Truman and the post-war years

Résumé du document

During and due to the War economy, the American factories had been very active. They bustled with triple shifts. The US had eventually absorbed one of the most severe attacks launched on its values. However the role of the family and women within, it highlighted the uncertainties facing the American society. 6 million women had taken jobs during the War and they wished to carry on working. As one worker put it, "war jobs have uncovered unsuspected abilities in the American women. Why lose all these abilities because of the belief that woman's place is at home? For some it is, for others it is not". This issue stimulated the Black Americans as they moved from the countryside to assembly lines. They found new opportunities and new reasons to be angry and to insist on Freedom, especially as they were confronted with new sorts of jobs related to city life.

Extraits

[...] Truman confronted Molotov with demands the Soviet considered as inconsistent. Mutual suspicion assumed dominance in the relation between the 2 superpowers. This led to misunderstandings at a moment when the spheres of influence have served as a basis for compromise. Some historians say that Truman, because of his short-temper and inexperience, blundered into unnecessary and harmful confrontation. Other analysts had viewed the beginning of the Cold War as caused by Stalin's ambitions and the failure of the USA to communicate effectively and consistently the way on which it would draw the line with the Soviet Union. [...]

[...] Wages had more than doubled. Consumers expenditures had increased by 50% and individual savings account had climbed almost 7 times. Immediately after the WWII, the question was "How would the economy sustain the impact of 11 million soldiers returned home?" Another figure takes the measure of the problem: in 1945, soldiers were 11 to 12 million; in the ground and air forces; in the marine: it dropped from 3 million in 1946, to 1.5 million in 1947. According to Fortune, the American soldier is depression conscious, worried sick by post-war joblessness. [...]

[...] There was a bipolar confrontation in the world. Ex : George Keanan, the American ambassador in Moscow, made a statement which became the reference in the American foreign policy : in an 8.000 words telegram, he described the USSR intentions which were dark and frightening. It was interpreted as a declaration of Cold War. Truman and Dean Acheson, who was an influent member of the State Department as early as 1941, and later secretary of state in 1949, argued that the Greek issue was essential. [...]

[...] After years of fighting (1950-1953), an armistice was signed in 1953, but it simply recognized the "status quo ante", that is to say the partition of the country into two parts. A demilitarised zone was created along the 38th parallel to separate the two political entities. The buffer zone was only 4 km wide but was protected by a million armed soldiers on each side. The communists may have been contained in Asia but there were already more than 7.000 soldiers who had paid for Washington Cold War policy. Indicative bibliography The Limits of Liberty: American History, 1607-1992 par Maldwyn A. [...]

[...] Eventually, some $12bn would be spent on the ERP over a 4 year period. The Marshall Plan would provide an economic arm to the political strategy of the Truman doctrine with bilateral treaties to be signed to benefit from the substantial American loans. This aid helped to politically anchor Western Europe in "America's camp". Reactions, counter-moves, were soon to come on the part of Stalin : in Hungary (1947), in Czechoslovakia, and a year long blockade of all supplies to Berlin (1948) where the American reacted with the Berlin airlift. [...]