The Cuban Missile Crisis and
Beyond
• Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959 and
declared himself a communist.
• The United States aided Cuban dissidents in a
failed attempt to overthrow Castro in 1961.
• Soviets try to put missile launch pads in Cuba
in 1962, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• Leads to Nuclear
Test Ban treaty in
1963
• Bans aboveground
testing and
development of
nuclear weapons
• American veterans of World War II returned
home and created the “baby boom.”
1946 – 1964
• Conservative middle class values and consumerism
dominated postwar era.
• Large families standard
– aided by improved medical care and diet.
• Mass consumerism for necessities and luxury goods
became the norm.
• Americans borrowed, while Europeans saved, to buy
consumer durables such as televisions and
refrigerators.
• The G.I. bill enabled many veterans to go to college.
• Tupperware typifies the new consumer era:
Americans had food surpluses to store and
large families to feed.
• Middle class life gender segregated by work
(men) and home (women).
• American pop culture dominated world, due
to radio, television, and movies.
• American music, from blues, jazz, to rock and
roll standard worldwide.
• In Europe, existentialism offered an alternative to
American materialist modernism.
• Martin Heidegger
– Influenced French intellectuals such as
– Sartre and Camus.
• Sartre viewed communist socialism as egalitarian.
• Camus was anti-communist who thought
engagement was the only way to escape the
absurdity of modern existence.
• Existentialism
– Philosophical thinking begins with the individual
– The individual is disoriented and confused
– The world is absurd
• Literature, film, and art explored themes of:
– Individualism
– Conformity
– Alienations
– Mass murder
– Gender
– Race
– Political persecution
• American authors explored the complexity of
modernism in the postwar period.
– William Faulkner
– Tennessee Williams
– Elizabeth Bishop
• British writers wrote about personal struggles
with modernity:
– W. H. Auden
– Dylan Thomas
• German writers focused on identity, guilt, and
truth in language:
– Max Frisch
– Günter Grass
• Latin American writers explored the
ambiguities of modernity.
– Jorge Luis Borges
– Pablo Neruda
– Octavio Paz
• Erich von Stroheim and Jean Renoir pioneered
the “art film” which included:
– Neorealist
•
•
•
•
Bicycle Thieves
La strada
The Hustler
The French Connection
– New Wave film
• Breathless
• Jules and Jim
• Painting: abstract expressionism.
• Rothko and Pollock’s
Mark Rothko
Jackson Pollock
• Social realism was also popular with artists,
especially in Mexico.
Populism and Industrialization in Latin America
• Latin American stayed out of World War II, and
remained economically stagnant.
– Depression of the 1930s reduced Latin America’s
exports in commodities.
– Leaders tried to industrialize by import substitution,
making goods domestically.
• Latin American slowly urbanized after 1945 but
led to more income disparity.
– Landless migratory workers settled in shantytowns in
the cities.
– “Informal sector” of peddling, repairing, and recycling
developed.
– Living in cities did provide educational and health
opportunities.
– Industrial labor force small, most Latin Americans
worked on farms.
• Only Mexico and Brazil developed basic industrial
goods: steel and chemicals.
• Latin American states chose populism rather
than capitalism or communism.
– Emphasis on appealing to the ordinary people and
their interests.
– Venezuela, Colombia, and Costa Rica tried
democracy in the 1950s.
– Eight nations had populist regimes, including
Argentina and Brazil.
– Remaining Latin American states had authoritarian
dictatorships.
• Populism typified by “Peronism”
– The rule of Argentina by .
• Perón was part of a military junta that seized
Argentina in 1943.
• Sympathized with urban workers, informal
sector, and traditional crafts.
• Negotiated with unions for higher and
minimum wages, and pensions.
• Married Eva Duarte, who managed charitable
social organizations.
• Perón elected president of Argentina in 1946 and
begins to industrialize and nationalize utilities and
transportation.
• Perón also nationalized iron, steel, and construction
industries.
• Machinery had to be imported and Truman refused to
send Marshall Plan aid.
• Perón would serve a third term as
president, 1973 – 1974
– His second wife Isabel Martínez de Perón
would be president from 1974 – 1976
The End of Colonialism and the Rise
of New Nations
• Chinese communists won control of China in
1949, after a ten-year civil war.
• Mao Zedong adapted
Marxism for peasants,
communal farms, and
decentralized village
industrialization.
• Land reform took land from landlords and
distributed it to peasants.
• As many as 2 million landlords who resisted
were killed.
• Began slow collectivization, using incentives to
get peasants to share tools and machinery.
• Mao’s “Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom” asked
intellectuals for suggestions for reform.
– Intellectuals complained more than expected and
tried to start a second party.
– By 1957 Mao is concerned
that the intellectuals had
gone too far.
– Intellectuals were arrested
and sent off for
“reeducation.”
