The Fair Deal and Containment

1
The Fair Deal and Containment

• Chapter 18

2
Introduction

• The United States emerged from World War II the
  preeminent military and economic power in the
  world.
• Americans had a monopoly over the atomic bomb and
  enjoyed a commanding position in international
  trade.
• While much of Europe and Asia struggled to
  recover from the physical devastation of the war,
  the U.S. was virtually unscathed, its economic
  infrastructure intact and operating at peak
  efficiency.
• By 1955 the United States, with only 6 percent of
  the worlds population, was producing well over
  half of the worlds goods.

3
Harry Truman

• Became president when FDR died on April 12, 1945,
  at his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia.
• Background Was seen at first as a caretaker
  president
• Domestic proposals of 1945 proposed to continue
  and enlarge the New Deal
• Replaced much of Roosevelts cabinet soon after
  becoming president and became known for his
  decisiveness (The buck stops here)

4
Demobilization Under Truman

• The public demanded that the president bring the
  boys home
• Rapid reduction of armed forces
• By 1950, armed forces down to 600,000
• 10 of what it had been during WWII
• World War II veterans returned to school, new
  jobs, wives, and babies
• This contributed a baby-boom
• The Great Depression caused many couples to delay
  beginning a family.
• As prosperity returned during the war, birthrates
  began to rise.
• Americans born during this postwar period
  comprised what came to be known as the baby-boom
  generation.

5
Demobilization Under Truman

• Demobilization did not bring depression because
• Unemployment pay and other Social Security
  benefits
• Servicemens Readjustment Act of 1944
• A Welfare Program for GIs
• The GI Bill of Rights
• Paid for education, vocational training, medical
  treatment, low interest loans for building homes
  or going into business.
• Pent-up demand for consumer goods (most
  important)
• Fueled by wartime shortages

6
The New Deal Programs Under Attack

• The problem of inflation
• Demands for wages increases
• Strikes
• Price controls ended after 1946
• Congressional elections of 1946
• Discontent with Democrats
• Trumans falling stock
• Republicans won majorities in both houses of
  Congress

7
Record of the Republican Congress

• Taft-Hartley Act an effort to chip away at the
  New Deal (1947)
• Restrictions on labor meant to curb the power of
  unions allowed states to adopt right-to-work
  laws and allowed the President to force striking
  workers back to work for a 90-day cooling off
  period
• Passed over Trumans veto
• Tax reduction (1948)
• Truman felt that the government debt should be
  reduced
• Congress overrode Trumans veto of 5 billion tax
  cut
• National Security Act (1947)
• Created a national military establishment, headed
  by a secretary of defense. Included the National
  Security Council with the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
  and the Central Intelligence Agency

8
Civil Rights (1940s)

• Nazism prompted Am. reform
• In 1948, Truman
• Banned racial discrimination in the hiring of
  federal employees.
• Ended racial segregation in armed forces
• Professional baseball integrated
• Jackie Robinson 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers
  (Rookie of the Year)
• Example followed by other teams and would prompt
  football and basketball to integrate.
• Racism, not inferiority, impeded blacks

9
Division of theDemocratic Party

• Trumans strategy for 1948
• To shore up New Deal coalition
• New departureemphasis on civil rights
• The 1948 election
• Rep. nominated Thomas E. Dewey (Gov. of N.Y.)
• Democrats nominated Truman and included a strong
  civil rights plank
• Southern conservatives formed the States Rights
  Democratic Party (Dixiecrats) and nominated J.
  Strom Thurmond (Gov. of S.C.)
• The Democratic left nominated Henry Wallace
  (FDRs V.P.) on the Progressive party ticket,
  sympathized with the Soviet Union

10
1948 Election Results

• Truman won in major upset
• Whistle-stop train tour Giveem hell, Harry
• Chicago Tribune Dewey Defeats Truman
• Split in Democratic party helped Truman by
  uniting New Deal coalition
• blacks (first major presidential candidate to
  campaign in Harlem), Jews, Catholics, farmers,
  and middle-income Americans helped by New Deal.
• Democratic majorities also elected in Congress
• A vindication of the New Deal

11
The Election of 1948
12
The Fair Deal

• As he began his new term, Harry Truman declared
  that all Americans were entitled to a Fair Deal
  from their government.
• Mainly extensions or enlargements of New Deal
  programs already in place.
• Truman won on higher minimum wage and extension
  of Social Security, rent controls, farm price
  supports, housing, and rural electrification
• Truman lost on civil rights bills, national
  health insurance, federal aid to education,
  direct subsidies of farm income, and repeal of
  the Taft-Hartley Act

13
Postwar Effortsat Revenge

• The Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46
• After, WWII the Allied powers decided to place on
  trial the highest-ranking Nazi officers for
  crimes against humanity
• 22 Nazi leaders were tried at an international
  military tribunal at Nuremburg, Germany. 12 were
  sentenced to death.
• The Tokyo Trial (1946-48)
• 7 sentenced to death and hanged (including Tojo)
• 18 given prison sentences (released in 1957)
• The question of trying the emperor as a war
  criminal was dismissed for fear of a revolt.

