Harry Truman's reputation as President has increased dramatically since he left office.  (He was President from 1945-1952.)  Ironically, when he left office, his public opinion approval ratings hovered in the twenty percentile range.  But over time, to the general public, his candor, tough talk, and reputation for honesty improved his stature.  After the Vietnam War and all its deception plus Watergate, (you will read about both later in the unit.), Americans began to look back with nostalgia on his Presidency for his unique charisma.  If they actually took some time to study his Presidency they would see that Truman was not all they made him out to be.  His administration was embroiled in several scandals, the military got stuck in a military quagmire in Korea, and a Red Scare haunted Americans at home.  But even historians began to hold Truman in high esteem in the last three decades despite his obvious flaws as President.  Looking back on this time period, they can see that Truman guided the nation through an incredibly important "adjustment period."  First, he led the nation from World War to Cold War.  At home, he presided over the transition from the war time economy to the beginnings of the biggest peace time expansion in U.S. history.  And equally important, he helped adjust the welfare state that you explored in Unit III to these new realities.  While he was never wildly popular while President, he laid the foundations for a "Post War Consensus" that dominated American politics until the 1970's.  Actually, it wasn't just him.  Many Congressman, intellectuals, and public opinion makers contributed to the making of this consensus.  But Truman did oversee this development.  Few Presidents have had or will have such a legacy.  Few of them have established parameters and a framework that their successors would follow for three decades.

So what do we mean by Postwar Consensus?  Remember this mantra: containment abroad and a limited welfare state at home.  Let's deal with containment first. 

The First Half of the Consensus - Containment

As World War II wound to a close, Americans had already begun to think about what kind of peace we wanted.  While no one was exactly sure how we should use our military and political power, a consensus had emerged that we should be a more active player in the international arena than we had during the years between World War I and World War II.  Among our foreign policy establishment and among many intellectuals, two ideas had crystallized.  The first involved international economics.  Many influential Americans concluded that the Great Depression had caused World War II.  Without the worldwide economic melt down, they argued, Hitler and the Japanese militarists would have never come to power.  Thus, we needed to do all we could to prevent another Depression after the war.  Had we done anything to cause the Great Depression?  Yes, concluded many policy makers and economists.  The United States had not worked very hard to stabilize the world economy after World War I.  Instead of making money available for Europeans to rebuild their economies during the 1920's, we had called in all the loans owed us from the war years and offered little debt relief here.  We also raised tariffs in 1924 and 1930, making it hard for foreigners to earn much needed dollars by selling goods here.  And we had the largest consumer market in the world!  These restrictions made it hard for Europe to recover from the war.  It also caused resentment among the Japanese.  The restrictions also exacerbated the downturn associated with the Depression.  Most countries defaulted on their loans once the Depression hit.  They also closed off their nations to most international trade, just like we had.  Hitler and the Japanese militarists decided that they would use military force to resolve their dilemmas.  Both envisioned self contained empires that were economically self sufficient.  They would have all the natural resources they needed, all the consumers they needed, and all the money they needed.  They would just take it from conquered peoples and territory.

     Within the Roosevelt Administration, policy makers decided that the U.S. should not and could not let this happen again.  In many ways one could argue that many American foreign policy makers wanted to "atone" for past mistakes and neglect.  Even before the war ended, they worked to create new international agencies that would loan money for reconstruction of war torn economies and that would promote greater flow of goods, services, and investment between countries so that they could all grow together.  In 1944, while the war still raged, the U.S. sponsored a conference on international finance at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.  The U.S. and its allies agreed to created an International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (we call it the World Bank today) provide money for nations in financial crisis or nations in need of development funds after the war.  Those attending also promised to work towards freer flows of goods (free trade) and capital.  All those who signed promised to give money to start this effort, the U.S. promising the most.

