Cold War tensions rise, along with a wall

As World War II came to a close, the USSR and the United States sparked off a conflict that would dominate foreign policies for decades. In 1945, the Yalta and Potsdam conferences between Great Britain, the USSR and the United States resulted in a Germany that was split into four zones, one controlled by each France, Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States. The capital city of Berlin was also divided into four parts. France, Great Britain, and the United States combined their zones to form West Germany and West Berlin, while the USSR made it’s zones into East Germany and East Berlin. As the Cold War ramped up and tensions started running higher, Germany became a center of Cold War tension.

As part of the Marshall plan, the United States gave over 13 billion dollars to Europe in order to improve its economy and provide a market for US goods. Some of that money was channeled into West Germany and West Berlin. Stalin viewed this as a ploy to get the successful and wealthy East German people to move to West Germany and West Berlin. In response, on June 24, 1948, he set up the Berlin Blockade, where he ordered all roads, canals, and railroads connecting West Berlin to East Berlin and East Germany to be blockaded, preventing supplies from entering West Berlin. The US claimed that this was the first step in a Soviet takeover in Europe, and together with Great Britain began the Berlin Airlift on June 26, flying supplies over West Berlin and dropping it in via parachute. At the peak, in September of 1948, one plane flew supplies in every 3 minutes. The USSR couldn’t shoot down the planes without possibly igniting a war, which could devastate the USSR with the United State’s use of nuclear bombs. Eventually on May 12, 1949, Stalin dropped the blockade. The standoff was an embarrassment to the USSR and made Stalin realize that the USSR needed the atomic bomb to stand up to the United States. The United States also started the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) shortly before the blockade ended, which led to the creation of the Warsaw Pact a few years later.

In 1953, Stalin died and Khrushchev took power. Until 1961, with an exception of the Berlin Blockade, East Berlin residents could freely move to and from the West, working wherever and living elsewhere if they wanted. Khrushchev was once again faced with the threat of successful and smart people all moving to West Berlin, so he erected the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. This was ostensibly because the Western powers could spy from West Berlin, but walls work both ways and the true purpose of the wall was to prevent people from moving from the East to the West. What began as a barbed wire fence became a thick concrete wall, with well guarded checkpoints and guard towers. The thick wall stood as a monument to the separation of Communism and capitalism, outlasting Khrushchev and five successive US presidents until the end of the Cold War era. Ronald Reagan, the sixth president since Eisenhower, made his famous speech by the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, his amplified voice reaching both sides of the Berlin Wall as he said:

“Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same… General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

These words, among the most notable of his whole presidency, had an effect. In November of 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. East Berlin residents entered West Berlin in swarms, some meeting family for the first time in decades. A couple years later, Gorbachev resigned and the USSR collapsed.

Germany, especially Berlin, was a focus for much of the Cold War. The Berlin Airlift and the Berlin Wall were both key events in the struggle between the United States and the USSR. The way leaders handled these events were instrumental to the end result of the Cold War.

I find it interesting to look at these past events and wonder what would have been different if they had turned out a different way. What if the Berlin Airlift had failed and the United States would have to stop supporting West Berlin? What if the Berlin Wall stood for even longer, possibly even up to today? And the big question from this point on; what would have happened if we passed the brink? If the policies of brinkmanship brought us to the edge and something happened to push us over? Humanity's capacity for destruction has increased through the development of nuclear warfare, and all “what if” thoughts are tainted by this possibility for complete and utter destruction of each other and the earth.

The far-reaching effects of World War Two

The good times of the Roaring 20s came to an end in the Great Depression, when huge swaths of people lost their life savings, their jobs, and their homes. President Hoover tried to help, but insisted on not getting the government too involved in the economy. While he had good motives, the lack of government help meant that the depression continued. When FDR took office in 1933, he established his “New Deal”, a system of programs designed to help the United States get out of the depression. The crisis at home led to a policy of isolationism, as Americans were to busy trying to get out of the depression to bother with events happening around the world. And there were definitely events happening in the wider world. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, propelled into power by promises of national power and a end to the hunger and unemployment caused by the end of World War One and the massive inflation that followed. Flaunting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler rebuilt the military to a large size and then invaded Austria and areas of Czechoslovakia. France and Great Britain, still weak from World War One, practiced appeasement, saying the annexation of Czechoslovakia was fine as long as it was the last area he took. Germany accepted, conquered Poland, and started World War Two. World War Two was much larger than World War One. Over 6 times as many people died in the 6 years of fighting from 1939-1945. Of the 60 million that died in World War One, 40 million were civilians. This huge war affected many things during the war, but now we look back and ask ourselves: “In what way did WW2 change the world? How did it change the US? How are things different after the war and why does it matter?” Those are the questions I will be answering today.

