The war is over!
Now what do we do?
Rebuild Europe
• 1943 –United Nations
• Reconstruction Finance Cooperation
• -money given to Greece
• Was not enough to rebuild the water system in Athens
• CARE
• DP’s
• Displaced persons
Everyone looked to Britain
• In 1947, Great Britain announced it could no longer maintain foreign aid
to Greece and Turkey
• two strategically important nations resisting communism
US to the rescue!
• The United States agreed to send aid
• Started at $400 million-Greece and Turkey
• Truman Doctrine
• contain communism
• Lifted pressure off Britain
• But what about the rest of Europe?
The Marshall Plan
• Program to rebuild the ruined continent
• Money to Europe to rebuild
• CNN - Cold War
United Nations
• 1943 at Yalta
• General Assembly
• Security Council
• US, Britain, Russia, France, China
• Ultimate veto power
• 6 non-permanent members for two year terms
• (now it is 10)
US after the War
• Victorious in the war
• Homeland undamaged from the ravages of war
• Postwar prosperity that created new levels of affluence in the
United States
Bring the boys home!
• For some, coming home was a very difficult transition
• Availability of jobs
• 1,360,000 women with husbands in the service had entered the work
force
• Migration of African-American workers from the South
• Reactions of the children they left behind
• how they would fit into the family system
• “Shell shock"
• Marital problems
• Housing Shortages
How do we fix it?
• Jobs
• Women-go home!
• Unemployment pay for GI’s
• GI Bill-education loans to all G.I.'s who served 90 days in
WWII.
• Loans to building companies
• Very little offered after the war for psychological problems
African-Americans
• Going from the South to northern cities, especially Chicago
• African American veterans returning to the South after military
service in World Wars I and II were often unwilling to be
subjected to the humiliation and degradation of segregation and
discrimination in the land for which they served and shed blood.
The end of the 40’s
• 2/3 of Americans owned their homes
• First time the number of white collar workers surpassed bluecollar jobs
• America had, within a few short years, become a predominantly
middle class
society.
• Read
• Zoot suit riots in 1943
Rebuilding Germany
• Divided between four countries
Berlin is divided too!
Rebuilding Japan
• US- Japan
• US and Soviet Union in Korea
• Easier to do.
Harry Truman
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Good ole boy from Missouri
Cursed all the time
“the buck stops here”
"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Fair Deal
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Labor
Organizer
Expander
Civil Rights
Strikes …again!
• Truman and Congress were mad
• Truman got over it!
• Congress did not.
Taft-Hartley
(slave labor law)
• 80-day injunction against any strike
• secondary boycotts (boycott against an already organized
company doing business with another company that a union is
trying to organize
• outlawed the “closed shop”
• affidavits that union officers are not Communists
• Congress overrode his veto
Let’s Organize
• 22nd Amendment
• 2 terms only
• National Security Act
• Department of Defense in 1949
• National Security Council
• CIA
• Priority given to a new independent Air Force
• SAC created Mar. 21, 1946
Amendments
• 16
• Income tax
• 17
• Senators
• 18
• Prohibition
• 19
• Women’s vote
• 20
• January 20th
• 21
• Prohibition repealed
Expander
• Expand Social Security
• Expand TVA
Civil Rights
• African-Americans have fought in every war in U.S. history.
• Executive Order 9981
• calling on the armed forces to provide equal treatment and opportunity
for black servicemen
• Integration!
Crossing the Color Barrier
• Jackie Robinson
Iron Curtain
• Churchill
• "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron
curtain has descended across the Continent.”
• US beamed in “Voice of America”
• Democratic propaganda
• Stalin had not kept promises for free elections
• 1948-took over Czechoslovakia
• 1948-Now he wanted ALL of Berlin
Berlin Air lift
“Operation Vittles”
• At the height of the Berlin Airlift
• two groups of aircraft flew in four-hour blocks around the
clock
• “ While one group of aircraft was loaded and serviced, the
other group was in the air. On the 264-mile route, 32 aircraft
were in the air simultaneously. Activity supports a plane
taking off and landing every 90 seconds in Berlin.”
