Occupation of Germany

1. Occupation of Germany At the end of the war, the division of Germany and Austria into Soviet, French, British, and U.S. zones of occupation was meant to be only temporary. In Germany, however, the eastern zone under Soviet occupation gradually evolved into a new Communist state, the German Democratic Republic. Russia wanted a weak Germany and war reparations. The U.S. and Britain refused to allow reparations from their Western zones because both viewed the economic recovery of Germany as important to the stability of Central Europe. The Soviets, fearing a restored Germany, tightened their control over East Germany. They also tried to force the U.S., Britain, and France to give up their assigned sectors of Berlin which was located in Russian zone.

2. Iron Curtain In March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared: “An iron curtain has descended across the continent” of Europe. The iron-curtain metaphor was later used throughout the Cold War to refer to the Soviet satellite state of Eastern Europe. Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech called for a partnership between Western democracies to halt the expansion of communism.

3. Truman Doctrine Truman first implement the containment policy of containing Russian expansion of communism in response to two threats: (1) a Communist-led uprising against the government in Greece and (2) Soviet demands for some control of Turkey’s Dardanelles. In what became known as the Truman Doctrine, the president asked Congress in March 1947 for $400 million in economic and military aid to assist the “free people” of Greece and Turkey against “totalitarian” regimes.

4. Marshall Plan After the war, Europe lay in ruins, short of food and deep in debt. Discontent encouraged the growth of the Communist party, especially in France and Italy. The Truman Administration feared that the western democracies might actually vote the communists into power. In June 1947 offered a program of U.S. economic aid to help the nations of Europe revive their economies and at the same time strengthen democratic governments. In 1948, Congress approved $12 billion in aid to countries of Western Europe. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites were also offered Marshall Plan aid, but they refused to take part fearing that their countries might become dependent on the U.S. The mass infusion of cash helped Europe.

5. Berlin Airlift In June 1948, the Soviets cut off all access by land to the German City. Truman dismissed any plans to withdraw from Berlin, but he also rejected any idea of using force to open up the roads through the Soviet-controlled eastern zone. Instead, he ordered U.S. planes to fly in supplies to the people of West Berlin. The world waited for war to break out. By May 1949, the Soviets finally opened up the highways to Berlin, thus bringing their 11-month blockade to an end.

6. United Nations Unlike the rejection of the League of Nations following World War I, Congress readily accepted the peacekeeping organization that was conceived during World War II and put in place immediately after the war. Meeting in 1944 at Dumbarton Oaks near Washington, D.C., Allied representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China proposed an international organization to be called the United Nations. Then in April 1945, delegates from 50 nations assembled in San Francisco, where they took only eight weeks to draft a charter for the United Nations. The Senate quickly voted to accept U.S. involvement in the U.N. On October 24, 1945, the U.N. came into existence.

7. NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization Ever since Washington’s farewell address of 1796, the United States had avoided permanent alliances with European nations. Truman broke with this tradition in 1949 by recommending that the United States join a military defense pact to protect Western Europe. The Senate readily gave its consent. Ten European nations joined the United States and Canada in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance for defending all members from outside attack. Thus, the containment policy led to a military buildup and major commitments abroad. The Soviet Union countered in 1955 by forming the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance for the defense of the Communist states of Eastern Europe.

8. Warsaw Pact The Soviets claimed that the Warsaw Pact was a direct response to the inclusion of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in NATO in 1955. The formation of a legally defined, multilateral alliance organization also reinforced the Soviet Union's claim to power Countries in red are members of the Warsaw Pact status as the leader of the world socialist system. The Soviet Union created a structure for dealing with its East European allies more efficiently when it superimposed the multilateral Warsaw Pact on their existing bilateral treaty ties.

9. Korean War After the defeat of Japan, its former colony Korea was divided at the 38th parallel by the victors. Soviet armies occupied Korean territory north of the line, while U.S. forces occupied territory to the south. By 1949 both armies were withdrawn, leaving the North in the hands of the Communist leader Kim Il Sung and the South under the conservative nationalist Syngman Rhee. On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army surprised the world, even possibly Moscow, by invading South Korea.

