HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 13 Outline of Last Lecture I Roosevelt and Foreign Policy a The Good Neighbor Policy b Roosevelt and Isolationism II The Road to War a Roosevelt and American Neutrality b The Battle for the Atlantic c Facing Japan d Pearl Harbor III America Responds to War a Japanese American Internment b A People at Work and War IV Waging World War a Halting the Japanese Advance b The Tide Turns in Europe c In the Perspective of the Soldiers V Ending the War a Stresses Within the Grand Alliance b Hitler s Defeat These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute c Entering the Nuclear Age Outline of Current Lecture I The Cold War Begins a Truman and the Soviets b The Division of Europe c A Global Presence II The Korean War a The UN Responds to Communist Aggression b Seeking to Liberate North Korea c Truman and Liberalism d The 1948 Election III Cold War Politics a Election b The Second Red Scare Current Lecture Truman and Cold War America 1945 1952 I The Cold War Begins a Truman and the Soviets Truman and other American leaders identified two overlapping paths to peace international cooperation and deterrence based on military strength o Not all nations accepted the American vision for peace and stability o The Soviets advanced opposing goals in Eastern Europe and were unwilling to allow an open political and economic system o Truman confronted the Soviets for not fulfilling its Yalta promises and was less compromising with the Soviets than Roosevelt had been o By early 1946 Truman was tired of babying the Soviets The United States adopted the containment policy created by George F Cannon an American ambassador for Moscow to meet the Soviet threat head on o Containment policy contain communism by keeping it where it is but not letting it spread o The fear of Soviet expansion quickly became a bipartisan issue o Churchill warned of the Soviet threat in his iron curtain speech in 1946 Iron Curtain speech Warning that there was another threat besides the Nazis now the Soviets The iron curtain has fallen separating Western and Eastern Europe a free from a communist Europe o Ideology and geography determined postwar credits and loans to Europe b The Division of Europe Events in Europe assumed first priority for the United States as Communist forces pressured Greece and Turkey o The Truman Doctrine offered help to those nations opposing Communism o The Marshall Plan expanded the Truman Doctrine to all of Europe Marshall Plan Named for secretary of state George C Marshall he wanted congress to pass a relief bill to Europe to give tens of billions of dollars to Europe to rebuild the countries after the war He does this to gain their friendship and to market American goods o The Soviets were unwilling to participate and tightened their control over Eastern Europe The Soviets engineered a coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and installed a Communist government The Berlin Blockade of June 1948 heightened Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR o The Soviet goal was to force Western abandonment of West Germany or face losing Berlin o The Berlin Airlif which flew in supplies to support West Berlin was a tremendous victory for the United States over the Soviets o The North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO was created in May 1949 to defend Western Europe from Communist forces c A Global Presence Asia however provided severe disappointments to U S foreign policy o In China a civil war led to Communist rule by 1949 Maozedong lead the successful communist revolution Chiang Kai Schek Zhou Enlai also apart of it This shows that the containment policy isn t working o The Nationalist government fled to Formosa Taiwan o Many Americans complained that the Truman administration was too soft on Communism The Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb in August 1949 o NSC 68 Most important national Security Council directive in history called for global containment and a massive military buildup so that the United States could adequately defend itself against the growing Soviet threat o II Truman hesitated to implement the report s recommendations but North Korea s invasion of South Korea helped change his mind on the issue The Korean War a The UN Responds to Communist Aggression Although U S public opinion supported intervention in Korea there was no World War II like rush to arms o By 1950 North Korean forces occupied most of South Korea o Douglas MacArthur came up with the attack plan His plan was to attacked at Inchan the capital of South Korea with 70 000 Americans The president s joint chiefs thought MacArthur s plan was too high risk but MacArthur said that if they wanted him to make the plan then they have to use the one he had already made o The plan ended up working and the Americans chased the North Koreans to the border The Americans crossed the border but then the Chinese begin crossing the bridges bordering China and North Korea MacArthur wanted to blow the bridges to stop them but that involved bombing China which would create a war with China and the Soviet Union For this reason the state department said no Eventually MacArthur blows the bridges but by that point many Chinese have crossed o MacArthur takes Piong Yang N Korea capital but the Chinese began chasing the Americans back to S Korea This becomes a stalemate at border 38th parallel MacArthur wanted to begin bombing the China because there were too many Americans dying and it wasn t worth it Of course this was denied due to the war it would cause Truman fired MacArthur and the Korean War became a stalemate for about 5 years o The war finally ends when Eisenhower brings back MacArthur for advice and he says that he should threaten to nuke if the war doesn t end It worked b Seeking to Liberate North Korea According to Truman and MacArthur restoring prevailing conditions prior to the invasion was no longer enough for the United States o They now wanted to unify the peninsula under South Korea and an invasion seemed safe o An overconfident MacArthur however violated his commander inchief s orders o MacArthur moved forces to within a few miles of Yalu o Within three weeks the Communists had shoved UN forces back to the thirty eighth parallel dividing North and South Korea Truman abandoned his goal of a unified Korea and sought a negotiated settlement that would leave two Koreas o Truman s decision was not