•
Candy Flyer
• Lt. Gail Halvorson
• "Candy Bomber"
• Started Operation "Little Vittles"
• Air-drop of candy to Berlin children
The Result
Israel is real
again!
1948 Election
• R-Dewey
I’m going to give ‘em hell!
• Whistle Stop campaign
• Began a coast to coast train campaign
• 22,000 miles and gave ten speeches a day
• Night of the election newspapers gave the victory to Dewey
Why did Truman win?
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Dewey did not actively campaign
Jewish vote
Black vote
Labor vote
Farmer vote
NATO
• An attack on one is an attack on all!
• First strike capability
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Reds are everywhere!
Alger Hiss
China gets smaller
Communists are stealing secrets
Joe McCarthy
Korea
Let’s look for Reds!
• House Un-American Activities Committee
• HUAC
• Richard Nixon
What a scumbag!
• Whitaker Chambers
• communist network working within the United States
• Named Alger Hiss as Communist agent
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Alger Hiss
Special Senate Commission investigating munitions industry
Accompanied to FDR to Tehran
US delegate to UN General Assembly
Clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes
Phi Beta Kappa
I don’t know this man.
• Denied knowing Chambers
• (He recognized Chambers as a man he had known as
George Crosley)
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I’ll prove I know Hiss!
Special names
Cocker spaniel
Vet
Household secrets
Pumpkin papers
• Farm in Maryland, where he brought out a hollowed-out
pumpkin containing four rolls of microfilm
• Documents were in what was apparently Hiss's own
handwriting
China gets Smaller
• Chiang Kai Shek attempted to eradicate the Chinese Communists led by
Mao Zedong
• Ultimately failed
• Forced his government to retreat to Taiwan
• We recognized Taiwan as China
Communist Spies are all around Us
• His brother-in-law was a technician fabricating components for
the Manhattan Project.
• Persuaded him to hand over atomic bomb secrets, which he then
relayed to the U.S.S.R.
Greenglass cut a Deal
• “I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. How do you
like that?”
• “And that's what I told the FBI. I said, 'If you indict my wife, you can
forget it. I'll never say a word about anybody.'"
Senator Joe McCarthy
February 1950
• “I have here in my hand a list of 205 names known to the Secretary of
State as being members of the Communist Party, and who, nevertheless
are still working and shaping policy” ?
• Witch hunt for “commies” in the government that lasted for
more than five years
• Rarely provided any solid evidence to back up his claims
• Ended many a career
The end
• Televised hearings of the Army fully exposed McCarthy as
irresponsible and dishonest
• Read
• Hollywood blacklists (Hollywood 10)
Korea!
• American and Soviet negotiators hastily agreed to an administrative
division of the peninsula at the 38th parallel
• 1948
• the nation was divided between two opposing political systems
• 1949
• Americans withdrew
• Soviets stayed
Korea is smaller
• North Korea advanced into South Korea in 1950
“Police Action"
• President Truman decided to seek United Nations action and to
commit troops in response to North Korea's sudden and massive
invasion of South Korea
• “Greece of the Far East”
• Where were the Soviets?
• United Nations' "police action" against the aggressors
UN to the rescue!
• Successful Inchon landing in September
• Followed by rapid military successes
• General Douglas Macarthur
• the war would be won quickly and that American troops would be
"home by Christmas."
• Let’s nuke everyone!
Who is the aggressor now?
Controversy
• McArthur wanted to use A-bomb and when Truman said no, was openly
critical of Truman.
• China intervened openly
• Soviet Union not-so-openly
• UN was thrown back midway into South Korea
• Early in the new year, the Chinese army was in turn contained and forced
to retreat
• Because of his insubordination, Macarthur is gone.
• Ridgeway takes his place
Truman and strikes
• 1950-U.S. Army seized all the nation's railroads to prevent a general
strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years
later.
• that threatened strikes would cripple production of weapons and
endanger
• U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike.
• The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court
Election of 1952
• D-Stevenson
• R-Eisenhower
• ''I Shall Go to Korea''