The Strategy of Containment
The Marshall Plan
Directions: Read the following documents and view the political cartoons. When you have finished, write a three-paragraph letter to President Truman in which you express either your support or your opposition to the Marshall Plan.
Document #1: From Speech by George C. Marshall, June 15, 1947: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/marshall/large/documents/index.php?docu mentdate=1947-06-15&documentid=0&studycollectionid=mp&pagenumber=1
I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.
In considering the requirements for the rehabilitation of Europe, the physical loss of life, the visible destruction of cities, factories, mines, and railroads was correctly estimated, but it has become obvious during recent months that this visible destruction was probably less serious than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy. For the past 10 years conditions have been highly abnormal. The feverish preparation for war and the more feverish maintenance of the war effort engulfed all aspects of national economies. Machinery has fallen into disrepair or is entirely obsolete. Under the arbitrary and destructive Nazi rule, virtually every possible enterprise was geared into the German war machine.
Long-standing commercial ties, private institutions, banks, insurance companies, and shipping companies disappeared, through loss of capital, absorption through nationalization, or by simple destruction. In many countries, confidence in the local currency has been severely shaken. The breakdown of the business structure of Europe during the war was complete. Recovery has been seriously retarded by the fact that two years after the close of hostilities a peace settlement with Germany and Austria has not been agreed upon. But even given a more prompt solution of these difficult problems, the rehabilitation of the economic structure of Europe quite evidently will require a much longer time and greater effort than had been foreseen....
The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.
The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. The manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their products for currencies the continuing value of which is not open to question.
Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.
It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government. It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all, European nations.
An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.
Document #2: Rep. Charles W. Vursell, Speech on the Marshall Plan, December 4, 1947: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=855
…This Congress is faced with grave decisions. We are being asked to take from the American people in money and supplies at a critical time of shortages on every hand, $597,000,000 for immediate emergency relief. Later we are being asked by the administration to enter into a 4-year contract to furnish some $20,000,000,000 or more in money and supplies to implement the Marshall plan. In the interest of our own people and Nation, we must not approach them in an atmosphere of hysteria and emotion; we must think as realists…
…[B]y holding up the false specter of starvation, the administration and the thousands of bureau propagandists and friendly commentators, over the air, seek to influence the American people and the Congress by the biggest barrage of propaganda ever turned loose on the public, to support the $20,000,000,000 Marshall plan… .
…[T]hose who favor the Marshall plan will tell you that we must rebuild western Europe to stop communism. We all want to retard or stop communism if we can, but we must be honest with ourselves and honest with the American people we represent. We cannot stop communism taking Western Europe unless we have the power to stop Russia and her armies. We held a serious conference with a group of high-ranking military men while in Europe whose duty it is to know what Russia can and may do. We asked the question as follows: "Suppose, under the Marshall plan or some other plan, we spend from $10,000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000 rebuilding western Europe and get those countries going in good shape in 4 or 5 years, is there anything then to stop Russia from moving in and taking a much richer prize after we have spent our money to build it up?" The answer was "No." I do not believe any top military man in the Nation will make the statement that we can land and maintain in western Europe sufficient military forces to prevent Russia, if she so desires, from taking over western Europe. Germany will have no army. Italy, France, Belgium and Holland will have no military strength capable of putting up any serious resistance if Russia should make such a move. You just as well quit trying to deceive the American people by telling them you can stop communism if you put over the Marshall plan…
…Now, if you want to exert the strongest influence possible by the United States to retard, or stop the encroachment of communism on western Europe, take some of these $20,000,000,000 that you would waste in the Marshall plan, and spend them here at home in building the strongest air force with the greatest striking power of any air force in the world. Give more attention to cooperation in hemispheric defense with South America, strengthen our military departments where necessary to enable us in any emergency to strike promptly with power and effect. Mr. Stalin and his warlords, if they knew we were making such moves, would probably hesitate to move further into Western Europe for fear they might precipitate a war with a powerful Nation that is prepared.
I would rather risk this course for the long pull future, and for the immediate effect it would have on Russia, than to tempt them by setting before them a $20,000,000,000 banquet table through the Marshall plan of rebuilding Western Europe. Force is the only thing Russia understands.
[I]f we weaken ourselves by shipping away our resources, causing the cost of living to go higher and higher, and spending our Nation into bankruptcy, such action will bring smiles and great satisfaction to Stalin, [Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav] Molotov, and Russia. Twenty billion dollars spent on our part in Western Europe now, plus the efforts of the European nations should be worth $50,000,000,000 in a few years. It is too great a temptation to place before the Russian warlords…
The first responsibility of the Members of this Congress is to protect the interests of our own people and preserve the financial solvency of our own Nation. The greatest contribution we can make for the future peace of the world is to keep America strong.
Document #3: Political Cartoon, “It’s the Same Thing, Without the Mechanical Problems”: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/s03386u.jpg
Document #4: Political Cartoon, “While the Shadow Lengthens”: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/marshall/images/bearwtext.jpg
The Truman Doctrine
President Truman has asked Congress to approve $400 million in aid to the governments of Greece and Turkey.
(Group #1):
Read the following document. When you are finished, you will pair with another student for a silent debate on whether the United States should do what Truman suggests.
Excerpts from Harry S. Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” address, which he delivered to Congress on March 12, 1947:
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/doctrine/large/documents/index.php?docum entdate=1947-03-12&documentid=31&studycollectionid=TDoctrine&pagenumber=1
The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress. The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved....
The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists, who defy the Government’s authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries. A commission appointed by the United Nations Security Council is at present investigating disturbed conditions in northern Greece and alleged border violations along the frontier between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia on the other.
Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek Army is small and poorly equipped. It needs supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the Government throughout Greek territory.
Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.
The United States must supply that assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but these are inadequate. There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.
No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek Government.
The British Government, which has been helping Greece, can give no further financial or economic aid after March. Great Britain finds itself under the necessity of reducing or liquidating its commitments in several parts of the world, including Greece.
We have considered how the United Nations might assist in this crisis. But the situation is an urgent one requiring immediate action, and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required....
Greece’s neighbor, Turkey, also deserves our attention.
The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound State is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey finds itself today are considerably different from those of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain furnished Turkey with material aid.
Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support.
Since the war Turkey has sought financial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.
That integrity is essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East.
The British Government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties, it can no longer extend financial or economic aid to Turkey.
As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.
I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these implications with you at this time.
One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free people to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.
This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes....
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.
Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent State would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war. It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world.
Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence.
Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far-reaching to the West as well as to the East. We must take immediate and resolute action.
I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period ending June 30, 1948. In requesting these funds, l have taken into consideration the maximum amount of relief assistance which would be furnished to Greece out of the $350,000,000 which I recently requested that the Congress authorize for the prevention of starvation and suffering in countries devastated by the war.
In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey, at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use of such financial and material assistance as may be furnished.
I recommend that authority also be provided for the instruction and training of selected Greek and Turkish personnel....
This is a serious course upon which we embark. I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious.
The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace. The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than one-tenth of one per cent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died.
We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events. I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.
(Group #2):
Excerpts from Harry S. Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” address, which he delivered to Congress on March 12, 1947:
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/doctrine/large/documents/index.php?docum entdate=1947-03-12&documentid=31&studycollectionid=TDoctrine&pagenumber=1
The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress. The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved....
The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists, who defy the Government’s authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries. A commission appointed by the United Nations Security Council is at present investigating disturbed conditions in northern Greece and alleged border violations along the frontier between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia on the other.
Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek Army is small and poorly equipped. It needs supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the Government throughout Greek territory.
Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.
The United States must supply that assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but these are inadequate. There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.
No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek Government.
The British Government, which has been helping Greece, can give no further financial or economic aid after March. Great Britain finds itself under the necessity of reducing or liquidating its commitments in several parts of the world, including Greece.
We have considered how the United Nations might assist in this crisis. But the situation is an urgent one requiring immediate action, and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required....
Greece’s neighbor, Turkey, also deserves our attention.
The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound State is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey finds itself today are considerably different from those of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain furnished Turkey with material aid.
Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support.
Since the war Turkey has sought financial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.
That integrity is essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East.
The British Government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties, it can no longer extend financial or economic aid to Turkey.
As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.
I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these implications with you at this time.
One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free people to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.
This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes....
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.
Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent State would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war. It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world.
Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence.
Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far-reaching to the West as well as to the East. We must take immediate and resolute action.
I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period ending June 30, 1948. In requesting these funds, l have taken into consideration the maximum amount of relief assistance which would be furnished to Greece out of the $350,000,000 which I recently requested that the Congress authorize for the prevention of starvation and suffering in countries devastated by the war.
In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey, at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use of such financial and material assistance as may be furnished.
I recommend that authority also be provided for the instruction and training of selected Greek and Turkish personnel....
This is a serious course upon which we embark. I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious.
The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace. The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than one-tenth of one per cent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died.
We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events. I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.
(Group #2):
Read the following document. When you are finished, you will pair with another student for a silent debate on whether the United States should do what Truman suggests.
Henry A. Wallace, Speech on the Truman Doctrine, March 27, 1947: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=852
[Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) grew up on a farm in Iowa, and graduated from Iowa State College in 1910. In 1915 he founded a business that remains to this day one of the most profitable agricultural corporations in the United States. In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt named him Secretary of Agriculture, a position which Wallace held until FDR selected him as his running mate for the 1940 presidential election. As vice president he became increasingly outspoken in his liberal views, leading FDR to drop him from the ticket in 1944 in favor of Harry Truman. However, he remained in the cabinet as Secretary of Commerce, and he remained in this post until 1946, when he was asked to resign because of his public differences with President Truman over foreign policy. He would later run against Truman in the presidential election of 1948.]
March 12, 1947, marked a turning point in American history. It is not a Greek crisis that we face, it is an American crisis. It is a crisis in the American spirit…. Only the American people fully aroused and promptly acting can prevent disaster.
President Truman, in the name of democracy and humanitarianism, proposed a military lend-lease program. He proposed a loan of $400,000,000 to Greece and Turkey as a down payment on an unlimited expenditure aimed at opposing Communist expansion. He proposed, in effect, that America police Russia’s every border. There is no regime too reactionary for us provided it stands in Russia’s expansionist path. There is no country too remote to serve as the scene of a contest which may widen until it becomes a world war.
President Truman calls for action to combat a crisis. What is this crisis that necessitates Truman going to Capitol Hill as though a Pearl Harbor has suddenly hit us? How many more of these Pearl Harbors will there be? How can they be foreseen? What will they cost? [ …]
One year ago at Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill called for a diplomatic offensive against Soviet Russia. By sanctioning that speech, Truman committed us to a policy of combating Russia with British sources. That policy proved to be so bankrupt that Britain can no longer maintain it. Now President Truman proposes we take over Britain’s hopeless task. Today Americans are asked to support the Governments of Greece and Turkey. Tomorrow we shall be asked to support the Governments of China and Argentina.
I say that this policy is utterly futile. No people can be bought. America cannot afford to spend billions and billions of dollars for unproductive purposes. The world is hungry and insecure, and the peoples of all lands demand change. President Truman cannot prevent change in the world any more than he can prevent the tide from coming in or the sun from setting. But once America stands for opposition to change, we are lost. America will become the most hated nation in the world.
Russia may be poor and unprepared for war, but she knows very well how to reply to Truman’s declaration of economic and financial pressure. All over the world Russia and her ally, poverty, will increase the pressure against us. Who among us is ready to predict that in this struggle American dollars will outlast the grievances that lead to communism? I certainly don’t want to see communism spread. I predict that Truman’s policy will spread communism in Europe and Asia. You can’t fight something with nothing. When Truman offers unconditional aid to King George of Greece, he is acting as the best salesman communism ever had. In proposing this reckless adventure, Truman is betraying the great tradition of America and the leadership of the great American who preceded him….
When President Truman proclaims the world-wide conflict between East and West, he is telling the Soviet leaders that we are preparing for eventual war. They will reply by measures to strengthen their position in the event of war. Then the task of keeping the world at peace will pass beyond the power of the common people everywhere who want peace. Certainly it will not be freedom that will be victorious in this struggle. Psychological and spiritual preparation for war will follow financial preparation; civil liberties will be restricted; standards of living will be forced downward; families will be divided against each other; none of the values that we hold worth fighting for will be secure….
This is the time for an all-out worldwide reconstruction program for peace. This is America’s opportunity. The peoples of all lands say to America: Send us plows for our fields instead of tanks and guns to be used against us …. The dollars that are spent will be spent for the production of goods and will come back to us in a thousand different ways. Our programs will be based on service instead of the outworn ideas of imperialism and power politics. It is a fundamental law of life that a strong idea is merely strengthened by persecution. The way to handle communism is by what William James called the replacing power of the higher affection. In other words, we give the common man all over the world something better than communism. I believe we have something better than communism here in America. But President Truman has not spoken for the American ideal. It is now the turn of the American people to speak.
Common sense is required of all of us in realizing that helping militarism never brings peace. Courage is required of all of us in carrying out a program that can bring peace. Courage and common sense are the qualities that made America great. Let’s keep those qualities now.
Excerpts from Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456
[....] Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are truly down....
Six years ago...there was within the Soviet orbit, 180,000,000 people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there were in the world at that time, roughly 1,625,000,000 people. Today, only six years later, there are 80,000,000,000 people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia—an increase of over 400 percent. On our side, the figure has shrunk to around 500,000. In other words, in less than six years, the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in our favor to 8 to 1 against us.
This indicates the swiftness of the tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.” [...]
The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores...but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of minority groups who have been traitorous to this Nation, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer...the finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give.
This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been most traitorous...
I have here in my hand a list of 205...a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department....
As you know, very recently the Secretary of State proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes—being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust—high treason....
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted, warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of honesty and decency in government.
Excerpt from President Truman’s News Conference at Key West, March 30, 1950: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456
Q: Do you think that Senator McCarthy can show any disloyalty exists in the State Department?
The President: I think the greatest asset that the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy....
Q: Mr. President, could we quote that one phrase, “I think the greatest asset the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy”?
The President: Now let me give you a little preliminary, and then I will tell you what I think you ought to do. Let me tell you what the situation is.
We started out in 1945, when I became President, and the two wars were still going on, and the Russians were our allies, just the same as the British and the French and Brazil and the South American countries. And we won the war together....
Then our objective was to—as quickly as possible—get peace in the world. We made certain agreements with the Russians and the British and the French and the Chinese. We kept those agreements to the letter. They have nearly all been—those agreements where the Russians were involved—been broken by the Russians. And it became perfectly evident that they had no intention of carrying out the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter and the agreements which had been made at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. And it became evident that there was an endeavor on the part of the Kremlin to control the world.
A procedure was instituted which came to be known as the cold war. The airlift to Berlin was only one phase of it. People became alarmed here in the United States then, that there might be people whose sympathies were with the Communist ideal of government—which is not communism under any circumstances, it is totalitarianism of the worst brand. There isn’t any difference between the totalitarian Russian Government and the Hitler government and the Franco government in Spain. They are all alike. They are police state governments.
In 1947 I instituted a loyalty program for Government employees, and that loyalty procedure program was set up in such a way that the rights of individuals were respected.
In a survey of the 2,200,000 employees at that time, I think there were some 205—something like that— who left the service. I don’t know—a great many of them left of their own accord....
And then, for political background, the Republicans have been trying vainly to find an issue on which to make a bid for the control of the Congress for next year. They tried “statism.” They tried “welfare state.” They tried “socialism.” And there are a certain number of members of the Republican Party who are trying to dig up that old malodorous dead horse called “isolationism.” And in order to do that, they are perfectly willing to sabotage the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States. And this fiasco which has been going on in the Senate is the very best asset that the Kremlin could have in the operation of the cold war. And that is what I mean when I say that McCarthy’s antics are the best asset that the Kremlin can have.
Now, if anybody really felt that there were disloyal people in the employ of the Government, the proper and the honorable way to handle the situation would be to come to the President of the United States and say, “This man is a disloyal person. He is in such and such a department.” We will investigate him immediately, and if he were a disloyal person he would be immediately fired.
That is not what they want. They are trying to create an issue, and it is going to be just as big a fiasco as the campaign in New York and other places on these other false and fatuous issues.
With a little bit of intelligence they could find an issue at home without a bit of trouble!
Q: What would it be, Mr. President?
The President: Anything in the domestic line. I will meet them on any subject they want, but to try to sabotage the foreign policy of the United States, in the face of the situation with which we are faced, is just as bad as trying to cut the Army in time of war.
Statement of Seven Republican Senators, June 1, 1950:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6459
1. We are Republicans. But we are Americans first. It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country. Democrats and Republicans alike have contributed to that confusion.
2. The Democratic administration has initially created the confusion by its lack of effective leadership, by its contradictory grave warnings and optimistic assurances, by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home, by its oversensitiveness to rightful criticism, by its petty bitterness against its critics.
3. Certain elements of the Republican Party have materially added to this confusion in the hopes of riding the Republican party to victory through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance. There are enough mistakes of the Democrats for Republicans to criticize constructively without resorting to political smears.
4. To this extent, Democrats and Republicans alike have unwittingly, but undeniably, played directly into the Communist design of “confuse, divide and conquer.”
5. It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.
Additional Herb Lock Cartoons
“You Mean I’m Supposed to Stand on That?” http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/hblock4.jpg
“Nothing Exceeds Like Excess”: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/s03493u.jpg
“Have a Care, Sir”: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/hblock5.jpg
Excerpt from draft of Eisenhower speech given on October 3, 1952 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on "Communism and Freedom": http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/dl/McCarthy/sixthdraftDDEWIcampaignspeech.pdf
(Group #1): Read the following documents. After you have done so, write a paragraph explaining how the events described in them might have contributed to McCarthy’s downfall. Be prepared to share this paragraph with the class.
Excerpt from diary entry by James C. Hagerty, White House Press Secretary, February 25, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/DiaryTypedHagertyFeb2554.pdf
[The following occurred after Robert Stevens, Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Army, was called to testify before McCarthy’s committee. McCarthy had begun suggesting that Communists had infiltrated important positions in the U.S. Army.]
[...] Pres[ident] very mad and getting fed up—it’s his Army and he doesn’t like McCarthy’s tactics at all. Stevens and [Deputy Secretary of Defense Roger M.] Kyes joined [Vice President Richard M.] Nixon and all of us at 4 P.M.—worked ‘til 5:30 on statement—cleared it with Pres who made it stronger and then released it in joint conference in my office.
Quotes—Ike on subject: “This guy McCarthy is going to get into trouble over this. I’m not going to take this one lying down”—“my friends tell me it won’t be long in this Army stuff before McCarthy starts using my name instead of Stevens. He’s ambitious. He wants to be President. He’s the last guy in the world who’ll ever get there, if I have anything to say.”
Excerpt from diary entry by James Hagerty, March 10, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/DiaryentryMarch1054.pdf
[...] Good conference—Pres tough on Joe [McCarthy] and backed up [Vermont Senator Ralph] Flanders [an outspoken McCarthy critic].... Pres in fighting mood, has had it as far as Joe is concerned: “if he wants to get recognized anymore,” Pres told Persons, “only way he can do it is to stand up and publicly say ‘I was wrong in browbeating witnesses, wrong in saying the Army is coddling Communists, and wrong in my attack on Stevens. I apologize’—that’s the only way I ever welcome him back into fold.”
Excerpt from diary entry by James Hagerty, May 14, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/Diaryentry51454.pdf
[...] We also discussed the Army-McCarthy hearings and [Arkansas Senator and member of McCarthy’s committee John L.] McClellan’s threat to subpoena White House staff members and bring them before the Committee. The President said that he would not stand for this for one minute. He explained that he looked upon his staff members as confidential advisors and that the Congress had absolutely no right to ask them to testify in any way, shape or form about the advice that they were giving to him at any time on the subject—“If they want to make a test of this principle, I’ll fight them tooth and nail and up and down the country. It is a matter of principle with me and I will never permit it”—The President reiterated his belief that Stevens was dead right by refusing to permit the hearings to go into closed sessions and said that he would once again tell all members of his staff to keep out of this controversy, to have nothing to say on it, and to let my office, and my office alone, be the spokesman on all question dealing with McCarthy.
Excerpt from diary entry by James Hagerty, May 17, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/Diaryentry51754pg1.pdf
[...] Turning to his letter [that is, the order banning his advisors from testifying before Congress] the President announced that they all knew that he had been trying to stay out of the “damn business on the Hill”, [Capitol Hill; in other words, Congress] that many people have been begging him to get into the struggle, to attack McCarthy personally but that he had refused to do so. However, he said, a situation had come up in the threatened subpoena of his confidential advisers that made it necessary for him to act. He said that he had written a letter to the Secretary of Defense ordering him to refuse to permit their people to discuss confidential matters with the Committee and that he had also attached the Attorney General’s memorandum outlining the precedents taken by twelve of his predecessors.... “Any man who testifies as to the advice he gave me won’t be working for me that night”—“I will not allow people around me to be subpoenaed and you might just as well know it now.”
Excerpt from diary entry by Press Secretary James Hagerty, May 28, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/Diaryentry52854pg1.pdf
[...] Following staff meeting drafted statement designed for President to issue regarding McCarthy’s appeal at hearing yesterday to Federal employees to disregard Presidential orders and laws and report to him on “graft, corruption, Communism and treason.” Discussed the statement with the Attorney General and he was all in favor of us putting one out.... I gave out the statement at 11:00. A few minutes later the President called me in to his office and said he wanted to discuss this further. He was really mad at what he termed “the complete arrogance of McCarthy”—Walking up and down behind his desk and speaking in rapid fire order he said the following:
“This amounts to nothing but a wholesale subversion of public service. McCarthy is making exactly the same plea of loyalty to him that Hitler made to the German people. Both tried to set up personal loyalty within the Government while both were using the pretense of fighting Communism. McCarthy is trying deliberately to subvert the people we have in Government, people who are sworn to obey the law, the Constitution and their superior officers. I think this is the most disloyal act we have ever had by anyone in the Government of the United States.”
