Transcript File - AP United States History

Chapter 23
The United States and the Cold
War, 1945–1953
Origins of the Cold War
•
After World War II, the United States possessed enormous industrial capacity, the largest navy and air
force (the army was demobilized). and the only atomic bomb in the world. This made it the most powerful
nation on earth. Roosevelt had wanted to avoid a return to the isolationism of the post–World War I era
and believed the United States should lead efforts to establish cooperation, democracy, and prosperity
across the globe, in part through new institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations. U.S. leaders
believed that America’s security depended on stability in Europe and Asia and that American prosperity
required the rebuilding of economies worldwide. The chief obstacle to American leaders’ visions for the
postwar world seemed to be the Soviet Union, whose victorious military occupied much of eastern Europe
and eastern Germany. The Soviet Union’s triumph over Germany and its claim that communism
modernized Russia appealed to colonized peoples who desired national independence, and like the United
States, the USSR intended to reshape the world in its own image. Though Americans knew the Soviet
military was too weak to directly threaten the United States, they accurately recognized Soviet intentions
to dominate eastern Europe.
•
The wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union was formed only to defeat Hitler.
Clashes between American and Soviet interests and values were bound to resurface after the war. The
Cold War’s first event occurred in the Middle East, where Soviet troops occupied parts of northern Iran in
with rich oil fields. Pressured by Britain and the United States, the Soviets withdrew troops from Iran but
simultaneously installed pro-communist governments in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, a move they
compared to U.S. domination in Latin America. To many Americans, Stalin seemed to violate his promise at
Yalta for free elections in Poland. Soon thereafter, U.S. diplomat George Kennan, in his famous Long
Telegram, told the Truman administration that communist ideology made the Soviet government
inherently and permanently aggressive. Only America, he wrote, could prevent the extension of Soviet
communist rule in the world. This was the basis for the policy of “containment,” in which the United States
aimed to check all Soviet attempts to expand its power in the world.
Origins of the Cold War
•
In a speech in Missouri, former British prime minister Winston Churchill declared that an “iron curtain”
had fallen over Europe, dividing the free West from the communist East. This reinforced emerging beliefs
that a long-term struggle between the United States and the Soviets was at hand. In March 1947, Truman
announced that the United States was now engaged in a global conflict with the Soviet Union. This new
policy came to be called the Truman Doctrine.
•
When he became FDR’s vice-president in 1944, Truman was an obscure senator from Missouri with little
foreign policy experience, and as president he soon faced daunting foreign policy challenges. He did not
trust Stalin and believed the United States had to assume world leadership. Truman decided to embrace
containment when Britain signaled it could no longer afford military aid to Greece, where a monarchy
faced a communist-led revolt, and to Turkey, where the Soviets wanted joint control of the crucial straits
linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Britain asked America to step in. Though unrest in Greece
and Turkey was mostly homegrown and incited by corrupt and undemocratic governments, these states
were strategically important as doors to southern Europe and the oil-rich Middle East.
•
To win Congress’s support for containment, Truman was told to frighten the American populace, and he
repeatedly invoked the nation’s responsibility to defend freedom at home and abroad. Truman’s rhetoric
laid the framework for how Americans viewed the postwar world, and it became the “guiding spirit of
American foreign policy.” Republican and Democratic support for Truman’s policy initiated a long period of
bipartisan backing for containment. And his speech showed the extent to which the Cold War was an
ideological conflict, in which both powers claimed their social system was a model for other nations and
that they advanced freedom and social justice while defending their own security. Congress’s approval of
military aid to Turkey and Greece rescued these governments and checked Soviet power. Truman’s speech
and policy committed the United States to a permanent responsibility in the world and set a precedent
both for U.S. support of undemocratic, anti-communist regimes and for the creation of military alliances
against the Soviets. The Truman administration soon established new “national security” agencies, such as
the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency, which were removed from congressional
oversight.
