History of the USA

Era: Wilson's aim was the extension of democracy and the creation of a just

world order. In January 1918 he issued his FOURTEEN POINTS as a proposed

basis for peace: freedom of the seas and removal of all barriers to trade;

an end to secret diplomacy; general disarmament; self-government for the

submerged nationalities in the German and Austro- Hungarian empires; and a

league of nations. The addition of more than a million American troops to

the Allied armies turned the balance against the Germans in 1918, and an

armistice on November 11 ended the war. At the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE,

however, Wilson failed in much of his program, for the other Allies were

not interested in a "peace without victory." The British would not agree to

freedom of the seas; tariffs did not tumble; self-determination was often

violated; key negotiations were kept secret; but in the end Wilson obtained

his greatest objective, establishment of the League of Nations to provide

collective security against future aggression. Many at home, however,

preferred to return to America's traditional isolation from world affairs.

When Wilson tried imperiously to force the Senate to accept the entire

treaty, he failed. The United States never became a member of the League of

Nations.

THE UNITED STATES TURNS INWARD: THE 1920S AND 1930S

After its participation in the conflagration then known as the Great War,

the American nation was ready to turn inward and concentrate on domestic

affairs (a "return to normalcy," as 1920 presidential candidate Warren

Harding called it). Private concerns preoccupied most Americans during the

1920s until the Great Depression of the next decade, when increasing

numbers turned, in their collective misfortune, to government for solutions

to economic problems that challenged the very basis of U.S. capitalistic

society.

The 1920s: Decade of Optimism

By the 1920s innovative forces thrusting into American life were creating a

new way of living. The automobile and the hard- surfaced road produced

mobility and a blurring of the traditional rural-urban split. The radio and

motion pictures inaugurated a national culture, one built on new, urban

values. The 19TH AMENDMENT (1920) gave women the vote in national politics

and symbolized their persistence in efforts to break out of old patterns of

domesticity. The war had accelerated their entrance into business,

industry, and the professions and their adoption of practices, such as

drinking and smoking, traditionally considered masculine. So, too, young

people turned to new leaders and values and sought unorthodox dress,

recreations, and morals.

Traditional WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) America fought the new

ways. The adoption of PROHIBITION in 1919 (with ratification of the 18TH

AMENDMENT) had been a victory of Yankee moral values over those of

immigrants, but now many of the great cities practically ignored the

measure. The Russian Revolution of 1917 sent a Red Scare shivering through

the country in 1919-20; suspicion centered on labor unions as alleged

instruments of Moscow. The KU KLUX KLAN, stronger in the northern

Republican countryside than in the South, attacked the so-called New Negro,

who returned from the fighting in France with a new sense of personal

dignity (the HARLEM RENAISSANCE expressed this spirit through the arts),

and the millions of Roman Catholics and Jews who had been flooding into the

country since the 1890s. The Immigration Law of 1924 established a quota

system that discriminated against all groups except northern and western

Europeans. In 1925 the spectacular SCOPES TRIAL in Dayton, Tenn., convicted

a high school science teacher of presenting Darwinian theories of

evolution, which fundamentalist Protestants bitterly opposed.

New ideas, however, continued to inundate the country, and optimism

remained high. The U.S. population delighted in the "miracles" that new

inventions had brought them--electric lights, airplanes, new communication

systems. The solo flight to Paris of Charles LINDBERGH in 1927 seemed to

capture the spirit of the age. The business community was praised for its

values and productivity. Henry Ford (see FORD family) and his system of

cheap mass production of automobiles for people of modest incomes was

regarded as symbolic of the new era.

Three Republican presidents occupied the White House during the 1920s.

Warren HARDING, a conservative, was swept into office by a landslide

victory in 1920. He proved an inept president, and his administration was

racked by scandals, including that of TEAPOT DOME. Calvin COOLIDGE, who

succeeded to the office on Harding's death (1923), worshiped business as

much as he detested government. Herbert HOOVER, an engineer, brought to the

presidency (1929-33) a deep faith in the essential soundness of capitalism,

which to him represented the fullest expression of individualism. In 1920

the U.S. census showed, for the first time, that a majority of Americans

lived in cities of 2,500 people or more.

