ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
U.S. History 1877-Present 10: Introduction 29 Views
Share It!
Description:
The post-war era was all about outdoing Russia, buying stuff, and building a carefully crafted false sense of security about the effectiveness of school desks as nuclear weapon shields.
Transcript
- 00:04
Read a little US history and the term post-war era will ['Big Book of U.S. History' on a table]
- 00:07
inevitably be thrown around to describe the years after 1945. World War II was
- 00:12
over and Americans came home from the fighting and went back to work. They
- 00:16
bought homes and started families and created a new suburban middle-class in [Sold sign appears in front of a house]
- 00:20
cookie cutter housing developments. Boy the post-war years were grave weren't they.
Full Transcript
- 00:25
Yeah.. debatable. The term post-war era isn't even all that um.. accurate really.
- 00:31
One war was over yes but another began immediately on its heels, the Cold War.
- 00:35
Don't be confused it does sound like what's going to happen whenever the [Cold War written in frozen letters]
- 00:39
White Walkers finally attacked the wall on Game of Thrones. But it was actually a
- 00:43
decades long face off between the US and the USSR. It was called the Cold War
- 00:48
because it never erupted into direct physical conflict or a ''hot war'' between
- 00:54
the two superpowers yeah, well what was the beef? The US was capitalist and the [American flag and USSR flag side by side]
- 00:58
Soviet Union was communist, and both powers thought that the other spreading
- 01:02
their ideas into the world was as bad an idea as sticking a fork into a toaster
- 01:07
in the aftermath of World War two Europe was divided in two with the eastern half
- 01:11
under Soviet control and the western half allied with the US. To keep each
- 01:15
other within their boundaries, both the US and USSR stockpiled massive amounts
- 01:20
of nuclear weapons the idea being that only the threat of total nuclear [Planet Earth explodes]
- 01:24
annihilation would keep the other countries from using the bomb keeping
- 01:29
the world safe from nuclear war. 'MAD' - mutually assured destruction. There are
- 01:35
some flaws in logic there but let's just gloss over them for now. By 1950 the [White board with 'MAD' information on is wiped clean]
- 01:39
Soviets and Americans had begun sort of fighting each other all over the globe
- 01:42
in a series of proxy wars. This meant that they supported opposing sides in a
- 01:47
smaller war without fighting each other directly... It was kind of like two big
- 01:51
bullies making two littler kids fight or in some picking a side in a fight
- 01:56
that was already happening and saying enough with the fist you guys should try [An arm hands a baseball bat to child in a fight]
- 02:00
these baseball bats. Well Americans worried that the US would be destroyed
- 02:04
from within by hidden Soviet spies.. This time of paranoia was called the Red
- 02:10
Scare, it swept the nation and had people looking under every bed for so-called
- 02:13
commies even while bumping chats with the Soviet Union for world dominance the
- 02:18
US did take its immigration policy in a new direction. Well the Immigration Act [America and the USSR on a world map with angry looking eyes]
- 02:23
of 1965 removed immigration quotas based on race, ethnicity and religion that had
- 02:29
been put in place in 1882 and this shifted the balance of immigration to
- 02:34
the US. For the first time Asia and Latin America sent the most new immigrants
- 02:38
making a whole new generation of coming to America stories possible. At the same
- 02:43
time Americans tried to push the fear of nuclear annihilation to the back of
- 02:47
their mind. Duck and cover.. yep we actually trained kids how to protect [Title footage of "Duck and Cover" training video]
- 02:51
themselves from a nuclear bomb. By what? Yes, hiding under their desk. We had
- 02:55
fun distracting ourselves with new things to buy cars, refrigerators, hula
- 03:00
hoops, jello molds to bomb shelter snacks. Welcome to America in the postwar world
- 03:04
of war everybody yeah.. Incidentally if we needed snacks for our bomb shelter we'd [Picture of a bomb shelter with supplies]
- 03:10
probably go with Swedish fish which are made in Canada... Go figure.
Up Next
Ever heard of a "living document"? They eat and breathe just like the rest of us! They even walk around on their own two legs. Okay, fine—maybe t...
Related Videos
If the Puritans had gotten their way, religion would play a much larger role in lawmaking these days. Want to know more? Watch the video for all th...
What happened between the creation of the Articles of Confederation and the ratification of the current U.S. Constitution? This video analyzes the...
The Modernists thought the world had a lot of problems, and they were intent on fixing them—or at least talking about fixing them. Unfortunately,...
This video explains Federalism and the quest for a fair balance between state and national power. It covers the progression and compromises of Fede...