World war II and the cold war

Pearl Harbor

  • Pearl Harbor (1941) → Surprise Japanese attack on U.S. naval base in Hawaii

  • Multiple ships destory but no aircraft carriers 

  • Caused U.S. to enter WWI officially

  • GOT PUBLIC SUPPORT for the war 

Road to American Involvement

Neutrality Acts

  • U.S. tried to stay out of foreign wars

  • FDR gave fire chat 

    • “America will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought”

      •  hinting we will end up in war and wants to build morale

cash/carry

  • Provides allies with non-military goods (eventually allowed weapons) but they pay for them up front and carry them back on their own vessels

lend/lease

  • Lendedborrowed military goods to countries vitial to our defense 

  • Now helping military while still not entering the war

Four Freedoms

  • Freedom of speech

  • Freedom of religion

  • Freedom from want

  • Freedom from fear

Federal Employment Practice Commission

  • A philip Randolph organized a march on washing DC 

  • Roosevelt got mad, his whole message to the pubic was that we were fighting for freedom and democracy, so 100k black ppl marching saying they were not free and their access to democracy was limited was a bad look

  • Executive Order 8802 - Set up a regulatory board to investigate discrimination in the denfense industry 

  • Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) was the agency created by that order to investigate and enforce the policy

  • Any company with defense contracts could not discriminate; if they did, the president or the executive branch would have to intervene and give people a place to file discrimination complaints. 

Women in industry

  • “Rosie the Riveter”; women filled industrial jobs 

  • Women took over factory and “male” jobs b/c emn are at war, when they come back, the jobs are gone, it pushes for later in the 60s and 70s for women to push for equal rights

Tuskegee Airmen

  • All black air combat unit that trained at the Tuskegee institutie of Alabama

  • First Black military pilots, one of the most decorated

Double V campaign

  • Black americans fought 2 wars: foregin enemies, and domestic racists 

  • Victory abord and victory at home, black ppl thought if they aprticapted in the war, they would be abel to get civil rights at home 

Segregated Units

  • Black soldiers served in segregated units in war and were relegated to the lowest job

  • Sesegrated by executive order, but this didn't get rid of racism

Issei/Nisei

  • Issei = 1st gen

  • Nisei = 2nd gen, born here (⅔ nisei, most are citizens that get put in camps)

Fred Korematsu

  • Refused to relocate to camps - arrested, plee ended up infront of supreme court 

  • Korematsu v the United States 

    • Argued govs internment policy violted 5th amendment to due process before the law and a right to a jury trial 

    •  Supreme Court case ruled against Korematsu

  • Sup crout said in times of war or danger, jap internment is okay 

Executive Order 9066

  • Forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans to 10 camps for duration of war

  • Less than 6 days notice, could only take suitcases 

Family dynamics in camps

  • Families lost homes/businesses 

  • Family roles disrupted (less parental authority b/soliders are in charge, culture separation)

  • 442nd in regimental combat team 

  • Eventually reparations of $20k to each surviving internee 

Racism in World War II (Chinese are our friends) 

  • Anti-Japanese propaganda (“enemy race”)

  • “Chinese are our friends” → Shows racial stereotyping based on alliances

  • Article to help you decipher Chinese from jap

1988 Civil Liberties Act

  • Reagan apologized for and provided $20,000 in reparations to japanese interned 

  • Over turns fred korematsu ruling, gives reparations, which doesn't do much  

McCarthyism

  • Joseph McCarthy- Claimed communists were inside the U.S. government

  • Caused fear, blacklists, and loss of civil liberties

  • “I have a list of 110 state dept employees who are card-carrying communists”

  • The idea of a witch hunt 

Army/McCarthy hearings

  • 1954 televised hearings about communists in the Army

  • McCarthy goes after former secretary of army

  • Joseph Welch challenged him (“Have you no sense of decency sir?”)

  • Public turned against McCarthy → his downfall

  • CENSURED AFTER - no longer have the right to speak

Cold War Timeline

Yalta

  • Great Britain, USSR, USA leaders meet to discuss fate of Germany and Europe (Iron Curtain and the UN) as well as strategy against Japan (Soviet promises to enter war)

  • Plan for postwar Europe

Potsdam (the difference between how presidents handled Stalin)

  • Conference w/allied powers, ultimatum to Japan and decisions on post war Europe, Stalin not informed of atomic bomb

  • Increased tensions between U.S. & USSR

Nato

  • Containment policy led the U.S. to organize an alliance for collective security 