The second assumption that had begun to crystallize among U.S. foreign policy makers during World War II was collective security.  While the Great Depression might have created the climate that allowed the brutal  and autarkic dictatorships in Germany and Japan to emerge, it was the spinelessness of the U.S. and its allies that help provoke the war.  Or at least this was what many American foreign policy makers and politicians came to believe.    When Japan invaded China in 1931, no nation had come to China's rescue.  When Italy (Germany's ally in World War II) invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the world turned a blind eye.  When Germany absorbed Austria into its empire in 1936, few protested.  And when Hitler demanded the Sudetenland province from Czechoslovakia, British and French leaders agreed to his terms at a conference in Munich in 1938.  American foreign policy makers believed there was a lesson to be learned.  The lesson was that if one does not stand up to an act of aggression, the aggressor will be encouraged to commit further acts of aggression.  This became known as the Munich analogy, or the Lesson of Munich.  American foreign policy makers were now determined to stand up to aggression before it spiraled into another world war. 

To prevent rogue nations from picking on weaker countries and fostering global war, the U.S. proposed the United Nations.  The U.N. would promote collective security.  Nations would come together to stop aggression in its tracks.  But this UN that American foreign policy makers negotiated with our allies at Dumbarton Oaks (in Washington, DC) in 1945 was supposed to be stronger than the League of Nations.  The UN would be divided into two units - the Security Council and the General Assembly.  The General Assembly would essentially be a debating society.  The Security Council held most the power.  There would be 15 nations on the panel.  Five would be permanent members - the U.S., Great Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union.  (These were the principal allies in World War II).  The other ten positions would rotate and reflect geographical balance.  The Security Council would make decisions as to whether to use collective force in a situation or whether to send in "peace keepers" to diffuse a situation.  All five permanent members had a permanent veto.  If they opposed a motion, it automatically failed.  But if they all agreed, a simple majority would carry the day.  (Remember the old League of Nations required unanimous consent from all of its members before any action could be taken.)

So these goals - collective security and economic internationalism - were already in place when Harry Truman became President on the death of FDR in April 1945.  When the war ended in August, Truman worked to further implement them.  But he kept running into increased difficulty from one ally, the Soviet Union (and note its not Russia during this period.  The Communist changed its name in 1922.) 

Joseph Stalin was the Soviet leader from 1928 to 1953 and the man with whom Truman increasingly clashed.  He had put the country through a vigorous and bloody path towards industrialization during the 1930's.  He had developed an economic system where the government controlled all property and made every economic decision.  He eliminated the market in other words.  People were told where to work, how much to produce, how much they were paid, etc.  To do this, Stalin pretty much cut the Soviet economy off from the rest of the world.  He wanted no international market forces interfering with his "five year plans" as he called them. 

To implement this strategy, Stalin cracked down on all potential dissent. The Communist Party was the only party allowed.  To be a member of it was a privilege.  Memberships was reserved for those most loyal to him and willing to carry out his will.  In return, the party gave them good jobs, prestige, and access to luxury goods denied the ordinary person .  Those who resisted the Party's rule were either killed or sent to prison labor camps in Siberia.  Stalin had also cleaned out the Communist Party of any potential enemy to him, not necessarily the Party, during the late 1930's.  He staged grand show trials where people he viewed as rivals were accused of treason.  Often, they had been beaten until they "confessed."  Millions died in what we call these "purges."  Millions also suffered during the industrialization drive as Stalin demanded six day work weeks and low low pay while providing inadequate housing and provisions. 

Stalin was no better than Hitler in their human rights abuses.  But both men oversaw remarkable successes.  Stalin's efforts to rapidly modernize the Soviet economy worked!  Stalin turned the weakest of all the major powers in the early twentieth century into the third largest economy in the world by 1939.  Now the Soviet Union had become the leading producer of steel, coal, and other primary materials.  And remember, this success occurred at a time when much of the world was in economic depression.  Many historians argue that without this industrialization drive, the Soviet Union could have never withstood the German onslaught in World War II.  During the war, when the U.S. and the Soviets were allies, many Americans had come to admire the Soviets for their fighting spirit and their military and economic successes.  The human rights abuses of the Stalinist regime were still pretty much unknown outside the Soviet Union.  Many Americans expect that this war time alliance would endure after the war ended.