Origins of the Cold War
•
Potential military action was only one element of containment. Secretary of State George C. Marshall
outlined another in a speech in June 1947, in which he committed the United States to spending billions of
dollars to finance Europe’s economic reconstruction. The destruction caused by the war, food scarcity, and
inflation plagued the continent, and these crises expanded support for communist parties in France and
Italy, which American leaders feared might go communist. The Marshall Plan promoted the idea that
capitalism, even after the Great Depression, would flourish, and it defined as a threat to American
security, not just Soviet military power, but the economic and political instability that nourished
communism. The Marshall Plan gave a positive meaning to containment, making freedom more than just
anti-communism. It represented a kind of New Deal for Europe that would establish mass industry and
mass consumption in order to provide employment and a high standard of living for Europeans. In only a
few years, production in Europe exceeded pre-war levels. But the plan exacerbated tensions between the
United States and the Soviet Union, which refused to support a plan that would consolidate U.S. influence
in Europe. With 23 other nations, the United States simultaneously created the General Agreement on
Trade and Tariffs (GATT) to foster more free trade and create larger markets for American goods and
investments.
•
In Japan, General Douglas MacArthur administered a U.S. occupation that ended in 1948 with a new,
democratic constitution and land reform. The new constitution gave women the vote and affirmed that
Japan would never again wage war and would only maintain a small military force for self-defense. The
United States supervised Japan’s economic recovery, as well. Though the nation considered dissolving the
giant industrial corporations that had enabled Japanese aggression, this idea was scrapped when U.S.
policymakers determined that a strong Japanese economy would check communism in Asia. By the 1950s,
Japan’s economy was booming.
Origins of the Cold War
•
The Cold War rapidly intensified. At the end of World War II, each winning power occupied and
administered parts of Germany and its capital, Berlin, which was located far inside the Soviet zone. In June
1948, when the United States, Britain, and France started a process that would lead to a new West
German government allied with them, the Soviets responded by blocking all traffic from the American,
British, and French zones to the city. Western planes began an 11-month airlift of supplies to West Berlin.
Stalin lifted the blockade, but two nations—East and West Germany—took form, each allied with a side in
the Cold War, and Berlin stayed divided. West Berlin survived as an isolated city surrounded by communist
East Germany, and only in 1991 was Germany reunified. In 1949, the Soviet Union also first tested an
atomic bomb, thus ending the U.S. monopoly on nuclear arms. That year the United States, Canada, and
10 nations in western Europe created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense
pact in the event of Soviet aggression in Europe. Many Europeans applauded when West Germany joined
NATO, because they hoped it would prevent future German aggression and defend against Soviet
advances. In turn, the Soviets in 1955 formed the Warsaw Pact, their own military alliance in Eastern
Europe.
•
Also in 1949, Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong won the civil war in that country, dealing a heavy
blow to U.S. containment policy. The Truman administration, criticized by Republicans for having “lost”
China to communism, did not recognize the new People’s Republic of China and prevented it from taking
its seat in the United Nations. Until the 1970s, the United States defended the exiled regime in Taiwan as
China’s legitimate government.
•
In 1950, the National Security Council responded to the growing tensions in Germany, China’s new
government, and the Soviet atom bomb with a policy of permanent military armament. The document
expressing this new policy, called NSC-68, depicted the Cold War as an epochal conflict between “the idea
of freedom” and the “slavery” of the Soviets that would determine whether the “free world” survived.
NSC-68 spurred monumental increases in military spending.
