history midterm

Birth of a Nation

• 1915: President Wilson screens the film in the White House

• ultimately leads to the rise of the second KKK

Selective Service Act

• 1917

• 24 million men required to register for the draft

• army expands from 120,000 to 5 million

• leads to growth of new federal industries to support wartime efforts + taxes rise

WW1 Repression

• many Americans do not want to go to war “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier”

• Wilson creates pro-war propaganda #unclesam

• espionage act 1917: cannot make false claims that could impede military success

• sedition act 1918: cannot print or make anti-government statements

women’s suffrage

• Alice Paul protests the war and is for suffrage via radical confrontation

• 19th amendment 1920: cannot be denied a right to vote based on gender

• what about black women in the south?

Versailles Treaty

• signed in 1919 + officially ends WW1 → Germany takes full blame

• redrew map of eastern europe and broke up Austro-Hungarian empire

• placed harsh economic penalties on Germany and Austria

Immigration After WW1

• already long history of racist immigration policies in United States: black and asian people cannot be naturalized citizens, sex workers/ppl with disabilities/criminals/ppl with contagious diseases, chinese cant even enter US

• Post war: immigration act of 1917: literacy tests required

• emergency immigration act of 1921: limit immigration to 355,000 a year based on quota system

Immigration act of 1924

• restricted immigration to 155,000 a year

• based on quotas from 2% of non-US born population from 1890 census

• Japanese exclusion

• defined the country in terms of nationality and race

Prohibition

• campaign to ban liquor led by wealthy Protestants

• rising state power

• selective enforcement: targeted poor and immigrant communities

Rise of Second KKK

• forms in Atlanta 1915 as a result of post-war nationality and anti-immigration sentiments

• mid 1920s klan membership: 3-5 million

• anti black, communist, jewish, immigration, feminism, alcohol, unions

prelude to the great depression

• re-introduction of gold standard in 1920

• demanded high interest rates

• stock prizes surged in 1920s

the great depression

• 1929: stock market value cuts in half

• October 29, 1929: Black Tuesday → worst US stock market crash in history

• global gold standard leads to bank failures

• Hoover doesn’t really respond/ denies federal unemployment relief at first

The Bonus March / Bonus Army

• 1932: Congress approves bonuses for WW1 veterans upon death or 1945

• march: 40,000 veterans march to demand early payment

• marchers occupy empty federal buildings: 2 killed by police → soldiers burn the encampment

1932 election: differences between Hoover and FDR

• FDR’s new deal promised public works projects + relief to the unemployed

• Hoover focused on voluntary cooperation, balancing the budget, and indirect aid to banks/corporations

The great depression : deflation

• most severe deflation in US history

• caused by bank failure, collapsed money supply and gold standard

• reduce in demand

FDR stopping deflation: emergency banking act 1933

• 4 day banking holiday immmediately upon FDR entering office

• Only banks inspected and found solvent by federal regulators were permitted to reopen

• empowered the President and the Secretary of the Treasury to control gold movements and currency transaction during the crisis

• successfully halted the banking panic, resulting in two-thirds of withdrawn funds being redeposited by the public

• suspends gold standard

Glass-Steagall banking act of 1933

• separated commercial and investment banks

• created FDIC to ensure depositors

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

• created in 1933 to provide work for men 18-35

• Bonus marchers arrive in DC again: FDR opposes bonuses but promises 25,000 jobs

• employs more than 3 million by 1942

The New Deal

• FDR’s series of domestic programs aimed at providing relief, recovery and reform to combat the great depression

• increased federal power

• 500 million in grants to the states to support relief, public + civil works administrations

National Industrial Recovery Act

• 1933

• codes of fair competition: stop the downward spiral of wages and prices

• created the National Recovery Administration to oversee the fair competition codes

Second New Deal

• 1935-1938

• shift from recovery to focus on security

• created new legislation: Works Progress Administration, Social Security Act, Wagner Act, Fair labor Standards act

• liberalism: regulatory state, social welfare, labor unions (contradicts modern conservatism)

Social Security Act

• 1935

• unemployment insurance

• old aid pensions

• aid to people with disabilities and families with dependent children

• excluded farmers and domestic workers to appeal to southern politicians

Works Progress Administration

• 1935

• employed over 8.5 million people after the great depression

• Workers built roads, bridges, schools, post offices, and hospitals

Wagner Act

• 1935 : guarantees private-sector employees the right to form unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes or other concerted activities

• 6 features: Industrial Peace, collective bargaining, bargaining power, free choice of representation, underconsumption and purchasing power, industrial democracy

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

• Defend workers against automation and

  deskilling: Base is “skilled” labor: construction trades,

  machine operators

Industrial Unionism

• industrial workers of the world (IWW): confrontation, sabotage, mass strikes → work towards shorter work day, better work conditions, and increased pay

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

• founded in 1935 by mineworkers in response of refusal by the AFL to employee “unskilled workers”

• revolutionized U.S. labor by organizing mass-production workers—regardless of skill, race, or gender—in industries like steel, auto, and rubber

FDR becomes more confrontational in 1936 election

• shifting from a consensus-builder to a populist fighter defending the New Deal against "economic royalists" and wealthy interests

• He campaigned directly against Republican opposition, welcoming their hatred, and secured a massive landslide victory that empowered him to later challenge the Supreme Court