But between 1945 and 1947, the Soviets and Americans bickered and bickered.  The disagreed over what to do with Europe now that they had liberated from the Nazis.  The United States envisioned a Europe were all nations had freely elected governments who worked together for the common good.  They envisioned the IMF, World Bank, and the UN providing economic assistance and collective security.  The US even envisioned that Germany would join this effort after she had been thoroughly de-Nazified. 

Stalin and the Soviets had other plans.  The Soviet Union had suffered more than any of the other major allies at the hands of the Germans.  Twenty million Soviet citizens had died.  One third of its economy had been destroyed.  Stalin decided that this would never happen again.  Germany had invaded the Soviet Union twice since 1900.  He proposed creating a buffer zone between Germany and the Soviet Union.  What he wanted was friendly regimes in Eastern European countries between the two powers that would work with the Soviet Union to prevent another German invasion.  The Soviets wanted to leave troops stationed there after the war permanently to discourage a German invasion.  The Soviets also wanted to see Germany severely punished.  For a map of Europe after the war see Map 1. 

Before FDR had died, he and his advisors had already grown concerned about Soviet infringements on the sovereignty of Eastern European countries.  Soviet troops had "liberated" these countries from Nazi rule as they rolled back German advances in 1944 and 1945.  But instead of holding elections or letting previous governments return to power, the Soviets installed local and loyal Communists in power.  At a conference at Yalta ( a resort down on the Black Sea in the Soviet Union) FDR persuaded Stalin to agree to hold free elections in Eastern Europe soon after the war.

But Stalin never allowed these elections to occur.  He knew that the people of these countries hated the Soviets about has much as they had hated the Germans.  In Poland especially, Soviet troops arrested opponents to the Soviet installed Communist regime.  The Soviets also helped loyal communists come to power in Bulgaria and Romania.  Now think about this.  Who did this look like to many American foreign policy makers and the American general public?  Hitler?  Right!  Stalin was unconcerned.  He argued that Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union's back yard.  The Soviets had every right to have a "sphere of influence" there.  After all, didn't the U.S. routinely interfere in Latin American to insure that no hostile governments came to power there?  (We did and do.)  Hadn't Europeans colonized Africa and much of South and Southeast Asia?  The Soviets were shocked that Americans and others protested their behavior.  Americans also grew upset over the way the Soviets treated their zone of occupation in Germany.  After its surrender, the U.S., the Soviets, Great Britain, and France had divided Germany into four units separate zones of occupation .  See Map 2.  The plan was to remove all Nazis and then work for reunification of all zones under a democratic framework.  Unlike the others, the Soviets plundered their zone.  They took anything of value back to the Soviet Union.  But, they argued, didn't they deserve to?

Once again, American foreign policy makers and much of the American public perceived this behavior as aggression.  Continued American protests made Stalin very suspicious.  After all, the U.S. was a capitalist nation that had not even recognized the communist regime in the Soviet Union until 1933 (sixteen years after it rose to power.)  Truman, earlier in the war before the U.S. was involved, had said publicly that we ought to help whichever side was loosing (Germany of the Soviet Union) until they both collapsed.  Stalin and his advisors began to feel that the U.S. was ought to destroy the Soviet Union, or at lest was not concerned with its long term security.  The quickly removed themselves from the IMF and World Bank saying that they would not be beholden to these capitalist institutions.  Stalin also increased military spending as well and cut off most talks with the U.S.

1947 saw the emergence of a "Cold War" between the two superpowers.  In that year, the nation of Greece was in the midst of a Civil War between Communists and supporters of the monarchy.  You have to remember that in many European countries, communists had led the underground resistance to the Nazis when they were occupied.  Also, many Europeans were attracted to the Soviet model.  (We talked about its successes in the 1930's.) Most did not know of Stalin's human rights abuses.  In Greece, Communists were trying to seize control by military means.  In France, Belgium, and Italy, they were waging electoral battles and gaining support.  In Yugoslavia, they had taken power when the Germans retreated.  Truman and his advisors felt that the security of the United States was in jeopardy.  What if all of Europe went communist?  This would give the Soviets control of the entire continent.  What next?  Would they succeed where the Nazi's had failed?    Note that increasingly in American rhetoric the words communists and Soviet were used interchangeably.  If you were a communist you were loyal to the Soviet Union and controlled by them too.  Any communist regime was automatically seen as an ally of the Soviet Union in its quest to extend its power.  And who knew where this quest would end?