14
Postwar Efforts at Peace

• The United Nations There was some hope when, in
  1945, the United Nations was created an
  organization to promote international stability
• A General Assembly where representatives from all
  countries could debate international issues.
• The Security Council had 5 permanent members
  U.S., Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China
  could veto any question of substance. There were
  also 6 elected members.
• Key U.S. Senate ratified the UN charter 89 to 2
  sharp contrast to League of Nations

15
Postwar Reality

• Consequences of World War II
• Soviet Union with agenda
• Unlike the isolation after WWI, the U.S. was
  engaged in world affairs
• Wartime Agreements
• Unlike WWI, there was no Peace of Paris to
  reshape Europe.
• Instead, the Yalta agreement of February 1945,
  signed by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin,
  turned the prevailing military balance of power
  into a political settlement.
• Potsdam Conference, in suburban Berlin (July
  1945)Truman, Stalin, Churchill Finalized plans
  on Germany. Germany would be demilitarized and
  would remain divided.

16
The Fall of Eastern Europe
17
Postwar RealitySoviet Control of Eastern Europe

• Europe was politically cut in half Soviet troops
  had overrun eastern Europe and penetrated into
  the heart of Germany.
• During 1944-1945, Stalin starts shaping the
  post-war world by occupying SE Europe with Soviet
  troops that should have been on the Polish front
  pushing toward Berlin.
• Roosevelt did not have postwar aims because he
  still had to fight Japan Stalin did have postwar
  aims

18
Developmentof the Cold War

• The Cold War (1945-91) was one of perception
  where neither side fully understood the
  intentions and ambitions of the other. This led
  to mistrust and military build-ups.
• United States
• U.S. thought that Soviet expansion would continue
  and spread throughout the world.
• They saw the Soviet Union as a threat to their
  way of life especially after the Soviet Union
  gained control of Eastern Europe.

19
Developmentof the Cold War

• Soviet Union
• They felt that they had won World War II. They
  had sacrificed the most (25 million vs. 300,000
  total dead) and deserved the spoils of war.
  They had lost land after WWI because they left
  the winning side now they wanted to gain land
  because they had won.
• They wanted to economically raid Eastern Europe
  to recoup their expenses during the war.
• They saw the U.S. as a threat to their way of
  life especially after the U.S. development of
  atomic weapons.

20
Cold War Mobilizationby the U.S.

• Alarmed Americans viewed the Soviet occupation of
  eastern European countries as part of a communist
  expansion, which threatened to extend to the rest
  of the world.
• In 1946, Winston Churchill gave a speech at
  Fulton College in Missouri in which he proclaimed
  that an Iron Curtain had fallen across Europe.
• In March 1947, U.S. president Harry Truman
  proclaimed the Truman Doctrine.

21
The Truman Doctrine (1947)

• Reasoning
• Threatened by Communist influence in Turkey and
  Greece
• Two hostile camps speech
• Financial aid to support free peoples who are
  resisting attempted subjugation
• Sent 400 million worth of war supplies to Greece
  and helped push out Communism
• The Truman Doctrine marked a new level of
  American commitment to a Cold War.

22
The Policy of Containment

• Definition - By applying firm diplomatic,
  economic, and military counterpressure, the
  United States could block Soviet aggression.
• Formulated by George F. Kennan as a way to stop
  Soviet expansion without having to go to war.
• Would later be expanded in 1949 in NSC-68, which
  called for a dramatic increase in defense
  spending, from 13 billion to 50 billion a year,
  to be paid for with a large tax increase.
• NSC-68 served as the framework for American
  policy over the next 20 years.

23
The Marshall Plan(1947-48)

• War damage and dislocation in Europe invited
  Communist influence
• Economic aid to all European countries offered in
  the European Recovery Program
• 17 billion to western Europe
• Soviets refused The blame for dividing Europe
  fell on the Soviet union, not the United States.
  And the Marshall Plan proved crucial to Western
  Europes economic recovery.

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DividingGermany

• U.S., Britain, and France merged their zones in
  1948 to create an independent West German state.
• The Soviets responded by blockading land access
  to Berlin.
• The U.S. began a massive airlift of supplies that
  lasted almost a year. (7,000 tons a day.
• In May 1949 Stalin lifted the blockade, conceding
  that he could not prevent the creation of West
  Germany.
• Thus, the creation of East and West Germany

26
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949)

• Stalins aggressive actions accelerated the
  American effort to use military means to contain
  Soviet ambitions.
• The U.S. joined with Canada, Britain, France,
  Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg to
  establish NATO, a mutual defense pact.
• Pledged signers to treat an attack against one as
  an attack against all.
• Counterpart in Eastern Europe Warsaw Pact

