Post-War Prosperity and Cold War Fear, 1945–1960

This is Unit Thirteen, part one, on the postwar return, containment, Korea, and loyalty at home. Unit Twelve closed with two contested judgements, on the bomb and on internment, and turned to the Cold War. Carry one idea through this part: the Cold War ran on two fronts at once, containment abroad and loyalty at home. Watch each policy abroad find its echo in Washington. In nineteen forty-nine, the year that turned the Cold War, the two fronts meet. By the end you will be able to explain whom the GI Bill served and whom it left out. To describe Truman's civil rights steps, and why he used executive orders. To trace containment from the Long Telegram to NATO. To explain why nineteen forty-nine turned the Cold War. And to describe the Korean War and its armistice, stating the dead with care.

Four entries on coming home: demobilisation, the GI Bill and its lines, and the return of Japanese Americans.

Demobilisation.

USH2 1801 Demobilisation

At the war's end the United States shrank its armed forces from twelve million in June nineteen forty-five to one and a half million by June nineteen forty-seven, as servicemen warned they would vote Republican unless they were home for Christmas nineteen forty-six. The anchor notes that even the reduced force was larger than any the nation had kept in peacetime.

The GI Bill.

USH2 1802 The GI Bill

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act, the GI Bill, signed by Roosevelt on June twenty-second, nineteen forty-four, funded veterans' education and offered low-interest loans for homes and businesses, after the Labor Department had estimated, in the National Archives' account, fifteen million veterans facing unemployment. The bill passed both chambers of Congress unanimously, the Archives records.

Whom the GI Bill served.

USH2 1803 Who the GI Bill Served

The GI Bill built much of the postwar middle class. In nineteen forty, five point five percent of American men held a college degree; by nineteen fifty the figure was seven point three percent, as more than two million veterans used the education benefit, and its loans helped veterans buy homes and start businesses. The same statute drew lines, and the anchor states them. African American veterans could use the education benefit only at schools that accepted Black students. About nine thousand servicemen and women dishonourably discharged for being gay or lesbian were ineligible. Some Mexican American veterans, mainly in Texas, found benefits denied or delayed. Unit eleven's question, whom it left out, applies to its successor.

The return of Japanese Americans.

USH2 1804 Japanese Americans Return

Roosevelt ended the forced relocation of Japanese Americans in December nineteen forty-four, and from January nineteen forty-five they were free to return home, to damaged property and missing possessions. When they reopened their businesses, the anchor says, former customers sometimes boycotted them. Unit twelve taught the internment; this is its aftermath.

Four entries on Truman at home: a programme Congress refused, a law against the unions, and two orders on civil rights.

The Fair Deal.

USH2 1805 The Fair Deal

In his inaugural address of nineteen forty-nine Truman named his programme the Fair Deal, a nod to Roosevelt's New Deal, including national health insurance, which the American Medical Association spent some one and a half million dollars to defeat, branding it socialised medicine. Congress refused it, the anchor says, and refused to make lynching a federal crime.

A law against the unions.

USH2 1806 Taft-Hartley

In nineteen forty-seven Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman's veto, limiting the power of unions and paring back unit eleven's Wagner Act twelve years after it passed. The Yawp adds that the Act gave union officials the initiative to purge Communists from the labour movement.

Truman and civil rights.

USH2 1807 A Committee on Civil Rights

Truman was the first president to address the NAACP, and in December nineteen forty-six he created by executive order a presidential committee to investigate racial discrimination, putting the nation's record on race under federal inquiry. Congress refused him a federal anti-lynching law, so Truman acted where he could, by executive order.

The desegregation of the armed forces.

USH2 1808 Desegregating the Armed Forces

On July twenty-sixth, nineteen forty-eight, Truman's Executive Order ninety-nine eighty-one required equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces without regard to race, ordering a military the Yawp called a Jim Crow institution to integrate. The anchor says Truman overrode objections that the armed forces were no place for social experiment. Roosevelt's order eighty-eight oh two of unit twelve was the precedent.

Eight entries on containment: the iron curtain, the telegram that named the policy, and its instruments abroad and at home.

The iron curtain.

USH2 1809 The Iron Curtain

On March fifth, nineteen forty-six, Winston Churchill, visiting Truman's home state of Missouri, declared that an iron curtain had descended across Europe, and by nineteen forty-seven Soviet-organised Communist governments ruled Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland, as Digital History lists. A Communist coup took Czechoslovakia in nineteen forty-eight. Yalta's Poland clause of unit twelve had come due.

The Long Telegram.

USH2 1810 The Long Telegram

On February twenty-second, nineteen forty-six, George Kennan, the American chargé d'affaires in Moscow, sent the State Department the Long Telegram, arguing, in the anchor's summary, that Soviet leaders believed their security required destroying rival nations' influence. There could be no cooperation, Kennan wrote, in the Yawp's account; the Soviet Union had to be contained.

The Truman Doctrine.

USH2 1811 The Truman Doctrine

On March twelfth, nineteen forty-seven, Truman asked a joint session of Congress for four hundred million dollars in military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey, which Britain, Digital History notes, could no longer afford to support. The Yawp calls the doctrine a cornerstone of containment, the policy of stopping Soviet expansion anywhere in the world.

Loyalty reviews at home.

USH2 1812 The Loyalty Program

In March nineteen forty-seven, facing anti-Communist pressure, Truman issued Executive Order ninety-eight thirty-five, establishing loyalty reviews for federal employees, with FBI investigators examining government workers' backgrounds, as the Yawp describes. Digital History notes that executive loyalty inquiries had begun as early as nineteen forty-one. The second Red Scare did not begin with McCarthy.

