Chapter 27 Flashcards

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1
Q

sources of Sino-American tension

A

At the heart of the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union in the 40s was a fundamental difference in the ways the great powers envisioned the postwar world. One vision, first openly outlined in the Atlantic Charter in 1941, was of a world in which nations abandoned their traditional beliefs in military alliances and spheres of influence and governed their relations with one another through democratic processes, with an international organization serving as the arbiter of disputes and the protector of every nation’s right of self determination. That vision, inspired in part by Wilson, appealed to many Americans, including FDR.

The Soviet Union’s vision and kinda Great Britain as well was different. Both Stalin and Churchill had signed the Atlantic Charter. But Britain had always been uneasy about the implications of the self determination ideal for its own enormous empire. And the Soviet Union was determined to create a secure sphere for itself in Central and Eastern Europe as protection against possible future aggressors from the west. Therefore, Churchill and Stalin tended to envision a postwar structure in which the great powers would control areas of strategic interest to them, in which something vaguely similar to the traditional European balance of power would reemerge.

Gradually, the difference between these two positions would turn the peacemaking process into a form of warfare

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2
Q

Poland issue

A

There were some matters where the origins of future disagreements were visible. Poland was one such example. ROosevelt and Churchill were willing to agree to a movement of the Soviet border westward, allowing Stalin to anne some historically Polish territory. But on the nature of the postwar government in the rest of Poland, there were sharp differences. Roosevelt and Churchill supported the claims of the Polish government in exile that had been functioning in London since 1940; Stalin wished to install another procommunist exiled government that had spend the war in Lublin, in te Soviet Union. The three leaders avoided a bitter conclusion to the Teheran conference only by leaving the issue unresolved.

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3
Q

Big Three

A

Winston Churchill, FDR, Joseph Stalin

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4
Q

Yalta Conference

A

In February 1945, Roosevelt joined Churchill and Stalin for a great peace conference in the Soviet city of Yalta-a resort on the Red Sea that was once a summer palace for the Tsars On a number of issues, the Big three reached agreements. In return for Stalin’s renewed promise to enter the Pacific war, FDR agreed that the Soviet Union should receive some of the territory in that Pacific that Russia had lost in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War

Produced ratification of the league of nations.

On other issues there was no real agreement. There was still disagreement about the postwar Polish government. There was also not agreement about the future of Germany. Roosevelt seemed to want a reconstructed and reunited Germany. Stalin wanted to impose heavy reparations on Germany and to ensure a permanent dismemberment of the nation. The final agreement was, like the Polish accord, vague and unstable. Th e decision would be referred to a future commission.

In the weeks following the Yalta Conference, FDR watched as the Soviet Union moved to establish pro communist governments in Central or Eastern European nations. But Roosevelt did not abandon hope. He left Washington to vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia. There, on April 12, 1945, he died of a sudden stroke.

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5
Q

Postdam Conference

A

Truman met in July at Postdam, in Russian occupied Germany with Churchill and Stalin. Truman reluctantly accepted the adjustment of the Polish German border that Stalin had long demanded; he refused, however, to permit the Russians to claim any reparations from the US, French, and British zones of Germany. This stance effectively confirmed that Germany would remain divided, with the Western zones united into one nation, friendly to the US and the Russian zoned surviving as another nation, with a Soviet dominated, communist government

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6
Q

Chinese civil war

A

Chiang Kai-shek was generally friendly toward the US, but his government was corrupt and incompetent with feeble popular support, and Chiang was himself unable or unwilling to face the problems that were threatening to engulf him. Since 1927, the nationalist government he headed had been engaged in a prolonged and bitter rivalry with the communist armies of Mao Zedong.

Some Americans wanted the government to support someone other than Mao or Chiang. Some thought that the US should reach some accommodation with Mao. Truman decided that he had no choice but to continua supporting Chiang. For the next several years, as the long struggle between the nationalists and the communists erupted into a full scale civil war, the US continued to send money and weapons to Chiang. Eventually, Truman sent general George Marshall, former army chief of staff and future secretary of state, to study the Chinese problem and recommend a policy for the United States. Marshall came to believe that nothing short of an all out war with China would be necessary to defeat the communists, and he was unwilling to recommend that the president should accept such a war.

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7
Q

containment

A

Any realistic hope of a postwar constructed according to the Atlantic Charter ideals that FDR and Churchill had agreed upon was in shambles. Instead, a new American policy,. known as containment, was slowly emerging. Rather than attempting to create a unified, “open” world, the United States and its allies would work to “contain” the threat of further Soviet expansion.

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8
Q

George F. Kennan

A

Truman decided to enunciate a firm new policy. In doing so, he drew from the ideas of the influential American diplomat George F. Kennan, who had warned not long after the war that the only appropriate diplomatic approach to dealing with the Soviet Union was a “long term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies”

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9
Q

Truman Doctrine

A

On March 12th, 1947, Truman appeared before Congress and used Kennan’s warnings as the basis of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. “I believe,” he argued, “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.” Helped ease soviet pressure on Turkey and helped the Greek government defeat the communist insurgents. More* importantly, it established a basis for American foreign policy that would survive for more than 40 years.

