the usa history terms g

Terms for American history and the 1960s

The New Deal

It was the name that Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to economic programs between 1933 and 1935 in order to reduce unemployment, reform the business and to recover the economy during The Great Depression.

Historians distinguish “The First New Deal” (1933) and “The Second New Deal” (1934-36)
The First New Deal aimed at meeting the needs of practically all major groups, from banking and railroads to industry and farming. The New Deal innovated with banking reform laws, work relief programs, agricultural programs, and industrial reform.
The Second New Deal included labour union support and programs to aid the agricultural sector, including tenant farmers and migrant workers.
The New Deal created jobs and helped stimulate the economy.
A major infusion of money into the economy to build infrastructure - many people were put back to work and America began to regain her momentum since the depression had caused such devastation to the economy - Roosevelt was a hero to the people.

Alphabet agencies

The alphabet agencies (also New Deal agencies) were the U.S. federal government agencies created as part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The earliest agencies were created to combat the Great Depression in the United States and were established during Roosevelt's first one hundred days in office in 1933; many were created throughout the 1930s, such the United States Housing Authority and the Federal Loan Agency, and some during the 1940s for the war, such as the Office of War Information and Office of Censorship. The agencies were sometimes referred to as alphabet soup. Some of the agencies still exist today, while others have merged with other departments and agencies or were abolished, or found unconstitutional.

Main purposes:

relief for the unemployed
preventing another stock market crash

AAA (The Agricultural Adjustment Act)

enacted in 1933
restricted agricultural production in New Deal by paying farmers to reduce crop area
Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus so as to effectively raise the value of crops and give farmers relative stability again
The farmers were paid subsidies by the federal government for letting a portion of their fields lay fallow (crop rotation)
The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. It is considered the first modern U.S. farm bill.

NRA (National Recovery Administration)

It was a New Deal agency in the United States. Created under the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, it was one of the first major pieces of the New Deal program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It allowed industries to have a fair competition
It set minimum wages and maximum weekly hours
It also allowed industry heads to collectively set price floors (limit on how low a price can be charged for a product)

The blue eagle

The NRA was symbolized by the Blue Eagle (a black-colored representation of the American thunderbird) . Businesses that supported the NRA put the symbol in their shop windows and on their packages. Though membership to the NRA was voluntary, businesses that did not display the eagle were very often boycotted, making it seem to many mandatory for survival.

Fireside chats

The fireside chats were a series of thirty evening radio speeches given by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.

A Presidential address to the nation characterized by a warm, intimate, and informal tone.
It is designed to build confidence in the President's policies.
The tradition of the fireside chat was begun by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 12, 1933, speaking to the nation by radio shortly after his inauguration, in the midst of the Great Depression.
The term fireside chat was first used by a CBS radio executive to promote an audience for Roosevelt's second address. Roosevelt gave 30 such addresses throughout his Presidency. Many of the chats described the bills that Roosevelt had gotten Congress to pass to deal with the depression. Other chats offered lessons in democracy.

TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)

A corporation owned and operated by the United States government.
Its purpose is to promote the unified development of the resources of the Tennessee River Basin, an area that includes parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Its main purposes were to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly impacted by the Great Depression.
The TVA was envisioned not only as an electricity provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society.
It was the first large regional planning agency of the federal government and remains the largest. The Authority became a model for America's governmental efforts to modernize Third World agrarian societies.

CCC

(1933 - 42) U.S. unemployment program. One of the earliest New Deal programs, it was established to relieve unemployment during the Great Depression by providing national conservation work primarily for young unmarried men. Recruits lived in semimilitary work camps and received $30 a month as well as food and medical care. Projects included planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting forest fires, and maintaining forest roads and trails. It employed a total of 3 million men during its existence.

Wagner Act

(1935) Labour legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. Sponsored by Sen. Robert F. Wagner
The act protected workers' rights to form unions and to bargain collectively.
A three-member National Labor Relations Board was established to protect against unfair labour practices; it could order elections to allow workers to choose which union they wanted to represent them.
The act also prohibited employers from engaging in unfair labour practices such as setting up a company union and firing or otherwise discriminating against workers who organized or joined unions.
The act, considered the most important piece of labour legislation in the 20th century, helped ensure union support for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 election.