In May and June of 1947, Truman made a fateful decision.  He decided that American foreign policy would try to "contain the Soviet Union."  We would try to prevent the Soviet Union from extended its power.  We would not try to directly fight or attack the Soviet Union, but we would oppose any aggressive moves on its parts.  Translation - we would oppose the establishment of any more communist regimes in the world.  How to do so?  In May, Truman asked Congress for military aid for Greece and Turkey to fight communist within their borders.  He promised that the U.S. would help any regime in the world resisting communism.  Congress consented.  In June, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that Congress grant several billions of dollars in economic aid to European countries to assist their recovery from the war.  There was a catch, however.  The nations of Europe would have to ratify the Bretton Woods agreement and promise to work with their neighbors on a development plan that would benefit them all.  Marshall offered the aid to the Soviets, but they refused.  Nor did they led the countries they occupied join the effort.  In 1948, Congress consented to the Marshall Plan making $13 billion in grants available for European recovery.  That's over $100 million in today's money.  The idea behind the Marshall Plan was that economic growth and development would lesson the appeal of Communists in the part of Europe that Soviet troops did not occupy and strengthen non-communist regimes there.  It would also promote the U.S. goal of greater economic internationalism.  The plan was wildly successful,  Over the next five years, Western Europe - France, Italy, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Western part of Germany experienced spectacular rates of growth.  Local communists parties soon lost their appeal.  Recently, a panel of foreign policy experts rated the Marshall Plan has the best American foreign policy initiative ever.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan caught the Soviets off guard.  To counter them, the Soviets placed communist regimes in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.  (Soviet troops occupied them after the war, but so far the Soviets had allowed free elections.  Now they tightened their grip.  In Czechoslovakia, the non-communist Prime Minister committed suicide in protest of Soviet actions.)  Stalin  also tried to cut off access to Berlin for the U.S., Great Britain, and France.  The German capital lay within the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.  But all four occupiers of Germany had also agreed to split the capital between them temporarily.  See Map 3.  In 1948, Stalin cut off all road and canal access from the other countries' occupation zones to their portion of Berlin.  In response Truman ordered an airlift where food and fuel supplies were flown into West Berlin around the clock.  He believed he had to show his resolve.  The strategy worked.  Stalin lifted the blockade in 1949.  Containment had been a success in Europe.  There were no more communist/Soviet gains in Europe after 1948.  Friendly democratic regimes were in power in Italy, France, West Germany, and Great Britain.  The communists had also been defeated in Greece.  The popularity of communism was declining throughout the part of Europe not occupied by Soviet troops (and it was declining there too!)

So containment meant economic and military assistance to other countries in order to prevent the spread of communism which would in turn expand Soviet influence in the world.  It also meant a permanently strong U.S. military presence throughout the war.   From 1947 to 1991, we call this rivalry between the Soviets and the U.S. the Cold War.  For all intentional purposes we were at war.  We were rivals.  But neither side ever risked direct conflict with each other.  Containment, however, did not mean actively working to undermine Soviet control of Eastern Europe. The costs would have been staggering, especially after both sides built up nuclear arsenals.  Several times, both sides fought wars against allies of the other, but never did a direct confrontation break out.  These wars, such as in the U.S. war against Communists in Vietnam or Soviet battles against Islamic groups in Afghanistan were called proxy wars.  Much of Western Europe joined the U.S. in its efforts to contain the Soviet Union.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance was formed in 1949.  The U.S. and Japan signed a similar agreement later in the fifties.  To counter NATO, the Soviets organized its Eastern European "satellites" into the Warsaw Pact.

