1. CHAPTER 27: THE COLD WAR
1945 – 1989 [only events until 1953 will be covered]
Mireya Carpio, Khristian Decastro, Robyn Harriman
Period 3

2. POST-WWII AMERICA

3. THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
 The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944
[AKA GI Bill of Rights] provided economic
and educational benefits to WWII veterans
 Lack of consumer goods and rise in income
in WWII led to purchasing goods on impulse,
causing rapid inflation
 Rapid inflation caused labor unrest
 Veterans began taking back jobs of women
and those of racial minority

4. THE FAIR DEAL
 Proposed by Truman for:
 Government provision of atomic research
 Fair employment practices and raising minimum wage
 Public housing and slum clearance
 Environmental and public works programming
 Shot down my conservatives, being
compared to New Deal reform
 81st Congress, after Truman’s election
 Raised minimum wage, created low-income housing,
expanded financial benefits
 Failed to aid any other Fair Deal points

5. 1948 ELECTION
 A new Progressive Party emerged, Henry A.
Wallace
 Republicans headed by Thomas E. Dewey,
who had enormous popularity over Truman
 Southern conservatives left the Democratic
Party to create the States’ Rights [or
Dixiecrat] Party
 After 32,000 miles of campaigning, Truman
still managed to win the election

7. THE EFFECTS OF THE NUCLEAR AGE
 Film Noir
 Radios tested emergency systems, and schools
and office buildings constantly practiced air raid
drills
 Fallout shelters were built in both public
buildings and private homes
 A poll in 1948 showed that two-thirds of
Americans believed that nuclear technology
would eventually be only beneficial
 Nuclear power plants were rapidly created

8. THE COLD WAR
FOR REAL THIS TIME

9. SOVIET IDEOLOGY
 Accepted by the Soviet Union and its Eastern
European states
 Goal: to spread communism throughout the
globe
 Command economy
 Having sole control of particular areas of
strategic interest

10. AMERICAN IDEOLOGY
 Accepted by the US and other “Western”
Democratic nations
 Goal: to contain communism and eventually
destroy it
 Capitalist economy
 Abandoning traditional military alliances and
spheres of influence
 Reestablishing international relations through
democratic processes (an international
organization)

11. METHODS OF ‘FIGHTING’ THE COLD WAR
USA USSR
Espionage CIA KGB
Nuclear Escalation
Arms Race Beating That
Space Exploration
Communism and
Democracy and
Proxy War Command
Capitalism
Economy

12. ORIGINS OF TENSIONS
 “The Big Three”: FDR, Churchill, Stalin
 Wartime
 Atlantic Charter of 1941
 Halting Western front on Germany
 Post-WWII [Yalta Conference of 1941]
 Poland [and eventually all Soviet states] Pro-Western or
Pro-Communist?
 Result: agreed on balance, but Stalin tended to put
Communist gov’t officials in charge without election
 Germany: Reconstruction or Reparation?
 Result: Four-war division of Germany and of Berlin

14. THE CHINA DILEMMA
 Mao Zedong’s communist
forces vs. Chiang Kai-Shek’s
nationalist government
 American public favored a third
force to dominate both of these
groups
 When civil war broke, the US
sent money and supplies to
Chiang
 Mao became the victory,
establishing China as a
Communist nation

15. THE CONTAINMENT POLICY
 US and its allies to contain further Soviet
expansion rather than create an international
democratic compromise
 Stalin attempted to gain control of Turkey
and Greece, but his efforts were defeated by
the $400 million aid provided by Congress to
support the free peoples
 Foundation for the Truman Doctrine

16. THE MARSHALL PLAN
 Drafted by Secretary of State George C.
Marshall in June 1947
 For the welfare of Europeans
 To remove dependency on the US
 To expand the European market for American goods
 To prevent Western European gov’ts from falling into
Communism
 Signed by 16 European nations, rejected by
USSR and its satellite states
 Created the Economic Cooperation
Administration, which channeled $12 billion of

17. MOBILIZATION AT HOME
 Atomic Energy Commission established in
1946, in charge of testing and researching
nuclear warfare
 National Security Act of 1947 enacted,
reforming major military and diplomatic
institutions, and creating a new Department of
Defense
 Selective Service System revived in 1948 in
case of war
 CIA created to collect information and eventually
engage secretly in political and military

