|
Harry S Truman
(1945-1953). April 12, 1945 - Harry Truman sworn in as 33rd
President.
April 16, 1945 - In his first speech to Congress,
President Harry S. Truman pledged to carry out the war and peace
policies of his late predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
April 16, 1945 - Just four days after President
Franklin Roosevelt passed away, federal government tacked another
year on to the term of one of Roosevelt's key pieces of wartime
legislation, the Lend-Lease Act. All told, the U.S. funneled $50.6
billion worth of Lend-Lease aid to the Allies during the war, the
majority of which went to Britain and the USSR.
April 23, 1945 - Soviet Foreign Minister
Molotov arrived at the White House for a meeting with the new
president. Truman immediately lashed out at Molotov, "in words of
one syllable," as the president later recalled. As Molotov
listened incredulously, Truman charged that the Soviets were
breaking their agreements and that Stalin needed to keep his word.
At the end of Truman's tirade, Molotov indignantly declared that
he had never been talked to in such a manner. Truman, not to be
outdone, replied that if Molotov had kept his promises, he would
not need to be talked to like that. Molotov stormed out of the
meeting. Truman was delighted with his own performance, telling
one friend that he gave the Soviet official "the straight one-two
to the jaw." The president was convinced that a tough stance was
the only way to deal with the communists, a policy that came to
dominate America's early Cold War policies toward the Soviets.
April 24, 1945 - President Harry Truman learns the
full details of the Manhattan Project, in which scientists are
attempting to create the first atomic bomb. The information thrust
upon Truman a momentous decision: whether or not to use the
world’s first weapon of mass destruction. FDR’s secretary of war,
Harry Stimson, and the army general in charge of the project,
Leslie Groves, brought Truman a file full of reports and details
on the Manhattan Project. They told Truman that although the U.S.
was the only country with the resources to develop the
bomb--eliminating fears that Germany was close to developing the
weapon--the Russians could possibly have atomic weapons within
four years. They discussed if, and with which allies, they should
share the information and how the new weapon would affect U.S.
foreign-policy decisions. Truman authorized the continuation of
the project and agreed to form an "interim committee" that would
advise the president on using the weapon. July 16 -
the team of scientists at the Alamogordo, New Mexico, research
station successfully exploded the first atomic bomb.
July 31, 1945 -
Truman gave Stimson the handwritten order to "release when ready
but not sooner than August 2".
August 6, 1945 -
First bomb was exploded over Hiroshima;
August 8 -
second was dropped on Nagasaki. The Japanese quickly surrendered.
Although other nations have developed atomic weapons and nuclear
technology since 1945, Truman remains the only world leader to
have ever used an atomic bomb against an enemy.
April 25, 1945 - Delegates from some 50 countries met
in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.
April 30, 1945 - Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dictator
of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter,
consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on
this day in 1945, as his "1,000-year" Reich collapses above him;
fifty-five feet under the chancellery (Hitler's headquarters as
chancellor), the shelter contained 18 small rooms and was fully
self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply.
January 16 - Hitler had repaired to his bunker after
deciding to remain in Berlin for the last great siege of the war;
bodies of Hitler and Eva were cremated in the chancellery garden
by the bunker survivors (as per Der Fuhrer's orders) and
reportedly later recovered in part by Russian troops. 1956
- A German court finally officially declared Hitler dead.
May 2, 1945 - The Soviet Union announced the fall of
Berlin (70,000 German troops laid down their arms in the surrender
that Adolf Hitler had said never would come, after twelve days of
history's deadliest street fighting) and the Allies announced the
surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria. Marshal
Stalin first issued an Order of the Day announcing destruction of
the German Ninth Army trapped southeast of Berlin, with the
capture of 120,000 of its men and the slaughter of at least
60,000. The greatest city ever to fall in battle, Berlin lay a
341-square-mile monument to the death of millions and to the
diseased ambition of one man, Adolf Hitler.
May 7, 1945 - Germany signed an unconditional
surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, to take effect
the following day, ending the European conflict of World War II;
brought the war in Europe to a formal end after five years, eight
months and six days of bloodshed and destruction, was signed for
Germany by Col. Gen. Gustav Jodl. General Jodl is the new Chief of
Staff of the German Army; signed for the Supreme Allied Command by
Lieut. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff for General
Eisenhower; also signed by Gen. Ivan Susloparoff for the Soviet
Union and by Gen. Francois Sevez for France.
May 8, 1945 - President Harry S Truman announced in
a radio address that World War II had ended in Europe. Great
Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day.
Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in
Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat
of the Nazi war machine. V-E Day marks the European victory of the
Allies in World War II.
June 8, 1945 - President Harry
Truman issues Executive Order 9568, permitting the release of
scientific information from previously top-secret World War II
documents. He hoped the information might help stimulate America’s
developing industries in the post-World War II economy. Order
provided for the release of scientific and technical data,
including highly sensitive information from World War II weapons
programs, but only after it had been reviewed first by the War and
Navy Departments and the director of War Mobilization and
Reconversion. The order laid out specific types of classifications
of information: secret, confidential and restricted. It also
allowed for documents to be classified with some "other comparable
designation [of secrecy level] or otherwise withheld from the
public for purposes of the national military security." New
classification system was designed to protect sensitive documents
that needed to remain secret in the interest of national security
while at the same time using some information to help transition
wartime industries to peacetime and create a robust post-war
economy. Stepping stone to future transparency-oriented
legislation including the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),
passed in 1966, which granted Americans the right to petition the
government for the release of information from federal agencies.
June 26, 1945 - The charter of the United Nations
was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.
July 6, 1945 - President Truman
signs executive order establishing Medal of Freedom.
July 11, 1945 - Soviet Union
promises to hand power over to British and U.S. forces in West
Berlin; accomplished, without incident, the following day.
Although the division of Berlin (and of Germany as a whole) into
zones of occupation was seen as a temporary postwar expedient, the
dividing lines quickly became permanent. The divided city of
Berlin became a symbol for Cold War tensions.
July 16, 1945 - United States
conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at its research
facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico (at the Alamogordo air base,
120 miles south of Santa Fe). The terrifying new weapon would
quickly become a focal point in the Cold War between the United
States and the Soviet Union. August 1942 - official
U.S. development of the atomic bomb began with the establishment
of the Manhattan Project; brought together scientists from the
United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility
of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive
power. The project proceeded with no small degree of urgency,
since the American government had been warned that Nazi Germany
had also embarked on a program to develop an atomic weapon.
Original $6,000 budget for the Manhattan Project finally ballooned
to a total cost of $2 billion.
July 17, 1945 - President Harry S.
Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill met in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam in the final
Allied summit of World War II to discuss issues relating to
postwar Europe and plans to deal with the ongoing conflict with
Japan. The issues at hand for the Big Three and their staffs were:
1) administration of a defeated Germany; 2) postwar borders of
Poland; 3) occupation of Austria; 4) Soviet Union's "place" in
Eastern Europe; 5) war reparations; 6) continuing war in the
Pacific. The conference soon bogged down on the issue of postwar
Germany. The Soviets wanted a united but disarmed Germany, with
each of the Allied powers determining the destiny of the defeated
power. Truman and his advisors, fearing the spread of Soviet
influence over all Germany--and, by extension, all of western
Europe--fought for and achieved an agreement whereby each Allied
power (including France) would administer a zone of occupation in
Germany. Russian influence, therefore, would be limited to its own
eastern zone. The United States also limited the amount of
reparations Russia could take from Germany. Discussion of the
continuing Soviet occupation of Poland floundered. August 2, 1945
- conference ended on; matters stood much where they had before
the meeting. There would be no further wartime conferences. Four
days after the conference concluded, the United States dropped an
atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan; on August 9, another bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki. World War II officially came to an end on
August 14, 1945.
July 18, 1945 -
In testimony before the House Military Affairs subcommittee, the
subcommittee's chief counsel, H. Ralph Burton, charges that 16
officers and non-commissioned officers in the U.S. Army have pasts
that "reflect communism." The charges, issued nearly 10 years
before Senator Joseph McCarthy would make similar accusations,
were hotly denied by the U.S. Army and government.
July 26, 1945 - Winston Churchill
resigned as Britain's prime minister after his Conservatives were
soundly defeated by the Labor Party. Clement Attlee became the new
prime minister. It was the first general election held in Britain
in more than a decade. The same day, Clement Attlee, the Labour
leader, was sworn in as the new British leader.
July 28, 1945 - The U.S. Senate ratified the United
Nations Charter by a vote of 89-2.
July 28, 1945 - Japanese premier
Suzuki disregards U.S. ultimatum to surrender.
August 2, 1945
- President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee concluded the Potsdam
conference. The conference failed to settle most of the important
issues at hand and thus helped set the stage for the Cold War that
would begin shortly after World War II came to an end. The meeting
at Potsdam was the third conference between the leaders of the Big
Three nations. The Soviet Union was represented by Joseph Stalin,
Britain by Winston Churchill, and the United States by President
Harry S. Truman. This was Truman's first Big Three meeting.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in April 1945, attended
the first two conferences--in Tehran in 1943 and Yalta in February
1945. At the Potsdam meeting, the most pressing issue was the
postwar fate of Germany. The Soviets wanted a unified Germany, but
they also insisted that Germany be completely disarmed. Truman,
along with a growing number of U.S. officials, had deep suspicions
about Soviet intentions in Europe.
August 6, 1945 - The United States
dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, that instantly killed
an estimated 66,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in
warfare. Bomb (weighs about 400 pounds) possessed more power than
20,000 tons of TNT, a destructive force equal to the load of 2,000
B-29's and more than 2,000 times the blast power of what
previously was the world's most devastating bomb. The President
referred to the joint statement issued by the heads of the
American, British and Chinese Governments in which terms of
surrender were outlined to the Japanese and warning given that
rejection would mean complete destruction of Japan's power to make
war.
August 8, 1945 - President Harry S. Truman signed
the United Nations Charter.
August 9, 1945 - The United States
exploded a nuclear device over Nagasaki, Japan, instantly killing
an estimated 39,000 people. The explosion came three days after
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (wiped out more than 60 percent of
the city). The target was an important industrial and shipping
area with a population of about 258,000 (two-thirds as large as
Hiroshima in population). Second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man." a
specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its
usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under
the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. The bomb was dropped at
11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city. The explosion unleashed the
equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded
the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but
the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and
80,000. Emperor Hirohito, by request of two War Council members
eager to end the war, met with the Council and declared that
"continuing the war can only result in the annihilation of the
Japanese people...." The Emperor of Japan gave his permission for
unconditional surrender.
August 10, 1945 -
President Harry S. Truman
orders a halt to atomic bombing of Japan as
Japan submits its acquiescence to the Potsdam Conference
terms of unconditional surrender. Japan announces willingness to
surrender to Allies provided status of Emperor Hirohito remained
unchanged.
August 14, 1945 - President Truman announced that
Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
Emperor Hirohito had submitted a formal declaration of surrender
to the Allies, via ambassadors, on August 10 but fighting
continued between the Japanese and the Soviets in Manchuria and
between the Japanese and the United States in the South Pacific
until the official announcement was made public to the Japanese
people. On the afternoon of August 14, Japanese radio announced
that an Imperial Proclamation was soon to be made, accepting the
terms of unconditional surrender drawn up at the Potsdam
Conference.
August 15, 1945 - Emperor Hirohito
broadcasts the news of Japan's surrender to the Japanese people;
voice-heard over the radio airwaves for the very first
time--confessed that Japan's enemy "has begun to employ a most
cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed
incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives." This was
the reason given for Japan's surrender. Hirohito's oral memoirs,
published and translated after the war, evidence the emperor's
fear at the time that "the Japanese race will be destroyed if the
war continues." A sticking point in the Japanese surrender terms
had been Hirohito's status as emperor. Tokyo wanted the emperor's
status protected; the Allies wanted no preconditions. There was a
compromise. The emperor retained his title; Gen. Douglas MacArthur
believed his at least ceremonial presence would be a stabilizing
influence in postwar Japan. But Hirohito was forced to disclaim
his divine status.
August 17, 1945
- Indonesian nationalists declared independence from the
Netherlands.
August 21, 1945 - President Harry Truman ended the
Lend-Lease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid to
America's allies during World War II.
August 29, 1945
- President Harry Truman issues Executive Order No. 9639, giving
the Secretary of the Navy the power to seize control of and
operate a list of petroleum refineries and transportation
companies in order to counteract strikes by oil workers. The list
of plants seized by the Navy included those owned by industry
giants: the Gulf, Shell, Standard and Union oil companies. War did
not formally end until the Japanese signed an unconditional
surrender agreement on September 2, 1945. Knowing that vast
amounts of oil would be required to enable demobilization and the
return of military equipment and personnel to the U.S., Truman was
forced to intervene between oil workers and management to avoid a
crippling shutdown of the industry. Oil, gas and chemical workers
had worked longer and harder than usual during the war to meet
production demands and now wanted to return to a 40-hour work
week. They resented the amount of money oil-industry CEOs were
making off of their labor while they simultaneously threatened to
lower workers’ wages after the war.
