The American War in Vietnam

                                         Country Joe McDonald and the Fish at Woodstock

I) Vietminh as US allies

A) Vietminh and the OSS

1) Ho Chi Minh – Ho was a Vietnamese nationalist who admired the works of Marx, and wanted to establish a socialist state in his country



2) Vietminh armed forces – with military supplies from the US, the Vietminh fought an effective guerilla war against the Japanese.



B) Japanese surrender – when the Japanese surrendered, the Vietminh expected the US to continue to support them in their effort to establish an independent country



II) French attempt to re-colonize – the Vichy government (the government which controlled France during the Nazi occupation of that country) had surrendered to the invading Japanese, but many French rubber plantation owners had in fact cooperated with the Japanese, and were allowed to maintain their property.

A) Vietminh resistance – not surprisingly, the Vietminh resisted the attempted French re-colonization, and maintained their guerilla war against the occupying forces.



B) US aid to France – the US provided some military assistance to their NATO alliance partners, in the form of credits and some military advisers

1) Geo-political decision – the officials of the US government decided that it was more politically important, in our “Cold War” against the Soviet Union, to make nice with France in their struggle to re-assert colonial control, than to ally with a small, insignificant country with which we had no economic interest, nor any real political interest.



C) French military offensive



1) 1946 – while the Vietminh were still expecting the US to side with them in the dispute, the French forces in Vietnam were able to drive the Vietminh forces out of most of the cities in the country



D) French military defeats – after their initial victories against the Vietminh, the French suffered a series of devastating defeats; in response, the French government changed military commanders in the country.

1) “The light at the end of the tunnel” – soon after taking command of French forces, commander Gen. Henri Navarre declared that “Now we can see victory clearly, like the light at the end of the tunnel.” That is not the last time that phrase is heard in relation to conflicts in Vietnam.

2) Dien Bien Phu – in the jungle near this small hamlet, a large French force was surrounded by Vietminh forces, and after an extensive two-month siege, the Vietminh forced the French survivors to surrender on May 7, 1954.



3) Geneva Accords – at the insistence of the United States, the country of Vietnam was divided “temporarily” along the 17th Parallel, and nationwide elections to choose a government for a unified Vietnam were to be held in 1956

III) Vietnam and the Domino Theory – the so-called Domino Theory was an ideology subscribed to by both liberals and conservatives; a politician who could be portrayed as “soft on communism” effectively signed their own political death warrant.



A) Government of South Vietnam – largely a paper tiger, if not a myth. The government in South Vietnam never enjoyed any widespread popular support; if it were not for the millions and eventually billions of dollars that the US poured in to the country, it would have collapsed of its own inertia long before 1975, when the North Vietnamese Army finally rolled into Saigon. As a secret government study conducted by the Pentagon, and leaked as the famous “Pentagon Papers,” the “government” of South Vietnam was largely a creation of the United States government.

1) Premier Diem – Vietnamese Catholic, he organized a “national referendum” that led to the creation of the Republic of Vietnam. He then won a rigged election to head that government, and maintained control only with US support (eventually, that support from the US amounted to over $1 million a day)



(a) Diem’s only support in the country come from other Vietnamese Catholics (a very small percentage of the population, by the way), and other Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French



2) US $$$ -- the United States was positive that given a choice, no country would want to pass up the political and economic advantages that could be provided by alliances with the US

3) National Liberation Front – in December of 1960, the National Liberation Front was established by forces loyal to Ho in the south; they were popularly known in the US by the derogatory term given them by forces loyal to Diem in the south, Viet Cong (which became “VC” or “Charlie,” eventually, in US GI slang)

B) Kennedy and Counterinsurgency – Kennedy was elected over Richard Nixon (barely) in part because of his promise to “close the window of vulnerability” that he claimed existed and threatened the security of the US.



1) Counterinsurgency – the creation of a Special Forces branch in the Army, which supposedly would be able to respond to Communist aggression around the globe



(a) “Green Berets” – to train South Vietnamese forces in techniques of counterinsurgency, and dry up the sea of support which the National Liberation forces swam in (an allusion to an idea Mao espoused, where he compared guerilla forces to fish in a sea, undetectable among other fish.



(b) Cowboys and Indians – the Vietnamese forces were an unconventional enemy that enjoyed widespread support among the people of the rural countryside—which in Vietnam, meant most of the people living in the country.



(c) Lack of success – the lack of success that the South Vietnamese forces enjoyed in their counterinsurgency battles meant that more and more money and material was flowing into the country from the US, as were more and more military advisors, to “support” the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN).



IV) Escalation of US Involvement

A) Gulf of Tonkin – the USS Maddox was allegedly “attacked” while offshore from North Vietnam, in disputed seas (North Vietnam claimed the area as sovereign territory, while the US maintained that the waters were international waters).



1) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution – after the alleged attack, President Johnson asked Congress for, and received, authorization from Congress to “take all necessary measures to repel armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”



(a) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed unanimously in the House, and only two dissenters in the Senate (both of whom lost in the next election that they faced.