The 1930s: Decade of Depression

The stock market crash of October 1929 initiated a long economic decline

that accelerated into a world catastrophe, the DEPRESSION OF THE 1930s. By

1933, 14 million Americans were unemployed, industrial production was down

to one-third of its 1929 level, and national income had dropped by more

than half. In the presence of deep national despair, Democratic challenger

Franklin D. ROOSEVELT easily defeated Hoover in the 1932 presidential

election. After his inauguration, the NEW DEAL exploded in a whirlwind of

legislation.

A new era commenced in American history, one in which a social democratic

order similar to that of Western European countries appeared. The federal

government under Roosevelt (and the presidency itself) experienced a vast

expansion in its authority, especially over the economy. Roosevelt had a

strong sense of community; he distrusted unchecked individualism and

sympathized with suffering people. He nourished, however, no brooding

rancor against the U.S. system. He sought to save capitalism, not supplant

it.

Recovery was Roosevelt's first task. In the First New Deal (1933-35) he

attempted to muster a spirit of emergency and rally all interests behind a

common effort in which something was provided for everyone. Excessive

competition and production were blamed for the collapse. Therefore,

business proprietors and farmers were allowed to cooperate in establishing

prices that would provide them with a profitable return and induce an

upward turn (under the NATIONAL RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION and the

AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ADMINISTRATION). By 1935, however, 10 million were

still unemployed, the economy seemed lodged at a new plateau, and the U.S.

Supreme Court was ruling such agencies unconstitutional.

The Second New Deal (1935-38) was more antibusiness and proconsumer.

Roosevelt turned to vastly increased relief spending (under the WORKS

PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION) to pump up consumer buying power. In 1933 he had

decided to take the nation off the gold standard, except in international

trade. Setting the price at which the government would buy gold at $35 an

ounce, he induced so massive a flow of gold into the country that its basic

stock of precious metal increased by one-third by 1940 (expanding by much

more the currency available in the economy). This monetary policy and the

spending to aid the unemployed succeeded in moving the economy toward

recovery before 1940, when the impact of war-induced buying from Europe

accelerated such movement.

The impact of the New Deal was perhaps strongest and most lasting in its

basic reform measures, which profoundly altered the American system. Farm

prices were supported and farm plantings centrally planned; the money

supply became a federal, not private, responsibility under a strengthened

Federal Reserve Board; and stock exchanges were put under regulation of the

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION. The FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE

CORPORATION insured bank deposits, and banking practices were closely

supervised under the Banking Act of 1933; the NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT

made relations between employers and employees a matter of public concern

and control; and under the direction of agencies such as the TENNESSEE

VALLEY AUTHORITY government facilities supplied electrical power to entire

regions, providing a standard for private utilities. Private utility

monopolies were broken apart and placed under public regulation; antitrust

efforts were reenergized; and economic recessions, then and afterward, were

monitored by the federal government, which was ready to increase public

spending to provide employment and ward off the onset of another

depression.

For the majority of the population, New Deal legislation defined minimum

standards of living: the Fair Labor Standards Act set MINIMUM WAGE and

maximum hour limitations and included a prohibition on child labor in

interstate commerce; the Social Security Act (see SOCIAL SECURITY) made

provisions for old-age and disability pensions, unemployment insurance,

monthly payments to mothers living alone with dependent children, and

direct assistance to the blind and crippled.

In addition, the New Deal helped make it possible for organized unions to

gain higher wages; in 1938 the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

was formed; members were organized by industry rather than by craft. The

New Deal also provided a sense of confidence that in a time of disaster the

federal government would take positive action.

Meanwhile, totalitarian movements abroad were inducing world crisis.

Congress, mirroring public opinion, had grown disenchanted with the U.S.

entry into World War I. This spirit of isolationism led to the passage

(1935-37) of a series of neutrality acts. They required an arms embargo

that would deny the sale of munitions to belligerents during a time of

international war and prohibited loans to belligerents and the travel of

Americans on ships owned by belligerents. Congress thus hoped to prevent

involvements like those of 1914-17.

