Focuson ap
Success
Chapter 34 The Cold War Begins 1945-1952
MUST KNOW: Events and People
• Postwar peace settlements
Soviet Union
• Baby boom
• Cold War
Military engagements in Korea
• The suburbs
Policies and methods to expose suspected
• The Sunbelt
•
Containment (also referred to as "contain
communists within the United States
communism")
NUSTUNDERSTAND: Essential Knowledge from Period 7 (1890-1945) and Period 8
(1945-1980)
Why did Americans debate policies and methodsdesignedto
expose suspected communists within the UnitedStateseven
as both parties supported the broader strategy ofcontaining
How did the war-ravaged condition of Asia and Europe, the
dominant U.S. role in the Allied victory, and postwar peace
settlements allow the United States to emerge from the war as
the most powerful nation on earth? (pp. 822-825)
•
Why did U.S. policymakers
communism? (pp. 837-839)
How did a
engage in a Cold War with the
authoritarian Soviet Union, seek to limit the growth of
communist military power and ideological in uence, create a
free-market global economy, and build an international security
system? (pp. 823-833; 836-837)
burgeoning
private sector, federal spending,thebaby
boom, and technological
developments help spureconomic
growth? (pp. 839-850)
• As higher education opportunities and newtechnologies
rapidly expanded, how did increasing social mobilityencouage
the migration of the middle class to the suburbs and ofmany
• As postwar tensions dissolved the wartime alliance between
Western democracies and the Soviet Union, why did the United
States develop a foreign policy based on collective security,
international aid, and economic institutions that bolstered
Americans to the South and West?(pp.844-850)
• Why did the Sunbelt
region
emerge as a signi cantpolitical
and
economic force? (pp. 844-845)
noncommunist nations? (pp.823-833; 836-837)
• How did the United States seek to contain communism through
military engagements in Korea? (pp. 833; 836-837)
MUSTCONNECT:Essential Knowledge and Historical Thinking Skills
and Reasoning Processes
• Essential
Knowledge: As higher education
opportunities and new technologies rapidly expanded,
S
Contextualization
AfteryoureadSection
34-16"The
Smiling Sunbelt" (pp. 844-845), can you identify anddescribe
increasing social mobility encouraged the migration of the
middle class to the suburbs and many Americans to the South
the historical context of the emergence oftheSunbelt?
and West. The Sunbelt region emerged as a signi cant political
and economic force.
•
Essential
Knowledge:
U.S. policymakers engaged in a
S
cold war with the authoritarian Soviet Union, seeking to limit
the growth of Communist military power and ideological
Comparison Afteryouhave
read"Varying
Viewpoints:
Who Was to Blame for the Cold War?" (pp.850-851),can
you create a Venn diagram that compares andcontraststhe
in uence, create a free-market global economy, and build an
revisionist or
postrevisionist
interpretations of theColdWar?
international security system.
•Essential
Knowledge: Aspostwartensionsdissolved
the wartime alliance between Western democracies and the
Soviet Union, the United States developed a foreign policy
based on collective security, international aid, and economic
institutions that bolstered noncommunist nations.
A
Causation "Victorycelebrationshadbarely
endedthe
authors conclude, "before America's crumbling relationswith
its wartime
ally, the Soviet
Union,
secondary causes you identi ed.
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threatened a newandeven
more terrible international con ict" As you read thischaptet
what event or series of events in the 1940s would youselect
as the primary and secondary causes of the ColdWar?Witea
paragraph explaining the difference between theprimaryand
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CHAPTER 34
The Cold War Congeals
The Cold War Begins, 1945-1952
831
-nsive alliance at Brussels. They then invited the
tinited States to join them. The proposal confronted
nited States with a historic decision. America had
teionally avolded entangling alliances,especially
peacetime (if the Cold War could be considered
eacetime). Yet American participation in the emerg
coalition could serve many purposes: it would
NAESEAIPLANS/
LLIN
strengthen the policy of containing the Soviet Union:
it would provide a framework for the reintegration o
Germany into the European family; and it would reassure jittery Europeans that a traditionally İsolationist Uncle Sam was not about to abandon them to the
marauding Russian bearor to a resurgent and domineering Germany.
NNNTH
ATLANTIC
The Truman administration decided to join the
34.6 The Marshalt Plan Turns Enemies
European pact, called the North
into Friends The poster in this 1950
photograph in Berlin reads, "Berlin
Rebuit with Help trom the Marshall Plan."
Organization (NATO), granting it a transatlantic
character. With white-tie pageantry, the NATO treaty
wassigned in Washington on April 4, 1949. The twelve
original signatories pledged to regard an attack on
The Soviet menace spurred the uni cation of the
armed services as well as the creation of a huge new
national security apparatus. Congress in 1947 passed
the National Security Act, creating the Department
of Defense. The department was to be
housed in the sprawling Pentagon building on the banks of the Potomac and to be
headed by a new
cabinet
of cer,
the sec-
retary of defense. Under the secretary, but
without cabinet status, were the civilian
secretaries of the navy, the army (replacing the old secretary of war), and the air
force (a recognition of the rising importance of airpower). The uniformed heads
of each service were brought together as
the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The National Security Act also es-
tablished the National Security Council
(NSC) to advise the president on secu-
rity matters and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) to coordinate the government's foreign fact gathering. The "Voice
of America," authorized by Congress in
1948, began bearming
American
The Soviet threat was forcing the democracies of
Western Europe into an unforeseen degree of unity.
In 1948 Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands,
and
Luxembourg
signed
a
path-breaking
treaty of
PA351
of selected young men fromn nineteen to
twenty- ve years of age. The forbidding
presence of the Selective Service System
shaped millions of young people's educational, marital, and career plans in the
following quarter-century. One shoe at a
time, a war-weary America was reluctantly
returning to a war footing.
Treaty
one as an attack on all and promised to respond with
"armed force" if necessary. Despite last-ditch howls
from immovable isolationists, the Senate approved the
treaty on July 21, 1949, by a vote of 82 to 13. Membership was boosted to fourteen in 1952 with the inclusion of Greece and Turkey, to fteen in 1955 with the
34.8 Reaching Across the Atlantic in Peacetime,
1948 When the United States joined with theVWestern
European powers in the North Atlantic Alliance, soon
addition of West Germany.
Soviet aggression.
The NATO pact was epochal. It marked a dramatic
departure from American diplomatic convention, a
gigantic boost for European uni cation, and a signi -
cant step in the militarization of the Cold War. NATO
becamethe cornerstone of all Cold War American policy
toward Europe. With good reason pundits summed up
NATO'S threefold purpose: "to keep the Russians out,
the Germans down, and the Americans in."
34-8 Reconstructionand
Revolution in Asia
O5OPONA
M... 5A3bl
radio
broadcastsbehind the iron curtain. In the
same year, Congress resurrected the military draft, providing for the conscription
Atlantic
34.7 The View from Russia American views of Russian ggression
in the earty Cold War years were matched by Russian foars of
American expansion. This Russian cartoon proclaims
Bases" (1t rhymes in both Russian and English!), whicn
sldcapitalbe
looselytranslated as "Words and WarPreparaticon.
red olve
iststoogein the soldier's hip pocket is brandishing a wi sting
branchinwhichisnestedatinyatomicbomb.He 5
t toan
"Peace," "Defense and "Disarmament while stanaingned inthe
over-sizesidearm burnished with a dollar sign, a moueoldier is
wad of cash in the soldier's front pocket. Meanwhile
planting an American base in Greece, a NATO member. U.S. bomber
bases in Britain, Spain, France, and Italy are also show
Reconstruction in Japan was simpler than in Germany,
primarily because it was largely a one-man and onearmy show, The occupying American army, under the
Supreme Allied commander, ve-star general Douglas
MacArthur, sat in the driver's seat. In the teeth of vioent protests from Soviet of cials, MacArthur went
nhexibly ahead with his program for the democrazation of Japan. Following the pattern in Germany,
OpJapanese "war criminals" were tried in Tokyo from
946 to 1948, Eighteen of them were sentenced to
prison terms, and seven were hanged.