B) Da Nang

1) USMC – on March 8, 1965, a large force of Marines landed at Da Nang to reinforce an airfield there; by March 13 the Marine expeditionary force was joined by 40,000 other troops, and by late June of that year the Army commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, had received authorization to commit American forces to battle wherever he saw fit.



C) The Undeclared War – as more troops were committed, soldiers and Marines from the United States began to assume more of the responsibility of the fighting in this undeclared war

1) Search and destroy missions – troops from the US forces engaged in the small troop tactic of so-called Search and Destroy missions, where platoons ventured into the jungles of Vietnam, looking for enemy to engage and hopefully kill, or at least locate so that air support could be called in. Most of the time, these patrols found nothing. The fault of these tactics was, of course, that the enemy only engaged their pursuers at the time and place of their choosing



2) The Air War – the US dropped four times the amount of bombs in Southeast Asia than were used by all belligerents during World War II; but this bombing campaign was relatively ineffective against an enemy that was fighting a low tech war anyway—there simply was not much infrastructure to destroy.

3) Weekly body count – each Friday, the military released figures of casualties, which was how the “score” was kept. Each week, the total number of casualties for the North Vietnamese Army and the National Liberation Front, which inevitably were higher than the combined totals for the United States and the ARVN—so we were winning the war, right?



4) Selective Service – because of college student deferments, the burden of service in this war fell inordinately upon the working-class; in fact, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (the three premier universities in the country) between them only had one alumnus die. George W. attended Yale, drank his way through four years, and then conveniently “served” in the Air National Guard; Albert Gore, Jr. graduated from Princeton, and served in Vietnam—as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper written for members of the military.

D) Tet – Tet is the name for the Vietnamese New Year; after 1968 the word Tet is associated with the beginning of the end of US involvement in the war in Vietnam.



1) “The light at the end of the tunnel” – in January 1968, Gen. Westmoreland declared that the end of the war, now three years along in the involvement of US forces, was at hand, that officers there were confident that they were able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.



2) The Tet Offensive – just after Westmoreland made his observance about the end of the war, the National Liberation Front launched its Tet Offensive. This offensive caught the US and South Vietnamese forces completely by surprise, and NLF forces captured several cities in the south (including the center of religious life in Vietnam, Hue), and threatened to capture Saigon. The NVA had coordinated an attack at a Marine camp called Khe Shanh at this time, and held it under siege for several weeks.

3) Result – the effect of the Tet Offensive, from a military view, was a crushing defeat for the NLF and NVA; the US forces eventually defeated the combined force, and retook all of the lost territory; the NLF in particular was decimated.



(a) The end of US involvement – it became obvious to even the most casual observers that the end of the war was no where close to happening; popular support for continued US involvement in the war began to shift dramatically from this point.

(b) This was less a result of the growing protest movement, but increased frustration on the part of the general public at the apparent stalemate in the war

The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll

I)       Working-class in the South

A)    African Americans

1)      Sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta – the Delta area covered much of northwestern Mississippi, between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, and was the area in the state most devoted to the cultivation of cotton, and therefore had a high concentration of descendents of former slaves in the area.

2)      Musical traditions – work songs, which helped regulate the pace of labor (as well as help the time pass more quickly); sacred music; both forms used “call and response.”

3)      Itinerant musicians – the Delta area, before the advent of the juke box and radio, had a tradition of musicians who traveled from plantation to plantation to play music for Saturday night fish fries, and at “juke joints.” For many men (and a few women), this was the only chance for them to avoid a life of back-breaking, ill-paying labor

(a)    Charley Patton

(b)   Robert Johnson – became a big star twenty years after his death, when recording of twelve of his songs became the visible sign of “hipness”

(c)    Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter

(d)   B.B. King

(e)    Muddy Waters

(f)    Howlin’ Wolf

4)      Movement off farms into cities – so-called “chain” migration—migrants often first moved into cities in the South, and then into cities in the North from there

(a)    Pull of wartime employment – as jobs opened up to African Americans in factories and docks in the North, many left farms to fill these jobs in the North.

(b)   Push of mechanization – after the war, cotton cultivation became increasingly mechanized, which meant that it was cheaper for large landowners (plantation owners) to buy tractors, cultivators, etc., and dismiss their sharecroppers—which in turn meant that these sharecroppers were forced to move off the land that they had cultivated; many chose to move into cities.

B)    Poor white southerners – segregation, that we think of as personifying life in the South (and in the North, for that matter), is really an urban phenomenon than something that takes place in a rural environment; poor southern whites often found themselves in similar situations as their African American neighbors.

1)      Tenant farmers – depressed farm prices had earlier forced many tenant farmers off farms and into cities, north and south.

2)      Musical traditions

(a)    Secular – “hillbilly” music; without radio, many people had to entertain themselves, and their neighbors.  White musicians in the south had a long tradition of learning music from their African American neighbors

(b)   Sacred – prevalence of Pentecostal religions in the South (both white and black) meant that adherents to these various sects were familiar with emotionally charged music, from their church services.

