In explaining American history from the beginnings of the n.docx

In explaining American history from the beginnings of the
nation to the Progressive era,
textbooks promote patriotism at the expense of other
nationalities and attempt to cover the
everlasting racism within the nation. Unfortunately, they
continue to take the same approach
while explaining events from 1920 to the present. Indeed,
textbooks fuel the irrational amount of
nationalism Americans hold while not revealing America’s
faults throughout its history.
Additionally, since 1920, American involvement across the
globe has expanded and has
attempted to exploit nations, whether it is for political or
economic benefits. However, in their
typical approach, textbooks do not provide the true motive of
America, but rather state America
is attempting to help nations develop into democratic nations.
Although America has had proud
moments such as the civil rights movement and positive
immigration legislation, textbooks also
have the responsibility of presenting America’s faults such as

their shortcomings in curtailing
racism and their true motives behind the legislation passed and
foreign involvement in the past
century.
In explaining America’s foreign involvement during the
1920’s, textbooks fail to mention
America’s true motive in expanding its “empire” which is
evident through their involvement in
the Hawaii and Cuba. For example, in Hawaii, textbooks argue
Queen Liliuokalani was
overthrown because of the she aimed to create a constitution
that would increase the monarch’s
power. However, textbooks fail to elaborate the constitution
would have diminished the
influence of American sugar planters in Hawaii. Essentially,
Queen Liliuokalani wanted to
protect her Hawaiian citizens from foreign American sugar
planters who wanted to exploit their
land. Nevertheless, a coup was arranged where Queen
Liliuokalani was overthrown and Hawaii
was eventually annexed (lecture, October 21). America’s
involvement in Hawaii was not to
prevent an increase in a monarch’s power, but rather to exploit
and increase economic benefits.

A similar approach was taken in Cuba following the Spanish-
American War. After the American
forces defeated the Spanish, Cuba and the United States came to
an agreement called the Platt
Amendment. Arguably, the Platt Amendment is perhaps the
most telling of America’s true
motives in expanding its “empire”. Provisions in the Platt
Amendment include protecting
American property, banning treaties between Cuba and any
other nation, and right to intervene
(lecture, October 21). Textbooks may argue America has
inserted these provisions to ensure
Cuba will become a flourishing democratic nation like America,
but as the future shows, this was
not the case. America’s desire to expand political and economic
power was often portrayed as
promoting democratic institutions to nations in desperate need.
While America aimed to expand
economic power outside its borders, the Great Depression
certainly slowed down that process.
While describing the devastation of the Great Depression, a
majority of textbooks fail to

provide perhaps the most meaningful, but darkest statistic of the
era: the suicide rate. Textbooks
often provide statistics of how GDP or unemployment was
increasingly high. While it does help
provide some perspective as to how overwhelming the Great
Depression was, it does not help
stimulate insightful thoughts to the average student. Discussing
how the GDP fell from $104
billion in 1929 to $74 billion in 1933 will not necessarily give
the full perspective that textbooks
must give (lecture October 28). If textbooks mention the suicide
rate during the Great Depression
was the highest rate ever in American history, it will certainly
give the full perspective that will
promote critical thinking among students as to how devastating
the Great Depression was.
Although it is arguably the darkest statistic in American history,
it is necessary for textbooks to
include it in order to truly demonstrate how devastating the
Great Depression was. The Great
Depression also provided an opportunity for Franklin Roosevelt
to endear himself to affected
Americans through his program called the New Deal.

Although the New Deal showed the government was willing to
help Americans in need,
textbooks must also show the government’s alternate motive
which is evident through the
Democratic coalition. While it is essential to show the faults of
America, it is also necessary to
applaud the government’s initiative to provide jobs within the
programs of the New Deal.
Programs such as Works Project Administration (WPA)
provided over 3 million jobs to
unemployed Americans (lecture, October 30). In a different
approach from President Hoover,
Roosevelt’s initiative to provide jobs to Americans gave the
country hope of improvement.
While praiseworthy, it is also necessary to include Roosevelt’s
alternative motive in pushing for
these social programs. Known as the Democratic Coalition, the
social programs provided by the
New Deal pulled in many different groups who supported the
Democrats throughout the 1930’s
to 1960’s. Indeed, the Democrats only lost elections to
Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower

in 1952 and 1956 through the time span. Although the programs
helped the Americans in need, it
is evident the Democrats knew the social programs would also
help them keep their political
power. However, it was not only the New Deal that helped
America recover from the Great
Depression, but also World War II.
World War II can be seen as a blessing in disguise in terms of
the opportunities presented
toward previously ignored groups such as women and
minorities. With the majority of male
Americans on the Pacific or European front, women and
minorities saw an increased opportunity
in terms of the labor force. For instance, during World War II 1
million African Americans had
manufacturing jobs. Additionally, women made over 40% of the
total labor force (lecture,
November 4). Certainly, women and minority groups enjoyed
the increased responsibility and
opportunities presented to them. However, it is essential to
mention these opportunities were
temporary. Once the war ended, the workforce consisted of only
9% women. Indeed the battle

for equal rights among was not over, but would be revitalized in
the future. In fact, the battle for
equal rights also devastated the Japanese within America during
World War II.
When discussing Japanese internment during World War II, it
is crucial that textbooks
elaborate as to how irrational American thoughts resulted in the
unjustifiable removal of the
Japanese’s constitutional rights. Following the attack in Pearl
Harbor, there was an initial wave
of sympathy towards the Japanese, which was led by Los
Angeles mayor, Fletcher Bowron.
However, as time passed the initial sympathy turned to
irrational paranoia of an “inevitable”
attack. In perhaps the idea most reflective of the time’s thought
process, Bowron argued that “the
absence of evidence of sabotage” shows that an attack is
imminent (Kurashige 120). Ultimately,
it was this thought process that culminated in Executive Order
9066. The internment of innocent
Japanese is not only symbolic of America’s paranoia, but also
of the everlasting racism within
America. In response to the discrimination, the civil rights

movement erupted into the national
scene.
Following World War II, textbooks must not only discuss the
achievement of the civil
rights legislation passed, but also of the faults that still need to
be addressed in terms of equality.
The mass civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.
was ultimately successful through
their peaceful protests and increasing sympathy because of the
police brutality in Birmingham,
Alabama. Their firm beliefs and relentless efforts resulted in the
passing of favorable legislation
such as the 24th Amendment, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
(lecture. Certainly, all the legislation helped address some of
the discrimination such as the right
to vote by African Americans. However, textbooks must not
give the impression that the
problem has been resolved entirely. Similar to the effects of
removing slavery, the lasting effect
of both slavery and de jure discrimination still exists: racism.
Racism has and seemingly will

always be prevalent in America unless textbooks explicitly
explain it still exists today. Ironically,
the United States tries to instill the democratic principles they
believe to hold themselves, upon
other nations during the Cold War.
When textbooks present the events of the Cold War, they often
present the idea that
America is attempting to provide democratic principles towards
nations in need, but it is also
necessary to present the perspective that America is
overextending its influence, specifically in
Guatemala. The United States was so consumed and to a certain
extent paranoid, of communism
they falsely assumed Guatemala was becoming communist.
United Fruit Company farmers in
Guatemala received unfavorable agricultural legislation and
appealed to the United States to help
achieve reform. In order to receive American support, the
farmers argued Guatemala was on the
verge of becoming communist. Alarmed by the proximity of a
possible communist nation to
America, the CIA acted swiftly to extinguish the “threat.”
However, the CIA involvement

ultimately resulted in a civil war in Guatemala that lasted over
36 years. Involvement in
Guatemala was not only misguided, but also affected the future
of Guatemala simply to ensure
ideological preferences for America. A similar approach to
prevent a victory for communism
was taken in Vietnam.
Textbooks often describe the Vietnam as a battle against
communism, but often fail to
provide to how much violent tactics the Americans will go to in
order to not only communism to
win. In a demonstration of the violent tactic of the United
States, America dropped more bombs
in Vietnam than in all of World War II (lecture, November 25).
Evidently, this approach was a
byproduct of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed
President Johnson to take any action
he felt was necessary in Vietnam. Additionally, American
troops used “Search and Destroy”
missions in which they killed all Vietnamese regardless of
whether their allegiance was to South
or North Vietnam. Indeed, these violent tactics portrayed to

what lengths America will go to
prevent any conflictive ideologies from growing on a global
scale. Essentially, America wants to
boast their set of democratic principles as the best. However, it
is evident America’s belief in
their set of democratic principles was shaken by the urban
unrest in the 1960’s.
In examining the urban unrest, it is crucial to address the
discrimination towards
minorities. During the 1960’s, Anglo Americans moved to the
suburbs of cities and minorities
had to stay in impoverished inner city. Suburbs such as
Levittown was exclusively available to
Anglo Americans due to legislation such as the GI Bill and
redlining allowed only wealthy
whites to get home loans among the suburbs. Eventually, these
conditions in the inner city
erupted into urban riots in cities across the nation such as Los
Angeles and Detroit (lecture,
December 2). The discrimination and divisive nation was
evident through the Kerner
Commission. The Kerner Commission stated the “nation was
moving toward two societies one
black, one white – separate and unequal,” (lecture, December

2). The findings of the Kerner
Commission contradict the message textbooks want to give
following slavery and Civil Rights
Act of 1964: elimination of discrimination. In fact, the Kerner
Commission reinforces the idea
that racism will not be removed with simply legislation.
Textbooks must make readers more
aware of the threat of racism dividing America further.
Immigration legislation attempted to
remove racist institutions, but ultimately failed to do so
completely.
Although America removed previous restrictions on
immigration such as the Chinese
Exclusion Act, limitations on Latin Americans through the Hart
Cellar Act shows the difficulty
of removing all discrimination within America. The United
States attempted to cleanse the racist
perceptions of its immigration legislation by repealing the
Chinese Exclusion Act and passing
the McCarran Walter Act. The McCarran Walter Act removed
all racial restrictions on
immigration and certainly showed progress towards removing

the racial barrier. However, the
significance of the other legislation, Hart Cellar Act, shows the
reluctance to fully remove the
racism that exists. Although the Hart Cellar Act did improve
immigration in some aspects, it
ultimately limited Latin American immigration to 120,000 a
year (lecture, December 2). The
Hart Cellar Act ultimately shows the difficulty throughout
American history towards removing
racism and discrimination in society. Abolishing slavery,
passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
and the Hart Cellar Act all prove it will take more than
legislation to remove racism.
Unfortunately, the New Right during the 1970’s showed
reluctance to resolve the problems
within racism.
The presence and ideology of the New Right showed a
reluctance to address and resolve
the problems within the divided nation. The New Right pushed
for a conservative approach and
did not desire rapid change, especially in racial issues. Their
reluctance was evident when a
busing program intended to integrate people from the suburbs
and inner city. Ultimately, this

program was ineffective and resulted in violent protests in
Boston (lecture, December 4). Years
after the Kerner Commission was published, the busing program
was clearly an attempt to
address the divided society. However, it is also evident that in
order for the legislation to unite a
discriminatory nation, it is necessary for the citizens to embrace
change. Textbooks make this
change difficult by hesitating to discuss racism in society.
Therefore, students remain relatively
oblivious to the racism that has existed throughout America’
history. Textbooks prefer to
promote nationalism at the expense of others, which is evident
in textbooks’ assessment of 9/11.
Recent events, such as 9/11, are quite sensitive topics to
discuss for textbooks, but their
approach is the same in that they promote patriotism at the
expense of other nations. For
example, Loewen states a textbook, Understanding September
11th, fuels nationalism by stating
the “Twin Towers symbolize peace,” and the “World Trade
Center is a living symbol of man’s

dedication to world peace,” (Loewen 266). Textbooks do not
hesitate to provide false
information to promote nationalism among the nation. Rather
than say the World Trade Center
shows American dominance, textbooks want to create sympathy
towards the nation, and cover
the idea that America is usually the enforcer and at times,
ideologically oppressive. Indeed,
textbooks evidently take the same approach in explaining the
beginnings of America to the
present.
History can have various perspectives depending on who is
discussing the past. America
tends to protect itself from possible criticism by refusing to
discuss the longest rooted problem in
its history: racism. Additionally, true motives behind foreign
involvement and legislation has
often been concealed from readers, but providing the generic
motive as spreading democracy
across the world and the nation itself respectively. However, it
is necessary to present these
problems of America to the readers of these textbooks. Changes
must be made to address the

faults within America, particularly racism. Only when textbooks
are willing to be honest with its
audience, can American citizens have the opportunity to take
the necessary changes. After all,
America is the land of opportunity, so textbooks should give
readers the opportunity to learn the
truths of the America.
Write a 350- to 700-word paper that:
· identifies Everett Stern whistleblower.
· Describes the situations surrounding the whistleblower.
· Describes the issue(s) that motivated the whistleblower to act.
· Assesses the personal attributes that the whistleblower needed
to possess in order to take action.
· Explains what ultimately happened to the whistleblower and
they company they spoke out about.
P.S
Everett Stern is a CEO and 2016 United States Senate
candidate, known as a whistleblower in the HSBC money
laundering scandal. He uncovered billions of dollars of illegal
money laundering transactions which led to an SEC
investigation and a $1.92 billion fine against HSBC in 2012.
WWII and the Cold War, 1941-1972
Introduction

On the eve of World War II, the United States possessed the
largest economy on
the globe, but neither its diplomacy nor its military role
reflected this status.
Washington stayed out of the League of Nations, while
participating in
disarmament conferences that weakened its power relative to
rising Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan. In 1939, the US Army ranked only
seventeenth
largest in the world. The increasingly dire developments in
Europe and Asia
would change matters rapidly, of course, leading to the first
peacetime draft in
1940, as well as a more powerful security state at home to fight
suspected
domestic threats.
The provision of Lend-Lease war armaments and materiel to
European countries
fighting Hitler underlined the importance of the US to the
global balance of
power the following year, as did the 16 million Americans who
entered the
conflict after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It would be
advanced American
technology, too, in the form of the atomic bomb, which helped
end the war.
Model of Little Boy; Mushroom Cloud, Hiroshima, August 6,
1945
!
When the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as
superpowers after
1945, there were high hopes that future international differences
would be
resolved in the new United Nations (UN). The US reconstructed

its former
enemies, Japan and Germany, and later, assisted Europe and the
Middle East
with aid. Its leaders could bask in fulfilling journalist Henry
Luce's prewar dream
for creating "a great American century… to exert upon the
world the full impact
of [US] influence."
But after the advent of the Cold War, American policy soon lost
its aura of good
intentions, as leaders pursued covert, unworkable plans and
bizarre plots
against foreign governments to stop the spread of Soviet
communism. The
underdeveloped world became a battleground, with the US and
the Soviet Union
both scrambling to gain allies at each other's expense. UN
discussions could do
little to stop the Cold War. All of this diminished the standing
of the "American
century," so that by the end of the 30 years covered in this
essay, the US
experienced its first military defeat, and this to a Communist
nation.
American leadership was in crisis, muzzling domestic critics
and seeking help
from former enemies abroad to shore up the country's sagging
fortunes. The
anticommunist ideological approach to foreign policy was
curtailed to pursue
new forms of international engagement in the late Nixon
Administration.

Eleanor Roosevelt with United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, 1949; Vietnam War Protesters, 1965
!
Section 1: World War II
Focus Questions:
• Section Question:
What role did the United States play during WWII?
• Question:
Why did America declare war on the Axis powers, and what
effect did the war have on women and African Americans?
Terms:
• The imperialistic surge in the 1930s
• Winston Churchill
• Midway
• Atlantic Charter
• US diplomacy before WWII
• "Germany first"
• Double V campaign
• Rosie the Riveter
• Percent of women working outside the home
World War II represented the death rattle of an old order--the
imperialist model
of development. While several old empires--Austria, Russia,
Prussia, and the
Ottoman Empire--expired after World War I, others, such as
Britain and France,
expanded their influence. Angered by this outcome, as well as

the war's
settlement which affected them adversely, Japan, Germany, and
Italy
refashioned and expanded their own empires in the 1930s. This
imperialistic
surge created the threatening scenario that would eventually
propel the United
States into World War II.
The first nation to expand was Japan, which invaded Manchuria
in 1931. Italy
then took over Ethiopia in 1935. At the same time, Germany
began building up
its military, and soon invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia. The
limited US
response to these developments has long been called
"isolationist," yet
American cultural and commercial ties with the world abounded
in those years.
Indeed, the US would use its trade as a weapon, cutting off
sales to the warring
powers with its Neutrality Acts. Only in 1939, when Germany
declared war on
Britain and France, could President Franklin D. Roosevelt
authorize the sale of
arms to Hitler's enemies.
As the Nazi threat expanded in 1940, with the fall of Norway,
Denmark, and
France, the US offered help to Britain with old destroyers, and
later the Lend-
Lease program, which was extended to Russia too after the Nazi
invasion of
June 1941. FDR also permitted US military convoys to assist
shipments to
Britain. He could do little more with the prevailing antiwar

sentiment at home; in
August, a bill to extend the draft passed by only one vote.
Meanwhile, Washington refused to recognize the expansion of
Japan into China,
and FDR authorized the sale of arms to that beleaguered country
as well. Even
so, it was not until 1940 that Washington ended aviation fuel
and scrap metal
sales to Japan. After the US cut off oil in mid-1941, the
Japanese looked to the
petroleum fields of the British and Dutch East Indies.
Americans soon broke the
Japanese diplomatic code, but could only guess where Japan
would go next.
!
By then, Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Great Britain,
and FDR had met
face to face on board the HMS Prince of Wales in
Newfoundland, and agreed to a
broader goal for a war that the United States had not yet
entered. This Atlantic
Charter offered a vision that eschewed territorial expansion and
called for 4
freedoms: speech, religion, and freedom from want and fear.
The sailors and
their leaders sang English hymns like "Onward Christian
Soldiers" in unison,
cementing their "special relationship.”
Four months later, on December 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor. Almost

2,400 Americans died and half as many more were wounded on
battleships and
aircraft in the early morning hours. On the USS Arizona alone,
1,100 went to a
watery grave. On this "day of infamy," as Roosevelt called it,
the US declared
war on Japan, and 2 days later, after Germany also declared war
on the United
States, the US declared war in return. Three days after Pearl
Harbor, the HMS
Prince of Wales was also sunk off Singapore.
Now allies, Churchill and Roosevelt met later that month at the
Arcadia
Conference, where another 2 dozen nations signed the Atlantic
Charter, lending
an overriding mission to the Allied military enterprise. The US
and British
leaders chose a strategy to focus their energies on Germany
first. Washington,
however, did not forget the Pacific. After a difficult winter and
spring, Americans
saw their first successful victory in Asia at Midway Atoll in
June 1942, inflicting
major damage on the Japanese navy. Later that year, Americans
had their first
significant deployment against German troops in North Africa.
Meanwhile, Lend-
Lease funneled aid to Britain, the Soviet Union, and China--a
total of $50 billion,
including 120,000 ships and over 300,000 military aircraft.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill Sign the Atlantic
Charter on the Prince of Wales, 1941
!