18. BERLIN AIRLIFT
 US, UK, and France agreed to merge the three
western zones of German occupation into the
West German Republic
 On June 24, 1948, Stalin placed a blockade on
western Berlin, implying that Germany’s split
meant that Western controllers should lose its
outpost in Soviet Territory
 Unwilling to risk war, Truman’s airlift sent
supplies, food, and 2.5 million tons of other
materials to Berlin to keep the 2 million people
there alive

20. NATO
 [National Atlantic Treaty Organization]
 Consolidated 12 nations on April 4, 1949,
stating that any attack on one member was
an attack against all members
 Initially designed as a defense against
possible Soviet invasion
 Influenced the Soviet Union to create their
own alliance of Communist nations under the
Warsaw Pact of 1955

21. NATO MEMBERS CONSOLIDATED BY 1950

22. NSC-68
 [National Security Council report, number 68]
 UK refused to continue aiding Germany
during the Berlin Airlift
 Report states that the US cannot rely on
other nations to contain communism, and
must rather take its own leadership
 Expanded military power, quadrupling the
American defense budget

23. 1950-1953
THE KOREAN WAR

24. INSTIGATION
 Both USSR and US sent troops to Korea,
unwilling to leave
 Nation agreed on temporary boundary on
38th parallel
 USA stated that did not consider South
Korea in its “defense perimeter”; North
Koreans tempted to invade
 US able to win UN assistance for South
Korea

25. UNSETTLING BOUNDARIES
 Boundary pushed past the 38th parallel by
northern forces, capturing the southern
capital of Seoul
 American forces (under MacArthur) pushed
boundary back past 38th parallel, almost
reaching the USSR
 On November 4, 1950, the Chinese sent
their own troops in favor of the Communist
North
 Boundary yet again pushed to the south of
the 38th parallel

26. RELIEVING MACARTHUR
 MacArthur resisted Truman’s limits on
military discretion, insisting that China should
be invaded, or somehow punished
 MacArthur sent a letter to House Republican
leader Joseph W. Martin, stating, “There is
no substitute for victory.”
 Appalled, Truman relieved him of duty on
April 11, 1951

27. THE END OF THE KOREAN WAR
 Opposing forces met in Panmunjom, but
never reached a final decision until 1953
 Established the permanent boundary
between the north and South
 Like WWII, the war pumped substantial
amounts government funds into the economy
 Mobilization and public support, however,
were not as great

30. DOMESTIC FEAR OF COMMUNISM

31. REPUBLICAN DOMINATION
 HUAC formed to battle Democrats
 House Un-American Activities Committee
performed and publicized investigations to
prove that the government would not have
tolerated Communist subversion if it was not
under Democratic rule
 HUAC interviewed Hollywood writers and
producers
 “Hollywood Ten”

32. ALGER HISS
 Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of
the State Department of sending State
Department documents to the USSR in 1937
and 1938
 Hiss not tried for espionage because of
statue of limitations
 Because of Richard Nixon’s efforts, Hiss was
eventually arrested for perjury
 Hiss was imprisoned for several years.

33. THE FEDERAL LOYALTY PROGRAM
 1947 – Truman permits a program to review
the loyalty of federal employees
 1950 – Truman allows the firing of
employees deemed “bad security risks”
 McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950
 Forced al Communist organizations in the US to
register with the gov’t
 FBI directory J. Edgar Hoover investigated
and harassed alleged radicals

34. THE ROSENBURG CASE
 USSR successfully detonated
an atomic bomb in 1949;
Americans believed that the
US gave the USSR atomic
research information
 David Greenglass of the
Manhattan Project, admitted
to have provided info to
USSR agents
 Admitted that the
masterminds were his sister
and brother-in-law, ordinary
New York couple Ethel and
Julius Rosenburg

35. MCCARTHYISM
 Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin
Republican Senator
 During a speech in
Wheeling, West Virginia,
claimed to have a list of 205
known communists working
in the State Department
 Harsh investigations spread to other
agencies
 Publicized investigations, going through
federal offices and American embassies