General MacArthur, as a kind of Yankee mikado,
oyed stunning success.TheJapanesecooperated to
dstonishing degree. They saw that good behavior
andthe adoption of democracywouldspeed the end
ne occupation-as it did. A MacArthur-dictated
to be called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it
overcame its historic isolationism in the wake of wars.
By 1955 former enemy West Germany would be admitted to NATO to help defend Western Europe against
constitution was adopted in 1946. It renounced militarism, provided for women's equality, and introduced
Western-style democratic government-paving the
way for a phenomenal economic recovery that within
a few decades made Japan one of the world's mightiest industrial powers. Ironically, as with the U.S.-
supported recovery of Western European economies,
Japan's postwar ascendance eventually helped to end
America's honeymoon as the unchallenged global
economic kingpin. Despite such ironies, Japan proved
an uncontestable postwar success story for American
policymakers.
The opposite was true in China, where a bitter civil
war had raged for years between Nationalists and communists. Washington had halfheartedly supported
the Nationalist government of Generalissimo Jiang
Jieshi in his struggle with the communists under Mao
Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). But ineptitude and corruption
within the generalissimo's regime gradually corroded
the con dence of his people. Communist armies
Swept south, and late in 1949 Jiang was forced to ee
with the remnants of his once-powerful force to the
last-hope island of Formosa (Taiwan).
The collapse of Nationalist China was a depressing
defeat for America and its allies in the Cold War--the
worst to date. At one fell swoop, nearly one-fourth of
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CHAPTER 34
The Cold War Begins, 1945-1952
the world's population--some 500 million people
was swept into the communist camp. The so-called
fall of China became a bitterly partisan issue in the
United States. Republicans, seeking out those who
had "lost China," assailed President Truman and his
bristly mustached secretary of state, Dean Acheson.
They insisted that Denmocratic agencies, wormy with
communists, had deliberately withheld aid from Jiang
Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) to trip him into his fall.
More bad news came in September 1949 when
President Truman shocked the nation by announcing
that the Soviets had exploded an atomic bomb-
approximately three years earlier than many experts
had thought possible. American strategists since
1945 had counted on keeping the Soviets in line
by threats of a one-sided aerial attack with nuclear
weapons. But atomic
bombing was now a game that
To
outpace
Alomic scientist Edward Condon (1902-1074
as carly as 1946-three years before the
Sovietemd
exploded their own atomic bomb--that Americome
con dence in their nuclear monopoly was a dangern.
delusion that could unleash vicious accusations and
scapegoating:
l Thelawsofnature,someseemtothink.
areoursexclusively. . . Having createdan ai
feusoicion and distrust, there will bepersons
among us who think our nations can know
nothing except what is learned by espionage.
So, when other countries make atom bombs.
these persons will cry 'treason' at our
scientists, for they will nd it inconceivable
that another country could make a bomb in any
other way.)
two could play.
the
Soviets
in
nuclear
weaponry,
Truman ordered the development of the "H-bomb"
(hydrogen
bomb)-a
city-smashing thermonuclear
weapon that was a thousand times more powerful
than the atomic bomb. J. Robert Oppenheimer, for-
mer scienti c director of the Manhattan Project and
current chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, led
a group of scientists in opposition to the program to
design thermonuclear weapons on the grounds that
it approached genocide. Albert Einstein, the physicist
whose theories had helped give birth to the atomic
age, declared that "annihilation of any life on earth
has been brought within the range of technical
possibilities.
But Einstein and Oppenheimer, the nation's two
most famous scientists, could not dissuade Truman,
anxious over communist threats in East Asia, from
proceeding with the H-bomb. The United States exploded its rst hydrogen device on a South Paci c
atoll in 1952. Not to be outdone, the Soviets countered with their rst H-bomb explosion in 1953.The
nuclear arms race had entered a perilously competitive
Cvcle, spurred on by massive state support for defenserelated scienti c research in both countries (see "Makors of America: Scientists and Engineers," Section 34-9.
po, 834-835). It was only constrained by the recognition that a truly hot Cold War would leave no world
ior the communists to communize or thedemocracies
to democratize. Peace through mutual terror brought a
shaky stability to the superpower standoff.
t 34-9TheKoreanVolcano
Erupts
Korea, the Land of the Morning Calm, heralded a new
and more disturbing phase of the Cold War-a shoot-
ing phase-in June 1950. When Japan collapsed in
1945, Soviet troops had accepted the Japanese surrender north of the thirty-eighth parallel on the Korean
peninsula, and American troops had done likewise
South of that line. Both superpowers professed to
want the reuni cation and independence of Korea, a
Japanese colony since 1910. But, as in Germany, each
helped to set up rival regimes above and below the
parallel.
By 1949, when the Soviets and Americans had
both withdrawn their forces, the entire peninsula was
a bristling armed camp, with two hostile regimes eyeing each other suspiciously. The explosion came on
June 25, 1950. Spearheaded by Soviet-made tanks,
North Korean army columns rumbled across the
thirty-eighth parallel. Caught at-footed, the South
Korean forces were shoved back
southward to a dan-
gerously tiny defensive area around Pusan, their weary
backs to the sea.
President Truman sprang quickly into the breach.
The invasion seemed to provide devastating proof of a
fundamental premise in the "containment doctrine"
that shaped Washington's foreign policy: even a slight
relaxation of America's guard was an invitation to
communist aggression somewhere.
34.9 The Hydrogen Bomb
This test blast at Bikini Atoll
in the Marshall lslands in
1954 was so powerful that
one Japanese sherman 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.
The Korean invasion prompted a massive expansİon of the American military. A few months before,
Truman's National Security Council had İssued its
famous National
Security Council Memoran-
dum Number 68 (NSC-68), recommending that
the United States quadruple its defense spending.
Ignored at rst because it seemed politically imposSible to Implement, NSC-68 got a new lease on life
Trom the Korean crisis. "Korea saved us," Secretary
Of State Acheson later commented. Truman now orđered a massive military buildup, well beyond what
Was necessary for Korea. Soon the United States
had 3.5 million men under arms and was spending
SSO bilon per year on the defense budget-some
13 percent of the GNP.
NSC-68 was a key document of the Cold War
period, not only because it marked a major step in
the militarization of American foreign policy, but
also because it vividly re ected the sense of almost
limitless possibility that pervaded postwar American
society. NSC-68 rested on the assumption that the
enormous American economy could bear without strain the huge costs of a gigantic
program. Said one NSC-68 planner,
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rearmament
"There was
practically nothing the country could not do if it
wanted to do it."
Truman took full advantage of a temporary Soviet
absence from the United Nations Security Council
on June 25, 1950, to obtain a unanimous condemnation of North Korea as an aggressor. (Why the Soviets
were absent remains controversial. Scholars once believed that the Soviets were just as surprised as the
Americans by the attack. It now appears that Stalin
had given his reluctant approval to North Korea's
strike plan but believed that the ghting would be
brief and that the United States would take little interest in it.) The Security Council also called upon all
U.N. members, including the United States, to "render
every assistance" to restore peace. Two days later, without consulting Congress, Truman ordered American
air and naval units to support South Korea. Before
the week was out, he also ordered General
MacArthur's Japan-based occupation
Douglas
troops
into
action alongside the beleaguered South Koreans. So
began the ill-fated Korean War.
Of cially, the United States was simply participating in a U.N. "police action." Participating nations,
including Great Britain, Canada, and the Philippines,
did make signi cant troop contributions. But the
United States provided 88 percent of the U.N. contingents, and General MacArthur, U.N. commander of the
entire operation, took his orders from Washington,
not from the Security Council.
