Global Concerns in the Cold War Part II

Hello readers! It's been a while since I last posted an update here on the blog. Since my last post, I submitted my second manuscript to The History Press, which is super exciting, and I've been teaching. The last post was a long one, and this one is probably going to be a longer one as well, so let's dive in!


Emerging Nations

After WWII, many former colonies gained their independence. The US and the Soviet Union soon were engaged in a competition to win allies among the new nations.

The Soviet Union made a major effort to win support among the newly independent nations. To counter this appeal, President John F. Kennedy in 1961 proposed that Congress establish a Peace Corps. The new program sought to build friendships between Americans and the people of other nations. It also sought to encourage economic growth in developing countries. Thousands of Americans, young and old, volunteered to serve in poor villages in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; they shared their skills and knowledge as teachers, doctors, nurses, carpenters, and farmers.

 

Developments in Africa

The Soviet Union quickly extended aid to the new African nations of Ghana and Guinea. To counter Soviet influence, the US expanded its own aid to other newly independent countries. 

The Congo became a flashpoint for this competition between the US and the Soviet Union to gain influence in a region. In 1960, the former Belgian Congo gained independence as the nation of Congo. Soon, opposing groups were fighting over control of the new country. The US backed one side; the Soviet Union backed the other; both sides supplied airplanes, trucks, and technical advisers to its Congo allies…the fight for control became increasingly violent but in 1965 the Congo became independently controlled and called itself the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Philippines

With European nations weakened by WWII, many Asians saw an opportunity to seize the independence they longed for. The first Asian country to win independence in the postwar period was the Philippine Islands. The US had promised the Philippines independence in 1934; in 1946, the US lived up to its promise.

Unrest soon developed in the Philippines. Many Filipinos wanted reforms, especially land reforms. When the government moved too slowly toward making changes, fighting broke out. Some of the rebels were Communists; but in 1954 the government had defeated the rebels and made some of the needed land reforms.

After Ferdinand Marcos became president in 1965, however, the government became less democratic. In the years that followed, many groups continued to push for greater reforms.

On May 10, 2022 Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was elected the president of the Philippines. 

Indochina

Indochina, which had been under French control, took a different path. After WWII, France struggled to maintain control. In one of the colonies, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh led the fight for independence from France. Because Ho Chi Minh was a Communist who had Soviet backing, the US backed the French. In 1954, Ho Chi Minh’s forces defeated the French and won control of the northern part of Vietnam. Fighting in Vietnam would last for almost 30 years. Before it ended, the fighting would draw the US into a long and bitter war.

But we’re not quite there yet…and this deserves its own series of posts.

Latin America and the Cold War

In the 1950s, the Cold War moved close to the US, in Latin America. The nations of Latin America faced many critical problems, including widespread poverty and poor health care. The US hoped that moderate Latin American governments would gradually improve these conditions…but instead many anti-American groups rose to power, including one that was close to our southern border—Cuba. 

In January 1959, Fidel Castro, a Communist, led a successful revolution in Cuba, overthrowing the president that the US had helped to place in power and supported. The Soviet Union promised Castro aid. Castro also began to encourage revolution in other parts of Latin America. Castro’s actions forced thousands of Cubans into exile, and many came to live in the US. In April 1961, a group of Cuban exiles secretly trained by the US CIA landed at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba. The Bay of Pigs Invasion failed and made Castro more popular in Cuba.

The next crisis with Cuba was more serious. Called the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962 aerial photographs showed American leaders that the Soviets were building nuclear missile bases inside Cuba. The bases could be used to launch missiles against the US.

President Kennedy insisted that the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev remove the missiles, calling them a “threat to world peace”. Khrushchev refused, and Kennedy ordered the US Navy to blockade Cuba, preventing Soviet ships from bringing missiles to Cuba. For 13 days, the world held its breath as Soviet ships sailed to Cuba loaded with missiles…but at the last minute, the Soviet ships turned around. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles as long as the US promised not to invade Cuba.

In our next post, or series of posts, we're going to learn about the Vietnam Conflict.

Global Concerns in the Cold War, Part I

Hello readers! It's been a few weeks since I last posted an update here on the blog. I've been busy with work and putting lesson plans together for the upcoming school year, but I'm back so let's get right into it!


