consumer society, with booming markets for radios, home appliances,
synthetic textiles, and plastics. One of the most admired men of the decade
was Henry Ford, who had introduced the assembly line into automobile
factories. Ford could pay high wages and still earn enormous profits by
mass-producing the Model T, a car that millions of buyers could afford. For
a moment, it seemed that Americans had the Midas touch.
But the superficial prosperity masked deep problems. With profits soaring
and interest rates low, plenty of money was available for investment. Much
of it, however, went into reckless speculation in the stock market. Frantic
bidding pushed prices far above stock shares' real value. Investors bought
stocks "on margin," borrowing up to 90 percent of the purchase price. The
bubble burst in 1929. The stock market crashed, triggering a worldwide
depression.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
By 1932 thousands of American banks and over 100,000 businesses had
failed. Industrial production was cut in half, wages had decreased 60
percent, and one out of every four workers was unemployed. That year
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president on the platform of "a New Deal
for the American people."
Roosevelt's jaunty self-confidence galvanized the nation. "The only thing
we have to fear is fear itself," he said at his inauguration. He followed
up these words with decisive action. Within three months -- the historic
"Hundred Days" -- Roosevelt had rushed through Congress a great number of
laws to help the economy recover. Such new agencies as the Civilian
Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration created millions
of jobs by undertaking the construction of roads, bridges, airports, parks,
and public buildings. Later the Social Security Act set up contributory old-
age and survivors' pensions.
Roosevelt's New Deal programs did not end the Depression. Although the
economy improved, full recovery had to await the defense buildup preceding
America's entry into World War II.
WORLD WAR II
Again neutrality was the initial American response to the outbreak of war
in Europe in 1939. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii by
the Japanese in December 1941 brought the United States into the war, first
against Japan and then against its allies, Germany and Italy.
American, British, and Soviet war planners agreed to concentrate on
defeating Germany first. British and American forces landed in North Africa
in November 1942, proceeded to Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943, and
liberated Rome on June 4, 1944. Two days later -- D-Day -- Allied forces
landed in Normandy. Paris was liberated on August 24, and by September
American units had crossed the German border. The Germans finally
surrendered on May 5, 1945.
The war against Japan came to a swift end in August of 1945, when
President Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against the cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. Although
the matter can still provoke heated discussion, the argument in favor of
dropping the bombs was that casualties on both sides would have been
greater if the Allies had been forced to invade Japan.
THE COLD WAR
A new international congress, the United Nations, came into being after
the war, and this time the United States joined. Soon tensions developed
between the United States and its wartime ally the Soviet Union. Although
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had promised to support free elections in all
the liberated nations of Europe, Soviet forces imposed Communist
dictatorships in eastern Europe. Germany became a divided country, with a
western zone under joint British, French, and American occupation and an
eastern zone under Soviet occupation. In the spring of 1948 the Soviets
sealed off West Berlin in an attempt to starve the isolated city into
submission. The western powers responded with a massive airlift of food and
fuel until the Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949. A month earlier the
United States had allied with Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United
Kingdom to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
On June 25, 1950, armed with Soviet weapons and acting with Stalin's
approval, North Korea's army invaded South Korea. Truman immediately
secured a commitment from the United Nations to defend South Korea. The war
lasted three years, and the final settlement left Korea divided.
Soviet control of eastern Europe, the Korean War, and the Soviet
development of atomic and hydrogen bombs instilled fear in Americans. Some
believed that the nation's new vulnerability was the work of traitors from
within. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy asserted in the early 1950s that
the State Department and the U.S. Army were riddled with Communists.
McCarthy was eventually discredited. In the meantime, however, careers had
been destroyed, and the American people had all but lost sight of a
cardinal American virtue: toleration of political dissent.
From 1945 until 1970 the United States enjoyed a long period of economic
growth, interrupted only by mild and brief recessions. For the first time a
majority of Americans enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. In 1960, 55
percent of all households owned washing machines, 77 percent owned cars, 90
percent had television sets, and nearly all had refrigerators. At the same
time, the nation was moving slowly to establish racial justice.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy was elected president. Young, energetic, and
handsome, he promised to "get the country moving again" after the eight-
year presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the aging World War II general. In
October 1962 Kennedy was faced with what turned out to be the most drastic
crisis of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had been caught installing nuclear
missiles in Cuba, close enough to reach American cities in a matter of
minutes. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on the island. Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushschev ultimately agreed to remove the missiles, in return for
an American promise not to invade Cuba.
In April 1961 the Soviets capped a series of triumphs in space by sending
the first man into orbit around the Earth. President Kennedy responded with
a promise that Americans would walk on the moon before the decade was over.
This promise was fulfilled in July of 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong
stepped out of the Apollo 11 spacecraft and onto the moon's surface.
Kennedy did not live to see this culmination. He had been assassinated in
1963. He was not a universally popular president, but his death was a
terrible shock to the American people. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson,
managed to push through Congress a number of new laws establishing social
programs. Johnson's "War on Poverty" included preschool education for poor
children, vocational training for dropouts from school, and community
service for slum youths.
During his six years in office, Johnson became preoccupied with the
Vietnam War. By 1968, 500,000 American troops were fighting in that small
country, previously little known to most of them. Although politicians
tended to view the war as part of a necessary effort to check communism on
all fronts, a growing number of Americans saw no vital American interest in
what happened to Vietnam. Demonstrations protesting American involvement
broke out on college campuses, and there were violent clashes between
students and police. Antiwar sentiment spilled over into a wide range of
protests against injustice and discrimination.
Stung by his increasing unpopularity, Johnson decided not to run for a
second full term. Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968. He pursued a
policy of Vietnamization, gradually replacing American soldiers with
Vietnamese. In 1973 he signed a peace treaty with North Vietnam and brought
American soldiers home. Nixon achieved two other diplomatic breakthroughs:
re-establishing U.S. relations with the People's Republic of China and
negotiating the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet
Union. In 1972 he easily won re-election.
During that presidential campaign, however, five men had been arrested for
breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office
building in Washington, D.C. Journalists investigating the incident
discovered that the burglars had been employed by Nixon's re-election
committee. The White House made matters worse by trying to conceal its
connection with the break-in. Eventually, tape recordings made by the
president himself revealed that he had been involved in the cover-up. By
the summer of 1974, it was clear that Congress was about to impeach and
convict him. On August 9, Richard Nixon became the only U.S. president to
resign from office.
DECADES OF CHANGE
After World War II the presidency had alternated between Democrats and
Republicans, but, for the most part, Democrats had held majorities in the
Congress -- in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. A string
of 26 consecutive years of Democratic control was broken in 1980, when the
Republicans gained a majority in the Senate; at the same time, Republican
Ronald Reagan was elected president. This change marked the onset of a
volatility that has characterized American voting patterns ever since.
Whatever their attitudes toward Reagan's policies, most Americans credited
him with a capacity for instilling pride in their country and a sense of
