CHAPTER 27
Postwar America, 1946 - 1952
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Reconversion
 Americans face two major questions at end of
WWII:
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What will be relationship with Soviet Union?
Will the economy thrive or flounder?
 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill)
 Provided new opportunities for veterans to purchase
homes and attend college
 Economy surges forward as consumer
spending begins in earnest
 Militancy of labor led to strikes
Affluence and Anxiety
 Baby booming
 Families place greater emphasis on children
 Listening to experts and agonizing over child rearing
 Woman displaced in workforce by returning vets
 Post-war women became nation’s primary consumers
 Many women still worked outside home, in “feminine”
jobs
 Suburbia after the war
 Levittown
 Reinforced traditional family roles
The Soviet Threat
 Soviet containment
 Winston Churchill and the Iron Curtain
 George Kennan
 President unveils Truman Doctrine
 Civil war in Greece
 Implements help from Europe
 Marshall Plan
 27 billion spent to help Europe recover
 National Security Act of 1947
 Created National Security Council, Department of
Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency
Liberalism in Retreat
 House Un-American Activities Committee
 Searched for communists in America
 Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers
 Pumpkin Papers
 Taft-Hartley Act curbs power of unions and
fosters racial discrimination
 Jackie Robinson breaks baseball’s color line
 Truman surprises experts with wins in 1948
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Dixiecratics
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Strom Thurmond
Racial Segregation, 1949
Election of 1948
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Trouble in Asia
 Communism prevails in China in 1949
 Chiang Kai-Shek
 Mao Tse-tung
 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
 North Korea invades South Korea in 1950
 United States and United Nations send forces
 Douglas MacArthur
 Inchon
 Truman relieves MacArthur, April 1951
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Korean War
McCarthyism and the Election of 1952
 Red Scare brings fear and “McCarthyism” to U.S.
 Joseph McCarthy
 Dwight Eisenhower runs for presidency in 1952
 Adlai Stevenson
 Richard Nixon is named running mate for Eisenhower
 Democratic attacks against Nixon backfired
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Checkers
Ike elected president
Republicans gain slim control of Congress
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Presidential Election, 1952
Discussion Questions
 Examine the rise of consumerism in the U.S. after
the war. What role did the G.I. Bill play in post-war
economy?
 What factors caused the U.S. and the Soviets go
from allies to enemies?
 What were the causes of the Korean War? What
was America’s reasons for becoming involved?
 What part did Alger Hiss and Joe McCarthy play
in the “Red Scare” of the 1950s?