CW - 1950s & the Korean War (Lesson)

1950s & the Korean War

1950s

In 1950, the United States and the democratic government of South Korea went to war against the communist government of North Korea. North Korea was being aided by the new Chinese communist government that had recently won the Chinese Civil War in 1947.

Combat began when the communist North Korean troops invaded South Korea. The United States sent its troops to force the communists back to North Korea and drove them across the border. The U.S. troops then followed the enemy into North Korea in an effort to eliminate communism from the Korean peninsula. When the Americans reached the border between North Korea and China, the Chinese attacked, forcing the Americans back to South Korea. The fighting of the Korean War ended in 1953 with the Korean Peninsula still divided.

 

Building Walls

The Cold War involved the building of physical and figurative walls.

The Soviets built physical walls to keep citizens of communist nations in, and democratic influences out. The Berlin Wall (1961) is a good example of the physical walls the Soviets built.

The United States built figurative "walls" surrounding communist nations to keep their influence from spreading. An example of a figurative wall built by the United States is the 38th Parallel which divides North Korea and South Korea. The conflicts that arose between communist and democratic nations were usually the result of attempts to break through these walls.

The conflicts were the byproduct of the policy mentioned previously called the Truman Doctrine---the policy of containment in the Cold War era.

McCarthyism

On the domestic front, Americans had an increased fear of communism after a communist regime took control of China in 1950 and the United States and South Korea went to war against North Korean communists who were being aided by China's new communist government.

This spread of communism in Asia encouraged a desire among some Americans to stop communism from spreading to the United States.

A series of "Red Scares," highlighted by Senator Joseph McCarthy's statements about alleged communist infiltration of the U.S. government and U.S. Army, led to civil rights violations of those who were communists, were suspected of being communists or were suspected of knowing someone who might be a communist. 

Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, made himself a household name in the 1950s when he broadcast to the American people that he had a list of 205 “known Communists” who had infiltrated the U.S. State Department and were employed there. Later he modified his list to 57 names, but he had already caused hysteria and paranoia in the minds of American citizens; those citizens began to suspect those people around them of being undercover communists.

McCarthy’s mostly baseless claims fueled his notoriety and set the scene for a wave of measures to remove the perceived threat.

The 1950s anti-communist movement is called “McCarthyism” because the senator was the instigator.

Anti-communists in the Senate and House of Representatives spent countless hours of hearings into investigations of film and television (a new invention) industry leaders out of fear that Communists would secretively get their messages out in mass media to the American people as a means of “brainwashing” them in favor of communist principles.

In 1947 several well-known Hollywood directors and writers (later labeled the “Hollywood Ten”) were called to Washington, D. C. to testify before Congress. They refused to testify and used their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly as their rationale.

These ten and others who refused to cooperate were “blacklisted” in the 1950s which prevented them from working in Hollywood. 

 

The Threat of Nuclear War

The threat of nuclear war was a constant fear in the minds of the American people throughout the Cold War era. Both the United States and the Soviet Union spent vast sums of money developing nuclear weapons and technology in the “arms race” to be the dominant superpower in the world. Americans were always concerned that a “conventional war” like the Korean War would turn into a nuclear conflict.

Many Americans built bomb shelters in their backyards or basements and stocked them with non-perishable food and water in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviets. Additionally, local governments set up programs to outfit and designate schools, hospitals, and other large venues as bomb shelters to prepare the citizens for a nuclear disaster.

Governmental actions included air raid drills in schools much like there are fire and tornado drills---to prepare school children for the unthinkable...there would be an alarm and children were trained to “duck and cover” under their desks or evacuate to a fallout shelter.

 

The Rosenbergs

The United States found out in 1949 that the USSR had developed and tested a nuclear bomb and many Americans were convinced that communists in the United States had provided the Soviets with the American government’s secrets about the bomb.

The most notable of these suspected traitors were the Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, who were members of the Communist Party but who also insisted they were innocent. Both Julius and Ethel were executed by the electric chair in 1953 for their supposed crimes.

(Since the end of the Cold War era evidence has come to light that there is evidence that Julius was in fact involved in espionage on the part of the Soviet Union.)

 

The End of McCarthyism

Over time, critics asserted that some of the most severe anti-communist measures in the 1950s were violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Increasingly common, the criticism gained momentum after the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Senator McCarthy finally went too far when he accused military personnel of being Communist Party members. Other senators investigated and found McCarthy’s accusations to be baseless. In 1954 the Senate voted to censure McCarthy which ended the worst of the “witch hunt.” In 1957 the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Communist Party members under the Smith Act in the cast of Yates v. United States (1957.)

Senator McCarthy died in May 1957 of what modern historians have labeled alcoholism. He was 48 years old.

 

Cuba

In 1956 Fidel Castro led the Cuban Revolution, taking power in 1959. When he allied himself with the Soviet Union, suspended all elections, and named himself president for life, the United States turned against Castro and his communist government. In 1961, 1,500 Cuban exiles armed and trained by the CIA tried to stage an invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. The small force was crushed by Castro after President Kennedy refused to involve the U.S. Armed Forces. Twelve hundred of the invaders were captured, and the United States was forced to give $53 million worth of food and supplies to Cuba for the release of the captives.

The Soviets believed that, because Kennedy refused to involve the American military in Cuban affairs, he would not interfere if the Soviets built military missile launch sites in Cuba, so they installed Soviet missiles. The Soviet plan was that Cuba could use these missiles to prevent another U.S.- planned invasion. When an American spy plane took photos of a Soviet nuclear missile site being built in Cuba, Kennedy immediately began planning a response. He completely blockaded Cuba and threatened to invade unless the Soviets promised to withdraw from Cuba. Finally, the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles if the United States would remove its nuclear missiles installed near the Soviet Union in Turkey. The two nations removed their missiles in what is now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

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