The President then sat down at his desk and said that he supposed he will be asked this question at his press conference. I said I was sure it would come up. He said, “Make sure it does because I’ll tell you now what I’m going to say—I am going to tell the newsmen that in my opinion this is the most arrogant invitation to subversion and disloyalty that I have ever heard of. I am going to also say that if such an invitation is accepted by any employee of the Government and we find out who that employee is, he will be fired on the spot if a civilian and court martialed on the spot if a military man. I won’t stand for it for one minute.”
The President then asked if it would not be possible to feed such a speech to [Michigan] Senator [Charles E.] Potter to be delivered on the floor of the Senate on this subject. I countered with the suggestion that maybe the best way to do would be to build up public opinion first. The President thought that was a good idea and after discussion we decided that it would be best for me on my own to call certain key people that I knew in radio, television and the newspapers to get this point of view over. I did that in the afternoon. The President also told me that I should do this on my own and should not let anyone even in the White House know what I was doing.... This is a fundamental fight and one I am sure we can win, but one to which I am also sure we will have to give a lot of attention to see that our point of view is accurately reflected in radio, television and the papers throughout the country.
Henry A. Wallace, Speech on the Truman Doctrine, March 27, 1947: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=852
[Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) grew up on a farm in Iowa, and graduated from Iowa State College in 1910. In 1915 he founded a business that remains to this day one of the most profitable agricultural corporations in the United States. In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt named him Secretary of Agriculture, a position which Wallace held until FDR selected him as his running mate for the 1940 presidential election. As vice president he became increasingly outspoken in his liberal views, leading FDR to drop him from the ticket in 1944 in favor of Harry Truman. However, he remained in the cabinet as Secretary of Commerce, and he remained in this post until 1946, when he was asked to resign because of his public differences with President Truman over foreign policy. He would later run against Truman in the presidential election of 1948.]
March 12, 1947, marked a turning point in American history. It is not a Greek crisis that we face, it is an American crisis. It is a crisis in the American spirit…. Only the American people fully aroused and promptly acting can prevent disaster.
President Truman, in the name of democracy and humanitarianism, proposed a military lend-lease program. He proposed a loan of $400,000,000 to Greece and Turkey as a down payment on an unlimited expenditure aimed at opposing Communist expansion. He proposed, in effect, that America police Russia’s every border. There is no regime too reactionary for us provided it stands in Russia’s expansionist path. There is no country too remote to serve as the scene of a contest which may widen until it becomes a world war.
President Truman calls for action to combat a crisis. What is this crisis that necessitates Truman going to Capitol Hill as though a Pearl Harbor has suddenly hit us? How many more of these Pearl Harbors will there be? How can they be foreseen? What will they cost? [ …]
One year ago at Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill called for a diplomatic offensive against Soviet Russia. By sanctioning that speech, Truman committed us to a policy of combating Russia with British sources. That policy proved to be so bankrupt that Britain can no longer maintain it. Now President Truman proposes we take over Britain’s hopeless task. Today Americans are asked to support the Governments of Greece and Turkey. Tomorrow we shall be asked to support the Governments of China and Argentina.
I say that this policy is utterly futile. No people can be bought. America cannot afford to spend billions and billions of dollars for unproductive purposes. The world is hungry and insecure, and the peoples of all lands demand change. President Truman cannot prevent change in the world any more than he can prevent the tide from coming in or the sun from setting. But once America stands for opposition to change, we are lost. America will become the most hated nation in the world.
Russia may be poor and unprepared for war, but she knows very well how to reply to Truman’s declaration of economic and financial pressure. All over the world Russia and her ally, poverty, will increase the pressure against us. Who among us is ready to predict that in this struggle American dollars will outlast the grievances that lead to communism? I certainly don’t want to see communism spread. I predict that Truman’s policy will spread communism in Europe and Asia. You can’t fight something with nothing. When Truman offers unconditional aid to King George of Greece, he is acting as the best salesman communism ever had. In proposing this reckless adventure, Truman is betraying the great tradition of America and the leadership of the great American who preceded him….
When President Truman proclaims the world-wide conflict between East and West, he is telling the Soviet leaders that we are preparing for eventual war. They will reply by measures to strengthen their position in the event of war. Then the task of keeping the world at peace will pass beyond the power of the common people everywhere who want peace. Certainly it will not be freedom that will be victorious in this struggle. Psychological and spiritual preparation for war will follow financial preparation; civil liberties will be restricted; standards of living will be forced downward; families will be divided against each other; none of the values that we hold worth fighting for will be secure….
This is the time for an all-out worldwide reconstruction program for peace. This is America’s opportunity. The peoples of all lands say to America: Send us plows for our fields instead of tanks and guns to be used against us …. The dollars that are spent will be spent for the production of goods and will come back to us in a thousand different ways. Our programs will be based on service instead of the outworn ideas of imperialism and power politics. It is a fundamental law of life that a strong idea is merely strengthened by persecution. The way to handle communism is by what William James called the replacing power of the higher affection. In other words, we give the common man all over the world something better than communism. I believe we have something better than communism here in America. But President Truman has not spoken for the American ideal. It is now the turn of the American people to speak.
Common sense is required of all of us in realizing that helping militarism never brings peace. Courage is required of all of us in carrying out a program that can bring peace. Courage and common sense are the qualities that made America great. Let’s keep those qualities now.
CONTAINMENT POLICY EMERGED
Memorandum from Clark Clifford to President Truman, “American Relations with the Soviet Union,” September 24, 1946: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/index.php?documentdat e=1946-09-24&documentid=4-1&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1
[A successful lawyer in St. Louis, Clark Clifford (1906-1998) was an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II. In this capacity he frequently advised President Truman, who came to rely on him to the extent that he asked Clifford to accompany him to the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. One of his first assignments in this job was to prepare a report analyzing the postwar behavior of the Soviet Union, and making recommendations as to how the United States should respond. The resulting document—an 81-page report entitled “American Relations with the Soviet Union”—would strongly influence U.S. foreign policy throughout the Cold War.]
The primary objective of United States policy toward the Soviet Union is to convince Soviet leaders that it is in their interest to participate in a system of world cooperation, that there are no fundamental causes for war between our two nations, and that the security and prosperity of the Soviet Union, and that of the rest of the world as well, is being jeopardized by aggressive militaristic imperialism such as that in which the Soviet Union is now engaged.
However, these same leaders with whom we hope to achieve an understanding on the principles of international peace appear to believe that a war with the United States and the other leading capitalistic nations is inevitable. They are increasing their military power and the sphere of Soviet influence in preparation for the ‘inevitable’ conflict, and they are trying to weaken and subvert their potential opponents by every means at their disposal. So long as these men adhere to these beliefs, it is highly dangerous to conclude that hope of international peace lies only in ‘accord,’ ‘mutual understanding,’ or ‘solidarity’ with the Soviet Union.
Adoption of such a policy would impel the United States to make sacrifices for the sake of Soviet-U.S. relations, which would only have the effect of raising Soviet hopes and increasing Soviet demands, and to ignore alternative lines of policy, which might be much more compatible with our own national and international interests.
The Soviet Government will never be easy to ‘get along with.’ The American people must accustom themselves to this thought, not as a cause for despair, but as a fact to be faced objectively and courageously. If we find it impossible to enlist Soviet cooperation in the solution of world problems, we should be prepared to join with the British and other Western countries in an attempt to build up a world of our own which will pursue its own objectives and will recognize the Soviet orbit as a distinct entity with which conflict is not predestined but with which we cannot pursue common aims.
As long as the Soviet Government maintains its present foreign policy, based upon the theory of an ultimate struggle between Communism and Capitalism, the United States must assume that the U.S.S.R. might fight at any time for the twofold purpose of expanding the territory under communist control and weakening its potential capitalist opponents. The Soviet Union was able to flow into the political vacuum of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Near East, Manchuria and Korea because no other nation was both willing and able to prevent it. Soviet leaders were encouraged by easy success and they are now preparing to take over new areas in the same way. The Soviet Union, as Stalin euphemistically phrased it, is preparing ‘for any eventuality.’
Unless the United States is willing to sacrifice its future security for the sake of ‘accord’ with the U.S.S.R. now, this government must, as a first step toward world stabilization, seek to prevent additional Soviet aggression. The greater the area controlled by the Soviet Union, the greater the military requirements of this country will be. Our present military plans are based on the assumption that, for the next few years at least, Western Europe, the Middle East, China and Japan will remain outside the Soviet sphere. If the Soviet Union acquires control of one or more of these areas, the military forces required to hold in check those of the U.S.S.R. and prevent still further acquisitions will be substantially enlarged. That will also be true if any of the naval and air bases in the Atlantic and Pacific, upon which our present plans rest, are given up. This government should be prepared, while scrupulously avoiding any act which would be an excuse for the Soviets to begin a war, to resist vigorously and successfully any efforts of the U.S.S.R. to expand into areas vital to American security.
The language of military power is the only language which disciples of power politics [that is, the belief that only considerations of power—and not of morality—matter in foreign affairs] understand. The United States must use that language in order that Soviet leaders will realize that our government is determined to uphold the interests of its citizens and the rights of small nations. Compromise and concessions are considered, by the Soviets, to be evidences of weakness and they are encouraged by our ‘retreats’ to make new and greater demands.
The main deterrent to Soviet attack on the United States, or to attack on areas of the world which are vital to our security, will be the military power of this country. It must be made apparent to the Soviet Government that our strength will be sufficient to repel any attack and sufficient to defeat the U.S.S.R. decisively if a war should start. The prospect of defeat is the only sure means of deterring the Soviet Union....
In addition to maintaining our own strength, the United States should support and assist all democratic countries which are in any way menaced or endangered by the U.S.S.R. Providing military support in case of attack is a last resort; a more effective barrier to communism is strong economic support. Trade agreements, loans and technical missions strengthen our ties with friendly nations and are effective demonstrations that capitalism is at least the equal of communism....
There are some trouble-spots which will require diligent and considered effort on the part of the United States if Soviet penetration and eventual domination is to be prevented. In the Far East, for example, this country should continue to strive for a unified and economically stable China, a reconstructed and democratic Japan, and a unified and independent Korea....
Our best chances of influencing Soviet leaders consist in making it unmistakably clear that action contrary to our conception of a decent world order will rebound to the disadvantage of the Soviet regime whereas friendly and cooperative action will pay dividends. If this position can be maintained firmly enough and long enough, the logic of it must permeate eventually into the Soviet system....
Because the Soviet Union is a highly-centralized state, whose leaders exercise rigid discipline and control of all governmental functions, its government acts with speed, consistency, and boldness. Democratic governments are usually loosely organized, with a high degree of autonomy in government departments and agencies. Government policies at times are confused, misunderstood or disregarded by subordinate officials. The United States cannot afford to be uncertain of its policies toward the Soviet Union. There must be such effective coordination within the government that our military and civil policies concerning the U.S.S.R., her satellites, and our Allies are consistent and forceful. Any uncertainty or discrepancy will be seized immediately by the Soviets and exploited at our cost....
In conclusion, as long as the Soviet Government adheres to its present policy, the United States should maintain military forces powerful enough to restrain the Soviet Union and to confine Soviet influence to its present area. All nations not now within the Soviet sphere should be given generous economic assistance and political support in their opposition to Soviet penetration.... In order to carry out an effective policy toward the Soviet Union, the United States Government should coordinate its own activities, inform and instruct the American people about the Soviet Union, and enlist their support based upon knowledge and confidence. These actions by the United States are necessary before we shall ever be able to achieve understanding and accord with the Soviet Union on any terms other than its own.
Even though Soviet leaders profess to believe that the conflict between Capitalism and Communism is irreconcilable and must eventually be resolved by the triumph of the latter, it is our hope that they will change their minds and work out with us a fair and equitable settlement when they realize that we are too strong to be beaten and too determined to be frightened.
Excerpts from X (George Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July 1947: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19470701faessay25403/x/the-sources-of-soviet-conduct.html
[A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, George F. Kennan (1904-2005) graduated from Princeton University in 1925 and soon thereafter went to work for the U.S. State Department as an expert on Russia. He spent much of the 1930s attached to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, where he witnessed firsthand the internal workings of the Soviet Union, including the show trials in which Stalin condemned thousands of suspected political opponents to death. This experience convinced Kennan that there was little hope for lasting cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West. In May 1944 he was appointed deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Moscow, where in 1946 he drafted a telegram [see previous lesson] that laid out his views on why the Soviets were behaving as they were. This telegram proved to be highly influential among many of Truman’s foreign policy advisers, who encouraged him to publish an article clarifying some of his ideas. What follows is a much shortened version of that article, which appeared in the July 1947 issue of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. Because the author was a prominent official in the State Department, he used a false name (“X”) rather than his own.]
....[I]t is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with...threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward "toughness." While the Kremlin is basically flexible in its reaction to political realities, it is by no means unamenable [unresponsive] to considerations of prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of realism. The Russian leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs. They are quick to exploit such evidences of weakness.…
It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect that Soviet policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and, weakening of all rival influence and rival power.
Balanced against this are the facts that Russia, as opposed to the western world in general, is still by far the weaker party, that Soviet policy is highly flexible, and that Soviet society may well contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon he interests of a peaceful and stable world.
It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.
[A successful lawyer in St. Louis, Clark Clifford (1906-1998) was an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II. In this capacity he frequently advised President Truman, who came to rely on him to the extent that he asked Clifford to accompany him to the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. One of his first assignments in this job was to prepare a report analyzing the postwar behavior of the Soviet Union, and making recommendations as to how the United States should respond. The resulting document—an 81-page report entitled “American Relations with the Soviet Union”—would strongly influence U.S. foreign policy throughout the Cold War.]
The primary objective of United States policy toward the Soviet Union is to convince Soviet leaders that it is in their interest to participate in a system of world cooperation, that there are no fundamental causes for war between our two nations, and that the security and prosperity of the Soviet Union, and that of the rest of the world as well, is being jeopardized by aggressive militaristic imperialism such as that in which the Soviet Union is now engaged.
However, these same leaders with whom we hope to achieve an understanding on the principles of international peace appear to believe that a war with the United States and the other leading capitalistic nations is inevitable. They are increasing their military power and the sphere of Soviet influence in preparation for the ‘inevitable’ conflict, and they are trying to weaken and subvert their potential opponents by every means at their disposal. So long as these men adhere to these beliefs, it is highly dangerous to conclude that hope of international peace lies only in ‘accord,’ ‘mutual understanding,’ or ‘solidarity’ with the Soviet Union.
Adoption of such a policy would impel the United States to make sacrifices for the sake of Soviet-U.S. relations, which would only have the effect of raising Soviet hopes and increasing Soviet demands, and to ignore alternative lines of policy, which might be much more compatible with our own national and international interests.
The Soviet Government will never be easy to ‘get along with.’ The American people must accustom themselves to this thought, not as a cause for despair, but as a fact to be faced objectively and courageously. If we find it impossible to enlist Soviet cooperation in the solution of world problems, we should be prepared to join with the British and other Western countries in an attempt to build up a world of our own which will pursue its own objectives and will recognize the Soviet orbit as a distinct entity with which conflict is not predestined but with which we cannot pursue common aims.
As long as the Soviet Government maintains its present foreign policy, based upon the theory of an ultimate struggle between Communism and Capitalism, the United States must assume that the U.S.S.R. might fight at any time for the twofold purpose of expanding the territory under communist control and weakening its potential capitalist opponents. The Soviet Union was able to flow into the political vacuum of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Near East, Manchuria and Korea because no other nation was both willing and able to prevent it. Soviet leaders were encouraged by easy success and they are now preparing to take over new areas in the same way. The Soviet Union, as Stalin euphemistically phrased it, is preparing ‘for any eventuality.’
Unless the United States is willing to sacrifice its future security for the sake of ‘accord’ with the U.S.S.R. now, this government must, as a first step toward world stabilization, seek to prevent additional Soviet aggression. The greater the area controlled by the Soviet Union, the greater the military requirements of this country will be. Our present military plans are based on the assumption that, for the next few years at least, Western Europe, the Middle East, China and Japan will remain outside the Soviet sphere. If the Soviet Union acquires control of one or more of these areas, the military forces required to hold in check those of the U.S.S.R. and prevent still further acquisitions will be substantially enlarged. That will also be true if any of the naval and air bases in the Atlantic and Pacific, upon which our present plans rest, are given up. This government should be prepared, while scrupulously avoiding any act which would be an excuse for the Soviets to begin a war, to resist vigorously and successfully any efforts of the U.S.S.R. to expand into areas vital to American security.
The language of military power is the only language which disciples of power politics [that is, the belief that only considerations of power—and not of morality—matter in foreign affairs] understand. The United States must use that language in order that Soviet leaders will realize that our government is determined to uphold the interests of its citizens and the rights of small nations. Compromise and concessions are considered, by the Soviets, to be evidences of weakness and they are encouraged by our ‘retreats’ to make new and greater demands.
The main deterrent to Soviet attack on the United States, or to attack on areas of the world which are vital to our security, will be the military power of this country. It must be made apparent to the Soviet Government that our strength will be sufficient to repel any attack and sufficient to defeat the U.S.S.R. decisively if a war should start. The prospect of defeat is the only sure means of deterring the Soviet Union....
In addition to maintaining our own strength, the United States should support and assist all democratic countries which are in any way menaced or endangered by the U.S.S.R. Providing military support in case of attack is a last resort; a more effective barrier to communism is strong economic support. Trade agreements, loans and technical missions strengthen our ties with friendly nations and are effective demonstrations that capitalism is at least the equal of communism....
There are some trouble-spots which will require diligent and considered effort on the part of the United States if Soviet penetration and eventual domination is to be prevented. In the Far East, for example, this country should continue to strive for a unified and economically stable China, a reconstructed and democratic Japan, and a unified and independent Korea....
Our best chances of influencing Soviet leaders consist in making it unmistakably clear that action contrary to our conception of a decent world order will rebound to the disadvantage of the Soviet regime whereas friendly and cooperative action will pay dividends. If this position can be maintained firmly enough and long enough, the logic of it must permeate eventually into the Soviet system....
Because the Soviet Union is a highly-centralized state, whose leaders exercise rigid discipline and control of all governmental functions, its government acts with speed, consistency, and boldness. Democratic governments are usually loosely organized, with a high degree of autonomy in government departments and agencies. Government policies at times are confused, misunderstood or disregarded by subordinate officials. The United States cannot afford to be uncertain of its policies toward the Soviet Union. There must be such effective coordination within the government that our military and civil policies concerning the U.S.S.R., her satellites, and our Allies are consistent and forceful. Any uncertainty or discrepancy will be seized immediately by the Soviets and exploited at our cost....
In conclusion, as long as the Soviet Government adheres to its present policy, the United States should maintain military forces powerful enough to restrain the Soviet Union and to confine Soviet influence to its present area. All nations not now within the Soviet sphere should be given generous economic assistance and political support in their opposition to Soviet penetration.... In order to carry out an effective policy toward the Soviet Union, the United States Government should coordinate its own activities, inform and instruct the American people about the Soviet Union, and enlist their support based upon knowledge and confidence. These actions by the United States are necessary before we shall ever be able to achieve understanding and accord with the Soviet Union on any terms other than its own.
Even though Soviet leaders profess to believe that the conflict between Capitalism and Communism is irreconcilable and must eventually be resolved by the triumph of the latter, it is our hope that they will change their minds and work out with us a fair and equitable settlement when they realize that we are too strong to be beaten and too determined to be frightened.
Excerpts from X (George Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July 1947: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19470701faessay25403/x/the-sources-of-soviet-conduct.html
[A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, George F. Kennan (1904-2005) graduated from Princeton University in 1925 and soon thereafter went to work for the U.S. State Department as an expert on Russia. He spent much of the 1930s attached to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, where he witnessed firsthand the internal workings of the Soviet Union, including the show trials in which Stalin condemned thousands of suspected political opponents to death. This experience convinced Kennan that there was little hope for lasting cooperation between the Soviet Union and the West. In May 1944 he was appointed deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Moscow, where in 1946 he drafted a telegram [see previous lesson] that laid out his views on why the Soviets were behaving as they were. This telegram proved to be highly influential among many of Truman’s foreign policy advisers, who encouraged him to publish an article clarifying some of his ideas. What follows is a much shortened version of that article, which appeared in the July 1947 issue of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. Because the author was a prominent official in the State Department, he used a false name (“X”) rather than his own.]
....[I]t is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with...threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward "toughness." While the Kremlin is basically flexible in its reaction to political realities, it is by no means unamenable [unresponsive] to considerations of prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of realism. The Russian leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs. They are quick to exploit such evidences of weakness.…
It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect that Soviet policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and, weakening of all rival influence and rival power.
Balanced against this are the facts that Russia, as opposed to the western world in general, is still by far the weaker party, that Soviet policy is highly flexible, and that Soviet society may well contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon he interests of a peaceful and stable world.
It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.
The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy
McCarthy’s Accusations documents
Excerpts from Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456
[....] Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are truly down....
Six years ago...there was within the Soviet orbit, 180,000,000 people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there were in the world at that time, roughly 1,625,000,000 people. Today, only six years later, there are 80,000,000,000 people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia—an increase of over 400 percent. On our side, the figure has shrunk to around 500,000. In other words, in less than six years, the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in our favor to 8 to 1 against us.
This indicates the swiftness of the tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.” [...]
The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores...but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of minority groups who have been traitorous to this Nation, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer...the finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give.
This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been most traitorous...
I have here in my hand a list of 205...a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department....
As you know, very recently the Secretary of State proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes—being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust—high treason....
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted, warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of honesty and decency in government.
Excerpt from President Truman’s News Conference at Key West, March 30, 1950: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456
Q: Do you think that Senator McCarthy can show any disloyalty exists in the State Department?
The President: I think the greatest asset that the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy....
Q: Mr. President, could we quote that one phrase, “I think the greatest asset the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy”?
The President: Now let me give you a little preliminary, and then I will tell you what I think you ought to do. Let me tell you what the situation is.
We started out in 1945, when I became President, and the two wars were still going on, and the Russians were our allies, just the same as the British and the French and Brazil and the South American countries. And we won the war together....
Then our objective was to—as quickly as possible—get peace in the world. We made certain agreements with the Russians and the British and the French and the Chinese. We kept those agreements to the letter. They have nearly all been—those agreements where the Russians were involved—been broken by the Russians. And it became perfectly evident that they had no intention of carrying out the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter and the agreements which had been made at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. And it became evident that there was an endeavor on the part of the Kremlin to control the world.
A procedure was instituted which came to be known as the cold war. The airlift to Berlin was only one phase of it. People became alarmed here in the United States then, that there might be people whose sympathies were with the Communist ideal of government—which is not communism under any circumstances, it is totalitarianism of the worst brand. There isn’t any difference between the totalitarian Russian Government and the Hitler government and the Franco government in Spain. They are all alike. They are police state governments.
In 1947 I instituted a loyalty program for Government employees, and that loyalty procedure program was set up in such a way that the rights of individuals were respected.
In a survey of the 2,200,000 employees at that time, I think there were some 205—something like that— who left the service. I don’t know—a great many of them left of their own accord....
And then, for political background, the Republicans have been trying vainly to find an issue on which to make a bid for the control of the Congress for next year. They tried “statism.” They tried “welfare state.” They tried “socialism.” And there are a certain number of members of the Republican Party who are trying to dig up that old malodorous dead horse called “isolationism.” And in order to do that, they are perfectly willing to sabotage the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States. And this fiasco which has been going on in the Senate is the very best asset that the Kremlin could have in the operation of the cold war. And that is what I mean when I say that McCarthy’s antics are the best asset that the Kremlin can have.
Now, if anybody really felt that there were disloyal people in the employ of the Government, the proper and the honorable way to handle the situation would be to come to the President of the United States and say, “This man is a disloyal person. He is in such and such a department.” We will investigate him immediately, and if he were a disloyal person he would be immediately fired.
That is not what they want. They are trying to create an issue, and it is going to be just as big a fiasco as the campaign in New York and other places on these other false and fatuous issues.
With a little bit of intelligence they could find an issue at home without a bit of trouble!
Q: What would it be, Mr. President?
The President: Anything in the domestic line. I will meet them on any subject they want, but to try to sabotage the foreign policy of the United States, in the face of the situation with which we are faced, is just as bad as trying to cut the Army in time of war.
Statement of Seven Republican Senators, June 1, 1950:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6459
1. We are Republicans. But we are Americans first. It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country. Democrats and Republicans alike have contributed to that confusion.
2. The Democratic administration has initially created the confusion by its lack of effective leadership, by its contradictory grave warnings and optimistic assurances, by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home, by its oversensitiveness to rightful criticism, by its petty bitterness against its critics.
3. Certain elements of the Republican Party have materially added to this confusion in the hopes of riding the Republican party to victory through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance. There are enough mistakes of the Democrats for Republicans to criticize constructively without resorting to political smears.
4. To this extent, Democrats and Republicans alike have unwittingly, but undeniably, played directly into the Communist design of “confuse, divide and conquer.”
5. It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.
“I Have Here in my Hand...” (cartoon): http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/s03479u.jpg
Additional Herb Lock Cartoons
“You Mean I’m Supposed to Stand on That?” http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/hblock4.jpg
“Nothing Exceeds Like Excess”: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/s03493u.jpg
“Have a Care, Sir”: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/images/hblock5.jpg
Excerpt from draft of Eisenhower speech given on October 3, 1952 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on "Communism and Freedom": http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/dl/McCarthy/sixthdraftDDEWIcampaignspeech.pdf
The Fall of Joseph McCarthy
(Group #1): Read the following documents. After you have done so, write a paragraph explaining how the events described in them might have contributed to McCarthy’s downfall. Be prepared to share this paragraph with the class.
Excerpt from diary entry by James C. Hagerty, White House Press Secretary, February 25, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/DiaryTypedHagertyFeb2554.pdf
[The following occurred after Robert Stevens, Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Army, was called to testify before McCarthy’s committee. McCarthy had begun suggesting that Communists had infiltrated important positions in the U.S. Army.]
[...] Pres[ident] very mad and getting fed up—it’s his Army and he doesn’t like McCarthy’s tactics at all. Stevens and [Deputy Secretary of Defense Roger M.] Kyes joined [Vice President Richard M.] Nixon and all of us at 4 P.M.—worked ‘til 5:30 on statement—cleared it with Pres who made it stronger and then released it in joint conference in my office.
Quotes—Ike on subject: “This guy McCarthy is going to get into trouble over this. I’m not going to take this one lying down”—“my friends tell me it won’t be long in this Army stuff before McCarthy starts using my name instead of Stevens. He’s ambitious. He wants to be President. He’s the last guy in the world who’ll ever get there, if I have anything to say.”
Excerpt from diary entry by James Hagerty, March 10, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/DiaryentryMarch1054.pdf
[...] Good conference—Pres tough on Joe [McCarthy] and backed up [Vermont Senator Ralph] Flanders [an outspoken McCarthy critic].... Pres in fighting mood, has had it as far as Joe is concerned: “if he wants to get recognized anymore,” Pres told Persons, “only way he can do it is to stand up and publicly say ‘I was wrong in browbeating witnesses, wrong in saying the Army is coddling Communists, and wrong in my attack on Stevens. I apologize’—that’s the only way I ever welcome him back into fold.”
Excerpt from diary entry by James Hagerty, May 14, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/Diaryentry51454.pdf
[...] We also discussed the Army-McCarthy hearings and [Arkansas Senator and member of McCarthy’s committee John L.] McClellan’s threat to subpoena White House staff members and bring them before the Committee. The President said that he would not stand for this for one minute. He explained that he looked upon his staff members as confidential advisors and that the Congress had absolutely no right to ask them to testify in any way, shape or form about the advice that they were giving to him at any time on the subject—“If they want to make a test of this principle, I’ll fight them tooth and nail and up and down the country. It is a matter of principle with me and I will never permit it”—The President reiterated his belief that Stevens was dead right by refusing to permit the hearings to go into closed sessions and said that he would once again tell all members of his staff to keep out of this controversy, to have nothing to say on it, and to let my office, and my office alone, be the spokesman on all question dealing with McCarthy.
Excerpt from diary entry by James Hagerty, May 17, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/Diaryentry51754pg1.pdf
[...] Turning to his letter [that is, the order banning his advisors from testifying before Congress] the President announced that they all knew that he had been trying to stay out of the “damn business on the Hill”, [Capitol Hill; in other words, Congress] that many people have been begging him to get into the struggle, to attack McCarthy personally but that he had refused to do so. However, he said, a situation had come up in the threatened subpoena of his confidential advisers that made it necessary for him to act. He said that he had written a letter to the Secretary of Defense ordering him to refuse to permit their people to discuss confidential matters with the Committee and that he had also attached the Attorney General’s memorandum outlining the precedents taken by twelve of his predecessors.... “Any man who testifies as to the advice he gave me won’t be working for me that night”—“I will not allow people around me to be subpoenaed and you might just as well know it now.”
Excerpt from diary entry by Press Secretary James Hagerty, May 28, 1954: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/McCarthy/Diaryentry52854pg1.pdf
[...] Following staff meeting drafted statement designed for President to issue regarding McCarthy’s appeal at hearing yesterday to Federal employees to disregard Presidential orders and laws and report to him on “graft, corruption, Communism and treason.” Discussed the statement with the Attorney General and he was all in favor of us putting one out.... I gave out the statement at 11:00. A few minutes later the President called me in to his office and said he wanted to discuss this further. He was really mad at what he termed “the complete arrogance of McCarthy”—Walking up and down behind his desk and speaking in rapid fire order he said the following:
“This amounts to nothing but a wholesale subversion of public service. McCarthy is making exactly the same plea of loyalty to him that Hitler made to the German people. Both tried to set up personal loyalty within the Government while both were using the pretense of fighting Communism. McCarthy is trying deliberately to subvert the people we have in Government, people who are sworn to obey the law, the Constitution and their superior officers. I think this is the most disloyal act we have ever had by anyone in the Government of the United States.”
The President then sat down at his desk and said that he supposed he will be asked this question at his press conference. I said I was sure it would come up. He said, “Make sure it does because I’ll tell you now what I’m going to say—I am going to tell the newsmen that in my opinion this is the most arrogant invitation to subversion and disloyalty that I have ever heard of. I am going to also say that if such an invitation is accepted by any employee of the Government and we find out who that employee is, he will be fired on the spot if a civilian and court martialed on the spot if a military man. I won’t stand for it for one minute.”
The President then asked if it would not be possible to feed such a speech to [Michigan] Senator [Charles E.] Potter to be delivered on the floor of the Senate on this subject. I countered with the suggestion that maybe the best way to do would be to build up public opinion first. The President thought that was a good idea and after discussion we decided that it would be best for me on my own to call certain key people that I knew in radio, television and the newspapers to get this point of view over. I did that in the afternoon. The President also told me that I should do this on my own and should not let anyone even in the White House know what I was doing.... This is a fundamental fight and one I am sure we can win, but one to which I am also sure we will have to give a lot of attention to see that our point of view is accurately reflected in radio, television and the papers throughout the country.
(Group #2): Read the following documents. After you have done so, write a paragraph explaining how the events described in them might have contributed to McCarthy’s downfall. Be prepared to share this paragraph with the class.
Excerpts from the Army-McCarthy Hearings: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6444
[White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, with Eisenhower’s permission, testified before McCarthy’s committee in relation to McCarthy’s accusation that communists had infiltrated the U.S. Army. However, his testimony quickly moved away from this subject to charges that McCarthy and his chief assistant, Roy Cohn, had put pressure on the Army to give special treatment to Cohn’s friend, G. David Schine.]
Mr. ADAMS. About that time these two friends left, and because I wanted Senator McCarthy to restate before Mr. Cohn what he had told me on the courthouse steps, I said, “Let’s talk about Schine.”
Excerpts from the Army-McCarthy Hearings: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6444
[White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, with Eisenhower’s permission, testified before McCarthy’s committee in relation to McCarthy’s accusation that communists had infiltrated the U.S. Army. However, his testimony quickly moved away from this subject to charges that McCarthy and his chief assistant, Roy Cohn, had put pressure on the Army to give special treatment to Cohn’s friend, G. David Schine.]
Mr. ADAMS. About that time these two friends left, and because I wanted Senator McCarthy to restate before Mr. Cohn what he had told me on the courthouse steps, I said, “Let’s talk about Schine.”
That started a chain of events, an experience similar to none which I have had in my life.
Mr. Cohn became extremely agitated, became extremely abusive. He cursed me and then Senator McCarthy. The abuse went in waves. He would be very abusive and then it would kind of abate and things would be friendly for a few moments. Everybody would eat a little bit more, and then it would start in again. It just kept on.
I was trying to catch a 1:30 train, but Mr. Cohn was so violent by then that I felt I had better not do it and leave him that angry with me and that angry with Senator McCarthy because of a remark I had made. So I stayed and missed my 1:30 train. I thought surely I would be able to get out of there by 2:30. The luncheon concluded.
Mr. JENKINS. You say you were afraid to leave Senator McCarthy alone there with him? Mr. Adams, what did he say? You say he was very abusive.
Mr. ADAMS. He was extremely abusive.
Mr. JENKINS. Was or not any obscene language used?
I was trying to catch a 1:30 train, but Mr. Cohn was so violent by then that I felt I had better not do it and leave him that angry with me and that angry with Senator McCarthy because of a remark I had made. So I stayed and missed my 1:30 train. I thought surely I would be able to get out of there by 2:30. The luncheon concluded.
Mr. JENKINS. You say you were afraid to leave Senator McCarthy alone there with him? Mr. Adams, what did he say? You say he was very abusive.
Mr. ADAMS. He was extremely abusive.
Mr. JENKINS. Was or not any obscene language used?
Mr. ADAMS. Yes.
Mr. JENKINS. Just omit that and tell what he did say which constituted abuse, in your opinion.
Mr. ADAMS. I have stated before, sir, the tone of voice has as much to do with abuse as words. I do not remember the phrases, I do not remember the sentences, but I do remember the violence.
Mr. JENKINS. Do you remember the subject?
Mr. ADAMS. The subject was Schine. The subject was the fact—the thing that Cohn was angry about, the thing that he was so violent about, was the fact that, (1), the Army was not agreeing to an assignment for Schine and, (2), that Senator McCarthy was not supporting his staff in its efforts to get Schine assigned to New York. So his abuse was directed partly to me and partly to Senator McCarthy.
As I say, it kind of came in waves. There would be a period of extreme abuse, and then there would be a period where it would get almost back to normal, and ice cream would be ordered, and then about halfway through that a little more of the same. I missed the 2:30 train, also.
This violence continued. It was a remarkable thing. At first Senator McCarthy seemed to be trying to conciliate. He seemed to be trying to conciliate Cohn and not to state anything contrary to what he had stated to me in the morning. But then he more or less lapsed into silence. . . .
So I went down to room 101. Mr. Cohn was there and Mr. Carr was there. As I remember, we lunched together in the Senate cafeteria, and everything was peaceful. When we returned to room 101, toward the latter part of the conversation I asked Cohn—I knew that 90 percent of all inductees ultimately face overseas duty and I knew that one day we were going to face that problem with Mr. Cohn as to Schine. So I thought I would lay a little groundwork for future trouble I guess. I asked him what would happen if Schine got overseas duty.
Mr. JENKINS. You mean you were breaking the news gently, Mr. Adams?
Mr. ADAMS. Yes, sir; that is right. I asked him what would happen if Schine got overseas duty. He responded with vigor and force, “Stevens is through as Secretary of the Army.”
I said, “Oh, Roy,” something to this effect, “Oh, Roy, don’t say that. Come on. Really, what is going to happen if Schine gets overseas duty?”
He responded with even more force, “We will wreck the Army.”
Then he said, “The first thing we are going to do is get General Ryan for the way he has treated Dave at Fort Dix. Dave gets through at Fort Dix tomorrow or this week, and as soon as he is gone we are going to get General Ryan for the obscene way in which he has permitted Schine to be treated up there.”
Then he said, “I wouldn’t put it past you to do this. We will start investigations. We have enough stuff on the Army to keep investigations going indefinitely, and if anything like such-and-such doublecross occurs, that is what we will do.”
This remark was not to be taken lightly in the context in which it was given to me. . . .
********************
Mr. JENKINS. You will recall, Mr. Cohn, that he testified that you said that if Schine went overseas, Stevens was through as Secretary of the Army?
Mr. COHN. I heard him say that, sir.
Mr. JENKINS. Just omit that and tell what he did say which constituted abuse, in your opinion.
Mr. ADAMS. I have stated before, sir, the tone of voice has as much to do with abuse as words. I do not remember the phrases, I do not remember the sentences, but I do remember the violence.
Mr. JENKINS. Do you remember the subject?
Mr. ADAMS. The subject was Schine. The subject was the fact—the thing that Cohn was angry about, the thing that he was so violent about, was the fact that, (1), the Army was not agreeing to an assignment for Schine and, (2), that Senator McCarthy was not supporting his staff in its efforts to get Schine assigned to New York. So his abuse was directed partly to me and partly to Senator McCarthy.
As I say, it kind of came in waves. There would be a period of extreme abuse, and then there would be a period where it would get almost back to normal, and ice cream would be ordered, and then about halfway through that a little more of the same. I missed the 2:30 train, also.
This violence continued. It was a remarkable thing. At first Senator McCarthy seemed to be trying to conciliate. He seemed to be trying to conciliate Cohn and not to state anything contrary to what he had stated to me in the morning. But then he more or less lapsed into silence. . . .
So I went down to room 101. Mr. Cohn was there and Mr. Carr was there. As I remember, we lunched together in the Senate cafeteria, and everything was peaceful. When we returned to room 101, toward the latter part of the conversation I asked Cohn—I knew that 90 percent of all inductees ultimately face overseas duty and I knew that one day we were going to face that problem with Mr. Cohn as to Schine. So I thought I would lay a little groundwork for future trouble I guess. I asked him what would happen if Schine got overseas duty.
Mr. JENKINS. You mean you were breaking the news gently, Mr. Adams?
Mr. ADAMS. Yes, sir; that is right. I asked him what would happen if Schine got overseas duty. He responded with vigor and force, “Stevens is through as Secretary of the Army.”
I said, “Oh, Roy,” something to this effect, “Oh, Roy, don’t say that. Come on. Really, what is going to happen if Schine gets overseas duty?”
He responded with even more force, “We will wreck the Army.”
Then he said, “The first thing we are going to do is get General Ryan for the way he has treated Dave at Fort Dix. Dave gets through at Fort Dix tomorrow or this week, and as soon as he is gone we are going to get General Ryan for the obscene way in which he has permitted Schine to be treated up there.”
Then he said, “I wouldn’t put it past you to do this. We will start investigations. We have enough stuff on the Army to keep investigations going indefinitely, and if anything like such-and-such doublecross occurs, that is what we will do.”
This remark was not to be taken lightly in the context in which it was given to me. . . .
********************
Mr. JENKINS. You will recall, Mr. Cohn, that he testified that you said that if Schine went overseas, Stevens was through as Secretary of the Army?
Mr. COHN. I heard him say that, sir.
Mr. JENKINS. Did you or not?
Mr. COHN. No, sir.
Mr. JENKINS. Did you say anything like that, Mr. Cohn?
Mr. COHN. No, sir, and my recollection is that I did not. I have talked to Mr. Carr who was sitting there the whole time, and he says I did not. . . .
Mr. JENKINS. All right, now you are saying you did not say it, Mr. Cohn?
Mr. COHN. Yes, sir. I am saying I am sure I did not make that statement, and I am sure that Mr. Adams and anybody else with any sense, and Mr. Adams has a lot of sense, could ever believe that I was threatening to wreck the Army or that I could wreck the Army. I say, sir, that the statement is ridiculous.
Mr. JENKINS. I am talking about Stevens being through as Secretary of the Army.
Mr. COHN. No, sir.
Mr. JENKINS. Did you say anything like that, Mr. Cohn?
Mr. COHN. No, sir, and my recollection is that I did not. I have talked to Mr. Carr who was sitting there the whole time, and he says I did not. . . .
Mr. JENKINS. All right, now you are saying you did not say it, Mr. Cohn?
Mr. COHN. Yes, sir. I am saying I am sure I did not make that statement, and I am sure that Mr. Adams and anybody else with any sense, and Mr. Adams has a lot of sense, could ever believe that I was threatening to wreck the Army or that I could wreck the Army. I say, sir, that the statement is ridiculous.
Mr. JENKINS. I am talking about Stevens being through as Secretary of the Army.
Mr. COHN. That is equally ridiculous, sir.
Mr. JENKINS. And untrue?
Mr. COHN. Yes, sir, equally ridiculous and untrue, I could not cause the President of the United States to remove Stevens as Secretary of the Army. . . .
[Later in the hearings the following heated exchange occurred between McCarthy himself and Joseph N. Welch, the Army’s chief counsel.]
Senator MCCARTHY. ...[I]n view of Mr. Welch’s request that the information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, incidentally, to do work on this committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh, years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party, an organization which always swings to the defense of anyone who dares to expose Communists. I certainly assume that Mr. Welch did not know of this young man at the time he recommended him as the assistant counsel for this committee, but he has such terror and such a great desire to know where anyone is located who may be serving the Communist cause, Mr. Welch, that I thought we should just call to your attention the fact that your Mr. Fisher, who is still in your law firm today, whom you asked to have down here looking over the secret and classified material, is a member of an organization, not named by me but named by various committees, named by the Attorney General, as I recall, and I think I quote this verbatim, as “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.” He belonged to that for a sizable number of years, according to his own admission, and he belonged to it long after it had been exposed as the legal arm of the Communist Party.
Knowing that, Mr. Welch, I just felt that I had a duty to respond to your urgent request that before sundown, when we know of anyone serving the Communist cause, we let the agency know. We are now letting you know that your man did belong to this organization for, either 3 or 4 years, belonged to it long after he was out of law school.
I don’t think you can find anyplace, anywhere, an organization which has done more to defend Communists—I am again quoting the report—to defend Communists, to defend espionage agents, and to aid the Communist cause, than the man whom you originally wanted down here at your right hand....
I am not asking you at this time to explain why you tried to foist him on this committee. Whether you knew he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don’t know. I assume you did not, Mr. Welch, because I get the impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh, I don’t think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist Party. I don’t think you yourself would ever knowingly aid the Communist cause. I think you are unknowingly aiding it when you try to burlesque this hearing in which we are attempting to bring out the facts, however....
