This article is part of a series on American history. Cross-reference to chapters 18-19 of A Patriot’s History of the United States and chapters 16-19 of A People’s History of the United States.
World War II transformed America and the world. The postwar decade was one of prosperity at home and unease abroad. These “happy days” set the stage for the 1960s—the turbulence of which rivaled that of the 1930s and 40s. Geopolitical tensions became principal foreign policy concerns, and drove both prudent (Berlin Airlift) and misguided (Vietnam) programs. As U.S. leaders sought greater security for freedom in the world, blacks, women, and others demanded guarantees of freedom at home, culminating in the greatest improvement in civil rights since Reconstruction.
Each of the key threads of American history post-1945—the Cold War, Korea/Vietnam, civil rights’ movements—are seminal stories that still shape the American consciousness. To my delight, People’s covers these issues in far greater detail than it devoted to earlier episodes of history. Our authors spar over issues and movements that remain controversial today.
The Same Old War?
Truman’s postwar task was made difficult due to the splintering of FDR’s Democratic coalition. One wing of the party “saw the USSR as a potential model for human development.” In the 1944 election, FDR had chosen Truman as running mate over the sitting vice president, Henry Wallace, an admirer of Stalin. Had Wallace remained on the ticket, he would have become president when FDR died—something Patriot’s calls “the closest the Soviets ever came to choosing and nominating a candidate for the American presidency.” This was a symptom of the New Deal’s progressive and command economy policies: “To a far greater extent that many Americans want to believe, communist agents had penetrated the Roosevelt administration and reached high levels.” While People’s appears to ignore these claims, Zinn’s critique of the New Deal likely suggests that he did not believe this to be true.
Patriot’s suggests that World War II was a “struggle between barbarism and civilization,” and in this sense did not truly end until the fall of the Soviet Union. While Truman initially harbored misconceptions about Stalin similar to FDR’s, he came to appreciate the danger that the Soviets posed. Patriot’s saw the postwar Soviet Union as an “ideological expansionist state”, while People’s describes several “revolutionary movements” across the world that were “described to the American public as examples of Soviet expansionism,” but actually represented “local Communist movements, not Russian fomentation.”
A key tenet of Marxist-Leninist thought was that capitalism must either expand or die—Lenin wrote this in Imperialism. People’s agrees, claiming that American leaders sought to create a postwar consensus in which both parties could unite to exclude radical elements. Liberals would accept an “aggressive policy abroad” in exchange for “welfare programs at home”, and conservatives vice versa. American containment strategy toward communism turned Lenin’s theory upside down, which Patriot’s explains: “Without expansion to justify totalitarian controls, a huge secret police, and massive expenditures on the military, the USSR and its leaders would have to explain to the people why they had virtually no cars, little good food, and a staggering lack of basic items such as soap and toilet paper.” Truman acted decisively to check Soviet provocations, sending planes to supply Berlin during an attempted blockade, and resisting interference in the Middle East. Yet Truman’s key front against communism came in Asia.
Taking a Stand: Korea
China had fallen to communism under Mao in 1949. Patriot’s blames a “pro-Mao tilt” in the U.S. government for not giving the nationalist party more help, while People’s claims that Mao succeeded despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid given to his opponent. The emboldened leader of North Korea (described by People’s as a “socialist dictatorship”, contrasted with the “right-wing dictatorship” in the south), Kim Il-sung, invaded South Korea in 1950, quickly overrunning most of the country.
The Americans organized a response, and with support from the United Nations, dominated the coalition forces sent to aid South Korea. Through daring amphibious attacks and naval support, the Americans pushed the front line back into North Korean territory. Per Patriot’s, General Douglas MacArthur had received “clear instructions” permitting him to carry the war to North Korea, yet this convinced China to intervene in the war. At this point, MacArthur advocated intense bombing and blockades to carry the war to China (which still had not declared war on the United States). Truman’s refusal and MacArthur’s insistence led to Truman firing the general, in a highly unpopular move that Patriot’s claims “protected the integrity of the presidency and squelched permanently any notion that military leaders could dictate public policy.” The war “ended” in a 1953 cease-fire, although no peace treaty was signed. As one soldier described it, it was “the war we can’t win, we can’t lose, and we can’t quit”—a refrain that would be echoed in Vietnam.