Before the end of 1942, the State Department had also learned
of the Nazi effort
to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. Two years
later, appalled at
their colleagues’ lethargic response, staff at the Treasury
Department published
a report, “[O]n the Acquiescence of This Government in the
Murder of the
Jews." Publicity about the report led to the creation of a War
Refugee Board,
which saved some 200,000 Jews through the efforts of people
like Swedish
diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. In part as a reaction to the
Holocaust and the deaths
of six million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and others, after the
war former first
lady Eleanor Roosevelt drafted a Universal Declaration of
Human Rights,
adopted by the UN in 1948.
At home, the war offered a more emancipatory picture,
especially for African
Americans, who saw job opportunities expand with the
establishment of the Fair
Employment Practices Commission in 1942. This put a stop to
the efforts of
such malingerers as the white transit workers who struck in
Philadelphia in 1944
rather than integrate their work force. African Americans also
embraced the
symbol of the Double V--victory against racism abroad and at
home--a campaign
that set the stage for the civil rights movement that followed in

the 1950s.
Women, too, benefited from the new war jobs; "Rosie the
Riveter" was in
demand. The percentage of women in the workforce jumped by
more than a
third; another 300,00 went into military service. These
developments had long-
term consequences, despite postwar retrenchment in war
industry jobs. By
1960, 40 percent of women worked outside the home.
Double V Protest, Philadelphia, 1944; Turret Lathe Operator,
1942
!
World War II had insidious consequences, too, such as the
expansion of the
surveillance state. FDR authorized wiretapping despite earlier
Supreme Court
rulings against it, and intelligence agents used this technology
to conduct
surveillance on those considered disloyal. In so doing, they
discovered Soviet
attempts to spy on facilities developing the atomic bomb.
• Question:
How did the European and Pacific theaters of the war differ?
Terms:
• Japanese American internment
• Discrimination and new labor laws
• Bataan Death March
• Race war in the Pacific

• Battle of Stalingrad
• Tehran Conference (1943)
• Normandy
• Battle of the Bulge
• Direct casualties of WWII allies
At the same time, the Army interned more than 110,000
Japanese–Americans,
many of whom had lived in the US for generations, on trumped-
up charges of
potential disloyalty and also out of hatred toward Japan, fanned
by the atrocious
race war in the Pacific. In particular, Americans were appalled
when they heard
about early Japanese atrocities in some of the first battles in the
Philippines. In
the 80-mile Bataan Death March (April 1941), Japanese captors
marched 75,000
Philippine and American prisoners of war through the
sweltering Philippine
countryside, murdering, starving, and torturing the captives
along the way.
Japanese Assembly Center and Internment Camp, 1942; Bataan
Death March, 1942
!
In Europe, however, the Soviets were doing most of the fighting
and dying. In
early 1943 they lost 400,000 men--the equal of all American
dead in the entire
war--at the Battle of Stalingrad, a turning point in the war
which saw 22 German

divisions surrender. Frustrated at the slow pace of the long-
promised second
front to relieve such slaughter, Stalin pressed hard for it at the
Allied wartime
conferences, including the November 1943 meeting at Tehran.
By then Americans and British had already launched a stepped-
up bombing
campaign using B-17s, the famous "Flying Fortresses," to
weaken Germany in
preparation for the planned assault on the Western Front. The
US had long been
running a "second front" in Asia, airlifting supplies daily from
India over the
Himalayas to China. Stalin's distrust of the slower response in
Europe was
heightened by his awareness that Britain and the US were
constructing an
atomic device without sharing their research.
In June 1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his men at last
carried out the
cross-channel invasion of Normandy. It was a smashing success,
and 2 months
later, Americans liberated Paris. It was thus a nasty shock when
German troops
struck back with a devastating offensive in December 1944, the
Battle of the
Bulge. The US lost more soldiers there than in any other battle
of World War II--
nearly 20,000.
!
• Question:
How did the war end? Why did the United States drop the bomb

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan?
Terms:
• Yalta Conference (1945)
• Harry S. Truman
• Potsdam Conference (1945)
• Atomic bomb
• Bombing in Japan
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Emperor Hirohito
• Casualties in WWII compared to WWI
The Nazi regime, however, was now on its last legs, and the
Allies opened the
Yalta Conference in February 1945 to discuss the postwar order.
With the Red
Army already occupying much of Eastern Europe, Roosevelt and
Churchill
pressed Stalin, futilely as it turned out, to assure freedoms
there. Churchill
worried especially about Poland's future, but FDR more readily
accepted the
situation. After FDR died on April 12, his successor, Harry S.
Truman, would be
less tolerant of the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern
Europe.
Germany began to surrender that April as well (Hitler
committed suicide on April
30, 1945). It provided the site for the last big meeting of the
war at Potsdam in
July. Here Truman learned of the first successful atomic bomb
test, and he

threatened Japan, which was carrying on the fight in the Pacific,
with "prompt
and utter destruction."
The final struggle in Asia had been arduous for the United
States. In the two-
month assault on Okinawa that spring, the US had suffered
82,000 casualties,
including 12,500 dead. Military planners anticipated at a
minimum, 25,000
casualties in an invasion of Japan, though some gloomy
forecasts suggested
800,000 American fatalities.
Yalta Conference, February, 1945; Potsdam Conference,
August,
1945
!
But there would be no invasion. Instead, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were hit by
atomic bombs on August 6 and 9, respectively; in between,
Russia declared war
on Japan, sending more than 1.5 million troops into Manchuria.
Emperor
Hirohito intervened to orchestrate a surrender on the 10th,
insisting only that
the imperial system remain, and the Japanese sued for peace.
It is estimated that 150,000 to 240,000 Japanese died in the
atomic blasts, and
many suffered long-term damage from radiation. While the
decision to use the
bomb has remained highly controversial, at the time American
officials did not

greatly agonize over it, just as they had not over conventional
bombing, which
in one night in March 1945 killed more than 100,000 in Tokyo.
World War II's destruction dwarfed previous wars, with some 60
million dead (by
contrast, 16 million lives were lost in World War I). In the
United States at the
time, reactions to the bomb ranged from shock to jingoistic
euphoria. Some also
hoped that the blast might prove an incentive to set up a world
government to
control the use of nuclear power. With the onset of the Cold
War, however, the
chief consequence of this weapon was an arms race that
continued unabated
until détente in the early 1970s.
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Section 2: The Cold War
Focus Questions:
How did developments during WWII and the post-War years
shape the actions of the the United States during the Cold
War
• Question:
What was the Cold War and what is the meaning of the
terms “third world” and “containment”?
Terms:

• ”Free world”
• Third World
• ”Long Telegram”
• George F. Kennan
• Ho Chi Minh
• "Iron Curtain"
• Henry Wallace
• Truman Doctrine
• Marshall Plan
• Berlin Wall and the airlift
The postwar world soon divided between the superpowers: the
United States
and its allies--the so-called "Free World," or "First World"--and
the Soviet bloc,
including Russia and Eastern Europe and after 1949, the
People's Republic of
China, North Korea, and a number of other communist nations.
The Third World,
formed from the dismembered empires of Britain, France,
Belgium, and the
Netherlands, and including 3 dozen new nations by 1960,
remained contested
territory between the two superpowers, although many of these
nations chose
to stay nonaligned.
For the United States, this period encompassed the Korean War
(1950-3),
interventions in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) and the
beginnings of US
support of South Vietnam. The era culminated in the Cuban
missile crisis, which

in 1962 brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Division of the Cold War World, ca. 1975
!
In 1945 there had been high hopes for postwar harmony,
fostered by the
gathering of 50 nations at the first United Nations conference in
April.
Unfortunately, all too soon the first signs of a bipolar chill were
appearing, with
one two-week period in winter 1946 bringing some of the
clearest signals of this
development.
In the "Long Telegram" (February 22), State Department attaché
George F.
Kennan wrote from Moscow that "world communism is like [a]
malignant
parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue." It was up to the
US to prevent
this and "put forward for other nations a much more positive
and constructive
picture of the sort of world we would like to see than we have…
in the past."
George F. Kennan 1947; Selections of the "Long Telegram"
!
In one poor former French colony, Vietnam, now also freed of
Japanese wartime
control, leader Ho Chi Minh identified just such a positive
example in US history.

His declaration of independence quoted from Thomas Jefferson!
But his hopes
for American support were stillborn. While Ho desired
American-style
independence from a European yoke, he also wanted a
communist-style
government and economy. The US was appalled at this and
financed a return of
France to their former colony.
Vietnam's turn to communism was perceived as part of a larger
global threat,
one that former Prime Minister Winston Churchill identified in
a speech in
Westminster, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. Churchill described
an "iron curtain"
dividing the non-communist world from the communist bloc and
called his
audience to action by reminding them of the missed
opportunities to stand up to
Hitler in the 1930s. To Stalin, however, Churchill's speech had
its own Hitlerian
echoes, with an "English racial theory" of world domination
akin to Nazi racism.
While Truman did not openly endorse the speech, his
connection to Churchill
was deepened on the train to his home town of Independence,
Missouri, over
Scotch and poker. Even so, an anti-Soviet stance had not yet
crystallized in the
United States, though minds were tending in that direction. Six
months later,
Henry Wallace, Secretary of Commerce, filled Madison Square
Garden calling for

a more conciliatory approach, but Truman soon fired him. The
Soviet
ambassador Nikolai Novikov noticed the hardened policy that
September,
pointing to an expanding number of military bases and the
advent of universal
military training in the US Novikov saw the US as attempting to
"dislodge" the
Soviet Union from its global position, as well as creating a "war
psychosis"
among its “masses."
Henry Wallace, ca. 1940; Selections of Madison Square Garden
Speech
!
US leaders grew particularly alarmed in this period when a
former British client,
Greece, faced a communist insurgency. To protect both Greece
and neighboring
Turkey, in March 1947 the US announced the Truman Doctrine,
"to support free
peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed
minorities or by
outside pressures." This came with an unprecedented peacetime
aid of $650
million, along with advisers.
In Western Europe, too, the communists were making inroads,
especially in
elections in France and Italy. To avoid the "economic, social
and political
disintegration" that seemed imminent, 3 months after the
Truman Doctrine,

Secretary of State George C. Marshall announced the Marshall
Plan, which
would bring $22 billion in aid to Europe over the next 4 years.
Through the Central Intelligence Agency, created as part of the
National Security
Act of 1947, the US also secretly funded anti-communist
political parties in
Europe. Such efforts were consistent with a theory George F.
Kennan had
detailed that year in the journal Foreign Affairs, calling for
"long term patient but
firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
At this time, too, the US Britain and France consolidated their 3
occupation
zones in Germany, politically and economically. The Soviets
responded from
their zone in 1948 by blockading access to the capital, Berlin.
The US and Britain
coordinated a successful airlift in response, lasting a year.
Cold War Europe, 1948
!
In 1949, lines tightened further in Europe, when American,
Canadian, and
Western European armies created a defense alliance--NATO.
Stalin’s wartime
espionage, however, was paying off. The Soviets had spent a
great deal of effort
during WWII not only finding out about America’s nuclear
program but also

gathering some of the secrets of nuclear technology. When
Stalin blasted off its
first A-bomb in August, the American government began a
campaign of rooting
out the spies in the Atomic Program. The uncovering of one spy
ring, the
Rosenberg case, resulted in the execution of American engineer
Julius
Rosenberg and his wife Ethel in 1953.
• Question:
In the post-war period, how did communism affect countries
in Asia?
Terms:
• Mao Zedong
• People's Republic of China
• Korean War
• General Douglas MacArthur
• Hot conflicts in the Third World during the Cold War
• "Non-aligned" movement
Meanwhile, Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China (PRC), a
new communist
state then aligned with the Soviet Union, chased the Nationalist
Chinese
government, who had governed China since the 1920s, to the
island of Taiwan.
The US refused to recognize the PRC and declared the
Nationalist Chinese in
Taiwan the true government of China (until the US normalized
relations with
Communist China in the 1970s).

Within months, with support from the PRC and the Soviet
Union, North Korean
troops invaded South Korea. Joined by other members of the
UN, the US
intervened in June 1950 to defend the South Korean
government. Initially, their
forces were pressed to retreat into the southern corner of the
peninsula, but
after General Douglas MacArthur's brilliant landing behind
enemy lines at
Inchon, the UN succeeded in turning the tide.
MacArthur at Inchon, 1950; Gains and Losses of Territory,
1950-53
!
MacArthur then pushed for a rollback of communism out of
North Korea, but his
actions brought the Chinese into the war with 300,000 troops.
The general
wanted to resort to atomic weapons next, but Truman fired him
for
insubordination in April 1951. More than 36,000 Americans
died in this first hot
war of the Cold War, and thousands of their successors remain
in Korea today,
maintaining the armistice line of July 1953. Korea set a pattern
for US military
responses in the Cold War. In Europe the 2 superpowers'
missiles bristled at
each other, but bloody conflicts were confined to the Third
World.

During the Korean War, in 1952, former General Dwight D.
Eisenhower had been
elected president. His first term included two CIA-sponsored
interventions to
overthrow elected governments in Iran and in Guatemala.
Watch this video :
The US, too, bankrolled most of the French effort in fighting
the Communist Viet
Minh in Vietnam. Eisenhower also tried other, "softer" forms of
diplomacy as
well in the Third World, such as the US Information Agency,
spreading the word
of the benefits of "peoples' capitalism" in the United States.
One of the most interesting Cold War struggles between the
United
States and the Soviet Union began in the Eisenhower
presidency--
the Space Race. The USSR and the United States vied for the
prestige that came with being the most advanced technological
country in the world. Arguably, the United States had held this
position since the turn of the century. American military
technology
in WWII and the atomic bomb had reinforced this belief.
However, the
USSR in the late 1950s, the Soviets began to challenge this
assumption by being the first to send rocket vehicles into space.
The
United States treated this as a challenge and soon responded

with a
program of space exploration and firsts of its own.
Watch this video :
Many smaller nations preferred to be "non-aligned" rather than
join either side
of the Cold War. Non-alignment was tricky, though, as Cuban
revolutionary Fidel
Castro learned. Initially the US was happy to see him come to
power in 1959
promising reforms. But soon Castro's increasingly Marxist
program, including
nationalizing American assets, recognizing Communist China,
and trading with
Moscow, too clearly showed his "alignment." The CIA made
plans to overthrow
Castro including assassination plots and an invasion of 1,400
Cuban refugees to
free their homeland.
Watch this video :
• Question:
What role did the CIA sometimes play in countries that
attempted to follow an independent path, such as Iran and
Cuba?
Terms:
• John F. Kennedy
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Direct telephone line between US and Soviets

• Mosaddegh and CIA in Iran
When John F. Kennedy came into office in 1961, he decided to
carry out the
invasion, set for 3 months hence. But a full-scale fiasco was in
store, and more
than a thousand men were captured. The president took full
responsibility, but
the CIA had other methods to deploy against Castro, including
Operation
Mongoose, a covert campaign to undermine him by fomenting
rebellion and
developing poisons to denude his beard, and Operation
Northwoods, a scheme
to have the CIA create bogus terrorist attacks in the US to be
blamed on Cuba.
Yet at the same time Kennedy created the Peace Corps, sending
volunteers to
provide aid to the Third World.
Castro, meanwhile, was fighting back, welcoming arms and
advisers from
Moscow. In October 1962, an American U-2 flight revealed
Soviet missiles there
with a 1,200 to 2,400 mile capacity. Shocked at their presence
just 90 miles from
Florida, the president called his closest advisers together,
ranging from his
brother Robert, the Attorney General, to Air Force General
Curtis LeMay, and
over the next thirteen days the world's future hung in the
balance. The Executive

Committee could not permit the missiles to remain. Memories of
Munich--the
site of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's 1938
capitulation to Hitler--
were much too alive for them.
Some, like LeMay, pushed for an airstrike and an invasion, but
Kennedy
eventually decided on his brother's idea, a naval blockade to
stop any further
shipments, along with a demand that the missiles be removed.
Kennedy
informed Americans on television about the situation on
October 22. Two days
later, approaching Soviet ships did turn back, and the next day,
Adlai Stevenson
showed photographic evidence of the sites in the UN,
embarrassing his Soviet
colleagues.
Watch this video :
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, meanwhile, responded with
two letters to
Kennedy, the first of which was conciliatory: "let us not only
relax the forces
pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie
that knot."
Kennedy accepted the terms of this letter: in return for the
Soviets taking the
missiles out of Cuba, the US would commit to leaving Cuba
alone. Privately,
Robert Kennedy gave assurances that Washington would
eventually remove its

missiles in Turkey, the topic of Khrushchev's second letter.
At least 2 were unhappy at the settlement: Fidel Castro, who
saw himself as the
pawn he truly had become, and Curtis LeMay, who reckoned
Castro's
continuation in power was America's "greatest defeat." But
Armageddon had
been avoided. A direct telephone line was installed between
Washington and
Moscow to prevent hair-trigger responses in the future. The
following year, the 2
governments banned above-ground nuclear testing, too.
President John F. Kennedy's A Strategy of Peace Speech,
American University, 1963
!
Section 3: Vietnam
Focus Questions:
How did America policymakers and leaders grapple with the
Vietnam War?
• Question:
Who were the participants in the Vietnam War in the early
1960s, and who did the US support?
Terms:
• North and South Vietnam

• "Falling domino" principle
• Dien Bien Phu
• President Ngo Dinh Diem
• National Liberation Front (NLF)
• Assassination of Diem
As Kennedy entered office, he signed on not only to the project
to invade Cuba
but also his predecessor’s efforts to keep South Vietnam out of
communist
hands. To the new president and his team, it was essential to
prevent what
Eisenhower had called “the falling domino” principle— a
Communist North
Vietnam would aggressively infiltrate and destabilize its
neighbors, possibly
causing them to fall to communism as well. To defend liberty,
as Kennedy said
in his inauguration speech, “… we shall pay any price, bear any
burden ….” This
was only more apparent to him after his first meeting with
Khrushchev in June
1961 at a summit in Vienna, Austria. There, six weeks after the
US had failed to
overthrow Castro, the Soviet leader proudly and smugly
declared his support for
wars of “national liberation,” while Kennedy squirmed.
Kennedy had not always had this determination. In 1954, as
France was
struggling in a last-ditch measure to hang on in Vietnam, then-
Senator Kennedy
had spoken of the “futility of channeling American men and
machines into that

hopeless internecine struggle.” However, this changed after the
French lost the
strategic battle of Dien Bien Phu and, thus, its chance to hang
on to all of
Vietnam. The French agreed to step aside and Vietnam was
divided between a
Communist North under Ho Chi Minh and a non-Communist
South under Ngo
Dinh Diem.
By 1956 Kennedy was calling South Vietnam “the cornerstone
of the Free World
in Southeast Asia…a test of American responsibility and
determination.” He
went on, “What we must offer them is a revolution— a political,
social, and
economic revolution far superior to anything the communists
can offer.” Yet
when Kennedy spoke in 1956 the US was not so much providing
a revolution as
a large subsidy— $300 million a year, most of it military aid.
Still, the crusading spirit of the American effort in Vietnam
against the vicious
communists was underlined in popular books like Thomas
Dooley's Deliver us
from Evil (1956). Diem would be greeted by hundreds of
thousands in New York
City in 1957, while Eisenhower called him the "miracle man of
Asia." But Diem
was a repressive leader, and particularly disliked among the
rural population. By
1959, an insurgency against him was well underway in the
South, and a number
of mayors loyal to him were savagely killed— as were the first
2 American
advisers to die in Vietnam.