3)      Movement off farms and into cities – for many of the same reasons that African Americans moved into cities; same kind of chain migration as was the case with African Americans.

(a)    Wartime employment

(b)   Mechanization of farming in the south

II)    Radio – radio became the vehicle for popularizing “race” music among a wider audience

A)    Clear Channel Stations – (not those of the company of today) in the late 1940s and 1950s, there were a number of 50,000-watt (the largest the government would allow) stations that could be heard (best at night) over much of the country—the so-called “clear channel” stations.

1)      WDIA—white-owned radio station in Memphis that began playing “race” music, and featured African American radio personalities, including Riley “Blues Boy” King (better known to us today as B.B. King) and Rufus Thomas, both of who became well-known performers of blues and rhythm and blues (R & B) music.

2)      WHBQ – white-owned radio station in Memphis began playing “race” music at night for the African American audience in the city, and as a result a number of white audience members were exposed to the music, as well. DJ Dewey Phillips’ nightly show, “Red, Hot and Blue” became a particular favorite.

3)      WLAC – Nashville record station, where a local business, Randy’s Record Mart (which did a big mail-order business), sponsored a blues radio show at night. The owner also owned Dot Records, which began releasing recordings of popular r&b songs redone by white artists—in particular, Pat Boone (whose first big hit was “Ain’t That a Shame”)

B)    Sam Phillips and Sun Records

1)      Sam Phillips – white engineer opened Memphis Recording Service, and began to seek out local African American talent to record.  Phillips quickly became frustrated at the limited sales that the race music was able to attain, and he begins to seek out a white singer to perform music in this style.

(a)    How does Phillips know that such a person exists? – because he himself enjoys such music, and is confident that other white southerners feel the same way, and are performing such music out there somewhere.

III) Elvis

A)    Childhood – Elvis was an only child (his twin brother, in fact, died soon after he was born) brought up by a doting, domineering mother and a largely absent father.

1)      Pentecostal church upbringing – Elvis attended sanctified churches with his parents, where he would have been exposed to the emotionally charged services that these churches are known for.

2)      Working-class upbringing – Elvis’ childhood was rather economically distressed, his father worked a series of rather low paying jobs.  Elvis grew up in Tupelo, MS, and although the public schools that he attended were segregated, and the public facilities (theaters, restrooms, etc.) were segregated by race, the town itself was only segregated by income.

3)      Father imprisoned – when Elvis was growing up, his father was imprisoned for several years after an attempted robbery, which did not affect the social standing of the family in the city, but only confirmed their outsider status there.

B)    Move to Memphis – some time after his father was released from prison, the Presley family moved from Tupelo to Memphis, where Elvis eventually graduated from high school, and held down several rather low-paying jobs driving trucks.

C)    Recording of song for mother – to surprise his mother on her birthday, Presley recorded a song at the Memphis Recording Service—which led eventually to his being courted by owner Sam Phillips to record some music with two musicians that he had worked with

D)    The Sun Records years – (both of them) Elvis cut only six singles with Sun, but they changed popular music forever.

1)      The marriage of white and black sensibilities – Elvis was able to cross boundaries that were thought to be impossible to cross; it was probably no accident that his first successful recording included a countrified version of a rhythm and blues hit, and a rhythm and blues treatment of a country hit.

2)      Elvis’ demeanor

(a)    Loved “loud” clothing (bought at Lansky Brothers, which catered to a largely African American clientele); and he favored pink particularly (which at that time was not a color that most men would have been caught out in public in).

(b)   Use of make-up – like Little Richard (although perhaps for different reasons), Elvis used make-up (eye-liner and eye-shadow) not only when he was performing, but in everyday life.

(i)     Explanation of Elvis androgynous appeal – males tended to like Presley’s music, if not his performance style (which females reacted to vociferously)

3)      Inspiration of others – many other white performers followed Presley to Sun Records, and eventually to other record companies, as well

IV) Race, Class, and Rock ‘n Roll

A)    Chuck Berry—Berry was in many ways the mirror image of Elvis Presley, although he was much more talented as a musician than Presley was.

1)      Childhood—Berry was born into a middle class family in St. Louis. Despite that, he was convicted at age 18 of armed robbery, and spent a year in prison between 1946 and 1947. After his release, he settled into married life, working for a time in an automobile factory before becoming a hair dresser.

2)      Musical career—Berry was able to get hired as a guitarist for a popular St. Louis “jump blues” group, the Johnny Johnson trio. After breaks in the clubs they played, Berry would sometime entertain the crowd with “bluesified” versions of country music numbers then popular on the radio. When Johnson left St. Louis to pursue a recording career with the Chess Record Company in Chicago, Berry took over leadership of the group.

3)      Chess Records—was owned by two Polish-American brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess. The company specialized in blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel records, aimed at an African American audience. The Chess brothers developed a business relationship with Sam Phillips, and handled some of the overflow from Sun Records. When Elvis hit, the Chess brothers were inspired to seek similar talent of their own.