34-10 The MilitarySeesawin Korea
Rather than ght his way out of the southern Pusan
perimeter, MacArthur launched a daring amphibious
landing behind the enemy's lines at Inchon. This bold
gamble on September 15, 1950, succeeded brilliantly;
within two weeks the North Koreans had scrambled
back behind the "sanctuary" of the thirty-eighth parallel. Truman's avowed intention was to restore South
Korea to its former borders, but the pursuing South
Koreans had already crossed the thirty-eighth parallel,
and there seemed little point in permitting the North
Koreans to regroup and come again. The U.N. General
Assembly tacitly authorized a crossing by MacArthur,
whom President Truman ordered northward, provided
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The Cold War in Asia
Scientistsand Engineers
sbatomicparticles and space-bound satelites do not
respect politicalboundaries. Disease-carrying viuses
spread across the gobe. Radio waves and Internet communications reach every comer of planet Earth. At rst
glance science, technology, and medicine appear to be
quintessentially international phenomena. Scientists often
pride themselves on the universal validity of scientilic
knowledge and the transnational character of scienti c
networks. In a world marked by political divisions, science
evidently knows no bOunds.
But a closer look reveals that national context does inuence the character of scienti c enterprise. American
scienitistshave repeatedly made Signi cant contributions to
the lite of the nation. They, in turn, have been shaped by
its unique historical circumstances-especially America's
intensifying concerns about national security in the
twentieth century. Once marginal players in global intellectual lite, American scientists now stand at the forefront of
worldwide scienti c advancement. In many ways the rise
of American science has kept pace with the arrival of the
United States as a world power.
Nowherewas this trend more evident than in the story of
"Big Science." The unusual demands of America's national
security state during VWorldWar lIl and the Cold War required
vast scient c investments. The result was Big Science, or
multidisciplinary research enterprises of unparalleled size,
SCope,and cost. Big Science and Big Technology meant big
bucks, big machines, and big teans of sclentists and engineers. The close link between government and science was
not new--precedents stretched as far back as the founding
of the Natonal Academy of Sciences during the Civil War.
But the depression-era Tennossoe Valley Authority (TVA)
and the wartime Manhattan Project ushered in ventures of
colossal scale and ambition. As the head of the TVA Wrote in
1944, "There is almost nothing, however fantastic, that (given
competant organization) a team of engineers, scientists, and
administrators cannot do today."
Cold War competition with the Soviets translaled into
huge government investmonts in physics, chomistry, and
aerospace. The equation was simple: national security
depended on technological superiority, which entailod
costly facities for scienti c rosearch and ambitious efforts
to recruit and traln sciontists. In the 1950s dofense projects
employed two-thirds of the nation's scientists and engineers.
Laboratories, roactors, accelorators, and observatories
proliferatod. Aftor the Soviets launched the world's rst
art cial satolite (Sputnik ) in 1957, thointermational space
raca bocame Amorica's top scienti c priority. To land astronauts on the moon, the National Aoronautics and Space
Acministration (NASA) spent a whopping $25.4 billion over
elevon yoars on Projoct Apollo. Another massive aorospace
mission, President Reagan's controvorsial Strategic Dofenso
Initiativo (or "Star Wars"), consumed somewhere betwoon
$32 blion and $71 bilion between 1984 and 1994.
In America's burgooning "research universitios, the
fedoral govornment found willing partners in the pronotion
&
34.11 A Scientist Working in Her Lab This medical
school professor researching pancreatic regeneration
was part of the surge of women pursuing scienti c
careers, particularly in the blological sciences. By 2004
as many women as men enrolled in medical schools,
and minority enrollment climbed as well, In that year 7
percent of entering medical students were Latino, and
6.5 percent were African American.
34.10 Launching Apollo 11 NASA ight directors
monitor the launch of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission
from the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas
in July 1969.
of the scienti c enterprise. University-employed scientists.
largely paid by government grants, concentrated on basic
research, accounting for over 75 percent of theestimated
$51.9 bilion spent on basic science in 2008. Meanwhile,
private industry spent
additional
billions on applied re-
search and product development.
For consumers of air bags, smart phones, and other
high-tech gadgets, these investments yielded rich
rewards as innovative technologies dramatically improved
the quality of life. Over the course of the twentieth century,
American corporations spearheaded a global revolution
In communications and information technology, American
Telephone and Telegraph (AT8T) and Radio Corporation
of America (RCA) attended the birth of telephones, radio,
and television. Apple, International Business Machines
((BM), and Microsoft helped put personal computers on
evory desk. Government and industry scientists together
invented the Internet.
Twentioth-century advances in medical scienco and
technology have also revolutionlzed American Ives.
ThankstoOnew drugs, devices, and methods of
ment,
the average life expoctancy in tho United States loapt trom
473 yoars in 1900 to 78.7 yoars in 2011. In the rst hai
of the twentioth century, physiclans discovered hormones
and vitamins, introduced penicilin and other antlbioteS,
bene ts, including new diagnoses for genetic defects, innovative therapies, and untold commercial applications.
Coordinated by the Department of Energy and the National
Institutes of Health, the project engaged thousands of scientists in universities and laboratories across the nation
and around the globe.
To achieve such innovation, Big Science typicatly
demands complex teans of scientists, engineers, and
technicians. When traditional channels of recruitment
came up short, scienti c institutions increasingly recruited
toreigners, women, and minorities (see Figure 34.1). Immigrants and exiles played key roles in the development of
the atomic bomb and Cold War weaponry. Long relegated
to junior positions as assistants and technicians, women
and minorities have recently made signi cant gains in the
"white man's world" of science. Yet severe imbalances persist, not only in academic science and engineering but in
the high-tech companies that have become some of the
world's most powerful enterprises in the early twenty- rst
century. In 2010 women represented 31 percent of employed doctoral scientists and engineers in the United
States, African Americans 3 percent, and Hispanics 4 percent, while the foreign-born accounted for 44 percent.
After dominating the world of basic and applied research
from the 1960s through the 1990s, American scientists
began winning fewer prizes and patents and publishing
fewer scienti c papers than their peers in Europe and
Asia. Experts predicted that current school-age Americans
would not be able to meet the rising dernand for scienti c expertise. Moreover, fewer foreigners are arriving to ll
the gap, as immigration laws becomne more restrictive and
international competition for their labor heats up in places
like Brazl, China, and India. For the United States to retain
preeminence in science, it must continue to welcome all
talent to the eld. That means attracting both foreign-born
scientists and a more diverse pool of young American
students whose brainpower helped make the nation a
scienti c colossus.
Percent
1980
30
1990
2000
2
2010
20
1
10
and oxporimented wlth Insulin therapy tor diabotesa
radiation therapy for ancer. More recently. cuttin
edge medical science has nurtured in-vito ortilizatic
eloped respirators, artiticial hoarts, and other meda
devicos; and largaly containod the AIDS epidormic.hs
Much of the optimism for future medical breakuhich
centers on the $3 billion Hunan Genome Project, whicn
Completod its mapping and soquencing of all the genetc
material in the human body in 2003. Deemed ntless
grall"'ofgenomlcs research, the project pron
fermale
Black
Latino
Foreign born
FIQUR 34.1 Demographic Pro le of Women, Minorities, and the Foreign-
in NonacademlcSclence andEngineeringOccupations,1980-2010
Source:Sclence and Engineering Indicators, 2002 and 2014
834
835
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ingbackdown thepeninsula.The ghtine eel.
CHINA
into a frostbitten stalemate on the icy terraiWsank
the
thirty-eighth parallel.
An imperiousMacArthur, humiliated by thisrou
NORTH
KOREA
yongyang
pressed for drastic
,Pyongyang
38"N
38N
SOUTH
KOREA
$OUTH
KOREA
Pusan
1297
o
Pusan
1257
Noth Korean atack
Norh Koreanattack
Nov. 25, 1950
USA
July27, 1953usSa
MANCHUPIA
ANCHRk
CHINA
CHINA
KOREA
NORTH
"Pyongjan
P'yongangKOREA
38'N
38*N
inchon
block-
concept
of a
"limited war"
and insisted that "there is no substitute for victory.