President Eisenhower greets South Vietnamese President Ngo
Dinh
Diem, Washington National Airport, 1957 and Ngo Dinh Diem
in
Saigon, 1954
!
The power of the North Vietnam-financed National Liberation
Front (NLF), also
called the Vietcong, was growing in the southern countryside.
In 1962 Diem
implemented a "strategic hamlet" program to isolate the NLF
from its peasant
supporters, which was not only resented but ineffective. Then,
at a Buddhist
protest against Diem in May 1963 in Hue, the South Vietnamese
government
killed 9 protesters. In response, some Buddhists publicly set
themselves on fire,
which drew much attention from the American media. Members
of the Kennedy
administration raised the possibility of Diem's removal, and 3
months later, Diem
and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were assassinated, an event that
was financed
with $42,000 in CIA money. In a bizarre coincidence, Kennedy
himself was
assassinated 3 weeks later, on November 22, 1963.
South Vietnam "Strategic Hamlet," 1964 and Captured Viet
Cong
Youth Awaiting Interrogation, 1968

!
• Question:
Why did the US escalate its participation in the Vietnam War,
and how did Americans respond?
Terms:
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Gulf of Tonkin
• Escalation of American involvement
• Anti-war activism
• The Tet Offensive
His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, at first insisted that he
wanted "no wider
war" in Vietnam and ran for president in 1964 on a ticket that
painted his
Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, as a warmonger. Yet in
the summer of
1964 Johnson used sketchy reports of attacks on American
destroyers in the
Vietnamese Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext for airstrikes, gaining a
unanimous
resolution from Congress that allowed him to widen the
conflict, the precise
thing he had been telling the American people he would not do.
Within months of his landslide election, Johnson began
bombing communist
targets and sent in the first Marines in March 1965. The
bombing, called Rolling
Thunder, expanded month by month, but could not stop Hanoi's
and the

Vietcong's steady infiltration of South Vietnam through a vast
tunnel system
that moved men and arms from north to south. Throughout
1967, thousands of
North Vietnamese came, joining insurgents in the South to
create an
intimidating force by 1968.
At the same time, US troop levels ballooned from 184,000 in
1965 to 543,000 by
1969. Soldiers in these years engaged in "search and destroy"
missions, flew
more than 300,000 bombing sorties (dropping almost 7 million
tons of bombs),
and sprayed herbicides, like dioxin, which eliminated the jungle
cover of the
insurgents, but also sickened American GIs.
American Involvement in Vietnam, 1960-72
!
All the while, the mood of the country was growing against war.
There were
"teach ins" at Berkeley as early as 1965, spurred by the methods
of the Civil
Rights movement. Dissent spread to the Senate the following
year, where
Senator Fulbright spoke of the "arrogance of power," and
Americans' "excessive
involvement in the affairs of other countries." Even the
country's foremost civil
rights leader, Nobel Prize winner Martin Luther King, attacked
the war, calling

the US "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
In 1967, activists in the Students for a Democratic Society
declared a "Vietnam
Summer" of antiwar activism; a "Stop the Draft Week" in the
fall brought 50,000
to the Pentagon. Colleges were regular sites for activism, and at
Columbia
University in the spring of 1968, white militants joined with
black neighbors of
the school to take over buildings, including the president's
office.
Vietnam War Protests, 1967
!
It was in 1968 that a real turn in public opinion against the war
began as well,
even as the government’s message on Vietnam was that the end
was “in view”
and the enemy was “on the run.” On January 30, the North
Vietnamese launched
the Tet Offensive, a massive strike intended to spur a general
rebellion of the
South Vietnamese. The Vietcong swept into every South
Vietnamese city, and
even broke through the walls of the US Embassy in Saigon.
The Tet Offensive was a military and political failure for Hanoi:
40,000 Vietcong
died, and no mass uprising occurred. Nevertheless, the North
scored a
propaganda victory in the United States, with images of the
stunning surprise
attack played repeatedly in the media.

Tet Offensive, 1968
!
Tet represented in stark relief a “credibility gap” between what
Americans were
told about the war and the reality of their country’s role and
progress in
Vietnam. Even the normally placid CBS anchorman Walter
Cronkite was shaken,
seeing the US future in Vietnam now as a stalemate. The
percentage of
Americans who thought sending troops was a mistake jumped to
almost 50
percent from less than 33 percent a year earlier. LBJ was
affected as well.
Rejecting the Army’s call for 206,000 more troops after Tet,
LBJ instead stopped
Rolling Thunder and made efforts to start negotiations.
That spring the country was rocked as well with the
assassinations of Martin
Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the latter just after
winning the California
primary on an antiwar platform. There were riots, including
those at the Chicago
Democratic convention that summer, where Mayor Richard
Daley refused to
grant permits for protesters, many of whom were outraged about
the candidacy
of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a war supporter; angry
police beat
protesters and carted them away, further inflaming the situation.

• Question:
What was Nixon’s strategy for ending the war in Vietnam, and
how was “triangular diplomacy” involved?
Terms:
• Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war
• Henry Kissinger
• Nixon's foreign policy
• Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)
• Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
• Pentagon Papers
• Daniel Ellsberg
• Watergate
• Cold War consensus
• "Triangular Diplomacy”
The Democratic Party was divided not only by the war but also
the civil rights
struggle. Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace
ran on a third
party ticket, splitting Democrats further. Republican Richard
Nixon emerged
victorious that fall, touting a "secret" plan to end the war but
also clandestinely
undermining the Vietnam peace process that LBJ had started
after the Tet
Offensive.
The new president's "secret plan" amounted mostly to trying
détente, or
lessening of tensions with the Soviets, in hopes they would
bring their client in
Hanoi to heel. Meanwhile, Nixon's aide and envoy Henry
Kissinger restarted the

peace talks in Paris in 1969, while the Administration's
negotiators launched the
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (known as SALT) with their
Soviet counterparts
in Helsinki.
The superpowers had weapons sufficient to destroy each other
many times over
by then, and the Cold War relied on Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD) to
prevent the outbreak of war. Nixon and Kissinger grandly hoped
that détente
would limit the arms race, save money, and salvage American
prestige while
putting pressure on North Vietnam's bigger friends to get Hanoi
out of South
Vietnam.
1968 Presidential Election
!
Meanwhile, the war continued, and frustrated activists formed a
New
Mobilization, with hundreds of thousands protesting in cities
like Boston and
Washington in fall 1969. But the moderate wing of this
movement was already
splintering off. And the more radical wing, the Weathermen,
emerged that year
with its first organized and militant protest in Chicago, the
“Days of Rage,”
calling for a “white fighting force” to join the “black liberation
movement” to
further the "destruction of US imperialism.” They trashed

businesses and
bombed corporate headquarters. Later, 3 Weathermen blew
themselves up while
attempting to make a bomb in a Greenwich Village apartment.
While such militancy discouraged some antiwar activists, others
had fresh
reasons to be outraged when they learned in May 1970 that
Nixon had quietly
expanded the war into Cambodia, Vietnam’s neighbor to the
west. Nixon had
hoped to stop the flow of armaments from North to South
Vietnam through that
country. The revelation of the president’s actions precipitated a
new round of
protests against the Nixon Administration and a deeply divided
nation reeled.
Tragedy struck at Kent State University, where the National
Guard killed 4
protesters, and at Jackson State in Mississippi, where 2 more
died.
Nixon pulled the troops out of Cambodia by the end of June and
also ended the
draft that year, diminishing the frequency of protest, if not the
fervor. A huge
protest organized by the Mayday Tribe in 1971 saw more than
12,500 arrested in
Washington, DC, the largest mass arrest in US history, which a
court later
determined had violated the Constitution.
Despite the Cambodian venture, by 1971, Nixon could claim he
had been trying
to get out of Vietnam for 2 years: reducing the number of
troops, part of a policy

known as "Vietnamization," and continuing the negotiations in
Paris. He was
thus furious when former Defense Department staffer Daniel
Ellsberg leaked the
Pentagon Papers that year. These classified documents revealed
that one of the
key reasons the US was in Vietnam was "to avoid a humiliating
defeat," and they
also exposed a long history of misinformation around the war's
progress. Nixon
tried to stop the publication as a danger to national security, but
was overruled
by the Supreme Court.
Youth Protests Across America, 1970-71
!
Nixon wasn’t done with Ellsberg, using his secret “Plumbers
Unit”— a covert
White House Special Investigations Unit given the task of
preventing more leaks
— to raid the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to obtain
information that might
discredit him. If extreme, such harassment of antiwar activists
was not new. The
FBI had been spying on them since at least 1966 through its
COINTELPRO
program— a similarly covert, and at times illegal, surveillance
of American
citizens. Some of the Plumbers would also orchestrate the
break-in of the
Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in
Washington DC in

1972. The president’s role in trying to hush this incident up and
encourage his
aides to lie to Congressional committees investigating it
eventually led to the
president’s resignation in August 1974, the only presidential
resignation or
removal in the nation’s history.
The Pentagon Papers and the Mayday arrests underlie an even
bigger story and
one of the chief legacies of the Vietnam conflict— the Cold
War consensus.
According to journalist Neil Sheehan, the consensus held that
“America’s cause
was always just…its intentions [even if not always carried out
properly] were
always good.” In the wake of Vietnam, it was no longer clear
that the United
States was still so “exceptional,” if it ever had been. Its values
had been used to
justify a number of problematic, and in some cases immoral,
courses at home
and abroad.
Daniel Ellsberg; Plumbers Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt;
May
Day Arrest; Watergate Hearings
!
While the Cold War consensus did not survive, Nixon and
Kissinger's policy of
détente and especially "triangular diplomacy" with the Chinese
and Soviets
resulted in some final glorious moments before Nixon's
Watergate debacle,
when he became the first president to visit Communist China.

The Chinese, in
the midst of deadly skirmishes with their Soviet neighbors, were
eager for
rapprochement, as were the Americans, still wrestling with
Vietnam. The
respective governments began by opening travel and trade
relations and
continued with the US Table Tennis team's visit to China in
1971. The following
year, Nixon arrived, where with leader Mao Zedong he
announced the beginning
of "progress" toward the normalization of relations between
their 2 countries.
Next the Soviets fulfilled their part of the “triangular
diplomacy” scheme and
invited the president to Moscow. In May 1972, the 2 nations
culminated the first
part of SALT I discussions by signing a treaty, which limited
each superpower to
2 anti-ballistic missile sites. Then, just before the 1972 election,
Kissinger and
North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho came to an agreement
on the US
extrication and departure from Vietnam. "Peace is at hand,” said
Kissinger;
“peace with honor,” echoed Nixon.
But South Vietnam’s then president, Nguyen Van Thieu, was
furious, and in part
to placate him, Nixon pushed Hanoi harder with more
bombings, killing another
1,600. Nixon offered his logic for this approach: “I call it the

Madman Theory…
We'll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God's sake, you know
Nixon is
obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's
angry— and he
has his hand on the nuclear button.’” On January 27, 1973, all
sides signed a
treaty, for which Le Duc Tho and Kissinger were awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
But it would be a short-lived victory. Hanoi’s representative
turned down the
prize, and 2 years later, he helped plan North Vietnam’s final
invasion of the
South.
Triangular Diplomacy
!
Drawing on the US victory in World War II, Americans had
strongly supported a
consensus that affirmed the positive legacy of American power
in the world,
promoting what has been called "the American century." The
infrastructure that
sustained the Cold War and its conflicts, from the archipelago
of American
bases to the technology of US intelligence experts, also
originated in World War
II. The Cold War would of course expand their extent and
sophistication, driven
by the imperatives of a bipolar world and the perceived threat of
world
communism.