World War Two, like World War One, was fought between two major sides, the Axis Powers and the Central Powers. The main Axis Powers were Germany (led by Adolf Hitler), Italy (led by Benito Mussolini), and Japan (led by Hideki Tojo). Opposing them were the central powers. The main central powers were Great Britain (led by Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill), United States (led by FDR and then Harry Truman), France (led by Charles De Gaulle), the Soviet Union (led by Joseph Stalin), and China. The initial years of the war were fought almost exclusively in Europe, as Germany’s blitzkrieg (lightning warfare) resulted in most of Europe quickly under German control. Only Great Britain remained free from occupation. Subjected to German air raids nicknamed “The Blitz”, strict laws were put in place regulating the amount of light showing in the evenings. The European focus of the war caused a decrease in the economy of Europe after the war due to the many buildings and factories destroyed by German bombing raids. In the US, on the other hand, the War Industries Board regulated factories, gearing up everyone to produce war materials such as planes and ships. The rapid increase in jobs led to the end of the Great Depression and an increase in industrialization that continued after the war, resulting in the emergence of the United States as a global economic superpower.

On the United State’s home front, the whole nation geared up for war. New government organizations regulated many facets of the war effort, from the Office of War Information regulating propaganda to the Office of Price Regulation helping with rationing. The government sold War Bonds to fund the war effort and pushed Victory Gardens, Meatless Mondays, and home canning to help conserve food for soldiers to use. One way they did this was by the use of propaganda, posters that pushed a message.

The first poster pushes home growing and equates the simple act of growing vegetables with winning the war, a common thread throughout the posters. The second one pushes for new volunteers for the war by pulling at feelings of nationalism. At the start of the war, six million soldiers volunteered for service. The draft that was instituted supplied another ten million soldiers for the war effort. This large volume of workers sent off to war left a large labor void. That void was filled by women. Spurred on by posters such as that of Rosie the Riveter, women took up many kinds of jobs, from manufacturing to telephone operators. The push also led to an increase in women working even after the war.

In Germany, before the war even started, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party passed the Nuremberg Laws, a group of laws limiting the rights of Jews. These laws also led to the Night of the Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht as it was called by the Germans, which was November 9, 1938, when mobs in Germany destroyed Jewish property and broke Jewish storefront windows, which was made easier by the requirement to post a Star of David on all Jewish businesses. Kristallnacht was only the first in a series of anti-semitic practices and events, which culmunated in the Holocaust, the consolidation and systematic killing of almost six million jews in concentration camps around Europe. The aftermath from this atrocity led to the formation of Israel as a separate entity and country, a change that is still around today.

Another difference in territory of nations was that of Russia, or the Soviet Union as it was called at that point. Led by Joseph Stalin, a paranoid man who took control of the Soviet Union following the death of Lenin in 1922. Before the start of WW2, Adolf Hitler had joined with Stalin and agreed to the Nazi Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, a secret agreement promising that neither the Soviet Union or Germany would attack each other. In addition, this pact split up Eastern European countries into German and Soviet control. Soon after Germany invaded Poland from the West, the Soviet Union invaded it from the East. A few years into the war, Germany broke the Non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, pushing for Stalingrad, Moscow, and Leningrad. Responding to this new threat, the Soviet Union defeated the German army at the Battle of Stalingrad and then pushed into Germany from the east. Coupled with the other Allied powers attacking from the west following the successful invasion of Normandy, Germany was trapped between two large powers. When Hitler’s last attempt to break free (the Battle of the Bulge) failed, Germany surrendered soon after. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt to discuss dividing Post-war Europe. Stalin agreed to help fight Japan, occupy part of Germany, and join the United Nations. He also agreed to set up self-determination in the territories the Soviet Union had occupied in Eastern Europe, but instead installed a communist government that, while ostensibly separate from the Soviet Union, was no more than a marionette in the hands of Stalin. This spread of communism was seen by the US as a threat to democracy, and led into the Cold War.

