History of the United States in the Twentieth Century — Winter – Institute for the Study of Western Civilization

Week 11

Week 11: Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The election of 1932 was also a watershed, since it ended the long period, beginning in the 1860s, when the Republicans had been the majority US party. Between the Civil War and 1932 the Democrats had won four presidential elections, electing Cleveland twice and Wilson twice, but in each case with minorities of the votes cast. Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaigning with Senator John Nance Garner of Texas, now carried the nation by a landslide, winning 22,809,638 to 15,758,901, and taking the electoral college by 472 votes to 59. The Democrats also took both Houses of Congress.70 The 1932 election saw the emergence of the ‘Democratic coalition of minorities,’ based on the industrial Northeast (plus the South), which was to last for half a century and turn Congress almost into a one-party legislature. The pattern had been foreshadowed by the strong showing of A. E. Smith in 1928 and, still more, by Democrats in the 1930s mid-term elections. But it was only in 1932 that the Republicans finally lost the progressive image they had enjoyed since Lincoln’s day and saw it triumphantly seized by their Democratic enemies, with all that such a transfer implies in the support of the media, the approval of academia, the patronage of the intelligentsia, and, not least, the fabrication of historical orthodoxy. The most welcome thing about Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time was that he was not Hoover. Common Sense, one of the new left-wing journals, got it right in one sense when it said the election had been a choice between ‘the great glum engineer from Palo Alto’ and ‘the laughing boy from Hyde Park.’ Roosevelt laughed. He was the first American President deliberately to make a point of showing a flashing smile whenever possible. By 1932 he was an experienced administrator with eight years in the Navy Department under Wilson and a moderately successful spell as governor of New York. At the beginning of 1932 Walter Lippmann described him as ‘a highly impressionable person without a firm grasp of public affairs and without very strong convictions…not the dangerous enemy of anyone. He is too eager to please…no crusader…no tribune of the people…no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man, without any important qualifications for the office, and would very much like to be president.’72 That was a shrewd and accurate assessment, before the reality was obscured by the patina of PR. Time called him ‘a vigorous, well-intentioned gentleman of good birth and breeding.’

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING

David M. Kennedy,

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States),

Oxford University Press,

ISBN 978-0195144031

12

Week 12: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
1932-1939

US Elections were held on November 8, 1932, during the Great Depression. The presidential election coincided with U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and gubernatorial elections in several states. The election is widely considered to be a realigning election. The Democratic Party swept control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, ending 72 years of Republican dominance of the country that lasted since 1860 and Lincoln's presidency. Democratic New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent president Herbert Hoover in a landslide, with Hoover winning only six Northeastern states. Roosevelt's victory was the first by a Democratic candidate since Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916. In addition to Hoover's defeat, the Republicans also suffered crushing defeats in both congressional chambers: they lost 101 seats in the House of Representatives, with the Democrats expanding their House majority to a supermajority, and also lost twelve seats in the Senate, with Democrats winning control of the chamber for the first time since 1918. This would be the last time that an incumbent president lost re-election and his party lost control of both chambers of Congress in a single term until 2020.

While the new government of Franklin Roosevelt faced an American economic crisis, in Europe and the Pacific the United States faced a growing military threat from a newly rearmed Germany and Japan on the march in China and the surrounding region. From 1932 to 1939, the Roosevelt administration did not want to be distracted from its New Deal by international affairs.

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Week 13: Tuesday, January 20, 2026
The New Deal: Success and Failure

The New Deal (1933–1939) was a series of federal programs enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat the Great Depression through relief, recovery, and reform. It succeeded in stabilizing the banking system, providing immediate relief, and creating lasting infrastructure, but failed to end the Depression, which required the massive demand of WWII.
Successes:
Banking Stabilization & Relief: The Emergency Banking Act restored confidence, while the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) secured bank deposits.
Job Creation & Infrastructure: Agencies like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) employed millions, building schools, roads, and parks.
Social Safety Net: The Social Security Act (1935) created a permanent system for pensions and unemployment insurance.
Financial Regulation: The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) was established to regulate the stock market.
Failures:
Failure to End the Depression: Unemployment remained high, and the economy took a downturn in 1937 when spending was cut, showing the economy had not fully recovered until the onset of WWII.
Economic & Social Disparities: Many programs, such as the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act), negatively affected sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Initial New Deal measures provided limited, uneven benefits to African Americans and women.
Government Overreach & Bureaucracy: Critics argued that the expansion of federal power, increased national debt, and creation of massive, often inefficient, bureaucracy undermined free enterprise.
Constitutional Challenges: The Supreme Court initially struck down key programs like the NRA (National Recovery Administration), deeming them unconstitutional extensions of federal authority.
The New Deal fundamentally altered the role of the federal government, establishing it as a guardian of economic stability and social welfare, even though it did not solve the immediate, deep-rooted economic crisis of the 1930s.

