THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING OF CLASS WAR --- Episode 4

    JUMPING AHEAD TO THE END OF WORLD WAR II 

           
   On September 2, 1945, the Second World War officially ended. Though Americans everywhere were cheered by that news, a strange pall hung over the nation as Americans envisioned their own future in the burned-out ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 12, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow observed, "Seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured." Public discourse was rife with apocalyptic forebodings, as Americans were struck by what historian Paul Boyer describes as a "primal fear of extinction." The St. Louis Post Dispatch worried that science may have "signed the mammalian world's death certificate." John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, admitted that he had been contemplating this development for fifteen years and added, "Frankly, I am scared." This was not just a new bomb ; it was, he explained, "the power to kill the human race." The New York Times regretted that humans could now "blow ourselves and perhaps the planet itself to drifting dust." The Washington Post lamented that the life expectancy of the human species had "dwindled immeasurably in the course of two brief weeks." 


War's end left much of Europe and Asia in tatters. As many as 70 million people lay dead. Civilian deaths outnumbered military deaths by more than three to two. The Soviet losses were unparalleled, as retreating German troops destroyed everything in their path. President John F. Kennedy later remarked, "No nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including two-thirds of its industrial base, were turned into a wasteland----a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago." 

Only the United States escaped such destruction. The U.S. economy was booming. GNP and exports more than doubled prewar levels. Industrial production soared, growing during the war at a record 15 percent annually. The United States held two-thirds of the world's gold reserves and three-quarters of its invested capital. It produced a phenomenal 50 percent of the world's goods and services. Yet businessmen and planners worried that the end of wartime spending augured a return to prewar depression conditions. They particularly feared the consequences should Europe adopt economic spheres closed to American trade and investment. 

With Franklin Roosevelt at the helm, the United States skillfully steered a middle course between Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Most Americans looked askance at British imperialism and disapproved of Great Britain's repressive policies in Greece, India, and elsewhere. Many also mistrusted Soviet-style socialism and decried the Soviet Union's heavy-handed treatment of Eastern Europe. After the war, the United States used a $3.75 billion credit to pry open the British Empire, gaining equal access for American capital and goods. It also cancelled Great Britain's lend-lease debt. The United States disappointed the Soviet Union by not offering similar aid, although it had dangled the prospect of a large war credit during wartime discussions .  Harry Truman, unfortunately, showed none of Roosevelt's dexterity in navigating an independent course as he tacked increasingly toward the British camp, ignoring Soviet concerns at a time of maximum U.S. strength and relative Soviet weakness. 

   TO BE CONTINUED