B)    The Day the Music Died

1)      February 1958 – Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper die in plane crash in Iowa

2)      Jerry Lee Lewis – brought down by his marriage to his 14 year old cousin

3)      Chuck Berry – convicted of violation of the Mann Act (transporting a 14 year old across state lines for illicit purpose).

4)      Elvis – drafted, enters service, and out of the limelight for two years (his transportation of a 12 year old across international borders received little notice); after his hitch is done he concentrated on movies

The Cold War at Home

I. 1945-46 Strike Wave--effected most industries, and was a result of worker's pent-up demands for wage increases to catch up with the wartime price spiral, and because industry did not want to grant wage increases until price restrictions were removed

A. Steel Workers

1. Little Steel--the steel companies besides US Steel were hoping to break the union (the companies of Little Steel had resisted unionization to the bitter end

B. Electrical Workers

C. Rubber Workers

D. Auto Workers

1. "Open the books"--Reuther demanded at the bargaining table that General Motors present proof that it could not grant the demanded wage increase because of financial considerations--and that proof would be GM "opening the book," or financial ledgers, of the company.

E. General strikes

1. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2. Rochester, New York

3. Lancaster, Pennsylvania

4. Oakland, California

II. 1946 Election--A Right Turn?

A. Office of Price Administration (OPA)--fearing that inflation would cause a recession that would stunt peacetime recovery, the wartime agency--now headed up by former Toledo mayor Michael DiSalle--was kept in the hope that it could control inflation; the agency was unsuccessful in this attempt, however.

B. Post-war recession--with wartime contracts ended, industry cut back production in the anticipation that there would be a recession--despite the fact that these contracts guaranteed these companies a profit for the next year.

C. Democratic control--as the party that controlled both houses of Congress, as well as the White House, the Democratic Party received the blame for things that went wrong from the end of the war to the 1946 election.

1. "Coziness" with labor--labor was already seen as exceedingly close with the Democratic Party, and therefore the party was blamed in the mainstream press and by the business class for not "controlling" labor in 1946.

2. 1946 Election--Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1930. It is generally argued by political scientists and historians that general weariness with "change" as well a desire to "give the other guys a chance," along with Truman's unpopularity, also contributed. These factors did effect turnout of Democratic voters, and allowed Republicans to gain control of the Senate (they increased their control in the House of Representatives, which they had won in the 1944 election--despite FDR prevailing in the presidential election).

D. 1947 Legislation

1. Taft-Hartley Act--amended the National Labor Relations Act to disallow sympathy strikes and boycotts. Gave states the right to outlaw the union shop, the so-called "right to work" (without belonging to a union).

E. 1948 Election

1. Democratic Party Split

a. Progressive Party

b. State Rights ("Dixiecrat") Party

2. Civil Rights plank

a. Desegregating the Armed Forces

3. Lackluster Republican campaign--combination of what Truman labeled the "do-nothing" Congress, and a lackluster campaign by Thomas Dewey, who was running not to lose rather than to win.

III. The Post-war Red Scare

A. Communist spies

1. Rosenberg trial--the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

B. Rise of Joe McCarthy

1. Early political career

2. Wheeling (WV) speech

3. Army-McCarthy hearings

The Global Cold War

I. Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A. Hiroshima--both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been left relatively undamaged by the firebombing raids undertaken by the Army Air Corps, so the damage of a nuclear attack could be accurately assessed. The first raid, the attack on Hiroshima, took place on August 6, 1945, when the Enola Gay dropped one of the three atomic bombs that the United States had manufactured to this point, nicknamed "Little Boy." The effects were devastating. Although the bomb only carried about 100 pounds of Uranium-235, it had the blast effect of 13 kilotons of TNT. The resultant blast destroyed everything within a mile of ground zero, and the resultant fires burned everything within a 4.5 mile radius. This raid (a convoy of three B-52 bombers, which the Japanese didn't even attempt to intercept) probably killed between 70,000-80,00 people immediately, with the casualty numbers rising to about 160,000 people by the end of 1945 and perhaps as many as 200,000 by the end of 1950, as people died of injuries or the effects of radiation.

B. Nagasaki--Three days after the attack on Hiroshima, a second bomb, "Fat Boy," was dropped on Nagasaki. Because Nagasaki was a smaller city, the number of people killed was less, but the devastation overwhelming anyway.

C. Surrender of Japan--Justification for the raids on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the American government lay in the idea that the raids ended the war early, compelling the Japanese government to surrender. Yet the surrender did not come until August 14, over the continued protests from the military--and recent evidence suggests that it was the fear that the Soviet Union would be able to grab a larger portion of the Japanese northern islands that compelled surrender, rather than a fear of nuclear attack, that persuaded the Japanese government.

I) The Cold War in Europe

A) Truman and Communism

1) Distrust of Stalin – although FDR had developed a relationship of statecraft with Stalin, Truman did not develop the same level of trust as his predecessor; in fact, Truman believed that Stalin was one of the most dishonest, evil men that he had ever known (a fact that is hard to argue with, certainly).