By the end of this era, though, the combination of global
overstretch— as
epitomized in Vietnam, but also in adventures in Iran,
Guatemala, and Cuba—
and the larger domestic upheaval occasioned by the antiwar
movement and an
overdue civil rights movement had thrown the Cold War
consensus into
disarray.
Thus at the very moment the US had reached its largest
footprint in the name of
fighting communism, with more than 1 million men overseas in
1968 (the
highest figure since World War II), the seeds had been sown for
a new direction
in US foreign policy. The future direction would be more
modest and less
ideological, and that would open new avenues for engagement
abroad.
Major US Cold War Interventions, 1945-72
!
Essay: WWI and the 1920s, 1914-1929
Introduction
When the United States entered World War I, the nation
abandoned its historic
aloofness from European affairs and plunged into the unfamiliar
morass of global

power politics. On the home front, economic mobilization for
World War I rapidly
accelerated the prewar progressive trend toward more
government control over
the economy. Both of these changes were wrenching
transformations for
Americans because they seemed to contradict the nation's
cherished traditions of
diplomatic isolation and unregulated markets. And yet, both
tossed-off traditions
came back with a vengeance in the postwar years as the nation
returned to
isolation abroad and minimal government at home.
Women's suffrage political cartoon, Judge, March 17, 1917, and
Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 campaign button for the progressive
Bull
Moose Party
Americans in the 1914-1929 period oscillated back and forth
between opposite
poles of foreign and domestic policy, seemingly unable to agree
on what should
be the nation's role in the world or the government's role in the
economy. These
were years when the United States accepted, but then rejected
the mantle of
world leadership. Similarly, government regulation of business
was drastically
increased, but then almost completely abandoned. The failure of
Americans to
solve key problems of security and governance in World War I
and the 1920s
would lead directly to a major depression in the 1930s and
another world war in
the 1940s. Hence for Americans these years tell a cautionary
tale about the

consequences of too little government at home and too much
isolation abroad.
Section 1: America at War and Peace
Focus Questions:
How did America’s intervention in WWI change the country
domestically and internationally?
• Question:
According to Glen Gendzel, why did America finally enter
WWI,
and how did the Federal Government attempt to control and
influence Americans?
Terms:
• US neutrality
• America drawn into war by business pressure and submarine
warfare
• "Safe for democracy"
• American Expeditionary Force
• Casualties in the Great War
• American losses
• Committee on Public Information (CPI)
• Anti-German campaign
• Espionage and Sedition Acts
American neutrality in World War I lasted for almost 3 nerve-
wracking years as
the nation slid ever closer toward intervention in Europe.
President Woodrow

Wilson's lofty proclamation of strict impartiality toward both
sides at war, issued
in 1914, proved to be an empty promise by 1917. US neutrality
did not prevent
American farms and factories from supplying the growing needs
of Britain and
France, paid for with credit from American banks. Yet at the
same time, Wilson
insisted that Germany must abandon submarine warfare, which
threatened
American supply lines to the Allies, even though he tolerated
Britain's naval
blockade against Germany.
"Steering Clear of the Rocks," 1916, political cartoon
demonstrating
the difficulties that Wilson had in trying to keep the nation out
of war.
Not all Americans backed Wilson's skewed policy of "neutral
rights," but after
Germany started sinking American ships with unrestricted
submarine warfare in
January of 1917, and after the Zimmerman Telegram suggested
that Germany
might threaten US homeland security, public opinion began to
shift in favor of
war. Disavowing any interest in "conquest" or "dominion,"
President Woodrow
Wilson announced that the time had come for the United States
to make the world
"safe for democracy" by vanquishing Germany. Congress went
along and voted
to declare war in April of 1917.
Watch this video :

https://glpro.s3.amazonaws.com/ah/10/ess/a/10a42v05.mp4
American entry into World War I made an Allied victory
possible, but not
inevitable. "The Yanks are coming," proclaimed a stirring
popular song of the day,
but Americans were ill prepared for modern total war and not
yet ready to make a
difference on Europe's battlefields. The Wilson administration
would need over a
year to draft, train, and equip a sizeable army and send it to
France. In the interim,
Germany nearly won the war.
General John Pershing of the US Army led the American
Expeditionary Forces,
which would ultimately number over 2 million. But these
"Doughboys," as
American troops were called, trickled across the Atlantic with
agonizing
slowness, and few of them were prepared for the rigors of
trench warfare right
away. General Pershing rebuffed Allied demands for
incorporating American
troops directly into British and French units, further delaying
their impact.
Consequently, a massive German offensive in the spring of 1918
had to be turned
back by exhausted British and French troops. Largely on their
own, they had
relatively little help from U.S. forces that were just beginning

to enter the front
lines. Not until months later, in the fall of 1918, were enough
"Doughboys" on
hand to lead the giant Allied counter-offensive that drove the
Germans out of
France.
!
Victory thus came to the Allies courtesy of a small, but at the
same time
decisive military contribution from the United States. There was
nothing
small about the $35 billion spent by US taxpayers on behalf of
the Allied
cause, but American losses of 115,000 dead paled in comparison
to over 4
million dead British, French, Russians, and Italians on the
Allied side.
On the home front, Progressives like President Wilson saw
wartime mobilization
as an opportunity to increase government regulation of business.
The results
were mixed: the War Industries Board coordinated
manufacturing efforts under
government supervision and the Railroad Administration
operated the nation's
vast rail network as a single unit under federal control. The
Food Administration,
on the other hand, relied entirely on voluntary participation and
market
incentives, with no resort to government coercion or rationing.

Labor unions thrived under the protection of the government's
War Labor Board,
but wartime gains were quickly stamped out once the war was
over and
government protection was removed. Wages failed to keep pace
with inflation so
workers suffered a significant loss of real income. Moreover,
the Wilson
Administration's decision to rely more on borrowing than taxes
to fund the war
placed the burden of payment squarely upon the shoulders of
future generations
rather than on the rich. None of these outcomes was very
faithful to the spirit of
progressive reform.
The most remarkable government agency to emerge from World
War I was the
Committee on Public Information (CPI), created by President
Wilson in April of
1917. Wilson feared that the American public was not
sufficiently committed to
the war effort. He knew that pockets of doubt and resistance
persisted among
radicals, intellectuals, farmers, workers, and certain ethnic and
religious
communities. Hence the CPI was put in charge of selling the
war to the American
people, using the latest techniques from public relations,
advertising, and
psychology to "fight for the minds of men" with official
propaganda.
"Under Four Flags," CPI Film Poster, 1917; "America's
Answer," CPI Film
Poster, 1918; "Four Minute Men," CPI Poster, 1917; "Germany's

Confession," CPI Pamphlet, c. 1917, "Destroy this Mad Brute--
Enlist," H.R.
Hopps, US Army Enlistment Poster, 1917; "Official United
States War
Films," CPI Poster, 1917
The result was a rather crude but effective anti-German
campaign conducted
throughout the nation by 75,000 public speakers and by mass
distribution of
books, pamphlets, newspaper columns, billboards, posters, and
silent films. It
was an unprecedented expansion of government activity into
new ways and
means of public persuasion, and it did not exactly bode well for
the future of
democracy. After all, in a democracy, the people are supposed
to influence the
government, but during World War I, the government began
trying to influence
the people--and not for the last time. This, too, was hardly in
the spirit of
progressivism.
An ugly side effect of the CPI's massive propaganda effort was
that pacifists and
critics of the war, especially German Americans, suffered abuse
at the hands of
private citizens who fancied themselves patriots enforcing
"100% Americanism"
on the home front. President Wilson worried that Americans at
war might
embrace "the spirit of ruthless brutality" and forget about the
need for democratic

tolerance. But his own administration's efforts to drum up
national unity and
support for the war effort were at least partly responsible for
this outcome. CPI
propaganda drowned out dissenting voices against the war or
cowed them into
silence, because few Americans dared to provoke the wrath of
vigilante patriots
by expressing a preference for peace.
Eugene Debs arrested for speaking out against the war, Atlanta
Prison, Georgia, 1920; Anti-German Sign, Chicago, 1917
Even more damaging to freedom of expression were the
Espionage and Sedition
Acts. Passed by Congress in 1917 and 1918, they criminalized
wartime dissent.
These laws, upheld by the Supreme Court, made a mockery of
civil liberties and
constitutional rights. Nonetheless, thousands of Americans were
arrested merely
for daring to speak out publicly against the war. This was surely
not the sort of
enhanced government authority that Progressives had in mind at
the war's
outset, but it would not be the only ironic outcome of the war.
• Question:
According to Glen Gendzel, why were Wilson’s Fourteen Points
and his concept of a League of Nations visionary but ultimately
failures?
Terms:
• League of Nations
• Treaty of Versailles