September 2, 1945 - Japan formally
and unconditionally surrendered in twenty-minute ceremony aboard
the Navy battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending World War II
- VJ Day. Twelve signatures, requiring only a few minutes to
inscribe on the articles of surrender, ended the bloody Pacific
conflict. On behalf of Emperor Hirohito, Foreign Minister Mamoru
Shigemitsu signed for the Government and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu for
the Imperial General Staff. One by one the Allied representatives
stepped forward and signed the document: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
for the United States, then the representatives of China, the
United Kingdom, the Soviet, Australia, Canada, France, the
Netherlands and New Zealand.
September 2, 1945 - Hours after
Japan's surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi
Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France; would be 30
years, however, before Ho's dream of a united, communist Vietnam
became reality.
September 22, 1945 - President Harry Truman accepted
the U.S. Secretary of War's recommendation to call the war, World
War II.
October 8, 1945 - President Harry S. Truman
announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only
with Britain and Canada.
October 11, 1945 - Negotiations
between Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader
Mao Tse-tung broke down.
October 17, 1945 - Col. Juan Peron
staged a coup, becoming absolute ruler of Argentina.
October 20, 1945
- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon formed the Arab League to
present a unified front against the establishment of a Jewish
state in Palestine.
October 24, 1945 - U.N. Charter (adopted and signed
on June 26, 1945) came into force upon its ratification by the
five permanent members of the Security Council (United States,
Great Britain, France, Soviet Union, China) and a majority of
other signatories; August 1941 - idea of the United
Nations articulated when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic
Charter (set of principles for international collaboration in
maintaining peace and security). Roosevelt coined "United Nations"
to describe the nations allied against the Axis powers--Germany,
Italy, and Japan. January 1, 1942 - term first
officially used when representatives of 26 Allied nations met in
Washington, DC., signed the Declaration by the United Nations,
which endorsed the Atlantic Charter and presented the united war
aims of the Allies; January 10, 1946 - first U.N.
General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, opened in London;
October 24, 1949 - cornerstone laid for the present
United Nations headquarters in New York City. Since 1945, the
Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded five times to the United
Nations and its organizations and five times to individual U.N.
officials.
November 8, 1945
- Revenue Act of 1945 cut $6 billion in taxes ( implemented to
help wage the war), initiated extensive post-war revision of the
nation's entire tax system.
November 13, 1945
- President Harry Truman announces the establishment of a panel of
inquiry to look into the settlement of Jews in Palestine. August
1945, Truman received the Harrison report, which detailed the
plight of Jews in post-war Germany, and it became clear to him
that something had to be done to speed up the process of finding
Jewish refugees a safe place to live. In late August, Truman
contacted British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to propose that
Jewish refugees be allowed to immigrate to Palestine, which at the
time was occupied by Britain. Attlee responded that he would look
into the matter and asked for a joint Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry to examine the complicated issue of integrating Jewish
settlers into territory that was home to an Arab majority.
Meanwhile, two U.S. senators introduced a resolution in Congress
demanding the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
November 13, 1945 - Charles de
Gaulle was elected president of France.
November 29, 1945 - Yugoslavia was
proclaimed a Federal People's Republic under Josip Tito's rule.
December 4, 1945 - The Senate passed by a 65-to-7
vote the legislation to give the United States full, active
participation in the United Nations Organization in accordance
with the San Francisco Charter that it ratified, 89 to 2 in July
1945; October 24, 1945 - Nations officially came
into existence (to arbitrate differences between countries and
stem military aggression) when China, France, the Soviet Union,
the United Kingdom, the United States and a majority of other
signatories ratified its charter; 1950 - the
Security Council, prodded by the United States and with the
Russian delegation absent, approved a peacekeeping force for
Korea = first time a UN peacekeeping force was committed to an
armed conflict.
December 4, 1945 - The Senate
approved United States participation in the United Nations.
January 10, 1946 - The first General Assembly of the
United Nations (fifty-one nations) convened in London; Paul-Henri
Spaak, Belgian Foreign Minister, elected President of the first
General Assembly; January 24 - General Assembly
adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful
uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other
weapons of mass destruction.
January 17, 1946 - The United Nations Security
Council held its first meeting.
January 31, 1946
- Yugoslavia, consisting of Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Serbia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, became a federal republic,
headed by Communist leader Marshal Tito.
February 1, 1946 - Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie
was chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United
Nations.
February 21, 1946 - Truman created the Office of
Economic Stabilization (OES), charged with keeping a watchful eye
over prices, and generally ensuring a smooth transition to a
peacetime economy. Truman tabbed Chester Bowles, a veteran New
Deal administrator who had previously led the Office of Price
Administration, to run the OES. However, Bowles's tenure quickly
turned sour, as lawmakers rolled back his power to govern price
controls; duly frustrated, Bowles retired the OES post just four
months after taking office.
February 22, 1946 - George Kennan, the American
charge d'affaires in Moscow, sends an 8,000-word telegram to the
Department of State, details his views on the Soviet Union
and U.S. policy toward the communist state; analysis provided one
of the most influential underpinnings for America's Cold War
policy of containment; among the U.S. diplomats to help establish
the first American embassy in the Soviet Union in 1933; throughout
World War II he was convinced that President Franklin D.
Roosevelt's spirit of friendliness and cooperation with Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin was completely misplaced. Less than a year
after Roosevelt's death, Kennan, then serving as U.S. charge
d'affaires in Moscow, released his opinions in what came to be
known as the "long telegram"; convinced that the Soviets would try
to expand their sphere of influence, and he pointed to Iran and
Turkey as the most likely immediate trouble areas. In addition,
Kennan believed the Soviets would do all they could to "weaken
power and influence of Western Powers on colonial backward, or
dependent peoples." Fortunately, although the Soviet Union was
"impervious to logic of reason," it was "highly sensitive to logic
of force." Therefore, it would back down "when strong resistance
is encountered at any point." The United States and its allies, he
concluded, would have to offer that resistance; Stalin's
aggressive speeches and threatening gestures toward Iran and
Turkey in 1945-1946 led the Truman administration to decide to
take a tougher stance and rely on the nation's military and
economic muscle rather than diplomacy in dealing with the
Soviets. These factors guaranteed a warm reception for Kennan's
analysis. His opinion that Soviet expansionism needed to be
contained through a policy of "strong resistance" provided the
basis for America's Cold War diplomacy through the next two
decades. Kennan's diplomatic career certainly received a boost--he
was named U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952.
March 5, 1946 -
Winston Churchill (defeated for re-election as prime minister in
1945) delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster
College in Fulton, MO; condemned the Soviet Union's policies in
Europe and declares, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."
Considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of
the Cold War; introduced by President Truman, Great Britain's
wartime Prime Minister asserted that a mere balance of power in
the world would be too narrow a margin and would only offer
"temptations to a trial of strength"; added that the
English-speaking peoples must maintain an overwhelming
preponderance of power on their side until "the highroads of the
future will be clear, not only for our time but for a century to
come"; painted a dark picture of post-war Europe, on which "an
iron curtain has descended across the Continent" from Stettin in
the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.
March 21, 1946 - The United Nations set up temporary
headquarters at Hunter College in New York City.
March 28, 1946 - State Department
releases the so-called Acheson-Lilienthal Report, which outlines a
plan for international control of atomic energy. The report
represented an attempt by the United States to maintain its
superiority in the field of atomic weapons while also trying to
avoid a costly and dangerous arms race with the Soviet Union.
Report suggested that an international body-such as the United
Nations-have control over atomic materials and the means of
producing nuclear energy. Information on atomic energy would be
shared, research facilities would be divided among the nations
involved, and the international body would conduct inspections. In
the meantime, while this organization was being established, the
United States would maintain its atomic monopoly. June 1946
- Truman selected businessman Bernard Baruch to present the plan
at the United Nations. Baruch, however, changed many of the key
points of the plan and insisted that the United States would have
an ultimate veto power on any issues arising in connection with
the plan. The Soviets quickly rejected the idea so the vote was
never held in the United Nations. The United States and the Soviet
Union would go their own ways in developing their nuclear
arsenals. In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atomic device and the
nuclear arms race was on.
April 1946 - The Anglo-American
Committee of Inquiry (examining the complicated issue of
integrating Jewish settlers into territory that was home to an
Arab majority) issued its report, which recommended the
immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine. Truman wrote
to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee for his help in moving
the repatriation process forward. However, by mid-1946, the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff had weighed in, bringing up the question of
who would control the lucrative oil fields in a region that had
the potential for unstable political and cultural relations
between Jews and Arabs. Since the threat of communist expansion
into politically unstable regions then dictated most of U.S.
foreign policy, Truman and Attlee became convinced by their
respective military advisors that Jewish communist sympathizers in
a new Jewish state might jeopardize the west’s access to Middle
Eastern oil. The settlement plans were put on hold. Truman was
again inundated with requests for help from the Jewish community.
The issue of the establishment of a Jewish state was debated and
delayed for another two years even though the newly formed United
Nations, which had no enforcement power without the participation
of the United States and Great Britain, had decided in favor of a
Jewish state by 1946.
April 8, 1946 - The League of Nations met for the
last time; April 18, 1946 -
The League of Nations went out of business.
April 18, 1946 - U.S. recognizes Tito's Yugoslavia
government.
May 17, 1946 - President Harry S. Truman seized
control of the nation's railroads, delaying a threatened strike by
engineers and trainmen.
June 2, 1946 - The Italian monarchy was abolished in
favor of a republic.
June 15, 1946
- United States presents the Baruch Plan for the international
control of atomic weapons to the United Nations. The failure of
the plan to gain acceptance resulted in a dangerous nuclear arms
race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the
Cold War. Baruch sided with those who feared the Soviets, and his
proposal reflected this. His proposal did provide for
international control and inspection of nuclear production
facilities, but clearly announced that the United States would
maintain its nuclear weapons monopoly until every aspect of the
proposal was in effect and working. The Soviets, not surprisingly,
rejected the Baruch Plan. The United States thereupon rejected a
Soviet counterproposal for a ban on all nuclear weapons.
July 1, 1946 - Communicable
Disease Center (CDC) came into being on one floor of a small
building in Atlanta, Georgia; descended from wartime agency,
Malaria Control in War Areas (MCWA); initially focused on fighting
malaria by killing mosquitoes; one of the 13 major operating
components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),
which is the principal agency in the United States government for
protecting the health and safety of all Americans and for
providing essential human services, especially for those people
who are least able to help themselves.
July 4, 1946 -
The United States granted the Philippine Islands their
independence.
July 25, 1946 - The United States
detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the
first underwater test of the device.
August 1, 1946 - President Harry S. Truman signed
the Fulbright Program into law, establishing the scholarships
named for Sen. J. William Fulbright.
August 1, 1946
- President Harry S. Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act, created
The Atomic Energy Commission, transferred the control of atomic
energy from military to civilian hands. Almost a year after World
War II ended, Congress established the United States Atomic Energy
Commission to foster and control the peace time development of
atomic science and technology. The National Laboratory system was
established from the facilities created under the Manhattan
Project, and Argonne National Laboratory was one of the first
laboratories authorized under this legislation as a
contractor-operated facility dedicated to fulfilling the new
Commission's mission.
August 1, 1946 - The McMahon Act mandated civilian
control of atomic energy under the auspices of the Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC).
September 30, 1946
- An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found
22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes; October 1, 1946
- 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the
International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those
condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi
minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the
Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick,
minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess,
Adolf Hitler's former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging
from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted. The trial,
which had lasted nearly 10 months, was conducted by an
international tribunal made up of representatives from the United
States, the USSR, France, and Great Britain. It was the first
trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges
ranging from crimes against peace to crimes of war and crimes
against humanity. On October 16 - 10 of the
architects of Nazi policy were hanged one by one. Hermann Goering,
who at sentencing was called the "leading war aggressor and
creator of the oppressive program against the Jews," committed
suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi
Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia; he
is now known to have died in Berlin at the end of the war.
October 23, 1946 - The United Nations General
Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium
in Flushing Meadow.
October 28, 1946 - President Harry S. Truman
appointed a five-man commission of civilians to The Atomic Energy
Commission, established by the U.S. Atomic Energy Act approved
August 1, 1946 to develop and utilize atomic energy toward
improving the public welfare, increasing the standard of living,
strengthening free competition in private enterprise, and
promoting world peace; first meeting took place on November 13,
1946, although the official confirmation by the Senate occurred
April 9, 1947. The chairman was David Eli Lilienthal.
November 4, 1946 - UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) was
established, with its headquarters in Paris.