Look how much had changed in American foreign policy in such a relatively short space of time!!  In the 1930's we had been an isolationist nation that had turned our back on the world.  Now we are members of the U.N., the World Bank, the IMF, NATO.  And we had never had a military alliance before 1949 except in war!  We also promised after 1945 to open up our economic borders and to cooperate with other nations in coordinating economic policies that would help all involved. Truman got the American public behind this!  What an accomplishment.  It defied traditional American assumptions about the rest of the world.  How did he succeed were Wilson had failed after World War I?  In part Truman succeeded because he scared the American public  He described the Soviets in tones reserved for the Nazis or the Japanese in World War II. (See the Truman Doctrine.)  But he also reasoned with them that we had to adjust our course.  And Soviet actions made it easier for him to defend his position.  Unlike Wilson, he also worked with members of both parties to clear his foreign policy agenda.  Republicans controlled Congress from 1946-1948.  Remember, Truman was a Democrat.

Containment became the cornerstone of American foreign policy until the end of the Cold War in 1991.  Many of its institutions - NATO for example - still survive.  Truman argued that containment would eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.  How right he was. 

The Limited Welfare State - The Second Half of the Consensus

Truman also laid the foundations for a limited post-war welfare state.  While most Americans had welcomed FDR's relief projects and his increase in federal government activism in the 1930's, many had viewed these efforts as "temporary."  Many expected to return to a more limited government with recovery.  On the other hand, many Americans had come to believe that the federal government had to remain active in the nation's economy and in people's lives.  After all, had not World War II expenditure proved Keynes right?  So after the war, Americans were divided as to what to do with the New Deal welfare state?  Get rid of it?  Expand it?  Keep some of it?  And there was no real consensus, not yet.

In 1946, tired of continued war time economic controls and a slight recession that had begun when the war ended, the voters returned Republicans to control of Congress for the first time since 1930.  Many political observers labeled Truman a lame duck.  It seemed inevitable that the Republicans would take back the White House in 1948.  After all, Democrats had controlled it since 1932.  Usually the American public gets tired with one party in charge after about 8-10 years.   But Truman realized that Republicans did not necessarily best express the views of the American public, despite their electoral successes after the war.  Many, but not all Republicans, talked about ending popular New Deal programs such as Social Security, the minimum wage, the National Labor Relations Act.  Some even opposed his foreign policy initiatives arguing that they simply increased the size of the federal government too much and would infringe on the sovereignty of the U.S.

As the 1948 election approached, Truman began to point these things out to the American public.  He also began to target voters who had benefited from the New Deal.  For example, he vetoed a bill passed by Republicans that weakened the National Labor Relations Act.  He also issued Executive order 9981 that integrated the military once and for all.  He also called for an increase in social security payments and broadening who it covered.  He talked about raising the minimum wage.

Truman called his strategy the Fair Deal.  It was a moderate course between those who wanted to expand the welfare state and those who wanted to dismantle it.  Truman recognized that many New Deal programs such as Social Security, the minimum wage, the NLRA were still very popular.  He also understood that while Americans still clung to the idea of a weak federal government, they also feared that if we returned to the status quo of the 1920's, we would probably have another depression.  Truman reminded people over and over again what had happened the last time the country elected a Republican to the White House.

The Fair Deal was not just about preserving New Deal programs.  Truman also proposed new federal initiatives.  These policies were not directed at relief toward the poor necessarily.  They were about improving the lives of all Americans, not just the destitute.  For example, he proposed a National Health Insurance program, federal aid to education, greater public assistance to housing, and most importantly, and end to legal discrimination against people of color in this country.  Health care, housing, and education were big concerns of voters after the war. 