Court packing plan

Roosevelt became frustrated with the Supreme Court because the judges were not aligned with him politically
He came to office in 1933, and was faced with a Court that had been mostly appointed by Republicans, and the judges were far more conservative than he would have liked.
In 1937, he next came up with the Court Packing Plan.
It suggested he could add another judge for every judge that was over 70 and had been on the court for over a decade. This would have allowed him to add 6 more judges (making the SC 15 in number). Obviously, he would have added judges who would have been pro-New Deal.
This was seen as too much grasping for power and upsetting the existing system. Couple that with the rise of fascism in Europe and a lot of people got angry at Roosevelt.
This was the final straw for many. Republicans joined with conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats to form an anti-New Deal coalition that blocked a lot of new ideas and expansions of older plans.

WPA

The Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 to the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest New Deal agency, employing millions of people and affecting almost every locality in the United States, especially rural and western mountain populations. It was created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidential order. The program built many public buildings, projects and roads and operated large arts, drama, media and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing and housing. Almost every community in America has a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. Until closed down by Congress and the war boom in 1943, the various programs of the WPA added up to the largest employment base in the country — indeed, the largest cluster of government employment opportunities in most states. Anyone who needed a job could become eligible for most of its jobs. Hourly wages were the prevailing wages in the area; the rules said workers could not work more than 30 hours a week.

HOLC (Home Owners' Loan Corporation)

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a New Deal agency established in 1933 by the Homeowners Refinancing Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its purpose was to refinance homes to prevent foreclosure. It was used to extend loans from shorter loans to fully amortized, longer term loans (typically 20-25 years). Through its work it granted long term mortgages to over a million people facing the loss of their homes.

SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)

The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
Securities and Exchange Commission was able to establish a good procedure for the corporations.
It regulates the securities markets and protects investors.
In addition to regulation and protection, it also monitors the corporate takeovers in the U.S.
responsible for administering the U.S. laws regarding securities
The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 created the Securities Exchange Commission, giving it the power to regulate the stock exchanges and the trading practices of the secondary market (a market for currently traded shares). In 1935 the Public Utility Holding Company Act was enacted to regulate all interstate holding companies (a holding company controls other companies by owning their stock) in the utility business.

Social Security Act

The main reason for the enactment of the Social Security Act was the:
1. costly medical care for the elderly
2. Suffering caused by the Great Depression
3. Need to aid farmers with economic security

4. Need to have a system that required the current working generation to contribute to the support of older, retired workers.

The federal retirement plan enacted by Congress in 1935. The Act was passed in response to old-age dependency resulting from Depression-generated phenomena. The act provided old-age benefits to be financed by a payroll tax on employers and employees. The system was later expanded to include dependents, the disabled, and others.

Prohibition

In the history of the United States, Prohibition, also known as The Noble Experiment, is the period from 1919 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Following significant pressure from the, temperance movement (social movement dedicated to the control of alcohol consumption through the promotion of moderation and abstinence), the United States Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 16, 1920. Some state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the 18th Amendment.

The "Volstead Act", the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, passed through Congress over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919 and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor. Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, it did little to enforce the law. The illegal production and distribution of liquor, or bootlegging (illegal traffic in liquor in the U.S) became rampant, and the national government did not have the means or desire to try to enforce every border, lake, river, and speakeasy in America. In fact, by 1925 in New York City alone there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.

Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities. On March 23, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages.

On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.

brain-trust

Brain trust began as a term for a group of close advisors to a political candidate, prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of advisors to Franklin Roosevelt during his presidential administration.

Franklin Roosevelt speechwriter and legal counsel Samuel Rosenman suggested having an academic team to advise Roosevelt in March 1932.
The core of the first Roosevelt brain trust consisted of a group of Columbia law professors (Moley, Tugwell, and Berle). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal (1933).
Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear. Many newspaper editorials and editorial cartoons ridiculed them as impractical idealists.The core of the second Roosevelt brain trust sprang from men associated with the Harvard law school (Cohen, Corcoran, and Frankfurter). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the Second New Deal (1935-1936).

