Essay plans

Domestic

Factors

  • Red Scare

  • Civil rights

  • McCarthyism

Red scare

1947-52 FBI Chief Edgar J hoover over 3 million investigations leading to over 1000 dismissals

1947: Hollywood 10 case

1950: Senator McCarthy claimed he could identify 205 card carrying communists in the state dept

1950: Alger Hiss convicted of Perjury

1951: Rosenburgs convicted of espionage and executed

1952: McCarthy headed congressional committees that investigated communist subversives in the US

Alger Hiss & Rosenburgs

Handled unsuccessfully, succumbed to pressure from press and hard-line against USSR

Civil rights

June 1946- addresses NAACP at the Lincoln memorial

Dec 1946- Truman signed an executive order announcing the creation of a presidential commission, which would investigate the ways in which the rights of African Americans were being violated

Dec 1947- the aforementioned commission issued its report, to secure these rights, over a million copies were printed and it was widely discussed by the media and highlighted problems like:

  • How racism undermined democracy and principles of freedom and equality

  • Economic impact e.g. two schools

  • damaged US international reputation

  • Called for anti-lynching legislation, fair reemployment laws, federal action to ensure blacks could vote in all elections and actions taken to prevent police brutality- congress blocked these reforms

Words not action & motivated by cold war

GI bill-1944 enforced

Jan 1948: argued racial discrimination was contrary to American ideas

1948: 2 executive orders desegregate the armed forces and federal work force

Economy

Servicemen benefitted from Roosevelt’s GI bill of rights 1944 giving 52 weeks of unemployment pay, and loans for education, housing (90% mortgages) farms or business. 1945-1955 $20 billion was given to 7.8 million veterans

1946 employment act passed

1946 National school lunch act

1946 steel worker strikes

Seized steel mills 1952

inflation rose to 25% during 1945-6 due to the withdrawal of wartime price controls, budget deficits and initial shortage of consumer goods

ultimately handled well considering returning from war likely to cause inflation

Civil rights

Foreign

Factors

  • Containment

  • Superpower status

  • Maintain peace

Superpower status

Arms race: 1945 new Mexico successful, 6&9 of Aug, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 1947-8 nuclear stockpile inc 13 to 50, 1952 Hydrogen bomb (1949 USSR develop atomic bomb)

Economic power: 1947 Marshal plan, 1951 US aid to French in Vietnam $450mil

Allies: NATO formed 1949 inc 12 countries, Greece and Türkiye join 1951

Containment

1945: forced to recognise new polish state

1948 Czechoslovakia falls to communism

1949: fall of China

1948: Berlin Blockade

Maintain peace

1948: Berlin Blockade

1950: Korean war