27
The Cold War Heats UpProblems of the Atomic Age

• Establishment of Israel
• Minutes after Jewish residents of Palestine
  announced their independence in May 1948, Truman
  recognized the new state of Israel and began
  sending them aid.
• (Upcoming 1948 election --strong Jewish vote in
  U.S., no Arab vote)
• Russia detonated its first atom bomb in 1949
• Truman ordered construction of the hydrogen bomb

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The Cold War heats upProblems of the Atomic Age

• Call for buildup of conventional forces to
  provide alternative to nuclear war.
• The Soviet army had at its command over 260
  divisions.
• The United States, in contrast, had reduced its
  forces by 1947 to little more than a single
  division.
• As the Cold War heated up, American military
  planners were forced to adopt a nuclear strategy
  in face of the overwhelmingly superiority of
  Soviet forces.
• They would deter any Soviet attack by setting in
  place a devastating atomic counterattack.

29
Losing China

• Truman was preoccupied with Europe. Events in
  Asia would soon bring charges from Republicans
  that the Democrats were letting the Communists
  win.
• Communist movement in China grew as poverty and
  civil unrest spread. By 1947, China was in a
  full-scale civil war.
• Rise of Mao Tse-tung (Communist)

30
Losing China

• U.S. supports Chiang Kai-shek and his
  Nationalists corrupt and inefficient government
• Nationalists lost to Communists and fled to
  Formosa (Taiwan) in 1949
• After losing China, the United States sought to
  shore up friendly Asian regimes

31
The Korean War(1950-53)

• Since World War II the country had been divided
  along the 38th parallel.
• The North was controlled by the Communist
  government of Kim Il Sung
• The South by the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee.
• North Korean forces invaded South Korea in 1950.

32
The Korean War (1950-53)

• Having already lost China, it was decided that
  the United States would fight the North Koreans.
• It would use enough force to deter aggression,
  but without provoking a larger war with the
  Soviet Union or China.
• The U.S. would not declare war. The United
  Nations sanctioned aid to South Korea as a
  police action.
• The move succeeded only because the Soviet
  delegate, who had veto power, was absent because
  he was protesting the UNs refusal to recognize
  the Communist government in China.

33
The Korean War(1950-53)

• Truman ordered American military forces to Korea
  under UN auspices and under the command of
  General Douglas MacArthur.
• U.S. 350,000 South Korean 400,000 other UN
  members 50,000
• Stalin had agreed to the North Korean attack, but
  promised only supplies.
• He would eventually send pilots dressed in
  Chinese uniforms and using Chinese phrases over
  the radio.

34
Side Effects of the Korean War

• Congress never voted a declaration of war set a
  precedent
• war by order of the president rather than by vote
  of Congress
• Truman also expanded American forces in NATO.
• By 1952, there were 261,000 American troops
  stationed in Europe, three times the number in
  1950.
• Truman also increased assistance to the French in
  Indochina, creating the Military Assistance
  Advisory Group for Indochina.
• This was the start of Americas deepening
  involvement in Vietnam.

35
MilitaryDevelopments

• MacArthur pushed the North Koreans back to the
  38th Parallel.
• He then decided to invade the North in an effort
  to unify Korea
• Chinese Communist volunteers entered the war
  and pushed U.S. back.

36
Dismissal of MacArthur

• MacArthur wanted to blockade China and use
  Taiwanese Nationalists to invade mainland China.
• He ordered China to make peace or be attacked.
• Truman removed MacArthur from all his commands
  and replaced him with General Matthew Ridgway who
  gradually pushed back almost to original line.

37
End of War

• Snags in negotiations
• Truce talks lasted for two years
• Truce signed on July 27, 1953
• Cost of the war
• U.S. 33,000 deaths and 103,000 wounded and
  missing.
• S. Korean 1 million
• N. Korean and Chinese about 1.5 million

38
The SecondRed Scare

• Started in 1945 as the domestic counterpart to
  the Cold War but reached its climax during the
  Korean War
• Evidence of espionage
• By 1950 anticommunism had created a climate of
  fear, where legitimate concerns mixed with
  irrational hysteria.
• Truman signs executive order for federal employee
  loyalty program

39
The SecondRed Scare

• House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
• Accusations about pro-Communist subversives in
  government
• The Alger Hiss case
• Whittaker Chambers, former Soviet agent, accused
  Hiss, who worked at the State Department, of
  passing secret documents
• Hiss convicted of perjury
• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed in 1953

40
Senator Joseph McCarthy

• Witch-hunt
• Saw an opportunity to improve his political
  career
• Army-McCarthy Hearings (1954)

41
Significant Events
? 1945 Iran Crisis
? 1946 Kennans long telegram
McMahon Bill creates Atomic Energy Commission
? 1947 Truman Doctrine
Marshall announces European recovery plan
HUAC investigates Hollywood
? 1948 Berlin blockade
Truman upset Dewey
? 1949 Soviet atom bomb test
NATO established
? 1950 Korean War begins
? 1952 Eisenhower defeats Stevenson
? 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings