Political environment 1945-80 - key facts

House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC)

• Set up in 1938, made permanent in 1945, investigated people for all ‘un-American’ activities, but focused on communists

• Government employees Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers told HUAC of others involved in a Moscow-led spy ring

• High-profile trials of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs

Loss of China to communism

• 1949

• Truman seen as not having given enough support to Chiang Kai-Shek

Jospeh McCarthy

• Announced he had the names of 205 known communists working in the State Department in an anti-communist speech to a Republican women’s group in 1950 → later revised this number to 57, then 81

• Tydings Committee set up to investigate charges → accusations found to be half-truths and lies

• Remained powerful until he turned to investigating the army in 1953 → televised and watched by 20 million

Powers of FBI

• Open letters

• Tap phones

• Bug offices and homes

Librarians in the late 1950s

1/3 removed books such as the works of Karl Marx from their shelves

Republican and Democrat unity

1953-62 - no senators publicly supported a softening of attitude to the USSR or China

1968 Democratic National Convention

• Met in Chicago to decide policy

• Anti-war protests in the park outside the hall broken up by the police with tear gas and batons

• 2000 marched against police brutality the next day

Evidence of liberalism in the 1960s

• Civil Rights Act

• Voting Reform Act

• Great Society reforms

1969 Woodstock

400,000 - 500,000 attended

Students for a Democratic Society

• Set up in 1960

• Rejected bigotry (e.g. racism and anti-communism)

• Organised the first mass rally against the Vietnam War in 1965

Free Speech Movement

• Led a campaign on the University of California campus at Berkley in 1964

• During the 2 months it ran, over 700 students were arrested for sit-ins and other activities

1970 Ohio Guardsmen

Shot 4 unarmed students and injured 9 during a protest at the invasion of Cambodia

1970 radical student bombers

• Bomb detonated outside an army research base in Madison, Wisconsin

• Killed 1 researcher, injured 4 and caused $60 million of damage

Nixon

Campaigned for president on New Right policies in 1969

Bill Bright

Evangelical preacher whose 1967 ‘Crusade for Christ’ went to campuses all over the USA, including the extremely radical Berkley, California

Cold War foreign policy

• Containment

• Marshall Plan

• Berlin airlift in 1948

• NATO in 1949

Nuclear Defence

• Federal Defence Administration set up in early 1950s → organised evacuations and gave out pamphlets with advice

• Schools ran regular ‘duck and cover’ exercises

• 1956 Interstate Act → designed for rapid evacuation of cities

• Fallout shelter could be bought for $1300 in 1958

Arms race

Between June 1947 and June 1948, the US holdings of atomic bombs rose from 13 to 50

1947 National Security Act

• Reorganised US military forces under a new Defense Department based at the Pentagon

• Size of the armed forces was greatly enlarged → after 1950, as commander-in-chief, the president could move forces around without the permission of Congress

• Created the CIA and the National Security Council → both reported to the White House, not Congress

Troops in Korean war (1950-53)

• 260,000 US troops

• 35,000 from the other 15 UN countries

• Over 33,000 American troops died

Korean War cost

Defence spending hit a peak of 14% of GNP

Media speculation about Korean War

On 7 July 1950, headlines falsely announced that the president wanted to use the draft and was considering using the atomic bomb

The draft

• Started December 1969

• Symbolic for men to burn draft cards during anti-war protests

Vietnam Veterans Against War

Reached a membership of over 30,000

Walter Cronkite broadcast 1968

• Cronkite returned after the Tet Offensive and broadcast a scathing criticism of the way the war was being run

• Johnson was heard to say after it that he had lost the support of ‘middle America’ for the war

Vietnam War cost 1965-73

$120 billion

Opposition to anti-war demonstrations

75% of Americans in 1967

Trust in government

• 1960 - 70%

• 1974 - <40%

Assassination of Martin Luther King

• 1968

• Riots in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit etc

Watergate (1972-74)

• Nixon and the White House guilty of burglary and surveillance of political opponents

Three Mile Island 1979

• People feared nuclear contamination after an emergency at a nuclear power plant

• Not reassured by government insistence that the leak was not dangerous - felt they were covering up or unable to control situation