A WORLD POWER

The spirit of isolationism eroded steadily as Americans watched the

aggressive moves of Adolf Hitler and his allies. President Roosevelt and

the American people finally concluded that the United States could not

survive as a nation, nor could Western civilization endure, if Hitler and

fascism gained dominance over Europe. During the world war that followed,

the American nation rose to the status of a major world power, a position

that was not abandoned but confirmed in the cold-war years of the late

1940s and the 1950s.

Total War: 1941-45

In September 1940, Congress established the first peacetime draft in

American history, and 6 months later it authorized Roosevelt to transfer

munitions to Great Britain, now standing practically alone against Hitler,

by a procedure called LEND- LEASE. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese reacted to

stiffening American diplomacy against its expansion into Southeast Asia by

attacking the U.S. fleet at PEARL HARBOR in the Hawaiian Islands. This

thrust was aimed at immobilizing American power long enough to allow the

establishment of a wide imperial Japanese perimeter including all of the

western Pacific and China, henceforth to be defended against all comers.

Japan, however, in one stroke had succeeded in scuttling American

isolationist sentiment, forcing the United States into World War II, and

unifying the American people as never before in total war.

The first American military decision was to concentrate on defeating Hitler

while fighting a holding action in the Pacific. The next was to form an

alliance with Great Britain so close that even military commands were

jointly staffed. The year 1942 was devoted to halting, after many defeats,

the outward spread of Japanese power and to keeping Hitler's forces from

overwhelming America's British and Soviet allies. Large shipments of

munitions went to both allies. In November an American force invaded North

Africa; it joined the British in defeating the German armies in that region

by May 1943.

In 2 months the Allies were fighting the Germans in Sicily and Italy; at

the same time U.S. forces in the Pacific were pushing in toward the

Japanese home islands by means of an island- hopping offensive. On the long

Russian front, German armies were being defeated and pushed back toward

their borders. In June 1944 a huge Allied force landed on the French coast,

an invasion preceded by 2 years of intense day-and-night bombing of Germany

by British and American aircraft. By August 1944, Paris was recaptured.

Hitler's empire was crumbling; clouds of bombers were raining destruction

on German cities; and on Apr. 30, 1945, with the Soviet troops just a few

miles from Berlin, Hitler committed suicide. Peace in Europe followed

shortly.

The Pacific war continued, the Japanese home islands being rendered

practically defenseless by July 1945. American aerial attacks burned out

city after city. In April, Harry S. TRUMAN had succeeded to the presidency

on Roosevelt's death. Now, advised that the alternative would be an

invasion in which multitudes would perish, including many thousands of

young Americans, he authorized use of the recently tested atomic bomb. On

Aug. 6, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated; on Aug. 9, the same fate

came to Nagasaki. Within a week, a cease-fire (which later research

suggests was reachable without atomic attack) was achieved.

The political shape of the postwar world was set at the YALTA CONFERENCE

(February 1945) between Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill.

Soviet occupation of Eastern European countries overrun by the Red Army was

accepted, in return for a pledge to allow democratic governments to rise

within them. Soviet and Allied occupation zones in Germany were

established, with Berlin, deep in the Soviet zone, to be jointly

administered. In return for Soviet assistance in the invasion of Japan

(which was eventually not needed), it was agreed that certain possessions

in the Far East and rights in Manchuria, lost to the Japanese long before,

would be restored to the USSR. Soon it was clear that the kind of

democratic government envisioned by the Americans was not going to be

allowed in the East European countries under Soviet control. Nor, as the

Soviets pointed out, was the United States ready to admit the Soviets to

any role in the occupation and government of Japan, whose internal

constitution and economy were rearranged to fit American desires under Gen.

Douglas MACARTHUR.