Mr. WELCH. Senator McCarthy, I think until this moment—
Senator MCCARTHY. Jim, will you get the news story to the effect that this man belonged to this Communist-front organization? Will you get the citations showing that this was the legal arm of the Communist Party, and the length of time that he belonged, and the fact that he was recommended by Mr. Welch? I think that should be in the record.
Mr. WELCH. You won’t need anything in the record when I have finished telling you this.
Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us.
When I decided to work for this committee I asked Jim St. Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I said to Jim, “Pick somebody in the firm who works under you that you would like.” He chose Fred Fisher and they came down on an afternoon plane. That night, when he had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about, Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, “Boys, I don’t know anything about you except I have always liked you, but if there is anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case you speak up quick.”
Fred Fisher said, “Mr. Welch, when I was in law school and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers Guild,” as you have suggested, Senator. He went on to say, “I am secretary of the Young Republicans League in Newton with the son of Massachusetts' Governor, and I have the respect and admiration of the 25 lawyers or so in [the prestigious law firm] Hale & Dorr.”
I said, “Fred, I just don’t think I am going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come out and go over national television and it will just hurt like the dickens.”
So, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston.
Little did I dream you could be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I will do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me....
Senator MCCARTHY. I just give this man’s record, and I want to say, Mr. Welch, that it has been labeled long before he became a member, as early as 1944— [...]
Mr. WELCH. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
"Damage": Collier’s Assesses the Army-McCarthy Hearings: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6449
[The following appeared in the August 6, 1954 issue of the popular magazine Collier’s.]
Now that the Army-McCarthy hearings have been history for a month, and the soap operas have reinherited the daytime TV channels, we should like to do a final review of the long-run show from Washington, and try to summarize its effect—aside from the subcommittee’s report.
We suppose the effect can be summarized in one word: damage. The legislative operations of Congress must have been delayed. The morale of the armed forces certainly could not have been heightened by the hearings. And our friends in other countries were obviously bewildered and dismayed by the goings on, with a consequent impairment of American prestige. But the greatest damage, we believe, occurred in the millions of homes where the televised proceedings were seen and heard....
What must many Americans have thought...seeing government in action for the first time! It was a carnival, a sprawling, brawling travesty. It was a performance to shame some of the leading participants, who seemed to forget that their hammy hokum and snarling words were being seen across the country and heard around the world.
How much damage was done cannot be calculated. But fortunately the carnival is over. Now let us hope that responsible members of party and government will take over and, without any further side-show diversions, guide us wisely through the crises that face the country. And let us also hope that those citizens who were shocked by the recent burlesque of responsible government will be assured that some of the performers are not typical of the men in the Capitol who, through the years, have helped to make America great and strong and just.
(Group #3): Read the following documents. After you have done so, write a paragraph explaining how the events described in them might have contributed to McCarthy’s downfall. Be prepared to share this paragraph with the class.
Senate Resolution 301: Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954): http://www.ourdocuments.gov./doc.php?doc=86&page=transcript
[The following resolution was sponsored by Republican Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont, a longtime critic of McCarthy. Debate began on July 30, 1954, but disagreements over the precise wording of the measure continued for months. Finally, on December 2, the resolution—as worded below—passed by a vote of 67 to 22.]
Resolved, That the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in clearing up matters referred to that subcommittee which concerned his conduct as a Senator and affected the honor of the Senate and, instead, repeatedly abused the subcommittee and its members who were trying to carry out assigned duties, thereby obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned.
Sec 2. The Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, in writing to the chairman of the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges (Mr. Watkins [Senator Arthur Watkins, Republican from Utah]) after the Select Committee had issued its report and before the report was presented to the Senate charging three members of the Select Committee with "deliberate deception" and "fraud" for failure to disqualify themselves; in stating to the press on November 4, 1954, that the special Senate session that was to begin November 8, 1954, was a "lynch-party"; in repeatedly describing this special Senate session as a "lynch bee" in a nationwide television and radio show on November 7, 1954; in stating to the public press on November 13, 1954, that the chairman of the Select Committee (Mr. Watkins) was guilty of "the most unusual, most cowardly things I've ever heard of" and stating further: "I expected he would be afraid to answer the questions, but didn't think he'd be stupid enough to make a public statement"; and in characterizing the said committee as the "unwitting handmaiden," "involuntary agent" and "attorneys-in- fact" of the Communist Party and in charging that the said committee in writing its report "imitated Communist methods -- that it distorted, misrepresented, and omitted in its effort to manufacture a plausible rationalization" in support of its recommendations to the Senate, which characterizations and charges were contained in a statement released to the press and inserted in the Congressional Record of November 10, 1954, acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity; and such conduct is hereby condemned.
1. Adlai Stevenson
2. Alliance of Progress
3. Bay of Pigs Invasion
4. Berlin Airlift
5. Cold War
6. Containment
7. Credibility Gap
8. Cuban Missile Crisis
9. Douglas MacArthur
10. Dwight Eisenhower
11. Eisenhower Doctrine
12. Fair Deal
13. Fidel Castro
14. Flexible Response
15. Geneva Conference
16. George F. Kennan
17. Harry S. Truman
18. Henry Kissinger
19. Ho Chi Minh
20. Iron Curtain
21. John F. Kennedy
22. Joseph McCarthy
23. Lee Harvey Oswald
24. Lyndon B. Johnson
25. Marshall Plan
26. Massive Retaliation
27. McCarthyism
28. Military-industrial complex
29. Missile Gap
30. National Defense and Education Act
31. National Security Act
32. New Frontier
33. Ngo Dinh Diem
34. Nikita Khrushchev
35. North Atlantic Treaty Organization
36. NSC-68
37. Nuclear-test Ban Treaty
38. Peace Corps
39. Richard M. Nixon
40. Robert F. Kennedy
41. Robert S. McNamara
42. South East Asia Treaty Organization
43. Sputnik I
44. Suez Crisis
45. Taft-Hartley Act
46. Thirty-eighth parallel
47. Thomas Dewey
48. Truman Doctrine
49. U-2 Incident
50. United Nations
Chapter 37
The Cold War Begins
1945-1952
Postwar Economic Anxieties
• During the 1930s, unemployment and insecurity had pushed up the suicide rate and decreased the marriage rate. The population growth was also declining as couples had economic troubles.
• In the initial postwar years, the economy struggled; prices elevated 33% from 1946-1947 after the wartime price controls were removed. An epidemic of strikes swept over the country in 1946.
• In 1947, the Republican Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman's veto. It outlawed the "closed" (all-union) shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required union leaders to take a noncommunist oath. Taft-Hartley was just one of several obstacles that slowed the growth of organized labor in the years following WWII.
• The CIO's "Operation Dixie," aimed at unionizing southern textile workers and steelworkers, failed in 1948 to overcome lingering fears of racial mixing.
• Congress passed the Employment Act in 1946 to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power. It also created a 3-member Council of Economic Advisers to provide the president with the data and the recommendations to make that policy a reality.
• The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill of Rights or the GI Bill, made generous provisions for sending the former solders to school. By raising educational levels and stimulating the construction industry, the GI Bill powerfully nurtured the long-lived economic expansion that took hold in the late 1940s.
The Long Economic Boom, 1950-1970
• In the 1950s, the American economy entered a twenty-year period of tremendous growth. During the 1950s and 1960s, national income nearly doubled, giving Americans about 40% of the planet's wealth. The post-World War II era transformed the lives of a majority of citizens and molded the agenda of politics and society for at least two generations. Prosperity underwrote social mobility; it paved the war for the success of the civil rights movement; it funded new welfare programs; and it gave Americans the confidence to exercise unprecedented international leadership in the Cold War era.
• The size of the middle class doubled from pre-Great Depression days, including 60% of the population by the mid 1950s.
• The majority of new jobs created in the postwar era went to women, as the service sector of the economy dramatically outgrew the old industrial and manufacturing sectors.
The Roots of Postwar Economy
• The economic upturn of 1950 was fueled by massive appropriations for the Korean War and defense spending. The military budget helped jumpstart high-technology industries such as aerospace, plastics, and electronics. Cheap energy also fueled the economic boom. American and European companies controlled the flow of abundant petroleum from the expanses of the Middle East, and they kept prices low.
• Gains in productivity were enhanced the rising educational level for the work force. By 1970, nearly 90% of the school-age population was enrolled in educational institutions.
• The work force shifted out of agriculture, which was achieving higher productivity gains as a result of new, more efficient farming equipment.
The Smiling Sunbelt
• In the 30 years after WWII, an average of 30 million people changed residence every year. Families especially felt the strain, as distance divided them.
• The "Sunbelt", a 15-state area stretching from Virginia through Florida and Texas to Arizona and California, increased it population at a rate nearly double than that of the old industrial zones of the Northeast (the "Frostbelt"). In the 1950s, California alone accounted for 1/5 of the nation's population. The modern pioneers came in search of jobs, better climate, and lower taxes. The large amount of federal dollars being given to the Sunbelt states accounted for much of the Sunbelt's prosperity. The industry region of the Ohio Valley (the "Rustbelt") was especially hit hard as a result of the loss in funds and population.
The Rush to the Suburbs
• In all regions, America's modern white migrants moved from the city to the new suburbs. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) made home-loan guarantees, making it more economically attractive to own a home in the suburbs rather than to rent an apartment in the city.
• "White flight" to the suburbs and the migration of blacks from the South left the inner cities, especially those in the Northeast and Midwest, to become poverty-stricken. The FHA often refused blacks home mortgages for private home purchases, thus limiting black mobility out of the inner cities.
The Postwar Baby Boom
• In the decade and a half after 1945, the birth rate in the United States exploded as the "baby boom" took place. More than 50 million babies were born by the end of the 1950s. By 1973, the birth rates had dropped below the point necessary to maintain existing population figures.
Truman: The "Gutty" Man from Missouri
• The first president without a college education in many years, President Harry S Truman was known as "average man's average man." He had down-home authenticity, few pretensions, rock-solid probity, and the political ability called "moxie" - the ability to face difficulty with courage.
Yalta: Bargain or Betrayal?
• February 1945, the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) met in Yalta to discuss the war's end. Final plans were laid for smashing the German lines and shackling the beaten Axis enemy. Stalin agreed that Poland, with revised boundaries, should have a representative government based on free elections-a pledge he soon broke. Bulgaria and Romania were likewise to have free elections-a pledge also broken. The Big Three also announced plans for fashioning a new international peacekeeping organization-the United Nations.
• The most controversial decision concerned the Far East. With the atomic bomb not yet tested, Washington analysts expected high American casualties in the assault on Japan. Roosevelt felt that Stalin should enter the Asian war, pin down Japanese troops in Manchuria and Korea, and lighten American losses. But with Soviet casualties already extremely high, Stalin needed incentive to join in the Far East. Stalin agreed to attack Japan within 3 months after the collapse of Germany. In return, the Soviets were promised the southern half of Sakhalin Island, lost by Russia to Japan in 1905, and Japan's Kurile Islands. The Soviet Union was also granted control over the railroads of China's Manchuria and special privileges in the two key seaports of that area, Dairen and Port Arthur. These concessions gave Stalin control over vital industrial centers of America's weakening Chinese ally.
The United States and the Soviet Union
• The United States terminated vital lend lease aid to a battered USSR in 1945 and ignored Moscow's plea for a $6 billion reconstruction loan-while approving a similar loan of $3.75 billion to Britain in 1946.
• Different visions of the postwar world separated the two superpowers. Stalin aimed above all to guarantee the security of the Soviet Union. He made it clear from the outset of the war that he was determined to have friendly governments along the Soviet western border. By maintaining a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe, the USSR could protect itself and consolidate its revolutionary base as the world's leading communist country.
• These spheres of influence contradicted President FDR's Wilsonian dream of an "open world," decolonized, demilitarized, and democratized.
• Unaccustomed to their great-power roles, the Soviet Union and the United States provoked each other into a tense, 40-year standoff known as the Cold War.
Shaping the Postwar World
• In 1944, the Western Allies met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to encourage world trade by regulating currency exchange rates. They also founded the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) to promote economic growth in war-ravaged and underdeveloped areas. Unlike after WWI, the United States took the lead in creating the important international bodies and supplied most of their funding after WWII. The Soviets declined to participate.
• The United Nations Conference opened on April 25, 1945. Meeting at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, representatives from 50 nations made the United Nations charter. It included the Security Council, dominated by the Big Five powers (the United States, Britain, the USSR, France, and China), each of whom had the right of veto, and the Assembly, which could be controlled by smaller countries. The Senate overwhelmingly passed the document on July 28, 1945.
• Through such arms as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), and WHO (World Health Organization), the U.N. brought benefits to people around the world.
• In 1946, Bernard Baruch called for a U.N. agency, free from the great-power veto, with worldwide authority over atomic energy, weapons, and research. The plan quickly fell apart as neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted to give up their nuclear weapons.
The Problem of Germany
• At Nuremberg, Germany from 1945-1946, Nazi leaders were tried and punished for war crimes. Punishments included hangings and long jail times.
• Beyond the Nuremberg Trials, the Allies could agree little about postwar Germany. At first, Americans wanted to dismantle German factories and reduce the country to nothing. The Soviets, denied of American economic assistance, were determined to rebuild their nation through reparations from Germany. Eventually, Americans realized that a flourishing German economy was indispensable to the recovery of Europe. The Soviets refused to realize this.
• At the end of the war, Austria and Germany had been divided into 4 military occupation zones, each assigned to one of the Big Four powers (France, Britain, America, and the USSR).
• As the USSR spread communism to its Eastern zone in Germany and the Western Allies promoted the idea of a reunited Germany, Germany became divided. West Germany eventually became an independent country, and East Germany became bound the Soviet Union as an independent "satellite" state, shutoff from the Western world by the "iron curtain" of the Soviet Union.
• Berlin, still occupied by the Four Big powers, was completely surrounded by the Soviet Occupation Zone. In 1948, following controversies over German currency reform and four-power control, the Soviet Union attempted to starve the Allies out of Berlin by cutting off all rail and highway access to the city. In May 1949, after America had flown in many supplies, the blockade was lifted.
• In 1949, the governments of East and West Germany were established.
Crystallizing the War
• In 1946, Stalin, seeking oil concessions, broke an agreement to remove his troops from Iran's northernmost province. He used the troops to aid a rebel movement. When Truman protested, Stalin backed down.
• In 1947, George F. Kennan formulated the "containment doctrine." This concept stated that Russia, whether tsarist or communist, was relentlessly expansionary. Kennan argued that the Soviet Union was also cautious, and the flow of Soviet power could be stemmed by firm and vigilant containment.
• President Truman embraced the policy in 1947 when he stated that Britain could no longer bear the financial and military burden of defending Greece against communist pressures. If Greece fell, Turkey and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean would collapse to the Soviet Union.
• On March 12, 1947, President Truman came before Congress and requested support for the Truman Doctrine. He declared that it must be the policy of the United States to aid any country that was resisting communist aggression.
• In 1947, France, Italy, and Germany were all suffering from the hunger and economic chaos caused in that year. Secretary of State George C. Marshall invited the Europeans to get together and work out a joint plan for their economic recovery. If they did so, then the United States would provide substantial financial assistance. Marshall offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, but the Soviets refused it. Although quite expensive, legislators passed the plan after realizing that the United States had to get Europe back on its feet. Within a few years, Europe's economy was flourishing. The Marshall Plan led to the eventual creation of the European Community (EC).
• Access to Middle Eastern oil was crucial to the European recovery program and to the health of the U.S. economy. Despite threats from the Arab nations to cut off the supply of oil, President Truman officially recognized the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.
America Begins to Rearm
• The Cold War, the struggle to contain Soviet communism, was not a war, yet it was not a peace.
• In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense. The department was headed by a new cabinet officer, the secretary of defense. Under the secretary were the civilian secretaries of the navy, the army, and the air force. The uniformed heads of each service were brought together as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• The National Security Act also established the National Security Council (NSC) to advise the president on security matters and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to coordinate the government's foreign fact-gathering.
• In 1948, the United States joined the European pact, called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). American participation strengthened the policy of containing the Soviet Union and provided a framework for the reintegration of Germany into the European family. The pact pledged each signed nation to regard an attack on one as an attack on all. The Senate passed the treaty on July 21, 1949.
• The NATO pact marked a dramatic departure from American diplomatic convention, a gigantic boost for European unification, and a significant step in the militarization of the Cold War.
Reconstruction and Revolution in Asia
• General Douglas MacArthur took control of the democratization of Japan. The Japanese people cooperated to an astonishing degree; they saw that good behavior and the adoption of democracy would speed the end of the occupation. In 1946, a MacArthur-dictated constitution was adopted. It renounced militarism and introduced western-style democratic government.
• From 1946-1948, top Japanese "war criminals" were tried in Tokyo.
• Although there was much success in Japan, China was another story. In late 1949, the Chinese Nationalist government of Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi was forced to flee the country to the island of Formosa (Taiwan) when the communists, led by Mao Zedong, swept over the country. The collapse of Nationalist China was a depressing loss for America and its allies in the Cold War as ¼ of the world's population fell to communism.
• In September 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, 3 years before experts thought possible. To stay one step ahead, Truman ordered the development of the H-bomb (Hydrogen Bomb). The first H-bomb was exploded in 1952. The Soviets exploded their first H-bomb in 1953, and the nuclear arms race entered a dangerously competitive cycle.
Feeling Out Alleged Communists
• In 1947, President Truman launched the Loyalty Review Board to investigate the possibility of communist spies in the government.
• In 1949, 11 communists were sent to prison for violating the Smith Act of 1940 (first antisedition law since 1798) in advocating the overthrow of the American government. The ruling was upheld in Dennis v. United States (1951).
• In 1938, the House of Representatives established the Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to investigate "subversion." In 1948, Congressman Richard M. Nixon led the hunt for and eventual conviction of Alger Hiss, a prominent ex-New Dealer and a distinguished member of the "eastern establishment." Americans began to join in on the hunt for communist spies of who were thought to riddle America.
• In 1950, Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Bill, which authorized the president to arrest and detain suspicious people during an "internal security emergency." Congress overrode Truman's veto and passed the bill.
• In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and sentenced to death for stealing American atomic bomb plans and selling them to the Soviet Union. They were the only people in history to be sentenced to death for espionage.
Democratic Divisions in 1948
• In 1948, the Republicans chose Thomas E. Dewey to run for president. After war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower chose not to run for the presidency, the Democrats chose Truman. Truman's nomination split the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats met and nominated Governor J. Strom Thurmond. The new Progressive party nominated Henry A. Wallace. Expected to lose, but not ready to give up, Truman traveled the country, giving energetic speeches. On Election Day, Truman, although not winning the popular vote, beat Dewey and was reelected as president. Truman's victory came from the votes of farmers, workers, and blacks.
• President Truman called for a "bold new program" ("Point Four"). The plan was to lend U.S. money and technical aid to underdeveloped lands to help them help themselves. He wanted to spend millions to keep underprivileged people from becoming communists.
• At home, Truman outlined a "Fair Deal" program in 1949. It called for improved housing, full employment, a higher minimum wage, better farm price supports, new TVAs, and an extension of Social Security. The only major successes came in raising the minimum wage, providing for public housing in the Housing Act of 1949, and extending old-age insurance to many more beneficiaries in the Social Security Act of 1950.
The Korean Volcano Erupts (1950)
• When Japan collapsed in 1945, Korea had been divided up into two sections: the Soviets controlled the north above the 38th parallel and the United States controlled south of that line.
• On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army invaded South Korea. President Truman's National Security Council had recommended NSC-68, calling for the quadrupling of the United States' defense spending. Truman ordered a massive military buildup, well beyond what was necessary for the Korean War.
• NSC-68 was a key document of the Cold War because it not only marked a major step in the militarization of American foreign policy, but it reflected the sense of almost limitless possibility that encompassed postwar American society.
• On June 25, 1950, President Truman obtained from the United Nations Security Council a unanimous condemnation of North Korea as an aggressor. (The Soviet Union was not present at the meeting.) Without Congress's approval, Truman ordered American air and naval units to be sent to support South Korea.
The Military Seesaw in Korea
• On September 15, 1950, General MacArthur succeeded in pushing the North Koreans past the 38th parallel. On November 1950, though, hordes of communist Chinese "volunteers" attacked the U.N. forces, pushing them back to the 38th parallel.
• Due to General MacArthur's insubordination and disagreement with the Joint Chiefs of Staff about increasing the size of the war, President Truman was forced to remove MacArthur from command on April 11, 1951.
• In July 1951, truce discussions dragged out over the issue of prisoner exchange.
Mr. JENKINS. And untrue?
Mr. COHN. Yes, sir, equally ridiculous and untrue, I could not cause the President of the United States to remove Stevens as Secretary of the Army. . . .
[Later in the hearings the following heated exchange occurred between McCarthy himself and Joseph N. Welch, the Army’s chief counsel.]
Senator MCCARTHY. ...[I]n view of Mr. Welch’s request that the information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, incidentally, to do work on this committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh, years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party, an organization which always swings to the defense of anyone who dares to expose Communists. I certainly assume that Mr. Welch did not know of this young man at the time he recommended him as the assistant counsel for this committee, but he has such terror and such a great desire to know where anyone is located who may be serving the Communist cause, Mr. Welch, that I thought we should just call to your attention the fact that your Mr. Fisher, who is still in your law firm today, whom you asked to have down here looking over the secret and classified material, is a member of an organization, not named by me but named by various committees, named by the Attorney General, as I recall, and I think I quote this verbatim, as “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.” He belonged to that for a sizable number of years, according to his own admission, and he belonged to it long after it had been exposed as the legal arm of the Communist Party.
