What is so nifty about the 50s?

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What is so nifty about the 50s?
Better dead than Red!
By the light of the atomic bomb
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• 1945 -1989
• Promise and Menace
• Baby boomers
• Fantastic standard of living
• Welfare state (elderly)
• Opportunities for women
• Welcome immigrants
• Civil rights and AAs
• Activist foreign policy

PLASTICS! - great new inventions
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1945
1950
1958-1970s
1980s
20 years of economic success!
Conservatism Republicanism Technologies Computers
Berlin Wall comes down Disco
Vietnam War Great Society Feminism Civil
Rights Watergate
End of WWII
Korean War McCarthyism
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What you should be aware of
The Montgomery GI Bill

• By raising educational levels and stimulating
  construction of the housing industry the GI Bill
  profoundly shaped the entire industry of postwar
  America

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This Century With Peter Jennings
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What you should be aware of

• We made in WWII
• Permanent war economy -Military budgets -
  Military Industrial Complex - R and D
• Deals in the Middle East Israel (Palestine) vs.
  Arabs (read Leon Uris Exodus)
• Highway systems, air conditioning, electricity
• Agricultural machinery and production levels
• 1947 Taft Hartley Act - unions take noncommunist
  oath - Unions cant overcome the South/women work
  force - Unions peak in 1950s and decline in U.S.
  thereafter
• Population and therefore political shifts broke
  historic grip of the North

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Yalta Conference

• February 1945 Big Three Churchill, Stalin and
  FDR met to create a post war agreement.
• Agreed to divide Germany into 4 zones controlled
  by allies.
• Berlin also divided into 4 zones (located in
  Soviet Zone)
• Poland US and GB wanted the people of Poland to
  choose their government.
• Stalin insisted for security, Poland had to have
  a Soviet friendly government.
• Compromise US agreed to recognize soviet
  government provided they include non- communist
  members and that free elections be held as soon
  as possible.
• Stalin never holds free elections

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Cold War

• Quietly behind the battles and bombs, American
  diplomats were working hard to make sure that
  when the war ended American economic power would
  be second to none....we would penetrate areas
  where England had been dominating....our massive
  economic machine needed more than just domestic
  markets... the world markets would be ours
• Case in point Middle East and oil

Howard Zinn A Peoples History of the United
States
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The Term Iron Curtain came from a speech given
by Winston Churchill at an American University in
1945. The Division of Europe between East and
West. Communism in the East v. Capitalism in the
West
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New international economic order based on
partnership between govt and big business
International Monetary Fund - regulate internatl
exchanges of currency voting proportional to
capital () contributed, so American dominance
was assured. Internatl Bank of Reconstruction
and Development - set up to help and its 1st
objective was to promote foreign investment.
Howard Zinn
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United Nations was to promote cooperation to
prevent future wars...but it was dominated by
Western imperialist countries

• Was the war fought to correct Hitlers claim of
  white race supremacy?
• U.S. came close to fascism itself with
  internment of Japanese Americans
• African Americans The Army jim-crows us. The
  Navy only lets us serve as messmen. The Red Cross
  refuses our blood. Employers unions shut us
  out. Lynchings continue. We are the
  disenfranchised, jim-crowed, spat upon.. What
  more could Hitler do than that?

Howard Zinn
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Iron Curtain

• British prime minister Winston Churchills Iron
  Curtain speech (1946) illustrated the division
  within Europe at that time. Following World War
  II, Europe had clearly been divided into two
  political and economic systems supported by two
  superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United
  States.
• The Soviet Union occupied countries in Eastern
  Europe (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
  Hungary, and Bulgaria) after the war, imposing
  Communist rule over them.
• The western democracies of Britain, France, West
  Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium,
  along with allies such as Canada and the United
  States, were in opposition to the spread of
  Communism in Europe.
• In his speech, Churchill described the conflict
  this way From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste
  in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended
  across the Continent. Churchill was outlining
  the ideological conflict between Soviet Communism
  and democratic capitalism

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Truman Doctrine

• 1st application of foreign policy of containment
  and 1st time US strayed from G. Washingtons
  Farewell Address on maintaining peacetime
  isolation

• Events that led to the Truman Doctrine
• George Kennans analysis of Soviet behavior
• Soviet reluctance to leave Iraq
• Difficulty in implementing Potsdam agreements
• Inability to reach an accord to control atomic
  energy (Bernard Baruch Plan)
• Winston Churchills Iron Curtain Speech in
  Fulton, Missouri
• Both Houses return a Republican majority in 1946
• England announces she can no longer provide aid
  to Greece Turkey

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Truman Doctrine

• Sec. of State Acheson - Containment Foreign
  Policy
• Greece and Turkey
• invasion of Iraq 2002 - U.S. and Turkish airfield
  bases in Turkey?