Tensions between the US and Communist nations increased during and after the Korean War. As the Cold War intensified, the US and the Soviet Union competed for power around the world. They engaged in a dangerous competition to build up their supplies of nuclear weapons–which would lead to the creation of the intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM for short.


The Arms Race

After almost 30 years of totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin died in 1953. His death brought no letup in the Cold War tensions. A new Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, predicted that communism would destroy the Western democracies. By the end of the 1950s, the US and the Soviet Union had emerged as world superpowers. Superpowers are countries whose military, economic, and political strength are so great that they can influence events worldwide.

In the 1950s, the two nations began an expensive and dangerous arms race. An arms race is a contest in which nations compete to build more and more powerful weapons. In 1952, Americans exploded the first hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb. Soon, the Soviets had their own H-bomb. China joined the race by exploding its own atomic bomb in 1964; three years later, China exploded an H-bomb. Britain and France also developed nuclear weapons.

No country wanted to use nuclear weapons and risk a deadly counterattack. Instead, the nuclear nations stockpiled, or collected, their nuclear weapons. By the 1970s, the Soviet Union and the US had enough weapons stockpiled to destroy each other many times over. This idea of a deadly counterattack if one nation uses their nuclear weapons is call mutually assured destruction.

With the superpowers having stockpiled nuclear weapons, the US entered the Atomic Age. And as a result of the Atomic Age, everyday life in the US changed…similar to how students today have lockdown drills and fire drills at school, everyone had to be prepared for the possibility of nuclear war and there were “duck and cover” drills that people had to know; also, the ways Americans purchased products was affected because of the arms race and the Cold War.


Shopping Mall Fallout

After the successful launch of the Soviet nuclear bomb, Americans sought ways to protect themselves and their families, and turned to bomb shelters; some of these bomb shelters were underground, similar to steel-and-concrete reinforced foxholes, while others were inconspicuous public places such as schools and hospitals. As America was growing increasingly prosperous with its new status as a major industrial complex and a global superpower, families experienced an increase in disposable income. This meant that more people would be shopping for pleasure rather than necessity. Enter the American shopping mall! Now, this is information that I had posted in a previous blog post and have also shared on "The Half-Pint Historian Podcast", so bear with me if you've seen this content from me before, but for those of you who haven't, this is some information that is sure to get you thinking!

The first shopping mall in America was designed by Victor Gruen, who had immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. He was an architect and would design many small shops and boutiques in the U.S.; he would also design the first shopping mall and it would opened in Edina, Minnesota in 1956, and the mall, the Southdale Mall, would be commissioned by the Dayton family, the owners of Target. Gruen's shopping malls were designed to be self-contained downtown centers where any Americans could spend their leisure time, but with the devastation that nuclear weapons were capable of, and the Cold War being in full-swing at the time he was designing the first mall and several others to come, Gruen also wanted shopping malls to act as nuclear fallout shelters.

Obtaining advice from numerous civil defense contractors, the Southdale Mall, and the others Gruen would design, would have features similar to shopping malls we see today—food courts, ample water fountains and restroom access, locking gates on store entrances, stores facing one another, numerous entrances and exits and even "hidden" hallways and access points, a central arboretum with real plants, at least two anchor stores, and other features. However, the most important feature in nearly all shopping malls in the U.S. as a result of World War II, which is still a major feature today, is where the mall is located—ten miles away from the city centers; if a hydrogen bomb were to be dropped on the major cities in any given state, those outside its eight-mile blast radius would survive. Malls tend to be outside the city centers so if a nuclear strike does occur, the people inside the malls at the time would survive the strike.

The idea of shopping malls operating as nuclear fallout shelters never really became popular, but it is interesting to think about the effects of World War II and the Cold War on our lives even today. Other places that do operate as public emergency shelters typically include: schools, fire departments, police departments, corrections facilities, town halls, and sometimes even shopping malls.

Along with the arms race, and the creation of the shopping mall, the Cold War era also saw the space race, where the US and the Soviet Union competed for dominance in the final frontier.


The Space Race

The Space Race began in 1955 when both countries announced that they would soon be launching satellites into orbit. The Soviets took the US announcement as a challenge and even established a commission whose goal was to beat the US in putting a satellite into space.

