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Compare and contrast the development of political ideologies in the post- WI era to those of the Depression era, concentrating on the attitudes of Americans toward Communism. 2. Compare the events, justifications, and results of the Second Red Scare to those of the First Red Scare. 3. Who Us ported Joe McCarthy and why? 4. Compare the competing American and Soviet visions for the post-war world in 1945. How did these opposing ideas lead to a “cold war? ” 5.
Compare the foreign policy goals of the Truman administration with those of Woodrow Willow’s administration. The Cold War Although the Soviet Union and the United States had been allies during World War II, their alliance quickly unraveled once they had defeated their common enemy. Different people have different views on the origins of the Cold War: all the fault of the Soviet Union, all the fault of the United States, all of the above The Cold War emerged because the united States and Soviet Union had radically different visions of the post-war world.
American politicians believed that the nations of the world were interdependent and should provide open markets for American goods and services. In this vision, free and open trade was necessary to prevent another Depression. In addition, any Americans were proud of their democratic system, believed in Manifest Destiny, and wanted to “share” their version of enlightened self- determination with the rest of the world, especially with the newly independent states of Asia and Africa. The Soviet union, on the other hand, had an entirely different vision of the post-war world.
The Soviets were largely concerned about establishing greater security. By some estimates, the U. S. S. R. Had suffered military and civilian losses of 20 million during the war. Many more had died in Stalin’s brutal political purges. The Soviet government, or example, often executed as traitors returning Red Army soldiers who had Had the misfortune of being prisoners of war. Stalin feared that Germany would regain its strength in a matter of decades and launch yet another attack on Russian soil.
In this atmosphere of xenophobia and obsession with security, the Soviet Union wanted to: Ward off another attack, establish defensible borders, encourage friendly regimes on its western border Soviet leaders believed that they COUld meet these goals if they could foster friendly states to the west. For this reason, Stalin and other Soviet leaders extended heir control over much of Eastern Europe during the decades after World War II. Soviet domination in this area denied the United States both free access to markets and the opportunity to export its vision of democracy.
The conflict between the worldviews of the United States and the IS came to a head with rebellions in Iran, Greece, and Turkey. During World War II, the British had occupied southern Iran, while the Soviets had occupied the north in the area bordering the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. At war’s end, neither side wanted to pull out of the Middle East because both wanted access to the region’s rich oil fields. The Soviet Union also sought to protect its southern border. Great Britain asked the Lignite States for aid to prop up the pro- British Shah and to prevent Arab nationalists from gaining power.
In Greece, Communist-led insurgents threatened to overthrow the corrupt, British-led monarchy. Although Communist Yugoslavia, rather than the Soviet union, aided the rebels, Truman was eager to fight Communists of any stripe. Dean Achaeans, then undersecretary of state, argued that a Communist victory in Greece would be disastrous for the United States and the Western world. He expressed this fear in the so-called ‘Rotten Apple Theory:” if Greece and Turkey went Communist, then, like a rotten apple in a barrel of fruit, the Communist menace would spread to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
American politicians would later restate this position, under different circumstances, as the “Domino Theory. ” The development of hostilities between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies after World War II Many of the issues that divided the post-war world were decided at the World War II summit meetings at Tehran (November, 1943), Yalta (February, 1945), and Potsdam (July-August, 1945). President Roosevelt knew of the weaknesses of the League of Nations and lived that only the great powers could insure peace in the postwar era.
In his view, the “Four policemen”–the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China–should assume the responsibility of preventing aggression after subduing the Axis. The movement to found a new league based upon the concept of collective security gathered strength, however, especially in Congress, and the President had little choice but to embrace the scheme. He did succeed in incorporating some of his views in the United Nations: the five great powers (France was added) would become permanent members of the Security Council, the Nun’s principal executive organ, and they would possess a veto over its actions.
The Senate of the U. S. Approved membership in the U. N. In July 1 945, by the vote of 89 to 2. When the “big three” met at Yalta the main outlines of the conference had been agreed to at Tehran. The three leaders generally agreed to DE Magnify and demoralized postwar Germany but not about how to achieve these goals. Disagreement existed not only between the Allies but also within the American government. Some leaders believed that while Germany deserved rather drastic treatment, the Allies would not reduce its sixty-odd millions to a semi-starvation level.