Knowing that, Mr. Welch, I just felt that I had a duty to respond to your urgent request that before sundown, when we know of anyone serving the Communist cause, we let the agency know. We are now letting you know that your man did belong to this organization for, either 3 or 4 years, belonged to it long after he was out of law school.
I don’t think you can find anyplace, anywhere, an organization which has done more to defend Communists—I am again quoting the report—to defend Communists, to defend espionage agents, and to aid the Communist cause, than the man whom you originally wanted down here at your right hand....
I am not asking you at this time to explain why you tried to foist him on this committee. Whether you knew he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don’t know. I assume you did not, Mr. Welch, because I get the impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh, I don’t think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist Party. I don’t think you yourself would ever knowingly aid the Communist cause. I think you are unknowingly aiding it when you try to burlesque this hearing in which we are attempting to bring out the facts, however....
Mr. WELCH. Senator McCarthy, I think until this moment—
Senator MCCARTHY. Jim, will you get the news story to the effect that this man belonged to this Communist-front organization? Will you get the citations showing that this was the legal arm of the Communist Party, and the length of time that he belonged, and the fact that he was recommended by Mr. Welch? I think that should be in the record.
Mr. WELCH. You won’t need anything in the record when I have finished telling you this.
Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us.
When I decided to work for this committee I asked Jim St. Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I said to Jim, “Pick somebody in the firm who works under you that you would like.” He chose Fred Fisher and they came down on an afternoon plane. That night, when he had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about, Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, “Boys, I don’t know anything about you except I have always liked you, but if there is anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case you speak up quick.”
Fred Fisher said, “Mr. Welch, when I was in law school and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers Guild,” as you have suggested, Senator. He went on to say, “I am secretary of the Young Republicans League in Newton with the son of Massachusetts' Governor, and I have the respect and admiration of the 25 lawyers or so in [the prestigious law firm] Hale & Dorr.”
I said, “Fred, I just don’t think I am going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come out and go over national television and it will just hurt like the dickens.”
So, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston.
Little did I dream you could be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I will do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me....
Senator MCCARTHY. I just give this man’s record, and I want to say, Mr. Welch, that it has been labeled long before he became a member, as early as 1944— [...]
Mr. WELCH. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
"Damage": Collier’s Assesses the Army-McCarthy Hearings: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6449
[The following appeared in the August 6, 1954 issue of the popular magazine Collier’s.]
Now that the Army-McCarthy hearings have been history for a month, and the soap operas have reinherited the daytime TV channels, we should like to do a final review of the long-run show from Washington, and try to summarize its effect—aside from the subcommittee’s report.
We suppose the effect can be summarized in one word: damage. The legislative operations of Congress must have been delayed. The morale of the armed forces certainly could not have been heightened by the hearings. And our friends in other countries were obviously bewildered and dismayed by the goings on, with a consequent impairment of American prestige. But the greatest damage, we believe, occurred in the millions of homes where the televised proceedings were seen and heard....
What must many Americans have thought...seeing government in action for the first time! It was a carnival, a sprawling, brawling travesty. It was a performance to shame some of the leading participants, who seemed to forget that their hammy hokum and snarling words were being seen across the country and heard around the world.
How much damage was done cannot be calculated. But fortunately the carnival is over. Now let us hope that responsible members of party and government will take over and, without any further side-show diversions, guide us wisely through the crises that face the country. And let us also hope that those citizens who were shocked by the recent burlesque of responsible government will be assured that some of the performers are not typical of the men in the Capitol who, through the years, have helped to make America great and strong and just.
(Group #3): Read the following documents. After you have done so, write a paragraph explaining how the events described in them might have contributed to McCarthy’s downfall. Be prepared to share this paragraph with the class.
Senate Resolution 301: Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954): http://www.ourdocuments.gov./doc.php?doc=86&page=transcript
[The following resolution was sponsored by Republican Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont, a longtime critic of McCarthy. Debate began on July 30, 1954, but disagreements over the precise wording of the measure continued for months. Finally, on December 2, the resolution—as worded below—passed by a vote of 67 to 22.]
Resolved, That the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in clearing up matters referred to that subcommittee which concerned his conduct as a Senator and affected the honor of the Senate and, instead, repeatedly abused the subcommittee and its members who were trying to carry out assigned duties, thereby obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned.
Sec 2. The Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, in writing to the chairman of the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges (Mr. Watkins [Senator Arthur Watkins, Republican from Utah]) after the Select Committee had issued its report and before the report was presented to the Senate charging three members of the Select Committee with "deliberate deception" and "fraud" for failure to disqualify themselves; in stating to the press on November 4, 1954, that the special Senate session that was to begin November 8, 1954, was a "lynch-party"; in repeatedly describing this special Senate session as a "lynch bee" in a nationwide television and radio show on November 7, 1954; in stating to the public press on November 13, 1954, that the chairman of the Select Committee (Mr. Watkins) was guilty of "the most unusual, most cowardly things I've ever heard of" and stating further: "I expected he would be afraid to answer the questions, but didn't think he'd be stupid enough to make a public statement"; and in characterizing the said committee as the "unwitting handmaiden," "involuntary agent" and "attorneys-in- fact" of the Communist Party and in charging that the said committee in writing its report "imitated Communist methods -- that it distorted, misrepresented, and omitted in its effort to manufacture a plausible rationalization" in support of its recommendations to the Senate, which characterizations and charges were contained in a statement released to the press and inserted in the Congressional Record of November 10, 1954, acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity; and such conduct is hereby condemned.
COLD WAR VOCABULARY 1945-1963
1. Adlai Stevenson
2. Alliance of Progress
3. Bay of Pigs Invasion
4. Berlin Airlift
5. Cold War
6. Containment
7. Credibility Gap
8. Cuban Missile Crisis
9. Douglas MacArthur
10. Dwight Eisenhower
11. Eisenhower Doctrine
12. Fair Deal
13. Fidel Castro
14. Flexible Response
15. Geneva Conference
16. George F. Kennan
17. Harry S. Truman
18. Henry Kissinger
19. Ho Chi Minh
20. Iron Curtain
21. John F. Kennedy
22. Joseph McCarthy
23. Lee Harvey Oswald
24. Lyndon B. Johnson
25. Marshall Plan
26. Massive Retaliation
27. McCarthyism
28. Military-industrial complex
29. Missile Gap
30. National Defense and Education Act
31. National Security Act
32. New Frontier
33. Ngo Dinh Diem
34. Nikita Khrushchev
35. North Atlantic Treaty Organization
36. NSC-68
37. Nuclear-test Ban Treaty
38. Peace Corps
39. Richard M. Nixon
40. Robert F. Kennedy
41. Robert S. McNamara
42. South East Asia Treaty Organization
43. Sputnik I
44. Suez Crisis
45. Taft-Hartley Act
46. Thirty-eighth parallel
47. Thomas Dewey
48. Truman Doctrine
49. U-2 Incident
50. United Nations
Chapter 37
The Cold War Begins
1945-1952
Postwar Economic Anxieties
• During the 1930s, unemployment and insecurity had pushed up the suicide rate and decreased the marriage rate. The population growth was also declining as couples had economic troubles.
• In the initial postwar years, the economy struggled; prices elevated 33% from 1946-1947 after the wartime price controls were removed. An epidemic of strikes swept over the country in 1946.
• In 1947, the Republican Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman's veto. It outlawed the "closed" (all-union) shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required union leaders to take a noncommunist oath. Taft-Hartley was just one of several obstacles that slowed the growth of organized labor in the years following WWII.
• The CIO's "Operation Dixie," aimed at unionizing southern textile workers and steelworkers, failed in 1948 to overcome lingering fears of racial mixing.
• Congress passed the Employment Act in 1946 to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power. It also created a 3-member Council of Economic Advisers to provide the president with the data and the recommendations to make that policy a reality.
• The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill of Rights or the GI Bill, made generous provisions for sending the former solders to school. By raising educational levels and stimulating the construction industry, the GI Bill powerfully nurtured the long-lived economic expansion that took hold in the late 1940s.
The Long Economic Boom, 1950-1970
• In the 1950s, the American economy entered a twenty-year period of tremendous growth. During the 1950s and 1960s, national income nearly doubled, giving Americans about 40% of the planet's wealth. The post-World War II era transformed the lives of a majority of citizens and molded the agenda of politics and society for at least two generations. Prosperity underwrote social mobility; it paved the war for the success of the civil rights movement; it funded new welfare programs; and it gave Americans the confidence to exercise unprecedented international leadership in the Cold War era.
• The size of the middle class doubled from pre-Great Depression days, including 60% of the population by the mid 1950s.
• The majority of new jobs created in the postwar era went to women, as the service sector of the economy dramatically outgrew the old industrial and manufacturing sectors.
The Roots of Postwar Economy
• The economic upturn of 1950 was fueled by massive appropriations for the Korean War and defense spending. The military budget helped jumpstart high-technology industries such as aerospace, plastics, and electronics. Cheap energy also fueled the economic boom. American and European companies controlled the flow of abundant petroleum from the expanses of the Middle East, and they kept prices low.
• Gains in productivity were enhanced the rising educational level for the work force. By 1970, nearly 90% of the school-age population was enrolled in educational institutions.
• The work force shifted out of agriculture, which was achieving higher productivity gains as a result of new, more efficient farming equipment.
The Smiling Sunbelt
• In the 30 years after WWII, an average of 30 million people changed residence every year. Families especially felt the strain, as distance divided them.
• The "Sunbelt", a 15-state area stretching from Virginia through Florida and Texas to Arizona and California, increased it population at a rate nearly double than that of the old industrial zones of the Northeast (the "Frostbelt"). In the 1950s, California alone accounted for 1/5 of the nation's population. The modern pioneers came in search of jobs, better climate, and lower taxes. The large amount of federal dollars being given to the Sunbelt states accounted for much of the Sunbelt's prosperity. The industry region of the Ohio Valley (the "Rustbelt") was especially hit hard as a result of the loss in funds and population.
The Rush to the Suburbs
• In all regions, America's modern white migrants moved from the city to the new suburbs. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) made home-loan guarantees, making it more economically attractive to own a home in the suburbs rather than to rent an apartment in the city.
• "White flight" to the suburbs and the migration of blacks from the South left the inner cities, especially those in the Northeast and Midwest, to become poverty-stricken. The FHA often refused blacks home mortgages for private home purchases, thus limiting black mobility out of the inner cities.
The Postwar Baby Boom
• In the decade and a half after 1945, the birth rate in the United States exploded as the "baby boom" took place. More than 50 million babies were born by the end of the 1950s. By 1973, the birth rates had dropped below the point necessary to maintain existing population figures.
Truman: The "Gutty" Man from Missouri
• The first president without a college education in many years, President Harry S Truman was known as "average man's average man." He had down-home authenticity, few pretensions, rock-solid probity, and the political ability called "moxie" - the ability to face difficulty with courage.
Yalta: Bargain or Betrayal?
• February 1945, the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) met in Yalta to discuss the war's end. Final plans were laid for smashing the German lines and shackling the beaten Axis enemy. Stalin agreed that Poland, with revised boundaries, should have a representative government based on free elections-a pledge he soon broke. Bulgaria and Romania were likewise to have free elections-a pledge also broken. The Big Three also announced plans for fashioning a new international peacekeeping organization-the United Nations.
• The most controversial decision concerned the Far East. With the atomic bomb not yet tested, Washington analysts expected high American casualties in the assault on Japan. Roosevelt felt that Stalin should enter the Asian war, pin down Japanese troops in Manchuria and Korea, and lighten American losses. But with Soviet casualties already extremely high, Stalin needed incentive to join in the Far East. Stalin agreed to attack Japan within 3 months after the collapse of Germany. In return, the Soviets were promised the southern half of Sakhalin Island, lost by Russia to Japan in 1905, and Japan's Kurile Islands. The Soviet Union was also granted control over the railroads of China's Manchuria and special privileges in the two key seaports of that area, Dairen and Port Arthur. These concessions gave Stalin control over vital industrial centers of America's weakening Chinese ally.
The United States and the Soviet Union
• The United States terminated vital lend lease aid to a battered USSR in 1945 and ignored Moscow's plea for a $6 billion reconstruction loan-while approving a similar loan of $3.75 billion to Britain in 1946.
• Different visions of the postwar world separated the two superpowers. Stalin aimed above all to guarantee the security of the Soviet Union. He made it clear from the outset of the war that he was determined to have friendly governments along the Soviet western border. By maintaining a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe, the USSR could protect itself and consolidate its revolutionary base as the world's leading communist country.
• These spheres of influence contradicted President FDR's Wilsonian dream of an "open world," decolonized, demilitarized, and democratized.
• Unaccustomed to their great-power roles, the Soviet Union and the United States provoked each other into a tense, 40-year standoff known as the Cold War.
Shaping the Postwar World
• In 1944, the Western Allies met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to encourage world trade by regulating currency exchange rates. They also founded the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) to promote economic growth in war-ravaged and underdeveloped areas. Unlike after WWI, the United States took the lead in creating the important international bodies and supplied most of their funding after WWII. The Soviets declined to participate.
• The United Nations Conference opened on April 25, 1945. Meeting at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, representatives from 50 nations made the United Nations charter. It included the Security Council, dominated by the Big Five powers (the United States, Britain, the USSR, France, and China), each of whom had the right of veto, and the Assembly, which could be controlled by smaller countries. The Senate overwhelmingly passed the document on July 28, 1945.
• Through such arms as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), and WHO (World Health Organization), the U.N. brought benefits to people around the world.
• In 1946, Bernard Baruch called for a U.N. agency, free from the great-power veto, with worldwide authority over atomic energy, weapons, and research. The plan quickly fell apart as neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted to give up their nuclear weapons.
The Problem of Germany
• At Nuremberg, Germany from 1945-1946, Nazi leaders were tried and punished for war crimes. Punishments included hangings and long jail times.
• Beyond the Nuremberg Trials, the Allies could agree little about postwar Germany. At first, Americans wanted to dismantle German factories and reduce the country to nothing. The Soviets, denied of American economic assistance, were determined to rebuild their nation through reparations from Germany. Eventually, Americans realized that a flourishing German economy was indispensable to the recovery of Europe. The Soviets refused to realize this.
• At the end of the war, Austria and Germany had been divided into 4 military occupation zones, each assigned to one of the Big Four powers (France, Britain, America, and the USSR).
• As the USSR spread communism to its Eastern zone in Germany and the Western Allies promoted the idea of a reunited Germany, Germany became divided. West Germany eventually became an independent country, and East Germany became bound the Soviet Union as an independent "satellite" state, shutoff from the Western world by the "iron curtain" of the Soviet Union.
• Berlin, still occupied by the Four Big powers, was completely surrounded by the Soviet Occupation Zone. In 1948, following controversies over German currency reform and four-power control, the Soviet Union attempted to starve the Allies out of Berlin by cutting off all rail and highway access to the city. In May 1949, after America had flown in many supplies, the blockade was lifted.
• In 1949, the governments of East and West Germany were established.
Crystallizing the War
• In 1946, Stalin, seeking oil concessions, broke an agreement to remove his troops from Iran's northernmost province. He used the troops to aid a rebel movement. When Truman protested, Stalin backed down.
• In 1947, George F. Kennan formulated the "containment doctrine." This concept stated that Russia, whether tsarist or communist, was relentlessly expansionary. Kennan argued that the Soviet Union was also cautious, and the flow of Soviet power could be stemmed by firm and vigilant containment.
• President Truman embraced the policy in 1947 when he stated that Britain could no longer bear the financial and military burden of defending Greece against communist pressures. If Greece fell, Turkey and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean would collapse to the Soviet Union.
• On March 12, 1947, President Truman came before Congress and requested support for the Truman Doctrine. He declared that it must be the policy of the United States to aid any country that was resisting communist aggression.
• In 1947, France, Italy, and Germany were all suffering from the hunger and economic chaos caused in that year. Secretary of State George C. Marshall invited the Europeans to get together and work out a joint plan for their economic recovery. If they did so, then the United States would provide substantial financial assistance. Marshall offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, but the Soviets refused it. Although quite expensive, legislators passed the plan after realizing that the United States had to get Europe back on its feet. Within a few years, Europe's economy was flourishing. The Marshall Plan led to the eventual creation of the European Community (EC).
• Access to Middle Eastern oil was crucial to the European recovery program and to the health of the U.S. economy. Despite threats from the Arab nations to cut off the supply of oil, President Truman officially recognized the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.
America Begins to Rearm
• The Cold War, the struggle to contain Soviet communism, was not a war, yet it was not a peace.
• In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense. The department was headed by a new cabinet officer, the secretary of defense. Under the secretary were the civilian secretaries of the navy, the army, and the air force. The uniformed heads of each service were brought together as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• The National Security Act also established the National Security Council (NSC) to advise the president on security matters and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to coordinate the government's foreign fact-gathering.
• In 1948, the United States joined the European pact, called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). American participation strengthened the policy of containing the Soviet Union and provided a framework for the reintegration of Germany into the European family. The pact pledged each signed nation to regard an attack on one as an attack on all. The Senate passed the treaty on July 21, 1949.
• The NATO pact marked a dramatic departure from American diplomatic convention, a gigantic boost for European unification, and a significant step in the militarization of the Cold War.
Reconstruction and Revolution in Asia
• General Douglas MacArthur took control of the democratization of Japan. The Japanese people cooperated to an astonishing degree; they saw that good behavior and the adoption of democracy would speed the end of the occupation. In 1946, a MacArthur-dictated constitution was adopted. It renounced militarism and introduced western-style democratic government.
• From 1946-1948, top Japanese "war criminals" were tried in Tokyo.
• Although there was much success in Japan, China was another story. In late 1949, the Chinese Nationalist government of Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi was forced to flee the country to the island of Formosa (Taiwan) when the communists, led by Mao Zedong, swept over the country. The collapse of Nationalist China was a depressing loss for America and its allies in the Cold War as ¼ of the world's population fell to communism.
• In September 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, 3 years before experts thought possible. To stay one step ahead, Truman ordered the development of the H-bomb (Hydrogen Bomb). The first H-bomb was exploded in 1952. The Soviets exploded their first H-bomb in 1953, and the nuclear arms race entered a dangerously competitive cycle.
Feeling Out Alleged Communists
• In 1947, President Truman launched the Loyalty Review Board to investigate the possibility of communist spies in the government.
• In 1949, 11 communists were sent to prison for violating the Smith Act of 1940 (first antisedition law since 1798) in advocating the overthrow of the American government. The ruling was upheld in Dennis v. United States (1951).
• In 1938, the House of Representatives established the Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to investigate "subversion." In 1948, Congressman Richard M. Nixon led the hunt for and eventual conviction of Alger Hiss, a prominent ex-New Dealer and a distinguished member of the "eastern establishment." Americans began to join in on the hunt for communist spies of who were thought to riddle America.
• In 1950, Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Bill, which authorized the president to arrest and detain suspicious people during an "internal security emergency." Congress overrode Truman's veto and passed the bill.
• In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and sentenced to death for stealing American atomic bomb plans and selling them to the Soviet Union. They were the only people in history to be sentenced to death for espionage.
Democratic Divisions in 1948
• In 1948, the Republicans chose Thomas E. Dewey to run for president. After war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower chose not to run for the presidency, the Democrats chose Truman. Truman's nomination split the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats met and nominated Governor J. Strom Thurmond. The new Progressive party nominated Henry A. Wallace. Expected to lose, but not ready to give up, Truman traveled the country, giving energetic speeches. On Election Day, Truman, although not winning the popular vote, beat Dewey and was reelected as president. Truman's victory came from the votes of farmers, workers, and blacks.
• President Truman called for a "bold new program" ("Point Four"). The plan was to lend U.S. money and technical aid to underdeveloped lands to help them help themselves. He wanted to spend millions to keep underprivileged people from becoming communists.
• At home, Truman outlined a "Fair Deal" program in 1949. It called for improved housing, full employment, a higher minimum wage, better farm price supports, new TVAs, and an extension of Social Security. The only major successes came in raising the minimum wage, providing for public housing in the Housing Act of 1949, and extending old-age insurance to many more beneficiaries in the Social Security Act of 1950.
The Korean Volcano Erupts (1950)
• When Japan collapsed in 1945, Korea had been divided up into two sections: the Soviets controlled the north above the 38th parallel and the United States controlled south of that line.
• On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army invaded South Korea. President Truman's National Security Council had recommended NSC-68, calling for the quadrupling of the United States' defense spending. Truman ordered a massive military buildup, well beyond what was necessary for the Korean War.
• NSC-68 was a key document of the Cold War because it not only marked a major step in the militarization of American foreign policy, but it reflected the sense of almost limitless possibility that encompassed postwar American society.
• On June 25, 1950, President Truman obtained from the United Nations Security Council a unanimous condemnation of North Korea as an aggressor. (The Soviet Union was not present at the meeting.) Without Congress's approval, Truman ordered American air and naval units to be sent to support South Korea.
The Military Seesaw in Korea
• On September 15, 1950, General MacArthur succeeded in pushing the North Koreans past the 38th parallel. On November 1950, though, hordes of communist Chinese "volunteers" attacked the U.N. forces, pushing them back to the 38th parallel.
• Due to General MacArthur's insubordination and disagreement with the Joint Chiefs of Staff about increasing the size of the war, President Truman was forced to remove MacArthur from command on April 11, 1951.
• In July 1951, truce discussions dragged out over the issue of prisoner exchange.
Chapter 38
The Eisenhower Era
1952-1960
The Advent of Eisenhower
• Lacking public support for Truman, Democrats nominated Adlai E. Stevenson to run for the presidency in the election of 1952. Republicans chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Richard M. Nixon was chosen for vice-president to satisfy the anticommunist wing of the Republican Party.
