CHAPTER 23 The United States and the Cold War,
1945–1953
This chapter concentrates on the history of the early Cold War period and the Truman administration. The chapter
opens with the national tour of the Freedom Train, which celebrated the freedom of America in contrast to the
tyranny of Hitler. The chapter continues by explaining the origins of the Cold War and the roots of containment as
outlined by George Kennan and as implemented through the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift, and
Korean War. Many critics, including Walter Lippmann, questioned the wisdom of viewing the Cold War through the
narrow lens of “free versus slave.” Next, freedom and the Cold War are explored by comparing freedom with
totalitarianism. The quest for an international human rights movement begins with the United Nations’ Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, a document that the United States has still not completely ratified. Truman’s domestic
policy, the Fair Deal, is an attempt to continue the expansion of government under the New Deal. Truman wished to
extend rights to labor and blacks and to create comprehensive national health insurance and housing plans. Most of
Truman’s agenda was stopped by the Republican resurgence led by Senator Robert Taft. The Democratic Party was
disrupted with the Dixiecrat revolt and Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party, but Truman was still able to steal the
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Freedom Train
II. Origins of the Cold War
A. The Two Powers
1. The United States emerged from World War II as the world’s greatest power.
2. The only power that in any way could rival the United States was the Soviet Union.
B. The Roots of Containment
a. Containment
4. The Iron Curtain
a. Churchill’s speech popularized the idea of an impending long-term struggle between the United
States and the Soviets.
D. The Truman Doctrine
1. Truman soon determined to put the policy of containment into effect.
2. To rally popular backing for Greece and Turkey, Truman rolled out the heaviest weapon in his
rhetorical arsenal—the defense of freedom.
E. The Marshall Plan
2. The Marshall Plan offered a positive vision to go along with containment.
a. The Marshall Plan envisioned a New Deal for Europe.
3. The Marshall Plan proved to be one of the most successful foreign aid programs in history.
F. The Reconstruction of Japan
1. New, democratic constitution
2. Economic recovery
G. The Berlin Blockade and NATO
1. In 1945, the Soviets cut off road and rail traffic from the American, British, and French zones of
2. In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb.
3. NATO pledged mutual defense against any future Soviet attack.
a. Warsaw Pact
H. The Growing Communist Challenge
a. NSC-68
I. The Korean War
1. In June 1950, the North Korean army invaded the south, hoping to reunify the country under communist
control.
J. Cold War Critics
1. Casting the Cold War in terms of a worldwide battle between freedom and slavery had unfortunate
consequences.
2. Walter Lippmann objected to turning foreign policy into an “ideological crusade.”
K. Imperialism and Decolonization
III. The Cold War and the Idea of Freedom
A. The Cultural Cold War
1. One of the more unusual Cold War battlefields involved American history and culture.
a. Hollywood
2. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Department emerged as unlikely patrons of the
arts.
B. Freedom and Totalitarianism
1. Works produced by artists who considered themselves thoroughly nonpolitical became weapons in the
cultural Cold War.
a. Jackson Pollock
b. The New York School
4. Just as the conflict over slavery redefined American freedom in the nineteenth century, and the
confrontation with the Nazis shaped understandings of freedom during World War II, the Cold War
reshaped them once again.
C. The Rise of Human Rights
2. In 1948, the UN General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
D. Ambiguities of Human Rights
2. Debates over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights revealed the tensions inherent in the idea of
human rights.
3. After the Cold War ended, the idea of human rights would play an increasingly prominent role in world
affairs.
IV. The Truman Presidency
A. The Fair Deal
2. He moved to revive the stalled momentum of the New Deal.
B. The Postwar Strike Wave
2. In 1946, nearly 5 million workers went on strike.
3. President Truman feared the strikes would seriously disrupt the economy.
C. The Republican Resurgence
1. Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress in 1946.
2. Congress turned aside Truman’s Fair Deal program.
a. Taft-Hartley Act
D. Postwar Civil Rights
E. To Secure These Rights
2. In 1948, Truman presented an ambitious civil rights program to Congress.
a. Truman desegregated the armed forces.
3. The Democratic platform of 1948 was the most progressive in the party’s history.
F. The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts
2. A group of left-wing critics of Truman’s foreign policy formed the Progressive Party.
a. Henry Wallace
G. The 1948 Campaign
2. Truman’s success represented one of the greatest upsets in American political history.
V. The Anticommunist Crusade
A. Loyalty, Disloyalty, and American Identity
1. The fear inspired by communism became a catalyst for reconsidering American identity in the mid-
twentieth century.
