Homeward Bound American Families in the Cold War

Question

How did Cold War politics and culture create conflicts over what it meant to be a "truthful American"?

Answer

America has not yet emerged from conflicts over what it means to be a "truthful American." Consequently, historical assessments of the Cold War and its ramifications in American civilization vary widely, depending on how they encounter the fundamental political issues at pale.

Internal and External Conflict

During the Cold War, the debate about what information technology meant to exist a true American expressed tensions that had been present in the U.S. since its founding and had inspired reformers ever since. In that sense, Cold War struggles with the question of what information technology meant to be a true American represented an internal problem, rather than simply something thrust upon the country by an external threat. These struggles, for case, amplified popular ambivalence about the leftward swing of the land during the Low and the New Bargain, and the resulting recalibration of the relationship between the regime and the private.

Nevertheless, they also resulted from an external political and military challenge posed by the Soviet Wedlock that deliberately "heightened the contradictions" within American civilisation, to use the Marxist term. Soviet policy aimed to advance the U.s.S.R.'southward interests and to spread its revolution against commercialism around the world. The Soviets also recognized that this same policy would counter U.Southward. efforts to encircle or "comprise" them in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia. The result was that many Americans at the time regarded the Cold State of war as a state of war with two fronts. One was away and 1 was at home.

Political Partisans

Toward the end of World State of war Ii, Democrats were criticized as being likewise tepid about the threat that international communism was "coming home" to America. Considering of this, in the run-up to the election of 1944, FDR dumped his incumbent vice-president, Henry Wallace, and replaced him on the Democratic ticket with Harry Truman.

Henry Wallace ultimately ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket. In the 1948 election, he charged that the Common cold War was America's fault, and was principally the invention of U.S. military and corporate interests for the purpose of consolidating their power by exploiting a baseless fright of the Soviet Marriage and communism. This line in fact mirrored what the Soviet Union was saying.

When Truman became president after FDR's death, he formulated his ain foreign policy, trying to solidify a tough anti-communist endeavor in the face up of his party'due south contempo widely perceived softness. The strategy he adopted was that of "containment" and "deterrence" of the Soviet Marriage and communism abroad, combined with funding and promoting economical development in democratic and potentially democratic countries. This strategy was continued in one course or some other by both Democratic and Republic presidents throughout the Cold War.

Nevertheless, beginning nether the Truman administration and coming to a crescendo nether Eisenhower's, a serial of Congressional committees began to investigate whether the Executive Branch, during the New Bargain under FDR and Truman, had been "infiltrated" past Soviet sympathizers and fifty-fifty active enemy agents. No matter what they uncovered, these investigations were bound to be clothed in divisive partisan politics.

Homegrown Conflicts about American Identity

In one sense, the contest over what constituted a "true American" reflected a contest betwixt two great powers, each aiming to accelerate two variants of revolutionary ideologies, democracy and communism.

Was a "true American," so, a collectivist or an individualist? Liberal or bourgeois? Urban or rural? Part of an intact and content nuclear family or not? Was information technology more "American" for women to exist stay-at-home mothers or to stay single and pursue their careers in the workplace?

Was it more than "American" to rebel or to salute a flag? To submit to authority or to dissent from the status quo? To urge social reform or to honor traditional social mores? To sing "God Bless America" or "This Land is Your Land"? To work for a marriage or in an open shop? Was America a identify that welcomed foreigners or not?

Such questions had not been settled before the Cold War; nor are they settled today. In addition, there were forces at work at every point along the political spectrum that both unified and fragmented the American identity. Necessarily, the question of what and who was a "true American" had ramifications in political debate about foreign and domestic policy, but information technology besides appeared with many inflections in fine art, music, literature, cinema, and fifty-fifty in such areas of life as spousal relationship, kid-rearing, relations between men and women, and living arrangements.

On the "Dwelling" Front end

Historians have recently begun to expect more closely at how the political and armed services challenges during the Common cold War influenced social life and cloth culture. Overall, the social keynote of the times was loftier feet. Skimming the pages of the Los Angeles Times for the twelvemonth 1948, for instance, gives one a sense that America was beingness confronted past moving ridge later wave of internal threats, not just external ones such as the Soviet blockade of West Berlin and its opposition to the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe.

Scientific discipline was seen every bit both a progressive tool for achieving a bright future and a death-dealing weapon that might end human life. Fear of an atomic apocalypse afflicted civilisation and politics. Cold War movies dealt with political espionage, like The Red Menace, and nuclear anxieties, like Seven Days in May, The Bedford Incident, and Dr. Strangelove.

LA Times reports in the summer of 1948 on the phenomenon of smog were saturated with anxiety. American cars and industry had "manufactured" the modern, liberated lifestyle. Merely they had also "manufactured" a new threat: mysterious toxic clouds that threatened, like the atomic flop, with footling advance warning, that might blanket the metropolis and cause widespread deaths. The newspaper proposed a smog "early on alert organization" (alike to the Civil Defence alarm system for nuclear attack) equally well equally a variety of technological fixes.

