The Good War Western Civilization in the Balance 1939-1945

The Atlantic Charter August 1941- Defense of Liberal Internationalism

No territorial gains

National self-determination

Global economic / social welfare

“Freedom from want and fear”

Postwar disarmament

Ideological Conflict

A. Paralyzed democracyDepression

Division

Isolation

Salvador Dali

1. Polarization in France

- Depression cancels out reform- anti-Semitism, fascism

Lèon Blum

2. British drift

- Maintaining Empire

- British Union of Fascists

Edward VIII

3. U.S. & the New Deal

- 1932: New Deal Coalition

- Leftward expansion

- Groundwork for prosperity

FDR

4. Totalitarian Europe

B. Appeasement

1. Rhineland ’36

- Hitler’s gamble Heinz Guderian

2. Anschluss ’38- Greater Germany

3. Munich Agreement ’38 - Sudetenland - “Peace in our time”

Neville Chamberlain

II. War for the EnlightenmentIf we fail, then the whole world, including the United

States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

- Winston Churchill

A. Early struggles

1. Fall of France Summer 1940

- Vichy RegimeMarshall Pétain

Collaborationists

2. Battle of Britain- Churchill May 1940- the “Blitz” Fall 1940

Nazi-Occupied Europe

B. U.S. as global power

1. Lend-lease March 1941- Atlantic War

2. Revolution in American Civil Society- War for Idealism- global commitment- FDR’s 4 Freedoms- Liberal Internationalism/ mulit-lateralism

3. United Nations Charter- June 26 1945

C. Domestic liberalism

- civil rights

- women’s rights

- social welfare

- Anti-imperialism

III. The New Crusade

World War II and the Foundations of the Cold War

“Crusade” against Totalitarian ideologies, not states

A. Stalinization

1. Totalitarianism- mind and body- v. Trotsky

2. Forced industrialization- 5-Year Plans- Collectivization

Liquidation of the kulaks

3. Comintern

4. Great Purges, 1934-38

“Gulag Archipelago”

Solzhenitsyn

5. Stalin’s foreign policy- Treaty of Rapallo, 1924

- Mutual Non-Aggression Pact, 1939

1. Stalin’s “Animal Farm”- ideology v. humanity- NKVD “Black Ravens”- Socialist dictatorship

2. Left in crisis

George Orwell

B. The Devil You Know

1. War in Russia Battle of Stalingrad, 1942

Battle of Kursk, 1943

2. Second Front- D-Day

3. Yalta Conference January 1945

C. The Iron Curtain

1. Winston Churchill 1946

D. Indirect opposition

1. 1947 – Truman Doctrine

2. Marshall Plan

3. “Atomic Diplomacy”

IV. Life in the Atomic Age

A. 1949

1. Turning pointa. 1948 – Berlin Airlift

b. 1949 – China “lost”

c. 1949 – Russian bomb

d. 1950 – Korean War

B. Idealism to paranoia

1. McCarthyism - HUAC

2. Containment- George F. Kennan- NATO

Joseph McCarthy

C. War by Proxy

1. Deterrence / “MAD”

1961- Berlin Wall

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis

2. Vietnam- Dien Bien Phu 1954- flexible response JFK

3. “Our Son-of-a-Bitch”- Cordell Hull

Augusto Pinchet

Shah of Iran Fulgencio Batista Chiang Kai-shek

D. Détente and divisions

1. “Monolithic” Communism- Mao Zedong

2. Suez Crisis 1956

3. Test Ban / Proliferation Treaties

4. Nixon in Moscow / China 1972

Cold War as permanent condition

V. End of the Cold War

A. Unrest

1. Unruly East- Hungary 1956- “Prague Spring” 1968- Poland & Solidarity 1980s- Afghanistan

2. Economic woes- stagnation, not starvation

B. Neo-Conservatism 1980 - 1989

1. Reagan / Thatcher military strength

hostility to “socialist”

domestic policies

unabashed patriotism

The end of the Cold War is “the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of

human government.”

The End of History and the Last Man- Francis Fukuyama 1992

C. Fall of the Soviet “Empire”1. Mikhail Gorbachev

Glasnost = openness

Perestroika = economic / administrative reform

2. 1989 – Lifting the Iron Curtain- Hungary elections- “Velvet” Revolution in Czechoslovakia- Fall of the Berlin Wall

4. Power and principle- revolution sacrificed for party discipline- standard of living sacrificed for military preparedness

Marxian Revolution never pans out- pragmatism- capitalism

North-South Divide

1. Population / resources

New ideological conflict?- Islamic Nationalism

neo-colonialism / Israeli-Palestinian conflict

- “Islamists”

rejection of “secular” values

Gulf (Iraq) Wars