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Cold War and Impacts of WWII Notes
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Cold War and Impacts of WWII Notes
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Cold War and Impacts of WWIIImpacts of WWII:
● Japanese-americans are put into internment camps and racism against them
increases (called the yellow peril)
○ Causes economic rivalry mainly rooted in the west coast, where there is a
history of racism against asians (chinese exclusion act, gentlemen's
agreement, etc)
● In WWII, african americans are paramount to the war effort in the military, but are still
faced with racism when they return
● Economy:
○ 10 times more costly than WWI
○ Wage increases to help cut inflation
○ Unions increase but the smith-connally act prevents strikes
■ blow to unions after the wagner act
● Women worked during WWII and were paramount to war production but were
expected to go back to the home once the war ended
● The office of science and research development creates penicillin and develops the
atomic bomb
● Radio is used to get war information → very popularized
● School enrollment decreases, teachers leave, but women involvement increases
Harry Truman: 33rd President
● Missouri, last US president to not get a college degree
● He was a WWI artillery officer
● He was not an involved vice president to FDR and was kept in the dark about a lot of
subjects (including the atomic bomb)
● Handles VE day, VJ day, Potsdam (future of europe), and makes the decision
whether to use the a-bomb
● His first major task was to demobilize (go from wartime to peacetime)
○ Transition wartime factories into consumer factories
○ Getting veterans home and getting them jobs
○ Demobilizing society
● Tried to make a global economy → the bretton woods conference tied the US
dollar to international currency
○ International Monetary Fund (IMF) + International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (World Bank)
Truman’s Fair Deal:
, 1. Improve Public Housing - succeeds
1. How?: New Housing Act
2. Increase Minimum Wage - succeeds
1. How?: increased to 75c per hour
3. More support for farmers/agriculture - fails
4. New TVA project - fails
5. Increase Social Security - succeeds
1. How?: Social Security Act of 1950
6. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act - fails
7. Ease Immigration Restrictions - sorta succeeds
1. How?: Passes Immigration Acts (like Displacement Act) but is not able to
remove the Immigration Quota
8. Increase Civil Rights - succeed
1. First president to push forward Civil Rights
2. How?: sends Civil Rights message to Congress and desegregated
military/congress
Yalta Conference:
● February 1945, an resort on the Black Sea
● Final Meeting of the Big 3
○ Franklin D. Roosevelt (U.S)
○ Winston Churchill (Britain)
○ Stalin (Soviets / Russia / USSR)
● #1. Laid the foundations for the postwar division of power in Europe
○ A divided Germany and territorial concessions to the Soviet Union
● #2. Stalin agreed that these countries should should have a representative
government based on free elections -- a pledge he soon broke
○ Poland (with revised boundaries)
○ Bulgaria
○ Romania
● #3. Created the United Nations: new international peacekeeping organization
● #4. Roosevelt and Stalin’s plans for Japan (“Asian War”)
○ To decrease American losses, Stalin would pin down Japanese troops in
Manchuria and Korea
○ In return, Stalin would receive:
■ Southern half of Sakhalin Island (was lost to Japan in 1905)
■ Japan’s Kurile Islands
■ Control over the railroads and 2 key seaports in China’s Manchuria
GI bill of rights = Sent Veterans to college and gave them greater skills → more skilled
jobs to help the economy grow
, USSR vs US Post-WWII Visions:
America Soviet
> Saw “sphere of influence” > Purely defensive
like an empire
> Guarantee Security (had been backstabbed before by
> FDR’s Wilsonian Dream of Eastern Europe)
an “open world”
> Determined to have friendly governments along the
- decolonized Soviet western border, especially Poland
- demilitarized > Wanted to maintain “sphere of influence” in Eastern
and Central Europe
- democratized
> To be world’s leading communist country
- strong international
organization to
oversee global peace
USSR vs US Ideologies:
Each believed in the universal applicability of its own particular ideology: democracy or
communism
America Soviet
> Isolationists by choice before > Isolationists through rejection by the other powers
WWII before WWII
The Cold War = An ideological war between the US and USSR from 1945 -1991
● Fueled by George S. Kennan’s “long telegram” (kennan was a US diplomat in the
USSR)
○ It said that the US cannot expect permanent peace with the USSR since
Stalin will not stop until he achieves world domination
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