Another thing that led into the Cold War was the development and use of nuclear weaponry. The Manhattan Project was a top-secret project headed by the United States and aided by Great Britain and Canada. The project’s goal was to develop nuclear weaponry faster than the Germans could. To aid this end, the project also supported a network of spies in Germany who sabotaged the German attempts to develop a nuclear bomb. The project was a success, and following the Trinity test (the first detonation of a nuclear bomb) the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to V-J Day (Victory over Japan Day) and the end of World War Two. The Soviet’s attempts to make nuclear weapons was part of an Arms Race that was a large part of the Cold War.

During WW2, many names made headlines and set them up for a successful career later in life. Charles DeGaulle was a French General and leader of an anti-nazi movement who later became the French President. Bernard Montgomery (the British leader in Africa) and Douglas MacArthur (the American general in the Pacific) became household names, while in Japan Hirohito (the general) became a figurehead post-war. The most famous American was probably Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander and leader of the D-Day invasion, who later became president after the war.

Many students in today’s time wonder why they have to study this and why it is important to them. The answer lies in the world and culture around them. Our current culture and environment is based on history, from policies laid down by past presidents that still affect us today to the latest decision made in the UN, an organization formed after WW2 as a way of regulating international disputes. History has made us who and what we are today, and what we do will affect those in the future.

In today’s time, the events in the Middle East remind me of some of the atrocities committed during WW2. The bombing and senseless killing by the government of their own citizens reminds me of Stalin’s treatment of his citizens, killing almost 50 million people. Hopefully the atrocities will end, and maybe a more effective form of the UN will arise, just as the UN replaced the weak League of Nations.

The 1920's: Above and Beyond the Things of the Past

Emerging from the destruction of World War II, America advanced into a time of prosperity and growth. Heroes established themselves as household names, while new technology gave rise to a culture with a vibrant night life. Despite these advancements, many new values were challenged by the old in clashes that shaped the future of the nation. The 1920’s were altogether a time of breaking barriers and clashing values.

The first broken barrier was in transportation. The invention of the automobile at the end of the 19th century didn’t change the landscape until the late 1910’s, when Henry Ford started using assembly lines to manufacture his Model T. The price of automobiles plummeted, and soon almost every home in America had a car. This opened up the way for day trips to the city or out into the country. It also led the way to a bustling nightlife, with people from miles around going to the city for a night of entertainment.

The entertainment in the city would also not be available to people without the added inventions of labor saving devices, such as the vacuum cleaner, washing machine, refrigerator, and store bought clothes and food. This myriad of inventions resulted in a surge of free time, which was then used to enjoy a vibrant party culture.

The party culture was also spurred by the rise of advertising. Radio and newspapers meant that for the first time the whole country was participating in the same fads, such as flagpole sitting and certain dances like the Charleston. Nationwide magazines like Time or Reader’s Digest caused the same stories to be on everyone’s mind.

New heroes also were household names, with sports giants like Babe Ruth providing models for young kids. The most famous hero was Charles Lindbergh, who flew across the Atlantic Ocean solo from New York to Paris.

Many changes were at opposition to the values of the past. The era of teenagers and flappers was at odds with the previous era of young marriage. The rampant drinking, smoking, and promiscuity was viewed as a rejection of the christian values of the years past, while evolution was seen as a rejection of the Bible.

The right to vote in 1919 also led to a reimagining of young women. These so-called “flappers” were young and single women who, with the right to vote, took their life into their own hands. They held a steady job and enjoyed a raucous nightlife. They would smoke, dance, and drink like their male counterparts. They wore shorter hair and shorter dresses. Flappers also experimented sexually, just like the new generation of teenagers.

The teenage years had changed dramatically with the lengthening of the education system and the push to get married pushed back till the early twenties. The automobile led to a new culture of freedom and personal expression, with revolutions in the places you could go and the people you could date. Dating was no longer limited to one town under parent’s supervision, and the new freedom led to an era of sexual experimentation.

School made the front page in 1925 with the Scopes Monkey Trial. John Thomas Scopes was accused of teaching Darwinian Evolution in a local high school when the law prohibited it. The sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, was flooded with media covering the trial. William Jenning Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate, was the prosecuting lawyer, while Clarence Darrow defended. The trial turned into verbal fencing between the two lawyers, who fired questions and rebuttals back and forth. Despite the lengthy trial (over a week long), in the end John Scopes was convicted and fined $100, though the the fine was later dropped. Overall it was still seen as a victory for evolutionists, a change that would culminate years later in evolution being taught instead of creationism.

