Kuklick PART V

Question 1

Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1932

Answer 1

The American people elected FDR in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. The liberalism that defined Roosevelt’s era was not the laissez faire approach but rather liberals were now those who wants to use national power often with policies that favoured poor folks.

Question 2

The First New Deal

Answer 2

The new deal implemented the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which promised financial assistance. The Civilian Conservation Corps gave outdoor occupations to young men, and the Congress passed an Emergency Banking Act and a Federal Securities Act.

Question 3

National Industrial Recovery Act 1933

Answer 3

It supervised programmes for the self-regulation of industry. Guidelines controlled wages, prices, hours worked and conditions of employment. Companies would put men back on the job, consumption would increase and the economy recover. Cooperation between government and businesses would guide the production of goods and services.

Question 4

Agricultural Adjustment Act

Answer 4

Seperate section of the NRA that gave unions the right to organise. And the Agricultural Adjustment Act sponsored a similar programme for farmers.

Question 5

The Second New Deal

Answer 5

After the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional in May of 1935. The Second Dew Deal concentrated more on reform of the system, the policies pushed competition and even took a hostile attitude to some enterprises. Four projects exemplified how the New Dealers divided the rich from everyone else and illustrated Roosevelts indifference to critics.

Question 6

The Wealth Tax Act 1935

Answer 6

The Wealth Tax Act of 1935 Decided that the more money you made, the more taxes you paid on each dollar over a certain amount. An elevated percentage of the salaries of the most well to do Americans will be taken after the earnings had reached the top brackets.

Question 7

The Social Security Act 1935

Answer 7

The Social Security Act of 1935 offered money to workers if they became unemployed and disabled. The act also aided dependent children and it gave pensions to retired workers.
Congress funded the Works Progress Administration Which employed workers in various work relief projects.

Question 8

New Law Supreme Court 1937

Answer 8

Roosevelt proposed a new law. The constitution did not specify the number of judges on the Court, only tradition made it 9. He proposed to expand the number to 15, he wanted to put New Dealers in the Court, but suspicion about FDR’s concerns for tradition led to a constitutional critique on the New Deal.

Question 9

Opposition for New Deal

Answer 9

The distress over the Court, large unions and the economy led to a growth of opposition. First were those who disliked what the New Deal had done to constitutional traditions. A second group feared labor. And a final group were pragmatists, moderate Republicans in the Northeast and Democrats outside the South who did not represent urban areas, they would support the New Deal only if they thought it would work. Forces within FDR’s party, particularly southern Democrats undermined whatever new ideas were set out for a comprehensive welfare state of welfare liberalism.

Question 10

Harry Truman

Answer 10

After the death of Roosevelt in 1945, his vice president Harry Truman took the job. He defended the New Deal that was still under attack from the Republicans. A few of them were communists, who all left office after Truman became president

Question 11

Meeting at Potsdam 1945

Answer 11

Meeting where Truman, Churchill and Stalin discussed the faith of Germany and divided it between on the one side the U.S and Britain, the other USSR. Each side worried about renewed German strength.

Question 12

First rounds of the Cold war

Answer 12

Days after the Potsdam conference Truman would use the atomic bomb to end WWII. They demonstrated their power to the USSR while they consolidated their power across a post-war Eastern Europe and put up ‘the Iron Curtain’. This constituted the first rounds in the Cold War

Question 13

Truman Doctrine

Answer 13

Truman believed massive economic reconstruction would put Western Europe back on its feet. Policy focused on financing the EU, and they would form a barrier to Soviet Expansion. Policymakers told the country that it had to defend democratic capitalism in Europe, but that the SU was engaging in a worldwide military contest. He further sold the joint aid package to Congress by emphasizing the need to fight vague global terror. Truman took a regional policy of political and economic aid and converted it into a global plan against the SU.

Question 14

Marshall Plan 1947

Answer 14

Comprehensive assistance Europe should receive. Would allocate aid to selected European nations. In exchange they would introduce US products and negotiate over how the aid would alter their traditional commercial practices. The US would rebuild the economies in an American image of common market. Congress passed the money for the Marshall Plan to counter a communist threat in the East

Question 15

Nuclear Threats and NATO

Answer 15

In 1949 the SU exploded an nuclear bomb, diplomats began to took security threats more seriously. In 1949 the US formed NATO.