They believed that Germany should have a sufficient economic base to feed itself and to play a constructive role in the revival of the European economy. Others believed that the only wise and safe course was to partition Germany and reduce her as close as possible to a pastoral agricultural economy, depriving her of the industrial sinews of war. Roosevelt, while initially favoring the harsh stand, came around to the idea of allowing Germany to rebuild its economy. Stalin favored a drastic policy toward Germany.
He particularly anted heavy reparations in capital equipment, goods, and labor, to rebuild his devastated country, and referred to a total of $20 billion as reasonable (Germany’s World War reparations had been set at $33 billion), with one-half going to the Soviet Union. At Yalta the amount of reparations was left open (a reparations commission would decide) and the question of dismemberment was also postponed. The Allies did agree to divide Germany into zones of occupation with Berlin jointly occupied. At British wishes primarily, France received an occupation zone carved from the British and American zones.
Churchill, unsure of the future U. S. Involvement on the continent, thus sought French help in curbing Germany and in watching closely the Soviet Union. Even before the defeat of Germany a rift had begun to emerge within the Grand Alliance. When Italy surrendered in 1943 the Soviets were excluded from any participation in the peace talks and subsequent terms. Thus the Italian government was allowed to surrender with conditions, to stay in power, to retain administrative control of non-battlefield areas in Italy, to keep the monarchy, and eventually to join the Allies as a co-belligerent.
The ND result was that by 1945 the same groups that had run Italy before the war were still in power, backed by Allied Control Council from which the Soviets had been systematically excluded. Stalin had protested initially, but did not press the point, for he seems to have recognized the value of the precedent those who liberated a country from the Nazis could decide what happened there. He was more than willing to allow the Allies to shape the future in Italy in return for the same right in Eastern Europe. On May 1 1, 1945 after the German surrender, President Truman ordered a drastic curtailment n lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union.
Ships were even recalled that were already en route with cargoes of aid for Russia. Although Truman countermanded the order (the Soviet Union still had to fight Japan), this action deeply offended Stalin who viewed it as an example of American bad faith and an attempt to coerce the Soviet Union into following policies favorable to the United States if it wanted to continue to receive aid for a post-war recovery program. After the war ended the Soviet Union began to organize and dominate the areas along its boarders.
In Eastern and Central Europe this meant a sphere f influence in countries that the Red Army controlled: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany. With the exception of Czechoslovakia, prior to the war these countries had been ruled by right-wing dictatorships hostile to the Soviet Union (Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria had declared war on the Soviet Union and their troops had helped in the German invasion). Probably Russia under czarist, Communist, or any other form of government would have pursued rather similar goals after 1945.
Security and traditional national goals were more important than ideology in the Soviet take over of Eastern Europe. The West was shocked and felt betrayed by the Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe. Although it was obvious that Stalin was cooperating in the attempt to restore worldwide stability by refusing to aid the Communists in Greece, Italy, France, China, and elsewhere, Americans came to believe that he was a would-be world conqueror. He was seen as another Hitler, and Americans remembered how appeasement had failed in preventing Hitter’s expansion.
Time and again Stalin emphasized the Soviet Union’s desire for security, her need to protect herself from Germany and the capitalistic West by controlling the nations on err border, but increasingly Americans dismissed his statements as lies and denounced him as a paranoid whose aim Was world conquest. The flames were fed by millions of American voters of East European origin, aided by the Catholic Church, businessmen who wanted access to the region’s markets, anti-Communists in the State Department, and military men who were sincerely worried about the new strategic balance in Europe.
A kind of panic swept over the U. S. One of the first of those to feel the panic was President Truman. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall plan. After World War II a vicious civil war broke out in Greece between the Communists and the right wing monarchy that had been re-established after the war. Although the Greek Communist Party was legally recognized, the party was finding it hard to gain strength by political action.
At the KIN Security Council in January 1946, the Soviet Union condemned persecutions of leftists in Greece 1,219 of them had been assassinated and 18,767 arrested and the Greek Communists mistakenly took this as proof that the Soviets would support them in their revolution that they began in March 1946. (Look up the tally of the casualties) On March 12, 1947 Truman addressed a joint session of Congress and the nation over the radio. He asked for immediate aid for Greece and Turkey (which was included because of its strategic location in blocking Soviet access to the Mediterranean and the Middle East), and then he explained his reasoning. L believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. ” In a single sentence Truman had defined United States’ post-war policy toward the Soviet Union. Whenever and wherever an anti-Communist government was threatened, by indigenous insurgents, foreign invasion, or even politics pressure (as with Turkey), the Ignited States could be counted on to supply political, economic, and military aid. In May 1947 Congress appropriated $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey.
With this aid the Greek government was able to defeat the Communist rebels. By later standards the sum was small, but nevertheless America had taken an immense stride. For the first time, the U. S. Had intervened in a period of general peace in the affairs of a country outside of the Western Hemisphere. The Truman Doctrine cleared the way for the Marshall Plan–a massive U. S. Aid program to Western Europe. In January 1 947, the distinguished wartime Army Chief of Staff, George Marshall, became Trauma’s Secretary of State. Europe remained in ruins after the war. European countries could not afford to purchase U.
S. Goods and Communist parties were showing impressive gains on the continent. It seemed quite possible that native Communist parties, which already polled one-third of the popular vote in Italy and one- fourth in France, might capitalize upon the general misery to capture political power through peaceful elections. Marshall announced his proposal for economic assistance to Europe on June 5, 1947. Most Americans approved wholeheartedly of the Marshall Plan. The policy appealed to their humanitarian instincts as well as to their desire to halt the inroads of Communism, nicely harmonize ideals with self-interest.
If Western Europe collapsed and fell under Communist domination, the U. S. Would be cut off from traditional markets and dangerously isolated in an increasingly Soviet-ruled world. Moreover, a generous program of aid to Europe would greatly stimulate the American economy (most of the aid money had to be spent in the U. S. , and the purchased materials had to be carried to Europe on U. S. Hips). A Soviet coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1 948 helped convince members of Congress to appropriate the initial $5 billion in April 1948. By 1952, when military aid began to supplant economic assistance, the U.
S. Had expended nearly $14 billion to promote European recovery. The program was very successful, checking the growth of Communism and laying the basis of Rupee’s future economic success Rupee’s economic productivity increased by nearly 200 percent between 1948-1952. The Berlin Blockade and the formation of NATO. During the war each side believed that a divided Germany was essential for a useful post-war world. If Germany were unified, no matter what the guarantees, both the Soviets and the Western Allies feared that the other would sooner or later control it.
The country that controlled Germany controlled the heartland of Europe. In the circumstances, the only thing to do was divide it, with the Soviets controlling the eastern third, and the Western Allies the western two-thirds. Berlin, the capital of Germany, located 200 miles inside Eastern Germany, was also divided into equal zones of occupation. At the beginning of the summer of 1 948, the Soviet Union was faced with a hole series of what they considered threatening developments. The Marshall plan and the aid to Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine began to draw the Western European nations closer together.
In March 1948, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg formed a defensive alliance. The United States had encouraged its formation and had indicated it intended to join. In June 1948 the Western powers indicated that they intended to go ahead with the formation of an independent West German government. Soviet foreign policy, based on an occupied and divided Germany, a weakened Western Europe, and tight control of East Europe, faced serious problems. To Stalin it must have seemed that the victor in the war was being hemmed in by the West, with the vanquished Germany (and Italy) playing a key role in the new coalition.
The Soviets viewed West Berlin as a Western intelligence and military outpost in the heart of the Soviet security belt. On June 23, 1 948 the united States introduced West German currency into West Berlin (implying that it was an integral part of West Germany) and Stalin responded immediately. He argued that since the West had abandoned the idea of German reunification, there was no longer any point to maintaining Berlin as the future capital of a united Germany. The Western powers, through the logic of their own acts, ought to retire to their own zones.
The Soviets clamped down a total blockade on all ground and water traffic into Berlin. The Anglo-Americans set up a counter-blockade on the movements of goods from the east into West Germany. Like Stalin, the Americans believed that they could not give an inch-??to retreat from West Berlin might be perceived in Western Europe as a lack of resolve by the United States to “stand up” to the Soviet Union, and encourage the Western European countries to try and accommodate Stalin. The Americans supplied Berlin with an around the clock airlift, flying in 5,000 tons of goods a day. In July 1 948 the U.
