March 20th Notes.

3/20/09

Today in class, we took notes off of a powerpoint. Here are the notes:

1950: the Korean War

• in June 1950 - North Korea invaded South Korea
• Truman invokedthe policy of containment
• Historically, Korea had been a unified country. only the critical division of Korea post-WWII into two entities caused the split
• efforts at reunification were not expected
• the Soviet Union was boycotting the United Nations on the day the US proposed sending a UN peacekeeping force to Korea
• Under the UN flag, the US rusehd to aid South Korea
• On September 15, 1950, US Marines made a daring amphibious landing at Inchon behind enemy lines
• General MacArthur pushed for an all-out war of liberation and unification as his troops met with success
• Truman authorized carryingthe war into North Korea but ordered MacArthur not to antagonize China
• MacArthur pushed too far and as US troops neared the Yalu River , China sent troops into the war on the side of NOrth Korea and pushed MacArthur back into South Korea
• Truman ordered MacArthur to seek a truce at the 38th parallel.
• MacArthur challanged President Truman and was fired in April 1951
• After the elections of 1952, the Eisenhower administration eventually negotiated a re-established border at the 38th parallel

Post Korean War

• the US announced plan to rearm West Germany
• NATOs military forces increased
• 1951, US signs a formal peace Treaty with Japan and a Japanese-American security
• the US acquired base rights in Saudi Arabia and Morocco
• 1950, Congress approved $52 million in military assistance to Latin America
• in 1952, the US began assisting France as it moved against a "communist" led independence movement in Indo-China
• US provided military assistance to the Philippines to fight leftist Huck rebels
• 1951, the US, Austrailia, and New Zealand signed the ANZUS collective security pact
• the Atomic Energy commisioni created to succeed the Manhattan compact (?)
• in 1948, the US allied with the all-white apartheid government of South Africa
• all of this is due to heightened concern for national security and anti-communist thinking

Organized Labor: the Taft-Hartley Act

• 1947, Congressional opponents of organized labor passed the Labor-Management Relations Act, also known as the Taft-Hartley Act

Taft-Hartley

• the law wiped out some union gains made during the 1930s
• ^ limited union's power to condct boycott
• ^ limited a union's owner to compel employers to accpet "closed shops" in which only union workers could be hired.
• the law strengthened
• ^ the power of union leaders to discipline their own members
• ^ it required union leaders to sign an affidavit stating that they did not belong to the communist party or other subversive organization
• Truman votoed the bill, but Congress overrode that veto
• in the years following, Truman's election in 1948, the CIO expelled 13 unions - and a full 1/3 of its membership for pro-soviet policies.

Anti-Communist Fears

• Anti-Communists also scruntinized the entertainment industry
• ^in 1947 - only 3 days after Truman Doctrine was announced, the HUAC opened hearings on the CPUSA 's activities in Hollywood
• ^ HUAC members went after 10 screen writers, producers, and directors who had been or were CPUSA who refused to testify before the committee
• ^the Hollywood Ten went to prison for contempt of Cognress after federal courts sided with the HUAC
• studio heads secretly drew up a "black list" of alleged subversives who could no longer work in Hollywood.

Anti-Communists Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon

• RR and RN made early political reputationis through HUAC hearings
• ^Reagan was secret informant for the FBI
• ^Nixon involved with journalist Whittaker Chambers, former COUSA member, coming before the HUAC and accusing state department employee Alger Hiss of passing documents to the Soviets.

That's all (:

- Lindsay Bakum.