• During the presidential campaign, reports of Nixon secretly tapping government funds arose. After Eisenhower considered dropping Nixon from the ballot, Nixon went on television and stated his apologies in the "Checkers speech"-this saved his place on the ballot.
• The new technology of black-and-white television changed political campaigning. Television often over-simplified the complicated issues of the time.
• Dwight Eisenhower won the election of 1952 by a large majority.
"Ike" Takes Command
• True to his campaign promise, President Eisenhower attempted to end the Korean War. In July 1953, after Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons, an armistice was signed, ending the Korean War. Despite the Korean War, Korea remained divided at the 38th Parallel.
• Eisenhower's leadership style of sincerity, fairness, and optimism helped to comfort the nation after the war.
The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy
• In February 1950, Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy made a speech accusing Secretary of State Dean Acheson of knowingly employing 205 Communist party members. Even though the accusations later proved to be false, McCarthy gained the support of the public. With the Republican victory in the election of 1952, his rhetoric became bolder as his accusations of communism grew.
• Though McCarthy was not the first red-hunter, he was the most ruthless, doing the most damage to American traditions of fair play and free speech.
• In 1954, McCarthy went too far and attacked the U.S. Army. Just a few months later, he was condemned by the Senate for "conduct unbecoming a member."
Desegregating the South
• All aspects of life of African Americans in the South were governed by the Jim Crow laws. Blacks dealt with an array of separate social arrangements that kept them insulated from whites, economically inferior, and politically powerless. Gunnar Myrdal exposed the contradiction between America's professed belief that all men are created equal and its terrible treatment of black citizens in his book An American Dilemma (1944).
• World War II had generated a new militancy and restlessness among many members of the black community. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled the "white primary" unconstitutional, undermining the status of the Democratic Party in the South as a white person's club.
• In the Supreme Court case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the Court ruled that separate professional schools for blacks failed to meet the test of equality.
• In December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest sparked a yearlong black boycott of the city busses and served notice throughout the South that blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation.
Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution
• Hearing of the lynching of black war veterans in 1946, President Harry S Truman commissioned a report titled "To Secure These Rights." Truman ended segregation in federal civil service and order "equality of treatment and opportunity" in the armed forces in 1948.
• When Congress and new President Eisenhower ignored the racial issues, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren stepped up to confront important social issues-especially civil rights for African Americans.
• In the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unequal and thus unconstitutional. The decision reversed the previous ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
• States in the Deep South resisted the ruling, and more than 100 senators and congressman signed the "Declaration of Constitutional Principles" in 1956, pledging their unyielding resistance to desegregation.
Crisis at Little Rock
• President Eisenhower was little inclined toward promoting integration. He shied away from upsetting "the customs and convictions of at least two generations of Americans." In September 1957, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas mobilized the National Guard to prevent nine black students from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School. Confronted with a direct challenge to federal authority, Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their classes.
• In 1957, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction Days. It set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights and authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights.
• Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. It aimed to mobilize the vast power of the black churches on behalf of black rights.
• On February 1, 1960, 4 black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina demanded service at a whites-only lunch counter. Within a week, the sit-in reached 1,000 students, spreading a wave of wade-ins, lie-ins, and pray-ins across the South demanding equal rights. In April 1960, southern black students formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to give more focus and force to their efforts.
Eisenhower Republicanism at Home
• When dealing with people, President Eisenhower was liberal, but when dealing with the economy and the government, he was conservative. He strived to balance the federal budget and to guard America from socialism. True to his small government philosophy, Eisenhower supported the transfer of control over offshore oil fields from the federal government to the states.
• In 1954, giving in to the Mexican government's worries that illegal Mexican immigration to the United States would undercut the bracero program of legally imported farmworkers, President Eisenhower rounded up a million illegal immigrants in Operation Wetback.
• Eisenhower sought to cancel the tribal preservation policies of the "Indian New Deal," in place since 1934. He wanted to terminate the tribes as legal entities and to revert to the assimilationist goals of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. The plan was dropped in 1961 after most tribes refused to be terminated.
• Eisenhower knew that he could not cancel all of the programs created in the New Deal and Fair Deal, because of the lack of public support. He actually supported the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, which created countless jobs and sped the suburbanization of America as 42,000 miles of highways were built.
• Eisenhower only managed to balance the budget 3 times while in office, and in 1959, he incurred the biggest peacetime deficit in the history of the United States.
A New Look in Foreign Policy
• In 1954, secretary of state John Foster Dulles proposed a plan in which Eisenhower would set aside the army and the navy to build up an air fleet of superbombers (called the Strategic Air Command, or SAC) equipped with nuclear bombs. This would allow President Eisenhower to threaten countries such as the Soviet Union and China with nuclear weapons.
• At the Geneva summit conference in 1955, President Eisenhower attempted to make peace with the new Soviet Union dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, following Stalin's death. Peace negotiations were rejected.
The Vietnam Nightmare
• In the early 1950s, nationalist movements had sought to throw the French out of Indochina. The leaders of the Indochina countries, including Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh, became increasingly communist as America became increasingly anticommunist. In May 1954, a French garrison was trapped in the fortress of Dienbienphu in northwestern Vietnam. President Eisenhower decided not to intervene, wary of another war right after Korea. Dienbienphu fell to the nationalists and the conference at Geneva halted Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The pro-Western government in the south, led by Ngo Dinh Diem, was entrenched at Saigon as Vietnam-wide elections, which were promised by Ho Chi Minh, were never held. President Eisenhower promised economic and military aid to the Diem regime of the south.
A False Lull in Europe
• In 1955, West Germany was let into NATO. Also in 1955, the Eastern European countries and the Soviets signed the Warsaw Pact, creating a red military counterweight to the newly-bolstered NATO forces in the West. In May 1955, the Soviets ended the occupation of Austria. In 1956, Hungary rose up against the Soviets attempting to win their independence. When their request for aid from the United States was denied, they were slaughtered by the Soviet forces. America's nuclear weapon was too big of a weapon to use on such a relatively small crisis.
Menaces in the Middle East
• In 1953, in an effort to secure Iranian oil for Western countries, the CIA engineered a coup that installed Mohammed Reza Pahlevi as the dictator of Iran.
• President Nasser of Egypt was seeking funds to build a dam on the Nile River. After associating with the communists, secretary of state Dulles pulled back U.S. monetary aid for Egypt. As a result, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which was owned by the French and British. In October of 1956, the Suez Crisis ensued as the French and British launched an assault on Egypt. The two countries were forced to withdraw their troops as America refused to release emergency supplies of oil to them.
• In 1957, Congress proclaimed the Eisenhower Doctrine, pledging U.S. military and economic aid to Middle Eastern nations threatened by communist aggression.
• In 1960, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela joined together to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Round Two for Ike
• President Eisenhower was reelected in the election of 1956 as he beat his Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson.
• In 1959, a drastic labor-reform bill grew out of recurrent strikes in important industries and corruption in unions. The Teamsters Union leader, "Dave" Beck was sentenced to prison for embezzlement. When his union replaced him with James R. Hoffa, the AF of L-CIO expelled the Teamsters. Hoffa was later jailed for jury tampering.
• In 1959, President Eisenhower passed the Landrum-Griffin Act. It was designed to bring labor leaders to book for financial shenanigans and to prevent bullying tactics.
The Race with the Soviets into Space
• On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the Sputnik I satellite into space. In November, they launched the satellite Sputnik II, carrying a dog. The two satellites gave credibility to the Soviet claims that superior industrial production lay through communism.
• In response, President Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
• As a result of the new technological advances in the Soviet Union, it was thought that the educational system of the Soviet Union was better than the United States'; a move to improve the American education system was taken. In 1958, the National Defense and Education Act (NDEA) authorized $887 million in loans to needy college students and in grants for the improvement of teaching sciences and languages.
The Continuing Cold War
• In March and October 1958, the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively, proclaimed a suspension of nuclear testing. In July 1958, Lebanon called for aid under the Eisenhower Doctrine as communism threatened to engulf the country. In 1959, Soviet dictator Khrushchev appeared before the U.N. General Assembly and called for complete disarmament. In 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down in Russia, causing feelings of a possibly peaceful resolution to subside.
Cuba's Castroism Spells Communism
• Latin Americans began to show dissent towards America as the United States seemed to neglect Latin America's economic needs for favor of Europe's. They also despised constant American intervention - the CIA directed a coup in 1954 that overthrew a leftist government in Guatemala.
• Fidel Castro led a coup that overthrew the America-supported government of Cuba in 1959. Annoyed with Castro's anti-American attitude and Castro seizing valuable American properties in Cuba, the United States cut off the heavy U.S. imports of Cuban sugar.
• Cuba's left-wing dictatorship quickly had the possibility to become a military satellite for the Soviet Union. In August 1960, Congress authorized $500 million to prevent communism from spreading in Latin America.
Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency
• The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon to run for president and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. for vice president in the election of 1960. The Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy to run for president and Lyndon B. Johnson for vice president.
The Presidential Issues of 1960
• John F. Kennedy's Catholicism aroused misgivings in the Protestant, Bible Belt South.
• Kennedy charged that the Soviets, with their nuclear bombs and the Sputniks, had gained on America in prestige and power. Nixon was forced to defend the dying administration and claim that America's prestige had not slipped.
• Television played a key role in the presidential election as Kennedy's personal appeal attracted many. Kennedy won the election of 1961, gaining support in the large industrial centers where he had strong support from workers, Catholics, and African Americans.
An Old General Fades Away
• America was prosperous during the Eisenhower years. Alaska and Hawaii became states in 1959. As a Republican president, Eisenhower had further woven the reforms of the Democratic New Deal and Fair Deal into the fabric of national life.
Changing Economic Patterns
• The invention of the transistor in 1948 sparked a revolution in electronics, especially computers. Computer giant International Business Machines (IBM) grew tremendously.
• Aerospace industries also grew in the 1950s, thanks to Eisenhower's SAC and to an expanding passenger airline business.
• In 1956, the number of "white-collar" (no manual labor) workers exceeded the number of "blue-collar" (manual labor) workers. Following suit, union memberships began to steadily decline.
• The new white-collar employment opened special opportunities for women. The baby boom during the years after World War II caused the role of women to revert to the typical role of a mother and wife. But the majority of the clerical and service work jobs created after 1950 were filled by women. Women's new dual role as both workers and homemakers raised urgent questions about family life and about traditional definitions of gender differences.
• Feminist Betty Friedan published in 1963 The Feminine Mystique, helping to launch the modern women's movement. Friedan spoke to many educated women who supported her indictment of the boredom of a housewife.
Consumer Culture in the Fifties
• The innovations of the credit card, fast-food, and new forms of recreation were forerunners of an emerging lifestyle of leisure and affluence. In 1946, only 6 TV stations were broadcasting; by 1956, there were 146. "Televangelists" like Baptist Billy Graham, and Pentecostal Holiness speaker Oral Roberts, and Roman Catholic Fulton J. Sheen took to the television airwaves to spread Christianity.
• As the population moved west, sports teams also moved west. Popular music was transformed during the 1950s. Elvis Pressley created the new style known as rock and roll.
• Traditionalists were repelled by Presley as well as many of the new social movements during the 1950s. Many critics blamed the implications of "societal deterioration" to the consumerist lifestyle.
The Life of the Mind in Postwar America
• Prewar realist, Ernest Hemingway continued to write as he authored The Old Man and the Sea (1952). John Steinbeck, another prewar writer, persisted in graphic portrayals of American society. Over time, realistic writing fell from favor and authors tended to write about the war in fantastic prose. John Heller's Catch-22 (1961) dealt with the improbably antics and anguish of American airmen in the wartime Mediterranean.
• The dilemmas created by the new mobility and affluence of American life were explored by John Updike and John Cheever. Louis Auchincloss wrote about upper-class New-Yorkers. Gore Vidal wrote a series of intriguing historical novels.
• Poetry and playwrights also flourished during the postwar era. Books by black authors made the best-seller lists. Led by William Faulkner, the South boasted a literary renaissance. Especially bountiful was the harvest of books by Jewish novelists.
The Eisenhower Era
1952-1960
The Advent of Eisenhower
• Lacking public support for Truman, Democrats nominated Adlai E. Stevenson to run for the presidency in the election of 1952. Republicans chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Richard M. Nixon was chosen for vice-president to satisfy the anticommunist wing of the Republican Party.
• During the presidential campaign, reports of Nixon secretly tapping government funds arose. After Eisenhower considered dropping Nixon from the ballot, Nixon went on television and stated his apologies in the "Checkers speech"-this saved his place on the ballot.
• The new technology of black-and-white television changed political campaigning. Television often over-simplified the complicated issues of the time.
• Dwight Eisenhower won the election of 1952 by a large majority.
"Ike" Takes Command
• True to his campaign promise, President Eisenhower attempted to end the Korean War. In July 1953, after Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons, an armistice was signed, ending the Korean War. Despite the Korean War, Korea remained divided at the 38th Parallel.
• Eisenhower's leadership style of sincerity, fairness, and optimism helped to comfort the nation after the war.
The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy
• In February 1950, Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy made a speech accusing Secretary of State Dean Acheson of knowingly employing 205 Communist party members. Even though the accusations later proved to be false, McCarthy gained the support of the public. With the Republican victory in the election of 1952, his rhetoric became bolder as his accusations of communism grew.
• Though McCarthy was not the first red-hunter, he was the most ruthless, doing the most damage to American traditions of fair play and free speech.
• In 1954, McCarthy went too far and attacked the U.S. Army. Just a few months later, he was condemned by the Senate for "conduct unbecoming a member."
Desegregating the South
• All aspects of life of African Americans in the South were governed by the Jim Crow laws. Blacks dealt with an array of separate social arrangements that kept them insulated from whites, economically inferior, and politically powerless. Gunnar Myrdal exposed the contradiction between America's professed belief that all men are created equal and its terrible treatment of black citizens in his book An American Dilemma (1944).
• World War II had generated a new militancy and restlessness among many members of the black community. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled the "white primary" unconstitutional, undermining the status of the Democratic Party in the South as a white person's club.
• In the Supreme Court case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the Court ruled that separate professional schools for blacks failed to meet the test of equality.
• In December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest sparked a yearlong black boycott of the city busses and served notice throughout the South that blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation.
Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution
• Hearing of the lynching of black war veterans in 1946, President Harry S Truman commissioned a report titled "To Secure These Rights." Truman ended segregation in federal civil service and order "equality of treatment and opportunity" in the armed forces in 1948.
• When Congress and new President Eisenhower ignored the racial issues, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren stepped up to confront important social issues-especially civil rights for African Americans.
• In the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unequal and thus unconstitutional. The decision reversed the previous ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
• States in the Deep South resisted the ruling, and more than 100 senators and congressman signed the "Declaration of Constitutional Principles" in 1956, pledging their unyielding resistance to desegregation.
Crisis at Little Rock
• President Eisenhower was little inclined toward promoting integration. He shied away from upsetting "the customs and convictions of at least two generations of Americans." In September 1957, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas mobilized the National Guard to prevent nine black students from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School. Confronted with a direct challenge to federal authority, Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their classes.
• In 1957, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction Days. It set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights and authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights.
• Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. It aimed to mobilize the vast power of the black churches on behalf of black rights.
• On February 1, 1960, 4 black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina demanded service at a whites-only lunch counter. Within a week, the sit-in reached 1,000 students, spreading a wave of wade-ins, lie-ins, and pray-ins across the South demanding equal rights. In April 1960, southern black students formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to give more focus and force to their efforts.
Eisenhower Republicanism at Home
• When dealing with people, President Eisenhower was liberal, but when dealing with the economy and the government, he was conservative. He strived to balance the federal budget and to guard America from socialism. True to his small government philosophy, Eisenhower supported the transfer of control over offshore oil fields from the federal government to the states.
• In 1954, giving in to the Mexican government's worries that illegal Mexican immigration to the United States would undercut the bracero program of legally imported farmworkers, President Eisenhower rounded up a million illegal immigrants in Operation Wetback.
• Eisenhower sought to cancel the tribal preservation policies of the "Indian New Deal," in place since 1934. He wanted to terminate the tribes as legal entities and to revert to the assimilationist goals of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. The plan was dropped in 1961 after most tribes refused to be terminated.
• Eisenhower knew that he could not cancel all of the programs created in the New Deal and Fair Deal, because of the lack of public support. He actually supported the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, which created countless jobs and sped the suburbanization of America as 42,000 miles of highways were built.
• Eisenhower only managed to balance the budget 3 times while in office, and in 1959, he incurred the biggest peacetime deficit in the history of the United States.
A New Look in Foreign Policy
• In 1954, secretary of state John Foster Dulles proposed a plan in which Eisenhower would set aside the army and the navy to build up an air fleet of superbombers (called the Strategic Air Command, or SAC) equipped with nuclear bombs. This would allow President Eisenhower to threaten countries such as the Soviet Union and China with nuclear weapons.
• At the Geneva summit conference in 1955, President Eisenhower attempted to make peace with the new Soviet Union dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, following Stalin's death. Peace negotiations were rejected.
The Vietnam Nightmare
• In the early 1950s, nationalist movements had sought to throw the French out of Indochina. The leaders of the Indochina countries, including Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh, became increasingly communist as America became increasingly anticommunist. In May 1954, a French garrison was trapped in the fortress of Dienbienphu in northwestern Vietnam. President Eisenhower decided not to intervene, wary of another war right after Korea. Dienbienphu fell to the nationalists and the conference at Geneva halted Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The pro-Western government in the south, led by Ngo Dinh Diem, was entrenched at Saigon as Vietnam-wide elections, which were promised by Ho Chi Minh, were never held. President Eisenhower promised economic and military aid to the Diem regime of the south.
A False Lull in Europe
• In 1955, West Germany was let into NATO. Also in 1955, the Eastern European countries and the Soviets signed the Warsaw Pact, creating a red military counterweight to the newly-bolstered NATO forces in the West. In May 1955, the Soviets ended the occupation of Austria. In 1956, Hungary rose up against the Soviets attempting to win their independence. When their request for aid from the United States was denied, they were slaughtered by the Soviet forces. America's nuclear weapon was too big of a weapon to use on such a relatively small crisis.
Menaces in the Middle East
• In 1953, in an effort to secure Iranian oil for Western countries, the CIA engineered a coup that installed Mohammed Reza Pahlevi as the dictator of Iran.
• President Nasser of Egypt was seeking funds to build a dam on the Nile River. After associating with the communists, secretary of state Dulles pulled back U.S. monetary aid for Egypt. As a result, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which was owned by the French and British. In October of 1956, the Suez Crisis ensued as the French and British launched an assault on Egypt. The two countries were forced to withdraw their troops as America refused to release emergency supplies of oil to them.
• In 1957, Congress proclaimed the Eisenhower Doctrine, pledging U.S. military and economic aid to Middle Eastern nations threatened by communist aggression.
• In 1960, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela joined together to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Round Two for Ike
• President Eisenhower was reelected in the election of 1956 as he beat his Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson.
• In 1959, a drastic labor-reform bill grew out of recurrent strikes in important industries and corruption in unions. The Teamsters Union leader, "Dave" Beck was sentenced to prison for embezzlement. When his union replaced him with James R. Hoffa, the AF of L-CIO expelled the Teamsters. Hoffa was later jailed for jury tampering.
• In 1959, President Eisenhower passed the Landrum-Griffin Act. It was designed to bring labor leaders to book for financial shenanigans and to prevent bullying tactics.
The Race with the Soviets into Space
• On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the Sputnik I satellite into space. In November, they launched the satellite Sputnik II, carrying a dog. The two satellites gave credibility to the Soviet claims that superior industrial production lay through communism.
• In response, President Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
• As a result of the new technological advances in the Soviet Union, it was thought that the educational system of the Soviet Union was better than the United States'; a move to improve the American education system was taken. In 1958, the National Defense and Education Act (NDEA) authorized $887 million in loans to needy college students and in grants for the improvement of teaching sciences and languages.
The Continuing Cold War
• In March and October 1958, the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively, proclaimed a suspension of nuclear testing. In July 1958, Lebanon called for aid under the Eisenhower Doctrine as communism threatened to engulf the country. In 1959, Soviet dictator Khrushchev appeared before the U.N. General Assembly and called for complete disarmament. In 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down in Russia, causing feelings of a possibly peaceful resolution to subside.
Cuba's Castroism Spells Communism
• Latin Americans began to show dissent towards America as the United States seemed to neglect Latin America's economic needs for favor of Europe's. They also despised constant American intervention - the CIA directed a coup in 1954 that overthrew a leftist government in Guatemala.
• Fidel Castro led a coup that overthrew the America-supported government of Cuba in 1959. Annoyed with Castro's anti-American attitude and Castro seizing valuable American properties in Cuba, the United States cut off the heavy U.S. imports of Cuban sugar.
• Cuba's left-wing dictatorship quickly had the possibility to become a military satellite for the Soviet Union. In August 1960, Congress authorized $500 million to prevent communism from spreading in Latin America.
Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency
• The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon to run for president and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. for vice president in the election of 1960. The Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy to run for president and Lyndon B. Johnson for vice president.
The Presidential Issues of 1960
• John F. Kennedy's Catholicism aroused misgivings in the Protestant, Bible Belt South.
• Kennedy charged that the Soviets, with their nuclear bombs and the Sputniks, had gained on America in prestige and power. Nixon was forced to defend the dying administration and claim that America's prestige had not slipped.