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10
Q

Marshall Plan

A

In June 1947, Sec. of State George C. Marshall announced a plan to provide economic assistance to all European nations (including the Soviet Union) that would join in drafting a program for recovery. Although RUssia and its Eastern satellites quickly and predictably rejected the plan, 16 Western European nations eagerly participated. Whatever domestic opposition to the plan there was in the US largely vanished after a sudden coup n Czechoslovakia February 1948 that established a Soviet dominated Communist government there.

Over the next 3 years, the Marshall Plan channeled over 12 billion dollars of American aid into Europe, helping to spark a substantial economic revival. By the end of 1950, European industrial production had risen 64 percent, communist strength in the member nations had declined, and opportunities for American trade hd revived.

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11
Q

Atomic Energy Comm.

A

established in 1946, became the supervisory body charged with overseeing all nuclear research, both civilian and military.

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12
Q

National Security Act of 1947

A

1947-reshaped the nation’s major military and diplomatic institutions. It created a new department of defense to oversee all branches of the armed services, combining functions previously performed separately by the War and Navy Departments.

Created the National Security Council, NSC as well as the CIA

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13
Q

Berlin crisis 1948-49

A

Convinced that a reconstructed Germany was essential to the hopes of the West, Truman reached an agreement with England and France to merge the three western zones of occupation into a new West German republic. Stalin responded quickly. On June 24, 1948, he imposed a tight blockade around the western sectors of Berlin.

If Germany was to be divided, he implied, then the country’s western government would have to abandon its outpost in the hart of the Soviet controlled eastern zone. Truman refused to do so. Unwilling to risk war through a military challenge to the blockade, he ordered a massive airlift to supply the city with food, fuel, and other needed goods. The airlift continued for more than ten months, transporting nearly 2.5 million tons of material, keeping a city of 2 million people alive, and transforming West Berlin into a symbol of the West’s resolve to resist communist expansion.

In the spring of 1949, Stalin lifted the now ineffective blockade and in OCtober, the division of Germany into two nations (Federal republic in west and democratic republic in east) became official.

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14
Q

North Atlantic Treaty Org.

A

The crisis in Berlin accelerated the consolidation of what was already in effect an alliance among the US and the countries of Western Europe. On April 4 1949, twelve nations signed an agreement establishing NATO and declaring that an armed attack against one member would be considered an attack against all. The NATO countries would maintain a standing military force in EUrope to defend the threat of a Soviet invasion. Spurred the Soviet Union to create an alliance of its own with the communist governments in Eastern Europe—an alliance formalized in 1955 with the Warsaw Pact

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15
Q

shocks of 1949

A

A series of events in 1949 propelled the Cold War in a new direction. An announcement in September that the Soviet Union had successfully exploded its first atomic weapon shocked and frightened many Americans. So did the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government in China, which occurred with startling speed in the last months of 1949. Chiang fled with his political allies and the remnants of his army to the offshore island of Formosa and the entire CHinese mainland came under control of a communist government.

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16
Q

NSC-68

A

In this atmosphere of escalating crisis, Truman called for a thorough review of American foreign policy. The result was a National Security Council report, issued in 1950 and known as NSC 68, which outlined a shift in the American position. The first statements of the containment doctrine had made at least some distinctions between areas of vital issues for the US and areas of less important to the nation’s foreign policy and called on American to share the burden of containment with its allies. But the April 1950 document argued that the US could no longer rely on other nations to take the initiative in resisting communism. It must itself establish firm and active leadership of the noncommunist world.

Among other things, the report called for a major expansion forAmerican military power, with a defense budget almost four times the previously projected figure.

17
Q

GI Bill of Rights

A

provided economic and educational assistance to veterans, increasing spending even further and hence contributing to a lack of a financial collapse.

18
Q

“Fair Deal”

A

Days after the Japandse surrender, Truman submitted to Congress the “Fair Deal.” It called for expansion of Social Security benefits, the raising for the legal minimum wage from 40 to 65 cents an hour, a program to ensure full employment through aggressive use of federal spending and investment, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, public housing and slum clearance, long range environmental and public works planning, and govenrment promotion of scientific research.

He added more a couple weeks later. Federal aid to funding for the St. Lawrence Seaway, nationalization of atomic energy, and national health insurance. The president was declaring an end to the wartime moratorium on liberal reform

wasn’t smooth sailing because there was a republiacn congress and house.

19
Q

Taft-Hartley Act

A

Most notable action for the new congress was its assault on the Wagner Act of 1935. Conservatives had always resented the new powers the legislation had granted unions; and in light of the labor difficulties during and after the war, such resentments intensified sharply. The result was the Taft Hartley Act. It made illegal the so called closed shop (a workplace in which no one can be hired without first being a member of a union) And although it continued to permit the creation of so called union shops (in which workers join a union after being hired) it permitted states to pass “wright to work” laws prohibiting even that.

Did not destroy the labor movement, but it did damage weaker unions in relatively lightly organized industries such as chemicals and textiles.

