Early Cold War America Flashcards
In 1944, in anticipation of the return of millions of servicemen and servicewomen, Congress passed the G.I. Bill. What did the Bill provide?
The G.I. Bill provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). Benefits included low-cost mortgages, loans to start a business or farm, and tuition aid to attend a vocational school, high school, or college.
Approximately 2.2 million veterans used the G.I. Bill’s education benefits in order to attend colleges or universities, and an additional 6.6 million used the benefits for some kind of training program.
What was the Baby Boom?
Between 1946 and approximately 1957, the United States experienced a massive growth in population, which historians and demographers term the Baby Boom.
Between 1948 and 1953 more babies were born than in the previous 30 years combined.
What was Levittown?
Begun in 1947, Levittown on Long Island was the first large-scale planned community. Levitt and Sons, a home developer, built hundreds of concrete slabs and erected 6,000 almost identical houses.
Levittown presaged the large flight to the suburbs which would take place during the 1950s.
Conservative Coalition
The Conservative Coalition was an alliance of Southern Democrats and Republicans that dominated Congress in the 1940s and 1950s.
The Conservative Coalition was able to block most of President Truman’s economic and civil rights legislation.
Throughout his administration, President Truman proposed numerous measures that continued the spirit of the New Deal, such as the Employment Act of 1946. What was the fate of most of Truman’s domestic proposals?
Most of President Truman’s domestic proposals were blocked in Congress by a combination of Republicans and Southern Democrats.
As an example, Truman requested that Congress draft legislation to provide national health insurance, a raise in the minimum wage, and a national commitment to full employment. Congress responded by providing the President with a Council of Economic Advisors.
In 1946, Congress eliminated the Office of Price Administration, which had been responsible for setting the prices on hundreds of goods. What was the result of this action?
During the Second World War, prices had been held at an artificial low. Once the check on prices was removed, inflation resulted and over the next year, prices rose 25%.
As a result of the elimination of the Office of Price Administration, inflation skyrocketed. In 1946 alone, prices rose 25%. How did workers react?
Wages had failed to keep up with inflation, and some 4.5 million workers went on strike in 1946. The vast number of strikers in essential industries threatened U.S. security interests, and during a United Mine Workers strike in 1946, Truman deployed the Army to ensure coal continued to be mined.
During his administration, President Truman desegregated the armed forces and the federal government, strengthened the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Department, and created a Committee on Civil Rights. Yet President Truman failed to have any proposed civil rights legislation passed. Why?
Faced with strong opposition from Southern Democrats, however, any civil rights legislation would have died in Congress. Truman did propose the Fair Employment Practices Commission, which failed to pass.
In July and August of 1945, representatives from the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain divided up Germany into zones of occupation at the _____ _____.
Potsdam Conference
The British, French, Americans, and Soviets each agreed to occupy roughly a quarter of Germany. In addition, the parties divided Berlin (which lay within the Soviet Zone) into four quarters, each assigned to one of the four powers.
What was the Baruch Plan?
The Baruch Plan was a proposal put forward in the United Nations in 1946. The Plan proposed a complete elimination of all nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear power only for peaceful means.
The Soviet Union rejected the Plan, heightening suspicions among U.S. leaders that the Soviets intended to develop their own weapons.
In an agreement with the United States, Stalin and the Soviet Union were to allow free elections in the Eastern European countries they occupied by 1946. What were the results of these elections?
The countries of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all backed Soviet candidates, although the elections were not open and honest.
The Soviet’s failure to allow open and honest elections strained relations with the United States.
In a speech decrying the elections of 1946, which placed the countries of Eastern Europe under Communist control, what term did Winston Churchill employ to describe the division between East and West?
Churchill used the term “Iron Curtain.”
The term came to symbolize the sharp division between the democratic nations of Western Europe and the nations of Eastern Europe, which were under Soviet control. During the 1950s, border defenses such as the Berlin Wall divided the two sides of the Curtain.
In 1946, Republicans were swept into office based on widespread dissatisfaction with President Truman’s domestic and foreign policies and passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. What did the Taft-Hartley Act establish?
The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop, which required workers to be union members before being hired. In addition, states were permitted to pass right-to-work laws, secondary boycotts (sympathetic boycotts in related industries) were outlawed, and the President was empowered to order an 80-day cooling-off period if a strike took place in an industry vital to national security.
The Taft-Hartley Act differed from the Wagner Act (passed as part of the New Deal), and favored employers over workers.
In the 1948 election Republicans chose _____ _____, the Governor of New York, to run for President, in opposition to President Truman, the Dixiecrats, and the Progressives.
Thomas Dewey
Feeling assured of victory due to the rifts in the Democratic Party, Dewey adopted a banal tone, focused on mere platitudes, and provided little indication of his post-election Presidential program.
In an example of his non-confrontational style, Dewey once stated, “You know that your future is still ahead of you.”
Who were the Dixiecrats?
The Dixiecrats were made up of states’ rights Southern Democrats, who opposed President Truman’s support for civil rights. The Dixiecrats ran Strom Thurmond for President.
The Dixiecrats weren’t the only Democrats to offer opposition to President Truman. Liberal Democrats who thought that Truman’s aggressive foreign policy threatened world peace formed a short-lived Progressive Party in 1948.
Faced with opposition from both the Dixiecrats and Progressives, President Truman still received the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1948. What was President Truman’s campaign strategy?
Faced with a three-way split in his own party, Truman went on the offensive. He criticized his Republican adversary Thomas Dewey’s refusal to address specific issues and attacked the Republican-controlled Congress with a wave of relentless and blistering partisan assaults as the “do-nothing” Congress.
In an astonishing upset, Truman was re-elected, winning by some two million votes.
In his 1949 State of the Union Address, President Truman outlined his domestic policy, termed the “Fair Deal.” What did Truman propose?
Truman proposed civil rights legislation, an increase in public housing, federal education, an increase in the minimum wage, aid for farmers, and national health insurance.
With the exception of an increase in the minimum wage (from $0.40 to $0.70), all of Truman’s Fair Deal programs failed to get Congressional approval, blocked by the Conservative Coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans.
During President Truman’s second term, U.S. foreign policy centered upon the doctrine of containment. What is containment?
Suggested by George Kennan in 1946, the U.S. foreign policy of containment centered on containing Communism to those countries where it existed, and halting its further spread.
Containment led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to U.S. involvement in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Who was George Kennan?
George Kennan was a Soviet expert in the State Department who first articulated the doctrine of containment in a 1946 cable to the State Department. Kennan believed that the policy of containing Communism in the areas where it currently existed would, in time, lead the Soviet Union to retreat from the idea of Communist world domination.
Containment would guide U.S. foreign policy until the Nixon Administration, and then see a resurgence as a foreign policy strategy during the Carter Administration, before being ultimately rejected by President Reagan.