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Map 23.1 Cold War Europe, 1956
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Origins of the Cold War
•
The Cold War turned “hot” not in Europe, but in Asia. In 1945, Korea was split into Soviet and
American zones. These became two governments: a communist North Korea, and the anticommunist and undemocratic South Korea, aligned with America. In June 1950, North Korean
troops invaded the south in an attempt to unify the peninsula under communist rule, and
they nearly conquered all of South Korea. Truman interpreted the invasion as a Soviet
challenge to US containment policy, and the UN authorized military action. American troops
led by General Douglas MacArthur launched a campaign that resulted in US occupation of
most of North Korea. But in October 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed
the border and pushed UN forces back down the peninsula. When MacArthur demanded the
right to use nuclear weapons to repel the Chinese and perhaps even invade China, Truman
declined. MacArthur’s refusal to recognize the president’s civilian control of the military led
to his dismissal. The war stalemated, and in 1953, an armistice left the two prewar nations
intact without any formal peace treaty.
•
More than 33,000 Americans, 1 million Korean soldiers, 2 million civilians, and hundreds of
thousands of Chinese troops died. The Cold War that began in Europe now became global in
scope. Events since 1947 suggested that the world had not found peace, as had been hoped
in 1945 when the UN was founded. Instead of one world living in harmony, the world was
split between the US, which led what became known as the West (including Japan), or the
“Free World.” The US formed more military alliances in Southeast Asia and the Middle east,
effectively surrounding the Soviet Union and China.
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Map 23.2 The Korean War, 1950-1953
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Origins of the Cold War
•
In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s brutal regime had jailed or murdered millions. Its
authoritarianism made the Soviet Union seem antithetical to “free enterprise” and
democracy. But some Americans argued that approaching the Cold War as a titanic struggle
between freedom and slavery was problematic. Even George Kennan, who inspired
containment policy, argued that US leaders should avoid ideological decisions and view
international crises on a case-by-case basis if they were to determine if freedom or American
interests were in danger. Walter Lippman condemned turning foreign policy into an
“ideological crusade” that required the US to constantly intervene abroad and violate its own
ideals by allying with authoritarian anti-communist governments – many of which faced
rebellions sparked by domestic problems, not Soviet subversion. Lippman argued that
communists were bound to be part of the movements for national independence that the US
should itself support.
•
The war elevated awareness in the US about imperialism and decolonization, even as anticolonial movements used the Declaration of Independence to make claims for selfgovernment. Some liberals and black leaders pressed Truman to promote decolonization, and
in 1946, the US gave independence to the Philippines. But the Cold War saw the US retreat
from the pressure that FDR had exerted on America’s European allies to grant sovereignty to
their colonies. Britain and France hoped to retain their possessions in Africa and Asia. While
geopolitical and economic interests influenced US foreign policy as much as ideas of
freedom, US policymakers used the language of freedom to justify actions that seemed to
contradict freedom. Even extremely repressive governments were included in the “Free
World” as long as they were anti-communist. One such ally was South Africa, where an
apartheid regime preserved white supremacy and suppressed the black population.
The Cold War and the Idea of
Freedom
•
The Cold War was an ideological conflict in which both sides sought to win support across the
world. Freedom was central to mobilizing public opinion, and in the 1950s freedom was a
prominent theme in the academy, the media and mass culture, and government. The Cold
War set the boundaries for understanding freedom.
•
Culture and history were mobilized for the Cold War. Historians argued that the American
Creed of pluralism, tolerance, and equality had always defined American life, and neglected
the ways in which race and ethnicity had restricted freedom. The federal government pressed
Hollywood to make anti-communist films, from which all references to racism were to be
removed. The CIA and the Defense Department patronized the arts, enlisting actors, dancers,
and musicians to promote the superiority of American values at home and abroad, and
sponsoring magazines and academic conferences. The CIA even funded the controversial
abstract expressionist art of painter Jackson Pollock, whose canvasses, created by dropping
and splashing paint, were said to embody cultural freedoms absent in socialist nations.