Truman bravely resisted calls for nuclear escalatlon
When MacArthur began to criticize the president's
policies publicly, Truman had no choice but to remove
the insubordinate general from command-which
Pusan
4130E
125
-Chneecountetatack
+ MacArthuratack
-
Amsice
lne
etory heldby
Jsouth Koeanforces
Tentoy hedby
JNorth Koean forces
0
100
"imbecile," a "Judas," and an appeaser of communism.
This domestic response to the Truman-MacArthur conlict offered just a hint of the depth of popular passions
coursing through the Cold War at home.
34-11 The Cold War Home Front
As never before, international events deeply shaped
American political and economic developments at
home in the years after World War II. The solidifying
Cold War with Russia fueled domestic political conict and drew new boundaries for acceptable political
opinion. Meanwhile, the postwar economic order that
the United States helped to forge, combined with Cold
War spending and investment, lald the foundations
for a Long Boom that transformed
the next several decades.
the country over
A new anti-red chase accelerated within America's
relations froze. Many nervous
citizens feared that communist spies, paid with
Moscow gold, were undermining the government and
treacherously misdirecting foreign policy. In 1947
Truman launched a massive "loyalty" program. The
attorney general drew up a list of ninety supposedly
disloyal organizations, none of which was given the
opportunity to prove its innocence. The Loyalty
Review Board investigated more than 3 millon federal
employees, some 3000 of whom either resigned or
were dismissed, none under formal indictment.
Individual states likewise became intensely securityConscious. Loyalty oaths in increasing numbers were
demanded of employees, especially teachers. The
gnawing question for many earnest Americans was,
Could the natlon continue to enjoy traditlonal freedoms-especlally freedom of speech, freedon of
thought, and the right of political dissent-in a Cold
War climate?
KOREA
Pusan
200 K
Front
MAP 34.3 The Shifting Front in Korea
EFLRING
AOrMACARTHUR,
that there was no armed intervention by the Chinese
In 1949 eleven
or Soviets (see Map 34.3).
communists were brought before a
New York jury for violating the Smith Act of 1940, the
The Americans thus raised the stakes in Korea,
ist peacetime antisedition law since 1798, Convicted
of advocating the overthrow of the American govern-
and in so doing quickened the fears of another poten-
tial player in this dangerous game. The Chinese had
publicly warned that they would not sit idly by and
watch hostile troops approach the strateglc Yalu River
boundary between Korea and China, But MacArthur
pooh-poohed all predictions of an effective intervention by the Chínese and reportedly boasted that he
would "have the boys home by Christmas."
MION
PyDL1e OPINIC
ment by force, the defendants were sent to prison. The
Upreme Court upheld their convictions in Dennis v.
United States (1951).
The
House
of
Representatives
in
ablished the House Un-American
34.12 Truman Takes the Heat
837
he did on April 1, 1951. In July, truce discussions
eean in a rude eld tent near the ring line but were
almost inmediately snagged on the issue of prisoner
exchange. Talks dragged on unproductively for neatly
(wo years while men continued to die.
Meanwhile, MacArthur, a legend in his own mind,
returned to an uproarious American welcome, whereas
in many circles Truman was condemned as a "pig." an
borders as U.S,-Soviet
SOUTH
3OUTH
KOREA
35N
He favore
Chinese and their supply lines. But Washington poli
cymakers, with anxious eyes on Moscow, refusedto
enlarge the already costly con ict. The chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared that a wider clashin
Asia would be "the wrong war, at the wrong place,at
the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."Europe.
not Asia, was the administration's
rst concern: and
the USSR, not China, loomed as the more sinister foe.
Two- sted General MacArthur felt that he was
being asked to ght with one hand tied behind his
back. He sneered at the
40N
AORTH
Seoul
retaliation.
ade of the Chinese coast and bombardment of
nese bases in Manchuria. He even suggested that
th
United States use nuclear weapons on the advancine
Seou
1938
had
Activities
Committee (HUAC) to investigate "subversion." In
34.13 Richard Nixon, Red-hunter Congressman
Nixon examines the micro lm that gured as important
evidence in Alger Hiss's conviction for perjury in 1950.
1948 committee member Richard M. Nixon, a rising
GOP star and ambitious red-catcher, led the chase
after Alger Hiss, a prominent
ex-New Dealer and
a distinguished member of the "eastern establishment." Accused of being a communist agent in the
1930s, Hiss demanded the right to defend himself.
He dramatically met his chlef accuser before HUAC in
August 1948. Hiss denied everything but was caught
in embarrassing falsehoods, convicted of perjury in
1950, and sentenced to ve years in prison.
The stunning success of the Soviet scientists in
developing an atomic bomb was attributed by many
to clever communist sples who stole American secrets.
Notorlous among those who had allegedly leaked
atomic data to Moscow were two American citizens,
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were convicted in
1951 of espionage and sent to the electric chair in
1953--the only people in American history ever executed in peacetimne for espionage. Though declassied evidence has subsequently strengthened the case
against the Rosenbergs, at the time they enjoyed the
support of many Americans who believed their claims
of innocence. Their sensational trial and electrocution, combined with sympathy for their two orphaned
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MANCHLKa
NORTH
KOREA
Truman versus MacArthur
MacArthur erred badly. In November 1950tensof
thousands of Chinese "volunteers" fell upon histashly
overextended lines and hurled the U.
Sept 14, 1950 USsa
USSR
CHINA
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TheCold War Begins, 1945-1952
CHAPTER 34
lune 25, 1950
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The Cold War Begins, 1945-1952
CHAPTER 34
children, began to sour some sober citizens on the
excesses of the red-hunters.
Was America
really
riddled
with
Soviet spies?
Soviet agents did in ltate certain government agencies, though without severely damaging consequences,
and espionage may have helped the Soviets to develop
an atomic bomb somewhat sooner than they would
have otherwise. Truman's loyalty program thus had
a basis in reality. But for many
ordinary
TheScourgeofMcCarthyism
Some Republicans sharply criticized Joseph McCowt
Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, for exam
declared,
reoroachedMcCarthy in front of ahugenational
l1 don't want to see the RepublicanPartyride
to political victory on the Four Horsemen
of
Calumny-Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry andSmear ))
Americans,
the hunt for communists was not just about fending
off the military threat of the Soviet Union. Unsettling
dangers lurked closer to home. While men like Nixon
and Senator Joseph McCarthy led the scarch for communists in Washington, conservative politicians at
the state and local levels discovered that all manner of
social changes-including increased sexual freedom
and agitation for civil rights-could conveniently be
tarred with a red brush. Anticommunist crusaders ran
sacked school libraries for "subversive" textbooks and
drove debtors, drinkers, and homosexuals, all alleged
to be security risks, from their jobs.
Some Americans, including President Truman,
realized that the red hunt was turning into a witch
hunt. In 1950 Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal
Security Bill, which among other provisions authorized the president to arrest and detain suspicious people during an "internal security emergency." Critics
protested that the bill smacked of police-state, concentration-camp tactics. But the congressional guardians
of the Republic's liberties enacted the bill over Truman's veto.
The demagogic politics of anticommunism found
its most dangerous practitioner in Joseph R. McCarthy,
an obstreperous Republican senator from Wisconsin.
Elected to the Senate on the basis of a trumped-up
war-hero record, the swaggering senator crashed into
the limelight in February 1950 when he CcusedSec-
of StateDeanAcheson of knowinglyemplovine
205 Communist party members. Pressed to
ealthe
names, MCCarthy later conceded that there were only
57 genuine communists and in the end failed to ider
tify even one. Some of McCarthy's Republica
colleagues nevertheless realized the partisan usefulnes
Menace
The Wisconsin
senator (standing) often
made a mesmerizing
spectacle out of his investigations into the allegedly
wide-ranging domestic
Communist conspiracy. But
his recklessness got the
better of him during the
nationally televised ArmyMcCarthy hearings in 1954,
where army counsel Joseph
Welch (seated) proved a
sympathetic and effective
antagonist.
wcvision audience for threatening to slander a young
lawyer on Welch's staf:
Until
this
moment,
Senator, I think I never
really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness
Little didI dream you could be so cruel as to do
aninjury to that lad.... I t were in mypowerto
forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do
so.I like to think that I am a gentleman, but your
forgiveness will have to come from someone
other than me....Have you nodecency,sir, at
long last? Have you left no senseof decency?)
of this kind of attack on the Democratic administra.
tion. Ohio's Senator John Bricker reportedly said,"Ioe
you're a dirty s.o.b, but there are times when you've
got to have an s.o.b. around, and this is one ofthem
McCarthy's rhetoric grew bolder and hisaccusations spread more wildly over the next severalyears.
