Feb. 24: first KKK discussion; Paul Whiteman Orchestra, "There Ain't No Sweet Man (Worth the Salt of My Tears)" with the Rhytmn Boys featuring Bing Crosby. Were this record to be released today, students of American culture would soon be writing essays on its "transgressive" qualities. Is Crosby assuming a female persona (mask) in the performance? A gay persona? Of interest to us as historians is that these questions did not arise in the 1920s. This does not mean that the transgressive characteristics did not register with those listeners. We will discuss what that might mean.

Follow-up: For Feb. 26 read the rest of the KKK essay. Submit one hour before class responses to the following:
  • What, according to McClymer, was at stake in the battle over Prohibition?
  • What does McClymer mean by the "ironies of normalcy"?
  • Why did the KKK collapse in Worcester, according to McClymer? what had initially fueled its growth?

Feb. 26: Introduction to the Great Depression with Assumption College Treasurer Christian McCarthy; second KKK discussion; choice of "Human Face" topic

Follow-up: For Mar. 3 read Marchand, "Advertising in Overalls," pp. 285-333 and McClymer, "Depression Era Ads." Submit one hour before class responses to the following:
  • Marchand reprises the "Democracy of Goods" parable in his discussion of advertising during the Depression. So we will reprise an assignment. Make Marchand's case for the "democracy of goods" by analyzing one of the ads McClymer collected from Marchand's archive.
  • Make a case against Marchand's parable with the same ad.

Mar. 3: "Human Face" reports; discussion of "Advertising in Overalls"; choice of New Deal topic; two scenes from "Sullivan's Travels" — Chaplin homage and opening scene.

At left are Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake, the stars of "Sullivan's Travels." In the opening scene, McCrea as Sullivan, a successful director of comedies and farces informs the studio heads that he intends to make a serious picture about the pain wrought by the Depression to be called "Oh Brother! Where Art Thou?". Despite their misgivings, Sullivan sets off to gain first-hand experience of suffering. After his first misadventure he meets "the Girl," an unsuccessful actress played by Veronica Lake. [Calling her character "the Girl" recalls a number of silent-era comedies of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and others whose characters were often named "the Boy" and their beloved "the Girl.] At first Lake mistakes Sullivan for a tramp and treats him to some ham and eggs and a cup of coffee. Learning that she is giving up on Hollywood, he tells her who he is and offers to help her. Of course, they fall in love, and set off together to plumb the depths of the Depression. More misadventures follow.

Finally, however, wearing the costumes pictured here, they manage to enter into the common ranks of those ravaged by the economic hard times. Lake imitates the walk and carriage of Charlie Chaplin's most famous character, the Little Tramp. There is no dialogue during the scene. The scene ends with Sullivan and "the Girl" realizing that they cannot stand another minute of rubbing elbows with the down-and-out, much less eating out of garbage cans. They head back to the luxurious accommodations the studio provides.

Sullivan's adventures are not over. Conscience-striken, he determines to don his tramp costume one last time and hand out a small fortune in five dollar bills. Since no good deed goes unpunished, he is mugged and the money stolen. Worse still, a tramp had stolen his shoes leaving his own behind. These, it turns out, cause Sullivan to be convicted of a crime and sent to a prison farm. His attempts to prove his identity are scoffed at by the authorities since his studio ID had been hidden in the soles of his shoes, and the film takes a very dark turn. During his convict days, Sullivan and the other prisoners receive only a single kindness. An African-American church invites them to see the movies they show every week. The convicts and the congregation shriek in delight at the antics of Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters. What people really need during the Depression, Sullivan discovers, is something to take their minds off their troubles. When his real identity is finally established and he is released, he returns to the studio determined to make more silly comedies. And to marry "the Girl," of course.