Question 16

China 1945

Answer 16

Conflict between Nationalists and communists intensified in 1945. Diplomats did not think nationalists could win the war and didn’t send aid. This hands-off approach sparked criticism under the public. If the US gave money to fight communism in Europe, they should support the Nationalists. They gave minimal aid, but still China fell.

Question 17

Korea 1950

Answer 17

After WWII, the 38th parallel split Korea between the USSR and US. By the late 1940s the US left Korea, it was too costly and too insignificant to defend. But in June of 1950, the north attacked the south. Truman promised to repel the invaders and restore the dividing line. Because they had not fought for China, they had to fight for Korea. General Mcarthur led the US army in Korea, and thought he could free all of Korea, Truman backed this idea, despite warnings of Communist China that they would not tolerate an intimidating government on their border. China counterattacked in November 1950. The Americans suffered defeats and much of the South reverted to communist hands. Eisenhower ended the war with a cease-fire.

Question 18

Ike Eisenhower

Answer 18

Eisenhower restored the prestige of presidency and continued the Cold War against the SU, but more cheaply. He stressed that the air force delivering nuclear weapons would deter the Soviet Union, and spoke of ‘massive retaliation’. Eisenhower kept the peace in the 1950s although an alarming arms race grew.

Question 19

Interstate Highway Act 1956

Answer 19

Eisenhower implemented the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, it built a road system across the country. Was partly a way for americans to flee should cold war escelate. The jobs, directly and indirectly created, fuelled the prosperity of the Eisenhower years.

Question 20

First Berlin Crisis 1948

Answer 20

In 1948, a reform of the money supply had implied that the US would form an independent West-German government. The USSR responded by refusing to allow Western powers to travel through East Germany to their part in Berlin. Western Allies only supplied berlin through the air rights. To ensure that no West German nuclear force developed, the east was willing to trade their interest in West-Berlin.

Question 21

Berlin Wall 1961

Answer 21

The East-Germans were massively leaving the country, and moving west by the way of Berlin, to prevent the migration Khrushchev build the Berlin Wall.

Question 22

The Cuba Crisis

Answer 22

In the late 1950s early 1960s, a revolution in Cuba under leadership of Fidel Castro. Castro was an outspoken ally of the USSR. The Russians wanted to counter Washington plans to overthrow Castro. In the spring of 1962, Khrushchev moved to base nuclear rockets in Cuba.

Question 23

US policy Cuba Crisis

Answer 23

Kennedy first agreed on a naval embargo, hoping the USSR would bow out, and offered to not invade the island. Further, through his brother Robert Kennedy, he proposed to remove nuclear rockets from Turkey, if the Russians would not put them in Cuba. Before this could happen the Russians decided to dismantle the rockets before Robert could propose his deal. The crisis concluded without incident because of the US nuclear superiority. The Russians reckoned that the US would destroy them and in the end were bluffing.

Question 24

Limited Test Ban Treaty 1963

Answer 24

In August of 1963, the US and Russia agreed to the Limited Test Ban Treaty. The two states could not prohibit nuclear weapons or reduce the number of them existing, but they did restrict testing and prevented more states from obtaining them. Since then, 123 other states agreed to the treaty.

Question 25

Assassination JFK 1963

Answer 25

On November 22 1963, a few months after his Cold War triumphs, the president was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Question 26

Segregation 20th century

Answer 26

Segregation forced black Americans to live apart from white, prevented their voting, and occupied them with menial work. Despite forms of resistance, the threat of violence enforced submissiveness. In the late 19th century, Black Southerners supplied the labor for its agricultural economy. In the 20th many fled north where condition marginally improved.

Question 27

African Americans turn to democrats

Answer 27

In the 1930’s African Americans who could vote in the North turned from the Republicans to vote for the New Deal and its generosity to the underprivileged. FDR, dependent on white Democratic votes of the South, refused to touch racial issues directly. How could America fight for freedom around the world, and ignore that in many Southern states black people were not allowed to vote?

Question 28

Civil Rights Activism

Answer 28

Energized by local black activism, white liberals in the late 1940s turned to the issue of racial equality. Real movement however hardly occurred. B

Question 29

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Answer 29

Black lawyers and clergymen, often members of the NAACP, attacked legal segregation, taking matters into own hands. A turning point came in 1954 when a Supreme Court led by Earl Warren rendered a unanimous decision and held that you could not separate segregated from unequal schooling.