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Week 14: Tuesday, January 27, 2026
USA in World War II

In 1942, the United States embarked on a mobilization of human, physical, and financial resources without precedent in history. All the inhibitions, frustrations, and restraints of the Depression years vanished virtually overnight. Within a single year, the number of tanks built in America had been raised to over 24,000 and planes to over 48,000. By the end of America’s first year in the war, it had raised its arms production to the total of all three enemy powers put together, and by 1944 had doubled it again, while at the same time creating an army which passed the 7 million mark in 1943.149 During the conflict, the United States in total enrolled 11,260,000 soldiers, 4,183,466 sailors, 669,100 marines and 241,093 coastguards. Despite this vast diversion of manpower to the forces, US factories built 296,000 planes and 102,000 tanks, and US shipyards turned out 88,000 ships and landing-craft.150 The astonishing acceleration in the American productive effort was made possible by the essential dynamism and flexibility of the American enterprise system, wedded to a national purpose which served the same galvanizing role as the optimism of the Twenties. The war acted as an immense bull market, encouraging American entrepreneurial skills to fling the country’s seemingly inexhaustible resources of materials and manpower into a bottomless pool of consumption. Extraordinary exercises in speed took place. One reason the Americans won the Battle of Midway was by reducing what had been regarded as a three-month repair job on the carrier Yorktown to forty-eight hours, using 1,200 technicians working round the clock.151 The construction program for the new defense coordinating center, the Pentagon, with its 16 miles of corridors and 600,000 square feet of office space, was cut from seven years to fourteen months. (Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People (p. 781). HarperCollins)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING

David M. Kennedy,

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States),

Oxford University Press,

ISBN 978-0195144031

15

Week 15: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Harry Truman

Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt that year. Subsequently, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the aftermath of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. A member of the Democratic Party, he proposed numerous New Deal coalition liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the United States Congress. Born in Lamar, Missouri, Truman was raised in Independence, Missouri, and during World War I fought in France as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning home, he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, and was elected as a judge of Jackson County in 1922. Truman was elected to the U.S. Senate for Missouri in 1934. Between 1940 and 1944, he gained national prominence as the chairman of the Truman Committee, which aimed to reduce waste and inefficiency in wartime contracts. Truman was elected vice president in the 1944 presidential election and became president upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945. Only then was he told about the ongoing Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. Truman authorized the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman's administration engaged in an internationalist foreign policy by working closely with Britain. Truman staunchly denounced isolationism. He energized the New Deal coalition during the 1948 presidential election, despite a divided Democratic Party, and won a surprise victory against the Republican Party's nominee, Thomas E. Dewey. Truman presided over the onset of the Cold War in 1947. He oversaw the Berlin Airlift and the Marshall Plan in 1948. With America's involvement in the Korean War (1950–1953), South Korea repelled the invasion by North Korea. He was eligible for reelection in 1952 but he chose not to run due to poor polling. Subsequently, Truman went into a retirement marked by the founding of his presidential library and the publication of his memoirs.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING

David M. Kennedy,

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States),

Oxford University Press,

ISBN 978-0195144031

16

Week 16: Tuesday, February 10, 2026
USA Saves Europe

During the winter of 1946-47 Europe was teetering on the edge of chaos. Soviet tanks were menacing all along the Eastern European borders, winter weather had delivered the most severe cold weather in a century, governments were on the verge of breakdown. The result was the appearance of President Truman before a special session of both Houses of Congress on March 12, 1947 and the annunciation of what was immediately called the Truman Doctrine: ‘I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.’ Truman did not say how long such support might be necessary but he indicated that it must be provided for as long as was needed, which might be many years. In short, the US was now undertaking an open-ended commitment, both military and economic, to preserve democracy in the world. It had the means, and it had the will, because it had the men: Truman himself, leading two whole generations of active internationalists, young and old, who had learned from experience and history that America had to take its full part in the world, for the sake of the human race. These men, military and civil, politicians and diplomats, included Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, John McCloy, Charles Bohlen, Robert Lovett, and many leading senators and congressmen, of whom the ‘born again’ newly internationalist Senator Vandenberg was the outstanding leader. (Paul Johnson. A History of the American People (p. 811). HarperCollins)

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Week 17: Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Communists in the World: Korea

On 25 June 1950, the Korean People's Army (KPA), equipped and trained by the Soviets, launched an invasion of the south. In the absence of the Soviet Union's representative, the UN Security Council denounced the attack and recommended member states to repel the invasion. UN forces comprised 21 countries, with the United States providing around 90% of military personnel. Seoul was captured by the North Koreans on 28 June, and by early August, the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) and its allies were nearly defeated, holding onto only the Pusan Perimeter in the peninsula's southeast. On 15 September, UN forces led by General MacArthur landed at Inchon near Seoul, cutting off North Korean troops and supply lines. UN forces broke out from the perimeter on 18 September, re-captured Seoul, and invaded North Korea in October, capturing Pyongyang and advancing towards the Yalu River—the border with China. On 19 October, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA) crossed the Yalu and entered the war on the side of the North. UN forces retreated from North Korea in December, following the PVA's first and second offensive. Communist forces captured Seoul again in January 1951 before losing it to a UN counter-offensive two months later. After an abortive Chinese spring offensive, UN forces retook territory roughly up to the 38th parallel. Armistice negotiations began in July 1951, but dragged on as the fighting became a war of attrition and the North suffered heavy damage from U.N. bombing.

With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank, at Haengju, Korea. June 9, 1951.

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Week 18: Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Communists in the USA: Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs

Klaus Fuchs
In the 1950s USA, Klaus Fuchs was a pivotal figure in Cold War espionage, a German-born physicist who spied for the Soviet Union, passing critical atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project (where he worked in Los Alamos) to the Soviets, accelerating their nuclear program and ending America's monopoly. Arrested in the UK in 1950, his confession implicated the Rosenberg spy ring, leading to high-profile arrests and fueling the era's intense anti-Communist concerns (McCarthyism) as the U.S. grappled with Soviet nuclear capability. Fuchs was a theoretical physicist who contributed to the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, from 1944 to 1946. He transmitted detailed information about the bomb's design and production to Soviet intelligence, motivated by his Communist beliefs and desire to counter fascism. U.S. and British intelligence uncovered his espionage through decrypted Soviet cables (Venona project), leading to his arrest in London in 1950. His espionage shattered the US-UK nuclear monopoly and significantly helped the Soviets develop their own atomic bomb, intensifying the Cold War arms race. The revelations about Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, and other atomic spies intensified American fears of Communist infiltration and subversion, contributing to the atmosphere of the McCarthy era. Fuchs's confession directly led to the arrests and convictions of Harry Gold, David Greenglass, and ultimately Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, some of his American contacts. Fuchs served nine years of a 14-year sentence in the UK, then moved to East Germany, where he continued his nuclear physics career until retirement, dying in 1988.
Alger Hiss.
In the 1950s, Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, and close advisor to President Roosevelt, became a symbol of communist infiltration in the U.S. after being accused by former Communist Whittaker Chambers of being a Soviet spy. Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 for lying about his involvement and served time in prison, a case that fueled Cold War fears, boosted House member Rep. Richard Nixon and remained controversial even with later evidence proving his guilt. (Soviet archives opened up during the 1990s produced proof that Alger Hiss was an active spy for the Soviet Union)
Key Details of the Case:
The Accusation (1948): Whittaker Chambers, a senior Time magazine editor and self-confessed former Soviet spy, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), naming Hiss as a Communist and spy.
Hiss's Denial: Hiss, a respected figure involved with the New Deal and a close advisor to FDR and the UN, denied the charges vehemently, claiming he was framed by Chambers.
The Trials (1949-1950): After a hung jury in 1949, Hiss was convicted in a second trial in January 1950 for lying about his relationship with Chambers, as the espionage charge was past the statute of limitations.
Conviction & Imprisonment: He was sentenced to five years for perjury, serving over three years in prison, maintaining his innocence throughout.
Impact on the 1950s:
Rise of McCarthyism: The case lent credibility to claims of widespread Communist infiltration in the US government, fueling Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade.
Political Significance: It boosted the careers of Richard Nixon (who was involved in the investigation of Hiss) and McCarthy, and marked a turning point in American anti-Communism.
Significance of the Hiss Case: Hiss's case became emblematic of the intense political tensions, public fear, and anti-Communist fervor (Red Scare) of the early Cold War era.