With his Fair Deal agenda, Truman set out to rally the New Deal coalition in the 1948 election in which he was a heavy underdog.  The New Deal coalition consisted of African Americans, union members, urban ethnics (new immigrants and their offspring in urban areas), as well as many middle class white Americans who believed that the New Deal had saved them during the Great Depression.  As mentioned above, he became the first President to support ending legal segregation and disenfranchisement in the South.  He vetoed Republican initiatives to scale back the rights of unions.  He recognized the new nation of Israel in 1948 to attract Jewish voters.  In the end, he shocked the political establishment and won the election in the biggest upset in Presidential elections of the twentieth century.  (He was lucky in that his Republican opponent Thomas Dewey was a lackluster candidate who assumed that he would win and did not campaign very hard.)  Truman's election was all the more remarkable when you consider that many Southern white Democrats abandoned him and voted for Strom Thurmund, the Governor of South Carolina (and currently a Senator over 100 years old) who ran as a "Dixiecrat" in protest of Truman's position on racial equality and civil rights.  Many liberals in the North, especially the intellectual types, also voted for another Democrat, former Vice President Henry Wallace, who urged a more peaceful approach to relations with the Soviet Union.  They viewed Truman as too hawkish.  Even without these normally Democratic voters, Truman won.

What does his victory say about the country in 1948?  It demonstrated that the country wanted to maintain the welfare state that the New Deal had built.  The electorate wanted to maintain popular New Deal programs, and even expand them.  It also showed that the electorate was comfortable with perhaps adding new federal measures to improve the quality of life for all Americans.  It showed that they accepted government management of the economy.  Already in 1946, Congress had approve under Truman's leadership, the Employment Act of 1946.  This law stated that the federal government should use fiscal and monetary policy to promote maximum feasible employment.  It was an endorsement of Keynes' ideas.  The Employment Act created a Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) to advise the President of proper economic policy and a Joint Economic Committee (JEC) to advise Congress.

But Truman's victory also demonstrated that the American public did not want to deviate too far from the status quo.  They did not want to build a European socialist style welfare state such as was developing in England and France where all children were subsidized by the government, all health care was run by the government, and government economic planning was all the rage.  Americans favored a limited welfare state.  Truman had convinced enough Americans that Republicans would take us too far back.  (In actuality Thomas Dewey, the Republican nominee, was very moderate.  But the many Republicans in Congress were not.  Truman talked about them more than Dewey.) 

In 1952, the country did overwhelmingly elect a Republican President - General Dwight D. Eisenhower.  But Eisenhower was a deft politician.  He made sure that he disassociated himself from conservative Republicans and that he endorsed popular New Deal programs.  He made sure that he did not seem a threat to the limited welfare state that existed.  Eisenhower also endorsed Truman's containment policy.  Eisenhower was more conservative than Truman.  He did not favor National Health Insurance, for example.  He wanted to wage the Cold War on less money.  He worried about fiscal deficits.  But he did not deviate from the consensus - he supported containment and a limited welfare state.  This consensus would unite both parties for the next several decades.  Only in the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate, and the recessions of the 1970's would it unravel.

Truman's Presidency from 1948-1952

Truman never captured the public's confidence like he did in the election of 1948.  During his full term in office (remember, he finished FDR's last term in office), his Presidency was marred by an unpopular war abroad and a Red Scare at home.

1949 was not a good year for Truman.  He had sold the American people on a crusade to contain communism.  He had told them that any communist was a Soviet sympathizer and that any gain for communism was a gain for the Soviet Union.  Now he had to "suffer the consequences" of his successes.  In 1949, the Chinese communists won their Civil War with a non-communist regime and came to power.  That same year the Soviets exploded and atomic bomb.  In a few months, the Cold War expanded at home and abroad.

China was not a European country.  To many Americans it seemed that just at the time the Soviets were being "contained" in Europe, they were on the march in Asia.  And China was a huge victory in the Cold War, or at least that is what millions of Americans thought.  Although poor, it was the world's largest country.  And the previous regime that the communists had overthrown was our friend and ally in World War II.  Republicans, still stinging from their defeat screamed "Who Lost China?"  The Chinese communists victory they insinuated had to come from the Truman Administration's incompetence.  In actuality, the Chinese communists won their civil war because the previous regime was terribly corrupt, never had much widespread support, and had done little to alleviate the plight of Chinese peasants - the vast majority of the population.  Chinese communists under Mao Zedong, had promised the peasants land and a say in their new government.  Communists armies were also very disciplined and accomplished fighters having fought both the Chinese government and the Japanese in during World War II.  To most of those Westerners in China, the Communists victory was not much of a surprise.

