Chapter 36The Cold War Begins 1945-1952

Postwar Economics• Fear of continued Depression

• Anti-union backlash from Conservative Republicans Taft-Hartley Act

• Sold off war factories, created Council of Economic Advisors

• Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) “the American Dream”

• 1948=GNP ↑ for 20 years, income doubled

Postwar Economics• New middle class (saved during

war)= Culture of Consumerism

• Planned obsolescence and advertising

• Home ownership ↑ from 1920’s

• Work for women vs. traditional role of wife and mother

• US in good situation rest of world destroyed by war

Postwar Economy• “permanent war economy”= massive

defense spending• High tech and scientific research=

defense spending• US control of oil= cheap fuel

highway system, suburbs etc.• Productivity increasing 3% per year=

increased standard of living• Agribusiness

Coca-Colonizing the World American consumerism—and American products—flooded over the globe after World War II, as

this 1950 cover from Time magazine illustrates.

Advertising Prosperity, 1956

AgribusinessExpensive machinery of the sort shown here made most of American agriculture a capital intensive, phenomenally productive big business by the twenty-first century—and sounded the death knell for

many small-scale family farms.

Population Redistribution• New economy= 30 million moved

each year

• Isolation from family Dr. Spock

• Growth of the Sunbelt

• Growth of the suburbs- home loans from Federal Housing Administration and VA

• Highways, tax deductions commuters

• Levittown on Long Island 1947

Distribution of Population Increase, 1950–2005

Moving to the Suburbs

Population Redistribution• “white flight” as a result of Southern

blacks moving to white, northern cities

• Doughnut Effect- shopping malls• FHA often refused loans to blacks=

segregation and cycle of poverty• Baby Boom= 15-20 years after war

with explosion in birthrate• Boomers created structural

problems at every stage of development

Yalta Conference• February 1945= Big Three met at

Yalta Conference• Divide Germany into 4 zones of

occupation• Free elections in Poland (and eastern

Europe)• Create UN as peace keeping

organization• Soviet Union to enter war against Japan

Great Hopes for World Peace with the United Nations, 1947

Start of Cold War

• US-Soviet relationship out of necessity trouble between 2 Superpowers

• Ideology conflict (communism vs. democracy)• US hadn’t recognized USSR until 1933• Delay for 2nd front!• USSR kept out of atomic bomb• End to Lend Lease, denial of loans from US• USSR wanted a buffer zone

Start of Cold War• US angry about nonaggression pact

• US wanted democracy, demilitarization, end to colonization, UN

• Increasing fear of atomic confrontation= Cold War

Internationalism• Bretton Woods Conference July 1944

• World Bank• International Monetary Fund

• United Nations Conference April 25, 1945• Security Council= veto power• General Assembly• Secretariat• UN Trusteeship Council• International Court of Justice

• 1st clash over atomic weapons between US and USSR

Growing Rift• Nuremberg Trials: Crimes against

Peace, Crimes against Humanity, War Crimes

• USSR demanding ½ of Poland (nonaggression pact)= shifted boundaries in Poland and Germany

• Satellite Nations= wanted a buffer zone

• USSR refused reoccupation= keep Germany weak

• Berlin divided too

The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1946

Growing Rift• West Germany vs. East Germany• “an Iron Curtain”• Berlin Blockade Berlin Airlift until

1949• George F. Kennan: Policy of

Containment• Truman Doctrine• 1947 Marshall Plan with $12.5 billion of

rebuilding Europe= stop communism!• North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) vs. Warsaw Pact

Postwar Partition of Germany

Berlin, 1948

United States Foreign Aid, Military and Economic, 1945–1954Marshall Plan aid swelled the outlay for Europe. Note the emphasis on the “developed” world, with

relatively little aid going to “developing.”

Japan• Douglas MacArthur Japanese

reforms and democratization (wrote constitution)

• Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 1946-48

• Explosion of USSR Atomic Bomb in 1949 arms race to Hydrogen bomb

The Hydrogen Bomb, 1954This test blast at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was so powerful that one Japanese fisherman was killed and all twenty-two of his crewmates were seriously injured by radioactive ash that fell on their vessel some eighty miles away. Fishing boats a thousand miles from Bikini later brought in radioactively contaminated catches.

Hunt for Commies• Loyalty Review Boards 1947

• House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)= subversion in government and Hollywood

• Led to black lists and Hollywood Ten

• Richard Nixon Communist? Alger Hiss in state department

• McCarran Internal Securities Bill 1950 dictatorship?

• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg= espionage

1948 Election• Republicans= Thomas Dewey

• Democrats= Harry Truman

• Formation of the States Rights Party (Dixiecrats) with Strom Thurmond

• Progressive Party with Henry Wallace

• Truman= whistle stop campaign “give em hell Harry!”

Korean War• Occupation zones at 38th parallel

after WWII

• June 25, 1950: North Korea invaded South Korea

• NSC-68= defense spending!

• UN action to “peace keep”; Douglas MacArthur= commander

• Battle of Inchon moved beyond 38th up to the Yalu River

• Chinese action (threatened)

The Shifting Front in Korea

Korean War• November 1950= stalemate,

MacArthur wanted nuclear weapons

• “wrong enemy, wrong war”= limited war

• MacArthur attacked Truman in the press= dismissed from post April 11, 1951

• Cease fire talks starting 1951, concluded 1953