On October 4, 1957 the Russians placed the first successful satellite into orbit. It was called Sputnik I. The Russians had taken the lead in the Space Race. The Americans successfully launched their first satellite four months later called the Explorer I. The Soviets again won the race for putting the first man into space. On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man to orbit the Earth in the spacecraft Vostok I. Three weeks later the US launched the Freedom 7 and astronaut Alan Shepherd became the first American in space. Shepherd's craft did not orbit the Earth, however. It was nearly a year later on February 20, 1962 when the first American, John Glenn, orbited the Earth on the Friendship 7 spacecraft.

The Americans were embarrassed at being behind the Space Race. In 1961 President Kennedy went to congress and announced that he wanted to be the first to put a man on the Moon. He felt this was important for the country and the western world. The Apollo Moon program was launched.

In conjunction with the Apollo program the US launched the Gemini program which would develop technology for use on the Apollo spacecraft. Under the Gemini program the Americans learned how to change the orbit of a spacecraft, spent significant time in orbit to learn how the human body would be affected, brought two spacecraft together in a rendezvous in space, and also went on the first space walks outside of a spacecraft.

After many years of experiments, test flights, and training the Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched into space on July 16, 1969. The crew included astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. The trip to the Moon took three days.

Upon arriving Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moved to the Lunar module, called the Eagle, and began their descent to the Moon. There were some malfunctions and Armstrong had to land the module manually. On July 20, 1969 the Eagle landed on the Moon. Neil Armstrong stepped outside and became the first man to walk on the Moon. With his first step on the Moon, Armstrong said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

With the Gemini and Apollo programs the US had taken a huge lead in the Space Race. In July of 1975 with relations between the US and the Soviet Union beginning to thaw, the first US-Soviet joint mission occurred with the Apollo-Soyez project. The Space Race was effectively over.

It was because of the Space Race that the National Aeronautics and Space Association, NASA, was founded as a part of the National Defense Education Act, with the goal of producing more rocket scientists and teachers.


Star Trek

Science fiction had been popular for quite some time in the US and the advances in technology during the years of the Space Race helped boost its popularity.

“Star Trek” aired from 1966 to 1969. Created by Gene Roddenberry and produced by Desilu Productions (owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez), “Star Trek” is set in the years 2266-2269 and shows the voyages of the crew of the Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701. Roddenberry created the show to rival other sci-fi shows of the time, such as “Buck Rogers” and others. But “Star Trek” was unique as it boasted a multi-racial and multi-ethnic cast, showing Roddenberry’s ideal world where everyone, even green-blooded aliens from other galaxies, was created equal.

The show was unsuccessful at first and failed to gain advertisers’ attention. But after the original series went off the air, the show became popular in syndication. Roddenberry’s ideal world sparked interest from people of all ages for its storylines and the messages in the episodes. Today, there are a total of 12 television shows and 13 movies. Other TV shows and movies have even taken elements from "Star Trek" and incorporated those elements, or have been so inspired by the franchise that the newer product looks nearly identical (a great example of this is "The Orville" with Seth MacFarlane).

The show imagined a humanity so exceptional it had reached out to the stars: a great interplanetary alliance called the Federation, a union of planets that represented all Roddenberry believed human civilization could achieve. But the episodes were full of cautionary tales of science warped by hubris: Artificial intelligence run amok, weapons of mass destruction, computers that ruled entire civilizations. Only through a fierce commitment to human independence and ingenuity were the heroes of the Enterprise generally able to emerge victorious. This was Cold War allegory at its finest: technology could lead us down the path to destruction if in the wrong hands, but if combined with a belief in the individual human spirit it could take us to the stars.


This was a longer post, so be sure to be on the lookout for part two, where I'll be examining struggles happening in emerging nations.

McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare

Hello everyone! It's been a bit since my last post; I've been busy with the last few days of school (I'm a middle school teacher, for any readers who didn't know), recording for season two of "The Half-Pint Historian Podcast", I started a part-time job for the summer which will turn into working nights and weekends during the school year, I've been lesson planning for the upcoming school year in September, and I've just been experiencing life in general. In any case, let's pick up where we left off!


American confidence was shaken by the Soviet possession of an atomic bomb, and the failure to win a decisive victory in the long stalemate in Korea further worried Americans. Due to these, American fears were realized at home.

Americans had absorbed a number of blows during the Cold War. Soviet possession of atomic weapons, the fall of China to the Communists, and the stalemate in Korea all led to worries about the ability of the US to defeat communism. Many Americans worried that Communist sympathizers and spies might be secretly working to overthrow the US government.

