Cold War and Consumerism Week 9

Cold War Conflict with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
a. The Big Threes vision for a Postwar World
b. The Atlantic Charter, the Yalta Conference, and the Potsdam Conference
Yalta Conference in February, 1945, the Big Three established the United Nations as a
security force for the post-war world and agreed to divide Germany into four zones, each
controlled by one of the Allied Powers: France, Great Britain, the United States, and the
Soviet Union.
c. Tensions over Eastern Europe
d. The Soviets develop their own nuclear weapons
e. Tensions over Germany and the Marshall Plan
f. Cold War military alliances
g. The U.S. policy of Containment
h. The Korean War
Cold War at Home: The Second Red Scare
a. Containment not working
b. Fear of Communist conspiracy infiltrating the United States
Communists are everywherein factories, offices,
butcher shops, on street corners, in private
businessesand each carries with him the germs
of death for society. Attorney General Tom Clark, 1947
c. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC)
d. Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism
The Affluent Society: Mass Consumer Culture and Economic Prosperity
a. Pentup consumer demand after deprivation of the Great Depression and wartime
rations
b. Era of economic prosperity
i. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society
ii. The Federal Role in Economic Prosperity
1. The GI Bill of Rights
2. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA)
The Space Race
a. Sputnik (blown up on launch)
b. Education programme to improve science and technological output 1958.