• Television played a key role in the presidential election as Kennedy's personal appeal attracted many. Kennedy won the election of 1961, gaining support in the large industrial centers where he had strong support from workers, Catholics, and African Americans.
An Old General Fades Away
• America was prosperous during the Eisenhower years. Alaska and Hawaii became states in 1959. As a Republican president, Eisenhower had further woven the reforms of the Democratic New Deal and Fair Deal into the fabric of national life.
Changing Economic Patterns
• The invention of the transistor in 1948 sparked a revolution in electronics, especially computers. Computer giant International Business Machines (IBM) grew tremendously.
• Aerospace industries also grew in the 1950s, thanks to Eisenhower's SAC and to an expanding passenger airline business.
• In 1956, the number of "white-collar" (no manual labor) workers exceeded the number of "blue-collar" (manual labor) workers. Following suit, union memberships began to steadily decline.
• The new white-collar employment opened special opportunities for women. The baby boom during the years after World War II caused the role of women to revert to the typical role of a mother and wife. But the majority of the clerical and service work jobs created after 1950 were filled by women. Women's new dual role as both workers and homemakers raised urgent questions about family life and about traditional definitions of gender differences.
• Feminist Betty Friedan published in 1963 The Feminine Mystique, helping to launch the modern women's movement. Friedan spoke to many educated women who supported her indictment of the boredom of a housewife.
Consumer Culture in the Fifties
• The innovations of the credit card, fast-food, and new forms of recreation were forerunners of an emerging lifestyle of leisure and affluence. In 1946, only 6 TV stations were broadcasting; by 1956, there were 146. "Televangelists" like Baptist Billy Graham, and Pentecostal Holiness speaker Oral Roberts, and Roman Catholic Fulton J. Sheen took to the television airwaves to spread Christianity.
• As the population moved west, sports teams also moved west. Popular music was transformed during the 1950s. Elvis Pressley created the new style known as rock and roll.
• Traditionalists were repelled by Presley as well as many of the new social movements during the 1950s. Many critics blamed the implications of "societal deterioration" to the consumerist lifestyle.
The Life of the Mind in Postwar America
• Prewar realist, Ernest Hemingway continued to write as he authored The Old Man and the Sea (1952). John Steinbeck, another prewar writer, persisted in graphic portrayals of American society. Over time, realistic writing fell from favor and authors tended to write about the war in fantastic prose. John Heller's Catch-22 (1961) dealt with the improbably antics and anguish of American airmen in the wartime Mediterranean.
• The dilemmas created by the new mobility and affluence of American life were explored by John Updike and John Cheever. Louis Auchincloss wrote about upper-class New-Yorkers. Gore Vidal wrote a series of intriguing historical novels.
• Poetry and playwrights also flourished during the postwar era. Books by black authors made the best-seller lists. Led by William Faulkner, the South boasted a literary renaissance. Especially bountiful was the harvest of books by Jewish novelists.
Chapter 39
The Stormy Sixties
1960-1968
• Kennedy's "New Frontier" Spirit
President Kennedy, the youngest president to take office, assembled one of the youngest cabinets, including his brother Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, who planned to reform the priorities of the FBI. Kennedy's new challenge of a "New Frontier" quickened patriotic pulses. He proposed the Peace Corps, an army of idealistic and mostly youthful volunteers to bring American skills to underdeveloped countries.
The New Frontier at Home
• Southern Democrats and Republicans despised the president's New Frontier plan. Kennedy had campaigned on the theme of revitalizing the economy after the recessions of the Eisenhower years. To do this, the president tried to curb inflation. In 1962, he negotiated a noninflationary wage agreement with the steel industry. When the steel industry announced significant price increases, promoting inflation, President Kennedy erupted in wrath, causing the industry to lower its prices. Kennedy rejected the advice of those who wished greater government spending and instead chose to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes and putting more money directly into private hands. Kennedy also proposed a multibillion-dollar plan to land an American on the moon.
Rumblings in Europe
• President Kennedy met with Soviet leader Khrushchev at Vienna in June 1961. After making numerous threats, the Soviets finally acted. In August 1961, the Soviets began to construct the Berlin Wall, which was designed to stop the large population drain from East Germany to West Germany through Berlin.
• Western Europe was prospering after the Marshall Plan aid and the growth of the Common Market, the free-trade area later called the European Union. Focusing on Western Europe, Kennedy secured passage of the Trade Expansion Act in 1962, authorizing tariff cuts of up to 50% to promote trade with Common Market countries.
• American policymakers were dedicated to an economically and militarily united "Atlantic Community" with the United States the dominant partner.
• President of France, Charles de Gaulle, was suspicious of American intentions in Europe and in 1963, vetoed British application for Common Market membership, fearing that the British "special relationship" with the United States would allow the U.S. to indirectly control European affairs.
Foreign Flare-ups and "Flexible Response"
• In 1960, the African Congo received its independence from Belgium and immediately exploded in violence. The U.N. sent in troops while the United States paid for it.
• In 1954, Laos gained its independence from France and it, too erupted in violence. Kennedy, avoiding sending troops, sought diplomatic means in the Geneva conference in 1962, which imposed a peace on Laos.
• Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pushed the strategy of "flexible response" - that is, developing an array of military options that could be precisely matched to the necessities of the crisis at hand. President Kennedy increased spending on conventional military forces.
Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire
• The doctrine of "flexible response" provided a mechanism for a progressive, and possibly endless, stepping-up of the use of force (Vietnam).
• In 1961, Kennedy increased the number of "military advisors" in South Vietnam in order to help protect Diem from the communists long enough to allow him to enact basic social reforms favored by the Americans.
• In November 1963, after being fed up with U.S. economic aid being embezzled by Diem, the Kennedy encouraged a successful coup and killed Diem.
Cuban Confrontations
• In 1961, President Kennedy extended the American hand of friendship to Latin America with the Alliance for Progress, called the Marshall Plan for Latin America. A primary goal was to help the Latin American countries close the gap between the rich and the poor, and thus quiet communist agitation. Results were disappointing as America had few positive impacts on Latin America's immense social problems.On April 17, 1961, 1,200 exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. President Kennedy was against the direct intervention of the overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba, failing to provide air support for the exiles. The invasion therefore failed as the exiles were forced to surrender.
• The Bay of Pigs blunder pushed the Cuban leader further into the Soviet embrace. In October 1962, it was discovered that the Soviets were secretly installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy rejected air force proposals for a bombing strike against the missile sites. Instead, on October 22, 1962, he ordered a naval "quarantine" of Cuba and demanded immediate removal of the weapons. For a week, Americans waited while Soviet ships approached the patrol line established by the U.S. Navy off the island of Cuba. On October 28, Khrushchev agreed to a compromise in which he would pull the missiles out of Cuba. The American government also agreed to end the quarantine and not invade the island.
• In late 1963, a pact prohibiting trial nuclear explosions in the atmosphere was signed.
• In June 1963, President Kennedy gave a speech at American University, Washington, D.C. encouraging Americans to abandon the negative views of the Soviet Union. He tried to lay the foundations for a realistic policy of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union.
The Struggle for Civil Rights
• During his campaign, JFK had gained the black vote by stating that he would pass civil rights legislation.
• In 1960, groups of Freedom Riders spread out across the South to end segregation in facilities serving interstate bus passengers. A white mob torched a Freedom Ride bus near Anniston, Alabama in May 1961. When southern officials proved unwilling to stop the violence, federal marshals were dispatched to protect the freedom riders.
• For the most part, the Kennedy family and the King family (Martin Luther King, Jr.) had a good relationship.
• SNCC and other civil rights groups inaugurated a Voter Education Project to register the South's historically disfranchised blacks.
• In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated big city in America. Civil rights marchers were repelled by police with attack dogs and high-pressure water hoses. In shock, President Kennedy delivered a speech to the nation on June 11, 1963 in which he dedicated himself to finding a solution to the racial problems.
• In August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. led 200,000 black and white demonstrators on a peaceful "March on Washington" in support of the proposed new civil rights legislation.
The Killing of Kennedy
• On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed as he was riding in an open limousine in Dallas, Texas. The alleged gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was shot and killed by self-appointed avenger, Jack Ruby. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn into office, retaining most of Kennedy's cabinet. Kennedy was acclaimed more for the ideals he had spoken and the spirit he had kindled for the goals he had achieved.
The LBJ Brand on the Presidency
• After prodding from President Johnson, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public. It strengthened the federal government's power to end segregation in schools and other public places. It also created the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to eliminate discrimination in hiring. Part of the act's Title VII passed with sexual clause ensuring some special attention for women. In 1965, President Johnson issued an executive order requiring all federal contractors to take "affirmative action" against discrimination.
• Johnson added proposals of his own to Kennedy's stalled tax bill to allow for a billion-dollar "War on Poverty." He dubbed his domestic program the "Great Society" - a sweeping set of New Dealish economic and welfare measures aimed at transforming the American way of life.
Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964
• The Democrats nominated Lyndon Johnson to run for president for the election of 1964. The Republicans chose Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater attacked the federal income tax, the Social Security System, the Tennessee Valley Authority, civil rights legislation, the nuclear test-ban treaty, and the Great Society.
• In August 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. Navy ships had been cooperating with the South Vietnamese in raids along the coast of North Vietnam. On August 2th and August 4th, two U.S. ships were allegedly fired upon. Johnson called the attack "unprovoked" and moved to make political gains out of the incident. He ordered a "limited" retaliatory air raid against the North Vietnamese bases. He also used the event to spur congressional passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution; lawmakers virtually gave up their war-declaring powers and handed the president a blank check to use further force in Southeast Asia. Lyndon Johnson overwhelmingly won the election of 1964.
The Great Society Congress
• Congress passed a flood of legislation, comparable to output of the Hundred Days Congress. Escalating the War on Poverty, Congress doubled the funding of the Office of Economic Opportunity to $2 billion. Congress also created two new cabinet offices: the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities was designed to lift the level of American cultural life.
• The Big Four legislative achievements that crowned LBJ's Great Society program were: aid to education, medical care for the elderly and poor, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill. Johnson gave educational aid to students, not schools, avoiding the issue of separation of church and state. In 1965 came Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system that had been in place since 1921. It also doubled the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country annually. The sources of immigration shifted from Europe to Latin American and Asia. Conservatives charged that the problem of poverty could not be fixed with money spent by the Great Society programs, yet the poverty rate did decline in the following decade.
Battling for Black Rights
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government more power to enforce school-desegregation orders and to prohibit racial discrimination in all kinds of public accommodations and employment.
• President Johnson realized the problem that few blacks were registered to vote. The 24th Amendment, passed in 1964, abolished the poll tax in federal elections, yet blacks were still severely hampered from voting. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, banning literacy tests and sending federal voter registers into several southern states.
Black Power
• Days after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, a bloody riot erupted in Watts, a black ghetto in Los Angeles. Blacks were enraged by police brutality and burned and looted their own neighborhoods for a week. The Watts explosion marked increasing militant confrontation in the black struggle. Malcolm X deepened the division among black leaders. He was first inspired by the militant clack nationalists in the Nation of Islam. He rallied black separatism and disapproved of the "blue-eyed white devils." In 1965, he was shot and killed by a rival Nation of Islam.
• The violence or threat of violence increased as the Black Panther party emerged, openly carrying weapons in the streets of Oakland, California. Just as the civil rights movement had achieved its greatest legal and political triumphs, more riots erupted. Black unemployment was nearly double than for whites.
• On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee. Black voter registration eventually increased, and by the late 1960s, several hundred blacks held elected office in the Old South.
Combating Communism in Two Hemispheres
• In April 1965, President Johnson sent 25,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to restore order after a revolt against the military government started. Johnson claimed, with shaky evidence, that the Dominican Republic was the target of a Castrolike coup. He was widely condemned for his actions.
• In February 1965, Viet Cong guerrillas attacked an American air base at Pleiku, South Vietnam, prompting Johnson to send retaliatory bomb raids and, for the first time, order attacking U.S. troops to land. By the middle of March 1965, "Operation Rolling Thunder" was in full swing - regular full-scale bombing attacks against North Vietnam.
• The South Vietnamese watched as their own war became more Americanized. Corrupt and collapsible governments fell one after another in Saigon, yet American officials continued to talk of defending a faithful democratic ally. Pro-war hawks argued that if the United Sates were to leave Vietnam, other nations would doubt America's word and crumble to communism. By 1968, Johnson had put more than 500,000 troops in Southeast Asia, and the annual cost for the war was exceeding $30 billion.
Vietnam Vexations
• Overcommitment in Southeast Asia tied America's hands elsewhere.
In June 1967, after numerous military threats presented by Egypt, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt's airforce, starting the Six-Day War. Following the war, Israel gained the territories of the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. Arab Palestinians and their Arab allies complained about Israel's doing, but all to no avail.
• Antiwar demonstrations increased significantly as more and more American soldiers died in the Vietnam War. Protesters' sayings included, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Senator William Fulbright staged a series of televised hearings in 1966 and 1967 in which he convinced the public that it had been deceived about the causes and "winnability" of the war.
• When Defense Secretary McNamara expressed discomfort about the war, he was quietly removed from office.
• By early 1968, the war had become the longest and most unpopular foreign war in the nation's history. The government failed to explain to the people what was supposed to be at stake in Vietnam. Casualties, killed, and wounded had exceeded 100,000, and more bombs had been dropped in Vietnam than in World War II.
• In 1967, Johnson ordered the CIA to spy on domestic antiwar activists. He also encouraged the FBI to turn its counterintelligence program, code-named "Cointelpro," against the peace movement.
Vietnam Topples Johnson
• In January 1968, the Viet Cong attacked 27 key South Vietnamese cities, including Saigon. The Tet Offensive ended in a military defeat for the VC, but it caused the American public to demand an immediate end to the war. American military leaders responded to the attacks for a request of 200,000 more troops. President Johnson himself now began to seriously doubt the wisdom of continuing to raise the stakes.
• Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy both entered the race for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.
• On March 31, 1968, President Johnson issued an address to the nation stating that he would freeze American troop levels and gradually shift more responsibility to the South Vietnamese themselves. Bombing would also be scaled down. He also declared that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968.
The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968
• On June 5, 1968, the night of the California primary, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed by an Arab immigrant resentful of the candidate's pro-Israel views. When the Democrats met in Chicago in August 1968, angry antiwar zealots, protesting outside the convention hall, violently clashed with police.
• Hubert H. Humphrey, vice president of Johnson, won the Democratic nomination.
• The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon for president and Spiro T. Agnew for vice president. The Republican platform called for a victory in Vietnam and a strong anticrime policy.
• The American Independent party, headed by George C. Wallace, entered the race and called for the continuation of segregation of blacks.
Victory for Nixon
• Richard Nixon won the election of 1968 as Humphrey was scorched by the LBJ brand. Nixon did not win a single major city, attesting to the continuing urban strength of the Democrats, who also won about 95% of the black vote.
The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson
• No president since Lincoln had done more for civil rights than LBJ. By 1966, the Vietnam War brought dissent to Johnson, and as war costs sucked tax dollars, Great Society programs began to wither. LBJ was persuaded by his advisors that an easy victory in Vietnam would be achieved by massive aerial bombing and large troop commitments. His decision to not escalate the fighting offended the "hawks," and his refusal to back off altogether provoked the "doves."
The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s
• Everywhere in 1960s America, a newly negative attitude toward all kinds of authority took hold. Disillusioned by the discovery that American society was not free of racism, sexism, imperialism, and oppression, many young people lost their morals.
• One of the first organized protests against established authority took place at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, in the Free Speech Movement. Leader Mario Savio condemned the impersonal university "machine." Angered by the war in Vietnam, some middle class sons and daughters became radical political rebels.
• The 1960s also witnessed a "sexual revolution." The introduction of the birth control pill made unwanted pregnancies easy to avoid. By the 1960s, gay men and lesbians were increasingly emerging and demanding sexual tolerance. The Mattachine Society, founded in 1951, was an advocate for gay rights. Worries in the 1980s of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases finally slowed the sexual revolution.
• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had, by the end of the 1960s, spawned an underground terrorist group called the Weathermen.
• The upheavals of the 1960s could be largely attributed to the three Ps: the youthful population bulge, protest against racism and the Vietnam War, and the apparent permanence of prosperity.
Chapter 40
The Stalemated Seventies
1968-1980
The Economy Stagnates in the 1970s
• Following the economic boom in America during the 1950s and 1960s, the economy of the 1970s was declining. A large part of the decline was caused by more women and teens entering the works force; these groups typically were less skilled and made less money than males. Deteriorating machinery and new regulations also hindered growth. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson's lavish spending on the Vietnam War and on his Great Society also depleted the U.S. Treasury, giving citizens too much money and creating too great a demand for too few products.
• As the United States lacked advancement, countries such as Japan and Germany leaped forward in the production of steel, automobiles, and consumer electronics.
Nixon "Vietnamizes" the War
• President Nixon brought to the White House his broad knowledge and thoughtful expertise in foreign affairs. He applied himself to putting America's foreign-policy in order. President Nixon's announced policy, called "Vietnamization," was to withdraw the 540,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam over an extended period. The South Vietnamese, with American money, weapons, training, and advice, would then gradually take over the war.
• The Nixon Doctrine proclaimed that the United States would honor its existing defense commitments but in the future, Asians and others would have to fight their own wars without the support of large numbers of American troops.
• On November 3, 1969, Nixon delivered a televised speech to the "silent majority," who presumably supported the war; he hoped to gain supporters.
Cambodianizing the Vietnam War
• For several years, the North Vietnamese and the VC had been using Cambodia as a springboard for troops, weapons, and supplies. On April 29, 1970, President Nixon widened the war when he ordered American forces to join with the South Vietnamese in cleaning out the enemy in officially neutral Cambodia. The United States fell into turmoil as protests turned violent. Nixon withdrew the troops from Cambodia on June 29, 1970, although the bitterness between the "hawks" and the "doves" increased.
• In 1971, the 26th Amendment was passed, lowering the voting age to 18.
• In the spring of 1971, mass rallies and marches erupted again all over the country as antiwar sentiment grew.
Nixon's Détente with Beijing (Peking) and Moscow
• The two great communist powers, the Soviet Union and China, were clashing bitterly over their rival interpretations of Marxism. Nixon perceived that the Chinese-Soviet tension gave the United States an opportunity to play off one antagonist against the other and to enlist the aid of both in pressuring North Vietnam into peace.
• Dr. Henry A. Kissinger reinforced Nixon's thinking. In 1969, Kissinger had begun meeting secretly with North Vietnamese officials in Paris to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam.
• In 1972, Nixon made a visit to China and paved the way for improved relations between the United States and Beijing. In May 1972, Nixon traveled to Moscow, which was ready to deal. Nixon's visits ushered in an era of détente, or relaxed tensions between the Soviet Union and China. The great grain deal of 1972 was a 3-year arrangement by which the United States agreed to sell the Soviets at least $750 million worth of wheat, corn, and other cereals.
• More important steps were taken to stem the dangerous race of nuclear arms. The first major achievement, an anti-ballistic missile (AMB) treaty, limited the U.S. and the Soviet Union to two clusters of defensive missiles. The second significant pact, known as SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), froze the numbers of long-range nuclear missiles for 5 years.
A New Team on the Supreme Bench
• Earl Warren was appointed as a Justice to the Supreme Court, making many controversial rulings-
• Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) struck down a state law that banned the use of contraceptives, even by married couples, creating a "right to privacy."
• Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) ruled that all criminals were entitled to legal counsel, even if they were unable to afford it.
• Escobedo (1964) and Miranda (1966) ruled that those who were arrested had to the "right to remain silent."
• Engel v. Vitale (1962) and School District of Abington Township vs. Schempp (1963) led to the Supreme Court ruling against required prayers and having the Bible in public schools, basing the judgment on the First Amendment, which separated church and state.
• Reynolds vs. Sims (1964) ruled that the state legislatures would be required to be reapportioned according to population.
• In an attempt to end the liberal rulings, President Nixon set Warren E. Burger to replace the retiring Earl Warren in 1969. With this a success, the Supreme Court had four new Nixon-appointed members by the end of 1971.
Nixon on the Home Front
• Nixon expanded the Great Society programs by increasing funding for Medicare, Medicaid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). He also created the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), giving benefits to the poor aged, blind, and disabled.
• Nixon's Philadelphia Plan of 1969 required construction-trade unions working on the federal pay roll to establish "goals and timetables" for black employees. This plan changed the definition of "affirmative action" to include preferable treatment on groups, not individuals; the Supreme Court's ruling on Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) upheld this. Whites protested to this decision, calling it "reverse discrimination."
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OHSA) were created.
• In 1962, Rachel Carson boosted the environmental movement with her book Silent Spring, which exposed the disastrous effects of pesticides. By 1950, Los Angeles had an Air Pollution Control Office.
• The Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 both aimed at protecting and preserving the environment.
• Worried about inflation, Nixon imposed a 90-day wage freeze and then took the nation off the gold standard, thus ending the "Bretton Woods" system of international currency stabilization, which had functioned for more than a quarter of a century after WWII.
The Nixon Landslide of 1972
• In the spring of 1972, the North Vietnamese burst through the demilitarized zone separating the two Vietnams. Nixon ordered massive bombing attacks on strategic centers, halting the North Vietnamese offensive.
• Senator George McGovern won the 1972 Democratic nomination. He based his campaign on pulling out of Vietnam in 90 days. President Nixon, though, won the election of 1972 in a landslide.
Bombing North Vietnam to the Peace Table
• Nixon launched the heaviest assault of the war when he ordered a two-week bombing of North Vietnam in an attempt to force the North Vietnamese to the conference table. It worked and on January 23, 1973, North Vietnamese negotiators agreed to a cease-fire agreement. The shaky "peace" was in reality little more than a thinly disguised American retreat.