Two cases at this time seized public attention. In the first case, Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, was accused of passing government secrets to Soviet agents. Hiss’s accuser, Whittaker Chambers, had been a Communist during the 1930s. In 1948, Chambers appeared before a committee of the House of Representatives where he claimed that in the 1930s Hiss had given him top secret papers to pass to the Soviet Union. Hiss strongly denied passing any secret papers to the Soviet Union and sued Chambers for making false accusations. Then, Chambers produced copies of the papers. They became known as the “pumpkin papers” because Chambers had hidden them on microfilm in a pumpkin in his garden. So many years had passed that Hiss couldn’t remember the crime he committed and because it had been so long, Hiss couldn’t be charged with spying; he was, however, charged with perjury (lying under oath) to the congressional committee and spent several years in prison.

Fears about America’s security rose even higher in 1950 when several Americans were arrested on charges of passing the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. In the most famous trial of the times, a married couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were found guilty of supplying information to the Soviet Union. They were sentenced to death. A worldwide outcry arose, but the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.

Today, more than half a century after the trials of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, their roles are still debated. However, many questions of their involvement have been resolved. In the 1990s, the US government released copies of secret Soviet messages that had been decoded after years of dedicated work. The messages appeared to show that both Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg had in fact spied for the Soviets; Ethel apparently was aware of the spying and may even have assisted her husband.


McCarthyism

A climate of fear contributed to the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. McCarthy built his career by threatening to expose Communists. In a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, McCarthy waved a paper in the air and claimed it contained the names of 205 Communists who worked in the State Department…McCarthy later reduced this number of 81, then to 57.

McCarthy refused to show the list to anyone. He didn’t even need to do so because many Americans were eager to believe him. His dramatic charges gained him a large following. During the next four years, McCarthy’s charges became more sensational; he led Senate hearings in which he bullied witnesses and made exaggerated charges. Eventually, the term McCarthyism came to mean accusing someone of disloyalty without having any evidence.

One of the things McCarthy is best known for was the establishment of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which was dedicated, in theory, to finding American Communists in government, show business, and other fields. The committee hearings in 1947 resulted in many people being blacklisted, or denied work in their chosen fields, based solely on suspicions. One group of producers, directors, screenwriters, and actors–known as the Hollywood Ten–refused to testify before the committee. They were sentenced to jail time for their silence and many never worked in Hollywood again after their release. One writer, Dalton Trumbo, got around the blacklist by writing a screenplay under a pseudonym. He won an Academy Award for the screenplay, The Brave One, in 1956.

Aware of McCarthy’s power to destroy careers, few people were brave enough to oppose him and his “red scare” tactics. McCarthy finally lost his following in 1954 when a TV audience of millions saw him make false accusations against the US Army. Many Americans came to realize that McCarthy couldn’t support the charges. Soon after, the US Senate voted to censure, or condemn him. McCarthy died three years later. By that time, the Communist scare was mostly finished.



Next time here on the blog, we're going to examine global concerns in the Cold War.

The Korean War

Hello readers! Rather than writing a lengthy intro, we're just going to jump right into things.

At the outset of the Cold War, the US used political and economic means to battle against Communism. However, the Cold War suddenly turned hot in the East Asian nation of Korea. As American soldiers fought in the Korean War, other Americans hunted for Communists in America.


Conflict in Korea

In 1910, Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula and ruled it harshly. After Japan’s defeat in WWII, Korea was divided at the 38th Parallel line of latitude. The Soviet Union backed a Communist government in North Korea, and the US backed a non-Communist government in South Korea.

Tensions between North and South Korea continued to increase; then, on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops suddenly invaded South Korea. Armed with Soviet tanks and artillery, the North Koreans shattered the South Korean army and pushed south. Within three days, the invasion had reached the South Korean capital of Seoul. Korea, it seemed, would soon fall to the Communists.

President Truman quickly responded to the attack. At his urging, the UN Security Council voted to send a military force to Korea. Truman appointed WWII hero General Douglas MacArthur to lead the force. Although 16 nations sent troops to fight under the UN flag, 90% were American. The Soviet delegate was (unsurprisingly) not present at the UN debate and so failed to veto the proposal.

The first UN forces to arrive at the front were badly outnumbered and poorly supplied. They fought bravely but were pushed back almost to the tip of the Korean Peninsula. As fresh troops and supplies arrived, however, the defensive line held.

