The Cold War Period & American Society
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Allan M. Winkler in his book Modern America: The United States from World War II to the Present relates the history of what came to be called the Cold War period up to 1985, several years before the Cold War effectively ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. The author begins with World War II because he feels "that the war had a profound impact in shaping the nature of postwar society" (xi). He notes that the war developed differently in the United States than it did anywhere else--the U.S. came to the war later, fought overseas, experienced no devastation at home, and gained a confidence that would last beyond the war. The author emphasizes the diplomacy of the war period and the nature of the various alliances that were formed at that time. During and after the war, various conferences were held among the Allies, conferences that would become statements of principle and the basis of post-war institutions like the United Nations. In the postwar period, the U.S. experienced a business boom. Also, the U.S. found itself with a bureaucracy that had been developed partly for the New Deal and partly for waging war, and now it was retained to control and redirect American energies domestically. The author shows how American society developed because of the war and also because of the conclusion of the war. After the war, American society had to face new challenges with the polarization of the world into two opposing camps, the proliferation of nuclear weaponry, t
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in particular brought the Communist threat close to American shores for the first time. This was also the era in which Southeast Asia would become more important with the war in Indochina, soon to be known as the Vietnamese War. The Kennedy Administration had much to say about labor, about civil rights, and about effecting change in the political culture. It was a forward looking period, not as much as many people may have thought, but more so than had been seen before. Black Americans started using nonviolent protest as a political tool on a widespread basis, and this would become the vehicle of choice for a number of disaffected groups over the next few years and into our own present era. The Camelot era offered hope to a new generation, and the way it ended dashed those hopes and led to increased tensions and new demands during the rest of the 1960s.
The Johnson Administration was in place during the central portion of the decade. Johnson, like Truman, came into office because of a tragedy, a tragedy that wrenched the country and left scars that still have not fully healed. Johnson was an activist president more in the mold of Roosevelt than anyone else, and he tried to reshape society in a way that would benefit the p
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1675
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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