2. Anticommunism promoted a new definition of American loyalty and identity: conformity.
5. The Cold War encouraged a culture of secrecy and dishonesty.
6. At precisely the moment when the United States celebrated freedom as the foundation of American life,
the right to dissent came under attack.
7. The conflation of communism with opposition to freedom at home began with President Truman’s loyalty
review program in 1947.
8. Truman’s loyalty review boards failed to detect espionage, but the new national security system
targeted leftist sympathizers as well as gay men and lesbians, forcing hundreds from their jobs.
9. At the same time, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began its search for
communists in Hollywood. It finally focused on what became known as the Hollywood Ten.
B. The Spy Trials
1. HUAC investigated Alger Hiss.
2. The Rosenbergs were convicted of spying and were executed in 1953.
C. McCarthy and McCarthyism
1. Senator Joseph McCarthy announced in 1950 that he had a list of 205 communists working for the State
Department.
2. McCarthy’s downfall came with the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.
D. An Atmosphere of Fear
1. Anticommunism was as much a local as a national phenomenon.
a. Red squads
b. Private organizations
2. Local anticommunist groups forced public libraries to remove “un–American” books from their shelves.
3. The courts did nothing to halt the political repression.
a. Dennis v. United States
E. The Uses of Anticommunism
F. Anticommunist Politics
1. The McCarran Internal Security Bill of 1950
G. The Cold War and Organized Labor
1. Every political and social organization had to cooperate with the anticommunist crusade or face
destruction.
H. Cold War Civil Rights
1. The civil rights movement also underwent a transformation.
a. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) purged communists
from local branches.
2. The Cold War caused a shift in thinking and tactics among civil rights groups.
3. Dean Acheson’s speech to the Delta Council was filled with irony.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What caused the Cold War?
• How was the language of freedom used to justify American foreign policy in the early Cold War? What
were the consequences of viewing the Cold War in such narrow terms as “free” and “slave”?
• What was the core principle of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
• Analyze Truman’s Fair Deal. In what way(s) was it an extension of the New Deal?
• How was labor affected by McCarthyism?
• Based on the entry by Senator Joseph McCarthy in Voices of Freedom, what definition of freedom does he
appear to express?
• How did the Cold War shape American politics?
• How did the Cold War shape American culture?
• In what ways did the Cold War shape American immigration policy?
• Consider the progress that had been made during World War II for minorities. Why do you think there was such
an abrupt halt to that progress when the nation became gripped with a fear of communism?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Civil Rights
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/from-swastika-to-jim-crow/
Based on a book of the same title, From Swastika to Jim Crow: Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges (2000) is a PBS one–
hour documentary tracing the relationship between black college students in the United States and German Jewish refugees.
They came together as students and teachers at black universities in the Jim Crow American South during World War II
and the Cold War.
The Korean War and Its Origins, 1945–1953
www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/koreanwar/index.php
This site is sponsored by the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Libraries and provides access to Korean
War materials related to the two administrations occupying the White House during that period.
The Korean War
www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/korean-war.html
This site by the National Archives offers links to a variety of resources on the military history of the Korean War.
The Marshall Plan
www.marshallfoundation.org
This site summarizes the Marshall Plan and its origins and is supplemented with useful pictures.
Nuclear Warfare
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/bomb/
This site provides articles and time lines to accompany the PBS documentary Race for the Superbomb, on the U.S.–
Soviet quest to detonate a hydrogen bomb during the early Cold War.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Beisner, Robert. “The Secretary, the Spy, and the Sage: Dean Acheson, Alger Hiss, and George Kennan.” Diplomatic History 27,
no. 1 (2003): 1–14.
Canaday, Margot. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2011.
de Luna, Phyllis Komarek. Public versus Private Power during the Truman Administration: A Study of Fair Deal Liberalism.
New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 1997.
Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2000.
Frederickson, Kari. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2001.
2005.
Westad, Odd Arne. The Cold War: A World History. New York: Penguin, 2017.
White, John Kenneth. Still Seeing Red: How the Cold War Shapes the New American Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1997.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Organize the class into the U.S. Senate during the McCarthy hearings. As the instructor, you play the part of Senator Joseph
McCarthy. Choose the anticommunist victim: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Alger Hiss, the Hollywood Ten, and Paul
2. Pull up some of the political cartoons surrounding the surprising and dramatic presidential election between Thomas Dewey and
Harry Truman in 1948. The following site has much information: