Impact of WW2

• The late summer of 1945 marked the height of American power
• The United States had developed the capability to produce more military and civilian goods than the rest of the world combined
• American farmers also benefited from mass production and distribution, selling enough food at war's end to feed populations around the globe
• Happiness was evident in the street parades, the family reunions, and the new births ("the baby boom") that filled American society immediately after the war
• In August 1946, only a year after the end of the war, journalist John Hersey published a searing account of the horrific suffering created by the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima
• Allied armies had divided Europe into Eastern and Western halves, held largely by Soviet and American forces respectively
• American forces also remained deployed widely in Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), the Philippines, Indonesia, and other areas formerly held by the Japanese in war
• These foreign commitments stretched American resources far, and they opened the country to many new conflicts
• Americans worried about postwar costs: How much would they have to pay to help rebuild allies, like Great Britain and France, and former enemies, especially Germany and Japan?
• Americans also worried about new enemies: Would the Soviet Union and its communist allies in Europe and Asia take advantage of postwar weaknesses to spread their extremist ideology?
• The cold winter of 1945–1946 witnessed near-starvation conditions in the American-occupied parts of Western Germany and increased Communist aggression in Eastern Europe
• President Harry Truman was an old-fashioned fiscal conservative
• Truman wanted to continue investments at home, control threats abroad, and limit spending on the military
• The Servicemen's Readjustment Act (also known as the "GI Bill"), signed into law by President Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, became the primary vehicle for federal aid to American war veterans
• Eight million veterans received education assistance, more than two million of whom attended colleges and universities, paid directly by the government
• More than two million veterans also bought new homes with discounted government loans provided by the GI Bill
• Higher education and home ownership became common routes for returning soldiers to move into the expanding American middle class
• The GI Bill and the ethic of public service that carried forward from the Second World War made the years after 1945 a period of extraordinary growth in American national capabilities
• The GI bill clearly favored white male veterans, but it also contributed to higher levels of educational attainment and home ownership for other groups
• In December 1946 Truman appointed a new President's Committee on Civil Rights, which in October 1947 published a landmark report: To Secure These Rights
• The report condemned segregation and called on the Truman administration to do more to integrate different races in American society, especially in the US military
• On July 26, 1948, the President signed Executive Order 9881, requiring "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin"
• Truman's narrow victory over his Republican opponent in 1948, Thomas Dewey, probably would not have been possible without the support of African American voters
• Truman's expansive vision of opportunity in American society went hand-in-hand with strong intolerance toward radicalism
• The late 1940s and early 1950s witnessed what historians have called a "religious awakening" in American society, as figures like Truman, and his successor Dwight Eisenhower, emphasized the religious roots of their programs for expanded economic opportunity at home, and strict efforts to prevent the spread of godless communism