The Cold War at Home
The same year that war began in Korea, an American senator named Joseph McCarthy took a high-profile stance against communism in the United States, leading to the term “McCarthyism”, a term Patriot’s describes as “synonymous with repression and terror.” Schweikart & Allen explain that McCarthy became aware of an actual network of underground Soviet agents, many of them high up in government, and that his investigations “underestimated the number of active Soviet agents in the country.” Yet they also admit that McCarthy’s “willingness to tout any unverified piece of information…obscured the fact that the genuine damage already had been done to American security.” People’s dismisses this notion, citing a historian’s claim that out of 6.6 million people investigated during this period, “not a single case of espionage was uncovered.”
Patriot’s insists that “not one of the people subpoenaed by the senator to testify lacked legal counsel; none were arrested or detained without due process; and no one went to jail without a trial.” This hardly equates with terror compared to The Gulag Archipelago’s description of arrests and lengthy detainments without even informing “criminals” of the charges against them. Further, Schweikart & Allen claim that “newly released Soviet documents confirm without question, the USSR had penetrated virtually every important division of the U.S. government related to military, diplomatic, and security issues.”
At the time, McCarthy’s actions seemed to reflect the public mood rather than determine it, as “the public was hostile to communism.” Hollywood and the press went out of their way to avoid condoning communism. The New York Times wrote: “We would not knowingly employ a Communist…because we would not trust his ability to report the news objectively or to comment on it honestly…” Surely Zinn includes this quote with an ironic smile.
Last of the Nonpartisans
Dwight Eisenhower had won acclaim as the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Though not aligned with either party, he agreed to run as a Republican in the 1952 presidential election, making his decision when the likely alternative candidate refused to commit to NATO, America’s military alliance in Europe. He won in a landslide.
Like other presidents with few partisan loyalties (John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and later, Donald Trump), Eisenhower took some actions that irritated the party that put him in the White House. Despite a Republican-dominated Congress, he did not take major steps to undo the New Deal policies that FDR had started and Truman had expanded (Truman raised the minimum wage and expanded Social Security eligibility). Eisenhower’s key social program was the National Highway Act, which sanctioned the Interstate Highway system. Patriot’s sums things up: “Eisenhower did not end the New Deal, but he slowed its growth.”
Yet Eisenhower’s two terms also saw the beginning of the “arms race” with Russia. The Soviets had tested the atomic bomb, and in 1957 they put a satellite in orbit and tested an ICBM. America’s response to these head starts was to throw money at the problem, authorizing grants in mathematics and science that flooded the universities with funds, which Patriot’s claims provided “the financial base for the student rebellions that would dominate the late 1960s.”
People’s echoes many of Eisenhower’s own warnings of a “military-industrial complex”, and claims that a series of “invented scares” were used to justify colossal defense budgets—two-thirds of the total federal budget in 1955. Zinn insists that the United States had “overwhelming nuclear superiority”, and the “missile gap” was a fiction peddled by defense contractors—and endorsed by John F. Kennedy to blast his Republican opponents in 1960.
The sitcom version of the 1950s is often depicted as “lighthearted and easy,” as Patriot’s puts it. Indeed, this generation benefitted from “the largest one-generation jump in educational achievement in the nation’s history” through the GI Bill. The new climate of prosperity and achievement fostered some optimism. Yet Schweikart & Allen suggest this was a façade hiding spiritual “emptiness”, which they contend foretold the turmoil of the 1960s: “Sooner or later, a sandy foundation of civic virtue, unsupported by deeper spiritual commitments, would crumble.”
Kennedy, Cuba, and More Cold War
John F. Kennedy (JFK) won the 1960 election based on image rather than experience. His Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, had served as Eisenhower’s vice president and thus was associated with the prosperity that administration had witnessed. Yet he made for poor television and “generated little fondness.” The election was incredibly close, with many Republicans urging Nixon to file a formal challenge to election results in Texas and Illinois. Nixon refused, on the grounds that “an electoral crisis had to be avoided.” Patriot’s calls this a “remarkable and civic-minded position”, one which Donald Trump could certainly learn from.
