The Cold War Begins 1945-1952

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Chapter 36

• The Cold War Begins 1945-1952

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Postwar Economics

• Fear of continued Depression
• Anti-union backlash from Conservative
  Republicans? Taft-Hartley Act
• Sold off war factories, created Council of
  Economic Advisors
• Servicemens Readjustment Act (GI Bill)? the
  American Dream
• 1948GNP ? for 20 years, income doubled

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Postwar Economics

• New middle class (saved during war) Culture of
  Consumerism
• Planned obsolescence and advertising
• Home ownership ? from 1920s
• Work for women vs. traditional role of wife and
  mother
• US in good situation? rest of world destroyed by
  war

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Postwar Economy

• permanent war economy massive defense spending
• High tech and scientific research defense
  spending
• US control of oil cheap fuel? highway system,
  suburbs etc.
• Productivity increasing 3 per year increased
  standard of living
• Agribusiness

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Coca-Colonizing the World American
consumerismand American productsflooded over
the globe after World War II, as this 1950 cover
from Time magazine illustrates.
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Advertising Prosperity, 1956
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AgribusinessExpensive machinery of the sort
shown here made most of American agriculture a
capital intensive, phenomenally productive big
business by the twenty-first centuryand sounded
the death knell for many small-scale family
farms.
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Population Redistribution

• New economy 30 million moved each year
• Isolation from family? Dr. Spock
• Growth of the Sunbelt
• Growth of the suburbs- home loans from Federal
  Housing Administration and VA
• Highways, tax deductions? commuters
• Levittown on Long Island 1947

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Distribution of Population Increase, 19502005
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Moving to the Suburbs
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Population Redistribution

• white flight as a result of Southern blacks
  moving to white, northern cities
• Doughnut Effect- shopping malls
• FHA often refused loans to blacks segregation
  and cycle of poverty
• Baby Boom 15-20 years after war with explosion
  in birthrate
• Boomers created structural problems at every
  stage of development

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Yalta Conference

• February 1945 Big Three met at Yalta Conference
• Divide Germany into 4 zones of occupation
• Free elections in Poland (and eastern Europe)
• Create UN as peace keeping organization
• Soviet Union to enter war against Japan

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Great Hopes for World Peace with the United
Nations, 1947
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Start of Cold War

• US-Soviet relationship out of necessity? trouble
  between 2 Superpowers
• Ideology conflict (communism vs. democracy)
• US hadnt recognized USSR until 1933
• Delay for 2nd front!
• USSR kept out of atomic bomb
• End to Lend Lease, denial of loans from US
• USSR wanted a buffer zone

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Start of Cold War

• US angry about nonaggression pact
• US wanted democracy, demilitarization, end to
  colonization, UN
• Increasing fear of atomic confrontation Cold War

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Internationalism

• Bretton Woods Conference July 1944
• World Bank
• International Monetary Fund
• United Nations Conference April 25, 1945
• Security Council veto power
• General Assembly
• Secretariat
• UN Trusteeship Council
• International Court of Justice
• 1st clash over atomic weapons between US and USSR

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Growing Rift

• Nuremberg Trials Crimes against Peace, Crimes
  against Humanity, War Crimes
• USSR demanding ½ of Poland (nonaggression pact)
  shifted boundaries in Poland and Germany
• Satellite Nations wanted a buffer zone
• USSR refused reoccupation keep Germany weak
• Berlin divided too

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The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1946
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Growing Rift

• West Germany vs. East Germany
• an Iron Curtain
• Berlin Blockade? Berlin Airlift until 1949
• George F. Kennan Policy of Containment
• Truman Doctrine
• 1947 Marshall Plan with 12.5 billion of
  rebuilding Europe stop communism!
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) vs.
  Warsaw Pact

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Postwar Partition of Germany
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Berlin, 1948
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United States Foreign Aid, Military and Economic,
19451954Marshall Plan aid swelled the outlay
for Europe. Note the emphasis on the developed
world, with relatively little aid going to
developing.
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Japan

• Douglas MacArthur? Japanese reforms and
  democratization (wrote constitution)
• Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 1946-48
• Explosion of USSR Atomic Bomb in 1949? arms race
  to Hydrogen bomb

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

• Loyalty Review Boards 1947
• House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)
  subversion in government and Hollywood
• Led to black lists and Hollywood Ten
• Richard Nixon? Communist? Alger Hiss in state
  department
• McCarran Internal Securities Bill 1950?
  dictatorship?
• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage

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1948 Election

• Republicans Thomas Dewey
• Democrats Harry Truman
• Formation of the States Rights Party (Dixiecrats)
  with Strom Thurmond
• Progressive Party with Henry Wallace
• Truman whistle stop campaign? give em hell
  Harry!

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Korean War

• Occupation zones at 38th parallel after WWII
• June 25, 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea
• NSC-68 defense spending!
• UN action to peace keep Douglas MacArthur
  commander
• Battle of Inchon? moved beyond 38th up to the
  Yalu River
• Chinese action (threatened)

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The Shifting Front in Korea
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Korean War

• November 1950 stalemate, MacArthur wanted
  nuclear weapons
• wrong enemy, wrong war limited war
• MacArthur attacked Truman in the press dismissed
  from post April 11, 1951
• Cease fire talks starting 1951, concluded 1953