10. Korean War Truman took immediate action, applying his containment policy. He called for a special session of the U.N. Security Council. Taking advantage of a temporary boycott by the Soviet delegation, the Security council under U.S. leadership authorized a U.N. force to defend South Korea against the invaders. U.S. troops made up most of the U.N. forces sent to help the South Korean army. Commanding the expedition was General Douglas MacArthur. Congress supported the use of U.S. troops in the Korean crisis but failed to declare war, accepting Truman’s characterization as merely a “police action.”

11. Truman and MacArthur MacArthur wanted to expand the war which included bombing and an invasion of mainland China. As commander in chief, Truman cautioned MacArthur about making public statements that suggested criticism of official U.S. policy. The general spoke out anyway. In April 1951, Truman with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recalled MacArthur for insubordination.

12. Korean War The war stalemated just north of the 38th parallel. Peace talks began in July 1951, however the police action went on until an armistice was signed in 1953 during the first year of Eisenhower’s presidency. More than 54,000 Americans died in Korea. Truman’s policy in Korea worked. It stopped Communist aggression without allowing the conflict to develop into a world war.

13. Second Red Scare Following World War II there was a 2nd Red Scare. Fear of Communists behind civil wars in Europe and Asia contributed to the belief that there were also Communist conspirators and spies in the U.S. State Department, the U.S. military, and all institutions in American society. In 1947, the Truman administration set up a Loyalty Review Board to investigate the background of more than 3 million federal employees. Thousands of officials and civil service employees either resigned or lost their jobs in a probe that went on for four years (1947-1951).

14. Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) In the House of Representatives, this committee was formed in 1939 and reactivated in the post war years to find Communists. The committee not only investigated government officials but also looked for Communist influence in such organizations as the Boy Scouts and the Hollywood film industry. Actors, directors, and writers were called before the committee to testify. Those who refused to testify were tried for contempt of Congress. Others were blacklisted from the industry.

15. Joseph McCarthy Hearings Senator McCarthy used a steady stream of unsupported accusations about Communists in government to keep the media focus on himself and to discredit the Truman administration. Working-class Americans at first loved his “take the gloves off,” hard-hitting remarks, which were often aimed at the wealthy and privileged in society. He became so popular, however, that even President Eisenhower would not dare to defend his old friend, George Marshall, against McCarthy’s untruths. Finally in 1954, McCarthy’s “reckless cruelty” was exposed on television. His televised hearings on Communists in the Army showed millions of viewers that he was a bully. The “witch hunt” for Communists had played itself out.

16. Rosenberg Case An FBI investigation traced a spy ring to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York. After a controversial trial in 1951, the Rosenbergs were found guilty of treason and executed for the crime in 1953. They were convicted of giving U.S. secret information to the Soviets.

17. President Dwight Eisenhower The most permanent legacy of the Eisenhower year was the passage in 1956 of the Highway Act, which authorized the construction of 42,000 miles of interstate highways linking all the nation’s major cities. The use of federal money to build highways was justified by Eisenhower as a means of improving the national defense. The immense public works project created jobs, promoted the trucking industry, accelerated the growth of the suburbs, and contributed to a more homogeneous national culture.

18. Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons In 1953, the United States developed the hydrogen bomb, which could destroy the largest cities. Within a year, however, the Soviets caught up with a hydrogen bomb of their own. To some, the policy of massive retaliation looked more like a policy for mutual assured destruction (MAD). Nuclear weapons indeed proved a powerful deterrent against the superpowers fighting an all-out war between themselves, but such weapons could not prevent small “brushfire” wars from breaking out in the developing nations of Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Both countries practiced proliferation of nuclear weapons.

19. Sputnik In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the United States and surprised the world by launching the first satellites, Sputnik I and Sputnik II, into orbit around the earth. The technology leadership of the United States was in question. U.S. rockets designed to duplicate the Soviet achievement failed. Congress passed the National Defense and Education ACT (NDEA), which authorized giving hundred of millions in federal money to the schools for science and foreign language education. In 1958 Congress created NASA to direct the U.S. efforts to build missiles and explore outer space. Fears of nuclear war were intensified by Sputnik.

