Post-war America. The Cold War

World War I

America was determined to stay out of the First World War and adopted a policy of strict neutrality. However, attacks on passenger ships by German submarines and the discovery of a German plot to involve Mexico in war with the United States led Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917.

The arrival of two million fresh troops altered the balance sufficiently to enable the Allies to win the war. While the Americans were in favor of a non-punitive settlement, Wilson was unable to prevent the Allies from trying to further their imperialist ambitions in the peace settlement and the Republican-controlled Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which also contained Wilson's idealistic League of Nations. The United States, therefore, never took its leading role in the organization, which Wilson had hoped would end wars.

The Roaring Twenties

The 1920s were a decade of conservatism and insecurely founded prosperity, in which tariffs were brought to their highest ever levels and taxes were drastically reduced. This remarkable rise in living standards, which caused the decade to be called the Roaring Twenties, ended suddenly in October 1929 with the Wall Street crash - the result of a long period of over-production by the nation's factories and farms, and speculative mania among the middle and wealthy classes. This crash marked the beginning of the worst depression in American history, commonly referred to as the Great Depression.

The period was full of contrasts. There was widespread fear following the Russian Revolution that communists would overthrow the Government (the Red Scare), which led to the persecution of all left-wing groups; there was briefly mass support (four million members in 1925) for the Ku Klux Klan, which, in addition to blacks, now attacked Catholics, Jews and all those not born in America; and restrictions were imposed on immigration, not only with regard to the number but also the countries of origin. Moreover, this was the period of prohibition, when it was prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment (1919) to manufacture, transport or sell intoxicating liquors (when it ended in 1933, only eight states stayed "dry").

Yet the Twenties were also a period of sexual revolution 'when the existence of an instinctive "sex drive" in young people, especially women, gained social acceptance... [and] sexual problems and analysis became acceptable and then fashionable', and of mass culture, when radio and magazines began to present standardized behavior models to the population with its culturally different backgrounds, and Hollywood fostered the myth and illusion on which the whole decade had been built.

The New Deal Era

Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed the Depression on basic faults in the American economy and promised a "new deal" for the "forgotten man". He won the 1932 presidential election with an unprecedented majority and set about remedying the worsening situation with his New Deal in 1933.

This was the first administration to introduce government planning into the economy. Roosevelt's first step as president was to carry out reforms in banking and finance. Those measures revived public confidence in banks. Also, over the next two years, millions of unemployed were given jobs in public works projects, and emergency relief was provided for others in order to create greater internal demand for American products. Numerous measures were also taken to help the farmers, as a result of which their incomes more than doubled between 1932 and 1939.

The Second New Deal (1935-39) aimed at providing security against unemployment, illness and old age, to prevent the terrible hardships of the Depression being repeated. Maximum hours and minimum wages were established, children under the age of 16 were prohibited from working in factories, pensions for retired workers and their spouses and aided people with disabilities were provided during that period.

World War II

Roosevelt once said in defense of his New Deal that continuing unemployment and insecurity were partially to blame for the disappearance of democracy in Germany, Italy and Spain, where the ordinary people had turned to strong governments for their intervention. This rise of totalitarian governments influenced his foreign policy, which was in opposition to the isolationist basis of Congress's neutrality acts. Once war had come to Europe, few Americans were truly neutral. Roosevelt was, therefore, able to provide all possible aid to Great Britain 'short of war' and still become the first President to be elected for a third term.

Relations with Japan continued to worsen and, while negotiations were underway between the two countries, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on the morning of 7 December 1941. Congress responded by immediately declaring war on Japan.

Although Roosevelt and Churchill decided that the main theatre of the war should be Europe, the American navy obtained several victories against the Japanese in 1942 and gradually reconquered one island after another in the Pacific. In Europe the Germans were slowly pushed back on all sides before surrendering on 8 May 1945. While the Japanese position was equally hopeless, they refused to surrender and the prospect of a heavy loss of life convinced the Allies to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August, leading to Emperor Hirohito's formal surrender on 2 September 1945.

The United Nations Charter had been drafted at the Potsdam peace conference in July 1945. This ended American isolationism and recognized the nation's important role in international affairs.

Post-war America. The Cold War

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent… Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high, and in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow (from a speech made by Winston Churchill at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946).

Nobody took Churchill's words more seriously than the Americans. The fear that Greece and Turkey might fall behind this iron curtain led Truman to ask Congress for funds to help "all free peoples" to resist Communist aggression - the Truman Doctrine. The widespread fear of Communism was one of the reasons behind the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949.

The desire to keep Europe free of Communism was also behind the Marshall Plan, devised by US Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947, in which the USA gave or loaned billions of dollars to various European countries, particularly Germany, to assist in post-war reconstruction of their industries.

The persistent hostility between the Western and Communist nations came to be called the Cold War, which became a real war in 1950 when Soviet-trained North Korean troops invaded the Republic of Korea. Numerous incidents throughout the world increased international tension and the possibility of another global conflict. This nearly occurred in 1962 when the United States learned that there were Soviet-manned missile bases in Cuba. The Russians only removed the missiles after a naval blockade had been established around the island.

There was a widespread fear of Communism in America during the 1950s. The most famous anti-Communist was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Anyone who dared to oppose him was branded as a Communist or "Communist sympathizer". He used his method of discrediting people without proof so often that it became known as McCarthyism. Those accused of being pro-Communists usually lost their jobs and found it very difficult to get new ones.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 891