• Mao launches Great Leap Forward, 1958–
1961 to speed up farm collectivization.
– Farms were collectivized, with people living in
barracks.
– Small backyard steel furnaces were built, and farm
implements melted down.
– Peasants resisted seizure of land and farming
tools.
• By 1962 some 30 million
had died from famine.
Palestine
Israel
• Britain handed the problem of Palestine over the United
Nations.
• Created the state of Israel, which declared its independence
in 1947.
– Soviet Union allowed 200,000 Jews to immigrate to Israel.
– Soviets sent weapons and planes, helped Israel to fight Arabs.
• The United States and Britain placed embargo on weapons to
Arabs to help Israel.
• Palestinians fled from Israel and Jews were expelled from
Arab lands.
600,000+ Jews immigrate to Israel, 1947-1951
• Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized control of Egypt
in a coup in 1952 and
set up a military state.
• Led the “Free Officers” in
land reform, to break up
large estates
• Opposed by Muslim Brotherhood, who tried to
create an Islamic state.
• Nasser outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954.
• Once in office (as president) Nasser promoted
Arab nationalism.
• Supported by Soviets with weapons and in
building the Aswan Dam.
• Nationalized the Suez Canal from Britain and
France.
• Closed Straits of Tiran in 1956, a major shipping
lane for Israel, but forced to reopen it after the
Suez War.
• Britain and France no longer a player in Middle
East politics.
• The United States inherits British interests in the
area, to protect oil.
• Nasser part of Non-Aligned Movement in 1961,
independent of superpowers (Bandung Conf.).
– Nasser of Egypt
– Sukarno of Indonesia
– Tito of Yugoslavia
India
• Before and during the World War III three
groups had vied for control of Indian
subcontinent.
– Indian National Congress wanted a secularized state
modeled on Britain.
– Muslim League wanted a separate religious state for
Muslims
– Hindu religious nationalists wanted Indian identity tied to
Hinduism.
• 1947 British divided subcontinent into
independent Pakistan and India.
– Nearly two million people crossed the borders,
and hundreds of thousands died in the exchange.
– Pakistan divided in 1971, when Bangladesh
declared its independence.
• First war between India and Pakistan in 1947 over the Kashmir.
– Region led by a Hindu prince but had a Muslim majority.
– India conquered most of it, but still a source of dispute.
• New nation of India adopted a British
parliamentary and court system.
• Led by Jawaharlal Nehru,
India’s first prime minister.
• Adopted five-year plans from
Soviets to increase agricultural
output.
• Most pressing problem was poverty and
overpopulation.
• India was a hybrid capitalist-socialist state
with private property and socialist state
investments.
• State socialism focused on nationalizing heavy
industry with loans and hampered by poor tax
collection and food shortages.
The French Empire
• France wanted to restore its empire after
World War II
• The first problem was in French Indochina
• The United States aided Vietnamese communists to
fight Japanese in World War II.
• Ho Chi Minh, leader of communists, declared Vietnam
independent in 1945.
• French convinced the United States to help, to prevent
victory for communists.
• Geneva Conference, 1954
– French defeated in Vietnam
– Negotiated a division of Indochina into:
• Two Vietnams
• Laos
• Cambodia.
• The United States sent military aid to South
Vietnam, first advisors then ground troops
soldiers.
• Communist guerillas fought in South Vietnam and
in Laos.
• In 1963 the South Vietnamese Army assassinated
Ngo Dinh Diem
• United States continues to support the military
government in the South.
• Europe began to
pull away from
sub-Saharan
African colonies
in 1950s, as the
cost of holding
on to them
became too
high.
• Europe tried to
influence new
governments to
be friendly with
former colonial
powers.
• Europe had not developed African colonies, which
needed large investments to build up industries.
– Continued to rely on commodities exports.
• Ghana (Gold Coast), under Kwame Nkrumah, became
independent of Britain in 1957.
– Had a strong economy based on cocoa, and strong middle
class.
– Nkrumah overthrew the British inspired constitution in
1959 and
– Eventually turned Ghana into a one-party state.
• Overthrown by a military coup, aided by the United
States, in 1966.
• Belgian Congo became a Cold War battlefield
in the 1960.
• National elections were held in 1960, and
nationalist Patrice Lumumba won.
• Lumumba became prime
minister on a centrist
platform.
• Lumumba alienated the Belgians and the
Congolese Army (which had Belgian officers).
• Order began to break down.
• Katanga province tried to break free, with
Belgian support.
• Lumumba brought in U.N. peacekeepers to
restore order, but also took aid from Soviets to
force Katanga to rejoin Congo.
• Divisions in government allowed Mobuto to
stage a coup and have Lumumba killed, with
the collusion of
– Belgian
– Britain
– The U.S.