The Linguistic Culture-8 (Years of Growth) (1157934), страница 3
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HisVice President Harry Truman came into office. Truman participated with Stalinand Churchill in the final meeting at Potsdam, from which two declarations wereissued. One of them confirmed the occupation zones in Germany and settled thereparation issue.The second was an unconditional surrender ultimatum to Japan.
In 1945American bombers made devastating raids on Japanese cities. In June the islandof Okinawa fell to the Americans. On August 6 an American bomber dropped anatomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A few days later, a secondatomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Both cities were devastatedand nearly 2000000 civilians were killed. Even the scientists who had beenworking on the bomb were shocked by the result. On August 14 the Japanesegovernment surrendered. The Second World War was over.The Cold War and the McCarthy Witch HuntsThe Cold War was an ideological struggle between the Soviet Unionand the United States over control of the world.
Americans were the only nationin the world that the Second World War had made better off. Their homes hadnot been bombed or their land fought over like the homes and land of theRussian people. Busy wartime factories had given them good wages. Americansbecame the most prosperous people in the world. But despite economicprosperity during the years under president Truman (1945-53) and thenpresident Eisenhower (1953-61) there was a constant anxiety in America andfear of the Russian influence on the afterward world. After two unpleasantsurprises – the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb and the creation of communistChina – a wave of panic swept across the USA. Due to the terrible propagandasome Americans started to see communist plots everywhere.
An ambitious andunscrupulous politician McCarthy tried to use these fears to win fame and powerfor himself. He started the campaign that came into American history with thename a “Witch Hunt” – a search for people he could blame for supposed threatsto the United States. For over five years, from early 1950s till the mid 1950sMcCarthy launched the serial of “hearings”, accusing a lot of people –government officials, scientists, and famous entertainers – of secretly workingfor the Soviet Union.
He never gave proofs, but Americans were so muchfrightened by the threat of communism that many believed his accusations. Theywere afraid to give jobs or even to show friendship to anyone “suspected” in“Soviet sympathy”. In 1957 McCarthy died, but so-called McCarthyism didserious damage to the relations between the countries.In 1961 a new President John F.
Kennedy (1961-3) was elected, themost progressive president since A. Lincoln and F. Roosevelt. He was young,had a good education, energy and keen, quick wit. The unfulfilled promise ofKennedy’s thousand days in office is nearly impossible to measure. He toldAmerican people that they were facing a “new frontier” with both opportunitiesand problems.
He announced policy of fighting poverty and giving civil rights toblack people. He streamlined and pushed through the space program and newlaws for pollution treatment, but his main merit was his foreign policy.When J. Kennedy came to the office, foreign problems were numerous.Soviet Union power was growing and relations between two superpowers wereas cold as ever. The incipient nations of Africa were rebellious. Fidel Castro hadtaken control of Cuba.
Unrest was evident in all Latin America. Kennedy’s firsttwo innovations – the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress – captured theimagination of much of the world. The Peace Corps sent thousands of youngAmericans abroad to assist underdeveloped countries. The Alliance for Progresswas designed as a broad assault upon the economic and social problems of LatinAmerica.In June 1961 a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles supported by the CIAattempted an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Although the attempt was adismal failure, the Soviet Union tried to install Soviet mediation-range ballisticmissiles and bombers in Cuba.
Kennedy met the Soviet Union challenge anddisplayed great mind in dealing with what was probably the most seriousconfrontation of the Cold War era. He gave the promise not to invade Cuba. Thethe Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev also promised to recall the weapons fromCuba. The two leaders succeeded in setting up a “Hot Line” to facilitate a quickexchange of views in case of major crises, and in signing a Nuclear Test BanTreaty that halted surface atmospheric and outer space testing. While Kennedywas president he frequently said: “All I want them to say about me is what theysaid about John Adams, “He kept the peace”. In the speech he had intended togive in Dallas on November 22,1963, the day of his assassination, Kennedydeclared: “We ask…that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, thatwe may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ”peace onearth, goodwill toward men”.
Kennedy’s sensible policy not only reduced thetension between the two but also started the policy of so-called “détente”.Even the long and bloody war in Vietnam (1965-73), finished by thevictory of the latter, was not allowed to interfere into it. In May 1972 PresidentNixon flew to Moscow to sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)with the Soviet Union. The idea of SALT was to slow down the arms race aswell as to make war between them less likely. In 1979 American Congressrefused to renew the SALT agreement. Both the United States and the SovietUnion continued to develop new, more deadly nuclear missiles and in the early1980s détente looked dead.
In the middle of the 1980s American militarystrength was increased so much that president Reagan realized the necessity toslow down the race M. Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985 in the USSR,also believed that the huge cost of the arms race was crippling the Soviet Unioneconomy. In 1987 Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate RangeNuclear Force (INF) treaty. According to the treaty both countries agreed todestroy all their land-based medium and shorter-range nuclear missiles within 3years. A hope was born that a new time of peaceful cooperation between the SUand the USA might be possible now. “I believe that future generations will lookback to this time and see it as a turning point in world history.
We are not in acod war now”,- the British prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in 1988 .Afro-Americans after the World War IIWorld War II paved the way for change in the he area of civil rights. In 1946president Truman created a President’s Committee to investigate the status of civilrights in America and recommend their improvements. In 1947 the committeecalled for changes in lynch laws, voting laws, for elimination of discrimination inthe armed forces and in the federal civil service through the creation of the FairEmployment board. In 1954 the Supreme Court stated that segregation of childrenin schools on the basis of race as unconstitutional.Under President D.
Eisenhower desegregation made progress. But in the DeepSouth resistance to elimination of segregation began even to harden. WhiteCitizen’s groups were created, and the Ku Klux Klan was revived. In 1956nineteen Southern senators issued a “Manifesto” against “forced integration”.Economic measures were taken against blacks and the progressive organizationswere under constant fire. The first open official resistance occurred in Little Rock(Arkansas), when the school board approved of a plan to admit some blackstudents to central High all-white school. The night before the opening of theschool the governor of Arkansas appeared on television to announce that he wasstrongly against the plan. When black James Meredith tried to be enrolled as auniversity student in 1963 President Kennedy had to dispatch regular army troopsto Oxford, Mississippi, to put down a white riot.
“It ought to be possible forAmerican students of any color to attend any public institution they select withouthaving to be backed by troops”, - the president commented. By 1964 only 1.17%of all black students were attending schools with white pupils, but schools forblack students were usually much inferior to white schools.Under the leadership of Baptist clergyman Martin Luther King, Montgomeryblacks formed the Improvement Association, boycotted the bus lines, and referredtheir case to the state court and then to the Supreme Court. Seventy-five percent ofthe black population boycotted segregated buses and walked to work.
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