u.s. history unit 10: 1945-1960: post-WWII challenges and prosperity

1950’s homefront post-WWII

• America now a prosperous world power

• pro-business; businessmen in cabinet → prosperity

• new kinds of business/industries, new technology, military growth (people joining as a career)

• women returned home so men could take their jobs as they came back from war; marriage and family life encouraged → baby boom

Dwight D. Eisenhower

• elected in 1952 with Richard Nixon as VP

• Republican and pro-business

GI Bill

• gave soldiers returning home from war cheap interest rates on homes, college loans, and business startups to encourage them to participate in society economically

• led to more affordable living

William Levitt

• figured out how to mass-produce homes in suburbs

• “Henry Ford of suburban living”

• you could choose your floor plan and it could be built in 100 days

• led to “cookie cutter living”

Interstate Highway Act

(1956) commissioned by Eisenhower to connect cities in the U.S. - took 20 years to finish

consumer culture

• wants of the 20’s became the needs of the 50’s

• credit cards emerge

• washing machines become a necessity

• cars - 1 car → 2 cars/family

• radios replaced by TVs

Jonas Salk

discovered the Polio vaccine → all children had to be vaccinated by the 50’s

counter culture

• aka “beat culture”

• anti-cookie cutter → attacked mainstream culture

• zen, buddhism, drug culture, poetry, art reflecting beliefs, etc.

Cold War

• political (communism vs. democracy)

• economic (communism vs. capitalism)

• social (space race, technology, etc.)

  standoff between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

United Nations

replaced the League of Nations; goal was to be an international peace-keeping organization divided into the General Assembly and Security Council

Marshall Plan

when U.S. became one of the strongest countries PES, then came the responsibility to help other countries in need of preventing communism - “we will fight fear, hunger, poverty, and desperation”

containment

idea that communism could exist where it was but could not spread

Truman Doctrine

U.S. would provide military and economic assistance to countries in need to prevent the spread of communism

satellites

• Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary

• countries loyal to the Soviet Union

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

an attack on America, Canada, or 10 other Western European countries is an attack on all of them

Warsaw Pact

• Stalin’s answer to NATO

• essentially NATO but with USSR and satellites

arms race

• once the science existed, there was no going back

• who would build the most powerful weapons of mass destruction first

• atomic bomb → hydrogen bomb → nuclear bomb

• mutually assured destruction = all world powers need to have these weapons

• brinkmanship - America threatening war with other countries to get its way

iron curtain

symbolic separation of East and West

Korean War

• China civil war → communism

• post WWII Korea divided in half

• communist-occupied North invaded South when America left → Truman Doctrine violated → 3 year war → U.S. pushed North back, containment was successful

red scare

• more grounded than the first

• paranoia of communism in the U.S.

HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee)

• headed by Sen. Joe McCarthy

• investigated “questionable” people, like Hollywood people, authors, and playwrights suspected of promoting communism (witch-hunt mentality)