Key Players in the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations

George Kennan: Considered the smartest man in the American government

Averill Harriman: U.S diplomat

George Marshall: 5 star general and Secretary of State

Dean Acheson: Secretary of State

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Leader of the NSA think tank on Cold War strategy

John Foster Dulles: Secretary of State and promoter of the brinkmanship strategy

The Truman Administration

1945-1953

1944 GI Bill passed by Congress

1945

Yalta Conference Franklin Roosevelt dies

Potsdam Conference Harry Truman, Josef Stalin, Clement Atlee

Hiroshima + Nagasaki Do you think we should have shared the technology?

1946

The Iron Curtain Inflation soars (25%), Hollywood screen actors guild strike

Containment Policy/George Kennan Unemployment rises with the return of soldiers

Greece-Turkey Conflict $400 million in aid

1947

The Truman Doctrine Richard Nixon & the Alger Hiss case

The Marshall Plan/$17 billion

1948

The Berlin Airlift

1949

NATO

China falls to the Communists/Mao v. Chiang

The Soviet Union tests an A-Bomb

1950

The Korean War/36th parallel Senator Joseph McCarthy charges that over 200

communists have infiltrated the State Department

1951

Truman fires Douglass MacArthur The Hollywood Ten

Inchon landing/Puson/Douglass MacArthur Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

NSC-68 increased military spending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

1952

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed

The Cold War

Eisenhower Years

1953-1961

1953

Dwight Eisenhower becomes president Josef Stalin dies

Massive retaliation policy/John Foster Dulles Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are electrocuted

Brinksmanship CIA

Korean armistice is signed

Iran/Reza Pahlavi (shah of Iran) CIA overthrow of Iranian government

1954

H-bomb developed Army-McCarthy Hearings/TV

France pulls out of Vietnam Senator Joseph McCarthy censored by the Senate

Dien Bien Phu “Have you no decency sir, have you no decency”

Joseph Welch

Senator Joseph McCarthy censored by the U.S. Senate

Southeast Asian Treaty Organization

SEATO

US, Great Britain, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, France

This was to counter the threat of communist expansion into South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

CIA involved in Guatemala overthrow of leftist government

1955: Geneva Conference

Vietnam

Diem + Ho Chi Minh

Issue: free elections in Vietnam

1956: Diem cancels free elections

1956: Suez Crisis

Gamal Nasser

US refuses to financially back Egypt in building the Aswan Dam

Egypt takes the Suez Canal from Great Britain and France

Great Britain, Israel, and France retake the canal

Radio Free Europe/Hungarian Revolt

1957: Eisenhower Doctrine: U.S. will support friendly governments in the Middle East

USSR launches Sputnik

1958: NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is organized

National Defense and Education Act (science and foreign language education)

1959: “kitchen debate” between Nixon and Khrushchev

Khrushchev visits the US and agreement is reached to “forestall” talks on West Berlin.

U-2 Incident/Gary Powers is shot down spying over the Soviet Union

1959: Fidel Castro overthrows military leader, Fulgencio Batista.

CIA plots to overthrow Castro

1960: Farewell Address

“Beware of the Military Industrial Complex”

Dwight D. Eisenhower