•
The Cold War’s other master concept was “totalitarianism.” First used in World War II to
describe fascist Italy and German as aggressive, ideological governments that harshly
controlled all of civil society and denied the rights and alternative values that might lead to
social change, totalitarianism soon came to describe the Soviet Union and its allies. This
concept helped spread the belief that powerful governments were the greatest threat to
freedom. Whatever the Soviet Union supported was automatically deemed antithetical to
freedom. The American Medical Association launched the largest public relations campaign in
history against Truman’s proposal for national health insurance, calling it “socialized
medicine.” Soviet hostility to organized religion automatically made Christian worship a
bastion of freedom.
The Cold War and the Idea of
Freedom
•
The Cold War also shaped the idea of human rights. The war’s atrocities and the Four
Freedoms and Atlantic Charter sparked calls for a new global order ruled by universal rights
for all of humanity. The war crimes trials of German officials showed that the international
community would hold individuals accountable for violations of human rights. In 1948, the
UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which
declared that all people should have basic rights to freedom of speech and religion, should be
free from arbitrary government, and should enjoy social and economic entitlements such as
housing, education, health care, and an adequate standard of living. Though the document
could not be enforced anywhere, its assertion that governments were accountable for the
way they treated their citizens became widely accepted.
•
Debates over the UDHR showed the contradictions and tensions in the idea of human rights.
How much human rights should supersede national sovereignty, and who or what should
protect the human rights that governments violate, are still unsettled questions. Both the US
and the Soviet Union resisted the creation of a mechanism to enforce the UDHR because
they feared outside interference in domestic and foreign policy. American leaders were
particularly sensitive about race relations, which they feared might invite UN action against
the US. In the 1950s, Cold War considerations limited human rights and both the US and the
Soviet Union used human rights for their own interests. The USSR claimed to provide its
citizens with social and economic rights, while the US criticized the Soviets for violating
democratic rights and civil liberties. Only in 1992 did Congress ratify the part of the UDHR
that covers “Civil and Political Rights”; it has not yet ratified the declaration’s “Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights.”
The Truman Presidency
• After the war, President Truman faced the monumental task of shifting
America from war to peace. The more than 12 million men still in the
military in 1945 wanted to return to their families and jobs, and
demobilization occurred rapidly. While some veterans found civilian life
difficult, others used GI Bill benefits to build or buy homes, start small
businesses, and go to college. Most veterans went into the labor force,
taking jobs from more than 2 million women workers. The government
dismantled wartime agencies that regulated industry and labor and set
price controls, which sparked immediate inflation.
• Backed by Democratic liberals and unions, Truman in 1945 tried to revive
New Deal politics with a program he eventually called the “Fair Deal.” This
would improve the social safety net and raise living standards. Truman
pressed Congress to hike the minimum wage, create a national health
insurance system, and increase public housing, Social Security, and
educational aid.
The Truman Presidency
•
The year 1946 was one of labor revolt. The AFL and CIO launched Operation Dixie
to bring unions to the South and end the anti-labor conservatism of southern
politics, sending hundreds of labor organizers into the region’s textile mills, steel
factories, and fields. With no more overtime work for war production, and
skyrocketing inflation caused by the end of price controls, workers’ real income
dropped sharply. Workers responded by going on strike to demand wage raises – 5
million of them. 750,000 steel workers conducted the largest single strike in US
history up to that point. The strike wave alarmed President Truman, who became
hostile to the unions and won an injunction to force striking coal miners back to
work.
•
In the 1946 elections, middle-class voters scared by labor unrest voted Republican,
and many workers angry at Truman’s policies stayed at home. The Democrats lost
both houses of Congress to the Republicans for the first time since 1920.
Operation Dixie capitulated to the opposition of southern employers and white
workers’ racism, keeping intact southern political power in Washington. The 1946
elections secured the continuing domination of the Congress by a coalition of
conservative southern Democrats and Republicans.
The Truman Presidency
•
President Truman in his first term embraced civil rights for African-American, departing from
Roosevelt’s administration relative lack of concern. The war against Nazism and its racial
theories had raised black militancy and consciousness about the plight of black Americans.
Many states established fair employment practices commission and cities passed laws to end
discrimination in jobs and public accommodations. A civil rights coalition of labor, religious,
and black groups supported these efforts. By 1952, the NAACP had raised the number of
black voters in the South to 20%, and in that year no lynchings took place, as many law
enforcement agencies started to crack down on the practice. Sports started to desegregate
after the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 added black athlete Jackie Robinson to their team.
•
In 1947, a Commission on Civil Rights appointed by Truman issued a report, To Secure These
Rights, calling on the federal government to end segregation and guarantee equal treatment
in housing, employment, education, and criminal justice. The Truman administration, calling
the report an “American charter of human freedom,” hoped to deflect Cold War criticisms
that American racial relations violated democracy and human rights. Though Truman soon
presented a comprehensive civil rights program to Congress asking for a federal civil rights
commission, anti-lynching and anti-poll tax laws, and laws for equal access in jobs and
education, Congress rejected it. But in the summer of 1948 Truman desegregated the
military, and the military became the first large integrated institution in American history.
Truman went on to help construct the most progressive Democratic platform in history for
the 1948 elections, which included a robust civil rights plank.
The Truman Presidency
•
When liberals at the 1948 Democratic convention passed the civil rights plank, many
southern delegates walked out. These so-called “Dixiecrats” soon formed the States Rights’
Democratic Party and nominated for president Strom Thurmond, the governor of South
Carolina. This party’s platform called for “complete segregation of the races,” and though he
denied being racist, Thurmond argued that the freedom of states to govern themselves was
imperiled. Truman also faced a second political insurgency from the left. Left-wing critics of
Truman’s foreign policy formed the Progressive Party and nominated Henry A. Wallace for
president. Wallace proposed expanding the welfare state and denounced segregation more
than Truman. Wallace differed most strongly from Truman over the Cold War. He called for
international controls on nuclear weapons and advocated trade with the Soviet Union. Yet
when Wallace welcomed the support of socialists and communists, opening the party to
Communist influence, liberals abandoned his candidacy.
•
Though Wallace threatened Truman on the left and Thurmond threatened him in the
democratic South, Truman’s primary challenger was the uncharismatic Republican candidate,
Thomas A. Dewey. Truman campaigned furiously, criticized the Congress for its inaction, and
recycled New Deal critiques of Wall Street and warnings that Republicans wanted to end
Social Security. This election was the last before television transformed electoral politics by
minimizing in-depth debate and presentations of ideology and policy. Despite a widelypredicted Dewey victory, Truman won an overwhelming majority in the electoral college. For
the first time since 1868, blacks decisively influenced the outcome. Thurmond carried four
southern states, anticipating a later shift of these Democratic states’ voters to the Republican
Party. Wallace received fewer votes than Thurmond, an outcome which made criticism of
America’s Cold War foreign policy even less acceptable.
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Map 23.3 The Presidential Election of 1948
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The Anticommunist Crusade
•
The Cold War completely transformed American life. Society was permanently militarized.
The military-industrial complex forged by World War II persisted and expanded. The US
retained a large and active federal government which spent billions on weapons and overseas
bases. National security justified enormous government projects and expenditures, including
aid to higher education and the building of a national highway system. It also made
government officials secret and dishonest, leading, for example, to the covering up of
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons tests conducted on US soldiers and civilians. Cold
War spending fostered economic growth and scientific and technological innovation that
greatly shaped civilian life, in medicine, computers, aircraft, and other products. Government
research needs expanded higher education. The Cold War changed immigration policy to
favor refugees from communist countries, and increased pressure on American officials to
minimize segregation. And the Cold War, like World War I, created a culture which sharply
differentiated the loyal from the disloyal and eroded civil liberties.