Cold-War Years

The breach widened steadily. Charges and countercharges were directed back

and forth, the Soviets and Americans interpreting each other's actions in

the worst possible light. Americans became convinced that the Soviets were

thrusting out in every direction, seeking to communize not only the Soviet-

occupied countries, but also Turkey, Greece, and Western Europe. In

February 1946, Stalin declared in Moscow that there could never be a

lasting peace with capitalism. Shortly thereafter, Churchill warned of the

"iron curtain" that had descended across the middle of Europe. The COLD WAR

had begun.

In March 1947, Truman asked Congress for funds to shore up Turkey and

Greece, both under Soviet pressure, and announced the Truman Doctrine: that

"it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are

resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside

pressures." Then the MARSHALL PLAN (named for George C. MARSHALL, U.S.

chief of staff during the war and at this time secretary of state),

approved by Congress in April 1948, sent $12 billion to the devastated

countries of Europe to help them rebuild and fend off the despair on which

communism was believed to feed.

True to its Democratic tradition, the Truman administration stressed

multilateral diplomacy; that is, the building of an international order

based on joint decision making. Nationalism, it was believed, must be

tamed. The United Nations received strong American support. Meanwhile, the

United States continued the drive toward a lowering of world tariffs (begun

in the 1930s). During the war, all recipients of Lend-Lease had been

required to commit themselves to lowered tariffs. These commitments were

internationally formalized in 1947 in the GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND

TRADE, when 23 nations participated in an extensive mutual lowering of

trade barriers. In 1948, at American initiative, the ORGANIZATION OF

AMERICAN STATES was established to provide a regional multilateral

consultative body in the Western Hemisphere. Within Europe, the Marshall

Plan required the formation of Europe-wide organizations, leading

eventually to the Common Market.

Toward the USSR, the basic American policy was that known as containment:

building "situations of strength" around its vast perimeter to prevent the

outward spread of communism. Angered Americans blamed the USSR for world

disorder and came to regard the peace of the entire world as a U.S.

responsibility. After their immense war effort, many Americans believed

that the United States could accomplish whatever it desired to do. Also,

having defeated one form of tyranny, fascism, and now being engaged in

resisting another, Stalinist communism, the American people assumed with

few questions that, since their cause was just, whatever they did in its

name was right. Critics of national policy were harshly condemned.

A series of East-West crises, most dramatically the Berlin Blockade of 1948-

49, led to the creation (April 1949) of the NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY

ORGANIZATION. The NATO alliance sought to link the United States militarily

to Western Europe (including Greece and Turkey) by making an attack against

one member an attack against all. As Europe recovered its prosperity, the

focus of East-West confrontation shifted to Asia, where the British,

French, and Dutch empires were collapsing and the Communist revolution in

China was moving toward its victory (October 1949). In June 1950 the North

Korean army invaded South Korea. The United Nations Security Council (which

the Soviets were then boycotting) called on UN members jointly to repel

this attack. Shortly afterward, a multinational force under Gen. Douglas

MacArthur was battling to turn back North Korean forces in the KOREAN WAR.

As the UN army swept northward to the Manchurian border, Chinese forces

flooded southward to resist them, and a long, bloody seesaw war ensued. An

armistice was not signed until July 1953, following 150,000 American

casualties and millions of deaths among the Koreans and Chinese.

Domestic Developments during the Truman Years

In 1945, President Truman called on Congress to launch another program of

domestic reform, but the nation was indifferent. It was riding a wave of

affluence such as it had never dreamed of in the past. Tens of millions of

people found themselves moving upward into a middle-class way of life. The

cold war, and the pervasive fear of an atomic war, induced a trend toward

national unity and a downplaying of social criticism. The Atomic Energy Act

of 1946 nationalized nuclear power, putting it under civilian control, but

no other bold departures were made. What fascinated Americans was the so-

called baby boom--a huge increase in the birthrate (the population was at

150 million by 1950 and 179 million by 1960)--and the need to house new

families and teach their children.

In the presence of rapidly rising inflation, labor unions called thousands

of strikes, leading in 1948 to passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (see LABOR-

MANAGEMENT RELATIONS ACT), which limited the powers of unions, declared

certain of their tactics "unfair labor practices," and gave the president

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