The Cold War Abroad and At Home

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The Cold War Abroad and At Home
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1945-1947, Emerging Conflict among Allies

• How should Europe be reconstructed?
• Soviets wanted
• friendly regimes on their borders,
• to prevent Germany from becoming a threat again,
• to advance communism
• US and Britain wanted
• friendly regimes in Europe,
• to prevent Germany from becoming a threat again.
• to restore the existing economic and colonial
  relationships from before the war

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Western Nations and Their Empires, 1945
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Soviet Union
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Points of Conflict 1945-47

• Understanding each others motives see Kennan
  and Novikovs analyses
• Nuclear technology Americas A Bomb
• Escalating Rhetoric Churchills Iron Curtain
  speech and Stalins statements
• Hot spots Greece, Turkey, Iran, Berlin
• Crises dislocated peoples famine abuse by
  occupying powers

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American Initiatives, 1947-1950

• Truman Doctrine
• Marshall Plan
• Rearmament, peacetime draft and North Atlantic
  Treaty Organization (NATO)
• National Security State new CIA, strengthened
  FBI

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The Domestic Cold War

• Support for emerging Cold War policies was not
  universal
• The US had a small Communist Party since the
  Russian Revolution (1917). There were also
  Socialist (here in Milwaukee) or Labor Parties
  (Farm Labor in Minnesota).
• During World War II, the US was allied with the
  Soviet Union and left wing radical politics
  became, if not mainstream, quite common
• within the labor movement,
• in the entertainment industry,
• among intellectuals.

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Emerging Domestic Cold War local and national

• Communist control of media and intellectual life?
  
• Communist control of Labor Movement and Strike
  wave in 1946-47 (Examples only)
• General Motors nationwide test for United Auto
  Workers (UAW-CIO) and Walter Reuther
• Here in Milwaukee Allis Chalmers, conflict
  between largest employer in Wisconsin, and the
  most militant union in Wisconsin, Local 248 of
  UAW-CIO
• Went on strike in April 1946
• Strike lasted until March 1947.

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Cold War in Milwaukee The Allis Chalmers union.

• Was successful, militant, and had left wing
  leadership.
• Challenged and limited management rights and
  prerogatives on the shop floor.
• The precipitating event of the strike the
  dismissal of the impartial referee of the
  grievance procedure.
• Two grievance rulings the one expanded the
  authority of committeemen and shop stewards the
  other attached wages to workers and not jobs

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On the Picket Line, 1946
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The Issue of Communism

• When the 11-month strike started Communist
  leaders were not the issue.
• In the late summer of 1946, the union
  successfully moved into Wisconsin politics.
• One CIO unionist, Edmund Bobrowicz, managed to
  unseat a Milwaukee Democratic congressman in
  Democratic primary.
• In response, the company and the local media
  attacked the union leadership as communists.

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Why did the Milwaukee Sentinel publish this
political cartoon in the Fall of 1946?
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Allis Chalmers Corporation Campaign Principle
Represented Communist
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Principle Represented Communist
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Principle Represented Communist
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Bitter conflict in the Streets of West Allis
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The Strike Broken.

• In March 1947, the AC strikers recognized defeat
  and returned to work.
• A-C officials dismissed 97 strikers many union
  leaders, bargaining committee members, and shop
  stewards and committeemen.
• Union leader Harold Christoffel went on trial for
  perjury for denying he was a communist and after
  a long court fight was sentenced to 2 to 6 year
  jail term.

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The Strike Broken.

• A-C officials played a major role in the
  drafting of the Taft-Hartley Act which limited
  political activity of unions, It remains an
  albatross around labors neck today, restricting
  labor organizing.
• After Taft-Hartley the CIO expelled 11 CIO
  unions whose leaders refused to sign affidavits
  that they were not Communists.
• The domestic Cold War weakened the aggressiveness
  and militancy of American labor.

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The Cold War continuedlate 1940s and early 1950s

• Soviets blocked ground transport access to Berlin
  and Britain and US responded with an Airlift of
  supplies
• China became Communist
• Soviets developed an atom bomb
• War broke out in Korea
• A fearful time

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