• Wilson's stroke
• "Reparations"
President Wilson revealed his vision of a new world order to be
plucked from the
ashes of war in his "Fourteen Points" address of January 8,
1918. Wilson
described a fair peace without revenge for either side, without
forced payments of
indemnities, and with only modest territorial adjustments based
on democratic
principles of national self-determination. He also called for free
trade, freedom of
the seas, dismantling of empires, and an end to military
alliances. He wanted to
replace these alliances with "a general association of nations"
that would prevent
future wars through the magic mechanism of "collective
security.”
Wilson was certain that no leaders of nations would ever dare to
start wars in the
future if they knew in advance that they would face the wrath of
the entire global
community sworn to fight in unison against aggressors. Wilson's
ambitious
"guarantee of peace" through an international alliance against
war itself became
known as the League of Nations. All the major non-Communist
world powers
would eventually join the League--except the United States.
The road to this paradoxical outcome began with the war's
abrupt end in
November of 1918, when Germany, its armies in full retreat,

suddenly
surrendered. Wilson met with the other Allied leaders to draw
up the final peace
treaty at the Paris Peace Conference, which dragged on for
months as the
president tried to defend his vision of a fair and equal peace
against Allied
leaders bent on all-out revenge. In the end, Wilson was able to
secure Allied
participation in the League of Nations--but in return, Wilson
had to accept a
punitive peace settlement that confiscated vast territories and
colonies from
Germany and the other Central Powers.
60
The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June of 1919, also forced
Germany to accept
full responsibility for the war and to pay billions in future
"reparations" to the
Allies. This was hardly the sort of equitable, beneficent, non-
vengeful peace that
Wilson had promised Americans when he led the nation into
Europe's war.
Disillusionment and resentment were bound to follow.
Months of intense debate over the Treaty of Versailles and the
League of Nations
began in the United States once Wilson returned from France
and submitted the
treaty to the US Senate for ratification. Most senators seemed
inclined to approve
Wilson's treaty in some form, including US membership in the
League of Nations.
But Republicans refused to vote for ratification without
amendments, and
Democrats, at the president's insistence, refused to accept any
changes to the

deal he had so painstakingly hammered out with the Allies.
"The Senate must
take its medicine," Wilson stubbornly decreed.
"Still in the Dark," Evening Public Ledger, 1920; "Interrupting
the
Ceremony," The Chicago Tribune, 1918; "Seein' Things,"
Brooklyn
Eagle, 1919
To break the partisan stalemate, the president began a national
speaking tour,
hoping to rally public opinion in favor of the treaty and thereby
put pressure on
senators to ratify it. Wilson had to allay fears raised by hard-
core isolationists
that American involvement in collective security would drag the
US into endless
future wars. Wilson criss-crossed the country and delivered
dozens of speeches
in a valiant effort to defend his treaty and the League of
Nations.
But after 3 weeks of nonstop traveling and speaking, Wilson
collapsed from
exhaustion. Then he suffered a severe stroke in October of
1919. The president
was severely disabled for the next few months, during which
time he was
secluded away from the press, senators, and even his own staff.
Without
leadership from the White House, the Treaty of Versailles went
down to final
defeat in the Senate, and consequently, the United States never
joined the League
of Nations.

• Question:
How and why did the abrupt end to WWI lead to recession and
race riots across the United States?
Terms:
• Red Summer
• Influenza epidemic
• Russian Revolution
• The Palmer Raids
By then Americans were preoccupied with the traumatic
transition from war to
peace on the home front following the unexpectedly swift
cessation of hostilities
in Europe. Billions of dollars in government war orders were
abruptly cancelled,
throwing 5 million people out of work all at once and sending
the economy into a
severe recession. Thousands of strikes erupted in numerous
industries as
workers tried to recoup wages lost to wartime inflation.
Race riots broke out in 2 dozen cities during the summer of
1919 as competition
between blacks and whites for scarce housing during the war
turned into
competition for scarce jobs afterwards. White residents attacked
the newly
enlarged black neighborhoods of northern cities, causing much
bloodshed and
fiery destruction, while a wave of lynchings swept the South.
Watch this video :

Meanwhile, a hundred US soldiers died in Russia fighting the
Bolsheviks after
Wilson ordered military intervention against the Russian
Revolution. Half a
million Americans lost their lives in an influenza epidemic that
ravaged the United
States along with many other countries around the world. For
Americans, the
aftermath of World War I proved far more deadly than the war
itself.
American civil liberties, already damaged by wartime repression
of dissent,
suffered further injury from the Red Scare of 1919-1920. The
hysterical anti-
German hatred whipped up during the war by CPI propaganda
mutated into anti-
radical hysteria after the war. Leftists, socialists, anarchists,
labor leaders, and
intellectuals now loomed as menacing "Reds" in the eyes of
Americans who
wondered if the Russian Revolution was about to spread to the
United States.
"Come Unto Me Ye Opprest!," Anti-communism political
cartoon, Memphis
Commercial Appeal, 1919 ; A. Mitchell Palmer, organized the
Palmer Raids
which directed federal agents to round up aliens and arrest them
without
trial; Political Cartoon showing US Army Machine Gunner

holding back
Reds and Wobblies, New York Herald, 1919; I.W.W.
Headquarters after
Palmer Raid, 1919; Headline in Boston Evening, 1920
Such fanciful fears were enflamed by Attorney General A.
Mitchell Palmer after his
house was mysteriously bombed in June of 1919, a crime that
was blamed on
radicals. Six months later, Palmer organized mass arrests of 6
thousand
suspected radicals across the country, while on their own, war
veterans returning
from Europe attacked radical and labor groups. For some
Americans, the war had
seemingly ended too soon, causing wartime passions to spill
over into the first
years of peace.
Section 2: The Jazz Age
Focus Questions:
How did American society change during the Jazz Age? What
saw the most marked change?
• Question:
Who were the “New Woman” and the “New Negro” of the
1920s?
Terms:
• Women's suffrage
• The "New" Woman
• Harlem Renaissance
• The Great Migration

Prohibition of alcohol would be the most lasting and
controversial home front
legacy of World War I in the United States. The 18th
Amendment, which prohibited
the manufacture, sale, and transportation of "intoxicating
liquors," grew out of
the temperance crusade of the 19th century. The movement
gained strength after
1900 by appealing to a wide variety of reformers who expected
that banning
alcohol consumption by force of law would be a shortcut to
other goals they had
long pursued.
To Progressives, prohibition would help to assimilate
immigrants and shut down
saloons. Saloons were considered cesspools of corruption,
immorality, and
machine politics. To employers, prohibition promised to
increase labor
productivity and cut down on factory accidents, while adding to
workers' take-
home earnings without any raise in pay. To social workers,
prohibition seemed an
easy way to reduce crime, poverty, and family violence all at
once. To nativists
and country folks, prohibition served as a handy club with
which to bash
foreigners and city-slickers.
Watch this video :

Woman suffrage advocates followed the example of
prohibitionists and used
World War I to push their reform agenda toward final approval,
after many years
of agitation. Only 11 states had enacted suffrage by the time the
war broke out
because it was still widely believed by Americans of both sexes
that women
would neglect their private responsibilities toward home and
family if they were
allowed to participate in the public world of politics.
Once the United States entered World War I, however,
American women played
vital public roles by working on farms, and in offices and
factories, and by
volunteering for war service as nurses, clerks, recruiters, and
recreation workers.
President Wilson had always opposed woman suffrage, but
women's wartime
service convinced him that it was time to recognize their
contributions. Enacting
suffrage, he felt, would demonstrate the nation's commitment to
democracy.
Perhaps he was also influenced by dozens of militant women in
Alice Paul's
National Women's Party. They had chained themselves to the
White House fence
and, when arrested, staged hunger strikes in order to shame a
president who
claimed to fight for democracy.
Watch this video :

The decade also saw major changes in the lives of African
Americans. Jim Crow
segregation remained the law in the southern states, and so did
disfranchisement, while racial discrimination in jobs and
housing still prevailed
across the land. But the first stirrings of change came during
World War I, when
half a million African Americans left the rural South for the
urban North. Close to
a million more would follow in the 1920s, beckoned by the lure
of a better life.
Deprived of their usual source of cheap labor from European
immigrants,
northern employers recruited poor southern blacks to work in
northern factories
during World War I. Many black sharecroppers and their
families were eager to
escape from the endless cycle of debt, poverty, and racist terror
in the South. By
joining the Great Migration, as this epic shift of population was
called, African
Americans could not escape racism. Even in the North they had
to live in
proscribed ghetto areas and put up with low-wage jobs,
everyday hatred, and de
facto segregation. Black migrants to northern cities did,
however, escape from
the degrading heritage of slavery in the South. The men, at
least, even gained the
right to vote, which began the process of building up African

American political
power for the future.
Watch this video :
• Question:
How did conservative candidates and policies in the 1920s
negate some of the reforms implemented in the Progressive
Era?
Terms:
• Warren Harding
• "Normalcy"
• Isolationism
• Republican progressives
• Calvin Coolidge
• "Red Scare"
• Wealth concentration
• Teapot Dome Scandal
The 1920 election disappointed those who wanted a popular
referendum on US
membership in the League of Nations. Governor James Cox of
Ohio, the
Democratic nominee, endorsed the League--but Senator Warren
Harding, the
Republican nominee, also from Ohio, did not. All of the leading
contenders for the
Republican presidential nomination in 1920 had been outspoken
opponents of
the League, but delegates to the party's national convention
decided to dodge the
issue by nominating Senator Harding, a "dark horse" candidate
who avoided

saying much in public about it.
1920 Presidential Race
!
This calculated indifference toward the leading issue of the day
freed Harding to
campaign more generally against the past 2 decades of
progressive reform,
which seemed to have led the country so badly astray in pursuit
of impossibly
idealistic goals. Postwar voters grown weary of reform crusades
at home and
abroad found Harding's vague promise of "not nostrums, but
normalcy"
reassuring somehow. The result was a record landslide: Harding
won 60 percent
of the popular vote in 1920, a feat that has only been surpassed
twice since then
(in 1936 and 1964).
Once in office, President Harding steered clear of any further
US involvement in
European balance-of-power politics. Not only would the League
of Nations have
to make do without the United States, but so would America's
erstwhile allies
Britain and France. They had to enforce the Treaty of Versailles
against Germany
on their own, until eventually they stopped trying.
"The Gap in the Bridge," Punch, 1919

!
Instead of working with Britain and France, US diplomats of the
1920s demanded
that the Allies repay their leftover war debts, which aroused
tremendous
resentment on both sides of the Atlantic. A few international
arms control treaties
were negotiated in the 1920s at America's behest, and US
diplomats also led the
way in convincing 62 nations to sign a meaningless pact
outlawing war (except in
"self-defense"). But otherwise, the United States resumed its
traditional posture
of isolationism in world affairs.
As usual, however, isolation did not extend to trade. The 1920s
saw enormous
growth in US trade and foreign investment even as American
involvement in
world politics and diplomacy shriveled away. The effort by
progressive presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to goad Americans
out of their insular
indifference to world affairs was now decisively repudiated.
Tragically, the demise
of Wilson's dream of collective security against aggression
would clear the way
for the rise of Fascism in Europe and Asia and another world
war.
Republican conservatives like President Harding set the pro-
business tone for

politics and governance in the 1920s. It was clear that the
progressive spirit of
government activism was now dead. This otherwise quite
conservative decade
had some insurgent candidacies, a few public hydroelectric
power projects, and
the beginning of federally subsidized health care for poor
mothers and children.
But Democrats offered no effective opposition to Republicans
as they dissolved
into fratricidal warfare between native-born rural Protestants
and urban-based
ethnic factions.
60
!
Republican progressives never regained any seats of power
within their party
after having joined the third-party effort of ex-President
Theodore Roosevelt in
1912. Almost all progressive Republicans returned to the G.O.P.
within a few
years, but they were left without much influence. Hence
conservatives were able
to dominate the Republican Party, which in turn dominated
national politics all
decade long. The result was a decade of retreat from the
progressive commitment
to government regulation of business and government protection
for workers,
consumers, small business, and the environment.

