Discussion Board - Cold War
The Cold War Part 4
Professor Tomiko Meeks
Anti-Communist Crusade “Red Scare”
After WWII we have a second red scare. The first occurred after WWI. People are unnaturally paranoid. Amreicans are afraid that communism has infiltrated America. How do we know this – spies we know this because the Russians make the bomb sooner than we expected and we do not know who they are because the look like us. The second thing is now that the soviets have nulcear weapons they want to kill us. And we fear that communism is spreadinf. Ex: China, eastern europe, n. Korea so people feel that the soviets are setting the stage for communism to spread. In the last class we talked about the fear of another great depression and that the communist may take over. Also fear is being promoted by the media. Movies – invasion of the body snatcher – thee movie was about aliens taking over human bodies and they look like us. So we are using aliens to project our fears. Another is the blob. A movie called they
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movies
Smith Act 1940
Made it illegal to promote the overthrow of the government. Before with the freedom of speech you could say I am going to take over the government. Also you could not be a part of the communist party. Smith Act was suppose to make people feel better about communism but it does not because while it promotes security it also creates fear
Smith act made it a crime to call for the overthrow of the U.S government or belong to an organization that did so
Conivted communist officials
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House Un-American Activities Committee HUAC
Their job was to invesitage communism which also meant investigating American citizens. People saw this as a violation of people’s rights. HUAC promoted sensationalist fears. They said that if you suspecyed your neighbor let us know and we will monitor them to see if they are communism. This created more frat
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Truman’s Loyalty Program
Truman creayed the loyalty review board that investigated 3 million government workers. The idea was to investigate them to see if they were vommunist to make sure they were not communist.
It investiagated employees
Required loyalty oaths
It forbid employees to
Criticize us foreign policy
Promote equal rights for women
Own socialists books
Watch foreign films
Over 3K will resign and this increases public fear
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McCarran Internal Security bill 1950
Communists organization were required to register with the government so that we can track them
Allowed president to arrest suspicious persons.
Truman actually felt like this gave him to much power making this a police state so he will veto this bill but congress overturned the bill.
Also we did not want communist working in the defense industry. Let me ask you how many communist you think were really bad
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Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
These two are communist spies who sell nuclear secrets to the russians, this proved that communist were among us and they looked like us. The point was that communists lived among us and at any moment could turn against us. These two are the only two executed for treason during peace time.
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blacklisting
Hollywood director, writers, actors were blacklisted for being friendly with communist. Congress was not happy about this and a group called the hollywood ten were areested because they refused to testify against their cmmunist connection
A total of 250 were blacklisted, this included lucile ball, and desi arnez
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Mccarthyism 1950-1954
We talked about him a little before. But senator joseph mccarthy said he knew that there were 205 communist in the state department and this made him very powerful. The problem was that he was a liar and he promtoed hyseteria, fear anf a witch hunt to gain polotical power. So many people will follow him because he says he knows where the communist are. He made accusations without evidence and he made these accusations during secret hearings. He became popular and ruined peoples careers. He also said that if you were a communist you were also homosexual. His downfall was the his head got too big and he accused the army of having communist and he televised the hearings. Now even though he was just accusing people some of them he gets right.
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How to spot a communist video
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Election of 1952
Republicans will nominate Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon is nominated as v.p
Democrate nominate Adlai Steven
Eisenhower is popular because he is a wwii war hero – he saved the world and this works in his favor. However, his VP is accused of having a secret slush fund. Which is a personal account from donors so people think that companies are giving him money in return for favors
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Nixon’s “Checkers Speech”
Nixon has to make people believe that this is not true so he gives the checkers speech showing that he is a family man and that he would never do that so this speechsave the campaign and the public sees him as human
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Ike Campaign video
After that there is a heavy we like ike campaign
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1952 Election
Ike will win the 1952 election 442 to 89
He will also win the 1956 election beatinf adlai stevenson again
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1956 Election
34th POTUS
Eisenhower’s Cold War Politics (Foreign & Domestic)
What was truman’s policies on cold war – containment – Marshall plan, truman doctrine, Nato, Org. of amer. States, berlin Airlift, radio free Asia
Eisenhower will not do these same things
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Secretary of state John Foster Dulles
Sec. of state John Foster Dulles is the architect of Eisenhower’s foreign policy.
Dulles had to goals
1. Liberate eastern europe of communism
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Liberation of Eastern Europe
Dulles wanted to roll back the iron curtain. So truman wanted to containment. But under roll back what is the difference. We are trying to eliminate commuisn thru military pressure and propoganda. We will encourage these countries to fight for liberation from communism. Is this more aggressive than containtaiment and will make the cold war hotter
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Massive retaliation
His other goal was massive retaluation
. This means that nay soviet or chinese aggression would be countered with a direct nuclear attack. So Dulles is saying this basically if you provoke me I am going to kill you and all of russia. Inother words if you kill three of my soldiers I will kill everyone in your country. Is this an appropraite response. Of course not. The assumption though is that you will do nothing. We are hoping this will prevent any type of aggression toward the US or our allies. Will this make the war hotter or colder - hotter
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Brinkmanship
We also believe in Brinkmanship. This means that america will never back down even it meant bringing the nation to the brink of war.
Will this make the war hotter or colder – hotter.
So if we actually went to war who would lose
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Mutually assured Destruction
Everyone. If we wever went to war it woul result in Mutually Assured Destruction. The us military knew that nuclear bombs would kill every one. The president says we have to do something to make people feel better. Because he knew that we would only have a short period of time before we knew we would be bombed
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Civil Defense
Eisenhower comes up with civil defense. This gave people the impression that there was a plan of protection.