In September 1950, General MacArthur launched a bold counterattack. UN forces at Inchon, a port city near Seoul, were able to pursue the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel into North Korea. MacArthur’s forces chased the North Koreans almost to the Yalu River, which separates North Korea from China.

China’s government responded angrily. As UN soldiers neared the Yalu, masses of Chinese troops crossed the border. The UN forces were overwhelmed. Soon, the battlefront was once again in South Korea. After the sides continued to go back-and-forth, the war settled down into a stalemate, a situation in which neither side wins.

The Korean War was heavily broadcast on television, and became a part of the national subculture, so much so that in the 1970s there was a TV about the Korean War called “M.A.S.H.” that showed the ups and downs faced by Army doctors and medics in the Korea conflict.



Truman vs. MacArthur

General MacArthur believed that the US couldn’t win in Korea unless the US attacked China. MacArthur publicly called for the bombing of supply bases in China. Truman, on the other hand, was more cautious; he believed that an American attack on China might start a new world war (as the Soviet Union supported China) and he warned MacArthur against making further public statements. MacArthur didn’t listen to Truman, continued to make public statements in support of going to war with China, and was fired by Truman.



Peace Talks

Meanwhile, the stalemate in Korea continued. In July 1951, the opposing sides began peace talks. These talks would continue for two long years while the fighting continued. In July 1952, a cease-fire finally ended the fighting. The border between the warring sides stood almost exactly where it had before the war. The two sides agreed to establish a demilitarized zone, an area from which military forces are prohibited. It still divides the country today.

The war’s toll was horrendous. At least two million Koreans died in the fighting. Most of them were civilians. American loses totaled well over 30,000 dead and more than 100,000 wounded. Thousands of soldiers from other nations were also killed.

With the cease-fire, the fighting ended in Korea. However, tensions between North and South Korea continued well into the next century. Two heavily armed forces continued to face each other across the demilitarized zone, sometimes called the DMZ.

Tensions are still high between North and South Korea today, and the two nations fight each other not with bombs but with information…and K-pop music. I remember seeing on the news around 2016 or so that the South Korean military was using high-powered speakers to blast information about what was really happening in North Vietnam over the border, hoping that the people who lived close to the border would hear; also, the South Korean military was blasting music over the speakers, knowing the North Koreans (1) often receive bootlegged K-pop music anyway and (2) that the country's leadership despised anything considered to be westernized.



American confidence was shaken by the Communist victory and Soviet possession of the atomic bomb, and the failure to win a decisive victory in the long stalemate in Korea further worried Americans. Due to these, American fears were realized at home.

Next post, we're going to examine the rise of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare.

A Time of Prosperity

Hello readers, and welcome back to another blog post! Look at me being productive! We're still in the Cold War era, and will be for quite some time. This post is going to get away from war a little bit and instead focus on the post-WWII era prosperity that was felt by many, but certainly not all, Americans in the mid-1940s and beyond.


As America’s leaders waged the Cold War all around the world, important economic, social, and political changes were occurring at home. Many Americans enjoyed a new burst of prosperity. However, not everyone was able to share in this economic boom.

On the homefront, Americans faced important economic challenges after the war. Defense industries had closed or had scaled back employment; millions of soldiers would have to be absorbed into the postwar economy…the nation faced a serious problem–how to change back to a peacetime economy. To help these needs, Congress had passed an act in 1944 that became known as the GI Bill of Rights. (GI, which stands for “government issue”, was the name given to any member of the US Armed Forces). The bill gave veterans money to spend on businesses, homes, and schooling; the GI Bill helped more than two million former soldiers attend college to prepare for new careers.

During WWII, consumer goods had been in short supply. With the war’s end, Americans were ready and eager to buy. Because demand far exceeded the supply of goods, the result was soaring inflation. As prices rose, workers demanded large pay increases. When employment refused, a wave of strikes swept the nation.

Although President Truman supported labor, he feared that wage increases would lead to even higher prices. In May 1946, he ended the Union Mine Workers strike by taking over the mines. When railroad workers went on strike a month later, Truman threatened to order them back to work, which angered the union members. When the President encouraged industries to raise salaries, inflation resulted. That made consumers angry.