(a) Cancellation of Soviet Lend-Lease Aid – at war’s end, Soviets denied any further access to lend-lease aid, which shut off their access to US military hardware.

2) Influence of Winston Churchill – Churchill had never put the level of trust in Stalin that FDR did, so when Truman became distrustful of Stalin, Churchill was there to feed those fears, which he shared with Truman.

(a) “Iron Curtain” speech – in a speech at a tiny college near St. Louis, Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech, where he encouraged isolating Western European countries from those under the domination of the Soviet Union.



3) Nuclear terror – the US insisted, since it was the lone country that could possibly hold the interests of the whole world ahead of its own self-interests (or that its self-interests alone were of concern to the rest of the world), insisted that this country, alone, should control these new weapons of mass destruction.

(a) Soviets successfully test Atomic bomb in 1949 – the acquisition of nuclear technology by the Soviet Union fed fears of the red menace at home. Part of this hysteria led to the construction of backyard bomb shelters, and the identification of public buildings that could also serve as temporary bomb shelters.

(b) Escalation by the US – after the Soviet Union acquired nuclear capability, the US went ahead with the development of the more powerful Hydrogen bomb, which had ten times the killing power of the atomic bomb.

4) Policy of containment – an increased confidence on the part of the military and diplomatic elite after the US successes in the second World War led to a belief that the military might, or the threat of the use of military might, of the US could “contain” the influence of the Soviet Union as it was constituted in 1946.

(a) George F. Kennan – was the diplomat stationed in Moscow who came up with many of the theories, and the term, which we now refer to as constituting the policy of containment

(b) Truman Doctrine – the Truman doctrine went hand-in-glove with the policy of containment. The Truman doctrine pledged to aid countries in their fight against “communist aggression.”

(i) Plan was formulated in response to an ongoing civil war in Greece, which pitted forces that had fought against fascists in the world war (led by a number of communists) against those forces that had collaborated with the fascists forces (which of course was anti-communist, and therefore backed by the US government). The aid the anti-communist forces received helped them to prevail in the struggle.

(c) Marshall Plan – named after Truman’s secretary of state, Gen. George C. Marshall; was a $16 billion dollar plan (that’s $140 billion in today’s dollars) plan for the reconstruction of Europe. Money was even offered to countries in the so-called Soviet bloc, if they would agree to strengthen economic ties with the West. This plan worked great for countries with strong social democratic traditions (like Great Britain, France), but it mainly strengthened the grip of right-wing dictators around the world.

II) Cold War in Asia – The Cold War was by definition a global conflict, and the United States took a much more active role in Asia after the World War than it ever had before—perhaps because the Soviet Union, like the United States, also was a Pacific Ocean power.

A) Fall of China – the Red Army of Mao tse-Chung prevailed over the forces of Chang Kai-shek in 1949, and Chang and his followers were forced to withdraw to the island of Formosa, just off the Chinese coast. Chang was a venal, corrupt leader, who lost this war despite the aid that he was provided by the United States; however, in domestic politics, Truman was blamed for the “loss” of China, and these domestic pressures in turn prompted and reinforced Truman’s commitment to militarily aid anti-communist governments in Asia

1) NSC-68 – a proposal by the National Security Council to triple the amount of money that the United States spent on defense. This increased defense spending in fact acts as a sort of welfare program for selected parts of the US industrial complex (mainly aeronautics, but also some other manufacturing concerns).

B) The “Domino Theory” – the need to oppose communism anywhere and everywhere it arose was fed by the fear that if communism were tolerated in one country, it would spread country by country, like dominoes toppling one after another, until the threat undermined the freedoms of the people of the United States.

C) Korea – Kim IL Sung attempted to reunite his country, which had been portioned at the insistence of the United States along the 38th parallel. The US suspects that the Soviet Union is responsible for this intrigue, and immediately begins aiding anti-communist forces in the South, both with material and men. After some initial difficulties, the US military operation after a brilliantly executed flanking maneuver utilizing a large scale amphibious assault was quite successful, and the combined forces are able to push the so-called North Koreans back well above the 38th parallel—in fact, in direct contradiction of the orders of his commander in chief, Douglas McArthur pushed the North Korean forces above the area claimed by China as its border with China—at which time the Chinese Red Army joined the fight against the Allied forces. The US was initially overwhelmed, but eventually recovered, and the fighting bogged down at the end of the year about where it had started, at the 38th parallel.

D) Wars to end colonial domination – Because of the focus upon the battle against communism, the US government tended to support the re-establishment of colonial rule around the globe, rather than the indigenous populations which looked to the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution for inspiration.