•
In 1947, Truman created a loyalty review system, in which federal employees had to prove
their devotion to America, without knowing who was accusing them of disloyalty, and on
what basis. No espionage was revealed, but hundreds lost their jobs or resigned rather than
be investigated. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings
about communist influence in Hollywood. Celebrities and famous writers and directors were
forced to appear before the committee or face punishment. Though some, like Ronald
Reagan, alleged that the entertainment industry was rife with communism, some refused to
testify, claiming that HUAC violated constitutional protections for free speech and political
association. A group called the Hollywood Ten went to jail for contempt of Congress, and a
Hollywood blacklisted them and hundreds of others who were accused of communist
sympathies or who refused to identify alleged communists.
The Anticommunist Crusade
•
Several high-profile legal cases exacerbated the anti-communist craze. Whittaker
Chambers, a Time magazine editor, charged that in the 1930s Alger Hiss, a State
Department official, had given him secret documents to take to Soviet agents. Hiss
denied the allegations, but was convicted for perjury and served five years in
prison. The Truman administration put Communist Party leaders on trial for
advocating revolution, and several were imprisoned.
•
In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, working-class Jewish communists from New
York, were convicted of conspiring to pass secrets about the atomic bomb to the
Soviets during World War II. The evidence against them was deemed too secret to
be revealed at the time, but later it became clear that Julius had not given “the
secret of the bomb” to the Soviets, and that almost no evidence supported
charges against Ethel. Even though their charges were less serious than spying or
treason, the judge said they had helped “cause” the Korean War. They were
sentenced to death, and executed in 1953. Whether or not Hiss or the Rosenbergs
were actually guilty, their trials strengthened Americans’ sense that a massive spy
network in the US endangered the nation.
The Anticommunist Crusade
•
This climate of fear allowed an obscure Wisconsin senator to lead a spurious anticommunist
crusade. In 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy delivered a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia,
in which he claimed to have a list of 205 communists employed at the State Department. The
charge was baseless, he constantly changed the numbers, and he never identified anyone
who was actually disloyal. But McCarthy used his senatorial position to hold hearings and
allege disloyalty at the Defense Department and other government agencies. Though many
Republicans embraced McCarthy’s campaign as a way to damage the Truman administration,
his attacks on government officials after Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower was
elected president in 1952 alienated Republicans. In 1954, his allegations of disloyalty in the
army led to televised hearings that exposed McCarthy’s tactics and led to his downfall. The
Republican senate condemned his action, and though McCarthy died three years later,
“McCarthyism” came to refer to the abuse of power in the name of anticommunism.
•
Although anti-communism most affected the national government, anticommunism
pervaded local government and life as well. States created committees, based on HUAC, to
ferret out alleged communists, and state and local authorities required loyalty oaths of
teachers, pharmacists, and other professionals. Private groups like the American Legion and
the National Association of Manufacturers also targeted individuals for their political beliefs.
Organizations that had been influenced by communists in the 1930s and 1940s became
tainted, and those who would not testify about their past and present political opinions or
refused to name communists often lost their jobs. “Un-American” books, like stories of Robin
Hood, were removed from local libraries. Universities refused to host left-wing speakers and
fired teachers who would not take loyalty oaths. The courts did nothing to halt these
violations of civil liberties, and the Supreme Court defended the imprisonment of
communists for their beliefs.
The Anticommunist Crusade
•
Though Soviet spies certainly were in the US, the minuscule Communist Party did
not endanger American security. Most of those jailed or fired in the McCarthy era
were guilty of only holding unpopular beliefs and engaging in lawful political
activity. Anti-communism was a popular mass movement that had its uses. One
basis was in ethnic groups with roots in eastern European countries dominated by
the Soviets, like the Polish, and among American Catholics who opposed
communist hostility to religion. Government agencies like the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, led by J. Edgar Hoover, used anti-communism to increase their
power. Anti-communism was also used for purely partisan political purposes.
McCarthy and other anti-communist leaders seemed to criticize the legacy of
Roosevelt and the New Deal more than Stalin and communism. Many Democrats
embraced anti-communism to deflect Republican allegations of disloyalty. The
Democrats excluded many in the left and the Popular Front who had helped
organize support for New Deal policies. Anti-communism made conformity the
new definition of loyalty; any criticism of the status quo now appeared subversive.
Business used anti-communism against unions, white supremacists used it against
black civil rights, and others used it to defend sexual morality and traditional
gender roles against feminism and homosexuality
The Anticommunist Crusade
•
Anti-communism, most pervasive from the late 1940s to the early 1960s,
powerfully shaped American politics and culture. Republicans invoked communism
to stymie Truman’s political program. Truman became alarmed by excesses of anticommunism, and he seemed to retreat from it in policies in government. In 1950,
he vetoed a measure that required “subversive” groups to register with the
government, denied passports to their members, and authorized the president to
deport or detain them. But Congress over-rode his veto and enacted it. In 1952, a
new immigration law also passed over Truman’s veto, which shot down Truman’s
proposals for immigration reform and allowed the deportation of communists,
even if they were citizens. In 1954, the federal government’s Operation Wetback
resulted in the military deportation of about 1 million Mexican-Americans alleged
to be illegal aliens. Truman only barely expanded the coverage of Social Security,
and instead of extending federal social welfare, private welfare prevailed. Union
workers’ contracts provided them with health insurance, wage increases that
followed the cost of living, pensions, and paid vacations, while all other workers
remained covered. But only workers in the unionized heavy industries enjoyed
these benefits in America. In Europe, all workers received these benefits from the
government.
The Anticommunist Crusade
•
All political and social groups had to comply with anti-communism or be destroyed, and this
severely damaged the labor and civil rights movements that had benefited from dedicated
communist organizers. After the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which withdrew
bargaining rights and legal protections from unions whose leaders refused to swear that they
weren’t communist, the CIO expelled left-wing unions with nearly 1 million members. Unions
began to support Cold War US foreign policies. Since left-wingers were often the most
militant advocates of women’s rights and civil rights, their expulsion left unions unable to
respond to the civil rights movement and an economy that shifted form manufacturing to
service work.
•
The civil rights movement changed. While major civil rights groups at first protested Truman’s
loyalty program and criticized anti-communists for not defining racism as “un-American,”
nearly all black leaders and civil rights organizations were pressured into joining the anticommunist crusade. Groups like the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, that had
united communists and non-communists in a struggle for both racial equality and social
justice, disintegrated, leaving only legalistic groups like the NAACP. Black organizations
adopted Cold War language to argue that segregation and racism in the US gave credence to
Soviet criticisms of America, and thus helped solidify Cold War understandings of freedom.
•
In a climate of anti-communism and McCarthyism, criticisms of American policy, domestic or
foreign, invited a harsh response. Truman’s civil rights program faltered. But the booming
economy of the 1950s, which produced an “affluent society” in America for the first time,
produced a widening gap between white affluence and black poverty and
disenfranchisement that would help inspire a civil rights resurgence in the 1960s.
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The Cold War led to widespread fears
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President Harry S. Truman delivering his
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Chinese communists carrying portraits of Mao Zedong
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Human Rights.
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A few of the numerous World War II
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the South in the post–World War II period.
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Jackie Robinson sliding into third base, 1949
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Blacks, led by A. Philip Randolph (left),Givepicketing
at the 1948
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Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
A crowd in Las Vegas, Nevada
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Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Movie stars
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Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Demonstrators at a 1953 rally in Washington, D.C.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Senator Joseph R.Mc Carthy at the ArmyMcCarthy hearings of 1954.
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Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
“Fire!” Cartoonist Herbert Block
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Norton Lecture Slides
Independent and Employee-Owned
This concludes the Norton Lecture Slides
Slide Set for Chapter 23
Give Me Liberty!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
THIRD EDITION
by
Eric Foner