20
Q

States’ Rights Party (Dixiecrats)

A

At the democratic convention, two factions abandoned the party. They walked out and formed the States’ Rights Party or the Dixiecrat party, with Governor Storm Thurmond of South Carolina as its presidential nominee.

21
Q

Ideas about nuclear power

A

Americans greeted these terrible new instruments of destruction with fear and awe, but also with expectation. Postwar culture therefor was torn in many ways. Dark image of nuclear war vs bright image of technological future atomic power might allow.

22
Q

postwar division of Korea

A

Once WWII was over, the US and the Soviet Union each supported different governments—the Soviets supporting a communist regime in the North and the US supporting a pro-Western government in the South. Instead, they had divided the nation, supposedly temporarily, along the 38th parallel. The Russians departed in 1949, leaving behind a communist government in the north with a strong, Soviet equipped army. The Americans left a few months later handing control to the pro western government of Syngman Rhee, who was anticommunist but only nominally democratic.

23
Q

Korean War

A

On June 24th 1950, The armies of communist North Korea swept across their southern border and invaded the pro Western half of the Korean peninsula to the south. Within days, they had occupied much of SOuth Korea, including Seoul, its capital. Almost immediately, the US committed itself to defeating the North Korean offensive. It was the nation’s first military engagement of the Cold War.

24
Q

Douglas MacArthur

A

Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur to command the overwhelmingly American UN operations in Korea.

Resisted any limits by Truman on his military discretion once the Chinese were involved and Truman wanted out.

He wrote a letter to House Republican leader that said “there is no substitute for victory.” His position was widely supported. The letter came after nine months during which MacArthur had opposed Truman’s decisions. MOre than once, the president had warned the general to keep his objections to himself. The release of the letter therefore, struck the president as intolerable insubordination. On April 11th 1951, he relieved MacArthur of his command.

Storm of public outrage.

25
Q

House Un-American Activities Comm (HUAC)

A

Beginning in 1947, the House Un-American Activities committee (HUAC) held widely publicized investigations to prove that, under democratic rule, the government had tolerated (if not actually encouraged) communist subversion. The committee turned first to the movie industry, arguing that communists had infiltrated Hollywood. Writers and producers were called to testify and when several refused to answer questions, they were jailed for contempt.

26
Q

Alger Hiss

A

More alarming to the public was HUAC’s investigation into charges of disloyalty leveled against a former high ranking member of the State Department: Alger Hiss. IN 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a self avowed former communist told the committee that Hiss had passed classified State Department documents through him to the Soviet Union. When Hiss sued him for slander, Chamber produced microfilms of the documents.

The Hiss case not only discredited a prominent young diplomat; it also cast suspicion on a generation of liberal Democrats and made it possible for many Americans to believe that communists had actually infiltrated the government.

27
Q

Richard M. Nixon

A

Hiss could not be tried for espionage because of the statute of limitations. But largely because of the relentless efforts of Richard Nixon, a freshman republican congressman from California and a member of HUAC, Hiss was convicted of perjure and served several years in prison.

28
Q

J. Edgar Hoover

A

The director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, investigated and harassed alleged radicals.

29
Q

McCarran International Security Act

A

In 1950, Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, requiring all communist organizations to register with the government. Truman vetoed the bill. Congress easily overrode his veto.

30
Q

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

A

In 1950, Klaus Fuchs a young British scientists, testified that he had delivered to the Russians details of the manufacture of the bomb. The case ultimately settled on an obscure New York couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, members of the communist party, whom the federal government claimed had been the masterminds of the conspiracy. The case against them rested in large part on a testimony by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, a machinist who had worked on the Manhattan Project. Greenglass admitted to channeling secret information to the Soviet Union through other agents. His sister and brother in law had, he claimed, planned and orchestrated the espionage. The Rosenbergs were convicted and sentenced to death. After two years of appeals and protests, they died in the electric chair.

31
Q

Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism

A

Joseph McCarthy was a relatively undistinguished first term Republican senator from Wisconsin when he suddenly burst into national prominence in February 1950. In a speech, he lifted up a sheet of paper and claimed to have a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. No person of comparable stature had ever made so bold a charge so naturally he became a prominent leader of the crusade against domestic subversion.

One hapless government official after another appeared before McCarthy’s subcommittee, where the senator belligerently and often cruelly badgered witnesses and destroyed public careers. McCarthy never produced solid evidence of actual communist subversion. But a growing constituency adored him nevertheless for his coarse, “fearless” assaults on a government establishment that many considered arrogant, elitist, even traitorous.

McCarthy provided his followers with an issue into which they could channel a a wide range of resentments.

32
Q

Dwight Eisenhower

A

Rejecting the efforts of conservatives to nominate Robert Taft or Douglas MacArthur, the Republicans turned to a man who had no previous identification with the party, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, military hero, commander of NATO, president of Columbia University in New York. Eisenhower won nomination on the first ballot. He chose as his running mate the young California senator who had gained national prominence through his crusade against Alger Hiss: Richard Nixon. Eisenhower and Nixon were a powerful combination in the autumn campaign. Eisenhower won by both a popular and electoral landslide. Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress. Ended 20 years of Democratic government and signaled the end of some of the worst turbulence of the postwar era.