20. Eisenhower – Military Industrial Complex In his farewell address as president, Eisenhower spoke out against the negative impact of the Cold War on U.S. society. He warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . By the military-industrial complex.” If the outgoing president was right, the arms race was taking on a momentum and logic of its own. It seemed to some Americans in the 1960s that the United States was in danger of going down the path of ancient republics, and, like Rome, turning to military, or imperial, state. After leaving the White House, Eisenhower claimed credit for checking Communist aggression and keeping the peace without the loss of American lives in combat.

21. Brinkmanship The practice, especially in international politics, of seeking advantage by creating the impression that one is willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation to the limit rather than concede.

22. John F. Kennedy Inaugural Speech Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house. Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

23. Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) Kennedy made the worst mistake of his presidency shortly after entering office. He gave his approval to a CIA scheme planned under the Eisenhower administration to use Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. In April 1961 the CIA-trained force of Cubans landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba but failed to set off a general uprising as planned. Trapped on the beach, the anti-Castro Cubans had little choice but to surrender after Kennedy rejected the idea of using U.S. forces to save them. Castro used the failed invasion to get even more aid from the Soviet Union and to strengthen his grip on power.

24. Berlin Wall After the Bay of Pigs, Soviet leader Khrushchev and President Kennedy meet in Vienna the summer of 1961. Khrushchev demanded that U.S. troops be pulled out of Berlin. Kennedy refused. In August, the East Germans, with Soviet backing, built a wall around West Berlin. Its purpose was to stop East Germans from fleeing to West Germany. As the wall was being built, Soviet and U.S. tanks faced off in Berlin. Kennedy made no move to stop the building of the wall. In 1963, he traveled to West Berlin to assure residents of continuing U.S. support. To cheering crowds, he proclaimed: “Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in . . . As a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ [I am a Berliner].” The wall was there until 1989.

25. Cuban Missile Crisis The most dangerous challenge from the Soviets came in October 1962. U.S. reconnaissance planes discovered that the Russians were building underground sites in Cuba for the launching of Offensive missiles that could reach the United States in minutes. Kennedy responded by announcing to the world that he was setting up a naval blockade of Cuba until the weapons were removed. A full-scale nuclear war between the superpowers seemed likely if Soviet ships challenged the U.S. naval blockade. After days of tension, Khrushchev finally agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange for Kennedy’s pledge not to invade the island nation. The Cuban missile crisis had a sobering effect on both sides. Soon afterward, a telecommunications hot line was established between Washington and Moscow. In 1963, the Soviet Union and the United States signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to end the testing of nuclear arms.

26. Peace Corps From the outset Kennedy inspired high expectations, especially among the young. His challenge of a New Frontier quickened patriotic pulses. He brought a warm hear to the Cold War when he proposed the Peace Corps, an army of idealistic and mostly youthful volunteers to bring American skills to underdeveloped countries. He summoned citizens to service with his clarion call to “ask not what your country can do for you: ask for you can do for your country.”

27. Vietnam – Domino Theory According to the “domino theory,” if the United States declined to fight in Vietnam, other countries would lose their faith in America’s will and would tumble one after the other like “dominoes” into the Soviet camp.

28. Vietnam –Tonkin Gulf Resolution President Johnson was criticized for not supporting South Vietnam’s fight against the Vietcong (Communist guerrillas). Johnson made use of a naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam’s coast to secure congressional authorization for U.S. forces going into combat. Allegedly, North Vietnamese gunboats had fired on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The President persuaded Congress that this aggressive act was sufficient reason for a military response by the United States. Congress voted its approval of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which basically gave the president, as commander in chief, a blank check to take “all necessary measures” to protect U.S. interests in Vietnam.

29. Vietnam In 1965, Johnson authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, a prolonged air attack using B-52 bombers against targets in North Vietnam. In April the president decided to use U.S. combat troops for the first time to fight the Vietcong. By the end of 1965, there were over 184,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam and most of them were engaged in a combat role. American generals used search-and-destroy tactics, which further alienated the peasants. By the end of 1967, the United States had over 485,000 troops in Vietnam (the peak was 540,000 in March 1969). General William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, assured the American public that he could see “light at the end of the tunnel.”