The Sit Downs → strikes

• 1936-37 nascent United Auto Workers (UAW), CIO union organizes sit-down strikes across plants

• Feb 1937, UAW agrees to a contract

• From 1930 to 1940 union membership doubles

the world the new deal made

• empowerment of organized labor and the shaping of a workplace democracy

• construction of the nascent social welfare state

prelude to WW2

• fascism growing in europe: Hitler consolidates power

WW1 caused: poiltical space for nationalist activism, discredits optimistic views and

progressive views of the future (Dada art movement), Economic and social strains exceed capacity of existing institutions to solve

• angry and restless veterans

WW2

• Germany continues to invade other countries throughout Europe

  starting with Poland, Sept. 1939

• France and Britain declare war in response

• Germany invades France and has taken over by June 1940 + launches air war over Britain

FDR 4 freedoms

state of the union address in 1941

1. freedom of speech and expression

2. freedom of worship

3. freedom from want: Economic understandings that secure a healthy peacetime life for all inhabitants

4. freedom from fear

US enters WW2

• Pearl Harbor 1941, because US stopped trading oil with Japan

• US declares entrance into war December 1941 → 50 million men register for draft + 10 million serve

• unemployment practically dissapears

• office of war information forms in 1942 to create propaganda

• economy booming: inflation

Executive Order 9066

• issued by FDR in 1942

• forced removal and internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans

• justified as military necessity after Pearl Harbor

• wartime fear led to violations of civil liberties and racial discrimination

Korematsu v United States 1944

• upheld the constitutionality of Japanese internment after WW2

• court ruled that national security concerns justified internment

• The judiciary supports violations of civil rights during a state of wartime fear

• Justice Jackson’s dissent: warns about the dangers of the precedent being set

racism in WW2

• segregation of armed forces

• assaults of black soldiers off base

March on Washington movement

• 1941 by A. Philip Randolph + Walter White of NAACP

• pioneering, all-Black, nonviolent campaign designed to combat racial discrimination in defense industries and government during WWII

• force federal action against segregation and job discrimination

• to call off march, FDR issues EO 8802, which established the Fair Employment Practices Commission

Double V Campaign

• 1942: victory against fascism at home and victory against racism at home

• black soldiers can enlist but have to serve in segregated units?

Economic Bill of Rights

• extension of the second new deal: argued that true freedom requires economic security

• rights to employment for all, income, farming, housing, healthcare, education and security

GI Bill

• 1944: economic bill of rights for soldiers

• most wide-ranging social benefits ever offered by the federal government: unemployment compensation, medical care, education, access to mortgage funds, capital to start businesses or farm

• 95 billion in federal spending over 1944-1971

• over a million black veterans excluded

The end of WW2

• victory in europe: Nazi regime crumbles with warfront on both sides

• 1945 allied victory

• Hitler dies by suicide in March as U.S. forces enter Germany and Soviet forces take Berlin

• FDR dies by stroke in 1945 right after winning 1944 election → Truman now president

• Truman drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan → kills over 350,000

1945 full employment bill

• proposes that US government guarantees jobs for all Americans after WW2 (fear of unemployment comes back)

• budget to match

• passed senate 71-10, but blocked by southern democrats and midwestern republicans in the house of reps

Bretton Woods

• 1944 meeting of 44 countries in New Hampshire

• establishes new economic international system post WW2

• US dollar dominant global currency

• Created international monetary fund and world bank

• solidified US as global dominant power

Creation of the United Nations

• 1944-45 successor to the league of nations

• maintain peace and avoid war: Outlawed force or threat of force as a means to settling disputes

• global effort of promoting diplomacy and security

UN Declaration of Human Rightds

• 1948

• outlines basic human rights for all: political freedoms and economic rights

• response to the atrocities of WW2 and Holocaust

  • reflects gap between ideals and reality → good ideas in theory, but not fully adopted by the US

UN convention against genocide

• 1948

• “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed

  with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious

  group, as such:

  A. Killing members of the group;

  B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

  C. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its

  physical destruction in whole or in part;

  D. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

  E. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Origins of the Cold war

• US emerges from WW2 as worlds most powerful nation state: militarily and economically

• political and ideological struggle between capitalist and communist countries

containment and the cold war

• US foreign policy strategy after WW2

• prevent the spread of communism / soviet influence

• foundation of US cold war policy + justified global involvement

Truman Doctrine

Announced by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, the Truman Doctrine pledged $400 million in American economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey to contain Soviet-influenced communist expansion

The Marshall Plan

Proposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in June 1947, the Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program) was a U.S.-funded initiative that provided over 13 billion in economic aid to 16 Western European nations. It aimed to rebuild war-torn economies, modernize industry, and prevent the spread of communism. 

NATO

• 1949

U.S., Canada, and ten Western European Countries pledge mutual defense against future Soviet attack after USSR develops atomic weapons.

Communist China

1949: Mao Zedong achieved victory in the Chinese Civil War + establishes the peoples republic of China

Creates a sense of panic for U.S. foreign policymakers after the so- called “loss of China.”

→ creates NSC 68

NSC 68

• 1950: key strategy memo of the cold war with goal to reduce power of the USSR

• the National Security Council produced a 60 + page, top-secret report proclaiming the threat of Soviet communism