President Calvin Coolidge, who replaced Harding upon the
latter's death in 1923,
famously said, "The chief business of the American people is
business." This
pithy little phrase served as cover for the effective takeover of
government by big
business in the 1920s. The carefully constructed progressive
regulatory state
withered away under conservative Republican administrations
more interested in
promoting economic growth than protecting the public interest.
The
abandonment of antitrust law enforcement led to the biggest
wave of corporate
mergers in the history of American business (until the 1980s).
!
Big business, which had terrified so many Americans in the
Progressive Era,
grew bigger than ever in the 1920s, but now politicians and the
press hailed these
behemoths of the corporate world as benevolent and public-
spirited. Harding and
Coolidge pushed through drastic income tax cuts at a time when
only the
wealthiest Americans paid any income tax at all, while their
administrations also
raised tariffs to record high levels. The effect was to shift the
burden of taxation
from a few high-income earners to the masses of consumers,
reversing the
prewar progressive trend.
Meanwhile, labor unions, weakened by the Red Scare, were

forced to surrender
their wartime gains, and more, as employers experimented with
"welfare
capitalism" and other union-busting schemes that sharply
reduced union
membership and worker protections. By the late 1920s, these
policies combined
to help make the nation's wealth more concentrated than ever
before or since.
Indeed, it was as if the Progressive Era had never happened.
The potential for corruption inherent in business-government
"cooperation"
became apparent following President Harding's death, when the
Teapot Dome
scandal erupted and several high-ranking members of his
administration went to
prison for taking bribes from oil companies. Nonetheless, under
President
Coolidge, the pro-business, anti-progressive policies continued
apace.
Republican politicians claimed to have inaugurated a "New Era"
of permanent
prosperity by letting business manage its own affairs free from
government
interference.
"Who Says a Watched Pot Never Boils?," 1924; "Juggernaut,"
1924; Fall
and Teapot Dome, 1928
!
Intellectuals disgusted by the nation's low-brow,
commercialized culture and self-
satisfied politics went into self-imposed exile in Europe. On the

other hand, titans
of the business world who had once been vilified as "robber
barons" were now
celebrated as visionary entrepreneurs engaged in noble service
to their fellow
man.
Yankees, Lou Gehrig, homerun, 1925; Teens dancing the
Charleston,
1926; Charles Lindbergh, American pilot who made first solo
non-
stop flight across the Atlantic; Film premiere in New York,
1926; Mary
Pickford, actress and co-founder of United Artists Film Studio
!
• Question:
According to Glen Gendzel, how did American society become
divided politically into town or urban areas vs. country or rural
areas?
Terms:
• Henry Ford
• Town vs. Country (tradition vs. modern)
• Urban nation
• Scopes Trial and evolution
• "100% Americanism"
• Immigration policies
• Prohibition
• The 18th Amendment
• Advocates for prohibition
Henry Ford, who sold millions of dependable, low-priced

"Model T" automobiles
in the 1920s, became a national folk hero despite his virulent
anti-Semitism,
eccentric notions, and harsh anti-union tactics. Reporters who
had once raised
questions about the methods of big businessmen in the
Progressive Era now
switched to praising their presumptive genius and public
usefulness. A popular
1920s bestseller even portrayed Jesus Christ as a "super
salesman" and "forceful
executive" who achieved success through mastery of modern
business
techniques.
New Era prosperity did set the tone for the 1920s. Exciting new
high-tech
industries thrived such as automobiles, consumer appliances,
chain stores,
construction, leisure, recreation, and entertainment, especially
in big cities.
Nearly a hundred million movie tickets were sold each week and
Americans
flocked to baseball parks, golf courses, and dance halls as well.
Automobile registrations soared over 20 million until by
decade's end 3 out of 4
cars in the world were registered in the United States. Owning a
car was finally
within reach of most American families. The celebrity exploits
of movie stars like
Mary Pickford, sports heroes like Babe Ruth, and the great
trans-Atlantic aviator

Charles Lindbergh filled the newsreels, magazines, and
newspapers, while radio
broadcasts of music, news, sports, soap operas, speeches,
sermons, comedies
and dramas reached into tens of millions of homes.
Popular fads ranging from "The Charleston" dance craze and
mahjong parties to
self-improvement books, vitamins, and palm reading
preoccupied those
Americans who were lucky enough to have leisure time and
disposable income
for such frivolous pursuits. But cultural interests, access to
technology,
openness to change, and differences in prosperity often divided
Americans along
rural vs. urban lines.
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In the 1920s immigration became a battlefront between urban
modernists and
rural traditionalists. New arrivals from southern and eastern
Europe rose sharply
after World War I. This upset nativists and Protestant old-stock
Americans who
had never been comfortable with the entry of so many Catholics
and Jews into
the country during the prewar decades. The wartime spirit of
"100%
Americanism" and the postwar Red Scare, both which aroused
prejudice against
foreigners as presumptively disloyal or radical, gave nativists,
after decades of

trying, a chance to finally enact severe restrictions on
immigration in the 1920s.
Responding to public fears of "inundation" and "race suicide,"
Congress passed
the National Origins Act of 1924, which imposed strict quotas
on immigrants from
southern and eastern Europe and dramatically reduced
immigration overall. Asian
immigration was banned entirely. "America must be kept
American," said
President Coolidge upon signing the law.
The nation's traditional welcome to immigrants, or at least to
Europeans, now
came to an end. The golden door to America was slammed shut
in the faces of
those yearning to breathe free. Immigration from Mexico and
the Philippines,
however, rose sharply in the 1920s. This was because no amount
of nativist fury
could wean American agriculture and industry away from its
reliance on cheap
labor from any available source.
Underneath the decade's noisy battles over immigration,
Prohibition, and
evolution lay a fundamental culture clash between country and
city, between
Protestant and Catholic, between native-born and immigrant,
between religious
and secular, between rigidly intolerant values inherited from the
19th century and

more flexible modern values of tolerance gaining ascendancy in
the 20th.
100
Watch this video :
Section 3: The Great Crash
Focus Questions:
What was “the Great Crash,” and how does it relate to “the
Great
Depression?”
• Question:
What did the phrase “new era prosperity” mean, and why was it
a false
promise even before the Great Crash?
Terms:
• Farm prices crash
• Necessity of credit
• New advertising
Country folks had much to resent about city folks in the 1920s.
Besides the clash
of values and lifestyles, there was a tremendous economic
disparity between the
fates of rural and urban America in a decade that was supposed
to be prosperous
for all. Farm prices crashed precipitously after World War I,
leaving many farmers
high and dry because they had borrowed heavily to expand
operations during the

war. Agricultural surpluses plagued the farm sector throughout
the 1920s. Farm
prices stayed low and farmers never got a chance to participate
in New Era
prosperity
10
!
Perhaps the ultimate insult to farmers was the ceaseless
migration of their own
sons and daughters away from rural areas and toward the cities.
In 1920, the US
Census Bureau announced that a majority of Americans lived in
towns and cities
for the first time ever, and the nation's urban population grew
tremendously in the
following decade, despite immigration restriction.
The reason was simple: children of the farm voted with their
feet, running away
from the traditional virtues of country life and running toward
the modern
excitements of city life. But they also left home out of sheer
necessity. They came
for jobs in the cities, because farm life was wracked with debt,
poverty, and
isolation even in the supposedly prosperous 1920s.
Another sign that not all was well with the US economy in this
decade was the
explosion of consumer credit and advertising. Credit in the form
of "buy now, pay
later" installment plans was necessary for more and more

consumers to
purchase the new automobiles, radios, appliances, vacations,
and other
trappings of modern life that would otherwise be financially out
of reach.
Advertising was equally necessary to persuade consumers to
buy what they
knew they could not afford. New Era prosperity relied on credit
and advertising to
stoke the engines of mass consumption.
General Motors Car Statistics on Sales and Credit, ca. 1925
!
The underlying problem was the nation's severe inequality of
income. Republican
policies under the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover
administrations favored
millionaires and corporations, which fared supremely well, but
millions of
workers, farmers, and poor folks did not. A handful of rich
people, however
prosperous, could never purchase enough Model T Fords and
RCA radios to keep
the assembly lines rolling and this is why a crisis of under-
consumption was
looming by decade's end. All that remained to pop the balloon
of New Era
prosperity was a high profile disaster--the Great Crash.
• Question:
According to Glen Gendzel, what kinds of economic problems
and business practices led to the Great Crash of 1929?
Terms:

• Stock market bubble, 1925-28
• Speculation
• Stocks "on margin"
• "Black Tuesday"
• Panic selling
The stock market rose dramatically in the late 1920s. Prices
doubled between
1925 and 1928, then doubled again in 1929. Republican
presidents and their
business allies pointed to Wall Street's boom as self-evident
proof of the wisdom
of their economic stewardship. But in fact, the stock market
bubble of the late
1920s was the last and biggest expression of a reckless
speculative spirit that
pervaded the whole decade.
!
New Era prosperity was never as broadly based, universally
shared, or
permanently secure as promised. It was highly concentrated in a
handful of
booming industries such as automobiles, construction, and real
estate. Florida
real estate underwent a notable boom-and-bust cycle early in the
decade, but
when that ended in 1925, speculators turned to the stock market.
After all, with
politicians and businessmen crowing in unison about permanent
prosperity and
the end of poverty, future profits seemed assured.

In explaining American history from the beginnings of the n.docx

In explaining American history from the beginnings of the n.docx

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In explaining American history from the beginnings of the n.docx