He saw the red hand of Moscow everywhere. The
Democrats, he charged, "bent to whispered pleasfrom
the lips of traitors." Incredibly, he even denounced
General George Marshall, former army chief of staf
and ex-secretary of state, as "part of a conspiracy so
immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any pre.
vious venture in the history of man."
became
known
as
McCarthy--and
what
McCarthyism- ourished
in the seething ColdWar
atmosphere of
suspicion
and fear. The senator was
neither the rst nor the most effective red-hunter, but
he was surely the most ruthless, and he did the most
damage to American traditions of fair play and free
COMHLNST
PATYORANIZAIKNUSA K 9n0
34.14McCarthy Mapsa
ln a moment ofhigh drama during the Army-McCarthy
hearings,attorneyJoseph Wlch (18g0-196o)
speech. The careers of countless of cials, writers, and
actors were ruined after "Low-Blow Joe" had "named"
them, often unfairly, as communists or communist
sympathizers. Politicians trembled in the face of such
onslaughts, especially when opinion polls showed
that a majority of the American people approved of
McCarthy's crusade.
At the peak of his powers McCarthy effectively
controlled personnel policy at the State Department.
One baleful result was severe damage to the morale
and effectiveness of the professional foreign service.
In particular, McCarthyite purges deprived the government of a number of Asian specialists who might
have counseled a wiser course in Vietnam in the fateful decade that followed. McCarthy's antics also damaged America's international reputation for fair and
open democracy at a moment when it was important
to keep Western Europe on the United States' side.
McCarthy nally bent the bow too far when he
attacked the U.S. Army. The embattled military men
fought back in thirty- ve days of televised hearings
in the spring of 1954. Up to 20 million Americans at
a time watched the
Army-McCarthy
hcarings in
fascination while a boorish, surly McCarthy publicly cut
his own throat by parading his essential meanness and
Irresponsibility. A few months later, the Senate formally
condemned him for "conduct unbecoming a member."
Three years later, unwept and unsung, McCarthy died
of chronic alcoholisn. But "McCarthyism" has passed
Into the English language as a label for the dangerous
Torces of unfalrness and fear that a democratic society
can unleash at its peril.
Beyond ghts over security and civil liberties, the
Cold War shaped American culture in complex and
profound ways. Many Americans interpreted the contict between the capitalist West and the communist-dnd of cially secular--East in religious terms. Truman
found support for casting the Cold War as a battle be-
tween good and evil from theologians like the in uential liberal Protestant clergyman Reinhold Niebuhr
(1892-197 1). A vocal enemy of fascism, communism,
and paci sm in the 1940s and 1950s, Niebuhr divided
the world into two polarized camps: the "children of
light" and the "children of darkness." For Niebuhr,
Christian justice, including force if necessary, required
a "realist"
response to
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"children
of
darkness"
like
Hitler and Stalin. But Niebuhr's realisn also emphasized the dangers of fallibility and the limits of power,
in contrast to the more crusading spirit of conservative Christian anticommunists. The postwar decades
saw an emphasis on religious belief of any kind as a
distinguishing feature of the "American Way." to be
defended against atheistic communism. Congress's
decision to insert the words "under God" into the
Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 epitomized this Cold War
impulse.
The Cold War in uenced domestic politics and society in still other ways. Radical voices in institutions
ranging from unions and universities to churches and
civic organizations were muzzled. Amnong those voices
were sorme of the most forceful advocates for racial
justice in the United States. Even moderate agitators
for civil rights were often slandered as communists
and fellow travelers.
But at the same timne, competition with the Soviets
for international support, like the earlier Allied ght
against fascism during World War II, placed pressure
on the United States to live up to its own stated democratic ideals. This created new political opportunities
and rhetorical tools for advocates to press civil rights
claims. An early example of the new international
politics of civil rights came in 1948, when President
Truman issued his landmark Executive Order 9981,
desegregating the armed forces.
34-12 PostwarEconomicAnxieties
The communist menace was not the only specter
haunting Americans after World War 1. Economic
uncertainty also loomed over the new peace. The
decade of the 1930s had left deep scars. Joblessness
and insecurity had pushed up the suicide rate and
dampened the marriage rate. Babies went unborn as
pinched budgets and sagging self-esteem wrought a
sexual depression in American bedrooms, The war had
banished the blight of depression, but would the respite last? Grim-faced observers were warning that the
war had only temporarily lifted the pall of economic
stagnation and that peace would bring the return of
hard times. Homeward-bound GIs, so the gloomy pre-
dictions ran, would step out of the arny's chow lines
and back into the breadlines of the unemnployed.
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C20
CHAPTSR
Economic Uncertainty and Poitical Tensions
The Cod WarBegins, 1945-1952
The faltering economy in the tnitial postwaryears
threatened to con rm the worst predictions of the
đoomsayers who foresaw another Great Depression.
Real gross national product (GNP) slumped sickeningly in 1946 and 1947fromn its wartime peak. With
the removal of wartime price controls, prices levitated
by 33 percent in 1946-1947. An epidemic of strikes
Swept the country. During 1946 alone some 4.6 million laborers laid down their tools, fearful that soon
they could barely afford the autos and other consumer
goods their war-commandeered factories twould soon
manufacture.
The growing muscle of organized labor deeply annoyed many conservatives. They had their revenge
against labor's New Deal gains in 1947, when a Re-
publican-controlled Congress (the
rst in fourteen
years)passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President
Truman's vigorous veto. Labor leaders condemned the
Taft-Hartley Act as a "slave-labor law." It outlawed the
"closed (all-union) shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among
themselses, and required union leaders to take a non-
communist oath.
Taft-Hartley was only one of several obstacles that
slowed the growth of organized labor in the years after
World War lI. In the headydays of the New Deal, unions
hadspread swiftly in the North, especially in huge manufacturing industries like steel and automobiles. But
labor'spostwar efforts to organize in the historically antiunion regions of the South and West proved frustrating. TheCIO's Operation Dixi, aimed at unionizing
southern textile workers and steelworkers, failed miserably in 1948 to overcome white workers' lingering fears
of racial mixing. Anticommunist purges removed from
labor's ranks some of its most active organizers. And
most importantly, workers in the rapidly rowing
Ser.
vícesector of the economy proved much moro
if cuh
wanize than the thousands of assemb
to
ne
w
ers who in the 193Oshad poured into the
unions. Organized labor played a sionie andt:in
shaping the onomic and political order
in theUnited
States for several decades after World War
IL. But the
number of organized private-sector workers WO
in the1950sand then begin a long, slowdecline
id peal
th
persistedinto the twenty- rst century.
Democratic administration meanwhile
took
somesteps to forestall an economic downturn. Ir
war factories and other government intalla
Ilations
Sold
to
privatebusinesses at re-sale prices. It secured p
of the Employment Act of 1946.
kingPassage
i it gov.
ernment policy "to promote maximum employment
production, and purchasing power." The actcreated
three-member Council of Economic Adviser to pro
vide the president with the data and the rec
tions to make that policy a reality.
Most dramatic was the passage of the Service.
men's Readjustment Act of 1944-better known a
: sthe
GI Bill of Rights, or the GI Bill. Enacted partly Out
of fear that the employment markets would never be
able to absorb 15 million
returning veterans at war's
end, the GI Bill tided ex-soldiers over as members
of the "52-20 Club (S20 a week for up to 52 weeks)
and made generous provisions for sending the for-
mer soldiers to school. In the postwar decade,some
8 million
veterans advanced
their
education atUncde
Sam's expense. The majority attended technical and
vocational schools, but colleges and universities were
crowded to the blackboards as more than 2 million
ex-Gls stormed the halls of higher learning. Thetotal
eventually spent for education was some $14.5 billion
taxpayer dollars--$2 billion more than the MarDlan. The act also enabled theVeterans Administion (VA) to guarantee about Sl6 billion in loans for
terans to buy homes, farms, and small busin
raising educational levels and stimulating the con-
ction
industry, the GI Bill powerfully nurtured
he robust and long-lived economic expansion that
entually took hold in the late 1940s and profoundly
shaped the postwar era.
DEM
34-13 Democratic Divisions in 1948
Attacking high prices and "High-Tax Harry" Truman.
he Republicans had won control of Congress in the
ANDRCACY
congressional elections of 1946. Their prospects had
seldom looked rosier as they gathered in Philadelphia
to choose their 1948 presidential candidate. They
noisily renominated warmed-over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, still as debonair as if he had
stepped out of a bandbox.
Also gathering in Philadelphia, DemoCratic politicos looked without enthusiasm on their hand-medown president and sang. "I'm Just Mild About Harry."
But a "dump Truman" movement collapsed when war
hero Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to be drafted. The
peppery president, unwanted but undaunted, was
then chosen in the face of vehement opposition by
southern delegates, alienated by his strong stand in
favor of civil rights for blacks, especially his desegrega-
tion of the military.
Truman's nomination split the party wide-open.
Embittered southern Democrats from thirteen states,
like their re-eating forebears of 1860, met in their
oWn convention, in Birmingham, Alabama, with
Confederate ags brashly in evidence. Amid scenes of
heated de ance, these "Dixiecrats" nominated Governor J. Strom
Thurmond of South Carolina on a States'
Rights party ticket.
To add to the confusion within Democratic ranks,
former vice president Henry A. Wallace threw his hat
into the ring. Having parted company with the adnminIstration over its
get-tough-with-Russia
policy, he was
nominated by the new Progressive party34.15 Going to College on
the GI Bil Financed by
the federal government,
thousands of Wortd War ll
veterans crowded into
college classrooms in the
late 1940s. Universities
struggled to house these
older students, many of
whom already had families.
Pennsylvania State College
resorted to setting up
hundreds of trailers.
veritable
menagerie of disgruntled former New Dealers, starryeyed paci sts, well-meaning liberals, and communisttronters. Wallace, a vigorous though perhaps unrealistic
liberal, assailed Uncle Sam's "dollar imperialism" from
the stump. Considered by some the "Pied Piper of the
Politburo," he took a Soviet-friendly line that earned
hin drenchings with rotten eggs in hostile cities. But to
is supporters, Wallace raised the only hopeful voice in
the deepening gloom of the Cold War.
With the Democrats ruptured three ways and the
Republican congressional victory of 1946 just past, Dewey'sVictory seemed assured. Cold, sımug, and overcontident, he con ned himself to dispensing soothing-syrup
34.16 The Harried Piano Player, 1948 Besieged by
the left and right wings of his own party, and by a host
of domestic and foreign problems, Truman was a long
shot for reelection in 1948. But the scrappy president
surprised his legions of critics by handily defeating his
opponent, Thomas E. Dewey.
trivialities like "Our future lies before us." The seemingly doomed Truman ("to err is Truman," his critics
mocked) had to rely on his gut ghter" instincts and
folksy personality. Traveling the country by train to deliver some three hundred "give 'em hell" speeches, he
lashed out at the Taft-Hartley "slave-labor law and the
"do-nothing" RepublicanCongress, while whipping up
support for his program of civil rights, improved labor
bene ts, and health insurance.
On election night the Chicago Tribune ran off an
early edition with the headline "DEWEY DEFEATS
TRUMAN." But in the morning, it turned out that
"President" Dewey had embarrassingly managed to
snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Truman had
swept to a stunning triumph, to the complete bewilderment of politicians, pollsters, prophets, and pundits. Even though Thurmond took away 39 electoral
votes in the Deep South, Trumnan won 303 electoral
votes, primarily from the South, Midwest, and West,
besting Dewey's largely Eastern-based 189 total. To
make the victory sweeter, the Democrats regained
control of Congress as well, thanks especially to support from Republican-wary farmers, workers, and African Americans.
Elected in his oWn right, Trumnan outlined a
Sweeping Fair Deal program in his 1949 message
to Congress. It called for improved housing, full employment, national health insurance, a higher minimum wage, better farm price supports, new TVAS, an
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8A2
CTER 34 The CodWarBegirs, 1945-1952
0seC
As Truman's Fair Deal was rebuffed by a hor
continued their march into the work place in the
Congress,critics like the conserative New
DEWEY DETEATS TRARMA
York Dai
Neusgioatedthat theodiousNew Dealwas hoy
vanquished:
(l TheNewDeal is kaput like the Thirty Yere
War or the BlackPlague or other disasters...
(lts demise] is like corming out of the darkness
into sunlight. Like feeling clean again after a long
timeinthemuck.)
34.17 That Ain't the Way I Heard It!
Truman wins.
extension of Social Security, and increased aid to developinz countries. But most of the Fair Deal fell vic-
Americans, some 6 percent of the world's peonle
enjoying about 40 percent of the planet's wealth.
Nothing loomed larger in the history of thepostWorld War II era than this fantastic eruption of afu.
ence. It did not enrich all Americans, and it did not
touch all people evenly, but it transformed the livesof
a majority of citizens and molded the agenda of politic
housing in the Housing Act of 1949, and extending
Americans the con dence to exercise unprecedented
international leadership in the Cold War era.
199
+14 TheLongEconomicBoom,
1950-1970
Gross national product began to clinmb haltingly in
1948. Then, bezinning about 1950, the American
economy surzed onto a dazzling
path of sustained
zrowth that was to last virtually uninterrupted for two
decades. America's economic performance became the
envy of the world. National income nearly doubled
in the 1950% and almost doubled again in the 19605,
shooting through the
trillion-dollar
mark in 1973.
families owned their own cars and washing machlnes
and nearly 90 percent owned a television set-a ga0
get invented in the 1920s but virtually unknown un
tll the late 1940s. In another revolution of swecping
consequernces,almost 60 percent of Amerlcan families
OWned their own homes by 1960, compared with less
In his inaugural address in January 1949, President
Harry S. Truman (ı884-197a) said,
ll Communismisbasedon the belief that man is
50 weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern
himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong
masters.... Democracyisbased on the conviction
that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as
well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with
reason and justice,)
than 40 percent in the 1920s.
Of all the bene claries
of postwar orosperlty,
ever, urban of ces and shops provided a bonanz
employment for female workers. The greatmajoority of
to women,
new jobs created in the postwar era went
yOut
as the service sector of the economy dramaticaly
grew the old industrial and
manufacturn sectors.
wotk
Womenaccounted or a quarter of theAmerie
nearlyhalf
force at the end of World War Il and for
Women
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93
81
51
522
81.7
418
4.9
1980 134.0
252.7
299.3
199
2721
200
294.5
616:1
200
661.023
188
S693.498
20.1
201
196
677.856
2013
19:2
183
633,446
2014
12:2
603457
201
589,659
201
593372
154
602.783
14.8
2017, est
160
400
500
600
32
31
159
652570
2018, est
4.3
20.7
705557
2012
4.0
20.2
200
201
4.0
20.0
551.3
300
3.0
16.5
495.3
200
3.7
17.9
200
100
5.2
23.9
2007
0
6.4
26.7
700
800
0
10
3.