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Marshal Plan 1948

• 16 BILLION in economic aid to Western European
  countries in 4 years -
• economic aim - build up markets for American
  exports
• political motive - Communist parties in Italy and
  France were strong and the US used pressure/money
  to keep Communists out of cabinets of those
  countries
• yeah, humanitarian aid but even more...a matter
  of national self-interest

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Economic/Political Aid from the U.S.

• From 1952 on, foreign aid was more and more
  designed to build up military power in
  non-Communist countries.
• 1952-1962 50 BILLION in aid to ninety countries
  and only 5 billion was for non-military aid

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Executive Order 9835 -issued 1947

• Program to search out any infiltration of
  disloyal persons in the U.S.
• Great wave of hysteria erupts
• Even membership in sympathetic associations
  like Chopin Cultural Center - League of American
  Writers- Nature Association (watch those commie
  pink tree huggers) - Peoples Drama

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Infiltration of disloyal persons in the U.S.

• and why not? after all...
• 1948 Communist party in Czechoslovakia ousted the
  non-Communists from rule
• Soviet Union blockaded Berlin - jointly occupied
  city isolated inside Soviet sphere of East
  Germany - forcing the U.S. to airlift supplies
• The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb
• Colonial people demanding independence Indochina
  (Vietnam) ag. the French in Indonesia ag. Dutch
  Philippines ag. U.S.
• China going red under Mao Tse Tung after Chiang
  Kai-Shek ousted to Taiwain

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Berlin crisis convinced Americans that they
needed a Military alliance with Western
Europe. 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NATO members agreed to come to the aid of one
another if one was attacked. 1955 US and NATO
members agreed to let West Germany rearm Prompted
the Soviet Union to create the Warsaw Pact a
military alliance of Soviet Union and other
Eastern European nations.
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Korean War 1950-1953
After WWII Korea was split between the North
(Soviet influenced) communist and the South
(American sphere) right-wing dictatorship When
North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel into
South Koream, the United Nations, dominated by
the U.S., asked its members to rebel the armed
attack. The American army became the UN army
Howard Zinn
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Korean War 1950-1953

• The UN resolution was to, repel the attack and
  restore peace
• American/UN armies after pushing North Koreans
  back across the 38th parallel, advanced all the
  way up through North Korea to the Yalu River on
  the border of China
• This provoked the Chinese into entering the war.
  The Chinese then swept southward and the war
  stalemated back on the 38th parallel
• Where it still sits today...the largest armed
  border in the world

Howard Zinn
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The Results of the Korean War 1950-1953

• The Korean War mobilized liberal opinion behind
  the war
• It justified a sustained policy of intervention
  abroad
• It justified the militarization of the economy
  at home
• MacArthur also got fired....by Pres Truman

Howard Zinn
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Joe McCarthy- Jr. Senator from Wisconsin -
looking for a political cause
Wheeling, W. Va speaking to the Womens
Republican Club
Holding up some papers and shouting I have
here in my hand a list of 205- a list of names
that were made known to the Secretary of State as
being members of the Communist Party and who
nevertheless are still working and shaping policy
in the State Dept.
Next day, in Salt Lake City, McCarthy claimed he
had a list of 57 (numbers kept changing) such
Communists in the State Dept. Shortly afterward,
on the Senate floor, he appeared with 100
dossiers from the State Dept loyalty files. The
files were 3 years old and most of the people no
longer worked for the State Dept but he claimed
they were, Communistically inclined or active
traveler became, active Communist and so on
He insisted Communism won in China because of
softness on Communism in the American govt
Howard Zinn
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McCarthyism
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg 1950
(shades of Sacco and Vanzetti)
Large-circulation newspapers have articles
like How Communists Get That Way Communists
are After Your Child Movies I Married a
Communist I Was a Communist for the FBI
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McCarthyism
Mickey Spillane published in 1951 One Lonely
Night (3 million copies sold) in which the hero,
Mike Hammer, says I killed more people tonight
than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in
cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it...They
were Commies...red sons-of-bitches who should
have died long ago....