history test

Following the war, Russia's
resistance to Britain, France, and America's plans for global restoration created increasing bouts of tension on both sides. First, the four nations agreed to divide Germany into four zones, but that would mean dividing Germany into Democratic and Communist factions. Russia's fear of future German uprising insisted on a weak Germany and bordering European nations that could strengthen Russia's defense. The presence of Russian military in Eastern Europe after the war ensured that pro-Soviet Communist governments would eventually be established in the nations of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. These would be called "satellite nations" because they were controlled by the Soviets like planets were controlled by the sun. They also would gradually establish a geographical "Iron Curtain" further dividing a Democratic Western Europe and a Communist Eastern
In February 1946, just six months after the end of the war, U.S. Diplomat George Kennan sent a LONG telegram from the American embassy in Moscow, Russia, offering his first-hand perspective of Russia's post-war position.
He said Russia possessed a long-held, deeply entrenched sense of fear and insecurity toward the West, built upon three decades of propaganda from Lenin and Stalin. He offered a plan called "containment," a plan followed by both President Truman and Eisenhower. Keenan said that Russia's economic and political philosophies were so inherently weak that by simply resisting Communist expansion, Communism would eventually collapse on its own without needing a major war to end it, and by 1990, that's essentially what happened.
After Russia launched guerilla warfare in both Greece and Turkey in 1946, Truman asked Congress for $400 million to fight Communist

aggression in those two countries. His speech outlined a plan later known as The Truman Doctrine, which was directly related to The Marshall Plan, devised by Secretary of State George Marshall. This plan sent an average of close to a billion dollars to 10 different European nations to help them rebuild their economies, open new markets for trade, and influence them toward a democracy, not Communism. Finally, in April 1949, NATO was created: a military alliance of 12 countries including the United States and seven countries it funded to come to the aid of any nation that was attacked.
Roosevelt believed that one of the reasons for World War 2 was
America's absence of the League of Nations after WW1. So, in 1944, as the end of the war drew near, 39 countries met to discuss the creation of a new United Nations. They agreed to appoint America, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union as permanent members, each wielding veto power. On April 25, 1945, 50 nations met in San Francisco to officially organize the U.N. It would not be long before the Soviet Union and China would complicate matters.
After the WW2, a civil war broke out in China and
the Communist regime led by Mao Zedong captured the Chinese capital of Beijing. The defeated Nationalists fled to the island later named Taiwan, while the Communists renamed the mainland The People's Republic of China. To make matters more concerning in the West, in 1950, now-Communist China and Russia signed a treaty of friendship. Just as America started to fear of a domino effect in Europe, U.S. foreign policy now vowed to guard against a similar domino effect in Asia. If China fell to
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Communism, they feared, other Asian countries would follow. In 1950, those fears would be realized.
After WW2, as efforts were made to disperse Japanese troops in Korea, the nation was divided, whereby Russian troops controlled the north and American troops, the south. Instead of Korea unifying, the Russian influence in the north provoked a Communist invasion of southern Korea in June 1950 While General MacArthur successfully drove back Korean troops in just three weeks, China responded by sending 300,000 soldiers into the battle. To MacArthur's vehement dissent, Truman pulled back forces and refused MacArthur's plan of a full-blown war with China, but by mid-1951, United Nations troops had pushed China's forces back. When Eisenhower became president in 1952, he threatened nuclear attack of Korea, and in doing so, got South Korea and China to agree to an end of the war, and lines between North and South Korea were drawn. America lost 50,000 soldiers despite the war lasting less than two years, but it also heightened Cold War tensions in both Europe and Asia, including the aid of French forces fighting Communism in Vietnam in 1954. During the latter 1940's and early 1950's, several events sparked a renewal of the Red Scare (fear of Communism) that initially spread throughout America during the 1920's after the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent Communist reign that led to the death of more than 10 million Russian citizens during the 20's. First, in 1946, Project Verona intercepted 3,000 Russian messages proving they were trying to steal nuclear secrets. In response, Truman formed a loyalty review program to screen all federal employees for any signs of Russian ties. He also appointed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate people with evidenced ties to Russia. In 1948, a magazine editor testified before Congress that there were government officials who were spies or former Communists. In 1949, the Rosenbergs were found guilty of selling military secrets to Russia. Meanwhile, Senator Joseph McCarthy led a witch hunt in Congress turning over every stone to find Communist ties in government and in Hollywood.
In 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act, thereby
creating the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA. Under Eisenhower in the 1950's, he used the CIA to conduct covert, hidden operations, mostly in developing nations, which blamed European imperialism and American capitalism for their problems and looked to the Soviet Union as a model for industrialization. In 1953 and 1954, the CIA armed dissenters to overthrow Communist leaders in Iran and Guatemala. Meanwhile, as Russia and the United States raced to see who could build their military arsenal faster giving rise to the military industrial complex, they also engaged in a space race. In 1947,