1) The French in Indochina

(a) Opposed by the Vietminh – the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, had been supported by the US during the war against Japan, even though the OSS was aware that Ho was a communist. This attitude quickly changed after the conclusion of the war, however, and the United States supported France’s efforts to re-establish control over the Indochina peninsula. Because of the strong resistance of the Vietminh, the US had to increase the support it furnished the French throughout the early 1950s, even going so far as providing advisors. In 1954, however, a large French force was surrounded near a little hamlet called Dien Bien Phu, and forced to surrender. The US quickly stepped in here, and declared that the country of Vietnam should be divided along the 49th Parallel, into North and South Vietnam, until a plebiscite could be held to choose a popularly elected government. Former collaborators ran the south with the French, some of who had even converted to Catholicism. The promised election never happened

The Homefront

I)     The Home Front

A)   Centralized planning – 1941 was a banner production year for the auto industry, which was reluctant to abandon civilian production to make war material, and did so only under duress (and the promise of guaranteed profits of cost-plus contracts).

B)   “Dollar-a-year-men” – executives from the US firms who came to Washington to help the military plan the economy; this "sacrifice" on the part of business men (their salaries were actually paid by the companies that they left) did much to rehabilitate the reputation of business in the minds of the general populace after the Great Depression

1)    War Production Board – set prices and determined production, since the entire economy was planned from Washington.

2)    Suspension of anti-trust laws – encouraged the formation of larger firms, which officials in the military believed would better meet their production criteria—and which made procurement by the government easier, since they had to deal with fewer firms.

3)    Construction of new factories – at the governments expense, or with low cost government loans (often, after the war, these factories that the government owned were sold to private industry for pennies on the dollar). To ensure continued support for the government expenditures, some of these new factories were built in the South, which to this point had little industrialization.

4)    Cost-plus contracts--in order to compensate companies who changed over their production to war material, and to encourage continued cooperation, contracts were let with a government guaranteed profit; that is, the companies were compensated at their cost, plus a guaranteed profit.

C)   War Labor Board – arbitrated labor-management disputes; set wage rates for all workers.  In return, labor officials promised to abide by a “no-strike” pledge, which individual workers supported, except when it involved their own grievances at work.


1) The No-Strike Pledge--in the first blush of patriotism, unions promised not to strike for the duration of  the war. While this sounds doable in theory, workers quickly found that by giving up the right to strike, they also lost their best tool for keeping wages up with inflation, and the quickest way to effect changes in working conditions.

D)   Office of Price Administration – set price ceilings for almost all consumer goods, in an effort to control inflation--with little success.

E)    Selective Service – FDR administration followed the practice of Woodrow Wilson, and instituted a wide-ranging conscription program.


1) The "Double V" campaign--African American leaders encouraged participation in this Selective Service campaign with the "Double V" campaign--victory over fascism, and then victory for the civil rights of  African Americans at home.

a) Jackie Robinson--was nearly court-martialed for his resistance to riding in the back of the bus at the Southern military base he was initially assigned to when he entered the Army.

F)    War Manpower Commission – determined which workers work was vital to the war effort (which would prevent them from being drafted); also determined when a worker could change jobs.

G)   Concentration of the Economy

1)    Procurement system – fostered further concentration of the US economy; by the end of the war the top 100 companies held 70% of all civilian and military contracts, compared with 30% five years before.

2)    Industrial boom--with government contracts being placed for material and factories, and much of the male civilian population being drafted or (after December 1941) choosing to join the military, economic conditions improved greatly.

(a)   By 1943 unemployment disappeared

(b)  Second Great Migration – whites and blacks left the South for the Midwest and the West Coast, where most of the jobs created by this economic boom were found.

3)    Real income growth – 27% between 1939 to 1945

(a)   Redistribution of wealth – income of those at the bottom of the wage scale grew at a faster rate than the heavily taxed incomes at the top of the scale.

(b) Taxation--in order to pay for the war, War Bonds were famously issued. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that taxation was greatly extended as well; Americans who earned as little as $500 per year paid income tax at a 23 percent rate, while those who earned more than $1 million per year paid a 94 percent rate. The average income tax rate peaked in 1944 at 20.9 percent.

H) Americanization push – although there were ugly, racist aspects of this new push toward Americanization, it was not anti-European immigrant; in fact, most propaganda celebrated the ethnic diversity of America.

 1) Sojourner Truth Homes--Detroit became a tinderbox of potential conflict  because of the number of new workers moving into the city and inadequate housing. The Sojourner Truth projects were one point of contention, with blacks claiming (rightfully) a desperate  need for adequate  housing,  and whites  assuming that the housing built in  "white" neighborhoods would continue to be used for whites. When black began moving into the project, it set off a riot. This conflict simmered into the summer, when another riot was set off on Belle Isle.

2) Zoot Suit Riots--took place in  Los Angles, involving Mexican-American youths dressed in "zoot suits" and soldiers and sailors on temporary leave. A zoot suit, with

its long draped jacket, wide labels, and pleated and pegged trousers, waved its middle finger at the wartime conventions of conservation and all for the war effort. In part, this was the young Californio reaction to being treated as second class citizens by the white establishment. Pachuco culture, particularly with the zoot suit, satirized white culture--something whites  got upset about, and supported the sailors when the went into Mexican American neighborhoods for 10 straight nights to "de-zoot" these pachucos.