Follow-up for Mar. 5: Submit one hour before class responses to the following:

  • How did hearing the Human Face reports deepen, complicate, and/or confuse your understanding of the Great Depression?
  • How did watching the two scenes from "Sullivan's Travels" deepen, complicate, and/or confuse your understanding of the Great Depression?

 

Mar. 5: The New Deal reports; discussion of the "Human Face" of the Depression and of "Sullivan's Travels"

SPRING BREAK


Irene Englund stands in front of one of the planes she piloted during World War II. Members of the Women's Air Service Pilots flew planes from factories to bases. They also towed targets for artillery practice.

Shirley Slade, Women's Air Service Pilot (WASP) Trainee

Mar. 17: New Deal reports continued; introduction to World War II; we start in 1939 with "Superman" and his campaign against munitions manufacturers, aka merchants of death. Superman is an alien, a non-human, conjured into being by two young Jewish Americans, Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, after Hitler had come to power and begun his anti-Semitic programs. In this context it is useful to note Superman's blue eyes, Nordic features, and jet black hair. This last feature, and it alone, marked him as non-Aryan. There is a long Jewish tradition about the "Golem," an artificially created monster/hero who protects Jews. According to one tradition, "once the golem had been physically made one needed to write the letters aleph, mem, tav, which is emet and means 'truth,' on the golem's forehead and the golem would come alive." Superman, we may recall, is dedicated to "truth and justice"; "the American Way" was added during the Cold War. Given all of this, it is worth pondering why Superman, in 1939, is not confronting Nazis but those who would lead the U.S. into war. So, we will begin by pondering.

Then we will listen to FDR's famous speech asking the Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. You will be happy to know that Superman immediately got involved in the war against Japan as seen in this 1942 cartoon adventure, "Eleventh Hour."

Next we will look at the explanation for "Why We Fight" offered to American soldiers by the federal government in a series of films of that title directed by Oscar-winning director Frank Capra. We will watch "Here is Germany" — one of the Capra films. Choice of "America at War" topic.

Follow-up: Mar. 19: America at war reports

The goal of the first three reports is to continue our examination of the highly uneven progress of marginalized groups in achieving equal treatment. The "relocation" of Japanese immigrants, who were not eligible for citizenship, and of their American-born children, who were citizens, played upon fears of the "Yellow Peril." Only those living on the West Coast were rounded up. Those living in Hawaii, where they constituted a much larger percentage of the population, continued to live and work as before.

The stringent quotas imposed upon European immigration in 1924 by the Johnson-Reed restriction act meant that Jews seeking asylum most often could not find it in the U.S. In 1939 Senator Robert Wagner (Dem., N.Y) and Representative Edith Rogers (Rep., Oregon) introduced a bill to admit 20,000 Jewish children over and above the quotas. The bill never made it to the floor of the House for a vote. Public opinion surveys indicated that two out of every three Americans opposed it.

African Americans fought in segregated units in the Army; in the Navy there were no black officers or petty officers; the U.S. Marine Corps continued to refuse to allow blacks to enlist. Nonetheless African Americans made important breakthroughs, especially in defense-related jobs. Black veterans were eligible for G.I. Bill benefits and, in 1948, President Truman desegregated the military and the Democratic Party adopted a pro-Civil Rights plank.

The next two topics look at how the government sought to explain the war and America's adversaries to the public at large. It is worth noting how the anti-German propaganda insisted that there was nothing racial underlying Nazi aggression. Instead the government insisted that the many leading Americans of German descent proved that there was nothing in "German blood" that led to WWII. It was the German tradition of militarism that lay behind the war. Anti-Japanese propaganda, in contrast, did use racial stereotypes.

In portraying the U.S. government propaganda stressed American traditions of tolerance and emphasized the country's diversity of ethnic groups, religions, and (far more cautiously) races. This may seem mere hypocrisy, given the treatment of Jewish refugees, Japanese Americans and African Americans. It was. But, it was also something else. The Roosevelt administration had worked from the beginning to break down ethnic and religious hostilities. And, to a significant degree, had succeeded. Racial antipathies were a different matter. And it would take the full knowledge of the Holocaust's extent to make anti-Semitism shameful.