Russia sent Sputnik into space, the first satellite to orbit Earth. The race eventually led to the U.S. putting the first man on the moon in 1969.
Dwight Eisenhower learned from the Korean War that small wars were too expensive and unpopular with the people. Instead, we had to find ways to preserve the economy and prevent wars in the first place. By cutting the military personnel considerably, he managed to increase our nuclear arsenal 18x and cut the military's budget by 32% at the same time! John F.
Kennedy entered office in 1961 at a time when the Cold War dominated all other presidential concerns.
Kennedy and Nixon alike both promoted themselves as resilient fighters against Communist aggression. Kennedy felt that Eisenhower had relied too much on nuclear weapons and pushed instead for a massive buildup of troops and conventional weapons. He also expanded the Special Forces, an elite army unit used in limited conflicts, and doubled our production intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads. Meanwhile, from 1961-1963, Kennedy increased American troops in South Vietnam from important 2,000 to 15,000 to aid the democratic resistance against Communism. In 1959, just 90 miles off Florida's coast, Fidel Castro overthrew the corrupt Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro immediately established ties with Russia, instituted drastic reforms, seized American-owned businesses, and provided ample evidence that Cuba was becoming a Communist nation. Fearing that Russia would use Cuba as a base to spread its revolution, Eisenhower authorized the CIA to secretly train a group of insurgents to stir up an uprising against Castro, but Kennedy took over before the plan was finalized. Once it was, The Bay of Pigs was a disaster and Kennedy was disgraced just months into his presidency. During the summer of 1962, American intelligence spotted Russians putting long-range missiles into Cuba, missiles that could annihilate all of Florida before we could even respond. Kennedy sent his brother Robert Kennedy to negotiate a secret peace deal that ultimately ended in just that, with Russia removing missiles from Cuba in exchange for America promising not to invade Cuba and America removing missiles from Turkey. The three-week threat became known as The Cuban Missile Crisis.Truman's Fair Deal (23-1) - Harry Truman, a Democrat like Roosevelt, aimed to continue the
spirit of Roosevelt's New Deal with a political agenda he called The Fair Deal. This included raising minimum wage to 75 cents an hour, increasing Social Security benefits by 75%, and passing the National Housing Act of 1949, providing low-income housing opportunities. He also got Congress to pass a law desegregating the military in 1948. Though Congress voted against Truman's plan for a national health care program (something that would not be realized until Barrack Obama 50 years later), Truman continued to expand the national deficit through government programs aimed at helping the poor and disenfranchised.
Eisenhower's Dynamic Conservatism (23-1) - Though Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during WW2, was a Republican, he was considered "middle of the road." He preferred the term, "dynamic conservatism" or the balance between economic conservatism and activism that would benefit the country. This ability to balance the two ends of the political spectrum may be why he is considered one of the five best presidents in American history. On one hand, milises
Eisenhower made significant economic cuts to the military and to various government programs like the
TVA, whose budget he slashed from $185 million to $12 million! But he also over-compensated with the nation's largest transportation spending program. In 1956, Congress passed the Federal Highway Act, which budgeted $2.5 billion a year for 10 years. By 1966, it has built 40,000 miles of interstate highways.
Eisenhower also expanded Social Security beyond Truman's reforms and extended unemployment payments to 10 million more citizens.