I)   Rosie the Riveter – women began to move into industrial jobs in unprecedented numbers during the war years; although most were force to give up those positions at the end of the war, they fought hard to remain in those positions, and a significant number of women remained in the industrial workforce after the war.

1)    Male resistance – women who moved into these jobs faced tremendous amounts of resistance from the males who remained on these jobs (give examples of harassment)

2)    Working mothers – faced problems relating to the lack of childcare, and the related problem of the alleged juvenile delinquency that their neglect caused.

3)    Role of women in society – remained largely unchanged; many saw women in these kinds of positions as a temporary war expediency, and expected women to willingly return to the kitchen and nursery at the war's  end.

Conclusion – the pressured of the war caused many of the programs to be implemented that the FDR administration had attempted to implement during the two phases of the New Deal; in fact what happens is the implementation of the military-industrial-government complex that a later president (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander during the war) warned against in his farewell address in 1959

The Global War

I)                   Roosevelt turns to internationalism – the growing international crisis during the latter 1930s gained more and more of Roosevelt’s attention as his New Deal policies began stalling; Roosevelt’s background left him well-prepared to handle this problem, as well.

A)    Threat of Fascism – the world-wide economic crisis of the 1930s led many countries to experiment with new forms of government; one of the most popular was what we call fascism

1)      Definition of fascism – government control of all aspects of life, promising a “third way” between Marxism and capitalism, emphasizing the organic national community; it glorified war and violence; it embraced the irrational (like the occult), and the presumption of revolutionary change.

B)     Italy

1)      Rise of Mussolini

(a)    Fascism – rigid, one-party rule which crushes opposition (especially on the left), retention of private ownership of means of production (which differentiates it from the tenets of Marxism), but which operates under centralized government control; belligerent nationalism (and sometimes racism); and the glorification of war.

(b)   Il Duce (the leader) – former socialist; appealed to Italian nationalism, and played upon the perceived slights to Italy from its participation on the First World War.

(c)    Invasion of Ethiopia – the last independent state on the continent of Africa in the 1930s, but it received no help from other countries to fight of Italian aggression.

C)    Germany

1)      National Socialism (Nazi)

(a)    Hostile to all forms of democracy

(b)   Rise of Adolph Hitler

(i)                  Appeals to pride in German culture

(ii)                Racism – believed in the “natural” superiority of the “Aryan” race (whatever  that is); racism was a much more important ideology for German fascists than it was for Italians.

(iii)               Compare Nazi ideas of the superiority of Aryans to the belief (backed by scientific “proof”) that Anglo-Saxons were destined by biology to rule the earth.

(c)    Burning of the Reichstag – fire of suspicious origin (which has been probably rightly been blamed on the Nazis) destroyed the meeting place for the equivalent of the German congress, which then did not meet any longer.

(d)   Kristallnach (November 9-10, 1938) – Nazis burned over 200 synagogues, and looted thousands of Jewish-owned stores

(i)                  Signaled the beginning of a more aggressive anti-Semitism on the part of the German government

(ii)                Point of comparison – until Kristallnach, Jews in Germany suffered less discrimination in that country than they suffered in the United States (no restrictions on residence, or clubs they could not join).

(e)    Repudiation of the Versailles Treaty – moved arms into the de-militarized Ruhr Valley, also began claiming the right to “lebensraum” or living space, pieces of land that Hitler thought other European powers would not go to war to prevent him from claiming.

D)    Japan

1)      Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere – to ensure Japan’s continued access to raw materials to run their industries, forced on other East Asian countries by the military power of Japan.

(a)    Invasion of Manchuria – Manchuria lies between China and Russian Siberia, and had traditionally been part of China; had the richest deposit of minerals in Asia.

(b)   1937 Sino-Japanese War – the “Rape of Nanking” which resulted in 300,000 deaths of Chinese civilians; numerous women were carted off to serve as “pleasure girls” (prostitutes for the Japanese army—a practice which they also practiced in other areas in Asia)

2)      Racist stereotyping

(a)    Japanese superiority – Japanese thought that the Chinese were an inferior people, who gave them the rights to dominate; in the Japanese view, westerners like the US and British were decadent westerners who would crumble when confronted by the pure Japanese spirit.

(b)   US racism – US saw Chinese has helpless peasants, largely incapable of self-government; the Japanese, on the other hand, were the “yellow peril,” devious, and set upon ruining the West by exporting their cheap goods, and not buying enough western goods.

E)     Spanish Civil War – the Spanish Civil War served as a surrogate battle between fascist and communist forces, with the fascist forces prevailing.

F)     Isolationism – the foreign policies of the US government had long promoted isolationism from foreign entanglements, and this; although this had begun to dissipate, it had not disappeared.

1)      US Senate rejected membership in the World Court

II)                 Neutrality Acts – mandated an arms embargo against both victim and aggressor in armed conflict; stipulated a narrower interpretation of neutrality rights; “cash and carry” trade policy for belligerents that would deprive them of access to US credit, ships, and military goods.

