HST 102 Final Exam Review Core Topics Concepts Liberalism is the belief in liberty and equality supporting ideas such as constitutionalism liberal democracy free and fair elections human rights capitalism and the free exercise of religion Isolationism the policy or doctrine of isolating one s country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances foreign economic commitments foreign trade international agreements Total War a group engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population WWII can be considered the quintessential total war of modernity The level of national mobilization of resources on all sides of the conflict the battle space being contested the scale of the armies navies and air forces raised through conscription the active targeting of civilians and civilian property the general disregard for collateral damage and the unrestricted aims of the belligerents marked total war on an unprecedented and unsurpassed multi continental scale Cold War 1945 1963 Postwar Tension In many ways the Cold War began even before the guns fell silent in Germany and in the Pacific in 1945 Suspicion and mistrust had defined U S Soviet relations for decades and resurfaced as soon as the alliance against Adolf Hitler was no longer necessary Competing ideologies and visions of the postwar world prevented U S president Harry S Truman and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin from working together Stalin intended to destroy Germany s industrial capabilities in order to prevent the country from remilitarizing and wanted Germany to pay outrageous sums in war reparations Moreover he wanted to erect pro Soviet governments throughout Eastern Europe to protect the USSR from any future invasions Truman however wanted exactly the opposite He believed that only industrialization and democracy in Germany and throughout the continent would ensure postwar stability Unable to compromise or find common ground the world s two remaining superpowers inevitably clashed Truman s Postwar Vision Truman worked tirelessly to clean up the postwar mess and establish a new international order He helped create the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund IMF and funded the rebuilding of Japan under General Douglas MacArthur After prosecuting Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials Truman in 1947 also outlined the Marshall Plan which set aside more than 10 billion for the rebuilding and reindustrialization of Germany The Marshall Plan was so successful that factories in Western Europe were exceeding their prewar production levels within just a few years Stalin s Postwar Vision Although Stalin joined with the United States in founding the United Nations he fought Truman on nearly every other issue He protested the Marshall Plan as well as the formation of the World Bank and IMF In defiance he followed through on his plan to create a buffer between the Soviet Union and Germany by setting up pro Communist governments in Poland and other Eastern European countries As a result the so called iron curtain soon divided East from West in Europe Stalin also tried unsuccessfully to drive French British and American occupation forces from the German city of Berlin by blocking highway and railway access Determined not to let the city fall Truman ordered the Berlin airlift to drop food and medical supplies for starving Berliners Containment The Berlin crisis as well as the formation of the Eastern bloc of Soviet dominated countries in Eastern Europe caused foreign policy officials in Washington to believe that the United States needed to check Soviet influence abroad in order to prevent the further spread of Communism In 1947 Truman incorporated this desire for containment into his Truman Doctrine which vowed to support free nations fighting Communism He and Congress then pledged 400 million to fighting Communist revolutionaries in Greece and Turkey In 1949 Truman also convinced the Western European powers to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO so that they might mutually defend themselves against the danger of Soviet invasion Threatened the USSR sponsored a similar treaty of its own in Eastern Europe called the Warsaw Pact in 1955 Postwar Prosperity Eisenhower s election in 1952 ushered in an unprecedented era of economic growth and prosperity in the United States The average national income doubled during the 1950s and then doubled again the following decade primarily due to continued defense spending and to the 1944 Montgomery G I Bill which helped returning veterans buy homes and go back to school Suburbanization Baby Boom The postwar baby boom contributed to population growth while the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities white flight from the cities to the suburbs and the rush to the Sun Belt altered population demographics By 1960 most American families had a car a television and a refrigerator and owned their own home Popular television sitcoms like Leave It to Beaver glamorized suburbia and consumerism Civil Rights Movement The Jim Crow Laws and Supreme Court Decisions 1880s 1900s After the federal troops withdrew from South at the end of Reconstruction in 1877 white southerners quickly took over state govs and openly flouted the recent laws designed to protect the rights of former slaves Several state governments in the South went so far as to legalize discrimination of blacks these laws are known as the Jim Crow laws Even though the Fifteenth Amendment gave all men the right to vote the southern states employed a variety of tactics to prevent blacks from voting including the following Whites only primaries Nonwhites were barred from primaries because Democrats argued that political parties were private organizations and thus not subject to antidiscrimination laws Literacy tests Blacks were required to pass complex tests that were graded by white election officials in order to vote Poll taxes Some states required people to pay a fee in order to vote In Plessy v Ferguson 1896 the Court held that the state government could segregate public transportation and thus established the separate but equal doctrine Blacks could be forced into separate accommodations including theater seats and hotels as long as the accommodations were equal to those given to whites Organizations National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP was founded in 1909 Energetic and talented lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall later the first African American