November 6, 1946 - English
Parliament passed the National Health Service Act of 1946, by
which the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for
Scotland are to promote a comprehensive health service for the
improvement of the physical and mental health of the people of
England and Wales and Scotland, and for the prevention, diagnosis,
and treatment of illness.
November 21, 1946 - Harry Truman
becomes first U.S. president to travel in a submerged sub.
December 11, 1946 - The United
Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was
established.
December 12, 1946 - A United Nations committee voted
to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a
gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of U.N.
headquarters.
December 14, 1946 - The United Nations General
Assembly voted to establish the U.N. headquarters in New York
City.
December 20, 1946 - The morning
after Viet Minh forces (Vietnamese guerrilla organization) under
Ho Chi Minh launched a night revolt in the Vietnamese capital of
Hanoi, French colonial troops crack down on the communist rebels.
Ho and his soldiers immediately fled the city to regroup in the
northern countryside. The conflict stretched on for eight years,
with Mao Zedong's Chinese communists supporting the Viet Minh, and
the United States aiding the French and anti-communist Vietnamese
forces.
December 31, 1946
- President
Truman officially proclaimed the end of hostilities in World War
II; covered period of actual fighting and duration of many
war-time statues; terminated immediately eighteen emergency laws,
scheduled thirty-three other statutes for expiration in six months
or later; War Labor Disputes Act (Smith-Connally Act) is most
important law affected (ends in six months).
March 11, 1947 - President Harry Truman writes to
his good friend, former President Herbert Hoover, thanks him for
his help in investigating post-World War II reconstruction issues
in Germany and Austria; 1945 - Truman first consulted the former
president for his expertise on foreign policy; 1914
- Hoover had established a food-aid program for Belgium while
serving as U.S. food administrator. He had also headed the
American Relief Administration from 1917 to 1921 and implemented
critical food-rationing and distribution policies for the U.S.,
Europe and Russia before becoming president in 1929; 1946
- Truman appointed former President Hoover (71) as honorary
chairman of the Famine Emergency Committee; 1947 -
Truman asked Hoover to chair the Commission on Organization of the
Executive Branch, to pare down and refine the post-World War II
federal government to improve administrative efficiency, curb the
powers of the executive branch, loosen what both men considered to
be excessive regulatory control of the private business sector.
This commission became known as the Hoover Commission.
March 12,
1947 - President Truman established what became known
as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism;
proposed that this country intervene wherever necessary throughout
the world to prevent the subjection of free peoples to
Communist-inspired totalitarian regimes at the expense of their
national integrity and importance; requested $400,000,000 to
bolster the hard-pressed Greek and Turkish governments against
Communist pressure, President said the constant coercion and
intimidation of free peoples by political infiltration amid
poverty and strife undermined the foundations of world peace and
threatened the security of the United States; de facto declaration
of the Cold War. Truman's address outlined the broad parameters of
U.S. Cold War foreign policy: the Soviet Union was the center of
all communist activity and movements throughout the world;
communism could attack through outside invasion or internal
subversion; and the United States needed to provide military and
economic assistance to protect nations from communist aggression;
set the guidelines for over 40 years of U.S.-Soviet relations.
March 21, 1947 - President Truman signs Executive
Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have allegiance to
the United States; March 22, 1947
- issues an executive decree establishing a sweeping loyalty
investigation of federal employees (in response to public fears
and Congressional investigations into communism in the United
States). Loyalty boards were to be set up in every department and
agency of the federal government to review every employee )based
on lists of "totalitarian, fascist, communist, or
subversive" organizations provided by the attorney general, and on
investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation). If there
existed "reasonable grounds" to doubt an employee's loyalty, he or
she would be dismissed. A Loyalty Review Board was set up under
the Civil Service Commission to deal with employees' appeals;
program resulted in the discovery of only a few employees whose
loyalty could be "reasonably" doubted.
March 24, 1947 - John D Rockefeller, Jr. donates New
York City East River site to the U.N.
April 9, 1947 - Atomic Energy Commission confirmed.
April 16, 1947 - Multimillionaire and
financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech attacking industrial labor
problems in the country, given during the unveiling of his
portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coins the
term "Cold War" to describe relations between the United States
and the Soviet Union. The phrase stuck, and for over 40 years it
was a mainstay in the language of American diplomacy. Term "Cold
War" was instantly embraced by American newspapers and magazines
as an apt description of the situation between the United States
and the Soviet Union: a war without fighting or bloodshed, but a
battle nonetheless.
April 25, 1947 - President Harry S. Truman
officially opens the first White House bowling alley; situated in
the West Wing; 1955 - Eisenhower closed the
alley, turned it into a mimeograph room. Later, another alley was
opened next door in the Old Executive Office Building (now the
Eisenhower Building), which President Johnson and his wife Lady
Bird used frequently. Nixon used that second bowling alley until
he had an additional one-lane alley installed underground directly
beneath the North Portico entrance of the White House.
April 30, 1947
- President Harry S Truman signed a
measure changing the name of Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam (in honor
of Herbert Hoover).
May 3, 1947 - Japan's postwar constitution goes into
effect. The progressive constitution granted universal suffrage,
stripped Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power, stipulated a
bill of rights, abolished peerage, and outlawed Japan's right to
make war. The document was largely the work of Supreme Allied
Commander Douglas MacArthur and his occupation staff, who had
prepared the draft in February 1946 after a Japanese attempt was
deemed unacceptable. In 1948, Yoshida Shigeru's election as prime
minister ushered in the Yoshida era, marked by political stability
and rapid economic growth in Japan. In 1949, MacArthur gave up
much of his authority to the Japanese government, and in September
1951 the United States and 48 other nations signed a formal peace
treaty with Japan. April 28, 1952 - the treaty
went into effect, and Japan assumed full sovereignty as the Allied
occupation came to an end.
May 13, 1947 - Senate approved the Taft-Hartley Act
limiting the power of unions.
May 22, 1947
- the Truman Doctrine was enacted as Congress appropriated
military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey.
June 4, 1947 - The House of Representatives
overwhelmingly approved the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows the
president to intervene in labor disputes.
June 5, 1947 - Secretary of State George C.
Marshall, speaking at Harvard University, outlined an aid program
for Europe that came to be known as the Marshall Plan.
June 20, 1947 -
President Truman vetoes Taft-Hartley Act.
June 23, 1947 -
The Senate (68 to 25, or six votes more than the necessary two-
thirds) joined the House (331 to 83) in overriding President
Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
July 1, 1947 - State Department
official George Kennan, using the pseudonym "Mr. X," publishes an
article entitled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in the July
edition of Foreign Affairs. The article focused on Kennan's call
for a policy of containment toward the Soviet Union and
established the foundation for much of America's early Cold War
foreign policy. Kennan's article created a sensation in the United
States, and the term "containment" instantly entered the Cold War
lexicon. The administration of President Harry S. Truman embraced
Kennan's philosophy, and in the next few years attempted to
"contain" Soviet expansion through a variety of programs,
including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) in 1949. Kennan's star rose quickly in the
Department of State and in 1952 - he was named U.S.
ambassador to Russia. By the 1960s, with the United States
hopelessly mired in the Vietnam War, Kennan began to question some
of his own basic assumptions in the "Mr. X" article and became a
vocal critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In particular, he
criticized U.S. policymakers during the 1950s and 1960s for
putting too much emphasis on the military containment of the
Soviet Union, rather than on political and economic programs.
July 2, 1947 - "Roswell Incident"
began in the New Mexico desert near the town of Roswell, NM when a ranch foreman, W. W. Brazel, found strange, shiny
material littering the ground. Mr. Brazel gave it to the sheriff,
who turned it in to the military authorities at the nearby air
base. Roswell Army Air Field issued a news release about the crash
of a flying disk, prompting a newspaper, The Roswell Daily Record,
to run an article under the headline: 'R.A.A.F. Captures Flying
Saucer.' Military officials retreated the next day, calling the
curious debris merely a downed weather balloon.
July 2, 1947 - Soviet Foreign
Minister V. M. Molotov walked out of a meeting with
representatives of the British and French governments, signaling
the Soviet Union's rejection of the Marshall Plan. Molotov's
action indicated that Cold War frictions between the United States
and Russia were intensifying. Molotov immediately made clear the
Soviet objections to the Marshall Plan: 1) it would include
economic assistance to Germany, and the Russians could not
tolerate such aid to the enemy that had so recently devastated the
Soviet Union; 2) Molotov was adamant in demanding that the Soviet
Union have complete control and freedom of action over any
Marshall Plan funds Germany might receive; 3) the Foreign Minister
wanted to know precisely how much money the United States would
give to each nation. None of the Soviet satellites participated in
the Marshall Plan. The Soviet press claimed that the American
program was "a plan for interference in the domestic affairs of
other countries." The United States ignored the Soviet action and,
in 1948 - officially established the Marshall Plan
and began providing funds to other European nations.
July 9, 1947 - Spain votes for
Franco monarchy.
July 9, 1947 - General Dwight D.
Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army, first woman in U.S. history to hold
permanent military rank; had served as superintendent of the Army
Nurse Corps during World War II and was instrumental in securing
passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act, which was advocated by
Representative Frances Payne Bolton. 1951 - received
the Florence Nightingale Award from the International Red Cross.
1978 - a U.S. Army hospital in Fort Campbell,
Kentucky, was named in her honor.
July 16, 1947 -
The National Security Act is passed, creating the independent U.S.
Air Force. It replaces the U.S. Army Air Forces.
July 18, 1947 - President Harry Truman signed the
Presidential Succession Act. The act revised
an older succession act that was passed in 1792 during George
Washington’s first term. Resurrected the original 1792 law
(designated the Senate president pro tempore as the first in line
to succeed the president should he and the vice president die
unexpectedly while in office. If he for some reason could not take
over the duties, the speaker of the house was placed next in the
line of succession) but placed the speaker ahead of the Senate
president pro tempore in the hierarchy. Truman’s critics at the
time claimed that the president did so because he had a close
friendship with then-Speaker Sam Rayburn, and a less congenial
relationship with Kenneth McKellar, the president pro tempore.
July 26, 1947 - President Truman signed the National
Security Act; created the Department of Defense, the National
Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; unified the Army and Navy under the Department of
Defense.
August 14, 1947 - Pakistan became
independent of British rule. In Karachi, capital of Pakistan,
Mohammed Ali Jinnah will take the oath this morning as Governor
General of the Moslem dominion which he was the primary figure in
creating against the demand for a united India. This ceremony at
the Sind Provincial Government House, which is now Mr. Jinnah's
official residence, will be the only event marking the transfer of
power from British to Indian hands in that dominion. The Viceroy,
Viscount Mountbatten, addressed the Pakistan Constituent Assembly
yesterday -- his last official act as Viceroy.
August 15, 1947 - Indian
Independence Bill, which carves the independent nations of India
and Pakistan out of the former Mogul Empire, comes into force at
the stroke of midnight. India granted independence within British
Commonwealth. Dominion of India reached the goal of freedom when
the rule of the King-Emperor came to an end, with minimum
celebration and a few speeches that stressed the gravity of the
tasks ahead of the new nation. Mohandas K. Gandhi was in humble
surroundings of his own choosing among the Moslems of Calcutta,
where he felt he was needed more. The Constituent Assembly or the
Government of India assumed its sovereign power solemnly in a
special session that began at 11 p.m. last night and reached its
climax at twelve o'clock. As the hands of the clock in the stately
assembly hall of the State Council building met at midnight
India's Cabinet Ministers and Members of the Assembly listened in
silence to the chimes of the hour. As the last note died an
unidentified member blew a conch shell of the kind used in Hindu
temples to summon the gods to witness a great event. Instantly a
great cheer arose. India at that moment had become a free member
of the British Commonwealth of Nations -- free even to leave the
commonwealth if she chooses. President and Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru, Prime Minister of the Dominion Government drove half a mile
to the VIceroy's house -- now to be known as Government House --
and passed to Viscount Mountbatten two momentous announcements:
first, that the Constituent Assembly of India had assumed the
power of governance of this country and second that the same
Assembly had endorsed a recommendation that Viscount Mountbatten
be Governor General of India from today.
September 2, 1947 - Rio Pact was signed; set up a
defensive military alliance between the United States and the
nations of Latin America.
September 17, 1947 - James V. Forrestal was sworn in
as the first U.S. secretary of defense.
September 18, 1947 - The National Security Act,
which unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force, went into
effect. John L. Sullivan took the oath as Secretary of the Navy
and W. Stuart Symington took the oath as the Secretary of the now
independent Air Force.
October 5, 1947 - In the first televised
White House address, President Truman asked Americans to refrain
from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help
stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.
October 20, 1947 - The House
Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged
Communist influence in the motion picture industry.
November 25, 1947 - Representatives from the
United States, France, Great Britain, Soviet Union meet to
discuss the fate of postwar Europe; focus on the future of
Germany (divided into sections occupied by forces from the four
nations since the end of the war in 1945); December 1945
- meeting dissolved in acrimony and recriminations; American
delegation, headed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall,
insisted on Western Germany's participation in the European
Recovery Program (ERP), so-called Marshall Plan through which
the United States pumped billions into the war-torn nations of
western Europe in an effort to revive their sagging economies
and establish a bulwark against the advance of communism in
Europe; Americans staved off Russian attempts to push forward
with German reunification; decided prior to the meeting
that should the talks fail, it should be made to appear that the
Soviets were at fault.
November 29, 1947 - Despite strong Arab
opposition, the United Nations votes for the partition of
Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state
(Britain, unable to find a practical solution, had referred the
problem to the United Nations); 1910s - origins of
modern conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine - both groups
laid claim to the British-controlled territory; Jews were Zionists
(recent emigrants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient
homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state), native
Palestinian Arabs sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a
secular Palestinian state; Jews were to possess more than half of
Palestine, though they made up less than half of Palestine's
population; May 14, 1948 - Britain withdrew with the
expiration of its mandate, State of Israel was proclaimed by
Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion; next day, forces from
Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq invaded; Israelis managed
to fight off the Arabs, then seize key territories (Galilee,
Palestinian coast, Gaza strip of territory connecting the coastal
region to the western section of Jerusalem); 1949 -
U.N.-brokered cease-fires left the State of Israel in permanent
control of those conquered areas.
December 6, 1947 - Everglades National Park in
Florida was dedicated by President Harry S. Truman.
December 30, 1947 - King Michael of Romania
agreed to abdicate, but charged he was being forced off the throne
by Communists.
January 4, 1948 - Britain granted
independence to Burma.
January 30, 1948 - Indian political and spiritual
leader Mahatma Gandhi (78) was murdered by a Hindu extremist. The
assassin was immediately identified as Nathura Vinayak Godse, 36,
a Hindu of the Mahratta tribes in Poona, a center of resistance to
Gandhi's ideology (objected to Gandhi's tolerance for the Muslims)
. Mr. Gandhi died twenty-five minutes later. Gandhi's Vaishnava
mother was deeply religious and early on exposed her son to
Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian religion that advocated
nonviolence. 1920 - he was leader of the Indian
movement for independence. He reorganized the Indian National
Congress as a political force and launched a massive boycott of
British goods, services, and institutions in India. 1922
- he abruptly called off the satyagraha when violence erupted. One
month later, he was arrested by the British authorities for
sedition, found guilty, and imprisoned. 1928- he
returned to national politics when he demanded dominion status for
India and in 1930 launched a mass protest against the British salt
tax, which hurt India's poor. In his most famous campaign of civil
disobedience, Gandhi and his followers marched to the Arabian Sea,
where they made their own salt by evaporating sea water. The
march, which resulted in the arrest of Gandhi and 60,000 others,
earned new international respect and support for the leader and
his movement. 1942 - Gandhi launched the "Quit
India" movement which called for a total British withdrawal.
Gandhi and other nationalist leaders were imprisoned until 1944.
1945 - a new government came to power in Britain,
and negotiations for India's independence began. Gandhi sought a
unified India, but the Muslim League, which had grown in influence
during the war, disagreed.
August 15, 1947
- After protracted talks, Britain agreed to create the two
new independent states of India and Pakistan. Gandhi was greatly
distressed by the partition, and bloody violence soon broke out
between Hindus and Muslims in India.
February 4, 1948 - The island nation of Ceylon - now
Sri Lanka - became an independent dominion within the British
Commonwealth.
February 18, 1948 - After 16 years as head of
independent Ireland Eamon de Valera steps down as the taoiseach,
or Irish prime minister, after his Fianna Fail Party fails to win
a majority in the Dail Eireann (the Irish assembly). As a result
of the general election, the Fianna Fail won 68 of the 147 seats
in the Dail, and de Valera resigned rather than lead a coalition
government. In his place, John A. Costello, leader of the Fine
Gael Party, joins with several smaller groups to achieve a
majority and becomes Irish prime minister. 1949 -
John Costello, officially made Ireland an independent republic;
1951 - lost the prime minister's office to de Valera.
1954 - Costello began a second ministry as the
relative Irish economic prosperity of the 1940s declined in the
1950s; 1957 -replaced again by de Valera. 1959
- de Valera resigned as prime minister and was elected Irish
president--a largely ceremonial post. June 24, 1973
- de Valera, then the world's oldest head of state, retired from
Irish politics at the age of 90.
February 25, 1948 - Under pressure from the
Czechoslovakian Communist Party, President Eduard Benes allows a
communist-dominated government to be organized. Although the
Soviet Union did not physically intervene, Western observers
decried the virtually bloodless communist coup as an example of
Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe. Rigged elections were held
in May to validate the communist victory. Benes then resigned and
his former foreign minister Jan Masaryk died under very suspicious
circumstances. Czechoslovakia became a single-party state. Both
the United and Great Britain denounced the communist seizure of
power in Czechoslovakia, but neither took any direct action.
Perhaps having put too much faith in Czechoslovakia's democratic
traditions, or possibly fearful of a Soviet reaction, neither
nation offered anything beyond verbal support to the Benes
government. The Communist Party, with support and aid from the
Soviet Union, dominated Czechoslovakian politics until the
so-called "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 brought a non-communist
government to power.
March 31, 1948 - Congress passes Marshall Aid Act to
rehabilitate war-torn Europe.
April 3,
1948 - President Truman signed the Marshall
Plan ,(Foreign
Assistance Act of 1948),
allocated more than $5 billion
in aid for 16 European countries; channeled more than $13 billion
in aid to Europe between 1948 and 1951; intended to : 1) spark
economic recovery in European countries devastated by World War
II, 2) save the United States from a postwar recession by
providing a broader market for American goods. However, because
the USSR prevented countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia from
participating, the plan also contributed to the raising of the
"Iron Curtain" between Eastern and Western Europe.
April 7, 1948 - U. N. founded The World
Health Organization..
April 19, 1948 - Chiang Kai-shek elected president
of Nationalist China.
April 30, 1948 - United States and 20 Latin American
nations sign the charter establishing the Organization of American
States (OAS) in Bogota, Colombia. The new institution was designed
to facilitate better political relations between the member states
and, at least for the United States, to serve as a bulwark against
communist penetration of the Western Hemisphere. OAS proved a
disappointment for the U.S. since the other member states did not
seem to share its own Cold War zeal (Castro's Cuba, Dominican
Republic in 1965); Latin American member states have also been
disappointed in the OAS (U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of the
government of Guatemala in 1954, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion
in Cuba in 1961, the intervention in the Dominican Republic in
1965, and other examples of the unilateral use of force by the
United States indicate that it had not given up its "gunboat
diplomacy" in Latin America).
May 1, 1948 - The People's Democratic
Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed.
May 3, 1948 - The U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to
blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
May 14, 1948 - In Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency Chairman
David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the National Council and the first
Premier of reborn Israel, proclaims the State of Israel,
establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years as British rule
in Palestine came to an end. Recognition of the state by the
United States, which had opposed its establishment at this time,
came as a complete surprise to the people, who were tense and
ready for the threatened invasion by Arab forces and appealed for
help by the United Nations. The first action of the new Government
was to revoke the Palestine White Paper of 1939, which restricted
Jewish immigration and land purchase. May 15, 1948 -
Hours after declaring its independence, the new state of Israel
was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
June 7, 1948 -
The Communists completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia with the
resignation of President Eduard Benes (elected "president for
life" in 1946). He resigned rather than sign a new constitution
that would make his nation into a communist state. His resignation
removed the last remnant of democratic government in
Czechoslovakia and cleared the way for a communist-controlled
regime; February 1948 - communists staged a political coup, and
pushed opposition parties from the government. May 1948
- communist-controlled Parliament produced a new constitution
patently designed to serve the interests of the Communist Party.
June 18, 1948 -
United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its
International Declaration of Human Rights, "common standard of
achievement for all peoples and all nations." The Declaration
constitutes the first part of a bill of human rights that the
commission, under the chairmanship of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt,
has been working on for more than two years. The remaining two
parts are the Covenant, which will cover a smaller field of
rights, but will be legally binding on member states that ratify
it, and provisions for implementing the Declaration of Human
Rights.
June 24, 1948 -
Republican National Convention in Philadelphia nominates New York
Governor Thomas Dewey.
June 24, 1948 -
Communist forces cut off all land and water routes between West
Germany and West Berlin; United States response came just two days
after the Soviets began their blockade. A massive airlift of
supplies into West Berlin was undertaken in what was to become one
of the greatest logistical efforts in history. Over 200,000 planes
carried in more than one-and-a-half million tons of supplies. For
the Soviets, the escapade quickly became a diplomatic
embarrassment. Russia looked like an international bully that was
trying to starve men, women, and children into submission. And the
successful American airlift merely served to accentuate the
technological superiority of the United States over the Soviet
Union; May 12, 1949
- Soviets officially ended the blockade.
July 5, 1948 - English Labour
health minister Nye Bevan opened Britain's National Health Service
(NHS) at the Park Hospital in Manchester, UK;
providing
government-financed medical and dental care as part of the
National Health Service Act of 1946;
one of the world's first and most comprehensive
health services to the British people (strongly opposed by the
Conservative Party and by the Doctor's professional body, the
British Medical Association).
July 15, 1948 - President Harry S. Truman was
nominated for another term by the Democratic National Convention
in Philadelphia.
July 17, 1948 - Southern Democrats opposed to the
nomination of President Harry S. Truman met in Birmingham, Ala.,
to endorse South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond.
July 20, 1948 - President Harry S.
Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for
nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the
next two months. Truman's action came during increasing Cold War
tensions with the Soviet Union. By 1948, less than 550,000 men
remained in the U.S. Army. This rapid decline in the size of
America's military concerned U.S. government officials, who
believed that a confrontation with the Soviet Union was imminent.
Truman's decision underlined the urgency of his administration's
concern about a possible military confrontation with the Soviet
Union. It also brought home to the American people in concrete
terms the possibility that the Cold War could, at any moment,
become an actual war. In 1950, possibility turned to reality when
the United States entered the Korean War, and the size of
America's armed forces once again increased dramatically.
July 23, 1948 - Progressive party
convention nominates Henry Wallace for President.
July 26, 1948 -
President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, officially
integrating the Armed Forces many years before the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s; prohibited discrimination in the
U.S. armed forces and federal employment.
July 31, 1948 -President Harry S.
Truman helped dedicate New York International Airport (later John
F. Kennedy International Airport) at Idlewild Field.
August 3, 1948
- In hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC),
Whittaker Chambers accuses former State Department official Alger
Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. The
accusation set into motion a series of events that eventually
resulted in the trial and conviction of Hiss for perjury.
August 13, 1948 - U.S. and British
planes airlift a record amount of supplies into sections of the
city under American and British control; came to known as "Black
Friday". The massive re-supply effort, carried out in weather so
bad that some pilots referred to it as "Black Friday," signaled
that the British and Americans would not give in to the Soviet
blockade of western Berlin; over 700 British and American planes
landed in western Berlin, bringing in nearly 5,000 tons of
supplies. Airlift reassured the people of western Berlin that the
two nations were not backing down from their promise to defend the
city from the Soviets. Second, it was another signal that the
Soviet blockade was not only unsuccessful but was also backfiring
into a propaganda nightmare. While the Soviets looked like bullies
and heartless despots for their efforts to starve western Berlin
into submission, the British and Americans--flaunting their
technological superiority--were portrayed as heroes by the
worldwide audience.
August 15, 1948 - The Republic of
Korea (South Korea) was proclaimed.
August 17, 1948 - Former State Department official
Alger Hiss faced his chief accuser, Whittaker Chambers, during a
closed-door meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee
in New York. Hiss repeated his denial that he'd ever been a
Communist agent.
September 1, 1948 - U.N.'s World
Health Organization forms.
September 9, 1948
- The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was
created.
September 13, 1948
- Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was elected to the U.S.
Senate, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of
Congress.
September 21, 1948
- The People's Republic of China was proclaimed by its Communist
leaders.
November 2, 1948 - President Harry S Truman
surprised the experts, narrowly won re-election over Republican
challenger Thomas E. Dewey by just over two million popular votes
(114 electoral votes) = greatest upset in presidential election history; political
analysts and polls were so behind Dewey that on election night,
long before all the votes were counted, the Chicago Tribune
published an early edition with the banner headline "DEWEY DEFEATS
TRUMAN"; in the last weeks before the election, Truman embarked on
a "whistle-stop" campaign across the United States in defiance of
his consistently poor showings in the polls. He traveled to
America's cities and towns, fighting to win over undecided voters
by portraying himself as an outsider contending with a
"do-nothing" Congress.