Huey Long (born Aug. 30, 1893 — died Sept. 10, 1935, Baton Rouge

U.S. politician.
Despite an impoverished background, he managed to obtain enough formal schooling to pass the bar in 1915.
Politically ambitious, he was elected state railroad commissioner at 25. His call for state regulation of the utilities and his attacks on the Standard Oil Company won him widespread popularity.
As governor (1928 - 31) of Louisiana, he became nationally famous for his fiery oratory and unconventional behaviour, and his nickname, "Kingfish," became widely known.
He implemented public works projects and education reform but used autocratic methods to control the state government.
Elected to the U.S. Senate (1932 - 35), he sought national power with a Share-the-Wealth program. In 1935 he was assassinated by Carl A. Weiss, whose father Long had vilified. (vilify-to say or write bad things about someone or something)

Father Coughlin (October 25, 1891 - October 27, 1979)

He was a Canadian-born Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church.
He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s.
Coughlin used his radio program to promote Franklin D. Roosevelt and his early New Deal proposals, to issue antisemitic commentary, and later to rationalize some of the policies of National Socialist Adolf Hitler and Fascist Benito Mussolini.
The broadcasts have been called "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture"
His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, with his slogan being Social Justice, first with, and later against, the New Deal.

D- Day

The first day of the operation “Overlord”- Allied invasion on Europe (6^th June 1944)
The greatest amphibious attack in history. Nearly 175,000 American, Canadian, and British troops landed in Normandy on D‐Day, supported by 6,000 aircraft and 6,000 naval vessels ranging in size from battleships to 32‐foot landing craft.
The object of the attack was to win a beachhead in France in order to open a second front against Hitler's armies and to use the beachhead as a springboard for the liberation of France and Belgium, and the eventual conquest of Nazi Germany.
The Commander of Allied Armies was gen. Dwight Eisenhower
The attack consisted of division‐strength assaults on five beaches, two British (code‐named “Gold” and “Sword”), two American (“Omaha” and “Utah”), one Canadian (“Juno”), preceded by a night assault of three airborne divisions to protect the flanks (one British on the left and two American on the right).
By nightfall, the Allies were ashore on a beachhead that stretched fifty‐five miles. The cost was some 4,900 casualties, half of them at Omaha. German losses were not calculated, but they must have been considerably higher. Hitler's Atlantic Wall, built at enormous expense, had not held up the Allied landings for even one day.

Dec. 7, 1941

Surprise aerial attack by the Japanese on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu island, Hawaii, that triggered U.S. entry into World War II.
In the decade preceding the attack, U.S.-Japanese relations steadily worsened, especially after Japan entered into an alliance with the Axis powers (Germany and Italy) in 1940, and by late 1941 the U.S. had severed practically all commercial and financial relations with Japan.
On November 26 a Japanese fleet sailed to a point some 275 mi (440 km) north of Hawaii, and from there about 360 planes were launched.
The first dive-bomber appeared over Pearl Harbor at 7:55 AM (local time) and was followed by waves of torpedo planes, bombers, and fighters. Due to lax reconnaissance and the fact that many vessels were undermanned (an unmanned craft does not have a person inside it) since it was a Sunday morning, the base was unable to mount an effective defense.
The Arizona (names of the U.S. warships) was completely destroyed; the Oklahoma capsized; the California, Nevada, and West Virginia sank; more than 180 aircraft were destroyed; and numerous vessels were damaged. In addition, more than 2,300 military personnel were killed.
The "date which will live in infamy," as U.S. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt termed it, unified the American public and swept away any earlier support of neutrality. On Dec. 8, 1941, Congress declared war on Japan.

G.I. Joe

Developed in 1964 by Hasbro in response to the success of the Barbie Doll. The original G. I. Joe was fully "poseable," twelve inches tall, modeled after World War II soldiers, and came with a variety of accessories covering all branches of the military.
Using the phrase "action figure" instead of doll, G. I. Joe was immediately popular with young boys.
As the struggle in Vietnam intensified, sales faltered with military toys, so in 1968, G. I. Joe became an adventurer
In 1970, Joe came with "lifelike" hair and beards, and a new "AT" (Adventure Team) logo further distanced Joe from his military background. Sales quickened, and in 1974 designers added the famous "Kung Fu" grip allowing Joe to firmly hold accessories.