Kennedy's New Frontier (24-1) - On September 26, 1960, 75 million Americans tuned into the first televised presidential debate. Both Richard Nixon, a Republican, and John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, heralded themselves as Cold War warriors. Ironically, while Kennedy would win in a very tight race (34,23 million to 34.11 million). Nixon would win the oresidency eight vears later when JFK's brother Robert Kennedy was assassinated as the front-runner just six months before the 1968 election.
Kennedy's New Frontier called for federal action against gender discrimination and affirmed the right of women for equally paid employment. Kennedy also became a champion for the mentally disabled and his sister started an athletic showcase for disabled Americans that would later grow into the Special 44.
Johnson's Great Society (24-3) - After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Lyndon Johnson knew the road to national support would be to continue Kennedy's legacy. Before his death, Kennedy was working on both a comprehensive antipoverty program and civil rights bill. Rivaled by only Franklin Roosevelt lohnson established the most expansive series of government programe in American history.
These includes the creation of Medicare, which provided comprehensive health insurance for all senior citizens, and Medicaid, which provided health insurance for low-income families. Under his tenure, Congress also passed the Child Nutrition Act. which provided free breakfast in schools for low-income families, as well as the creation of adult education programs, college tuition scholarshios and student loan programs, and Project Head Start, which funded a preschool program for disadvantaged children.
The Great Society also created the Job Corps, an education and job training program for at-risk youth, and passed a law requiring all products to disclose relevant information like ingredients and health risks.
The Great Society's Legacy (24-3) - Johnson's programs touched nearly every aspect of
American life, but vears after lobneon has left office, as critics looked back and evaluated the success of his expansive reforms, like FDR before him, many questioned whether the negative effects outweighed the good. For one, like the massive cutbacks to police budgets after the George Floyd riots of 2020 created rapid spikes in crime, Johnson's programs created so much change so quickly, they became unmanageable, and their impact diminished. Furthermore, Johnson's presidency took our national debt to an alarming new level. From the time of Roosevelt took office in 1929 to the time he left in 1945, the federal debt ballooned from $17 billion to $259 billion! From 1945-1963, under the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, it only mildly grew from $259 to $306 billion. But from 1963-1968 under Johnson, it grew from $306 to $348 billion, three times the rate of the three presidents before him. And yet, by 2000, the federal debt had skyrocketed to $5,674 billion, and by 2023, an unthinkable $33,167 billion, or $33 trillion! But more than his effect on a government culture of debt, critics argued that Johnson's programs fostered a culture of dependency and a new permanent "underclass,"
"trapped" in a pattern of over-reliance on government programs.
46. A Liberal Supreme Court Movement (24-1) - In the 1962 Engel vs. Vitale case, the Court ruled that states could not compose official prayers in public schools. In the 1963 Abington School District vs.
Schempp case, it ruled against state-mandated Bible readings in public schools. In 1965 Griswold vs.
Connecticut, the Court ruled that prohibiting the sale and use of birth control devices violated citizens' constitutional right to privacy. But arguably the most consequential ruling of what became known as The Warren Court (headed by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren) was the 1973 Roe vs. Wade case, which ruled that the Constitution protected the right of a woman to have an abortion. How impactful were those decisions? Well, from 1945-1965, polls indicated that an average of 98% of Americans believed in God. By 2011, that number had dropped to 83%. As for Roe Vs. Wade, since its ruling in 1973, there have been more than 63 million abortions in America. Since 2015, there have been an average of 120 million abortions worldwide... per year! The total death count of World War 2 was 70 million!
A Cultural Revolution (23-2) - At the same time that America was engaged in a Cold War position of resistance against the rapid spread of Communism around the world during the 1950's,

America was also engaged in a cultural revolution. First, the war's end led to a historic baby boom as couples rushed to settle down and have families, As a result, the teenage population expanded like never before, coupled with the rapid expansion of Hollywood movies and television, Rock and Roll, mass production of the automobile, the popularity of professional soorts, and a flourishine economy, all leading to a cultural revolution never before seen in America's history.
The New Mass Media (23-2) - The 1950's saw the rapid rise of TV popularity. In 1953, I Love Lucy broke a record with 44 million viewers in a single day. Variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show became popular, featuring guests who became the next up-and-coming stars, as well as comedy and music. Bobe Hope and Jack Benny had similar popular variety shows. In the 1950's, shows like The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke made the western genre popular. Police shows like Dragnet also intrigued audiences. And quiz shows like The $64,000 Question became the craze. As a result, however, people fled from the movie theaters in droves. From 1946 to 1950, vearly ticket sales droooed from 82 million to 36 million. However, by getting knocked off his high horse by TV, the movie industry adopted new special effects and were forced to create better plots with more exciting thrills and dramatic appeal.
When it did rebound in the 1960's, its influence spread worldwide.
49. Rock and Roll (23-2) - In 1951, a new genre of music caught fire: rock n' roll. Influenced by African American rhythm and blues, especially Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ray Charles, and Nat King Cole, a louder music gave birth that facilitated a dance craze. In 1956, after first refusing to host Elvis Presley because of the negative influence of rock n' roll on influential youth, Ed Sullivan finally hosted the up-and-coming star, giving rise to his music ascent. The Beatles would hit the scene four years later in 1960. Between Presley and The Beatles, they would produce 74 albums! The 1950's Rock N' Roll era helped facilitate a "Generation Gap" or cultural separation between children and their parents."
50. Worlds Apart (23-3) - During the 1950's, the generation gap continued to expand as juvenile
delinquency, or criminal behavior among the young, continued to rise. From 1948-1953, it grew an astounding 45%. Some people blamed the influence of mass media platforms like movies, TV, music, and comic books. Others cited rising divorce rates and declining church attendance. Others cited fears of another world war and the possibility of a military draft. Others saw a rising clash between the conformity of the parent generation and the younger generation's need to create a separate identity that was unique and free. Juvenile delinquency was also influenced by stereotypes that judged young people because of the length of their hair, their clothes, their music, and the way they talked. All this set the stage for the biggest social reform movement in America's history: the 1960's.