Modern America: WWII, the Cold War & the Late 20th Century

Benito Mussolini founded Fascism (Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, 1919) and became Italy's PM in 1922. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party grew during mass unemployment; Paul von Hindenburg appointed him chancellor in Jan 1933, and the Enabling Act made him dictator. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped Jews of citizenship. Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland (1936) and annexed Austria (1938). At the Munich Conference (1938), Britain's Neville Chamberlain and France's Édouard Daladier handed Germany the Sudetenland — the Munich Pact, a policy of appeasement ("peace in our time"). WWII began with the Blitzkrieg on Poland, Sept 1, 1939; Britain and France declared war Sept 3.

Senator Gerald P. Nye led the noninterventionists; the Neutrality Acts (1935, 1936, 1937) banned arms sales, loans, and travel to belligerents. As war spread, Franklin D. Roosevelt aided Britain: Cash and Carry (Nov 1939), the Export Control Act (July 1940, embargo of Japan), and Lend-Lease (March 1941, ~$45 billion, which "ended nonintervention"). The Atlantic Charter (Aug 1941) laid out Anglo-American aims. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941) — "a date which will live in infamy" — brought the U.S. in; Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. Dec 11.

The first peacetime draft came in Sept 1940. A. Philip Randolph threatened a march → Executive Order 8802 created the Fair Employment Practices Committee. The Double V campaign (Pittsburgh Courier) sought victory abroad and over racism at home; the Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo code talkers served with distinction. Rosie the Riveter (Norman Rockwell) symbolized women workers. But Executive Order 9066 (Feb 19, 1942) forced ~120,000 people of Japanese ancestry into internment; the 442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most decorated unit of its size.

The Big Three — Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin — met at Casablanca (1943, "unconditional surrender"), Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945). D-Day (June 6, 1944) opened the second front; the Battle of the Bulge (Dec 1944) was Germany's last offensive; Germany surrendered May 8, 1945. In the Pacific, Midway (June 1942) turned the tide, and Douglas MacArthur pursued island hopping through Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Harry S. Truman dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima (Aug 6) and "Fat Man" on Nagasaki (Aug 9); Emperor Hirohito surrendered.

Demobilization shrank the military from ~12 million to ~1.5 million by 1947. The GI Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act, 1944) gave veterans unemployment pay, tuition, and home loans — though African American, gay, and some Mexican American vets were shut out. Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal (1949) sought a higher minimum wage, Social Security expansion, and public housing; he desegregated the armed forces by executive order (1948). Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act (limiting unions) over his veto.

George Kennan's "Long Telegram" (1946) launched containment; Winston Churchill named the "Iron Curtain" (1946). The National Security Act (1947) created the NSC and CIA. The Truman Doctrine (1947) aided Greece and Turkey; the Marshall Plan (1948–51, ~$13 billion) rebuilt Western Europe. Stalin's Berlin blockade met the Berlin airlift (1948–49) → NATO (1949). Then in 1949 the USSR got the atomic bomb and Mao Zedong's Communists won China (Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan).

Executive Order 9835 (1947) began the loyalty program; HUAC investigated Hollywood (the blacklist / Hollywood Ten); Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed (1953). In Korea, Kim Il Sung invaded across the 38th parallel (June 25, 1950); Douglas MacArthur's Inchon landing reversed the war until China (Zhou Enlai) intervened; MacArthur was relieved (1951); armistice July 27, 1953. Senator Joseph McCarthy's crusade collapsed after the televised Army-McCarthy Hearings (1954) and Senate censure.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (elected 1952) embraced "massive retaliation" (MAD) and warned of the "military-industrial complex." Suburbs boomed (William Levitt / Levittown; homeownership ~44% → 62%); the baby boom (1946–64) and rock and roll (Alan Freed, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry) reshaped culture; Sputnik (1957) spurred the National Defense Education Act (1958). Civil rights: Brown v. Board of Education (1954, Thurgood Marshall, Chief Justice Earl Warren), the Little Rock Nine (1957, Gov. Orval Faubus), Emmett Till (1955), and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1955–56).