Nagasaki, Japan two days before and three days after the bomb.

Choice of Cold War America topics — The Cold War was a primary influence over all aspects of American life from the end of WWII through the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will therefore examine it very closely. The first topic looks at the fact that the WWII literally ended with a bang, an explosion of unprecedented power that began the "Atomic Age," a nuclear arms race, the adoption of a deterence policy vis a vis the Soviet Union called Mutual Assured Destruction (aptly known as MAD), and ongoing fears of nuclear proliferation. There would also arise the, so far, hypothetical threat of terrorists gaining access to some sort of nuclear device.

The next four topics take up the organizing principles of American Cold War policy. George Kennan, a career Foreign Service officer and expert on Russia, was a key player. He devised the "Containment" policy that shaped U.S. foreign policy through 1989. Kennan, however, lost control over the implementation of this policy to Paul Nitze who thought of containment largely in military terms. Kennan resigned from the State Department in protest and wrote that he felt "like one who has inadvertently loosened a large boulder from the top of a cliff and now helplessly witnesses its path of destruction in the valley below, shuddering and wincing at each successive glimpse of disaster."

Winston Churchill not only coined one of the defining phrases of the Cold War in the "Iron Curtain," he also played a large role in persuading war-weary Americans that they would need to rise to the challenge posed by Soviet expansion into central and eastern Europe and the Baltic region of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. He was no longer British Prime Minister, and Britain's Labour government was finding it progressively more difficult to live up to the committments Churchill (a Conservative) had made to Greek anti-communists. The following year Harry S Truman announced that the United States would support all anti-communist movements, a policy that became known as the Truman Doctrine. It was triggered by American fears that the Communists in Greece would win and move against Turkey.

Another pillar of American foreign policy was the Marshall Plan of economic aid to war-ravaged European countries. Russia refused to participate and forced the regimes behind the Iron Curtain to do the same. Stalin objected to the control the United States would exercise over how the money would be spent. George Kennan, by then head of the State Department Office of Planning, played a key role in designing the Plan.

Follow-up for Mar. 24: Cold War America Reports: The Cold War Starts As the World War Ends

  • The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb + Universal newsreel of first film of atomic bomb test over the Bikini atoll in the South Pacific. This became public in August 1946, a year after the bombing of Hiroshima + City of Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum + Scientific Data on the effects of the blast provided by the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki University + U.S. Department of Energy's interactive site on the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb.
  • George Kennan, "Long Telegram" (Feb. 22, 1946) — text + helpful brief introduction to the "containment" policy towards the Soviet Union Kennan advocated from the U.S. Department of State + fuller statement of containment in "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published in Foreign Affairs (July 1947)
  • Winston S. Churchill, "Iron Curtain" speech, March 5, 1946 — text (excerpted) + audio file (partial video). See map below.
  • Truman Doctrine (address to Congress, March 12, 1947) — full text and audio + helpful brief introduction from the U.S. Department of State + "The International Dimension of the Greek Civil War," World Policy Journal, Spring 2000 by John O. Iatrides and Nicholas X. Rizopoulos.
  • The Marshall Plan (address at Harvard, June 5, 1947) — text and m4a file + helpful brief discussion by Hoover Institution fellows Peter J. Duignan and Lewis H. Gann


Map illustrating Winston Churchill's description of the Iron Curtain separating countries under Soviet control from the West

Follow-up for Mar. 26: Beginnings of the Cold War, continued — with the Cold War came fear, fear of Soviet expansion, fear of Soviet espionage, and finally fear of Soviet nuclear weapons, fears grounded in and epitomized by the following:

  • Truman Loyalty Program, Executive Order, March 21, 1947 + "Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist," Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives, Fall 2006, Vol. 38, No. 3, by Robert Justin Goldstein — the Loyalty Program was the Truman administration's attempt to get on top of fears of Russian spies and American double agents and thereby head off the initiatives of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) controlled by conservative Democrats and Republicans. Instead, most historians agree, the Loyalty Program actually contributed to a second Red Scare, usually denominated McCarthyism after the most influential and reckless purveyor of fear, Senator Joseph McCarthy.
  • QuickTime movie on Berlin Airlift with audio from Edward R. Murrow + Universal newsreel on airlift + Central Intelligence Agency report, "Effect of Soviet Restrictions on the U.S. Position in Berlin, June 14, 1948" — the USSR wanted to maintain the four-party occupation of Germany. The U.S., Britain, and France instead created the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany). As with the country as a whole, the former capital of Berlin, was divided into four zones of occupation. Again, the U.S., Britain, and France combined their zones into one and incorporated it into the new republic. Since the city was well within the Soviet zone of occupation (what would become the People's Republic of Germany or East Germany), the U.S.S.R. was able to impose a blockade of western truck and train traffic to the city, thus cutting off food, fuel, and other necessities. Americans saw the blockade as both a test of their will and an example of Soviet expansionism.
  • Universal newsreel on Whittaker Chambers showing "pumpkin patch" microfilm to HUAC (Richard Nixon) + testimony of Chambers and Alger Hiss before House UnAmerican Activities Committee — Alger Hiss, an architect of the United Nations treaty and former high State Department official, was on everyone's short list for Secretary of State. Whittaker Chambers was an editor at Time magazine. Chambers claimed that Hiss had been a spy for the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s when working for the Department of Agriculture. Chambers admitted his own Communist past. He had been a courier and had delivered some of Hiss' copied documents to his Russian overseer. Hiss denied everything. But, historians now agree, Chambers was telling the truth. The fact that someone that high in American foreign policy circles had been a Soviet agent fueled fears of Communist spies in key policy positions. Chambers' accusations had important long-term consequences.
    • One was to make Richard Nixon into a national figure. Nixon parlayed his role in uncovering Hiss into a successful run for the Senate in 1950 and then the Republican nomination for vice president in 1952.
    • Another was to give Senator McCarthy an initial target, Communists and Communist sympathizers (aka fellow travelers) in the State Department. If Hiss had spied for the Soviet Union, surely there could be others still doing so. Or so many thought.
    • Perhaps most importantly, McCarthy and his chief investigator Roy Cohn turned accusations of treason away from those targeted during the first Red Scare. Then immigrants from eastern Europe and Italy along with Jews were suspected. McCarthy, a Roman Catholic, and Cohn, a Jew, focused upon members of the WASP elite like Hiss. In some ways this was a sort of ethno-cultural revenge.
  • USSR successfully tests Atom bomb, August 29, 1949 + CIA report on how and why the agency dismissed the likelihood of a Soviet bomb before 1953 — until this test Americans had been confident that they would continue to hold a monopoly over atomic weapons into the foreseeable future. The successful Soviet test enormously intensified the dangers the Cold War posed and the accompanying popular insecurities. Americans soon learned that the British liasion at the Manhattan Project, a physicist named Karl Fuchs (a refugee from Nazi Germany), had given the Soviets the same scientific data he had turned over to the British. This caused an even greater furor over the possibility of American spies. Within months, in 1950, the FBI would arrest first Julius and then Ethel Rosenberg and charge them with stealing nuclear secrets and giving them to the Russians.