20
30
40
50
60
0
12
Percentage
FIGURE 34.2 National Defenso Budget, 1940-2018* Gross national product (GNP)
was used before 1960, It includes income from overseas Investment and excludes pro ts
generated in the United States but accruing to foreign accounts. Gross domestic product
(GDP), used thereafter, excludes overseas pro ts owed to American accounts but includes
ie value of all items originating in the United States, regardless of the destination of the
Prots, Until recent years those factors made for negligible differences in the calculation of
national and domestlc product, but most economists now prefer the latter approach.
Urces: Statistical Abstract of the United States,2014, from US Of ce of Management and Budget
vongressional Budget Of cel, Budget of the United Slates Government, Historical Tables, annual,
ps//www.whitehouse.gov/omb/historical-tables/
ve decades later. Yet even aas
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PERCENTAGE OF GNP/GDP
322
Blions of dollars (unadyusted for in ation)
onereapedgreater rewards than women. More t
the labor pool
1970
industries such as aerospace, plastics,
175
196048.1
1985
tíal inproverments to many Americans' lives.
high-technology
1950 137
vast new welfare programs, like Medicare; and it gave
As the gusher of postwar prosperity poured forth its
riches, Americans drank deeply from the gildedgoblet.
Millions of depression-pinched souls sought to makeup
for the sufferings of the 1930s. They determined to"get
theirs" while the getting was good. A people who had
once considered a chicken in every pot the standard
of comfort and security now hungered for two cars in
every garage, swimming pools in their backyards,vacation homes, and gas-guzzling recreational vehicles.
The size of the "middle class," de ned as households
carning between $3000 and S10,000 a year, doubled
from pre-Great Depression days and included 60 percent of the American people by the mid-1950s. By
the end of that decade, the vast majority of American
economic upturn of 1950 was fueled by massive appropriations for the Korean War, and defense spending accounted for some 10 percent of the GNP throughout the
ensuingdecade.Pentagon dollars primed the pumps of
PERCENTAGE OF FEDERAL BUDGET
OUTLAYS
in raising the minimum wage, providing for public
old-açe insurance to many more bene ciaries through
the Social Security Act of 1950. Short-term legislative
of a "permanent war economy" (see Figure 34.2). The
34-15 The Roots ofPostwarProsperity
outhern Dernocrats. The only major successes came
cbstacles to reform, howevet, paled against seismic
shifts in the domestic economy that brought substan-
the 1950s and 1960s rested on the underpinnings of
colossal military budgets, leading some critics to speak
What propelled this unprecedented economic explosion?World War II itself provideda powerful stimulus.
While other countries had been ravaged by years of
ohting, the United States had used the war crisis to
and society for at least two generations. Prosperity underwrote social mobility; it paved the way for theeventual success of the civil rights movement; it funded
tin toconzressionalopposition from Republicans and
re up its smokeless factories and rebuild its depression-plagued economy. Invigorated by battle, America
had almost effortlessly come to dominate the ruined
global landscape of the postwar period.
Ominously, much of the glittering prosperity of
O40s and 1950s, popular culture glori ed the tradiinnal feminine roles of homemaker and mother. The
lash between the prescriptive demands of suburban
ousewifery and the realities of employment eventually sparked a feminist revolt in the 1960s.
1940}16
843
ava Shared
Post-War
FProsperity
3
4
5
6
Percentage
7
8
9
10
fi
an to rupture in the 1970s, it signaled theb
be.
of the end of the postwar golden age (see Finning
on p. 1001).
'Also contributing to the vigor of the postwarecon.
omy were some momentous changes in the nation's
basic economic structure. Conspicuous was he
erating shift of the work force out of agriculture whi
achieved productivity gains virtually unmatck
b
any other economic sector. The family farm
became an
antique
artifact
as
consolidation
nearly
pro
duced giant agribusinesses able to employ costly
ma
chinery. Thanks largely to mechanization and to rich
new fertilizers--as well as to government subsidies
and price supports-one farmworker by the centurv'
end could produce food for over fty people, compared with about fteen people in the 1940s.Farmers
whose forebears had busted sod with oxen or horses
now plowed their elds in air-conditioned tractorcabs,
listening on their stereophonic radios to weather fore.
in productivity. In the two decades after the outbreak
casts or the latest Chicago
tions. Once the mighty backbone of the agricultural
produce nearly twice as much in an hour's labor as
commodities
market quota-
Republic, and still some 15 percent of the labor force
at the end of World
2 percent of working
War II,
farmers
Americans
made up a slim
by the turn of the
twenty- rst century-yet they fed much of theworld.
4-16 TheSmilingSunbelt
nearly double that of the old industrial zones of
Northeast (the "Frostbelt"). In the 1950s
ifornia
and sisters from one another. One sign of
stresswasthephenomenalpopularity oI
tiaccounted for one- fth of the entirenation'spop-
rose as its
34-17 TheRush to the Suburbs
In all regions America's modern migrants--if they
were white- ed from the cities to the burgeoning
new suburbs in the initial postwar decades (see "Mak-
eight Americans.
The Sunbelt was a new frontier for Americans afWorld War II. Modern pioneers came in search of
iobs, a better climate, and lower taxes. Jobs they found
ers of America: The Suburbanites," pp.
846-847).
While other industrial countries struggled to rebuild
their war-ravaged cities, government policies in the
United Statesencouraged movement away from urban
in abundance, especially in the California electronics
industry, in the aerospace complexes in Florida and
Texas,and in the huge military installations that pow-
centers. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and
Veterans Administration (VA) home-loan guarantees
made it more economically attractive to own a home
in the suburbs than to rent an apartment in the city.
Tax deductions for interest payments on home mortgages provided additional nancial incentive. And
government-built highways that sped commuters
erful southern congressional representatives secured
for their districts (see Map 34.4).
A Niagara of federal dollars accounted for much
of the Sunbelt's prosperity, though, ironically, southern and western politicians led the cry against government spending. By the early twenty- rst century,
states in the South and West were annually receiving
some $444 billion more in federal funds than those
in the Northeast and Midwest. A new economic war
between the states seemed to be shaping up. Northeasterners and their allies from the hard-hit heavyindustry region of the Ohio Valley (the "Rustbelt")
tried to rally political support with the sarcasticslogan
"The North shall rise again."
These dramatic shifts of population and wealth
further broke the historic grip of the North on the nation's political life. Everyelected occupant of the White
House from 1964 to 2008 hailed from the Sunbelt, and
from suburban homes to city jobs further facilitated
this mass migration. By 1960 one in every four Americans dwelt in suburbia, and a half-century later, more
than half the nation's population did.
The construction industry boomed in the 1950s
and 1960s to satisfy this demand. Pioneered by innovators like the Levitt brothers, whose rst Levittown
sprouted on New York's Long Island in the 1940s,
builders revolutionized the techniques of home construction. Erecting hundreds or even thousands of
dwellings in a single project, specialized crews working from standardized plans laid foundations, while
M
MN
4%
ID
1846
MI
T
NE
449
sort of
68
hooks
O
DE
W
KY
so%
KS
on child-rearing, especlally Dr. Benjamin Sp
TN
iing
lished in 1945, It instructed millions of pare
the ensuingdecades in the kind of homelywisdom
thatwasonce transmitted naturally ron sondships
to parent. In uld postwar neighborhood
o hard to sustain. Mobllity could exact
human cost in loneliness and isolatlon.
Especiallystriking was the growth of tne crescen!
unbelta fteen-state area stretching in a smiling
trom Virginia through Florida and Texas
ation aat
population
fr
450
WI
WY
e The
CommonSenseBook of Baby and ChildCare.
intensive, phenomenally productive big business by the
twenty- rst century-and sounded the death knell for
many small-scale family farms.
representation
population grew.
lation grOwth and by 1963 had outdistanced New York
as the most populous state-a position it still holds in
the earlydecades of the twenty- rst century, with more
than 38 million people, or more than one out of every
tance divided parents from chlldren, and brotte
34.18 Agribusiness Expensive machinery of the sort
shown here made most of American agriculture a capital-
the region's congressional
845
The convulsive economic changes of the post-1945period shook and shifted the American people,ampli
fying the population redistribution set in motion by
World War II. As immigrants and westward-trekking
pioneers, Americans had always been a people on
tne move, but they were astonishingly footlo0se in
the postwar years. For some three decades after 1945,
residences
an average of 30 million people changed
every year. Familles especially felt the strain, as
OK
AT
g
034
MS
260%
AL
GA
1
A
States growing faster
than national
rateof 16659%,
1950-2016
Statesgro
slower
e of1665%,
than nationalrateof1665%.
