American history 1945-1960 (Cold war, McCarthy, Cuba)

AMERICAN HISTORY

-1945 – America was full of self-relief

- powerful nation

- Cold war – relationship with soviet union developing

- west Europe rebuild – Marshalls plan

- affect of cold war in domestic politics – threat of communism

- fear of communism – more than reality

- anti-communist hysteria – fear of nuclear war

- Rosenbergs – executed, 1953

- wife didn’t know – possibly shouldn’t be executed

- communists are spreading their ideology each way

- people betraying American way of life

- McCarthyism – whole investigation process

- FBI – J. Edgar Hoover – anti-communist, anti-homosexual – supporting civil rights = communism

- he directed FBI operations away from mafia

- helping to blacklist people, black mail

- House of Representatives – committee – investigates in American activities

- definition: spying for Soviet Union, having wrong opinion

- HoR – damages people’s lives

- McCarthy – on senate committee

- home of the witch hunt = no matter what they said they would still accuse them

- give names and you are saved, be a snitch bitch

- early dates – they persecuted defence lawyers

- 5th amendment – labelled in the media as 5th amendment communist, blacklisted,

- 10-12 thousand people were fired, hundreds in jail

- perjury

- McCarthy – manipulating peoples fears to gain power, populist

- accusation destroys you, lack of judicial awareness

- Arthur Miller – play The Crucible – satire, parody of McCarthyism

- piece of paper – I have list of 200 agents working for communists – paper was blank

- he already made the news, people feared him

- they went after homosexuals

- losing job, going to jail

- why they went after homosexuals? Blackmail, prejudice – threat to us

- the lilac scare

- a Ref scare

- McCarthy’s opponent in the senate – election, his son had been caught with another man

- DC – hushed up – normal procedure, if you are poor you are fucked, BUT McCarthy told: resigned your seat, we are going to expose your son, jail time etc., guy killed himself

- senate had enough, put McCarthy in trial, scumbag, they broke him, somebody pointed out, they took him on

- he loses money, business deals, becomes joke, drank himself to death

- he manipulated fears, compulsive liar

- through fear he wanted to get power

- The Red Menace

- sci-fi, aliens, anti-communist propaganda

- Beat Generation, civil right movement – suspicious

- narrowing ideas and values

- real fighting against communism – Korean war – 1950-1953

- example of American intervention, China, sick of domination of other nations

- U.N intervention

- saved half peninsula from communism

10.3.

- how to stop spread communism

- direct military intervention

- Korean war – precedence

- information war

- Espion age

- spheres of influence

- proxy wars

- influencing governments in the third world

- Domino effect = snowball effect

= if Vietnam falls to communism, Laos falls too and etc.

- what happens when Thailand falls, India???

- stop the spread now, our ideas and economic system will win