The Soviet explosion of an atomic bomb also shocked Americans.  Government intelligence sources had not a whiff of this development.  American scientists also had argued that it would take Soviet scientists roughly twenty years to develop the capability to build atomic weapons.  Again, many people asked, how did the Truman Administration let this happen?

Things go worse for Truman in 1950.  In the first half of the year, North Korean communists invaded South Korea in an effort to unify the country under communist control.  Korea had been a Japanese colony from 1905 to 1945.  When the war was over, it was jointly occupied by American troops in the South and Soviet troops in the North.  When this arrangement was made during the war, policy makers had not anticipated the Cold War.  Soviet cooperation was welcome.  Most importantly, it would reduce costs in rebuilding Asia after World War II.  As Cold War hostilities increased, the Soviets placed loyal communists in power in North Korea.  The U.S. supported a non democratic strongman.  In 1950, both occupying troops left.  According to plans made in 1945, the nation of Korea would then hold elections to choose a unification government.  Neither side pushed for these elections.  Instead, North Korean communists tried to unify the country militarily. 

Remember the logic behind containment.  Any gain for communism was a gain for the Soviet Union.  Communists triumphs in China and Korea made East Asia the focus on the Cold War now.  Where would the Soviets move next?  Japan?  (Which was still occupied by American troops?)  Too make matters worse, communists were fighting the French in Vietnam to liberate that country from French rule. 

Truman believed that he had no choice but to defend South Korea.  In the summer of 1950, he rushed American troops to the peninsula.  He even got the U.N. to approve the action.  (The Soviet Union was boycotting Security Council meeting at this time because the U.S., Britain, and France refused to let the Communist regime in China represent China in the U.N.  The instead recognized the government of Taiwan, an island off the coast of China where the defeated former government of China fled to and had set up shop in 1949.) 

American troops quickly turned the tide of the war, pushing the North Korean troops back into North Korea and even further.  As American troops approached the Chinese border in an effort to rid all Korea of communists, the Chinese communist government warned the U.S. not to approach their borders any further.  (For a map go to Map 4.  Click on the map, then click the arrows to follow the story.  You will need Flash software.  If you don't have it go to Map 5.)  When the U.S. continued, Chinese troops invaded North Korea and attacked American positions in November 1950.  For the next two years, American, South Korean, North Korean, and Chinese troops would fight to a bloody stand still.  Americans at home became frustrated at our inability to win the war.  They wanted to Truman to introduce nuclear weapons or to bomb China.  Truman refused, not wanting to widen the war any further.  When General Douglas MacArthur publicly criticized his leadership, Truman had to fire him to the disapproval of much of the public.)  So went America's first "limited war."

As American fortunes in the Cold War seemed to dim so quickly after 1949, millions of Americans came to believe that a communist conspiracy at home was  undermining our nation.  This second Red Scare reflected the public's new fears concerning the Cold War and the threat of nuclear warfare, their unease with the growth in government since the Great Depression, and partisan politics.  The Red Scare primarily involved Republicans of accusing Democrats of ignoring, covering up, or participating in a communist conspiracy to undermine the nation.  For example, in the late 1940's, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (It has since been disbanded) began to investigate alleged Communist influence on the United States.  They investigated certain unions who had communist members, communist employees of Hollywood studios, and other areas were they believed communists held power.  There were communists in Hollywood, in unions, and in academia.  Remember, communism appealed to many people during the Great Depression.  They admired what the Soviet Union was accomplishing while capitalism seemed to be failing everywhere.  Communism seemed the wave of the future to them, just as many Americans were drawn to Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.  Don't forget, the world did not learn of Stalin's atrocities until the 1950's.  But did these communists have significant influence?  Had they carried out plots to undermine the U.S. government?  Had they spied for the Soviet Union?  Absolutely not.  Nevertheless, Hollywood blacklisted anyone accused of being, anyone who was, or anyone who had been a communist from future employment.  Unions banned communist from membership.  And colleges and universities made professors take loyalty oaths.  These people had committed not crimes.  Some held unpopular views.  Many could not even be accused of that. 