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Week 19: Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Dwight David Eisenhower

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (1890 – 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas. His family had a strong religious background, and his mother became a Jehovah's Witness. Eisenhower, however, belonged to no organized church until 1952. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and later married Mamie Doud, with whom he had two sons. During World War I, he was denied a request to serve in Europe and instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews. Between the wars he served in staff positions in the US and the Philippines, reaching the rank of brigadier general shortly before the entry of the US into World War II in 1941. After further promotion Eisenhower oversaw the Allied invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany. After the war ended in Europe, he served as military governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany (1945), Army Chief of Staff (1945–1948), president of Columbia University (1948–1953), and as the first supreme commander of NATO (1951–1952). In 1952, Eisenhower entered the presidential race as a Republican to block the extremist policies of Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO and sought to undo the New Deal. Eisenhower won that year's election and the 1956 election in landslides, both times defeating Adlai Stevenson II. Eisenhower's main goals in office were to contain the spread of communism and reduce federal deficits. In 1953, he considered using nuclear weapons to end the Korean War and may have threatened China with nuclear attack if an armistice was not reached quickly. China did agree and an armistice resulted, which remains in effect. He supported regime-changing military coups in Iran and Guatemala orchestrated by his own administration. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, he condemned the Israeli, British, and French invasion of Egypt, and he forced them to withdraw. He also condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but took no action. He deployed 15,000 soldiers during the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Near the end of his term, a summit meeting with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was cancelled when a US spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which was left to John F. Kennedy to carry out. Eisenhower continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking executive privilege. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders which integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His administration undertook the development and construction of the Interstate Highway System, which remains the largest construction of roadways in American history. In 1957, following the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Eisenhower led the American response which included the creation of NASA and the establishment of a stronger, science-based education via the National Defense Education Act. The Soviet Union began to reinforce their own space program, escalating the Space Race. His two terms saw unprecedented economic prosperity except for a minor recession in 1958. In his farewell address, he expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, which he dubbed "the military–industrial complex". Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of US presidents. (Wikipedia)

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Week 20: Tuesday, March 10, 2026
John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president at 43 years. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency. Born into the prominent Kennedy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940, joining the U.S. Naval Reserve the following year. During World War II, he commanded PT boats in the Pacific theater. Kennedy's survival following the sinking of PT-109 and his rescue of his fellow sailors made him a war hero and earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, but left him with serious injuries. After a brief stint in journalism, Kennedy represented a working-class Boston district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953. He was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate, serving as the junior senator from Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960. While in the Senate, Kennedy published his book Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy ran in the 1960 presidential election. His campaign gained momentum after the first televised presidential debates in American history, and he was elected president, narrowly defeating Republican opponent Richard Nixon, the incumbent vice president. Kennedy's presidency saw high tensions with communist states in the Cold War. He increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam, and the Strategic Hamlet Program began during his presidency. In 1961, he authorized attempts to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and Operation Mongoose. In October 1962, U.S. spy planes discovered Soviet missile bases had been deployed in Cuba. The resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly resulted in nuclear war. In August 1961, after East German troops erected the Berlin Wall, Kennedy sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners of U.S. support, and delivered one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin in June 1963. In 1963, Kennedy signed the first nuclear weapons treaty. He supported the civil rights movement but was only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. His vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, assumed the presidency. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination, but he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Warren Commission both concluded Oswald had acted alone, but conspiracy theories about the assassination persist. (Wikipedia)