What is so nifty about the 50s? By the light of the atomic bomb Better dead than Red!

What is so nifty about the

50s?

By the light of the atomic bomb

Better dead than Red!

•1945 -1989

•Promise and Menace

•Baby boomers

•Fantastic standard of living

•Welfare state (elderly)

•Opportunities for women

•Welcome immigrants

•Civil rights and AAs

•Activist foreign policy PLASTICS! - great new inventions

1945

End of WWII

1950

Korean WarMcCarthyism

1958-1970s

Vietnam WarGreat Society

FeminismCivil RightsWatergate

1980s

ConservatismRepublicanismTechnologiesComputers

Berlin Wall comes downDisco

20 years of economic success!

Write this down!

What you should be aware of:

• By raising educational levels and stimulating construction of the housing industry the GI Bill profoundly shaped the entire industry of postwar America

The Montgomery GI Bill

This Century With Peter Jennings

What you should be aware of:

We made $ in WWII

Permanent war economy -Military budgets - Military Industrial Complex - R and D

Deals in the Middle East: Israel (Palestine) vs. Arabs (read Leon Uris’ Exodus)

Highway systems, air conditioning, electricity

Agricultural machinery and production levels

Population and therefore political shifts: *broke historic grip of the North

Yalta Conference• February 1945 “Big Three” Churchill, Stalin

and FDR met to create a post war agreement.

• Agreed to divide Germany into 4 zones controlled by allies.

• Berlin also divided into 4 zones (located in Soviet Zone)

• Poland – US and GB wanted the people of Poland to choose their government.

• Compromise – US agreed to recognize soviet government provided they include non- communist members and that free elections be held as soon as possible.

• Stalin never holds free elections

Cold War•Quietly behind the battles and bombs, American diplomats were working hard to make sure that when the war ended American economic power would be second to none....we would penetrate areas where England had been dominating....our massive economic machine needed more than just domestic

markets... the world markets would be ours

•Case in point: Middle East and oil

Howard Zinn A People’s History of the United States

Iron Curtain

United Nations was to promote cooperation to prevent future wars...but it was dominated by Western imperialist countries

Was the war fought to correct Hitler’s claim of white race supremacy?

• African Americans: “The Army jim-crows us. The Navy only lets us serve as messmen. The Red Cross refuses our blood. Employers & unions shut us out. Lynchings continue. We are the disenfranchised, jim-crowed, spat upon.. What more could Hitler do than that?”

Howard Zinn

Truman Doctrine• 1st application of foreign policy of containment and 1st time US strayed from G. Washington’s Farewell Address on maintaining peacetime isolation

Events that led to the Truman Doctrine:

•George Kennan’s analysis of Soviet behavior•Soviet reluctance to leave Iraq•Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech in Fulton, Missouri•England announces she can no longer provide aid to Greece & Turkey

Marshal Plan 1948

$16 BILLION in economic aid to Western European countries in 4 years -

• economic aim -

• political motive -

• *yeah, humanitarian aid but even more...a matter of national self-interest

Berlin crisis convinced Americans that they needed a Military alliance with Western Europe.

1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO members agreed to come to the aid of one another if one was attacked.

1955 – US and NATO members agreed to let West Germany rearm

Prompted the Soviet Union to create the Warsaw Pact – a military alliance of Soviet Union and other Eastern European nations.

Korean War 1950-1953After WWII Korea was split between the North (Soviet influenced) communist and the South (American sphere) right-wing dictatorship

North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea – UN retaliates

The American army became the UN army

Howard Zinn

McCarthyism

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

1950(shades of Sacco and

Vanzetti)Large-circulation newspapers

have articles like:“How Communists Get That Way”“Communists are After Your Child”MoviesI Married a CommunistI Was a Communist for the FBI

McCarthyismMickey Spillane published in 1951 One Lonely Night (3 million copies sold) in which the hero, Mike Hammer, says:

“I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it...They were Commies...red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago....”