To try and alleviate fears that there were communist in the federal government, Harry Truman ordered a Federal Employees background check.  The investigation resulted in a few people loosing their jobs, but it did not uncover a communist conspiracy.  Nevertheless, many Republicans were salivating at the prospect of attacking Democrats as soft on communism.  After all many die hard Republicans believed that Franklin Roosevelt was a communist.  They also remembered that many communist in the U.S. had enthusiastically supported the New Deal.  In 1948-1949, a new Republican Congressman from California, Richard Nixon, handed them a bombshell.

Nixon a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated the charges of Whitaker Chambers, a journalist and reformed communist.  Chambers accused Lager Hiss of being a communist spy.  Hiss headed the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a very prestigious think tank.  Under FDR, he had served in the State, Treasury, and Agricultural Departments.  He had clerked for a liberal Supreme Court Justice following his Ivy League Education.  He was the quintessential New Dealer.  At first most observers scoffed at the notion.  But Nixon kept revealing evidence that confirmed Chambers charges.  What we now know is that Hiss had passed government documents to Chambers during the 1930's when Chambers was a member of the Communist Party.  That's it.  The documents revealed no secrets.  We have no record that Hiss spied during the 1940's.  He ended up serving 5 years in jail for perjury.  There have been much more serious cases of espionage.  But it didn't matter to Republicans like Nixon.  They had found their Democratic Communists spy.  They screamed that the Truman administration and the federal government must be full of them!

No Republican better captured this mood that Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin from 1946 to 1957.  In 1950 he began issuing a serious of malicious charges claiming that there were over 150 communists in the State Department yet the Secretary of State had done nothing to get rid of them.  He accused virtually everyone in the Truman Administration of being a communist.  He actively campaigned against Democrats in 1952 claiming that they had all been duped by the Communists.  Many of his Republican colleagues deplored him and his tactics (including General Eisenhower) but kept their mouth shut because his message was working.  Republicans were now winning elections.  They seemed guaranteed the Presidency in 1952.  They wanted the White House back.  And McCarthy was shrewd.  He never accused a Republican of being soft on communism. 

McCarthy went so far to accuse George Marshall (the Marshall Plan guy) of being a communist.  For his accusation, see Document 2. 

Why did so many Americans believe these charges?  It is tough for a society to absorb the changes that Americans had gone through between 1929 and 1952.  They experience depression, war, then prosperity.  They had seen the emergence of welfare state and the Cold War.  Both of these vastly increased the size of the American government, something most Americans were anxious about.  What went on behind closed doors in the federal bureaucracy?  Who held the real power?  What could the government do without the public's knowledge?  The Cold War also caused new fears for Americans.  What if we lost?  How could we win?  Where was the enemy?  Who was the enemy?  McCarthy, Nixon, and others liked them offered simple solutions to these anxieties and fears.  Why had the Soviets been able to build a bomb?  American communist spies.  (And yes, there were some, but none had access to top secret information surrounding nuclear energy.)  Why did we lose China?  Communists in the State Department?  Why were we not winning the Korean War?  Communists in the Truman Administration.  If only we could get rid of our own domestic communist conspiracy, than we would be safe.  Its the same sentiment that many of you expressed in you papers on immigration.  If we stop immigration, we can stop terrorism.  Will that really make us more secure?  Will winning the war on terrorism be that simple?  Can we wage a war on terrorism without increasing the scale and scope of the federal government?  Can we have security yet still cling to older assumption and attitudes?  Probably not. 

The Red Scare represented the first rebellion against the post war consensus.  Yet the consensus held.  There would be many more cracks.  Many would be much more noble than this one.