Atlantic Charter

It was signed 14 August 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain at a meeting in Argentia Bay off the coast of Newfoundland.
The United States, still technically neutral in World War II, had already taken a number of steps that brought it closer to war.
The charter included the following points:

No territorial gains were to be sought by the United States or the United Kingdom.
Territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned.
All peoples had a right to self-determination.
Trade barriers were to be lowered.
There was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare.
Freedom from want and fear.
Freedom of the seas.
Disarmament of aggressor nations, postwar common disarmament.

Although only a press release as first issued, the charter was nonetheless well understood to be a pronouncement of considerable significance. It acquired further authority when, on 1 January 1942, twenty-six countries (including the United States and Great Britain) signed the United Nations Declaration, which included among its provisions formal endorsement of the charter.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British soldier, politician, and prime minister)

A conservative, he joined the cabinet in 1908, and, at the start of World War I as first lord of the Admiralty, was in charge of the Royal Navy, with general oversight of the policy of searching neutral, including American, ships. Blamed for the ill‐fated Gallipoli expedition, he left government to serve on the western front.
Falling out with his party leaders, Churchill spent most of the 1930s as a backbench member of Parliament, but he made his name once more as an opponent of appeasement of Nazi Germany, and again took charge of the navy in 1939. With his great experience of war and government, he was a natural choice as war leader in May 1940.
As prime minister, Churchill's rousing oratory and determination embodied Britain's will to win.
He believed it vital to work closely with the United States.
He especially advocated a “Mediterranean Strategy,” designed to attack Germany through what he called the “soft underbelly” of Europe while preserving British Imperial interests.
Defeated by the Labour Party in the July 1945 election, and replaced at the Potsdam Conference by Clement Attlee.
Churchill urged resistance to Soviet communism with the 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Missouri. As prime minister once more in 1951-55, he visited America three times and took a great interest in nuclear developments, reaching an agreement in January 1952 on the use of British air bases by American nuclear bombers.

Lend-lease program Provided U.S. military aid to the Allies in World War II.

Lend-lease was a program that, from 1940, enabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt to extend aid to any country whose fate he felt was vital to U.S. defense - for the sake of national security.
Not until March 1941 did the U.S. Congress pass the Lend-Lease Act.
It provided for military aid to the World War II Allies, in return for, in the case of Britain, military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the British West Indies.
In practice, lend-lease became the main wartime U.S. aid program of the Roosevelt administration.
This act also ended the pretense of the neutrality of the United States.
A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to nearly $700 billion at 2007 prices) worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China.

The Axis Powers

The Axis powers (also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis) comprised the countries that were opposed to the Allies during World War II.^[1] The three major Axis powers - Germany, Italy, and Japan - were part of a military alliance on the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which officially founded the Axis powers. At their zenith, the Axis powers ruled empires that dominated large parts of Europe, Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, but World War II ended with their total defeat. Like the Allies, membership of the Axis was fluid, and some nations entered and later left the Axis during the course of the war. Minor Axis powers: Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia (only for about two days)

Rosie the Riveter

A fictional character created during World War II to symbolize women working in the war industries (for example, as riveters in aircraft factories). Rosie was often depicted wearing overalls and work gloves with her hair tied up in a polka-dot cloth.

Blitzkrieg

(German: "lightning war") Military tactic used by Germany in World War II, designed to create psychological shock and resultant disorganization in enemy forces through the use of surprise, speed, and superiority in matériel or firepower.
The Germans tested the blitzkrieg during the Spanish Civil War in 1938 and against Poland in 1939, and used it in the successful invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France in 1940.
The German blitzkrieg coordinated land and air attacks — using tanks, dive-bombers, and motorized artillery — to paralyze the enemy principally by disabling its communications and coordination capacities.