The Marshall Plan.

USH2 1813 The Marshall Plan

Proposed by Secretary of State George Marshall in June nineteen forty-seven, the European Recovery Program became law on April third, nineteen forty-eight, with about thirteen billion dollars for Western Europe's reconstruction, the anchor's figure; Digital History gives twelve and a half billion. It adds that European purchases of American coal, crops and machinery largely paid for it.

The Soviet answer.

USH2 1814 The Soviet Answer

When Czechoslovakia and Poland signalled that they wanted to join the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union refused to let them, Digital History records, offering instead the Molotov Plan, in the Yawp's words a symbolic pledge of aid to Eastern Europe. Digital History adds that the Soviet refusal made it easier to win congressional passage of the Marshall Plan.

Berlin.

USH2 1815 The Berlin Airlift

In June nineteen forty-eight, after the Western powers introduced a new currency in their zones, Stalin cut every land and water route into West Berlin, and the United States, Britain and France supplied the city by air for a year, about two million tons in all. On May twelfth, nineteen forty-nine, the anchor records, the Soviets ended the blockade.

NATO.

USH2 1816 NATO

In nineteen forty-nine the United States, Britain and France joined Canada and eight Western European nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, twelve nations from Iceland to Italy, pledging mutual defence against attack. The Yawp notes the Soviet Union formalised its own alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in nineteen fifty-five.

Two entries on the year that turned the Cold War, and the memorandum that answered it.

The year the Cold War turned.

USH2 1817 Nineteen Forty-Nine

Nineteen forty-nine turned the Cold War. NATO formed, and in May the Soviets lifted the Berlin blockade. On August twenty-ninth the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb, years before American officials had expected, the Yawp records. On October first Mao Zedong proclaimed the Communist victory in China's civil war, and in December the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek left for Taiwan. Suspicion followed at once, the anchor records: that spies had handed the Soviets the bomb's secrets, and that Communist sympathisers had cost the nation China. The Yawp calls the loss of China a source of panic among American policymakers, whose attention began to shift from Europe to Asia.

NSC-68.

USH2 1818 NSC-68

In April nineteen fifty a classified memorandum known as NSC-68 urged a rapid build-up of American political, economic and military strength to roll back Soviet power, the Yawp records, calling for more than a threefold increase in the annual defence budget. The anchor does not carry the memorandum; the Yawp does.

Four entries on Korea: the invasion, Inchon and the Yalu, a general relieved, and the armistice.

The war in Korea.

USH2 1819 War in Korea

On June twenty-fifth, nineteen fifty, war broke out along the thirty-eighth parallel as North Korean forces invaded the South, the National Archives records, across a peninsula divided since nineteen forty-five, with ten million Koreans separated from their families, Digital History notes. The United States, the Yawp says, pressed the United Nations to support the South and sent troops.

Inchon.

USH2 1820 Inchon and the Yalu

On September fifteenth, nineteen fifty, a landing at Inchon behind North Korean lines reversed the invasion, and United Nations forces under MacArthur retook Seoul and pushed north toward the Yalu River, the border with China. As his forces neared the river, the anchor says, China's premier Zhou Enlai sent troops into the war.

MacArthur's dismissal.

USH2 1821 MacArthur Relieved

MacArthur asked for authority to use nuclear weapons against North Korea and China, the Yawp records; denied, he publicly denounced Truman, and in April nineteen fifty-one Truman accused him of insubordination and relieved him of command. This is MacArthur's third appearance in the course: Anacostia in unit ten, the Pacific in unit twelve, and now dismissal.

The armistice.

USH2 1822 The Korean Armistice

The Korean War ended in an armistice signed on July twenty-seventh, nineteen fifty-three, after Eisenhower's election and Stalin's death that March, as the Yawp records. The line settled close to the original thirty-eighth parallel, with a demilitarised zone between the two Koreas, and prisoners of war were allowed to choose whether to return home. The dead must be stated with care. The anchor gives about thirty-six thousand five hundred American soldiers killed; the Yawp gives over thirty thousand American deaths and one hundred thousand wounded. The anchor adds that most of the war's dead were Korean civilians. The Yawp calls Korea a war rather forgotten in American memory, ending without clear victory.

Two entries on loyalty at home: a congressional committee and its blacklist, and the case that made a young congressman's name.

HUAC.

USH2 1823 HUAC and the Blacklist

The House Committee on Un-American Activities, established in nineteen thirty-eight, investigated suspected Communists in business, academia and the media, with particular attention to Hollywood, and witnesses who invoked the Fifth Amendment found themselves blacklisted, among them Leonard Bernstein, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson and Artie Shaw. The Yawp counts over one hundred congressional investigations of subversion between nineteen forty-nine and nineteen fifty-four.

Alger Hiss.

USH2 1824 Alger Hiss

On August third, nineteen forty-eight, Whittaker Chambers testified before HUAC that he and the former State Department official Alger Hiss had worked together in a Communist underground, the Yawp records, and a young congressman, Richard Nixon, made his name by publicly accusing Hiss. The Yawp calls Hiss the highest-ranking official linked to Soviet espionage.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain whom the GI Bill served, more than two million veterans in college and a new middle class, and whom it left out: many Black, gay and Mexican American veterans. You can describe Truman's civil rights steps, a presidential committee and the order to integrate the armed forces, taken by executive order because Congress refused him. You can trace containment: the Long Telegram, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift and NATO, with loyalty reviews at home. You can explain why nineteen forty-nine turned the Cold War: a Soviet bomb and a Communist China, and suspicion that followed at once. And you can describe Korea, from invasion to an armistice near the thirty-eighth parallel, with its dead stated as the sources give them.