There was a new governmental system evolving in Asia. Following the Bolshevik revolution during World War I, Lenin lead Russia to become a Communist country. Communism, with everyone the same and no possibility for personal advancement, was seen as the antithesis of the American Dream and  Capitalism as a whole. The influx of immigrants had led to a wider array of ideas, and the labor unions of Reconstruction had grown in size. The idea of labor unions were considered Socialism by many people, and the threat of anarchists led to a “Red Scare”, a time of fear and distrust of immigrants and unionists. This was exemplified by the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Palmer Raids.

In the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti were two known Italian radicals who were convicted of armed robbery. Despite evidence to the contrary and obvious contradictions in the testimony of witnesses, they were convicted and sentenced to death by electric chair. All appeals were denied, both at regional and statewide court, despite worldwide protests. 50 years later, the Massachusetts governor issued a statement that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.

The Palmer Raids were a series of arrests, trials, and deportations of people suspected of supporting communism, socialism, anarchism, or labor unions. Led by A. Mitchell Palmer, the U.S. Attorney General, they resulted in thousands arrested and hundreds deported from 1919 to 1920. These raids were protested by many, including Emma Goldman, an anarchist and socialist who was deported during the raids. She protested the infringement on free speech, saying:

“I wish to register my protest against these proceedings, whose very spirit is nothing less than a revival of the ancient days of the Spanish Inquisition or Czarist Russia… The object of the deportations and of the anti-anarchist law is to stifle the voice of the people…”

In this statement she gave at her hearing, Emma Goldman was comparing the Palmer Raids to old systems of government and control, where all disagreement was silenced by deportation or death.

I am struck by the similarities between the 1920’s and today. The Red Scare is frighteningly similar to the mass hysteria and Islamophobia induced by terrorist attacks and compounded on by Donald Trump. The internet, cell phones, and social media have knit American culture together across the country more fully than radio or magazines could ever have done. Social media and YouTube propagates fads like the ice bucket challenge, while airplanes have reinvented the travel landscape once again. Teenagers are still challenging values with continued sexual experimentation and drug use at odds with parental values. It will be interesting to see if the pattern continues and we plunge into another depression or world war.

American Imperialism: Then and Now

  In the late 1800's and early 1900's, the United States expanded its borders in a series of battles and treaties that drastically expanded the influence of the United States on the world stage, both economically and politically. Overall, I feel like the dramatic expansion of territory was a bad thing, as it stretched the United States across a large area that it would be hard-pressed to defend. Locations like the Philippines were much closer to Asia than to the United States, and it would take a long time for any news, supplies, or troops to travel there or back.
  As we look forward towards these next few years under President Trump in an era of conflict at home and abroad, I feel like we should remain anti-imperialist, not taking over territory but still providing help where needed. Some people will argue that if we had just stayed in the Middle East ISIS would not have risen, but if we do stay there it will still be a longer response time to any problems and have more problems with the local people and law enforcement. This is not a time to try and expand US borders, because no matter what it will strain relations with other nations and if we fail we will provide a stronger point for terrorist groups to rise, playing on the emotions and opinions of the people we attempted to rule.

 As Reconstruction came to a close, the United States entered a new age of industry and expansion, propelled by government and large businesses. While men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller made their fortunes, many people lived in squalor, working long hours for low pay. Muckrakers exposed the horror of the working conditions, while women and African Americans struggled for equal rights. The Government, while corrupt at times, attempted to regulate business and help protect the rights of the common working class consumer. The question facing both the voters of that time and the voters of today is how powerful and involved should the government be.

 At the start of Urbanization, a majority of Americans lived in rural areas and few lived in big cities, but by the end of Urbanization, the ratio had reversed and the majority lived in the city. There were a wide array of reasons that people moved to the city, but one reason drew in the most people: jobs. With the rise of corporations and big business, large numbers of jobs became available in the cites. As the number of available jobs grew, so did the number of immigrants. Immigrant families from Asia and Europe came in great numbers, spurred on by Push/Pull factors, which were reasons for immigration. Some push factors would be war or famine, while pull factors included available jobs and land. The horde of immigrants was so great that the United States government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, preventing the immigration of Chinese laborers. Even with that restriction, large numbers of people flooded into the cities, leading to the construction of Tenements, which were like apartment buildings, but had little to no windows and overall poor quality of living.