November 12, 1948
- Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War
II Japanese leaders were sentenced to death by a war crimes
tribunal.
December 6, 1948 - The "Pumpkin
Papers" were found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers and
became evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss was
spying for the Soviet Union.
December 10, 1948 - The U.N. General Assembly
adopted its Universal Declaration on Human Rights by a vote of 48
to 0 (Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia, Union of South Africa abstained);
first part of a projected three-part International Bill of Rights.
December 21, 1948
- The state of Eire (formerly the Irish Free State) declared its
independence.
1949 -
Geneva Conventions of 1864 were revised and expanded.
January 3, 1949 - Supreme Court
ruled that states held the right to outlaw the closed shop
(provision originally passed as part of the Taft-Hartley Act in
1947). Handed states the power to limit one of labor's most potent
bargaining tactics, increased management's leverage, curtailed
labor's power and political legitimacy. Effectively altered the
course of the labor movement during the twentieth century.
January 5, 1949 -
In his State of the Union address, President Harry S. Truman
labeled his domestic program the ''Fair Deal'', plans for domestic
policy reforms: national health insurance, public housing, civil
rights legislation, federal aid to education; advocated an
increase in the minimum wage, federal assistance to farmers, an
extension of Social Security, immediate implementation of
anti-discrimination policies in employment; argued for an
ambitious liberal agenda based on policies first articulated by
his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt; conservatives and Southern
Democrats in Congress believed the "Fair Deal" smacked of
socialism; after re-election in 1948: Congress passed several
liberal reforms: almost doubled the minimum wage (40 cents to 75
cents an hour), established the Housing Act (provided 800,000 new
houses for the poor), approved extension of Social Security
benefits but rejected the idea of national health care, avoided
passing any new civil rights legislation, failed to aggressively
tackle concerns over fair labor practices.
January 20, 1949 - In his inaugural address,
President Harry S. Truman calls for a "bold new program for making
the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress
available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped
nations"; resulting Point Four program (so-called because it was
the fourth point in Truman's speech) resulted in millions of
dollars in scientific and technical assistance--as well as
hundreds of U.S. experts--sent to Latin American, Asian, Middle
Eastern, and African nations (clear that the program was part of a
foreign policy designed to contain the Soviet threat); May 1950 -
Senate passed the program by the margin of only one vote
(businessmen and agricultural producers were wary that programs
aimed to help other countries with the production of goods and
crops might be at odds with their own interests).
March 18, 1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) was formed; April 4, 1949 -
Twelve nations, including the United States, signed the North
Atlantic Treaty; mutual defense pact aimed at containing possible
Soviet aggression against Western Europe; stood as the main
U.S.-led military alliance against the Soviet Union throughout the
duration of the Cold War; greatly increased American influence in
Europe.
March 19, 1949
- Soviet-dominated East Germany, the People's Council of the
Soviet Zone of Occupation (a puppet legislative body dominated by
the Soviets) approves a new constitution. This action, together
with the U.S. policy of pursuing an independent pathway in regards
to West Germany, contributed to the permanent division of Germany.
The new constitution made clear that the Russians were going to
establish a separate and independent East Germany. In October
1949, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was declared.
Months earlier, in May, the Federal Republic of Germany (West
Germany) had been formally proclaimed. Germany remained a divided
nation until the collapse of the communist government in East
Germany and reunification in 1990.
March 24, 1949 - President Harry
S. Truman signs a U.S. resolution authorizing $16 million in aid
for Palestinian refugees displaced and facing starvation as a
result of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Truman’s
resolution contributed U.S. funds to a $32 million United Nations
(U.N) aid package. At the signing, the president stated his hope
that before the relief money ran out, "[the] means will be devised
for the permanent solution of the refugee problem." Truman argued
that U.S. aid would contribute to the long-term stability of the
Middle East through "[integrating] Palestinian refugees into the
economic life of the [underdeveloped] area.
March 31, 1949 - Newfoundland
entered the confederation as Canada's 10th province.
April 4, 1949 - The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) is established by 12 Western nations:
the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada,
and Portugal. The military alliance, which provided for a
collective self-defense against Soviet aggression, greatly
increased American influence in Europe.
April 18, 1949 - The Republic of Ireland was
proclaimed and it withdrew from the British Commonwealth.
May 8, 1949 - West German constitution
approved.
May 11, 1949 - Israel was admitted to the United
Nations.
May 11, 1949 - Siam changed its
named to Thailand.
May 12, 1949 - The Soviet Union announced an end to
its 11-month old blockade against West Berlin, first British and
American convoys drove though 110 miles of Soviet Germany to reach
West Berlin.. The blockade had been broken by a massive
U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two
million citizens. June 20, 1948 - as a major step
toward the establishment of a West German government, the Western
powers introduced a new Deutsche mark in West Germany and West
Berlin. June 24, 1948 - Soviets Soviets condemned
this move as an attack on the East German currency, began a
blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between
Berlin and the West. Britain and the United States responded by
initiating the largest airlift in history, flying 278,288 relief
missions to the city during the next 14 months, resulting in the
delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies (accounted for over
two-thirds of the material delivered).
April 1949 -
height of the Berlin airlift, planes were landing in the city
every minute. As a countermeasure against the Soviet blockade, the
Western powers also launched a trade embargo against eastern
Germany and other Soviet bloc countries. May 23, 1949
- the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was formally
established. October 7, 1949 - the German Democratic
Republic, a Communist state, was proclaimed in East Germany.
1961 - Berlin Wall constructed.
May 14, 1949 - Truman signs bill establishing a
rocket test range at Cape Canaveral.
May 17, 1949 -
British government recognizes Republic of Ireland.
May 23, 1949 -
West German Parliamentary Council met and formally declared the
establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, capital at Bonn;
October 1949 - Soviet Union announced formation of
German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
June 8, 1949
- Siam changes name to Thailand.
June 20, 1949 -
Central Intelligence Agency Act, passes; enacted to give the CIA
specific authority to carry out the duties assigned to it in 1947;
had been acting without the authorities typically given to other
federal government agencies.
July 21, 1949 - The U.S. Senate
ratified the North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 82-13.
August 10, 1949
- President Harry S.
Truman signs the National Security Bill, which establishes the
Department of Defense. As the Cold War heated up, the Department
of Defense became the cornerstone of America's military effort to
contain the expansion of communism; established the Cabinet-level
position of secretary of defense, which oversaw a rather unwieldy
umbrella military-defense agency known as the National Military
Establishment. National Security Bill streamlined the defense
agencies of the U.S. government. The 1949 bill replaced the
National Military Establishment with the Department of Defense.
The bill also removed the cabinet-level status of the secretaries
of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, who would henceforth be
subordinate to the Secretary of Defense. The first person to hold
this position was Louis Johnson. Finally, the bill provided for
the office of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in an effort
to bring to end to the inter-service bickering that had
characterized the Joint Chiefs in recent years. World War II hero
General Omar Bradley was appointed the first Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
August 12, 1949 - Fourth Geneva Convention. Diplomatic Conference for the
Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of
Victims of War, held in Geneva, adopted Geneva Conventions and
their Additional Protocols for the Treatment of Prisoners of War;
acceded to by 194 States and enjoy universal acceptance;
October 21, 1950 - went into effect.
August 24, 1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty went
into effect.
September 21, 1949 - At the
opening of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
in Peking, Mao Zedong announces that the new Chinese government
will be "under the leadership of the Communist Party of China".
September 23, 1949 - President Truman announced: "We
have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion
occurred in the USSR."
September
30, 1949 - After 15
months and more than 250,000 flights, the Berlin Airlift
officially comes to an end; one of the greatest logistical feats
in modern history and was one of the crucial events of the early
Cold War.
October 1, 1949 - People's
Republic of China formally announced, with Mao Zedong as its leader.
He would remain in charge of the nation until his death in 1976.
October 1, 1949 - Republic of
China (Taiwan) forms on island of Formosa.
October 6, 1949 - President Harry Truman
signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, totaling $1.3 billion in
military aid to NATO countries.
October 6, 1949
- American-born Iva Toguri D'Aquino, convicted as Japanese wartime
broadcaster Tokyo Rose, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and
fined $10,000.
October 7, 1949 - The Republic of
East Germany was formed; Wilhelm Pieck was named East Germany's
first president, with Otto Grotewohl as prime minister; consisted
of the German states of Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Saxony,
and Thuringia. Berlin, the former German capital, remained divided
between West and East German authorities, even though it was
situated deep within the communist Democratic Republic of Germany.
East Germany ceased to exist in 1990, when its land and people
were absorbed into the democratic Federal Republic of Germany.
October 12, 1949 - Eugenie Anderson is first female
nominated (by Harry Truman) to be U. S. ambassador (to Denmark
from October 28,1949 to 1953 - 184 women ambassadors through
2004). First American woman to serve as the chief of a mission
abroad. First woman to sign a treaty on behalf of the United
States. American Minister to Bulgaria under Kennedy from 1962 to
December, 1964. Ruth Bryan Owen (daughter of William Jennings
Bryan, Florida's first Congresswoman) was first female appointed
diplomat -Minister to Denmark by FDR (April 13, 1933-August 30,
1936).
October 26, 1949 - President Harry Truman signed a
bill raising the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour.
October 28, 1949 - Helen Eugenie Moore Anderson was
sworn in as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, becoming the first
female American ambassador.
November 19, 1949 - Monaco held a
coronation for its new ruler, Prince Rainier III, the 30th monarch
of Monaco.
November 26, 1949 - India adopted
a constitution as a federal republic within the British
Commonwealth.
December 8, 1949
- Chinese Nationalist leaders depart for the island of Taiwan,
where they establish their new capital. This action marked the
beginning of the "two Chinas" scenario that left mainland China
under communist control and vexed U.S. diplomacy for the next 30
years. It also signaled the effective end of the long struggle
between Chinese Nationalist forces and those of the communist
leader Mao Zedong, though scattered Chinese Nationalists continued
sporadic combat with the communist armies. In the years after
1949, the United States continued its support of Taiwan, and Mao's
government continued to rail against the Nationalist regime off
its coast; December 9, 1949 - Chiang Kai-shek
lost control of Peking, settling on the island of Formosa, which would
later become the independent Chinese republic of Taiwan.
December 27, 1949 - Queen Juliana
of the Netherlands granted sovereignty to Indonesia after more
than 300 years of Dutch rule.
January 6, 1950 - Britain
recognized the Communist government of China.
January 18, 1950 - People's
Republic of China formally recognizes the communist Democratic
Republic of Vietnam and agrees to furnish it military assistance;
January 30, 1950 - the Soviet Union extended
diplomatic recognition to Hanoi. China and the Soviet Union
provided massive military and economic aid to North Vietnam, which
enabled North Vietnam to fight first the French and then the
Americans. Chinese aid to North Vietnam between 1950 and 1970 is
estimated at $20 billion. It is thought that China provided
approximately three-quarters of the total military aid given to
Hanoi since 1949, with the Soviets providing most of the rest. It
would have been impossible for the North Vietnamese to continue
the war without the aid from both the Chinese and Soviets.
January 21, 1950 - A federal jury
in New York City found former State Department official Alger Hiss
guilty of perjury. He was convicted of having perjured himself in
regards to testimony about his alleged involvement in a Soviet spy
ring before and during World War II. Hiss served nearly four years
in jail, but steadfastly protested his innocence during and after
his incarceration. Hiss appeared before HUAC and vehemently denied
the charges, stating that he did not even know Chambers. Later,
after confronting Chambers face to face, Hiss admitted that he
knew him, but that Chambers had been using another name at the
time. In short order, Chambers produced the famous "Pumpkin
Papers"-copies of the documents he said Hiss passed him during the
1930s. They were dubbed the "Pumpkin Papers" because Chambers kept
them hidden in a pumpkin in his pumpkin patch. Because the statute
of limitations had run out, he was not tried for treason. Instead,
he was charged with two counts of perjury--for lying about passing
government documents to Chambers and for denying that he had seen
Chambers since 1937. 1949 - the first trial for
perjury ended in a deadlocked jury. January 1950 - The second
trial ended with a guilty verdict on both counts.
November 15, 1996 - Hiss died (92), never deviated
from his claim of innocence.
January 23, 1950 - The Israeli
Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of
Israel.
January 26, 1950 - Republic of India was born as the
Indian constitution takes effect, making (most populous democracy
in the world); India's government was modeled after the British
parliamentary system; first president was Rajendra Prasad.
With universal adult franchise, Nehru hoped to
overcome India's "caste-ridden" society and promote greater gender
equality. Elections were to be held at least every five years, and
India's government was modeled after the British parliamentary
system. A president would hold the largely ceremonial post of head
of state but would be given greater powers in times of emergency.