Social Problems

The LA Times reported Elizabeth Bentley's revelations about a Communist spy ring to a Congressional commission alongside other disturbing news. A crippling port strike in Los Angeles grew more complicated when the marriage, role of the CIO, conducted internal purges of high-level officials accused of beingness clandestine Soviet agents. Turing the page of the Times, an ad for Admiral televisions promised to keep children safe at dwelling. A reported rise in juvenile malversation and criminal offence appeared to threaten the institution of the family unit, with commentators identifying threats from exterior (or at the margins of) society also as threats from within.

Throughout the period, debates over diverse solutions to social problems centered on what was "truly American." This included the push button for ceremonious rights, for extending women'due south rights and roles outside the domicile, and for expanding government welfare programs. Singer Paul Robeson, for example, after a visit to the Soviet Union, made public statements that African Americans should prefer the Soviet system; N.A.A.C.P. President Roy Wilkins and baseball star Jackie Robinson vigorously disagreed.

The U.S. and the UsaSouth.R. competed against each other during the Cold War in all realms. Each state offered its own civilization (or at to the lowest degree what it wished to showcase) to the remainder of the earth as prove of its superiority. Thus, the notion of being "true American" overlapped with enthusiasm for international sports teams, dance troupes, orchestras, bands, automobiles, tractors, soft drinks, and even kitchen appliances.

The Red Scare: Real and/or Imagined?

On the one hand, much of the "pro-American" and "anti-Communist" phenomena of Cold War civilization during the "Red Scare" was bizarre, comical, and in some cases (such as the McCarthy hearings) downright dangerous. On the other hand, recent historical work on the Common cold War has taken into business relationship the extent of the Soviet Marriage's espionage activities, made public after the opening of the KGB archives and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These revelations have demonstrated the widespread Soviet successes in America from the 1920s through the stop of the Common cold War and documented the existent presence of sympathizers and spies among U.Due south. government employees. They also show Soviet funding for a range of political and social activist groups virtually of whose rank and file members never thought of them as anything but independent, homegrown, and purely "American."

For more information

Documentary Sources on the Political Foundations of the Cold War:
"Text of Bernard Baruch'due south Address at Portrait Unveiling," New York Times, April 17, 1947.
"Dr. Douglass Calls for End of 'Common cold War,' Militant Peace," Washington Post, August 4, 1947.
Mr. X [George F. Kennan, Managing director of Policy and Planning, U.South. State Section], "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs Vol. 26, no. 2 (July 1947): 566-82.
Harry South. Truman, "Accost earlier a Articulation Session of Congress," March 12, 1947 [Truman Doctrine].
George C. Marshall, "Speech Delivered at Harvard University," June 5, 1947 [Marshall Plan].
"Text of Hoover Address Alarm U.South. of 'Collectivism,'" New York Times, Baronial xi, 1949.
Andrei Zhdanov, "Study on the International State of affairs to the Cominform," September 22, 1947.

Historians' Assessments of the Culture of the Cold War:
Paul Boyer. By the Flop's Early Calorie-free: American Idea and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Chapel Colina: University of Northward Carolina Press, 1994.
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Annal and the Secret History of the KGB. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
John Lewis Gaddis. We At present Know: Rethinking the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Arthur Herman. Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America'south Most Hated Senator. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Ronald and Allis Radosh. Red Star over Hollywood: The Flick Colony'due south Long Romance with the Left. San Francisco: Encounter Press, 2005.
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassilev. . New Haven: Yale University Printing, 2009.
Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Woods: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era. New York: Random Business firm, 2000.
Whittaker Chambers, Witness. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1997 [orig. publ. 1952].
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage. Encounter Books, 2005.
John C. Culver and John Hyde. American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace. New York: W.Westward. Norton, 2001.
Elaine Tyler May. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, eds. Cold State of war Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users. Cambridge: MIT Printing, 2009.
Beatriz Colomina et al. Common cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar Culture, from Cockpit to Playboy. New York: Princeton Architectural Printing, 2004.
Larry May, ed. Recasting America: Civilisation and Politics in the Historic period of the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Printing, 1989.
Stephen J. Whitfield. The Civilization of the Cold War, 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Academy Press, 1996.
John Fousek. To Lead the Gratis World: American Nationalism and the Cultural Roots of the Cold War. Chapel Colina: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Elizabeth Borgwardt. A New Deal for the Earth: America's Vision for Homo Rights. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
Richard M. Fried. The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-State of war America. New York: Oxford Academy Press, 1998.
Laura A. Belmonte. Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Tony Shaw. Hollywood's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
Thomas Doherty. Cold State of war, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Civilization. New York: Columbia University Printing, 2005.
Jane Pavitt. Fear and Fashion in the Cold War. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2008.
The University of Washington library, The Red Scare: A Filmography.
Transcript of Richard Nixon and Nikita Kruschev's 1959 "Kitchen Debate."

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Source: https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/23933