John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" opened with the first televised debate (Sept 26, 1960) over Richard M. Nixon. His defense used flexible response (Robert McNamara), the Green Berets, and the Peace Corps (1961). The Bay of Pigs (1961) failed, but Kennedy prevailed in the Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct 1962) — a naval "quarantine" that made Nikita Khrushchev withdraw the missiles. In Vietnam he backed Ngo Dinh Diem (~16,000 advisors by 1963). He was assassinated in Dallas (Nov 22, 1963) — Lee Harvey Oswald, then Jack Ruby; the Warren Commission followed.

Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society / war on poverty delivered the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), Medicare and Medicaid (Social Security Act, 1965), the Economic Opportunity Act (1964 — Job Corps, Head Start, VISTA), and the Immigration and Nationality Act (1965). Civil rights: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the 24th Amendment (poll tax), and — after Selma's "Bloody Sunday" (Gov. George Wallace) — the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964) and the Tet Offensive (1968) drove escalation and public disillusionment.

Grassroots action drove change: the Greensboro sit-in (1960) → SNCC (Ella Baker); Freedom Rides (1961, John Lewis); the March on Washington ("I Have a Dream," 1963); the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"; Freedom Summer (1964). After Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination (April 1968), many turned to Black Power — Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers (Bobby Seale, Huey Newton). The Chicano movement (Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta), the New Left (SDS / Port Huron Statement), and the women's movement (Betty Friedan, the pill, NOW) all rose.

The counterculture (hippies, communes, Woodstock 1969) rejected mainstream norms. The American Indian Movement (1968; Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt) occupied Alcatraz (1969–71) and Wounded Knee (1973). The Stonewall uprising (June 28, 1969) launched gay liberation; Harvey Milk won office in 1977. Feminists won Roe v. Wade (1973) and Title IX (Education Amendments, 1972, Patsy Mink); Shirley Chisholm ran for president (1972). The ERA passed Congress (1972) but was never ratified.

Richard Nixon won 1968 (over Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace) with a southern strategy and appeals to the "Silent Majority"; Spiro Agnew was his VP. The economy brought stagflation; the 1973 OAPEC oil embargo (after the Yom Kippur War) sent gas prices soaring. Diplomacy was his strength: the Nixon Doctrine (1969), the historic China visit (Feb 1972, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai), and détente + SALT with Leonid Brezhnev (Moscow, 1972).

The My Lai massacre (March 16, 1968; Lt. William Calley), exposed in 1969, horrified the public. Nixon's Vietnamization withdrew troops while he bombed and then invaded Cambodia (1970) → the Kent State (May 4) and Jackson State (May 15) shootings. The Pentagon Papers (1971, Daniel Ellsberg) revealed deception. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho signed the Paris accord (Jan 1973); Saigon fell April 30, 1975.

The Watergate break-in (June 17, 1972) at DNC headquarters, exposed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (source "Deep Throat" = Mark Felt), brought down Nixon (resigned Aug 1974). Gerald Ford pardoned him. Jimmy Carter (elected 1976) brokered the Camp David Accords (1978, Menachem Begin & Anwar Sadat), but stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis (Nov 4, 1979; 52 held 444 days) doomed his presidency.

As the White majority approached minority status, some pushed to make English the official language (Arizona, 2006). The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (2006) — border security + guest workers + a path to legal status — failed. During the Great Recession, Arizona and Alabama passed strict enforcement laws (partly struck down); in 2013 a surge of ~52,000 Central American children reached the border.

The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) barred federal recognition. After Vermont's civil unions, Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex marriage (2004). Between 1998–2012, 30 states banned it (including California's Proposition 8, 2008), but courts — and the Supreme Court (2013) — began overturning the bans.

The U.S. (~36% of greenhouse gases) signed the Kyoto Protocol (1998) but never ratified it; President Bush objected on economic grounds, and the administration was accused of suppressing climate science. Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (shared with the IPCC) pushed back.