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One of the best-known mobs worked in Chicago. It was led by the gangster“Scarface” Al Capone, who turned into the great celebrities of the 1920s. His income wasover 100 million dollars a year. He had a private army of nearly a thousand thugs and was thereal ruler of Chicago. Competition between rival mobs sometimes caused bloody street wars,fought out with armored cars and machine guns. The winners of the gangster wars became sopowerful that they bribed police and other public officers. Organized crime opened the wayfor the new kind of American business.
And American newspaper headlines and crime storiesbespeak America’s fascination with these new celebrities. , Americans loved energetic peoplewho got ahDepression and the Policy of New DealIn October 1924 stock prices dropped dramatically. The nation succumbed to panic.The money crash unlashed a devastating depression. Between 1929 and 1933 the shock of thedepression was felt in all areas of American life.
Distress influenced such industries like coal,railroads, construction and textiles. By the end of 1931 nearly eight million Americans wereout of work, but unlike unemployed British or German workers in Europe they received nogovernment unemployment pay. Millions spent hours shuffling slowly forward in“breadlines» where they received free pieces of bread or bowls of soup, paid for by the moneycollected from those who could afford charity.By 1932 the situation became still harder. Thousand of banks and over 100000businesses had closed down. Industrial production had fallen down by half and wagepayments by 60%.
Twelve million people, one out of every four of the country’s workers,were unemployed. The factories were silent, shops and banks closed. With the number ofpeople out of work rising day by day, farmers could not sell their produce. In despair some ofthembanded together. Some paraded together with the workers in angry demonstrations,demanding that President Hoover (1929-33) take strong action against depression.
Hooverwho strongly believed in market economy said that he could do two things to end theDepression: to balance the budget and to restore businessmen’s confidence in the future. Timeand time again in the early 1930s Hoover told people that recovery from the Depression was“just around the corner”. But the factories remained closed and the breadlines grew longer.A change took place with the election of Franklin D.Roosevelt as presidentin1933.
Although Roosevelt was crippled by polio he was energetic and determined to carefor the welfare of ordinary people. Roosevelt’s main idea was that the federal governmentshould take the lead in the fight against the Depression. His program, which he called TheNew Deal 15 major, consisted of a number of legislative measures. At first Roosevelt tookactive steps to stabilize banking. He also put right agricultural production by paying subsidiesto farmers and introduced a system of regulated prices for corn, cotton, wheat, rice and diaryproducts.
Believing that his most urgent task was to give employment to the American people,he proposed a plan for public works and relief payments to the needed citizens. Roosevelt wasespecially anxious about the young people. The Civilian Conservation Corps found work formany young people. Part-time employment was provided for students who were invited tobuild roads and construct hospitals and schools.
Roosevelt’s New deal program financed thepainting of murals and the staging of plays. Writers were paid to write guidebooks andregional ethnic. In 1935 the Act was passed that granted workers the right to unionize andbargain collectively. New trade unions were organized.During his first term Franklin Roosevelt did not manage to fight unemployment andsolve some other tasks completely As a result of all his measures unemployment droppedfrom 13 million people in 1933 to 9 million in 1936, but there were still over four millionjobless people in the country and there was no real increase in the life of Afro-Americans,Indians and other minorities.
The nation was still plagued by under consumption.Ultimately it was the Second World War that put the American people back to work.The Second World War and the USAWhen the Second World War broke out in 1939 F. Roosevelt,who had been reelected for the second term, persuaded theUSA Congress to approve the first peacetime militaryconscription act in the USA history and later to accept his LendLease Plan. The USA quickly became the main supplier ofweapons and other goods to the countries fighting Hitler Germany.
American factories beganworking at full swing again. The unemployment practically ended.In 1941 after Japanese warplanes bombed, sank and badly damaged 8 Americanbattleships in American base Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), killing over 2000 men, the USA declaredwar against Germany and Japan. They joined the countries of anti-Hitler coalition (The SovietUnion and Britain).The USA government organized the whole American economy towards winning thewar. “Old Dr.
