HIS 605 - Cold War and the American Empire

A part of the series America in the 20th Century. Although communists and capitalists united during World War II to crush fascism, Hitler’s defeat set the stage for allies to become adversaries once more. This program frames the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union as the defining conflict of much of the 20th century. Viewers are shown how the world’s two superpowers faced off in an uncompromising showdown over ideology and economics that would persist for five decades—not in a vacuum, but under the omnipresent threat of nuclear holocaust. (132 minutes)

The 1950s in America were a time of nostalgia and neurosis. Factories poured out goods, the dollar was powerful, and the United States—filled with the heady optimism of victory in World War II—believed that it could politically, culturally, and militarily lead the world. But the decade also saw the solidification of the Iron Curtain in Europe, the entrenchment of Communism in China, years of so-called police action in Korea, and a Red Scare that divided Americans at home. Bill Moyers shows how an initial burst of optimism fostered an era of American conformity, in which fitting in led to a hostility and distrust of those who stood out. (57 minutes)

As the United States reshaped Manifest Destiny for use in the 20th century, the concept came to be equated not with conquest and expansion, but with the spread of American values and institutions. Focusing on World War I and the Russian Revolution, the section “A New World Order” traces the deflected trajectory of President Wilson’s idealistic plan to export democracy—a plan that ended in compromises and broken dreams. “Containment,” which begins with World War II, examines the spread of communism in Asia and U.S. opposition to it via the Kennan policy of containment and the Truman Doctrine. And “Quagmire” discusses how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations felt duty-bound to escalate American political and military involvement in Vietnam as a part of an ideological proxy war between East and West. (87 minutes)

In this program, Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon argue the merits of democracy and communism in the impromptu Kitchen Debate, complete with on-screen translations. Also included are Nixon’s famous "Checkers" speech; a 1960 campaign address to Wisconsin farmers by Senator Hubert Humphrey; and the verbal showdown between Senator Joseph McCarthy and attorney Joseph Welch at the Army-McCarthy hearings that helped end McCarthy’s political career. (51 minutes)

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