First Soviet Atomic Bomb Test: First Lightning/"Joe-1"
Time: 07:00 29 August 1949 (local)
Location: Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan
Test Height and Type: Tower
Yield: 22 Kt

  • Bevin Alexander, "1946-1949: The Victory of Communism" from The Triumph of China, The Middle Kingdom’s Long March from Degradation to World Power in the Twentieth Century — the Chinese Civil War had raged for decades. On one side were the reigning Nationalists; on the other were the Communists. During the 1930s Japan had seized large portions of Chinese territory and continued its expansion during the first several years of WWII. The Nationalists proved ineffectual in defending the country. In fact, only the Communist forces actively resisted the Japanese. With the war over, the U.S. had to decide what to do. Americans had long dreamed of "an empire in the Pacific," to use President Polk's phrase. William McKinley justified the American occupation of the Philippines on the grounds that they provided stepping stones to China and the potentially vast Chinese market. The desire to gain access to that market lay behind American resistance to Japanese expansionism. So, the stakes were high. But American leverage on the ground was limited. The Truman administration determined to provide military and economic assistance to the Nationalists. The Nationalists, however, proved no better at fighting the Communists than they had been at fighting the Japanese. In 1949 the administration admitted that its support of the Nationalists had not succeeded and that a Communist victory was inevitable. This immediately led to accusations that Communists and Communist sympathizers inside the administration had "lost" China.

 