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Bomb shelters were created to make people feel better. Did people feel more secure that there was somewher for people to go. Look the reality is if you are anywhere close to the fall out you are still going to die. Fall out shelters are made out of metal and you will cook to death, people were also given detectors to identify radiation. The truth is this stuff did nothing and the government knew this and purposely underfunded these programs. All these programs did was make people feel better
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“Duck and Cover:
We also created educational programs and childrens songs. All you have to do children if there is a nuclear bomd all you have to do is duck and cover
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Duck and cover video
This seems pretty ridiculous unless you are very far away, otherwise this does not make sense. The goal of ducka nd cover was to make people feel safe. So both kids and parents feel better. And this is something that people can remember
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National emergency alarm repeater
We also implement a warning system
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With brinkmashipt eisenhower is rejecting the containment policy. He believed that not destroying communism was immoral
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New look military
In order to get rid of communism he changes the military and implements the new look miltary. This means we had a smaller army and a bigger airforce. This would save money because we need less soldier. Also we will not need soldiers to fight communism because we have nuclear bombs
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Strategic air command
So you see a shift in the military. And we have the creation of strtegic air command, this is a fleet of super bombers carrying nuclear bombs. These things are flying all over the world and could attack at a moments notice. So we have an increase in nuclear weapons and a decrease in convential weapons
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B52
Nuclear Triad “More Bang for the buck”
This was to suppose to give us more bang for the buck. By investing more into nuclear submarines, bombers and eventually missiles we could focus more on eliminating communism and less on soldiers. So this is more bang for the buck. This would give us the ability to reduce military cost. This is in line with rollback and massive retailiation. So soldiers will leave the front
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Eisenhower’s farewell address
Eisenhower warned about the growth of the military industrial complex. This meant that the militaryhad too much influence on the economy. So the more wars we fight the economy will mean more jobss and if there were more jobs then people will want to fight. He also said we spent too much on weapons and not enough on our own people. So he is saying we should step back from this even though this was his baby
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Easing cold war tensions (1953)
Stalin dies in 1953 and this makes the cold war much cooler. Then nikita krushchev is put into power
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Nikita khrushchev (1955)
Nikita Khrushchev is sppointed leader of russia in 1955 he will implement a program of peaceful coexistence. In his philosophy we do not have to fight and kill each other. Half the world communist and half democratic. Rather than trying to kill each other we should fight with our economies. So if more economies become successful with communism then communism wins and vice versa, he thought russia would bury the us economically/ look at the picture on the right. The american people are not under the control of the government
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Geneva summit (1955) “Agreement” Open Skies
Eisenhower and khrushev meet at the geneva summit and they first sign the open skies agreement which allowed mutual aerial monitoring of nuclear stock piles. The idea was that america would fill more comfortable if we could fly over your country to make sure you are not over producing and russia says this sounds good. This will not be that effective because you had to give 7 days notice so you know that in seven days I could essentially hide all of my weapons, but it eases tensions and cools the cold war. The two will also agree that nuclear weapons are a threat to the world and this is a good thing, they both agree to disarm the nuclear weapons eventually because they are dangerous, they do not do this right away. But they see that what they have been doing is crazy. So relationships are getting better
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Hungarian uprising (1956)
Then things get bad with the Hungarian uprising. In 1956 the hungarians have a revolution, they fight for democracy and independence. Why? They were inspired by americas position to free people from communism. They have a revolution because america said if you have a revolution we will come and help you. We have been saying this for years over radio free europe. So the russians send in the tanks and the americans send in wait for it…nothing. We send no aid and this country becomes a slaughter house they kill ten of thousands of people and institute a puppet government. Remember we said if their was agression against us or our friends there would be massive retalition. So massive retalitation fails becuae that meant russia would come after us. So the us is saying that hungary was not that important. We were thing about MAD because in reality we could not respond we were to afraid to respone
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We are so sorry
Instead we send our apologies. Is that good enough? Our foreign policy was no good we look like a fraud. Hungarian people staked their lives on the us helping them and we say we can’t help
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Sputnik 1957
Another failure on our part is sputnisk, 1957 the russian launch a satellite into space on a missile before we do. So if they can do this what else can they do lausnch a missile at the us with a nuclear warhead
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Sputnik video
Now we have a problem because if you can put a satellite at the tip of the missile you can put a nuke
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“Missile Gap”
People question why don’t we have this technology. What is created is a missile gap. The soviets could attack us but we could not attack back. Prior to this it took about 10 hours to attack to we would be warned and we could prepare to attck back but now there is a missile age and the russians got to it first and now they can attack in 33 to 35 min to attack us and there is no warning. They could shoot down our plans and obliterate us. This becomes a serious problem. Wednesday we will discuss americas response
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Vietnam
Eisenhower will address the issue in vietnam. The communist leader ho chi minh was fighting against french colonial rule. At the battle of Dien Bien Phu the communist defeat the french. Vietnam is divided at the 17th parallel. North vietnam will become communist and south vietnam Ngo Dihn Diem becomes the leader and they have a democratic governement
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South Vietname
The french and the americans would hold country wide elections to determine who the leader would be, but they never hold the elcetions because we know the communist will win
Instead we continue to support Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem is amilitary dictator, he kills any communist tries to make people convert to catholicism even though most are buddhist, he is rich other are very poort. We allow him to do this because he is preventing the spread of communism. We are afraid there may be a war here
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SEATO
So we create SEATO which is much like NATO this is a military alliance to prevent the spread of communism in south east asia
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Domino theory
We were afraid of the spread of communism in south east asia because of the domino theory. We feared if one country fell all the others would fall too/ many of the countries were prime for communism
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