S. Sent two groups of B-ass (the planes that had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan) to Britain thus establishing the principle of boon. ‘art American bases. The Berlin crisis induced the U. S. Congress to reintroduce the draft, something it had refused to do earlier. In April 1949 the U. S. And 11 other nations (Canada, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, France, the Benelux countries, Portugal, and Italy) formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pledging “an armed attack against one or more Of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. President Truman moved four divisions of U. S. Troops to Europe to join the American occupation forces in Germany as part of the united States’ commitment to the common defense. On May 12, 1949 the Soviets lifted the Berlin blockade. The counter-blockade by the west was hurting them more than they were injuring the West and they realized that there was no longer any hope of stopping the movement toward a West Germany Government. On May 23, 1 949 the Federal Republic f Germany was created. Reconstruction of Japan ( Fonder 845) The Communist success in China.
There were many reasons for the triumph of communism in China, however Japanese aggression was the most important single factor in Mao Godson’s rise to power. When the Japanese armies advanced rapidly in 1938, Aching Aka-she’s Nationalist government moved its capital to Chinking deep in the Chinese interior and the war settled into a stalemate. The war enabled the Communists, aided by their uneasy “united front” alliance with the Nationalists, to build up their strength in guerrilla bases in the countryside behind Japanese lines.
Mao avoided pitched battles and concentrated on winning peasant support and forming a broad anti-Japanese coalition. By the end of the war the Communists controlled a vast slice of China with about 1 16 million people. Mao and the Communists emerged in peasant eyes as the true patriots, the genuine nationalists. The promise of radical redistribution of the land strongly re-enforced their appeal. The long war with Japan exhausted the Nationalist government. The United States had little influence in China, but it wished to use China as a counter- balance to Soviet and Japanese expansion in the area.
The U. S. Put terrific pressure on Aching to root out corruption, to introduce some meaningful land reform, and to make an accommodation with Mao and the Communists. United States’ policy rested on the false assumption that Aching wanted, and would initiate, reform. Most Americans viewed the Chinese communists with horror and there seemed to be no alternative between Mao and Aching. The U. S. Sent huge loans to Aching, often in the form of direct cash. In actuality these were bribes since the Chinese threatened to quit the war against Japan if their palms were not crossed.
Fully half papaya’s overseas armies were pinned down in China, and the Chinese had suffered 3 million casualties in fighting the Japanese. The possibility that the Chinese might surrender, thus freeing the bulk of the Japanese army for deployment against U. S. Troops, frightened Washington sufficiently to keep the money flowing. When Japan collapsed in August 1945, Communists and Nationalists both rushed to seize evacuated territory (Chasing’s troops were transported to key areas by the Americans).
Heavy fighting broke out in Manchuria and the civil war resumed in earnest in April 1946. During 1945-48 Aching received more than $3 billion in U. S. Id, large quantities of U. S. Military equipment, and the weapons of 1. 2 million defeated Japanese. American influence was so strong that by 1 946 the United States was responsible for 51 percent of all Chinese imports (as opposed to 22 percent in 1936) and 57 percent of all exports (compared to 19 percent in 1936). At first Aching had the upper hand, but the Communists resorted to guerrilla warfare and refused to be defeated.
The huge influx of U. S. Money caused inflation to grip the country, the government’s money became worthless. The ruling classes panicked, and the rising prices caused terrible hardships among the people. Violent strikes became widespread. The Nationalists faced serious problems–their supply lines were extremely long, American equipment was ill suited for guerrilla warfare, and internal rivalries split the high command. In addition, most workers and peasants hated the Nationalists for their oppressive policies.
Throughout the Communist controlled areas a hundred million peasants had received land. American economic inroads blocked the expansion projects of many of the Chinese bourgeoisie and a large portion of them was pushed toward political collaboration with the Communists. Beginning in the spring of 948 the Communists began their final offensive and by December 1949 they had defeated the Nationalists. Aching and 1 million of his followers fled to the Island of Taiwan under U. S. Protection, and on the mainland Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China.
After their victory the Communist government seized the holdings of landlords and rich peasants 10 percent of the farm population owned between 70 to 80 percent of the land and distributed it to 300 million poor peasants and landless laborers. The Communists consolidated their power by dealing harshly with their foes. Mao admitted in 1 957 that 800,000 “class enemies” had been executed between 1949 and 1954. By means of mass arrests, forced-labor camps, and, more generally, re-education through relentless propaganda and self-criticism sessions, all visible opposition from the old ruling groups was destroyed.
