Great Depression, Cold War, and Historical Movements

Part A 

Various forces contributed to the Great Depression’s onset. The connectedness of the events led the situation to the worsening of the situation. During the 1930s, the Great Depression spread globally resulting to significant reduction in economic activities. In the viewpoint of economists, for instance, they argue that the U.S. experienced a boom period during the 1920s, allowing output of industries to grow considerably. As a result, banks were able to realize increased retail sales mostly because they offered enterprises, persons, and big corporations diverse credit services. The rise in economic activity saw a rise in manufactured products, which exceeded demand. Supply increased more than demand for products, leading companies to cut down their operations, which forced them to embark on downsizing, an issue that resulted to economic downturn and deflation since money lost value. This led to bank run, which in turn resulted to public panic who sold their stocks in huge amounts. The individuals that hoarded cash because of the banking sector’s uncertainty made the problem to worsen. Many banks declared bankruptcy, while those not affected made their credit provision policies stricter. Persons and enterprises regarded credit facilities as expensive due to their huge costs. As such, individuals spent less, which led to tremendous layoffs, leading to the highest unemployment rate in U.S. history. Moreover, economic agreements between the U.S. and European countries made the Great Depression worse. The move by the U.K. to support the U.S. in upholding the Gold standard revealed the inflation of the U.S. economy. Additionally, competition from foreign countries led other nations to react by establishing prohibitive tariffs on products that the U.S. manufactured. The changes that prevailed in economic policies between nations resulted to a reduction in international trade by approximately two-thirds. The significant effects of the First World War to European countries posed challenges for the nations to pay U.S. loans, leading the U.S. to call in the loans. The situation in line with the prohibitive trade policies worsened the Great Depression further (Eichengreen, 2016) . As a result, all the industries operating within the U.S. lost a significant number of jobs, which created a ripple effect on countries involved in international trade with the U.S.

Part B 

The introduction of the New Deal aimed at dealing with the challenges that emerged during the Great Depression. The U.S. government instituted the New Deal, while it utilized three major elements to deal with the existing issues. The initial element embarked on offering industries and corporations hit greatly by the Great Depression relief for the short term. In the case of the second element, it focused on ensuring rapid recovery of the economy. For the last element, it entailed a requirement for industries and companies to institute permanent reforms. In an effort aimed at dealing with the aftermaths of the Great Depression, the U.S. Congress instituted a number of legislation that aimed at making sure that the country would not experience such situations again. For example, the Emerging Banking Relief Act offered the U.S. president absolute power on finances of the nation. It established relief as well as recovery efforts for reducing the rising unemployment. Furthermore, the Civilian Consumption Corps targeted creating jobs by making sure that industries suffering from the Great Depression effects attained unskilled manual labor. Persons grouped themselves into outdoor clusters to fight fires, regulate floods, and create access roads. The employees were able to create trade unions because of the recovery efforts that the New Deal brought (Purcell, 2014) . Here, it became possible to support fair rivalry while employees would experience fair labor hours.

Part C 

With the end of the Second World War, tensions surrounding the Cold War increased, especially due to the growth of the arms race. The war drove the two countries to develop weapons in order to portray their military and nuclear capability. For instance, during World War II, the U.S. destroyed Nagasaki with an atomic bomb, ending the war. Since the bombing by the U.S. was considered inhumane, a nuclear era emerged since the Soviet Union aimed to attain the same progress as the U.S. in war technology. Seeing this, the U.S. collaborated with European countries to regulate the creation of nuclear and atomic weapons. The soviets retaliated by developing and propelled the first atomic bomb during 1949. The U.S. and the Soviet Union continued competing on nuclear weapon ability, which led to a nuclear arms race before the emergence of the Cold War. Anxiety grew between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950s especially when the two nations were able to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, since this indicated that the two nations would destroy each other with those weapons (Westad, 2017) . Overall, the broad tensions between the countries led them to result to diplomatic solutions to avoid going into war with each other.

The differing ideologies that prevailed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union increased the Cold War tensions. In the case of the U.S., for instance, it followed capitalistic ideals, while communism principles governed the Soviet Union. When following capitalistic ideas, the U.S. allowed its citizens to own land whereas the government possessed all power in the communist Soviet Union. During the Cold War, differences emerged in terms of how the two countries undertook their operations. This led them to result to war, which mostly revolved around propaganda as opposed to involving the military (Westad, 2017) . The propagandas led the two nations to differ on various policies, leading tensions to exacerbate mostly because of the nuclear and military capabilities of the two nations.

Concerning the Cold War, it affected the American politics and culture in a number of ways. For example, the since the U.S. and the Soviet Union were great countries, the pressure prevailing between them subjected Americans to feelings never encountered in prior years. Through the military organizations of the U.S., for instance, the U.S. was able to spread propaganda via films, which criticized communism. The many films developed led Americans to resent communism and serve as patriots. These kinds of attitudes also prevailed in the political setting to an extent that most of the domestic policies of the U.S. were anticommunist (Westad, 2017) . In this vein, the Cold War had tremendous effect on the culture as well as domestic policies, which shaped American way of life.

Part D 

From the early 1950s to 1960s, when the civil war movement emerged, it led to a number of socio-cultural, economic, and political changes in the lives of Americans. The period is attributed to the culmination of slavery and numerous groups braced its elimination. The result for this was that various legislative changes existed from 1865 to 1960s. In the case of the 13 th Amendment instituted during 1865, it hindered the slavery practice across the U.S. Furthermore, the 1954 ruling by the Supreme Court argued that racial segregation was unconstitutional. It also eradicated the racism, which dominated various schools within the U.S. In this case, African American children managed to interact freely with white kids in learning institutions. In the case of the Civil Rights Act enacted during 1957, African Americans attained voting rights, allowing them to participate in elections. This allowed them to attain political power while at the same time pursuing their careers in politics. Furthermore, the time of the Civil Rights movement allowed groups affiliated to civil rights and activists to focus on social justice. Several philanthropic activist groups emerged that fought for the rights of immigrants who worked and lived in the U.S. Concerning the sociocultural environment, it played a critical role in making sure that African Americans were treated equally in line with eradicating discrimination in terms of an individual’s color (Ollhoff, 2011) . In this perspective, therefore, the civil rights movement played a critical role in altering the way the American society viewed individuals of different race or ethnic origins.

References

Eichengreen, B. (2016). Hall of mirrors: the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the uses-and misuses-of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ollhoff, J. (2011). Civil War. Edina: ABDO.

Purcell, A. D. (2014). The New Deal and the Great Depression. Kent: Kent State University Press.

Westad, O. A. (2017). The Cold War: a world history. New York: Basic Books.