New Deal has to be replaced by Dr. Win-the-War”, said. Roosevelt. Controlson wages and prices were placed, and high income taxes were introduced. Gasoline and somefoods were rationed. Factories stopped producing consumer goods such as cars and washingmachines, and started making tanks, bombers and other war supplies. The USA warproduction became six times greater than the military output before the war. The overall effectof the war was a positive one for the economy in general and the business community inparticular.In November 1942 Combined British and American forces landed in North Africa,defeating the German general Rommel’s Africa Corps. 1943 they invaded Sicily, themainland of Italy and months of bitter fighting freed Rome from German control.At Tehran conference (Iran, 1943) Stalin met Roosevelt and Churchill to coordinate theirmilitary plans with the Allied cross-channel invasion.
In 1944 the Allied troops opened socalled The Second Front in Europe and after hard fighting occupied France and liberatedParis. In September Allied forces crossed Germany western border. On the 25 th of April thePPremarkable event took place – British and American soldiers met advancing Soviet troops onthe banks of the River Elbe in the middle of Germany. In five days Hitler committed asuicide. German soldiers everywhere laid down their weapons and on the 5 th of May 1945,PPGermany surrendered.The final details of the war and plans for the postwar world were hammered out atthe Yalta Conference in the Crimea in 1945. Russia was to become the guardian of the nationsof Eastern Europe.
Defeated Germany was to be divided into four zones of militaryoccupation, and a conference was to be convened in San Francisco on April 25 to create theUnited Nations Organization and formulate its Charter.Roosevelt left Yalta physically weak but pleased that he had brought Allied unity.Nine weeks after Yalta conference he had a stroke and died. His Vice President Harry Trumancame into office.
Truman participated with Stalin and Churchill in the final meeting atPotsdam, from which two declarations were issued. One of them confirmed the occupationzones in Germany and settled the reparation issue.The second was an unconditional surrender ultimatum to Japan. In 1945 Americanbombers made devastating raids on Japanese cities. In June the island of Okinawa fell to theAmericans. On August 6 an American bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanesecity of Hiroshima. A few days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city ofNagasaki.
Both cities were devastated and nearly 2000000 civilians were killed. Even thescientists who had been working on the bomb were shocked by the result. On August 14 theJapanese government surrendered. The Second World War was over.The Cold War and the McCarthy Witch HuntsThe Cold War was an ideological struggle between the Soviet Union and the UnitedStates over control of the world. Americans was the only nation in the world that the SecondWorld War had made better off. Their homes had not been bombed or their land fought overlike the homes and land of the Russian people.
Busy wartime factories had given them goodwages. Americans became the most prosperous people in the world. But despite economicprosperity during the years under president Truman (1945-53) and then president Eisenhower(1953-61) there was a constant anxiety in America and fear of the Russian influence on theafterward world. After two unpleasant surprises – the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb and thecreation of communist China – a wave of panic swept across the USA. Due to the terriblepropaganda some Americans started to see communist plots everywhere. When in 1950 NorthKorea invaded South Korea their fears became even stronger.
An ambitious and unscrupulouspolitician McCarthy tried to use these fears to win fame and power for himself. He started thecampaign that came into American history with the name a “Witch Hunt” – a search forpeople he could blame for supposed threats to the United States. For over five years, fromearly 1950s till the mid 50s McCarthy launched the serial of “hearings”, accusing a lot ofpeople – government officials, scientists, and famous entertainers – of secretly working forthe Soviet Union. He never gave proofs, but Americans were so much frightened by the threatof communism that many believed his accusations. They were afraid to give jobs or even toshow friendship to anyone “suspected” in “Soviet sympathy”.
In 1957 McCarthy died, butso-called McCarthyism did serious damage to the relations between the countries.In 1961 a new President John F. Kennedy (1961-3) was elected, the mostprogressive president since A. Lincoln and F. Roosevelt. He was young, had a goodeducation, energy and keen, quick wit. The unfulfilled promise of Kennedy’s thousand daysin office is nearly impossible to measure. He told American people that they were facing a“new frontier” with both opportunities and problems.
He announcedpolicy of fightingpoverty and giving civil rights to black people. He streamlined and pushed through the spaceprogram and new laws for pollution treatment, but his main merit was his foreign policy.When J. Kennedy came to the office, foreign problems were numerous. SovietUnion power was growing and relations between two superpowers were as cold as ever. Theincipient nations of Africa were rebellious. Fidel Castro had taken control of Cuba. Unrestwas evident in all Latin America. Kennedy’s first two innovations – the Peace Corps and theAlliance for Progress – captured the imagination of much of the world.
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