Transcript Course Overview – Aftermath of WWII – Cold War

The Superpower Stories
The USA after 1945
[email protected]
prac.us.edu.pl/~marcin.sarnek
Office Hours: THU. 1315 – 1445 / MON. 0945 – 1115, by appointment
US History After1945
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In this course you will learn
 About
the history of the USA after 1945
 The major issues, directions and problems of the
American post-WWII foreign policy
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How are we going to do this?
 Historical
events and processes are understood as / are
enriched by / are framed within / become narratives.
 Those narratives shape identities.
 We will look at some of these narratives to not only
understand the historical processes theselves, but also
see how they shape our understanding of the world.
 Such narratives often originate from or become equal
to myths.
What kind of myths? What kind of
stories?
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Events, when put in a sequence, automatically create
structures / plots / stories.
Example: JFK assassination and other events that
are central to conpiracty theories
 This
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will be discussed further
Rhetoric powers of historical narratives are much
stronger than we are willing to accept
 specifically,
the rethoric power of enthymemes.
 Contextualization
 Edition and ommission – and enthymemes
 Does all that conclude in layering of paranoid claims?
Enthymeme
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Syllogism
 Major
premise (All humans are mortal.)
 Minor premise (Socrates is a human being.)
 Conlusion (Socrates is mortal.)
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Truncated syllogism (Socrates is human so he is mortal.)
Syllogism based on signs (Socrates sneezed, so he has a
cold)
Syllogism in which the audience fills in the premise
(Socrates is a politician, so he lies)
Visual enthymeme (all advertisment, really, also think
about political magazine covers) / Barthes - mythology
Enthymeme and rhetoric persuasion
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’’Historical policy”
’’We must use the right narrative”
edition
juxtaposition
hence, production of enthymemes
digression 1
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Manhattan Project
Potsdam ultimatum
bombing of Hiroshima
(August 6, 1945)
 "Litle Boy" kills approx.
140.000, mostly civilians
bombing of Nagasaki
(August 9, 1945)
 "Fat Man" kills approx.
80.000, mostly civilians
August 15, 1945 – Japan
announces surrender (V-J
Day)
September 2, 1945 –
Surrender signed
A-Bomb controversies
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Did the bombings help end the war
sooner?
prevent invasion of Japan?
 massive losses anticipated
save lives?
 100.000 POWs, Japanese civilians,
American soldiers
yet: were they war-crimes?
were they militarily unnecessary?
were they acts of state-terror?
atomic logic – new strategic questions
 why was terror chosen over
intimidation?
 why was Nagasaki attacked?
 what would happen should
American intelligence concerning
the Japanese nuclear program fail?
started the nuclear era
intimidated the Soviets
secured the position of the USA as the
superpower
worst American publicity move to date
Aftermath of the WWII
Aftermath of the WWII
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50.000.000 – 70.000.000 people dead
Europe in ruins
Germany occupied and later divided
Japan humiliated and occupied
revisions of borders
population relocations – repatriations and expulsions
decolonisation
emergence of the UN
emergence of two superpowers – a bipolar world
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Soviet Bloc
technological advancements
The Holocaust
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more than a third of the Jewish global population
and over two thirds of the European Jewish
population perished – estimated nearly or over
6.000.000 people
Aftermath of the WW II – American
Perspective
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420.000 deaths (out of approx. 16.000.000 military
personnel)
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Consider the expansion of the American military: 1939 –
137.000 in the military
nuclear superpower
Marshall plan
period of wealth and economic stability followed
The home front / role of women
G. I. Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act )
The Good War / The Good War
Myth
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Changed how Americans perceived their role in the
world (how?)
’’The Great Crusade” (Eisenhower)
WWII was not won by Americans alone (yet the
American culture created and promoted such myth)
WWII established the model for the Good vs Evil
war rhetoric
’’The Greatest Generation” (Tom Brokaw)
Cold War
Cold War
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containment of Communism
 Operation
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Unthinkable
proxy wars
arms race
 space
exploration
 race to the Moon
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deterrence
 MAD
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detente
The Big Three Conferences
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Tehran
Yalta
Potsdam
American nuclear program
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Manhattan Project
Hiroshima, Nagasaki –
August 1945
Occupation of Germany
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Four zones of occupation
 American Zone
 British Zone
 Bizone
 French Zone
 Trizone
 Soviet Zone
Emergence of two
German states
Berlin
1948 – Berlin blockade
 Berlin airlift
1949 – East Germany
(GDR), Federal Republic
of Germany (FRG)
Iron Curtain
1946 – Winston Churchill
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in
the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has
descended across the Continent.