Question 30

Rosa Parks 1955

Answer 30

In 1955 a black seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her seat in a full bus to a white man. She was arrested which caused a boycott of the busses. The resistance eventually ended the Jim Crow busses and drew national and international attention. By the end of 1956, Alabama’s segregation had been overthrown.

Question 31

Lyndon Baines Johnson 1964

Answer 31

After the assassination of JFK, LBJ took over the presidency. He advertised the “Great Society” as the completion of the New Deal. The 60s became a time of great promises. Nonetheless, ideals were often unrealized. The Great Society did not much alter the existing welfare state, and left the problems of poverty and disadvantage unsolved.

Question 32

Office of Economic Opportunity

Answer 32

In addition to the second Civil Rights act, Johnson expanded the funding of the Office of Economic Opportunity. An umbrella agency administered programs for the poor, elderly, and economically disadvantaged. He created bureaucracies that would make ‘A war on Poverty’.

Question 33

Vietnam

Answer 33

From the end of WWII, communists in Vietnam fought the French, who bowed to them in 1954. The US saw to it that agreements unifying the communist country were not carried out. In the South the US re-enforced an anti-communist group which became the government of South-Vietnam under Diem. The National Liberation Front (NLF) worked to destabilize the South. The US believed that financial assistance, military instruction and coaching could prop up South-Vietnam

Question 34

American Military Intervention Vietnam 1964/1965

Answer 34

In November, Diem fell to a coup in which the Americans had a hand, Johnson wanted to contain the fighting in Vietnam but the US needed to make a stand against communists north. In August of 1964, North-Vietnam opened fire on American Ships, the president reported to Congress on the North Vietnamese provocation, they authorized all necessary action to protect the US. A bombing raid retaliated against the North. In February 1965, the president launched the systematic bombing war on the North of Vietnam called ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’.

Question 35

End of US/Vietnam War

Answer 35

As the fighting continued, a ‘new Left’ determined to stop the war. They were frequently well-off college students. At the end of January 1968, the North launched a series of attacks in the South. It undermined America’s power and support for LBJ plummeted. He slowly started moving US troops out of Vietnam.

Question 36

Growing Civil Rights demand

Answer 36

The war soured Civil Rights. LBJ could not sustain support for his domestic policies when so much conflict occupied the US abroad. He could not spend on welfare while he paid for the war in Asia. Moreover, African Americans now demanded economic and social power, not just the vote and formal equality. African American revolutionaries and the various white groups sided together against ‘the establishment.’

Question 37

Assassination MLK 1968

Answer 37

In April 1968, a racist murdered Martin Luther King, ending hope for a well-mannered resolution to the race issue. The most serious black rioting in the country followed.

Question 38

Robert Kennedy

Answer 38

Two months after Martin Luther King’s death in 1968 the people elected Robert Kennedy (brother JFK), but moments after he announced his presidency a gunman killed him.

Question 39

Richard Nixon

Answer 39

After the chaos in 1968, the country elected republican Richard Nixon. Nixon chose Henry Kissinger as his national security advisor. Stability emerged as the principal aim. They thought that nuclear war most threatened the planet. Nixon and Kissinger sought détente with the SU.

Question 40

The First Stategic Arms Limitation Treaty

Answer 40

The First Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty modestly set the standard for arrangements with the SU. During the second part of the Cold War, the powers would monitor each other’s arsenals.

Question 41

Nixon Doctrine

Answer 41

In 1969, according to the Nixon doctrine of Allies being in charge of their own security, the US would not commit soldiers to Asia in the future. The US would only act as an nuclear umbrella when asked. Nixon and Kissinger pulled troops out of Vietnam. The Vietnam war contaminated public life while persuading more and more people that politicians had dishonoured America with their policy in Vietnam.

Question 42

The Watergate Scandal

Answer 42

Nixon and Kissinger found out who leaked officials documents to the Pentagon Paper in which came to light that US soldiers had massacred civilians in Vietnam and that Washington had consistently deceived the public about Vietnam. Nixon created a group called ‘plumbers’ who sought leaks in national security and undertook black-bag operations. In June 1972, plumbers broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee to find out what liberals were planning. The president had hidden his participation in the break-in. As Congress investigated, Nixon lurched from crisis to crisis. The cover-up fell apart and he resigned in August.

Question 43

End of Vietnam War 1975

Answer 43

The war in Vietnam had started again in January 1973, in may 1975 South Vietnam surrendered to the North. Laos, Cambodia and the whole of Vietnam became communist but no one in America seemed to care anymore.