Transcript Chapter 27 Chills and Fever During the Cold War, 1945-1960

Chapter 27
Chills and Fever
During the Cold War,
1945-1960
The American People, 5th ed.
I. Origins of the Cold War
The American Stance/
Soviet Aims
 The United States emerged from World
War II more powerful than any other
nation and it sought to use that power in
the creation of a world order based on
the ideals of democracy
 Soviet aims included rebuilding after the
ravages of war, and a restructuring of her
borders to prevent a repeat German
invasion
Early Cold War Leadership
 Eisenhower saw Communism as a
overreaching world force bent on
domination through subversive activity
 Joseph Stalin, the soviet Leader,
possessed almost unlimited power and
answered to no one
 Americans distrusted Soviet political aims
and generally equated Communism with
the Nazi state
II.
Containing the
Soviet Union
Containment Defined
 George Kennan is generally credited with
defining Americas response to the
aggressiveness of the Soviet Union
 Containment theory taught that the Soviets
would never turn from their plans of world
domination unless hindered by force at every
turn
 Containment created the need for America to
assist any country that was perceived to be
falling under the influence of the Soviets
The Truman Doctrine
 “I believe that it must be the policy of the
United States to support free peoples
who are resisting subjugation by armed
minorities or by outside pressures.”
--Harry Truman
The Next Steps
 The Marshall Plan: rebuilding the
devastations of war-torn Europe with
massive American aid
 NATO: North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, a twelve-member alliance
that vowed that an attack on one nationmember would be an attack on all
III. Containment in Asia
and the Middle East
Asia
 Internal conflict in China produced a
revolution to Communism that the U.S. was in
no position to stifle
 War on the Korean peninsula produced a
stalemate between a communist North and a
democratic South that exists to this day
 Vietnam, an American conflict inherited from
the French, closely resembled the problems of
Korea with one exception: communism won
The Middle East
 The state of Israel, created by the
United Nations as a homeland for the
Diaspora Jews of the Holocaust,
unfortunately displaced thousands of
Palestinian Arabs from their traditional
lands along the Mediterranean
 This action solidified Arab hatred of the
western sponsors of Israel and put in
motion a series of war and death that
survives to this day
IV. The Cold War
at Home
Truman’s Loyalty Program
 Truman, worried about the influence of
communism within the borders of the
U.S., created the Employee Loyalty
Program in 1947
 Although only dismissing several
hundred employees overall, Truman’s
program set a precedent for government
review of who could be considered a
threat due to a belief system
Joe McCarthy
 The key anti-Communist Senator of the
1950s
 Virtually unknown beforehand, he make
a reputation uncovering Communist
plots and targeting anyone outside his
narrow version of “American”
 General public alarm over the evils of
Communism allowed McCarthy the
latitude to destroy many reputations
needlessly