 As people flooded into the cities during Urbanization, not everything was as nice as it seemed. During the Gilded Age, companies like Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel Company bought up almost all their competitors in a process known as Horizontal Integration, while other companies bought up all parts of the manufacturing and distribution process in Vertical Integration. These monopolies made their owners (such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller) some of the richest men in American History. In order to keep prices down, workers worked long hours in dangerous conditions for little pay. These bad working conditions led to the formation of labor unions and the start of labor strikes. Unfortunately events like the Haymarket Riot, where a peaceful strike ended with at least eight people dead, caused employers to distrust unions.

 On the political side of things, people like “Boss” Tweed ran political machines, groups of people that got favors like political jobs in exchange for voting to keep the leader in power. These political machines were only one facet of government corruption, as government scandals like Credit Mobilier and the Whiskey Ring proved. Credit Mobilier was a railroad construction company that overcharged Union Pacific for building a rail line and gave bribes and shares in their company to congressmen that passed laws helping Credit Mobilier profit. The Whiskey Ring was a group who evaded the high tax on whiskey by bribing people to undercount the number of barrels of whiskey they were selling. Both these scandals made people less confident in government’s ability to help regulate business and protect workers and consumers. The government did pass the Sherman Antitrust Act, prohibiting “anti-competitive activities” such as trust forming monopolies, but was unable to do much enforcing of it. Farmers felt that the government was not helping them so they formed the Granger movement, an organization that pushed for helping farmers politically and economically. This movement evolved into it’s own political party, the Populists. Populists were critical of capitalism and pushed for unions. They were supported by miners, industrial workers, and farmers. Their most famous candidate was William Jennings Bryan, who was also the Democratic candidate and won five states, but not the Presidency.

 The Gilded Age was succeeded by the Progressive Era, a time period where many of the problems of the Gilded Age were corrected. The problems of bad working conditions were exposed by Muckrakers, journalists who used pictures and descriptions to expose the horrors of the base parts of society. Two famous Muckrakers were Lewis Hine and Upton Sinclair. Lewis Hine used photography to expose child labor and Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a book exposing the horrid lives of immigrants and the unsanitary conditions of meatpacking plants. At one point, he writes:

“This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat will be shoveled into carts and the man who did the shoveling will not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one.”

 The effect of these revelations were long reaching and many still endure today. The most notable effect of The Jungle was the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, an act that regulated the quality and safety of food and drugs.

 During the Progressive Era, many things changed for the better of the general citizen. One of these was the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, which was an international labor union started by Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate for president. On the political scene, many things had changed. With the introduction of initiatives and referendums, the basic citizen was able to introduce laws and vote on major issues. They also voted in a series of “Progressive Presidents”, which included Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, who both engaged in “trust busting”, the breaking up of trusts and monopolies like Standard Oil. Roosevelt also passed his “Square Deal”, a collection of laws and acts that controlled corporations, conserved natural resources (such as national parks), and enforced consumer protection. After Taft was president, he wished to run for president again, but Roosevelt also wanted to. Roosevelt established the Bull Moose Party to run for president. During the campaign, Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” and competitor Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” both laid out ideas for the future of government involvement. New Nationalism pushed for heavy taxes on the rich, government regulated industry, and better working conditions , while New Freedom pushed for less big business, restoration of a competitive market, and encouragement of small business. Woodrow Wilson won the election, in part due to Taft and Roosevelt splitting the Republican vote, and implemented a graduated income tax, upheld rights of unions, outlawed child labor, and much more.

 Under Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, women also were granted the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment. Two major figures in this struggle were Alice Paul and Jane Addams. Jane Addams founded the Hull House, a settlement house, which was a place where poor people could come for help from middle class people who lived there.

 Overall, despite the occasional corruption, the government regulated the economy and prevented trusts from becoming too powerful. This worked and I think that it was a good amount of governmental control in the economy. I believe that the role of government should be to provide fair and open market competition, while still allowing businesses to enact competitive practices allowing them to make money. Some people would say that the government should enact laissez-faire policies, a policy where the government does not interfere in the economy, but I think that that would be a mistake. If the government doesn’t help the common consumer, large businesses will form monopolies and gouge the consumer with inflated prices.

 Even today, we must face some of the same decisions as the people of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era did. The people need to decide if the government should help consumers, and if so, how much. Should the government prevent unfair trade practices or should it step back and allow the people to fend for themselves? I feel like it should help people, because ordinary people don’t have the means or money to prevent unfair practices by themselves.