30. Credibility Gap The Vietnam War was the first “living room war.” Americans watched the progress—or lack of it—in their living rooms on nightly newscasts. The intimacy of television made news of the war unavoidable. But unlike World War II, there was no march to victory Americans could not put maps of Vietnam on their walls and trace the routes the troops were taking to Hanoi. Americans watched government officials issue optimistic statement after optimistic statement. Soon, a “credibility gap” emerged between what the Johnson administration said and what many journalists reported. This gap referred to the American public’s growing distrust of statements made by the government.

31. Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive was a coordinated assault on 36 provincial capitals and 5 major cities, as well as the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The communists planned to take and hold the cities until the urban population took up arms in their support. They thought the Tet Offensive had a good chance of ending the war. The fighting was fierce, but in the end American and South Vietnamese forces repelled the offensive. Although U.S. forces defeated this push, it was strategic blow to the Americans. It demonstrated that that North Vietnam had the will and ability to fight on.

32. War Powers Act In order to prevent Nixon from ordering another bombing without the consent of the Senate, the Senate passed the War Powers Act. "The War Powers Act that passed stipulated that a president must notify Congress within forty-eight hours after troop deployment and must withdraw troops within sixty days unless they are authorized by Congress to stay longer.” "The law did not prohibit the nation from re-intervening in Indochina, but it could only be done so with Congressional concurrence.” Defining and restricting the war powers of the President as a step to help redress the balance of war-making power between Congress and the White House.”

33. Presidential Election 1968 Robert Kennedy became a Senator from New York in 1964. He decided to run for President in 1968. While campaigning in California in June, he was shot and killed by a young Arab nationalist who opposed Kennedy’s support for Israel. In April of 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down by a white man while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis. Massive riots erupted in 168 cities across the country.

34. Election of 1968 After Kennedy’s death, the election turned into a three way race between two conservatives—George Wallace and Richard Nixon—and one liberal, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the antiwar demonstrators were determined to control the streets. Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley had the police out in mass, and the resulting violence went out on television across the country as a “police riot.”

35. Election of 1968 Nixon defeated Humphrey by a very close popular vote but took a substantial majority of the electoral vote (301-191). Supporters of Nixon and Wallace had had enough of protest, violence, permissiveness, the counterculture, drugs, and federal intervention in social institutions.

36. Kent State 1970 On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced during a televised speech to the nation that American forces had invaded Cambodia. On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen were on the Kent State college campus to maintain order during a student protest against the Vietnam War and the invasion of Cambodia. For a still unknown reason, the National Guard suddenly fired upon the already dispersing crowd of student protesters, killing four and wounding nine others.

37. 22nd Amendment – Presidential term is limited. No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice. (Term limits – two terms) 24th Amendment– Payment of poll tax or other taxes not to be prerequisite for voting in federal elections. (No poll taxes to vote.) 25th Amendment– Presidential succession and disability. Vice President to become President on death or resignation of President. If vacancy of Vice President , the President shall nominate a Vice President and must be confirmed by majority vote of both House of Congress. 26th Amendment– Voting age now 18 years old.

38. Truman -- Desegregation The President used his executive powers to establish the Committee on Civil Rights in 1946. Most important, in 1948 he ordered the end of racial discrimination in the departments of the federal government and all three branches of the armed forces. The end of segregation within the military also changed life on military bases, many of which were in the South

39. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher In 1946, she applied at the University of Oklahoma and was denied because of race, and in 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Oklahoma must provide instruction for Blacks equal to that of whites. In order to comply, the state of Oklahoma created the Langston University School of Law, located at the state capital. Further litigation was necessary to prove that this law school was inferior to the University of Oklahoma law school. Finally, in 1949, Sipuel was admitted to the University of Oklahoma law school becoming the first African American woman to attend an all white law school in the South. The law school gave her a chair marked "colored," and roped it off from the rest of the class. In 1992, Oklahoma's governor David Walters appointed her to the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma,