Follow-up for Mar. 31: The Cold War intensifies
  • Korean War — Universal Newsreel "1950 Fateful Year" (6:57) + modified timeline + select materials from Truman Library online exhibition — at the Yalta Conference in early 1945 the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union agreed that, once Hitler had been defeated, the U.S.S.R. would enter the war against Japan. Stalin proved as good as his word, and the Red Army moved against Japanese forces on the Korean peninsula in early August. The Japanese army was in full retreat and, when the surrender came, the U.S. and the Soviet Union each occupied approximately half of the territory. As was the case in Germany, the U.S. organized the Republic of Korea in the South. The Soviet Union then set up the People's Republic of Korea (aka North Korea). The Communist victory in China in 1949 left South Korea surrounded by Communist states. Would the U.S. defend it if it were attacked? In 1950 it appeared that the answer might be "no." Secretary of State Dean Atcheson gave a speech on American security interests in the Pacific in which he omitted any mention of South Korea. The North Korean leadership took this as a tacit admission that the U.S. considered the Republic of Korea to be militarily indefensible. They obtained Stalin's permission to attack the South. He, however, refused to give them any military assistance. At first the war went well for the North. Then U.N. forces under American command (Gen. Douglas MacArthur) made a successful counter-attack, cutting the North's army in two at Inchon and quickly driving it back toward North Korea. The next question was: Should the U.N. forces drive them all the way to the Chinese border? China threatened to enter the war. McArthur, claiming that he understood the "oriental mind," thought they were bluffing. They were not. The Chinese poured vast numbers of troops into Korea and forced the U.N. forces to retreat rapidly towards Seoul, the South Korean capital. MacArthur sought perrmission to use atomic weapons against the Chinese. Truman, fearing that the Soviet Union would be able to retaliate against American troops and against Japan, refused. MacArthur went public, and Truman relieved him of his command. The war turned into a bloody stalemate until 1953 when the new Eisenhower administration negotiated a truce, one that still holds. Tens of thousands of U.S. forces remain in South Korean. North Korea turned into a nightmare state ruled by a small military elite. Many North Koreans, in an attempt to escape famine and oppression, have sought refuge in China as well as South Korea.
  • Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism — McCarthy was the junior senator from Wisconsin and a Republican. He had won the seat in 1946 to fill out the rest of the previous senator's term and faced re-election in 1950. He needed an issue. On Feb. 9, 1950 in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia he found it, "traitorous Communists" in the State Department. President Truman responded in a news conference on Mar. 30th by saying that McCarthy was the greatest "asset" the Soviets had in the U.S. Between early 1950 and the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, when he met his match in Joseph Welch, chief counsel for the Army, McCarthy became the face of militant anti-Communism. Their famous exchange over the loyalty of Fred Fisher is here. The U.S. Senate provides a brief introduction. For more information see "About McCarthyism" at the Modern American Poetry site at the University of Illinois prepared and compiled by Cary Nelson and Ellen Schrecker. Schrecker, a historian at Yeshiva University, is a noted expert on the subject. McCarthyism and the fear of its recurrence haunted the American political imagination thereafter, as we will see.
  • Rosenberg Spy Trial (1951) — link is to the Famous American Trials site that contains trial excerpts, photos, the judge's sentencing statement among other materials — historians are now generally agreed that Julius Rosenberg was part of a Soviet spy ring. His brother-in-law David Greenglass worked on the Manhattan Project as a carpenter. Because of security procedures, all Greenglass could get his hands on was one part of the bomb's triggering mechanism. The FBI tracked down Greenglass and the courier who gave the stolen plan to Rosenberg. Each confessed. So the FBI next arrested Rosenberg. They wanted him to name his Soviet contact so that they could unravel the rest of the spy ring. He refused to cooperate, instead insisting upon his innocence. In an effort to pressure him, the FBI arrested his wife Ethel. They assumed Julius would play ball to save her. Both Rosenbergs held firm. To heighten the pressure further, the Justice Department decided to seek the death penalty. Since the Rosenbergs had two young sons, the prosecution judged that one or both would cave rather than turn their children into orphans. They continued to insist on their innocence. An important part of the case is that did not lead to a spike in anti-Semitism despite the fact that all of the American members of the spy ring were Jewish. One reason is that the government tried the case before a Jewish judge and used Jewish prosecutors (one of whom was Roy Cohn, soon to be Senator McCarthy's chief investigator).
  • The Cuban Revolution (huge site with contemporary press accounts, photographs, government reports), the Bay of Pigs (U.S. documents, previously classified at George Washington University) + excerpt from Fidel Castro's speech at Havana's May Day celebrations on May 2, 1961 - less than two weeks after the Bay of Pigs invasion — given the limits on our time we will focus upon the Bay of Pigs fiasco. When Fidel Castro led his guerilla forces into Havana, Democrats took the opportunity to repay Republicans who had blamed them for "losing" China by charging that the Communist menace now was only 90 miles away. Kennedy used this charge to great effect against Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. Upon taking office JFK gave the go-ahead to a CIA plot to overthrow Castro. Everything that could go wrong with this operation did.
  • Cuban Missile Crisis (site at History Out Loud with RealAudio files of JFK and advisors and a helpful chronology) — also available at George Washington University where there are also previously classified documents from the US, Cuba, and USSR + a photo archive. Concern on Castro's part that the U.S. might launch a second invasion, this time using its own military forces instead of Cuban exiles, led him to seek Soviet protection. Nikita Kruschev, the Russian premier, saw an opportunity to strike a bargain with the U.S., which had missiles stationed on the Soviet border in Turkey. He offered to put Soviet missiles on Cuban soil, intending to trade their removal for an American agreement to remove its missiles from Turkey. Instead President Kennedy issued an ultimatum: the Soviet naval vessels carrying the missiles must turn around or face attack. This marked the most dangerous moment of the Cold War as the United States and the U.S.S.R. came closest to a nuclear exchange that could have ended human history. In the event, the U.S.S.R. removed its missiles. Some months later, the U.S. dismantled its missile sites on the Soviet border. Both countries learned the necessity of co-existence. Kruschev's recklessness cost him his position as premier.

 