Behind that line lie all the capitals of
the ancient states of Central and
Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin,
Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade,
Bucharest and Sofia; all these
famous cities and the populations
around them lie in what I must call
the Soviet sphere, and all are
subject, in one form or another, not
only to Soviet influence but to a very
high and in some cases increasing
measure of control from Moscow.
1947 – Red Scare begins
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Sen. Joseph McCarthy
McCarthyism
anti-communist witch-hunt
House Committee on UnAmerican Activities
Loyalty programs
Blacklists
1947 – Truman Doctrine
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Greek civil war (1946 – 49)
Communist
"Domino effect"
1954 – Domino Theory
policy of containment
1948 - Marshall Plan
NATO vs the Warsaw Pact
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1949 – NATO
1955 – Warsaw Pact
Soviet nuclear program
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1949 – first successful Soviet A-Bomb
1949 – Mao Zedong proclaims People's
Republic of China
MAD
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Mutual Assured Destruction
 American theory of deterrence
 Probability of the enemy first strike limited due to
the second strike capability
 Second strike capabilities reassured by the
nuclear arsenals build-up
 MAD doctrine speeded up the arms race
American and Soviet nuclear potentials
 EXAMPLE: 14 Trident class Submarines (Ohio
Class Submarine)
 24 Trident missiles each
 8 warheads 475Kt each (fat man dropped on
Hiroshima - between 13 and 18 Kt). In
comparison – the largest nuclear weapon ever
produced: 25MT B41 (500 of these were
produced…)
 (potentially 12 warheads, yet treaties reduce the
number to 8).
Korean War (1950 – 1952 (present))
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Japanese rule in Korea
During WW II – communist and nationalist factions
fight the Japanese in different regions of the
country and of the world
At the end of WW II Soviets occupy the north of
Korea
Potsdam conference (1945) – Korea divided
North Korea 
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South Korea
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cupported by China and the Soviet Union
supported by UN forces
No Gun Ri Massacre (26–29 July 1950)
Bodo League
38th parallel – DMZ
no peace treaty
Hungarian Revolution of 1956
1961 – Berlin Wall
Kennedy delivers Ich bin ein Berliner speech in Berlin, June 26, 1963
Cuba
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Fidel Castro
1958- 59 - Cuban
revolution
American plots to
assassinate Castro
1961 - Bay of Pigs
invasion
1962 - Cuban
Missile Crisis
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis
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Soviet nuclear missiles and
installations discovered in
Cuba by American
intelligence
Blockade of Cuba
(quarantine)
deals with Khrushchev
John F. Kennedy Address on the Buildup of Arms
in Cuba
Quarantine begins 23. Oct 2963
Adlai Stevenson shows the intelligence photographs to the UN Security
Council , Oct. 25, 1962
Secret deals with Khrushchev
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missiles removed from
Cuba in exchange of
the American promise
nto to ever invade
Cuba
American missiles
secretely removed from
Turkey within 6 months
hotline agreement
JFK Assassination, Nov. 22, 1963
Vietnam War
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Ho Chi Minh
Japanese occupation of Vietnam in WW II
Vietminh
1945 – Democratic Republic of Vietnam
1946 - The Indochina War
Treaty of Geneva
 Vietnam divided
 North – communist
 South – prime minister Van Diem
1960 - Vietcong
1964 – Gulf of Tonkin incident
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
1968 – full fledged escalation
photo by Malcolm Browne, Wide World Photos, Inc.
Thich Quang Duc commits self-immolation in Saigon on
June 11, 1963.
Photo taken by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on
March 16, 1968 in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre
Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Minh officer February 1, 1968. This
Associated Press photograph won a 1969 Pulitzer prize for the photographer
Eddie Adams.
June 8, 1972.Kim Phuc Phan Thi, center, running down a road near Trang Bang,
Vietnam, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village of Trang Bang
suspected by US Army forces of being a Viet Cong stronghold. Photographer:
Huynh Cong Ut (also known as Nick Ut). The image won the Pulitzer Prize for
spot news.
1968 – Invasion of Czechoslovakia
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Prague Spring
Richard Nixon presidency
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China
Vietnam
Watergate
Ronald Reagan presidency
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Reaganomics
George Bush presidency
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end of the Cold War