August 15, 1947 - the former Mogul Empire was divided into
the independent nations of India and Pakistan (January 1948
- Gandhi assassinated by a Hindu fanatic during a prayer vigil to
an area of Muslim-Hindu violence).
January 31, 1950
- President Harry S. Truman announced that he had ordered
development of the American hydrogen bomb: "I have directed ...
work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so called
hydrogen or superbomb. Like all other work in the field of atomic
weapons, it is being and will be carried forward on a basis
consistent with the overall objectives of our program for peace
and security ... until a satisfactory plan for international
control of atomic energy is achieved. We shall also continue to
examine all those factors that affect our program for peace and
this country, security." This response followed his earlier
announcement, on September 23, 1949, that had shocked America, "We
have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion
occurred in the USSR."
February 9, 1950 - Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R WI).,
during a speech in Wheeling, WV., charged that the State
Department was riddled with Communists; claims he has in his hand
a list of 205 communists who have infiltrated the U.S. State
Department. The unsubstantiated declaration, which was little more
than a publicity stunt, suddenly thrust Senator McCarthy into the
national spotlight; prompted the Senate to form a special
committee, headed by Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, to
investigate the matter. The committee found little to substantiate
McCarthy's charges, but McCarthy nevertheless touched a nerve in
the American public, and during the next two years he made
increasingly sensational charges, even attacking President Harry
S. Truman's respected former secretary of state, George C.
Marshall; 1953 - a newly Republican Congress
appointed McCarthy chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations of Governmental Operations, and "McCarthyism"
reached a fever pitch. In widely publicized hearings, McCarthy
bullied defendants under cross-examination with unlawful and
damaging accusations, destroying the reputations of hundreds of
innocent citizens and officials; early 1954 -
McCarthy, who had already lost the support of much of his party
because of his bullying tactics, finally overreached himself when
he took on the U.S. Army. Republican President Dwight D.
Eisenhower pushed for an investigation of McCarthy's conduct, and
the televised hearings exposed the senator as a reckless and
excessive tyrant who never produced proper documentation for any
of his charges; December 1954 - the Senate voted to
condemn him for misconduct; 1957 - by the time of
his death from alcoholism, influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy in
Congress was negligible.
February 15, 1950 - PRC leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou
En-lai, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister
Andrei Vishinsky, leaders of the two largest communist nations in
the world, announce the signing of a mutual defense and assistance
treaty; called for the Soviets to provide a $300 million credit to
the PRC. It also mandated that the Soviet Union return to the
Chinese the control of a major railroad and the cities of Port
Arthur and Dairen in Manchuria, all of which had been seized by
Russian forces near the end of World War II. The mutual defense
section of the agreement primarily concerned any future aggression
by Japan and "any other state directly or indirectly associated"
with Japan. Zhou En-lai proudly declared that the linking of the
two communist nations created a force that was "impossible to
defeat"; arly-1960s - Mao Zedong was openly declaring that
the Soviet Union was actually allying itself with the United
States against the Chinese revolution.
March 14, 1950 - Federal Bureau of
Investigation institutes the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in
an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The
creation of the program arose out of wire service news story in
1949 about the "toughest guys" the FBI wanted to capture. The
story drew so much public attention that the "Ten Most Wanted"
list was given the okay by J. Edgar Hoover the following year.
Since then, over 130 fugitives have been captured after appearing
on the list. As of May 1998, 454 fugitives had appeared on the Ten
Most Wanted List. Generally, the only way to get off the list is
to die or to be captured. There have only been a handful of cases
where a fugitive has been removed from the list because they no
longer were a particularly dangerous menace to society. Only seven
women have appeared on the Ten Most Wanted list. Ruth
Eisemann-Schier was the first in 1968.
March 18, 1950 - In a surprise
raid on the communist People's Republic of China (PRC), military
forces of the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan invade the
mainland and capture the town of Sungmen (about 200 miles south of
Shanghai). Because the United States supported the attack, it
resulted in even deeper tensions and animosities between the U.S.
and the PRC. Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek bombarded
the mainland with propaganda broadcasts and pamphlets dropped from
aircraft signaling his intention of invading the PRC and removing
what he referred to as the "Soviet aggressors." Eventually the
Nationalist forces were defeated and driven back to Taiwan.
April 8, 1950
- Senator Joseph McCarthy labels Professor Owen Lattimore
"extremely dangerous so far as the American people are concerned"
in a carefully worded public speech, but stops short of calling
him a Soviet spy. He called Lattimore "extremely dangerous," and
declared that the professor had been "invaluable to Russia."
McCarthy's attacks on Lattimore continued for years. 1950
- A congressional committee cleared Lattimore of McCarthy's
charges. 1951 - the Senate reopened the
investigation, spearheaded by McCarthy; claimed that
Lattimore had perjured himself during his earlier testimony.
1952 - Lattimore was formally charged with perjury in
connection to his 1950 testimony. A very long and costly legal
battle ensued, and eventually Lattimore succeeded in having all
charges dropped. 1963 - His career in American
academia, however, was ruined and he left the country. He later
returned to the United States and died in 1989.
April 14, 1950 - President Harry S. Truman receives
National Security Council Paper Number 68 (NSC-68), complete
review and re-evaluation of America's Cold War diplomacy strategy.
The report was a group effort, created with input from the Defense
Department, the State Department, the CIA, and other interested
agencies; NSC-68 formed the basis for America's Cold War policy
for the next two decades. Report recommended: 1) a policy of
"containing" Soviet expansion, 2) that the United States embark on
rapid military expansion of conventional forces and the nuclear
arsenal, including the development of the new hydrogen bomb, 3)
massive increases in military aid to U.S. allies, 4) more
effective use of "covert" means to achieve U.S. goals. The price
of these measures was estimated to be about $50 billion; at the
time the report was issued, America was spending just $13 billion
on defense.
April 24, 1950 - President Truman denies
there are communists in U.S. government.
April 29, 1950 - Secretary of State Dean Acheson and
three former secretaries of state deny Senator Joseph McCarthy's
charge that Owen Lattimore, former State Department consultant and
university professor, had any influence on U.S. foreign policy.
The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the "red
scare" in the United States. McCarthy charged that Lattimore,
acting as a virtual Soviet agent, had helped design a policy that
resulted in the loss of China to the communists in 1949. Lattimore
served as a consultant to the Department of State during and after
World War II. Like many others, he had come to the conclusion that
the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek was
hopelessly inefficient and corrupt, and that continued U.S.
support of such a government was useless. In the harsh Cold War
atmosphere of America, though, the "loss" of China to the
communists encouraged suspicion that spies and sympathizers were
to blame. Lattimore was cleared by a congressional investigation
in 1950, but in 1951-1952 the attacks against the professor were
renewed and he was charged with perjury in connection with his
1950 testimony. These charges were eventually dismissed, but not
before Lattimore's academic career in the United States had been
destroyed.
June 27, 1950 - Warren Austin, the U.S.
representative on the United Nations Security Council, proposed a
resolution. It noted that North Korea had ignored the earlier
cease-fire resolution and that South Korea was pleading for
assistance. Therefore, the resolution asked that "the members of
the United Nations furnish such assistance to the Republic of
Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore
international peace and security in the area." The resolution
passed by a vote of 7 to 1. Vote meant that any member nation
could now come to the assistance of South Korea, though it left
unstated how the efforts of various nations might be coordinated.
Provided a foundation for American military intervention.
June 27, 1950
- President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean
War following a call from the United Nations Security Council for
member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the
North. He said this country took the action, as a member of the
United Nations, to enforce the cease-fire order issued by the
Security Council Sunday night. Ordered Vice Admiral Arthur D.
Struble to form a protective cordon around Formosa to prevent its
invasion by Communist Chinese forces. Mr. Truman based the
decision to fight for the South Koreans entirely on the Security
Council resolution which called upon all members of the United
Nations to help carry it out. And at the Pentagon it was explained
that our air and naval forces would fight only below the
Thirty-eighth Parallel line that divides South Korea from the
Russian- sponsored North Korea. June 30 - Truman
agreed to send U.S. ground forces to Korea, and on July 7
- the Security Council recommended that all U.N. forces sent
to Korea be put under U.S. command. The next day, General Douglas
MacArthur was named commander of all U.N. forces in Korea. In the
opening months of the war, the U.S.-led U.N. forces rapidly
advanced against the North Koreans, but Chinese communist troops
entered the fray in October, throwing the Allies into a hasty
retreat.
July 4, 1950 - Truman signs public law 600 (Puerto
Ricans write own constitution).
July 27, 1950 - President Truman promises aid to
Taiwan.
August 13, 1950 - President Truman gives military
aid to Vietnamese regime Bao-Dai.
August 24, 1950 - Edith Sampson named first black
U.S. delegate to U.N.
August 25, 1950 - President Harry S. Truman ordered
the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a
strike.
September 8, 1950 - Congress passed the Defense
Production Act, which called for various economic measures,
including wage and price controls.
October 25, 1950 - Sukarno appointed president of
Republic Indonesia.
November 1, 1950 - Griselio Torresola and Oscar
Collazo, Puerto Rican nationalists, tried to force their way into
Blair House in Washington to assassinate President Harry S. Truman
(living there while (while White House was being renovated); had
avoided an attempt on his life from the right-wing Israeli Stern
Gang a few years earlier, escaped unscathed; Torresola was killed;
July 24, 1952 - Truman commuted the Collazon
sentence to life imprisonment from a death sentence.
November 26, 1950 - China entered the Korean
conflict, launching a counter-offensive against troops from the
United Nations, the United States, and South Korea.
November 30, 1950 - President Harry S. Truman
announces during a press conference that he is prepared to
authorize the use of atomic weapons in order to achieve peace in
Korea. At the time of Truman’s announcement, communist China had
joined North Korean forces in their attacks on United Nations
troops, including U.S. soldiers, who were trying to prevent
communist expansion into South Korea. Truman blamed the Soviet
Union for using communist Chinese insurgents as part of a devious
plan to spread communism into Asia and pledged to "increase our
defenses to a point where we can talk—as we should always
talk—with authority." The press then asked what Truman planned to
do if the Chinese Nationalists, who were already struggling
against the spread of communism in their own country, failed to
get involved in the Korean conflict. Truman responded that the
U.S. would take "whatever steps were necessary" to contain
communist expansion in Korea. A reporter asked "Will that include
the atomic bomb?" to which Truman replied, "That includes every
weapon that we have."
December 16,
1950 - President Truman proclaimed a
national state of emergency in order to fight "Communist
imperialism" (massive Chinese intervention in the Korean War
constituted a threat to the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of
Rights, to the free enterprise system and to other rights, like
collective bargaining, that free people had chosen for
themselves); delegated many of his own war powers to Charles E.
Wilson, the new Mobilization Director (subject in the Executive
Branch of the Government only to the veto of President Truman);
took two actions to start a drastic increase of the mobilization
program: 1) signed the proclamation of emergency, which unleashed
scores of additional executive powers, 2) issued an executive
order granting virtually blanket authority to Mr. Wilson to carry
out all aspects of war production and economic control deemed
necessary.
December 19, 1950 - General Dwight D. Eisenhower was
named Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) military forces.
December 29, 1950
- Celler-Kefauver Anti-merger Act, anti-trust legislation,
enacted; drafted by Estes Kefauver and Emanuel Celler, a
trust-busting Congressman from Brooklyn; designed to expand and
enhance the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and help staunch monopolistic
mergers and acquisitions, reign in big corporations that
threatened competition. Barred corporations from monopolizing
other company's land, equipment and/or property, extended the
Clayton Act to cover competition-killing, cross-industry mergers.
Represented the last major anti-monopoly legislation meted out
during the century.
December 30, 1950 - Secretary of State Dean
Acheson declares that the United States will increase its efforts
to contain communist aggression and calls upon the American people
for support and sacrifice; declared that the United States was
willing and able to meet any challenge posed by the communists and
that American commitment to Korea would not falter. "Our freedom,
our way of life, is menaced," Acheson declared. In some of the
harshest language in the statement, the secretary argued, "The
present difficulties arise from the lawless and cynical conduct of
the communists who would destroy peace and freedom." Despite talk
of peace from the Soviet Union, said Acheson, its recent actions
revealed its talk to be "nothing but camouflage to cloak the naked
imperialism of its aims." The United States and the American
people needed to support all efforts to defeat the communist
threat. "No sacrifices are too great when the future of this
nation is at stake."
January 9, 1951 - The United Nations headquarters
opened in New York City.
February 1, 1951 - United Nations General
Assembly passes a resolution by a vote of 44 to 7 condemning the
communist government of the People's Republic of China for acts of
aggression in Korea. It was the first time since the United
Nations formed in 1945 that it had condemned a nation as an
aggressor. The action was largely symbolic, because many
nations-including some that voted for the resolution-were
reluctant to take more forceful action against the People's
Republic of China for fear that the conflict in Korea would
escalate.