Like Truman before him, Kennedy would have to earn the grudging respect of his Soviet rivals through shrewd Cold War policies. In the 1960s, the new front in the détente was Cuba. Long considered part of America’s “sphere of influence” (the island had been a target of many annexation schemes and American troops had fought there in the Spanish-American War), Cuba now played host to a revolutionary communist government under Fidel Castro. The CIA went to great lengths to quash this sprig of communism on America’s doorstep—seeking to assassinate Castro in partnership with the Mafia, and backing a failed invasion effort by Cuban exiles in which American aircraft took part. This Bay of Pigs invasion failed, as People’s tells it, because Castro’s “was a popular regime,” although this is contradicted by “millions of Cubans” who “voted with their feet” and fled to the U.S.
Emboldened by America’s weak showing, the Soviets decided to place missiles in Cuba and construct a wall between the Soviet and Allied occupation zones in Berlin. Kennedy allowed the Berlin Wall to remain, where it became a “physical symbol of the Cold War”, but put his foot down on missiles in Cuba. He cleverly arranged that the Russians could abandon their missile plans without losing face, and averted the threat of hostile nuclear weapons in the western hemisphere.
Reacting to continued Soviet space program achievements (and oblivious to Soviet snafus), Kennedy committed the U.S. to put a man on the moon within a decade—which ultimately occurred in 1969. JFK also supported broad tax cuts, explaining that lower tax rates would “generate wealth that would produce more tax revenues.” Despite this measure being unpopular with many liberal Democrats, by 1977 even the staunchest Keynesians admitted that Kennedy’s tax cut had paid “for itself in increased revenues.”
Shot Through the Heart—But Who’s to Blame?
In 1963, Kennedy was assassinated under dubious circumstances. He had certainly made powerful enemies, but the assumed killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was both a former Marine and a citizen of the Soviet Union, “providing grist for the mill of ‘researchers’ with almost any political viewpoint.” JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, ordered an investigation that ended up hasty and slipshod, and conspiracy theorists continue to debate the true nature of JFK’s death.
Lyndon Johnson served one-and-a-half terms, winning reelection in 1964 against Barry Goldwater, a rare champion of “small government”. This reelection was a watershed moment, as a Goldwater presidency would have worked to roll back many of the progressive trends of the century.
Johnson’s key domestic agenda item was the “war on poverty”, an effort that Johnson hoped would move America “upward to the Great Society.” People’s speaks very little on these programs, and Patriot’s criticizes them heavily, labelling the Aid to Families with Dependent Children as the “most destructive of all.” In its telling, the AFDC disincentivized marriage. Worse, because poor whites were “more diffused and thus difficult to reach,” and poor blacks were concentrated in inner cities, the social upheaval of such programs disproportionately affected blacks. Such welfare programs were “the policy equivalent of smallpox on inner-city black families,” and would “re-enslave many poor and minorities into a web of government dependency.”
“We Shall Overcome!”
Black Americans were certainly already dealing with enough. The 1890s Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson had upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal”, providing a legal precedent for segregation that was wholly unequal in practice. Although the 1954 ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka overturned this, southern states dragged their feet in ending segregationist policies.
People’s identifies a link between early civil rights’ activism and communism, as this was the only group willing to give at least some service to the problems of race in the south. Following Brown vs. Board, some blacks took courageous steps to defy local and state segregation practices, resulting often in backlash, violence, and arrests.
Both our authors identify two competing strands of black activists in the 1960s. The first, led by Martin Luther King Jr., insisted on nonviolence, passive resistance, and seeking allies in public opinion. This group conducted an orderly march on Washington, D.C., where King gave his famed “I have a dream…” speech. The second group included militants like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, who repudiated King’s activism as being far too mild, as a “sellout” of the movement. People’s insists that “the black militant Malcom X was probably closer to the mood of the black community.” This movement led to large-scale urban riots, which Patriot’s cites as “appealing to the impulse to get back at someone or get quick restitution through theft,” and contrasting with the practices of civil rights’ advocates in the south. Congress passed multiple Civil Rights Acts during the 1960s, one in 1964, and one in 1968.