40. George W. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents George W. McLaurin was an Oklahoma citizen and an African‐American. Hoping to earn a doctorate in education, he applied for admission to graduate study at Oklahoma's all‐white University of Oklahoma. Initially denied admission on the basis of race, McLaurin was ordered admitted by a federal district court. But because Oklahoma law required that graduate instruction must be “upon a segregated basis,” McLaurin found himself enshrouded in the segregationist equivalent of a plastic bubble: in class, he sat in a separate row “reserved for Negroes”; in the library he studied at a separate desk; in the cafeteria he ate at a separate table. McLaurin sought relief from these measures by returning to the district court, and eventually appealing to the Supreme Court. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents --On June 5, 1950, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his/her race as doing so deprived the student of his/her Fourteenth Amendment rights of Equal Protection.

41. Clara Luper In August 1958, 18 months before a group of black students won national attention for demanding service at segregated restaurants in Greensboro, N.C., Mrs. Luper led a handful of children into the Katz drugstore in downtown Oklahoma City. They sat down and ordered Cokes. The waitress refused to serve them. White customers spit on them and cursed. But Mrs. Luper and her young compatriots — members of the NAACP youth council, ages 6 to 17 — stayed for hours. She and the other sit-inners returned for several days before the drugstore agreed to serve them sodas and hamburgers.

42. Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American member of the U.S. Supreme Court. He served on the court from 1967 until he retired in 1991. Earlier in his career, Marshall worked as a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and helped win the 1954 landmark desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Throughout his life, Marshall used the law to promote civil rights and social justice.

43. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka One of the great landmark cases in Supreme Court history was argued in the early 1950s by a team of NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, they argued that segregation of black children in the public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” In May 1954, the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall and overturned Plessy case. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that (1) “separate facilities are inherently unequal” and unconstitutional and (2) segregation in the schools should end with “all deliberate speed.”

44. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott In Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Rosa Parks was too tired after a long day at work to move to the back of the bus to the section reserved for African Americans. Her arrest for violating the segregation law sparked a massive African American protest in Montgomery in the form of a boycott against riding the city buses. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., son emerged as the inspiring leader of a nonviolent Movement to achieve integration. The protest touched off by Rosa Parks and the Montgomery boycott eventually triumphed when the Supreme Court in 1956 ruled that segregation laws were unconstitutional.

45. Little Rock Central High States in the Deep South fought the Brown ruling. In Arkansas in 1956, Governor Orval Faubus used the state’s National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Little Rock Central High School, as ordered by a federal court. President Eisenhower intervened. While the president did not actively support desegregation and had reservations about the Brown decision, he understood his constitutional responsibility to uphold federal authority. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to stand guard in Little Rock and protect black students as they walked to school. He was the first president since reconstruction to use federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans.

46. Freedom Riders Groups of Freedom Riders fanned out to end segregation in facilities serving interstate bus passengers. A white mob torched a Freedom Ride bus near Anniston, Alabama, in May 1961, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s personal representative was beaten unconscious in another anti-Freedom Ride riot in Montgomery. When southern officials proved unwilling or unable to stem the violence, Washington dispatched federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders.

47. March on Washington In August 1963, King led one of the largest and most successful demonstrations in U.S. history. About 200,000 blacks and whites took part in the peaceful March on Washington in support of the civil rights bill. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this famous speech: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

48. Birmingham Church Bombing On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama--a church with a predominantly black congregation that served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured; outrage over the incident and the violent clash between protesters and police that followed helped draw national attention to the hard-fought, often dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans.

49. Civil Rights Act of 1964 A southern president succeeded in persuading Congress to enact the most important civil rights law since Reconstruction. Johnson managed to persuade both a majority of Democrats and Republicans in congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made segregation illegal in all public facilities, including hotels and restaurants, and gave the federal government additional powers to enforce school desegregation. This act also set up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to end racial discrimination in employment.

50. Voting Rights Acts of 1965 In 1965, the brutality in Selma, Alabama against the voting rights marches led by Martin Luther King moved the Congress to pass the Voting rights Act of 1965. This act ended literacy tests and provided federal registrars in areas in which blacks were kept from voting. The impact was most dramatic in the Deep South, where African Americans could vote for the first time since the Reconstruction era.