February 28, 1951 - A Senate committee headed by
Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn., issued a preliminary report saying at
least two major crime syndicates were operating in the United
States.
March 6, 1951 - Trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
begins in New York Southern District federal court; accused of
selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be
charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet
Union). David Greenglass, machinist at Los Alamos, where America
developed the atomic bomb and Julius Rosenberg's brother-in-law
testified that Rosenberg asked him to pass highly confidential
instruction on making atomic weapons to the Soviet Union; Soviets
exploded their first atomic bomb (and effectively started the Cold
War) in September 1949 based on information, including that from
Greenglass, they had obtained from spies; March 29, 1951
- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to
commit espionage for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union; April 4, 1951
- convictions for all the defendants; April 5 - The Rosenbergs were
sentenced to death row; offered a deal in
which their death sentences would be commuted in return for an
admission of their guilt. They refused and were executed.
March 29, 1951 - Julius Rosenberg and Ethel
Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage;
June 19, 1953 - they were executed.
April 11, 1951 -
President Truman
relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East;
concluded that the Far Eastern commander "is unable to give his
wholehearted support to the policies of the United States
Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his
official duties"; MacArthur had publicly challenged the
President's foreign policy, urging that the United States
concentrate on Asia instead of Europe and use Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek's Formosa-based troops to open a second front on the
mainland of China; Truman remained committed to keeping the
conflict in Korea a "limited war" (came to define the U.S. Cold
War military strategy); appointed Lieut. Gen. Mathew B. Ridgway as
his successor; assumes all of General MacArthur's titles - Supreme
Commander, United Nations Forces in Korea, Supreme Commander for
Allied Powers, Japan, Commander-in-Chief, Far East, and Commanding
General U.S. Army, Far East.
April 19, 1951 - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of
his command by President Harry S. Truman, bid farewell to
Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: ''Old soldiers never die;
they just fade away.''.
May 3, 1951 - The Senate Armed Services and Foreign
Relations Committees, meeting in closed session, begin their
hearings into the dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur by President
Harry S. Truman (instigated by Republican senators eager to
discredit the Democratic administration of Harry Truman). The
hearings served as a sounding board for MacArthur and his
extremist views on how the Cold War should be fought. MacArthur
was the featured witness, and he spoke for more than six hours at
the opening session of the hearings. He condemned Truman's Cold
War foreign policy, arguing that if the president's "inhibitions"
about the war in Korea had been removed the conflict could have
been "wound up" without a "very great additional complement of
ground troops." He went on to suggest that only through a strategy
of complete military destruction of the communist empire could the
U.S. hope to win the Cold War. The hearings ended after seven
weeks, with no definite conclusions reached about MacArthur's
dismissal. However, the general's extremist stance and intemperate
statements concerning the need for an expanded conflict against
communism during the hearings soon eroded his popularity with the
American public. MacArthur attempted to garner the Republican
presidential nomination in 1952, but lost to the more moderate
campaign of another famed military leader, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
May 18, 1951 - The United Nations moved out of its
temporary headquarters in Lake Success, N.Y., for its permanent
home in Manhattan.
July 9, 1951 - President Truman
asked Congress to formally end state of war with Germany.
July 20, 1951 - Jordan's King
Abdullah Ibn Hussein was assassinated in Jerusalem. While entering
a mosque in the Jordanian sector of east Jerusalem, King Abdullah
of Jordan is assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist. Abdullah
was a member of the Hashemites, an Arab dynasty said to be
directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad. After a brief
sojourn on the Jordanian throne, Abdullah's son was declared
mentally unfit to rule and was replaced by Abdullah's grandson,
Hussein bin Talal. King Hussein ruled until he died in 1999; he
was succeeded by his son, Abdullah.
July 31, 1951 - Defense Production
Act Amendments of 1951 created Small Defense Plants Administration
to encourage small businesses to contribute to defense production.
The SDPA certified small businesses to the RFC when it had
determined the businesses to be competent to perform the work of
government contracts. Provides financial assistance to small
businesses and investment companies and to state and local
development companies. Licenses and regulates small business
investment companies. July 31, 1953 - abolished by
the Defense Production Act Amendments of 1953.
August 1, 1951 - David
Ben-Gurion's Mapai-party wins Israeli parliamentary election.
August 8, 1951 - The United States
Customs Agency moved to protect consumers from fraud by passing
the Fur Labeling Act; required manufacturers to include labels
that identified species of animal and whether paws or tails were
used.
September 1, 1951 - The United
States, Australia and New Zealand signed a mutual defense pact,
the ANZUS treaty.
September 4, 1951
- President Harry Truman held the first live coast-to-coast
television broadcast when AT&T carried his address to the opening
session of the Japanese Peace Convention in San Francisco;
formalized end of hostilities with Japan, opened door for Japan's
economic recovery; carried by 94 stations to largest single
television audience to date, estimated at over 30 million people,
as far away as New England; 1948 - AT&T devised,
built, operated system of cable and microwave-relay facilities
that made network transmission possible.
September 8, 1951 - A peace treaty
with Japan was signed by 48 nations in San Francisco.
October 7, 1951
- David Ben-Gurion forms Israeli government.
October 10, 1951 - President Harry
S. Truman signs the Mutual Security Act (modeled on the Marshall
Plan for economic aid), announcing to the world, and its communist
powers in particular, that the U.S. was prepared to provide
military aid to "free peoples." The signing of the act came after
the Soviet Union exploded their second nuclear weapon in a test on
October 3. instead of providing mostly economic aid as the
Marshall Plan had, the Mutual Security Act emphasized an increase
in military assistance to democratic nations. Congress earmarked
the monies for raw materials, guns, tanks, planes, technicians and
books, fertilizer and seeds, irrigation pumps and medical
supplies. 1953 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower
abolished the Mutual Security Act.
October 19, 1951 - President Harry S. Truman signed
an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.
October 24, 1951
- President Harry Truman finally proclaims that the nation’s war
with Germany, begun in 1941, is officially over. Fighting had
ended in the spring of 1945. In his proclamation on this day,
Truman stated that it had always been America’s hope to create a
treaty of peace with the government of a united and free Germany,
but that Soviet policy had "made it impossible." The official end
to the war came 10 years and two months after Congress had
declared open war with Nazi Germany on December 11, 1941.
October 26, 1951
- Winston Churchill re-elected British PM.
November 14, 1951 - President Harry Truman asks
Congress for U.S. military and economic aid for the communist
nation of Yugoslavia; part of the U.S. policy to drive a deeper
wedge between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union; 1948
- Josip Broz Tito openly broke with Stalin, though he continued to
proclaim his allegiance to the communist ideology; 1949
- to curry favor with Tito, the United States supported
Yugoslavia's efforts in 1949 to gain a seat on the prestigious
Security Council at the United Nations; Tito gave tacit support to
the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, but harshly criticized the
Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968; relations between
the United States and Yugoslavia warmed considerably after Tito's
denunciation of the Czech intervention, but cooled again when he
sided with the Soviets during the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1973.
November 29, 1951
- Winston Churchill re-elected British premier.
January 9, 1952 - In his 1952
State of the Union address, President Truman warns Americans that
they are "moving through a perilous time," and calls for vigorous
action to meet the communist threat. Truman spent much of his
speech addressing foreign policy concerns. The primary focus was
on meeting the communist challenge. The president declared that
the United States was confronted with "a terrible threat of
aggression." He also pointed with pride to U.S. action in meeting
that threat. In Korea, combined U.S. and United Nations forces
"turned back the Chinese Communist invasion;" elsewhere in Asia,
U.S. assistance to its allies was helping to "hold back the
Communist advance;" and in Europe and the Middle East, the fight
against Soviet expansion was also ongoing. Truman's speech was a
stirring rebuttal to domestic critics like Senator Joseph
McCarthy, who attacked Truman's "softness" on communism.
February 17, 1952 - Winston Churchill announced that
Britain had developed its own atomic bomb; February 25, 1952
- Windscale plutonium plant began operation at Sellafield on the
Irish Sea coast in Cumberland; October 3, 1952 - the
first British atomic weapons test, called Hurricane, was
successfully conducted aboard the frigate HMS Plym. Britain was
was the third nuclear power after the U.S. and Russia to include
the atomic bomb in its armory.
March 3, 1952 - In a 6-3 decision,
the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a New York state law (Feinberg
Law-banned from the teaching profession anyone who called for the
overthrow of the government; the law was specifically aimed at
communists) that prohibits communists from teaching in public
schools. Coming at the height of the Red Scare in the United
States, the Supreme Court decision was additional evidence that
many Americans were concerned about possible subversive communist
activity in their country; 1967 - Supreme Court
decision declared most of Feinberg Law provisions
unconstitutional.
April 3, 1952 -
President Harry S. Truman signed Public Law-82-293 that gave a
Congressional Charter to the National Conference of State
Societies (NCSS).
April 8, 1952 -
President Harry S. Truman seized the steel industry to avert a
nationwide strike; June 1952 - Supreme Court ruled
in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer that Truman had
overstepped his bounds. The finding effectively proscribed the
president's power during times of national emergency.
April 28, 1952 - At his own request, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the most highly regarded American
generals of World War II, was relieved of his post as supreme
commander of the combined land and air forces of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to campaign on the Republican
ticket.
July 11, 1952
- The Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago,
nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and Richard M. Nixon
for vice president.
July 19, 1952
- 1952 Patent Act was enacted; revised and codified patent laws;
with amendments, constitute patent law in force currently.
July 23, 1952 - Society of Free Officers seizes
control of the government in a military coup d'etat staged by
Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser's Free Officers. King Farouk, whose
rule had been criticized for its corruption and failures in the
first Arab-Israeli war, was forced to abdicate and relinquish
power to General Muhammad Naguib, the figurehead leader of the
coup. The revolutionaries redistributed land, tried politicians
for corruption; 1953 - abolished the monarchy.
1954 - Nasser emerged from behind the scenes,
removed Naguib from power, and proclaimed himself prime minister
of Egypt. For the next two years, Nasser ruled as an effective and
popular leader and promulgated a new constitution that made Egypt
a socialist Arab state, consciously nonaligned with the prevalent
communist and democratic-capitalist systems of the Cold War world.
1956 - he was elected, unopposed, to the new office
of president. He died still in office in 1970 from a heart attack.
Nasser was a consistently popular and influential leader during
his many years in power.
July 24, 1952 - President Truman settles 53-day
steel strike.
July 25, 1952 - Puerto Rico became a self-governing
commonwealth of the United States.
July 26, 1952 - Adlai E. Stevenson was
nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in
Chicago.
July 26, 1952 - King Farouk I of Egypt abdicated in
the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.
August 11, 1952 - Prince Hussein is proclaimed the
king of Jordan after his father, King Talal, is declared unfit to
rule by the Jordanian Parliament on grounds of mental illness;
November 14, 1953 - formally crowned, his 18th
birthday. Hussein was the third constitutional king of Jordan and
a member of the Hashemite dynasty, said to be in direct line of
descent from the Prophet Muhammad. 20th century's longest-serving
executive head of state.
September 6, 1952 - Universal Copyright Convention
signed at Geneva, Switzerland.
September 23, 1952 - Republican vice-presidential
candidate Richard M. Nixon went on television to deliver what came
to be known as the ``Checkers'' speech as he denied allegations of
improper campaign financing.
October 3, 1952 - Britain successfully tests its
first atomic bomb (25-kiloton device) in the hull of the frigate
HMS Plym anchored off the Monte Bello Islands, off the northwest
coast of Australia. The test made Britain the world's third atomic
power after the United States and the Soviet Union.
October 24, 1952 - Republican presidential candidate
Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, ''I shall go to Korea'' as he
promised to end the conflict.
November 1, 1952 - The United States exploded the
world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb
(approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear
devices), on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the
United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race
with the Soviet Union; Soviet Union exploded a thermonuclear
device the following year and by the late 1970s, seven nations had
constructed hydrogen bombs.
November 4, 1952 - UNIVAC, world's first
commercially produced electronic digital computer, achieved
national fame when it correctly predicted Dwight D. Eisenhower's
unexpected landslide victory in the presidential election after
only a tiny percentage of the votes were in.
November 29, 1952 - President-elect Dwight D.
Eisenhower kept his campaign promise to visit Korea to assess the
ongoing conflict.
December 24, 1952 - The McCarren-Walter Act takes
effect, revises America's immigration laws; hailed by supporters
as a necessary step in preventing communist subversion in the
United States, while opponents decried the legislation as being
xenophobic and discriminatory; named after Senator Pat McCarren
(Democrat-Nevada) and Representative Francis Walter
(Democratic-Pennsylvania), did relatively little to alter the
quota system for immigration into the United States that had been
established in the Immigration Act of 1924; immigrants from Great
Britain, Ireland, and Germany were allotted two-thirds of the
154,657 spots available each year; specifically removed previously
established racial barriers that had acted to exclude immigrants
from nations such as Japan and China (now assigned very small
quotas); banned admission to anyone declared a subversive by the
attorney general and indicated that members of communist and
"communist-front" organizations were subject to deportation;
President Harry S. Truman called the legislation "un-American" and
inhumane, vetoed the bill, Congress overrode his veto; new
legislation was passed in 1965.