Follow-up for Apr. 2: Vietnam — there is a wealth of relevant documents at Mount Holyoke + images from Google. The United States decided, in the immediate aftermath of WWII, to recognize France's sovereignty over IndoChina rather than the independence of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vietnam headed by Ho Chi Minh. Japan had occupied the region after Germany conquered France. French colonial officials, acting on orders from the collaborationist Vichy government, cooperated with the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Communists led by Ho waged a guerilla campaign against the Japanese. With the return of the French Ho waged war against them. In May 1954 the French lost a key battle at Dien Bien Phu. Later that year France accepted the Geneva Accords that granted independence to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The Accords called for a temporary division of Vietnam to allow families to relocate. This was to be followed by an internationally supervised election in 1955. The Eisenhower administration, which did not sign the Accords, instead established the Republic of Vietnam in the south of the country and refused to allow the election. What would be the point of an election that Ho Chi Minh, the "George Washington of Vietnam," was sure to win, Eisenhower asked. Ho then organized the People's Republic of Vietnam. [Please note the pattern in Germany, Korea, and Vietnam: U.S. initiative in organizing non-Communist states followed by Communists organizing states of their own.]

The Communists built a guerilla movement in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong. The U.S. provided military and economic assistance to the new government in the south. It was headed by Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother. Gradually the Diem government started to lose control over the countryside even as the Kennedy administration increased the number of American "advisors" and the amount of aid. Finally, in the fall of 1963, several South Vietnamese generals decided to overthrow Diem, with at least the tacit consent of the Kennedy administration. Diem was assassinated.

The situation on the ground did not improve and, after Kennedy's assassination a few weeks after Diem's, Lyndon Johnson had to decide what to do. He could acknowledge that South Vietnam, despite American aid, had become a failed state, pull out American forces, and allow reunification under Ho. Or, he could ramp up the American effort. LBJ chose the latter. Why? One reason he gave was that he feared another wave of McCarthyism, were the U.S. to "lose" another country to Communism. Another was the timing. He had big plans for the 1964 election and for the "Great Society" he wanted to create. Withdrawal from Vietnam would, he feared, bitterly divide the country, jeopardize his chances of winning the presidency on his own, and doom his social programs (that included Civil Rights legislation as well as anti-poverty measures). In addition, Johnson, like other American leaders and much to the dismay of George Kennan, believed in the domino theory. This held that, should one country "fall" to the Communists, so would neighboring states just as a falling domino knocks over the one next to it, which then knocks the one next to it and so on.

LBJ got through the 1964 election, achieving a landslide victory. In 1965, however, he faced the same choice he had in 1963. Again, he decided to escalate U.S. military involvement. Without realizing it, Johnson was trapping himself in what Daniel Ellsberg (who released the top secret Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post) called "the stalemate machine." Whenever the Communists appeared to be on the verge of victory, the U.S. would increase its forces in country. This would cause the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies to pull back to assess the new situation and plot new strategies. The resulting lull would cause American military and diplomatic personnel to conclude that the escalation was working. Unfortunately, the lull would give way to a new series of Viet Cong attacks which, in turn, would lead to more U.S. forces and a new lull and then another round of VC attacks.

The turning point came in February of 1968 with the Tet Offensive. It had been preceded by a lull that had led the American commander, William Westmoreland, to predict that the U.S. could leave in victory by Christmas. Barely had he said this then all hell broke loose. The VC launched attacks across the whole of South Vietnam. The resulting fighting broke the back of the Viet Cong, but it also broke the American consensus in favor of the war. Eliminating the VC as an effective military force meant that the Americans would face the North Vietnamese Army led by the general who had defeated the French, Vo Nguyen Giap. Westmoreland asked that U.S. forces, already at almost 600,000, be increased by another 250,000. LBJ withdrew from the Democratic presidential race. Hundreds of thousands joined the peace movement.

The divisions occasioned by the Vietnam War persisted until the 2008 presidential election in which the winner pledged to move the country beyond the divisions of the 1960s. Since the consequences of the war and the social, cultural, and political fissures it caused and/or caused to widen have proven so important, we will seek to make some sense of what actually happened.

We will look at several key years using the documents at Mount Holyoke and images from Google™

  • 1954
  • 1963
  • 1965
  • 1968
  • 1970 — the infamous "incursion" into Cambodia that led to the triumph of the Khymer Rouge and the killing of over a million Cambodians
  • 1972 — Paris peace conference and American withdrawal

Continued