  • U.S. + Western allies made up the North Atlantic Treaty organization

    • Military alliance between  U.S & 11 western European democracies

    • Purpose was to resist soviet military expansion

    • Agreement = an attack on one member nation meant an attack on all, so all nations woudl come to eachohters defense  

Warsaw Pact 

  • Soviet Union + Eastern bloc made rivialry military alliance in respone to NATO

  • Group of communist nations 

Domino Effect

  • If one country falls to communism, others will too 

Containment - THE IDEA communism should be stopped in all possible ways

  • Stop spread of communism

  • Proposed by George Kennen who said he knew Stalin intended to aggressively expand communism throughout the world

    • must be met with firm resistance

  • Kennen believed no free population would willingly adopt communism

    • so argued U.S. needed to play a big role in helping rebuild Western European countries

  • TRUMAN loved these ideas and turned them into a practical set of policies that became know as THE TRUMAN DOCTRAINE

Truman Doctrine - PUT THE IDEA (containment) INTO PRACTICE by throwing dollars and guns at the problem

  • Set of practical polices supporting countries resisting communism

    • U.S. would provide military and economic aid to any democractic country threatened by the spread of communism 

Bay of Pigs

  • Failed U.S.-backed invasion

Cuban Missile Crisis

  • Standoff between U.S. Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev over Soviet plan to install nuclear missiles in Cuba - lasted  13 day

  • Kennedy received aerial photos of the missiles in transit - imposed a naval quarantine of Cuba.

  • American U-2 reconnaissance plane shot down over Cuba 

  • Khrushchev withdrew the nuclear arms from Cuba on the condition that US publicly declare that it would not attack Cuba and privately withdraw its nuclear arsenal from Türkiye

  • climax of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union

  • Khrushchev ultimately backed down - crisis exposed how vulnerable the US was to nuclear attack.

  • Closest to nuclear war

Vietnam

CAUSED BY:

  • Fear of the spread of communism and the US policy of CONTAINMENT

  • Global decolonization - soviets and americans fought to influcnece these newly independent states 

1954 Geneva Accords - outlined the terms of vietnamese peace 

  • U.S., Soviet, & china agreed Vietnam would be split a 17th parallel :

    • North → Communist (Ho Chi Minh)

      • Supported by Sovet and China

      • Land restitutions 

    • South → Anti-communist (Ngo Dinh Diem)

      • U.S. support 

Ngo Dinh Diem

  • Leader of South Vietnam (unpopular, corrupt)

  • U.S. Supported Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam

  • Sent money, weapons, and eventually troops to fight against North Vietnam

Gulf of Tonkin “Fog of War”

  • U.S. ships reported a second attack by North Vietnam that never happened, leading to massive escalations based on poor visibility and flawed intelligence

  • This confusion led to a hectic, unverified report being sent to Washington, resulting in immediate retaliatory airstrikes

  • LED TO GULF OF TONKIN RESOULTIONS 

  • 88-2 in senate, 46-0 HR 

  • Allowed President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War without needing a formal declaration of war

My Lai

  • War crime massacre where U.S. soldiers killed unarmed civilians

  • only Lieutenant William Calley convicted of murder, serving only 3.5 year house arrest

Bloods

  • Black American soilders serving in vietnam 

  • discrimination, was often more intense than the battlefield danger.

Kent State

  • Protests after bombing cambodia 

  • Protesters set fire to ROTC building - arrests

  • School prohibits protest next day - ppl still show up 

  • Ppl throw rocks at national guard - guards opened fired 

  • 4 die, 9 wounded 

1964 Daisy Ad

  • Anti-nuclear political ad

Nixon and the bombing of Cambodia

  • Massive, secret air campaign targeting North Viet supply lines, training camps, and sanctuaries within Cambodia.

  • Secretly scalated the war 

Vietnamization

  • Called for the removal of US troops by transferring responsibility to South Vietnamese 

  • But at the same time,  escalated by ordered bombing of Cambodia

What ultimately happens to Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh 

  • Leader of North Vietnam

    • Communist who fought for Vietnamese independence

    • the U.S. opposed Ho Chi Minh

    • U.S. feared the Domino Theory (if Vietnam became communist, others would too)

    • Seen as a nationalist hero in Vietnam

    • After U.S. withdrawal (1975), North Vietnam wins

    • Vietnam becomes fully communist under his movement 

Agent orange -  a powerful herbicide and defoliant

Napalm -  caused severe, often fatal, burns

Consquences of vietnam war:

Shatters democratic party, ends the great society ( The Great Society was an ambitious set of domestic programs launched by President Johnson in 1964–65 aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice), impact on vietnam, credibility of U.S. abroad.