Finally, Mao and the Communists reunited China in a strong centralized state. They demonstrated that China was indeed a great power. This was the real significance of China’s intervention in the Korean War. In 1950, when the American-led United Nations forces crossed the 38th parallel and appeared to threaten China’s industrial base in Manchuria, the Chinese attacked, advanced swiftly, and fought the Americans to a bloody standstill on the Korean peninsula. This struggle against “American imperialism” embroiled the masses, and military success increased Chinese self-confidence.
It was the Communists who realized many of the fondest dreams of Chinese nationalism. The Korean war, 1950-53. ( Read Fonder 847-849) On the Home Front: Trauma’s Fair Deal (F-owner 854-855) CiVil Rights ( goner 869-870) The Second Red Scare On May 26, 1938, Congress organized the House UN-American Activities Committee (HIJACK) to investigate American Fascists and Communists, although its focus soon became strictly anti-Communist. During WI, HIJACK concentrated on labor unrest, but after the war’s end, it gained strength and began to investigate left-wing Americans who might be communist sympathizers.
This search led HUGH to Hollywood in 1947, where left-leaning actors, writers, and directors were allegedly spreading subversive communist messages through their movies. One young actor who was ready to name names was future President Ronald Reagan. Reagan had come to Hollywood as an ardent New Deal Democrat, but when the political winds began to shift, he became a conservative Republican. HIJACK did not uncover any of the systematic subversion it had alleged in Hollywood.
Nevertheless, since being questioned or mentioned during a hearing was, in the minds of many studio executives, an indication of guilt, many suspected leftists found themselves on a blacklist that shut them out of jobs in cinema, radio, television, and theater for the next ten years The Trial of Alger Hiss The Alger Hiss case that took place from 1948 to 1950 was another HUGH investigation and the second event that fueled the Second Red Scare. Hiss was a Harvard-educated New Dealer who had come to Washington during the Roosevelt administration.
At the time of his trial, he was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His accuser was a self- described “dumpy, middle-aged, unhappy scoundrel” named Whittaker Chambers, who would go on to become a senior editor of -rime magazine. Chambers accused Hiss of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1 sass when Hiss had been employed at the State Department. Chambers claimed that he and Hiss had belonged to the same espionage ring and that Hiss had given him copies of secret State Department documents. A young California Congressman named Richard M. Nixon took up the case and soon captured cantonal attention.
When Chambers claimed that a he had hidden a microfilm Of the secret documents in a pumpkin field near his farm, Nixon took members of the press with him to document the uncovering of the microfilm. The statute of limitations for an espionage charge had expired, so the federal government prosecuted Hiss was for perjury. The result of the first trial was a hung jury. After the second trial, a jury found Hiss guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison. When Hiss was finally released from prison, he struggled to prove his innocence for decades. That moment finally came in 1 992, when Hiss was 87.
A Russian general in charge of Soviet intelligence archives declared that Hiss had never been a spy, but rather a victim of Cold War hysteria. Hiss died on November 15, 1996, just four days after his 92 birthday. Trauma’s loyalty program In 1 947, as part of this growing anti-communist hysteria, President Harry Truman ordered the Justice Department to draw up a list of possible “subversives” in government. Under the terms of this loyalty program, the federal government could dismiss an employee “if reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal. ” Truman not only associated
Communism with Fascism and Nazism, but also believed that Communism was the worst of the three. McCarthy Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) was a Republican Senator from Appleton, Wisconsin, who did the most to whip up anti-communism during the 1 sass. McCarthy was a WI veteran who liked to call himself “Tail gunner Joe,” although he actually flew more desk than plane during the war. First elected to the Senate in 1 946, McCarthy did little during the first four years of his term. He failed to attach his name to any significant bills and even the Republican Party leadership considered him a legislative lightweight.
Then, on February 9, 1 950, he dropped a political bombshell. McCarthy gave a speech at the Republican Women ;s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, where he claimed to have a list of 205 Communists in the State Department. No one in the press actually saw the names on the list, but McCarthy announcement made the national news. McCarthy continued to repeat his groundless charges and the number of Communists on his list fluctuated from speech to speech. Senior Republicans didn’t care for McCarthy, but appreciated his attacks on the Truman administration. McCarthy labeled Secretary’ of State Dean Achaeans “Red Dean.