III)              Pacific Theater of Operation (PTO)

A)    Pearl Harbor – Despite the fact that the US was well on its way toward full wartime mobilization, the Japanese attack was still a surprise to the US forces in Honolulu (discuss evidence that some in the US were aware that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent)

1)      Initial Japanese successes

(a)    Indonesia (Dutch)

(b)   Indochina (French; spawned the creation of the Vietminh, who with US backing carried on a guerilla war against Japanese—Vietminh were led by a previously exiled, French-educated Vietnamese who renamed himself Ho Chi Minh)

(c)    Hong Kong, Malay, and Burma (Great Britain)

(d)   Most of eastern China (China)

(e)    Philippines (US)

2)      US turns tide

(a)    Battle of Coral Sea – depleted navy fleet won its first battle of the PTO

(b)   Battle of Midway – US gained control of the Central Pacific

3)      1943 – US, with major assistance from Australia and New Zealand, and from many of the indigenous populations of the various Pacific islands and East Asia continental areas, regains the iniative.

B)     Island hopping – the strategy of choosing to battle Japanese fortifications on some islands, while skipping (or “hopping”) over others.

1)      Amphibious assault

IV)              European Theater of Operation (ETO)

A)    Soviet Union – from mid-1941 on, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war with Germany

1)      “Scorched earth” tactics – much of the eastern front had to be given up by the Red Army in a series of strategic retreats, but the Soviets burned to the ground anything that they could not carry with them, which prevented the German Army from obtaining the material, which caused the supply lines of the Germans to be stretched dangerously thin.

2)      Battle of Stalingrad – German Army was encircled, supplies from the West were cut off, and the Germans were starved into submission.

B)     Air War – to relieve some pressure on the Soviet Union before the Allies were ready to open a second front in Europe.

1)      “Precision bombing” – a misnomer; when attacks on industrial areas increased, Germany decentralized its industry, which led to the Allied bombing of population centers—like Dresden in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (much of the same thing was happening in the United States, as the government paid industry to build new factories in previously rural areas)

C)    Allied invasion of Europe

1)      D-Day at Omaha Beach – (show Private Ryan)

V)                The Home Front

A)    Centralized planning – 1941 was a banner production year for the auto industry, which was reluctant to abandon civilian production to make war material, and did so only under duress (and the promise of guaranteed profits of cost-plus contracts).

B)     “Dollar-a-year-men” – executives from the US firms who came to Washington to help the military plan the economy

1)      War Production Board – set prices and determined production

2)      Suspension of anti-trust laws – encouraged the formation of larger firms, which officials in the military believed would better meet their production criteria—and which made procurement easier.

3)      Construction of new factories – at the governments expense, or with low cost government loans (often, after the war, these factories that the government owned were sold to private industry for pennies on the dollar

4)      Cost-plus contracts

C)    War Labor Board – arbitrated labor-management disputes; set wage rates for all workers.  In return, labor officials promised to abide by a “no-strike” pledge, which individual workers supported, except when it involved their own grievances at work.

D)    Office of Price Administration – set price ceilings for almost all consumer goods.

E)     Selective Service – FDR administration followed the practice of Woodrow Wilson, and instituted a wide-ranging conscription program.

F)     War Manpower Commission – determined which workers work was vital to the war effort (which would prevent them from being drafted); also determined when a workers could change jobs.

G)    Concentration of the Economy

1)      Procurement system – fostered further concentration of the US economy; by the end of the war the top 100 companies held 70% of all civilian and military contracts, compared with 30% five years before.

2)      Industrial boom

(a)    By 1943 unemployment disappeared

(b)   Second Great Migration – whites and blacks leave the South for the Midwest and the West Coast, where most of the jobs created by this economic boom are to be found.

3)      Real income growth – 27% between 1939 to 1945

(a)    Redistribution of wealth – income of those at the bottom of the wage scale grew at a faster rate than the heavily taxed incomes at the top of the scale.

4)      Americanization push – although there were ugly, racist aspects of this new push toward Americanization, it was not anti-European immigrant; in fact, most propaganda celebrated the ethnic diversity of America.

H)    Rosie the Riveter – women began to move into industrial jobs in unprecedented numbers during the war years; although most were force to give up those positions at the end of the war, they fought hard to remain in those positions, and a significant number of women remained in the industrial workforce after the war.

1)      Male resistance – women who moved into these jobs faced tremendous amounts of resistance from the males who remained on these jobs (give examples of harassment)

2)      Working mothers – faced problems relating to the lack of childcare, and the related problem of the alleged juvenile delinquency that their neglect caused.

3)      Role of women in society – remained largely unchanged; many saw women in these kinds of positions as a temporary war expediency.

VI)             Conclusion – the pressured of the war caused many of the programs to be implemented that the FDR administration had attempted to implement during the two phases of the New Deal; in fact what happens is the implementation of the military-industrial-government complex that a later president (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander during the war) warned against in his farewell address in 1959