1 Jan 1940 Jahr - Unit Summary

Beschreibung:

Between 1945 and 1980, the United States became the world’s leading economic and military power. That development defines these decades as a distinct period of American history. The dates we’ve chosen to bookend the period reflect two turning points. In 1945, the United States and its allies emerged victorious from World War II. In 1980, American voters turned away from the robust liberalism of the postwar years and elected a president, Ronald Reagan, backed by a conservative political movement. Each turning point, one international the other domestic, marked a new development in American history — and thus our periodization of these decades features the rise of American global power and the expansion, and later contraction, of political liberalism.

Internationally, after 1945 a prolonged period of tension and conflict known as the Cold War drew the United States into an engagement in world affairs unprecedented in the nation’s history. Domestically, three decades of sustained economic growth expanded the middle class and brought into being a mass consumer society. These international and domestic developments were intertwined with the predominance of liberalism in American politics and public policy. One might think of an “age of liberalism” in this era, encompassing the social-welfare liberalism that was a legacy of the New Deal and the rights liberalism of the 1960s.

Global leadership abroad and economic prosperity at home relied on further expansions in government power — and the making of a modern state equally capable of waging global war and shaping domestic life. How that power was used proved controversial. Immediately following World War II, a national security apparatus emerged to investigate so-called subversives in the United States and, through the clandestine Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to destabilize foreign governments. Meanwhile, American troops went to war in Korea and Vietnam. At home, African Americans, women of all racial backgrounds, the poor, and other social groups sought new laws and government initiatives to bring them greater equality in American life. Here, in brief, are three key questions about this convulsive, turbulent era to explore as you read the chapters in this part.

CONCEPT CONNECTIONS
Why did the United States fight a Cold War and ascend to global leadership?
A black-and-white photo shows a sergeant instructing his men of the Second Infantry division during the Korean War, 1950.

Following their shared victory in World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union competed to reshape postwar Europe, East Asia, and the developing world. American leaders sought to restore liberal democracies in postwar conflict zones and to forge new international alliances and trading partnerships. These goals conflicted with Soviet ambition to expand its sphere of influence. Each nation feared direct military engagement with the other, so the two superpowers pursued their objectives through diplomatic and military interventions around the world that stopped short of cataclysmic nuclear war with each other. The result was a standoff that lasted four decades: the Cold War.

Driven by a commitment to overseas alliances and open international markets, postwar American policymakers sought to stabilize global capitalism and block communist expansion. They developed the policy of containment — limiting the expansion of communism — and extended American political and military reach onto every continent. The United States intervened directly or indirectly in dozens of sovereign nations and fought major wars in Korea and Vietnam, inspiring support and spurring detractors alike.

Why did liberalism define the era’s politics?
A black-and-white photo shows Fannie Lou Hamer with vocal a wired microphone in her hand. She sings along with delegates at a rally in Mississippi Democratic Party.

Responding to the Great Depression and World War II enlarged the federal government’s involvement in the social and economic life of the country. Inspired by these examples of government as a positive force for economic growth and social stability, the Democratic Party, and many Republicans as well, undertook such postwar measures as the GI Bill, subsidies for suburban home ownership, and investment in infrastructure and education. Roosevelt’s Democratic coalition of workers and the middle class, which supported these federal efforts, thrived after the war and, along with the policies themselves, made liberalism widely popular.

Nearly one-quarter of Americans lived in poverty, however, and racial discrimination denied millions full citizenship. In fighting these injustices, the civil rights movement embraced the liberalism that had gained strength since the 1930s. Inspired by African American activists, other social movements sought equality based on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and other identities. Where “New Deal liberalism” focused on social welfare, this “rights liberalism” focused on equal citizenship. Conservatives mobilized against what they saw as excessive liberal activism, and the resulting conflict began to reshape American politics in the 1970s.

How did the rise of the postwar middle class shape culture and politics?
A photo shows a family of four enjoying breakfast at a campground in Zion National Park, Utah. The woman serves the food while the man looks at her and smiles.

The postwar American economy was driven by mass consumption and suburbanization. Rising wages, increasing access to higher education, and the availability of suburban home ownership raised living standards, and suburbanization transformed the nation’s cities. But the new prosperity had mixed results. Cities declined and racial segregation hardened. Suburbanization and mass consumption raised concerns that the nation’s rivers, streams, air, and open land were being damaged. And prosperity itself proved short-lived. By the 1970s, deindustrialization had eroded much of the nation’s once prosperous industrial base.

A defining characteristic of the postwar decades was the growth of the American middle class, which led to numerous demographic changes. Women worked more outside the home and spurred a new feminism. Children enjoyed more purchasing power, and a “teen culture” arose on television, in popular music, and in film. The family became politicized, too, and by the late 1970s, liberals and conservatives were divided over how best to address the nation’s family life.

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