Watergate Woes
• On June 17, 1972, five men working for the Republican Committee for the Re-election of the President were caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel and bugging rooms.
• Following was a great scandal in which many prominent members of the president's administration resigned. Lengthy hearings proceeded, headed by Senator Sam Erving. John Dean III testified of all the corruption, illegal activities, and scandal.
The Great Tape Controversy
• When conversations involving the Watergate scandal were discovered on tapes, President Nixon quickly refused to hand them over to Congress, despite denying any participation in the scandal. In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign due to tax evasion. In accordance with the newly-passed 25th Amendment (1967), Nixon submitted to Congress, for approval as the new vice president, Gerald Ford.
• On October 20, 1973 ("Saturday Night Massacre"), Archibald Cox, the prosecutor of the Watergate scandal case who had issued a subpoena of the tapes, was fired. Both the attorney general and deputy general resigned because they, themselves did not want to fire Cox.
The Secret Bombing of Cambodia and the War Powers Act
• Despite federal assurances to the American public that Cambodia's neutrality was being respected, it was discovered that secret bombing raids on North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia had taken place since March of 1969; this caused the public to question trust of the government. Nixon ended the bombing in June 1973.
• However, Cambodia was soon taken over by the cruel dictator Pol Pot, who later committed genocide of over 2 million people over a span of a few years.
• In November 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, requiring the president to report all commitments of U.S. troops to foreign exchanges within 48 hours. A new feeling of "New Isolationism" that discouraged U.S. troops in other countries began to take hold, yet Nixon stood strong.
The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis
• Following U.S. support of Israel during Israel's war against Syria and Egypt to regain territory lost during the Six-Day War, the Arab nations imposed an oil embargo, strictly limiting oil in the United States. A speed limit of 55 MPH was imposed, the oil pipeline in Alaska was approved in 1974 despite environmentalists' cries, and other forms of energy were researched.
• OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) lifted the embargo in 1974, yet it then quadrupled the price of oil.
The Unmaking of a President
• On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that President Nixon had to submit all tapes to Congress. Late in July 1974, the House approved its first article of impeachment for obstruction of justice. On August 5, 1974, Nixon released the three tapes that held the most damaging information-the same three tapes that had been "missing." On August 8 of the same year, Nixon resigned, realizing that he would be convicted if impeached, and with resignation, he could at least keep the privileges of a president.
The First Unelected President
• Gerald Ford became the first unelected president; his name had been submitted by Nixon as a vice-presidential candidate. All other previous vice presidents that had ascended to presidency had at least been supported as running mates of the president that had been elected.
• President Ford's popularity and respect sank when he issued a full pardon of Nixon, thus setting off accusations of a "buddy deal."
• In July 1975, Ford signed the Helsinki accords, which recognized Soviet boundaries and helped to ease tensions between the two nations.
Defeat in Vietnam
• Early in 1975, the North Vietnamese made their full invasion of South Vietnam. President Ford request aid for South Vietnam, but was rejected by Congress. South Vietnam quickly fell. The last of Americans were evacuated on April 29, 1975.
• The United States had fought the North Vietnamese to a standstill and had then withdrawn its troops in 1973, leaving the South Vietnamese to fight their own war. The estimated cost to America was $188 billion, with 56,000 dead and 300,000 wounded. America had lost more than a war; it had lost face in the eyes of foreigners, lost its own self-esteem, lost confidence in its military power, and lost much of the economic strength that had made possible its global leadership after WWII.
The Bicentennial Campaign and the Carter Victory
• In the election of 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter beat Republican Gerald Ford to win the presidency. Carter promised to never lie to the American public.
• In 1978, President Carter convinced Congress to pass an $18 billion tax cut. Despite this, the economy continued to tumble.
• Although early in his presidency he was relatively popular, the popularity of President Carter soon dropped as world events took a turn for the worse.
Carter's Humanitarian Diplomacy
• Carter championed for human rights, and in Rhodesia (known today as Zimbabwe) and South Africa, he championed for black rights.
• On September 17, 1978, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel signed peace accords at Camp David. Mediated by Carter after relations had strained, this was a great success. Israel agreed to withdraw from territory gained in the 1967 war as long as Egypt respected Israel's territories.
• In Africa, though, many communist revolutions were taking place; although not all were successful, the revolutions did cause disheartenment and spread fear.
• President Carter pledged to return the Panama Canal to Panama by the year 2000 and resume full diplomatic relations with China in 1979.
Carter Tackles the Ailing Economy
• Inflation had been steadily rising, and by 1979, it was at 13%. Americans learned that they could no longer hide behind their ocean moats and live happily.
• Carter diagnosed America's problems as stemming primarily from the nation's costly dependence on foreign oil. He called for legislation to improve energy conservation, without much public support.
Carter's Energy Woes
• In 1979, Iran's shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who had been installed by America in 1953 and had ruled Iran as a dictator, was overthrown and succeeded by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
• Iranian fundamentalists were very opposed Western customs, and because of this, Iran stopped exporting oil; OPEC also raised oil prices, thus causing another oil crisis.
• In July 1979, Carter retreated to Camp David and met with hundreds of advisors to contemplate a solution to America's problems. On July 15, 1979, Carter chastised the American people for their obsession of material woes ("If it's cold, turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater."), stunning the nation. A few days later, he fired four cabinet secretaries and tightened the circle around his advisors.
Foreign Affairs and the Iranian Imbroglio
• In 1979, Carter signed the SALT II agreements with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, but the U.S. senate refused to ratify it.
• On November 4, 1979, a group of anti-American Muslim militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostages, demanding that the U.S. return the exiled shah who had arrived in the U.S. two weeks earlier for cancer treatments.
• On December 27, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which ended up turning into the Soviet Union's own Vietnam. Because of the invasion of Afghanistan however, the Soviet Union posed a threat to America's precious oil supplies. President Carter placed an embargo on the Soviet Union and boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow. He also proposed a "Rapid Deployment Force" that could quickly respond to crises anywhere in the world.
The Iranian Hostage Humiliation
• During the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the American hostages languished in cruel captivity while news reports showed images of Iranian mobs burning the American flag and spitting on effigies of Uncle Sam. Carter first tried economic sanctions to force the release of the hostages, but this failed. He then tried a commando rescue mission, but that had to be aborted. When two military aircraft collided, eight of the would-be rescuers were killed.
• The stalemate hostage situation dragged on for most of Carter's term, and the hostages were never released until January 20, 1981-the inauguration day of Ronald Reagan.
Chapter 41
The Resurgence of Conservatism
1980-2000
The Triumph of Conservatism
• President Jimmy Carter's administration appeared to be stumped and faltering when it was unable to control the rampant inflation or handle foreign affairs. It also refused to remove hampering regulatory controls from major industries such as airlines.
• Late in 1979, Edward Kennedy ("Ted") declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the election of 1980. His popularity sputtered and died when the suspicious 1969 accident in which a young female passenger drowned arose.
• As the Democrats ducked out, the Republicans, realizing that the average American was older and more mature than during the stormy sixties and was therefore more likely to favor the right, chose conservative and former actor Ronald Reagan, signaling the return of conservatism. New groups that later spearheaded the "new right" movement included Moral Majority and other conservative Christian groups.
• In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in Milliken v. Bradley that desegregation plans could not require students to move across school-district lines. This reinforced the "white flight" that pitted the poorest whites and blacks against each other, often with explosively violent results.
• Affirmative action was another burning issue, but some whites used this to argue "reverse discrimination." In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in University of California v. Bakke that Allan Bakke had not been admitted into U.C. because the university preferred minority races only; the Court ordered the college to admit Bakke. The Supreme Court's only black justice, Thurgood Marshall, warned that the denial of racial preferences might sweep away the progress gained by the civil rights movement.
The Election of Ronald Reagan, 1980
• Ronald Reagan backed a political philosophy that condemned federal intervention in local affairs, favoritism for minorities, and the elitism of arrogant bureaucrats. He drew on the ideas of the "neoconservatives"-supporting free-market capitalism, questioning liberal welfare programs and affirmative-action policies, and calling for reassertion of traditional values of individualism and the centrality of family.
• Ronald Reagan won the election of 1980, beating Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
The Regan Revolution
• The Iranian's released the hostages on Reagan's Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity.
• Reagan assembled a conservative cabinet when he took office. Much to the dismay of environmentalists, James Watt became the secretary of the interior.
• A major goal of Reagan was to reduce the size of the government by shrinking the federal budget and cutting taxes. He proposed a new federal budget that called for cuts of $35 billion, mostly in social programs like food stamps and federally-funded job-training centers. On March 6, 1981, Reagan was shot. 12 days later, Reagan recovered and returned to work.
The Battle of the Budget
• The second part of Reagan's economic program called for tremendous tax cuts, amounting to 25% across-the-board reductions over a period of 3 years. In August 1981, Congress approved a set of tax reforms that lowered individual tax rates, reduced federal estate taxes, and created new tax-free saving plans for small investors. With the combination of budgetary discipline and tax reduction, the "supply-side" economics would stimulate new investment, boost productivity, promote dramatic economic growth, and reduce the federal deficit.
The economy slipped into its deepest recession since the 1930s as unemployment rose and banks closed. The anti-inflationary polices that caused the recession of 1982 had actually been initiated by the Federal Reserve Board in 1979, during Carter's presidency.
• For the first time in the 20th century, income gaps widened between the rich and the poor. Some economists located the sources of the economic upturn in the massive military expenditures. Reagan gave the Pentagon nearly $2 trillion in the 1980s. He plunged the government into major deficit that made the New Deal look cheap.
Reagan Renews the Cold War
• Reagan's strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union was simple: by enormously expanding U.S. military capabilities, he could threaten the Soviets with an expensive new round in the arms race. The American economy could better bear this new financial burden than could the Soviet system. In March 1983, Reagan announced his intention to pursue a high-technology missile-defense system called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars. The plan called for orbiting battle satellites in space that could fire laser beams to vaporize intercontinental missile on liftoff.
• In 1983, a Korean passenger airliner was shot down when it flew into Soviet airspace. By the end of 1983, all arms-control negotiations were broken, and the Cold War was intensified.
Troubles Abroad
• In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, seeking to destroy the guerrilla bases from which Palestinian fighters attacked Israel. Reagan sent peacekeeping troops, but after a suicide bomber killed 200 marines, he withdrew the force. In 1979, Reagan sent "military advisors" to El Salvador to prop up the pro-American government. In October 1983, he dispatched a heavy-fire-power invasion force to the island of Grenada, where a military coup had killed the prime minister and broth Marxists to power. Overrunning the island and ousting the insurgents, American troops demonstrated Reagan's determination to assert the dominance of the United States in the Caribbean.
Round Two for Reagan
• Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly won the election of 1984, beating Democrat Walter Mondale and his woman vice presidential nominee, Geraldine Ferraro.
• Foreign policy issues dominated Reagan's second term. Mikhail Gorbachev became the chairman of the Soviet Communist party in March 1985. Committed to radical reforms in the Soviet Union, he announced two policies, Glasnost and Perestroika, aimed at ventilating the Soviet society by introducing free speech and a measure of liberty, and reviving the Soviet economy by adopting many of the free-market practices, respectively. The two policies required the Soviet Union to reduce the size of its military and concentrate aid on the citizens. This necessitated an end to the Cold War. In December 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the IFN treaty, banning all intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. The two leaders capped their friendship in May 1988 at a final summit in Moscow.
The Iran-Contra Imbroglio
• Two foreign policy problems arose to Reagan: the continuing captivity of a number of American hostages seized by Muslim extremist groups in battered Lebanon; and the continuing grip on power of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Money from the payment for arms to the Iranians was secretly diverted to the contras, who fought the Sandinista government, although it violated a congressional ban on military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. In November 1986, news of the secret dealings broke and ignited a firestorm of controversy. Reagan claimed he had no idea of the illicit activities. Criminal indictments were brought against Oliver North, Admiral John Poindexter, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. The Iran-contra affair cast a shadow over the Reagan record in foreign policy, tending to obscure the president's achievements in establishing a new relationship with the Soviets.
Reagan's Economic Legacy
• Ronald Reagan had taken office vowing to stimulate the American economy by rolling back government regulations, lowering taxes, and balancing the budget. Supply-side economic theory had promised that lower taxes would actually increase government revenue because they would stimulate the economy as a whole. The combination of tax reduction and huge increases in military spending caused $200 billion in annual deficits. The large deficits of the Reagan years assuredly constituted a great economic failure. By appearing to make new social spending both practically and politically impossible for the foreseeable future, though, the economic deficits served their purpose. They achieved Reagan's highest political objective: the containment of the welfare state.
• In the early 1990s, median household income actually declined.
The Religious Right
• In 1979, Reverend Jerry Falwell founded a political organization called the Moral Majority. He preached with great success against sexual permissiveness, abortion, feminism, and the spread of gay rights. Collecting millions of dollars and members, the organization became an aggressive political advocate of conservative causes.
Conservatism in the Courts
• The Supreme Court had become Reagan's principal instrument in the "cultural wars." By the time he had left office, Reagan had appointed 3 conservative-minded judges, including Sandra Day O'Connor, the first women to become a Supreme Court Justice. Reaganism rejected two icons of the liberal political culture: affirmative action and abortion.
• Affirmative Action - In two cases in 1989 (Ward's Cove Packing v. Antonia and Martin v. Wilks), the Court made it more difficult to prove that an employer practiced racial discrimination in hiring.
• Abortion - In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Court had prohibited states from making laws that interfered with a woman's right to an abortion during the early months of pregnancy. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), the Supreme Court approved a Missouri law that imposed certain restrictions on abortion, signaling that a state could legislate in an area in which Roe had previously forbidden them to legislate. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Court ruled that states could restrict access to abortion as long they did not place an "undue burden" on the woman.
Referendum on Reagansim in 1988
• Corruption in the government gave Democrats political opportunities. Signs of economic trouble seemed to open more political opportunities for Democrats as the "twin towers" of deficits-the federal budget deficit and international trade deficit-continued to mount. On "Black Monday," October 19, 1987, the stock market plunged 508 points-the largest one-day decline in history.
• The Republicans nominated George Bush for the election of 1988. Black candidate Jesse Jackson, a rousing speech-maker who hoped to forge a "rainbow collation" of minorities and the disadvantaged, campaigned energetically, but the Democrats chose Michael Dukakis. Despite Reagan's recent problems in office, George Bush won the election.
George Bush and the End of the Cold War
• After receiving an education at Yale and serving in World War II, George Bush had gained a fortune in the oil business in Texas. He left the business, though, to serve in public service. He served as a congressman and then held various posts in several Republican administrations, including ambassador to China, ambassador to the United Nations, director of the CIA, and vice president.
• In 1989, thousands of prodemocracy demonstrators protested in Tiananmen Square in China. In June of that year, China's autocratic rulers grew angry and brutally crushed the movement. Tanks and machine gunners killed hundreds of protestors. World opinion condemned the bloody suppression of the prodemocracy demonstrators.
• In early 1989, the Solidarity movement in Poland toppled the communist regime. Communist regimes also collapsed in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Romania. In December 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and the two Germanies were reunited in October 1990.
• In August 1991, a military coup attempted to preserve the communist system by trying to dislodge Gorbachev from power. With support of Boris Yelstin, the president of the Russian Republic (one of the several republics that composed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR), Gorbachev foiled the plotters. In December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. He had become a leader without a country as the Soviet Union dissolved into its component parts, 15 republics loosely confederated in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with Russia the most powerful state and Yelstin the dominant leader. The demise of the Soviet Union finished to the Cold War.
• Throughout the former Soviet Union, waves of nationalistic fervor and long-suppressed ethnic and racial hatreds were exposed. In 1991, the Chechnyan minority tried to declare its independence from Russia. Boris Yelstin was forced to send in Russian troops. Ethnic warfare in other communist countries was took place as vicious "ethnic cleaning" campaigns against minorities arose. Western Europe was now threatened by the social and economic weakness of the former communist lands.
• Now that the Soviet Union had dissolved and there was no longer a Cold War, America's economy suffered. During the Cold War, the U.S. economy had been dependent upon defense spending.
• In 1990, the white regime in South Africa freed African leader Nelson Mandela, who had served 27 years in prison for conspiring for overthrow the government. Four years later, he was elected as South Africa's president. In 1990, free elections removed the leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua from power. In 1992, peace came to El Salvador.
The Persian Gulf Crisis
• On August 2, 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, seeking oil. The United Nations Security Council condemned the invasion and on August 3, demanded the immediate withdrawal of Iraq's troops. After Hussein refused to comply by the mandatory date of January 15, 1991, the United States spearheaded a massive international military deployment, sending 539,000 troops to the Persian Gulf region.
Fighting "Operation Desert Storm"
• On January 16, 1991, the U.S. and the U.N. launched a 37-day air war against Iraq. Allied commander, American general Norman Schwarzkopf, planned to soften the Iraqis with relentless bombing and then send in waves of ground troops and armor. On February 23, the land war, "Operation Desert Storm," began. Lasting only 4 days, Saddam Hussein was forced to sign a cease-fire on February 27. The war had failed to dislodge Saddam Hussein from power.
Bush on the Home Front
• President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, prohibiting discrimination against citizens with physical or mental disabilities. In 1992, he signed a major water projects bill that reformed the distribution of subsidized federal water in the West. In 1990, Bush's Department of Education challenged the legality of college scholarships targeted for racial minorities.
• In 1991, Bush nominated conservative African American Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Thomas's nomination was approved by the Senate despite accusations from Anita Hill that Thomas had sexually harassed her.
• By 1992, the unemployment rate had exceeded 7%, and the federal budget deficit continued to grow.
Bill Clinton: The First Baby-Boomer President
• For the election of 1992, the Democrats chose Bill Clinton as their candidate (despite accusations of womanizing and draft evasion) and Albert Gore, Jr. as his running mate. The Democrats tried a new approach, promoting growth, strong defense, and anticrime policies, while campaigning to stimulate the economy.
• The Republicans dwelled on "family values" and selected Bush for the presidency and J. Danforth Quayle for the vice presidency.
• Third party candidate, Ross Perot entered the race and ended up winning 19,237,247 votes, although he won no Electoral votes.
• Clinton won the election of 1992, by a count of 370 to 168 in the Electoral College. Along with the presidency, Democrats also gained control of both the House and the Senate.
• Presidency Clinton placed in Congress and his presidential cabinet minorities and more women, including the first female attorney general, Janet Reno, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court
A False Start for Reform
• Upon entering office, Clinton called for accepting homosexuals in the armed forces, but he had to settle for a "don't ask, don't tell" policy that unofficially accepted gays and lesbians.
• Clinton appointed his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to revamp the nation's health and medical care system. When the plan was revealed in October 1993, critics blasted it as cumbersome, confusing, and stupid. The previous image of Hillary as an equal political partner of her husband changed to a liability.
• In 1993, Clinton passed the Brady Bill, a gun-control law named after presidential aide James Brady, who had been wounded in President Reagan's attempted assassination.
• By 1996, Clinton had shrunk the federal deficit to its lowest levels in ten years.
• In July 1994, Clinton convinced Congress to pass a $30 billion anticrime bill.
• On February 26, 1993, a radical Muslim group bombed the World Trade Center in New York, killing six people. On April 19, 1993, a fiery standoff at Waco, Texas between the government and the Branch Davidian cult took place; it ended in a huge fire that killed 82 people. On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma, killing 169 people. By the time all these events had taken place, few Americans trusted the government.
The Politics of Distrust
• In 1994, Newt Gingrich led Republicans on a sweeping attack of Clinton's liberal failures with a conservative "Contract with America." That year, Republicans won eight more seats in the Senate and 53 more seats in the House, where Gingrich became the new Speaker of the House.
• The Republicans, however, went too far, imposing federal laws that put new obligations on state and local governments without providing new revenues.
• Clinton tried to fight back, but the American public gradually grew tired of Republican conservatism; Gingrich's suggestion of sending children of welfare families to orphanages, and the 1995 shut down of Congress due to a lack of a sufficient budget package aided to this public disliking.
• In the election of 1996, Clinton beat Republican Bob Dole. Ross Perot, the third party candidate, again finished third.
Problems Abroad
• Clinton sent troops to Somalia, but eventually withdrew them. He also got involved with the conflicts in Northern Ireland, but to no positive effect. Before serving as presidency, Clinton denounced China's abuses of human rights and threatened to punish China. However, as president, Clinton discovered that trade with China was far too important to "waste" over human rights.
• Clinton committed American troops to NATO to keep the peace in the former Yugoslavia and sent 20,000 troops to return Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti. He fully supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that made a free-trade zone surrounding Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. He then helped to form the World Trade Organization, the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). He also provided $20 billion to Mexico in 1995 to help its faltering economy.
• Clinton presided over the 1993 reconciliation meeting between Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Yasir Arafat at the White House. Two years later, though, Rabin was assassinated, ending hopes for peace in the Middle East.
A Sea of Troubles
• The end of the Cold War left the U.S. probing for a diplomatic formula to replace anti-Communism, revealing misconduct by the CIA and the FBI.
• Political reporter Joe Klein wrote Primary Colors, mirroring some of Clinton's personal life/womanizing. Clinton ran into trouble with his failed real estate investment in the Whitewater Land Corporation.
• In 1993, White House councilman, Vincent Foster, Jr. apparently committed suicide, perhaps overstressed at having to (possibly immorally) manage Clinton's legal and financial affairs.
• As Clinton began his second term, the first by a Democratic president since FDR, there were Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.
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