World War II: Legacies

• Civilian Deaths
• Racism
• Urban Bombing
• Total War
• Imperial Superpowers: Soviet Union and USA
• Threat of Nuclear War

The Winners: Yalta Conference of 1945

• The United States
• The Soviet Union
• The British Empire

The Cold War--1945-1991

U.S. Plans

Franklin D. Roosevelt

World Capitalism

Free Trade

The United Nations

What Do You Need for Capitalist Free Trade to Work?

Bretton Woods 1944

• World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development)
  • Economic Development
• International Monetary Fund (IMF)
  • Monetary Stability

An American Empire?

• Free Trade
• Democracy
• Freedom
• Geo-political Power
• Military Bases
• Justifying it to American people?
• Republic or Empire?

Postwar Threats?

 Stalin's Plans

• Security
• Eastern Europe: Yalta Agreements
• Global Power
• Nuclear Weapons
• Global Communism

President Harry S Truman 1945-

• Atomic Bomb
• Hiroshima
• Churchill: Iron Curtain 1946
  • Eastern Europe
• Stalin as new Hitler
• Anti-communism as global moral crusade

The Advance of Communism

• Communist Party of China 1921
• Mao Zedung (Mao Tse-Tung) Chairman Mao
• Civil War with Republic of China
• 1949--People's Republic of China
• World Communism

George Kennan

• Containment (1946)

Truman Doctrine (1947)

• Global Containment of Communism
• Central Intelligence Agency

The British Empire

• The Keynes Loans: indebted to USA
• 1945 Election: Labour Party (Democratic Socialist)
  • Welfare State or Maintain Empire?
• Nationalist Rebellions in India, Palestine

Mahatma Gandhi

• simplicity
• non-violent resistance
• Indian National Congress
• 1942 Quit India Movement: prison

Independence for India/Pakistan 1947

• Partition Along Religious Lines
• India: a Hindu Majority state
• Pakistan: a Muslim state with protections for minorities

 The Middle East

• Balfour Declaration 1917
• Zionism: A Jewish State
• The Holocaust
• Independence for Israel 1948
• Partition Along Religious Lines
• Palestinian dispossession
• First Arab-Israeli War

(British) Commonwealth of Nations 1949

Western Europe

• Marshall Plan 1948
  • Economic Support for European Democracies
• NATO 1949
  • Military Integration of Western Europe/USA
  • US Military Guarantee against Soviet Invasion
• Frustration with Containment in USA

Questions for Review:

What plans did America's leaders have for the postwar world?

How did they intend to put those plans into effect?

How did those plans conflict with those of Stalin?

How did the British Empire fit into those plans?

How did Britain respond to the postwar balance of power?

Why was George Kennan's policy of "containment" controversial in the United States?

What was the alternative?