During the 1946 elections, Republicans asked voters, “Had enough?” Voters seemed to agree. The election gave Republicans a majority in both the House and Senate. Armed with the power to cancel many New Deal programs, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act. The act let the government get a court order to delay a strike for 80 days if the strike threatened public safety. The act also forbade unions to contribute to political campaigns. Finally, the act banned the closed shop, which is a workplace in which only union members can be hired. Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, but Congress passed the act over Truman’s veto. Eventually, Truman would try to expand the goal of the New Deal with his Fair Deal reforms.


The Election of 1948

In early 1948, President Truman’s chances for reelection looked slim. Two out of three voters disapproved of the way he was leading the country. Even Truman’s own Democrats were split. Angered by Truman’s support of civil rights for African Americans, white Democrats nominated their own candidate, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond. Liberal Democrats, unhappy with Truman’s policy of challenging Soviet expansion, formed the Progressive Party, and they nominated former Vice President Henry Wallace to run for President.

Confident of victory, the Republicans nominated New York’s governor Thomas Dewey. Dewey didn’t campaign hard; Truman, on the other hand, campaigned tirelessly. He traveled more than 30,000 miles and made hundreds of speeches. Everywhere Truman went, he attacked what he called the “do-nothing” Republican Congress. On election night, people still expected a Dewey victory. In fact, the Chicago Tribune printed its first edition with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”.

The election was one of the biggest upsets in American history. Truman squeaked past Dewey to victory. The Democrats also gained control of both the House and the Senate. President Truman saw his narrow victory as a chance to act on his Fair Deal Program, which he had proposed during the campaign. Congress approved a few of the President’s Fair Deal Program proposals; for example, lawmakers increased the minimum wage and provided funds for flood control and low-income housing. However, Congress refused to fund education and national health insurance. It also voted down Truman’s proposals to reduce racial discrimination.


Eisenhower's Middle Way

In 1952, Truman decided not to run again. I the election of 1952, the Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois. The Republicans chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower, nicknamed Ike. A war hero, Eisenhower won a landslide victory.

In contrast to Roosevelt and Truman, Eisenhower believed that the federal government should play a smaller role in the economy. He called for cutting spending, though not for ending programs that helped people. In fact, he increased the number of people who could receive Social Security benefits. Generally, Eisenhower followed a middle-of-the-road policy in his two terms as President. Running on a record of “peace, progress, and prosperity” won him another huge victory in 1956.

Perhaps Eisenhower’s greatest achievement was the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. It provided funds for a vast system of freeways to link all parts of the US. Increasingly, Americans used highways instead of railroads for traveling and for transporting goods.

The Eisenhower years were prosperous ones for many Americans. Inflation slowed and employment soared. New technologies such as the use of computers helped increase American productivity. New jobs put money in consumers’ pockets. Americans responded by spending money on homes, furniture, and cars. Shoppers also bought new products like televisions and air conditioners. Throughout the 1950s, the American standard of living, which is a measure of how comfortable life is for a person, group, or country, rose steadily. By the end of the decade, 6 out of 10 American families owned homes, and 3 out of 4 had cars. Americans manufactured and bought nearly 1 out of every 2 products produced anywhere in the entire world. The US was in the midst of change. After the dangers of war, Americans were looking for security, and many found it in their homes and families.

In the postwar years, Americans married earlier than their parents had. They also raised larger families. The increased birthrate became known as the baby boom. The baby boom increased demand for food, housing, and manufactured goods. Along with the baby boom, people were living longer thanks to new medicines that became popular in the 1950s. For example, antibiotics could now cure many serious infectious diseases; and a new vaccine for polio kept children and adults safe from the disease.

Americans bought automobiles as fast as auto plants could make them. Nowhere were these cars more appreciated than in the growing suburbs. During the 1950s, the number of Americans living in the suburbs grew by 50%. Suburbs grew around cities throughout the US. The growth was most pronounced in the West. As a result, states such as California, Arizona, and Texas gained both people and political power.

Of all the new products of the 1950s, the one that has the greatest impact on American life was television. In 1946, only 8,000 homes had a television set, but by the mid-1950s, 3 out of 4 American homes had one. By the early 1960s, almost every house had one television set, and many homes had more than one.

Television brought news and entertainment into people’s homes. Early programs included original dramas from top writers and situation comedies, more commonly called sitcoms, about the ideal middle-class family. There was, however, some negative effects from television. During the 1950s, watching television became the most important activity of family life. In fact, by 1956, Americans were spending almost as much time watching television every week as they spent at work. The first frozen dinners, introduced in the 1950s, were designed for families who wanted to combine mealtime and television viewing.

Television also helped to make popular a new kind of music…rock-and-roll. Rock-and-Roll was a blend of Black rhythm-and-blues and country music. By far the most popular singer of rock-and-rolle in the postwar era was Elvis Presley, who became known as “the King of Rock-and-Roll”. With hips shaking and knees bending, Presley soon became a teen idol and national star. Adults, on the other hand, were shocked at his music and his provocative dance moves. When he appeared on national television, the camera showed only his upper body.

Although Elvis was “The King”, Chuck Berry is often called the Father of Rock-and-Roll. He invented driving guitar riffs that are still being imitated by today’s bands, and is most well-known for his song “Johnny B. Goode”. If you’ve seen the movie “Back to the Future”, you know this song.The baby boomers were the first generation to grow up with rock-and-roll. The concerts by artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard brought white and black teenagers together, enjoying the same beat.

The song “Rock Around the Clock”, written by James Myers and Max Freedman, has often been credited as the first song to popularize rock-and-roll music. First recorded in 1953 by Sonny Dae and his Knights, “Rock Around the Clock” received little attention at first. The following year it was recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets as a “B-side” on a 45 single, and still received little attention. In 1955, it was used in the soundtrack for a popular film called Blackboard Jungle, a gritty drama about teenage alienation and violence. Almost immediately, Haley’s version of “Rock Around the Clock” became a hit, and it popularized the rockabilly subculture and led to the domination of popular music charts by rock-and-roll music.

As the US was poised to enjoy a new burst of prosperity, a conflict was brewing in a faraway corner of the world, the Korean Peninsula. It would draw the US into a very “hot” and bloody war, and set off a period of self-doubt among Americans.



This is where we're going to leave off for this post. Next time, we're going to examine the Korean War.

The Cold War Era

Hello everyone. The last history-related post here on the blog was about espionage during WWII, where I covered some of the basic intelligence organizations and spy rings. Prior to that, however, we ended the WWII posts with the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This post, the return to the history posts, is going to be introduction into the next conflict that Americans were involved in...the Cold War.

Photo from Wiki Commons


Shortly after the Allies defeated the Axis powers in WWII, the Allies’ wartime alliance broke down. The alliance was replaced by a struggle between Communist and non-Communist nations. This struggle, known as the Cold War, would impact American life for nearly half a century…and in many ways we’re still feeling the affects of the Cold War today.



Growing Distrust

Differences arose among the wartime Allies even before the war had ended. In the final months of the war, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had met at Yalta, a resort in the Soviet Union. There, Stalin promised to hold free elections in the parts of Eastern Europe under his control. At the time, Soviet troops were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Instead, Stalin proceeded to establish Communist governments in these nations. He realized that free elections would result in non-Communist governments. Stalin wanted to construct a ring of friendly countries to protect the western borders of the Soviet Union. After the ring had been built, Stalin hoped to make the Soviet Union the world’s dominant power.

By 1948, most of the nations of Eastern Europe had become satellite states of the Soviet Union. A satellite is a nation that is dominated politically or economically by a more powerful nation.

Churchill expressed the fears of many in the West. Speaking at a college in Fulton, Missouri, he warned of the Soviet threat, stating that: “An iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe…all these famous cities and populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.” The term “iron curtain” is a way of referring to a barrier to understanding and information. Churchill’s use of the term became a popular way of describing the conflict between the democratic nations of the West and the Soviet Union and the Communist-controlled nations of Eastern Europe. In addition, hostile Communist threats loomed in Southern and Western Europe. The wartime alliance among the Allied powers was no more.



Containing the Communist Threat

The Cold War began at a time when many Americans worried about the nation’s leadership. Harry S. Truman had become President after the sudden death of FDR in April 1945. Truman wasn’t well-known; as Vice President, his leadership hadn’t been tested. However, President Truman wasted little time in showing his leadership qualities, as the first Cold War challenges he had faced were in Greece, Iran, and Turkey. After WWII, a Communist-led revolt broke out in Greece. Greek Communists threatened to take over the government. At the same time, the Soviet government began to threaten two nation on its southern border, Turkey and Iran.

In March 1947, President Truman made an urgent request to Congress to aid Greece and Turkey. He declared that the US would oppose the spread of communism. In a statement he made to Congress on March 12, 1947, he stated a principle that became known as the Truman Doctrine: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” The Truman Doctrine led to the policy of containment, which had the goal of containing, or limiting, Soviet expansion.

Military aid alone couldn’t contain communism. After WWII, much of Europe lay in ruins. Communists said the capitalist system was powerless to repair the damaged economies, and many desperate Europeans believed them. Communist parties gained strength in both Italy and France in the postwar era. To meet this crisis, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a plan in June 1947 that called for the US to provide economic assistance to European nations. Between 1948 and 1951, the US loaned 16 Western European countries more than $12 billion in aid. The Marshall Plan was a huge success. It helped countries such as France, West Germany, and Italy recover from the war. American dollars built new factories, schools, hospitals, railroads, and bridges.

The focus of Cold War hostility now shifted to Germany. At the Yalta Conference, the Allies had agreed to divide Germany into four zones; American, British, French, and Soviet troops would each control one of the zones. Germany’s capital city, Berlin, which lay inside Soviet-controlled territory, was also divided into four zones.

By 1948, the Western powers believed that it was time to reunite Germany. Stalin was bitterly opposed to this move. In June 1948, the Soviets set up a blockade around Berlin. They prevented delivery of food supplies to West Berlin’s two million residents. Stalin gambled that the Western Allies would accept the Communist takeover of West Berlin. However, the Allies responded with a massive airlift–sending cargo planes to deliver tons of supplies to the people. For almost a year, Western planes delivered supplies to West Berlin. The Soviets finally called off the blockage in May 1949. In October, France, Britain, and the US combined their zones into one country, called the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany. The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany.

A divided Germany and Berlin remained a focus of Cold War tensions. Between 1949 and 1961, thousands of East Germans fled to West Berlin. From there, they went to West Germany. Suddenly, in August 1961, the East German government began building a wall between East and West Germany. For 28 years, the wall stood as a symbol of a divided Germany and a divided Europe.



International Organizations

After WWII, the US played a leading role in creating the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This move signaled a turn away from traditional American isolationism.

The main goals of the UN were to maintain peace and settle international disputes. Under the UN Charter, member nations agreed to bring disputes to the UN. At the core of the UN are the General Assembly and the Security Council. Every nation, large or small, has a single vote in the General Assembly; however, the General Assembly doesn’t have a way to enforce its decisions. The Security Council has far greater power, as its decisions are supposed to be followed by all of the UN nations.

The Security Council has 15 members; five of which are permanent members–the US, Russia, China, Britain, and France. Each permanent member has the power to veto, or reject, any proposal before the Security Council. Even if only one permanent member votes no, the Security Council can’t act. The UN’s greatest successes have been in fighting hunger and disease as well as in improving educational opportunities. Through relief programs, the UN has provided tons of goods, clothing, and medicine to victims of natural disaster and war.

In April 1949, as Cold War tensions rose, the US and other Western nations established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which is a formal military alliance to guard against a Soviet attack. Members of NATO agreed than an attack on one member would be considered an attack against the entire group. In response, the Soviet Union and the satellite nations of Eastern Europe formed their own alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.



The Shocks of 1949

Until 1949, most Americans were confident that the US was safe because it alone knew how to build the atomic bomb. However, in September 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic bomb. Now, the Cold War seemed much more deadly. Each nation had, within its reach, the power to destroy one another.

Shortly after, Americans received a second shock. Since the 1930s, China had been a battleground between the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communists. In the final months of 1949, the Nationalist government collapsed. China fell under the control of the Communists. Under their leader, Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communists established the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese Nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan. The US insisted that the Taiwanese government was the legal government of China. It refused to recognize the People’s Republic and kept the UN from admitting Communist China to China’s seat on the Security Council.



I think this is a good place to stop for now. Next time here on the blog, we're going to talk about the prosperity of the post-WWII era. Not everything during the era of the Cold War was scary, after all!

I'm Back!

Hello readers! I'm so sorry for the long hiatus, but I've had a lot of changes happen in my personal life and I didn't have enough time to sit and write blog posts for a while; also during this hiatus I've been experimenting with podcasting, and that went really well. I'm hoping to be able to balance my time between work, being an author, being a podcaster, and blogging so I can get everything done that I want to!

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