The Manhattan project

(1942 - 45) U.S. government research project that produced the first atomic bomb.
1939 U.S. scientists urged Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a program to study the potential military use of fission (the process of splitting an atom to produce large amounts of energy or an explosion), and $6,000 was appropriated. By 1942 the project was code-named Manhattan, after the site of Columbia University, where much of the early research was done. Research also was carried out at the University of California and the University of Chicago.
In 1943 a laboratory to construct the bomb was established at Los Alamos, N.M., and staffed by scientists headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The first bomb was exploded in a test at Alamogordo air base in southern New Mexico. By its end the project had cost some $2 billion and had involved 125,000 people.

Yalta Conference

In early February 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin met in the Black Sea port city of Yalta to discuss the postwar administration of Europe.
At the time of the conference, Allied forces had pushed Nazi Germany to the brink of collapse, and all sides recognized that the end of World War II was imminent.
Despite Roosevelt's efforts, however, Stalin drove a hard bargain at Yalta. Roosevelt's physical weakness as a dying man and Churchill's political weakness as head of a dying empire left Stalin in the strongest bargaining position of the three.

Key points of the meeting are as follows:

There was an agreement that the priority would be the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. After the war Germany would be split into four occupied zones.

Germany would undergo demilitarization and denazification.
Creation of a reparation council which would be located in Russia

The status of Poland was discussed. It was agreed to reorganize the communist Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland that had been installed by the Soviet Union "on a broader democratic basis."
The Polish eastern border would follow the Curzon Line, and Poland would receive territorial compensation in the West from Germany.

Roosevelt obtained a commitment by Stalin to participate in the United Nations.
Stalin agreed to enter the fight against the Empire of Japan within 90 days after the defeat of Germany.

Nazi war criminals were to be hunted down and brought to justice.

Potsdam conference

On 17 July 1945, Josef Stalin, Harry S. Truman, and Winston S. Churchill (who was replaced on 28 July by Clement Attlee) met for eleven days at Potsdam near Berlin. They faced two related issues: ending the war against Japan and restructuring Germany and Eastern Europe.
Truman's goal was to create principles to guide the proposed Allied Control Council in preparing for unification of Germany. Stalin was concerned about reparations and Germany's border with Poland.
Accepted were the American principles, including denazification, demilitarization, and democratization, and the Soviet desire for the Oder and Neisse Rivers as Germany's eastern border.
As for Japan, Stalin agreed to Soviet entry into the war by mid‐August, while Truman informed Stalin in vague terms about a new weapon to be used against Japan, but failed to specify that it was an atomic bomb.
At the end of the meeting, Truman and Attlee issued the Potsdam Declaration, calling upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or face destruction.

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)

Ruthless and ambitious, Joseph Stalin grabbed control of the Soviet Union after the death of V.I. Lenin in 1924.
As a member of the Bolshevik party, Stalin (his adopted name meaning "Man of Steel") had an active role in Russia's October Revolution in 1917.
He maneuvered his way up the communist party hierarchy, and in 1922 was named General Secretary of the Central Committee.
By the end of the 1920s Stalin had expelled his rival Leon Trotsky, consolidated power, and was the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s Stalin summarily executed his political enemies and started aggressive industrial and agricultural programs that left untold thousands of peasants dead.
During World War II Stalin was the commander of the Soviet military, and attended the postwar conferences at Yalta, Teheran and Potsdam. After Stalin's death he was denounced by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, and "Stalinism" was officially condemned.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)

Truman was president from 1945 to 1953.
In 1944, after representing Missouri in the Senate, Truman was elected vice president under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and became president when Roosevelt died.
He led the nation in the final months of World War II and made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
Truman enthusiastically supported the United Nations and put forward the Marshall Plan to aid the recovery of Europe after the war.
He sent American troops to support the United Nations in the Korean War, and, in a controversial move, removed General Douglas MacArthur from his command in Korea.

Truman doctrine

Pronouncement by Pres. Harry Truman. On March 12, 1947, he called for immediate economic and military aid to Greece, which was threatened by a communist insurrection, and to Turkey, which was under pressure from Soviet expansion in the Mediterranean. Engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the U.S. sought to protect those countries from falling under Soviet influence after Britain announced that it could no longer give them aid. In response to Truman's message, Congress appropriated $400 million in aid. The eruption of the Korean War in 1950 prompted a further expansion of the Truman Doctrine and the containment policy. The United States was committed to fighting communism in Asia and around the world.