3. CHAPTER THEMES Theme: America emerged from World War II as the world’s strongest economic power, and commenced a postwar economic boom that lasted for two decades. A bulging population migrated to the suburbs and Sunbelt, leaving the cities increasingly to minorities and the poor.

4. Theme: The end of World War II left the United States and the Soviet Union as the two dominant world powers, and they soon became locked in a Cold War confrontation. The Cold War spread from Europe to become a global ideological conflict between democracy and communism. Among its effects were a nasty hot war in Korea and a domestic crusade against “disloyalty.”

5. CHAPTER SUMMARY In the immediate postwar years there were widespread fears of a return to depression. But fueled by cheap energy, increased worker productivity, and government programs like the GI Bill of Rights, the economy began a spectacular expansion that lasted from 1950 to 1970. This burst of affluence transformed American industry and society, and particularly drew more women into the workforce.

6. Footloose Americans migrated to the Sunbelts of the South and West, and to the growing suburbs, leaving the northeastern cities with poorer populations. Families grew rapidly, as the “baby boom” created a population bulge that would last for decades. The Yalta agreement near the end of World War II left major issues undecided and created controversy over postwar relations with the Soviet Union. With feisty Truman in the White House, the two new superpowers soon found themselves at odds over Eastern Europe, Germany, and the Middle East.

7. The Truman Doctrine announced military aid and an ideological crusade against international communism. The Marshall Plan provided economic assistance to starving and communist-threatened Europe, which soon joined the United States in the NATO military alliance.

8. The Cold War and revelations of spying aroused deep fears of communist subversion at home that culminated in McCarthy’s witch- hunting. Fear of communist advances abroad and social change at home generated national and local assaults on many people perceived to be “different.” Issues of the Cold War and civil rights fractured the Democratic Party three ways in 1948, but a gutsy Truman campaign overcame the divisions to win a triumphant underdog victory.

9. The Communist Chinese won a civil war against the Nationalists. North Korea invaded South Korea, and the Americans and Chinese joined in fighting the seesaw war to a bloody stalemate. MacArthur’s insubordination and threats to expand the war to China led Truman to fire him.

10. Postwar Economic Anxieties The Americans cheered the end of World War II in 1945, but many worried that with the war over, the U.S. would sink back into another Great Depression. – Upon war’s end, inflation shot up with the release of price controls while the gross national product sank, and labor strikes swept the nation. To get even with labor, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which outlawed “closed” shops (closed to non-union members), made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required that union leaders take non- communist oaths. Opposite of the Wagner Act of the New Deal, this new act was a strike against labor unions. So essentially, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was passed to check the growing power of labor unions.

12. Labor tried to organize in the South and West with “Operation Dixie,” but this proved frustrating and unsuccessful. To forestall an economic downturn, the Democratic administration: 1.Sold war factories and other government installations to private businesses cheaply. 2.Congress passed the Employment Act of 1946, which made it government policy to “promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.” 3.Created the Council of Economic Advisors to provide the president with data to make that policy a reality. – It also passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill of Rights, which allowed all servicemen to have free college education once they returned from the war. – Actually, the passage of the GI Bill was partly motivated by fear that the labor markets could not absorb millions of discharged veterans.

13. The Long Economic Boom, 1950-1970 Then, in the late 1940s and into the 1960s, the economy began to boom tremendously, and folks who had felt the sting of the Great Depression now wanted to bathe in the new prosperity. – The middle class more than doubled while people now wanted two cars in every garage; over 90% of American families owned a television. Women also reaped the benefits of the postwar economy, growing in the American work force while giving up their former roles as housewives. Even though this new affluence did not touch everyone, it did touch many. In the end, the long economic boom from WWII to the 1970s was fueled primarily by low energy costs.

14. Coca-Colonizing the World American consumerism— and American products— flooded over the globe after World War II, as this 1950 cover from Time magazine illustrates.

15. The Roots of Postwar Prosperity Postwar prosperity was fueled by several factors, including the war itself that forced America to produce more than it’d ever imagined. However, much of the prosperity of the 50s and 60s rested on colossal military projects. – Massive appropriations for the Korean War, defense spending, industries like aerospace, plastics, and electronics, and research and development all were such projects. – R and D, research and development, became an entirely new industry. Cheap energy paralleled the popularity of automobiles, and spidery grids of electrical cables carried the power of oil, gas, coal, and falling water into homes and factories alike. Workers upped their productivity tremendously, as did farmers, due to new technology in fertilizers, etc. In fact, the farming population shrank while production soared.

16. Agribusiness Expensive machinery of the sort shown here made most of American agriculture a capital-intensive, phenomenally productive big business by the 1990s—and sounded the death knell for many small-scale family farms.

17. The Smiling Sunbelt With so many people on the move, families were being strained. Combined with the baby boom, this explained the success of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Immigration also led to the growth of a fifteen-state region in the southern half of the U.S. known as the Sunbelt, which dramatically increased in population. – In fact, in the 1950s, California overtook New York as the most populous state. Immigrants came to the Sunbelt for more opportunities, such as in California’s electronics industry and the aerospace complexes of Texas and Florida. Much of the Sunbelt’s new prosperity was based on its tremendous influx of money from the federal government. Dollars poured into the Sunbelt (some $125 million), and political power grew there as well, as ever since 1964, every U.S. president until Barack Obama has come from that region. – Sunbelters were redrawing the political map, taking the economic and political power out of the North and Northeast.

18. Sunbelt Prosperity The old and new West are evident in this view of booming Dallas