January 7, 1953
- President Harry S. Truman announced in his State of the Union
address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb;
January 31, 1950 - Truman publicly announced that had
directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the
development of the hydrogen bomb (in response to evidence of an
atomic explosion occurring within USSR in 1949).
January 14, 1953 - Josip Broz Tito was elected
president of Yugoslavia by the country's Parliament.
July 6, 1957 - Harry S. Truman Library forms in
Independence, Missouri.
December 31, 1961
- The Marshall Plan expired after distributing more than $12
billion in foreign aid.
Dean Acheson (1969).
Present at the Creation; My Years in the State Department.
(New York, NY: Norton, 798 p.). Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971; United
States--Foreign relations--1933-1945; United States--Foreign
relations--1945-1953.
Robert S. Allen and William V. Shannon (1950).
The Truman Merry-Go-Round. (New York, NY: Vanguard Press,
502 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
Robert L Beisner (2006).
Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War. (New York, NY:
Oxford University Press, 800 p.). Former President of the Society
for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Acheson, Dean,
1893-1971l Statesmen--United States--Biography; Cold War; United
States--Foreign relations--1945-1953. Acheson's unstinting dedication to an often
unpopular president was reciprocated with deep gratitude and
loyalty. Together, they redrew the map of the post-war world.
Eds. Barton J. Bernstein and Allan J. Matusow (1966).
The Truman Administration; A Documentary History. (New
York, NY: Harper & Row, 518 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972;
United States--Politics and government--1933-1953--Sources; United
States--Foreign relations--1945-1953--Sources.
Douglas Brinkley (1992).
Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-71.
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 429 p.). Acheson, Dean,
1893-1971; Statesmen--United States--Biography; United
States--Foreign relations--1945-1989.
Compiled for the Harry S. Truman Library Institute by Richard
Dean Burns (1984).
Harry S. Truman: A Bibliography of His Times and Presidency.
(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 297 p.). Truman, Harry
S., 1884-1972 --Bibliography; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953--Bibliography.
James Chace (1998).
Acheson: The Secretary of State who Created
the American World. (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 512 p.).
Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971; United States. Dept. of
State--Biography; Statesmen--United States--Biography; Cabinet
officers--United States--Biography; United States--Foreign
relations--1945-1989.
Clifton Truman Daniel with a foreword by Margaret Truman and
Clifton Daniel (1995).
Growing up with My Grandfather: Memories
of Harry S. Truman. (Seacaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, 228 p.).
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 --Family; Truman family; Daniel,
Clifton Truman, 1957-; Presidents--United States--Biography.
Virgil W. Dean (2006).
An Opportunity Lost: The Truman Administration and the Farm Policy
Debate. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 280
p.). Agriculture and state--United States--History--20th century.
Gary Donaldson (1999).
Truman Defeats Dewey. (Lexington,
KY: University Press of Kentucky, 270 p.). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1972; Dewey, Thomas E. (Thomas Edmund), 1902-1971;
Presidents--United States--Election--1948.
Lyle W. Dorsett (1980).
The Pendergast Machine.
(Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 163 p. (Reprint 1968
ed.)). Pendergast, Tom, 1870-1945; Kansas City (Mo.)--Politics and
government.
Andrew J. Dunar (1984).
The Truman Scandals and the Politics of Morality.
(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 213 p.). Truman,
Harry S., 1884-1972 --Psychology; Political corruption--United
States--History--20th century; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
Robert H. Ferrell (1983).
Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency.
(Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 220 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972;
Executive power--United States; Presidents--United
States--Biography; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
--- (1984).
Truman, A Centenary Remembrance. (New York, NY: Viking,
256 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Presidents--United
States--Biography.
Ed. with commentary by Robert H. Ferrell (1991).
Truman in
the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers. (Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press, 402 p.). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1977; Ayers, Eben A., 1891-1977 --Diaries; Presidents--United
States--Staff--Diaries; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
Robert H. Ferrell (1994).
Choosing Truman: The Democratic
Convention of 1944. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri
Press, 137 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Democratic National
Convention (1944 : Chicago, Ill.); Presidents--United
States--Election--1944; United States--Politics and
government--1933-1945.
--- (1994).
Harry S. Truman: A Life. (Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press, 501 p.). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1972; Presidents--United States--Biography. Series: Missouri
biography series.
ed. Robert H. Ferrell (1998).
Dear Bess: The Letters from
Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959. (Columbia, MO: University of
Missouri Press, 593 p. (orig. pub. 1983)). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1972 --Correspondence; Truman, Bess Wallace--Correspondence;
Presidents--United States--Correspondence; Presidents'
spouses--United States--Correspondence. Series: Give 'em hell
Harry series.
Robert H. Ferrell (1999).
Truman and Pendergast.
(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 162 p.). Truman,
Harry S., 1884-1972 --Friends and associates; Pendergast, Tom,
1870-1945; Kansas City (Mo.)--Politics and government--20th
century.
--- (2006).
Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists. (Columbia,
MO: University of Missouri Press, 142 p.). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1972; Cold War; Political culture--United
States--History--20th century; United States--History--1945-1953;
United States--Foreign relations--1945-1953; United
States--History--1945-1953--Historiography; United States--Foreign
relations--1945-1953--Historiography.
James N. Giglio (2001).
Truman in Cartoon and Caricature.
(Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 304 p. [new ed.]).
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 --Caricatures and cartoons; American
wit and humor, Pictorial.
Alonzo L. Hamby (1973).
Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism.
(New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 635 p.). Distinguished
Professor of History (Ohio University). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1972; Liberalism--United States; New Deal, 1933-1939; United
States--Politics and government--1945-1953.
--- (1995).
Man of the People: A Life of Harry
S. Truman. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 760 p.).
Teaches American History (Ohio University). Truman, Harry S.,
1884-1972; Presidents--United States--Biography; United
States--Politics and government--1945-1953.
Michael J. Hogan (1998).
A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National
Security State, 1945-1954. (New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 535 p.). Editor ( Diplomatic History). Truman,
Harry S., 1884-1972; National security--United
States--History--20th century; Cold War; Political culture--United
States--History--20th century; United States--Foreign
relations--1945-1953. Full account of
national security state that emerged in the first decade of the
Cold War.
Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr. (2005).
American Gunfight: The Plot To Kill Harry Truman, and the
Shoot-Out that Stopped It. (New York, NY: Simon &
Schuster. Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 --Assassination attempt,
1950; Collazo, Oscar, 1914- ; Torresola, Griselio; Blair House
(Washington, D.C.); United States. Secret Service--Officials and
employees--Biography; Nationalists--Puerto Rico--Biography;
Assassins--Biography. Two Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to
kill a president during his afternoon nap.
Roy Jenkins (1986).
Truman. (New York, NY: Harper & Row,
232 p.). Member, House of Lords. Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972;
Presidents--United States--Biography; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
Zachary Karabell (2000).
The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman
Won the 1948 Election. (New York, NY: Knopf, 308 p.). Truman,
Harry S., 1884-1972; Dewey, Thomas E. (Thomas Edmund), 1902-1971;
Presidents--United States--Election--1948.
ed. Ralph Keyes (1995).
The Wit & Wisdom of Harry Truman.
(New York, NY: HarperCollins, 200 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
--Quotations; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1989--Quotations, maxims, etc.
Maeva Marcus (1977).
Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: The Limits of Presidential
Power. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 390 p.).
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Sawyer, Charles, b. 1887; Youngstown
Sheet and Tube Company; War and emergency powers--United States;
Steel industry and trade--Law and legislation--United States.
Ernest R. May (1975).
The Truman Administration and China,
1945-1949. (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 112 p.). United
States--Foreign relations--China; China--Foreign relations--United
States.
Arthur F. McClure (1969).
The Truman Administration and the Problems of Postwar Labor,
1945-1948. (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 267 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Labor policy--United
States; World War, 1939-1945--Influence.
Donald R. McCoy (1984).
The Presidency of Harry S. Truman.
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 351 p.). Truman, Harry
S., 1884-1972; United States -- Politics and government --
1945-1953.
David G. McCullough (1992).
Truman. (New York, NY: Simon
& Schuster, 1117 p.). Prize-winning Author, Distingusihed
Historian, Lecturer. Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Presidents --
United States -- Biography.
Merle Miller (1985).
Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of
Harry S. Truman. (New York, NY: Greenwich House, 448 p. [orig.
pub. 1974]). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Presidents--United
States--Biography; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
Wilson D. Miscamble (2006).
From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War.
(New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 376 p.). Former
Chairman of the History Department (University of Notre Dame).
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; World War, 1939-1945--Diplomatic
history; World War, 1939-1945--United States; Nuclear
warfare--United States--History--20th century; Cold War; United
States--Foreign relations--1945-1953. Real departure in American policy came
only after the Truman administration had exhausted the legitimate
possibilities of the Rooseveltian approach of collaboration with
the Soviet Union.
Steve Neal (2001).
Harry and Ike: The Partnership That
Remade the Postwar World. (New York, NY: Scribner, 368
p.). Political Historian, Veteran Chicago Sun-Times Columnist.
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David),
1890-1969; United States--Politics and government--1945-1953;
United States--Politics and government--1953-1961;
Friendship--United States--Case studies; Presidents--United
States--Biography; Generals--United States--Biography.
William E. Pemberton (1989).
Harry S. Truman: Fair Dealer
and Cold Warrior. (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 227 p.).
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Presidents--United States--Biography;
United States--Politics and government--1945-1953; United
States--Foreign relations--1945-1953.
Gale E. Peterson (1985). President Harry S.
Truman and the Independent Regulatory Commissions, 1945-1952.
(New York, NY: Garland, 617 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972;
Independent regulatory commissions--United States; United
States--Politics and government--1945-1953.
Cabell Phillips (1966).
The Truman Presidency; The History of a Triumphant Succession.
(New York, NY: Macmillan, 463 p.). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972;
United States--Politics and government--1945-1953.
Irwin Ross (1977).
The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman
Victory of 1948. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 304 p. (orig.
pub. 1968)). Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Presidents--United
States--Election--1948.
Richard H. Rovere, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. with a new
introduction by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1992).
General
MacArthur and President Truman: The Struggle for Control of
American Foreign Policy. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 344 p. [orig. pub. 1951]). MacArthur, Douglas,
1880-1964; Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972; Korean War,
1950-1953--United States; United States--Foreign
relations--1945-1953.
Richard Norton Smith (1982).
Thomas E. Dewey and His Times.
(New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 703 p.). Dewey, Thomas E. (Thomas
Edmund), 1902-1971; Politicians--United States--Biography;
Governors--New York (State)--Biography; New York (State)--Politics
and government--1865-1950; United States--Politics and
government--1945-1953.
J. Samuel Walker (1997).
Prompt and Utter Destruction:
Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. (Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 142 p.). Truman,
Harry S., 1884-1972; World War, 1939-1945--United States; World
War, 1939-1945--Japan; Atomic bomb; United States--Foreign
relations--1945-1953.
_______________________________________________
LINKS
American Experience: Truman
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/
Companion to a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) American
Experience program about Harry S. Truman, the 33rd U.S. president.
Features biographical material, timeline, documents, and image
gallery. Includes information about domestic policy (such as civil
rights) and foreign policy (such as the decision to drop the
atomic bomb and the division of post-World War II Europe). Also
includes a teacher's guide and show transcript. Subjects: Truman,
Harry S., 1884-1972; Presidents; United States; People.
Eleanor & Harry: The Correspondence of
Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/eleanor/
Facsimiles and transcriptions of the 1945-1959 correspondence
between Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The correspondence
shows how "from a formal, often wary, political relationship
developed also a strong friendship. Ultimately, Harry Truman
designated Eleanor Roosevelt as his representative on the United
Nations and 'First Lady of the World.'" Includes biographies,
lesson plans, photos, and related links. A joint project of the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and the Harry S. Truman
Presidential Library.
HARRY S. TRUMAN LIBRARY
http://www.trumanlibrary.org
Harry S Truman: National Historic Site
http://www.nps.gov/archive/hstr/exhibits/bwt_exhibit/bess_6.htm
Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan, 1948-1953
http://www.sellingdemocracy.org
Companion to a 2005-2006 national retrospective tour of this
"cache of 'lost films'" that had been used to promote the Marshall
Plan (the post-World War II "European Recovery Program"). Find an
overview of the Marshall Plan, brief biographies of the films'
producers, a list of films with synopses, and a poster archive.
From the Academy Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences in association with German cultural
organizations. |