The coming of age of the “baby boomer” generation brought a flood of young Americans to college campuses, which were flush with funds and a left-leaning faculty, Patriot’s claims. This set the stage for radical student protests and the “hippie” counterculture, all reinforced with drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. People’s details many other civil rights’ movements that receive less attention:
- Women. A new wave of feminism advocated equal working rights for women, rebelling against the family as a means of social control. In 1973, the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision ruled that the right to an abortion was included in the Constitution—a position held for nearly fifty years and still hotly debated.
- Prisoners. Zinn cites that white-collar criminals were never punished to the proportion of their crimes relative to burglars and car thieves. He further details multiple riots and strikes for better prison conditions during this period.
- Indians. Many Indians, with a long history of grievances, rose again in fresh protest. The highlight of these movements occurred in 1969, when 78 activists seized and occupied Alcatraz Island, holding it for six months until “federal forces invaded the island and physically removed the Indians living there.”
The Elephant and the Tiger
The Americans had been involved in Vietnam since the 1950s. A local communist revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh, had fought the French colonial government and secured the promise of elections to unite the new nation. People’s claims that the subsequent government in South Vietnam was an American invention, designed simply to provide an alternative to communism, and that the Americans prevented any united elections from occurring. Later, with the CIA sitting back, military leaders in South Vietnam would overthrow this unpopular government while the stand-off with the communists in the north was still ongoing.
American involvement ratcheted up following an incident in which a U.S. destroyer was allegedly attacked in “international” waters—an even that People’s claims was a pretext, and it may have been. Yet this provided a rationale for American troops to go in force, in an action that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara claimed was a “limited war”. People’s disagrees, calling American intervention a “maximum military effort,” despite which the “people” won.
The war was never as popular in the United States as the Korean War or World War II had been. People’s details a significant level of desertion, dissention, and draft-dodging among U.S. armed forces and recruits, suggesting that a fifth of all discharged servicemen left without an “honorable” discharge. Zinn cites atrocities committed by American soldiers who were unprepared to fight a counter-insurgency type of war. Yet Patriot’s suggests that American bombing efforts took a heavy toll on North Vietnam, and many POWs suggested that the communists were near collapse just when the Americans pulled out. Yet this seems exaggerated given that South Vietnam was quickly overrun once the Americans did withdraw.
Our authors agree on many points critical of the war and the leaders that steered America into it, likely reinforcing the proverb that victory has a hundred fathers—and defeat is an orphan.
Nixon’s Marred Legacy
Richard Nixon had been vice president in the 1950s. Although he thought his political career was over, Johnson’s decision not to seek reelection in 1968 opened a window of opportunity. Patriot’s cites that the “rampant lawlessness in the country” likely gave him a chance to represent “law and order,” which he did.
At home, Nixon, despite being a Republican, continued to embrace the New Deal, supporting government largesse and signing the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (of which Patriot’s has a low opinion). The excessive deficits of Nixon’s tenure culminated in America going off the gold standard for good in 1971, and ushered in an era where free-floating currencies would provide a check against any government’s irresponsible spending (a check of which Patriot’s soundly approves).
Nixon’s greatest successes were in foreign policy. He extricated America from Vietnam, began the process of normalized relations with China, oversaw a peace agreement that set the foundation for Israel’s security in the Middle East, and continued détente and arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, many of these items are overlooked in Nixon’s legacy due to the Watergate scandal, in which a group of administration insiders burglarized the opposition Democrats twice in 1972. Many of the political “dirty tricks” Nixon’s administration was accused of had been practiced before—Johnson had bugged Goldwater’s campaign in 1964 with no reaction from the press—but the press was decidedly hostile to Nixon. Democrats in Congress smelled “blood in the water”, and the investigation resulted in Nixon’s impeachment and resignation from office. People’s cites multiple examples of corruption both inside and outside the administration as evidence of political horse trading, while Patriot’s insists that the media treated Nixon with a negative bias. Schweikart & Allen would likely agree that dirty tricks on both sides are ignored until one side is caught—and getting caught means getting stuck with the blame.
In many ways, Nixon’s fall represented a 180-degree shift from the progressive ideal that had shaped policy for nearly a century. The idea of government as an ameliorative force was challenged by clear evidence of political cronyism that eroded trust in that same government. This dilemma represented a challenge America would grapple with for the rest of the century.
In our next post, we’ll cover the rest of the 20th century—Reagan, the collapse of communism, and Bill Clinton.