1950-
MAP 34.4 Distribution
of Population Increase,
1950-2016 States
with gures higher than
166.5 percent were growing
faster than the national
average between 1950 and
2016. Note that much of the
growth was in the "Sunbelt,"
a loose geographical concept,
as some Deep South states
had very litle population
growth, whereas the mountain
and Paci c states were
booming.
and California. This region increased its
Created with Scanner Pro
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virtually doubled the average American's standardof
living in the postwar quarter-century., WVhenthe link
between productivity gains and income growth
of the Korean War, productivity increased at an average rate of more than 3 percent per year. Gains
in productivity were also enhanced by the rising
educational level of the work force. By 1970 nearly
90 percent of the school-age population was enrolled
in educational institutions--a dramatic contrast with
the opening years of the century, when only half of
this age group had attended school. Better educated
and better equipped, American workers in 1970 could
they had in 1950. Productivity was the key to prosperity. Rising productivity in the 1950s and 1960s
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in their homes, and engineered a sixfold increase in
the country's electricity-generating capacity between
1945 and 1970. Spidery grids of electrical cables carried
the pent-up power of oil, gas, coal, and falling water to
activate the tools of workers on the factory oor.
With the forces of nature increasingly harnessed
in their hands, workers chalked up spectacular gains
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their consumption of inexpensive and seemingly inexhaustible oil in the quarter-century after the war. Anticipating a limitless future of low-cost fuels, they ung out
endless ribbons of highways, installed air-conditioning
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Middle East and kept prices low. Americans doubled
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of nature was the key to unleashing economic growth.
Cheap ernergy also fed the economic boom. American and European companies controlled the ow of
abundant petroleumn from the sandy expanses of the
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TheRise of the Sunbelt
The Cold War Begins, 1945-1952
reigned supreme over all foreign competitors. The Cold
War military budget also nanced much scienti c research and development ("R and D"-hence the name
of one of the most famous "think tanks," the Rand Corporation). More than ever before, unlocking the secrets
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CHAPTER 34
and electronics--areas in which the United States
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844
The Suburbanites
34.20 Aerial View of the On-ramps to a Typical New
Interstate Highway, 1950s
rages evckemore vvd heprosoenityof the
ea rar araphotographsof sprawing
SLCUts Neet ows cf pCk-aike tracthousses,each with
2reny andlawnandhere and here abackyardSwim-
irç poO,came SymcozeTecapacityof theeconomy
0ehe te Arencandream"tomalionsoffamilles.
nardyyrew. Wel-off city dwellers
ing
neighbortioocS
hadSrrtarzan
teter patrs to leaty outyng
neighborhoods since
Te rireteerth certury But atter 1945 the steady ow
tecame a starrcede Thebaby boorn, new highways, gov
ermert garrtses for mortgagelending. and favorable
t poicesalmade
suburbia
blossorn.
Who were the Americans racing to the new postwar
Stuts? Wa veteransled the way in the late 1940s, aided
Dy Veterans Adrninistration mortgages that featured tiny
Gwn pamerts and low interest rates. The general public
Sn tlowed. TheFecderalHousing Adrrinistration (FHA)
fered inaured rortgages with low down payments and 2
to 3 percErt irterest rates on thirty year loans. With deals
Sko this, t was hardy surprising that Arnerican farnilies
focked irto "Leittons," bult by Wiliam and Alfred Levitt,
suburban families constantly "on the go
culture
sorang up with new destinations, like drive-th
rants and drive-in movies. Roadside shopping resta:
edgedoutdowntownsas places to shop. Mean ters
new interstate highway system enabled
breadue, the
ve fartherand farther from their jobs and still comSo
work daily.
woI
burbanites continued to depend on cities for
iobs. though by the 1980s the suburbs themselves wer
becoming "edge cities" and important sites of empl
ment. Wherever they worked, suburbanites turned the
backs on the city and its problems. They fought to main.
tain their communities as secluded retreats, independer
municipalities with their own taxes, schools, and zonina
restrictions designed to keep out public housing and the
poor. Even the naming of towns and streets re ected a
pastoral ideal. Poplar Terrace and Mountainview Drive
were popular street names; East Paterson, New Jersey
and other sirnilarcutburtban developrnents.
Pecple f at kindsfoundtheirway tosuburbia,heading
tor raicgtotoods
that varied frorm the posth to the plain. Yet
tor al this dversity, the overvternig majority of suburbantos wore vhito ard rmiddo- class. Foaring that the presence
was rernamed Elmwood Park in 1973. With a mnajority of
Americans iving in suburbs by the 1980s, cities lost ther
political clout and much of the tax base that supported
crucial public services. As local television news bearmed
out stories of "urban crisis" into suburban iving rooms,
the economic and social divides between city and suburtb
yawned even wider.
ye
Middie-class African Americans began to move to the
suburbs in substantial numbers by the 1980s, but even
that migration failed to alter dramatically the racial divide
of metropolitan America. Black suburbanites settled in
towns like Rolling Oaks outside Miami or Brook Glen
near Atlanta-black middle-class towns in white-majority
counties. Meanwhile, new immigrants from across the
globe turned suburbs from California to Michigan into
self-segregated "ethnoburbs." By the beginning of the
twenty- rst century, suburbia as a whole was more
racially and economically diverse than at midcentury.
But old patterns of residential segregation endured, and
economic inequality increasingly separated older and
poorer "inner-ring" suburbs from newer more middleclass ones.
f minoriteswoulddepresspropertyvalues, white homeomors tornetines violently intirmidated prosp0ctive black
tuors.
rd sorno unscrupulous roaltors ongagod in
"Uiok tusting-noving in on0 or two black farnilios, and
tajng up the rormaining propor tios of panickod whites
vho lod and sold at distrossod pricos. As a rosult, postwar
Anerican motropolitan aroas bocarno evor moro starkly
wrgatod Only 347 of the 120,000 units of housing built
in metropolitan Ptiladelphia botwoon 1946 and 1953 woro
open to tlwks
ito in tho suburbs brought both opportunity and conformity, Mon tondod to vork in eithor whito-collar jobs or
uppor leol blue-collar positions such as forormen. Wornen
UAally orked in the homo, 50 much so that suburbia
camo to synbolizo the domoslic con nomont that fominists in the 1900s and 1970s docriod in tholr campaign for
Women's rights.
The houso itsolf bocano more important than over as
postwar suburbanitos bult their loisuro lives around telovision, horno inprOVOmont projocts, and barb0cues on
the patio, Tho contor of family ifo shittod to the fonced-in
backyard, as noighborly city habits of visiting on the front
stoop,gatbbingon the sidowalk,and strolling to local storos
disappearod. Institutions that had thrived as socal centers
in the city-churches, women's clubs, tatemal onganizaions, and tavorns--had a tougher time attracting patrons
in tho privalized world of postwar suburbia.
The sububa woro a boon to the automobile, as parents
junped behind the wheel to shuttle childron, groceri0s, and golf clubs to and fro, Tho second car, once an
unhoard-of kuxury, became a practical "necessity for
846
34.19 Drive-in
Los Angelcs,
Angeles. the
th Motherand
Modelot
A Café
re in
in Los
Model ot All Suburbias
34.21 Buyers Line Up for a Levittown Home, 1951 Mass construction technigues and a
New Deal-inspired revolution in home mortgage nancing made rst-tirne honeownere out ot
milions of Americans in the post-Worid War l years,
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