THE YEARS BETWEEN THE WARS

In the 1920's America became a nation on wheels. It seemed as if every family were buying a car. The most popular car was the Model T, made by Henry Ford. Like the assembly line in industry, including Ford's factories, buying durable goods on the install­ment plan was a new idea in American business. The installment plan made it possible for people to "own" cars before they really owned them.

The plan was also called 'buying on time." It had a good effect on business because more people were able to buy expensive things.

In 1929, American business ran into trouble - the stock market crashed, the value of stocks fell so low that stocks were no longer worth the money people had paid for them. Banks and companies went out of business. Industries cut down production, jobs were hard to find, wages lowered considerably, unemployment rates were very high - millions of Americans were out of work. Farm families lost their land. People stood in line to get handouts, of bread and soup. The situation was so bad and lasted so long that the 1930's are called the Great Depression. In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President. He promised Americans a New Deal- new plans to end the Depression. By 1936 there had been started dozens of programs to create new jobs and help people make a new start. So Roosevelt easily won election to a second term as President. Four years later, in 1940, he was elected to a third term, which broke the old tradition that limited a President to two terms in office.

 TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF THE CENTURY AND AFTER

In 1937 China was invaded by Japanese military forces. Two years later, Hitler sent his army into Poland and went on to attack other European countries. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States in 1940. The United States was staying neutral. On December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes attacked an American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the American battleships and airplanes were destroyed in the Pearl Harbor attack. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,388 persons, sank 8 ships, and damaged nearly 350 airplanes. This was the largest sin­gle-day loss in U.S. Navy history. During the attack the USS Arizo­na sank in less than nine minutes, killing 1,177 crew members.

This attack brought the United States into World War II, and Congress declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. The fighting went on in North America, Europe, China, South­east Asia, and on islands in the Pacific Ocean. The American fight­ing forces used airplanes to bomb enemy bases. Boats landed troops and tanks on Pacific islands held by the Japanese. Although Roosevelt and Churchill decided that the main the­atre of the war should be Europe, providing all possible help to Great Britain and the allies, the American Navy obtained several victories against the Japanese in 1942 and gradually reconquered one island after another in the Pacific. After the victory of the Soviet Union over Hitler's troops in Europe (the Nazi Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945), the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people was finished. But the Japanese rulers did not surrender. In the summer of 1945, American air­planes dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. One destroyed the city of Hiroshima, and the other wiped out the city of Nagasaki. This military bombing of the two Japanese cities caused a heavy loss of peaceful people's lives, and it led to Emperor Hirohito's formal surrender on 2 September 1945.

While the United States had lost almost 300,000 members of its armed services in World War II, there had been no fighting or bombing in North America. So the United States was in much better shape than the war-torn countries. The United Nations, the UN for short, had been formed at the end of WW II. Most of the world nations joined. The United Na­tions Charter had been drafted at the Potsdam peace conference in July 1945.

A cold war started between the United States and the Soviet Union almost as soon as WW II ended. The two countries had been allies in fighting Nazi Germany. But they bitterly disagreed over what should happen to the countries of eastern Europe after Germany was defeated. After the war, new types of weapons and new forms of using them were invented, and both the United States and the Soviet Union built up a tremendous supply of powerful armaments. This contest became known as the arms race.

This persistent hostility between the Western and Communist nations defined the life of the post-war world. The cold war land­marks were the policy of the iron curtain, i.e. of the Soviet Union control over the countries of the Warsaw Treaty; the Truman Doc­trine (Harry S. Truman — U.S. President in 1945-1953) of help­ing 'all free people' to resist Communist influence; the Marshall Plan, devised by US Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947, in which the United States gave or loaned billions of dollars to various European countries, particularly Germany, to assist in post­war reconstruction of their industries. The widespread fear of Com­munism was one of the reasons behind the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949. The same fear, during the 1950s, brought to life the political phenomenon of McCarthyism (the most famous anti-Communist, Senator Jo­seph McCarthy of Wisconsin, branded anyone opposing him as a Communist or 'Communist sympathizer', and used this method of discrediting people without proof. Those accused of being pro-Communists usually lost their jobs and found it very difficult or impossible to get new ones).

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) was the axis of po­litical and war strategies machine of the United States. The Bu­reau's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, built the new agency into a law enforcement empire and became enormously powerful in the process, running his fief with scant interference through the ten­ures of eight presidents (1924-1972). By the time he died in 1972, Hoover was feared and hated by millions for his agency's habit of bending civil liberties laws, especially when gathering informa­tion on suspected "subversives" - nonconformists of any stripe.

Numerous political and armed incidents and war actions throughout the post-war world for spheres of influence increased international tension and the possibility of another global con­flict: the wars in North Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1960-1973), the support of France in their Indochina War (1946-1954), the Soviet-American conflict in Cuba (1962).

By 1965 the United States was spending huge amounts of mon­ey on the war, and large numbers of American soldiers were fight­ing in Vietnam. The Vietnam War became the subject of heated argument among the American people. Feeling about this war grew so strong that some people held big demonstrations to protest the war. Finally, in 1973 the United States withdrew it’s forces from the Viet­nam War. It had been the longest war in their history.

While Americans were still recovering from the shock of their first-ever defeat in war, their belief in the nation's political insti­tutions was shaken by a series of scandals. The most serious of these became known as the Watergate scandal, when prominent members of the Republican party were found guilty of 'bugging' the Democratic party's campaign headquarters (at the Watergate building). The scandal forced President Nixon to resign the Pres­idency, thus completely overshadowing his achievements while in office, such as the normalization of relations with China and the signing of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union in 1972. Facing sure impeachment for rea­sons of perjury, misuse of federal funds, and politicization of federal agencies, Nixon resigned in 1974.

When the Iran-Contra scandal began to break in November 1986, it was as deeply disturbing as any revelation from Washing­ton since Watergate. The Reagan administration, in its zeal to

top­ple the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, had illegal­ly sold arms to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran to fund a ragtag army of "freedom fighters" in Nicaragua known as the "Contras".

The issue that dominated American politics in the 1950s and 1960s was civil rights. Numerous Presidents (Truman, Eisenhow­er, Kennedy, and Johnson) attempted to improve the situation of black people and other minorities in American society. Some progress was made, despite congressional opposition.

Although the civil rights movement - the struggle for equal rights for blacks - had long been in existence, it gained strength in the 1950s. Blacks had fought in WW II, and after the war many blacks had migrated from farms to cities. They were less willing to put up with unequal conditions.

The equal rights movement suffered a great loss in 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr., who had done much for outlawing segre­gation and who had called for the observance of principles of non­violence, nonviolent protest - sit-ins, marches, etc. - was assassi­nated. King is buried in Atlanta, Georgia. Carved on his tomb­stone are famous words from one of his speeches: "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."

Although many civil rights efforts were non-violent, they of­ten met with violent responses on the part of mobs and the police. Civil rights workers were jailed, beaten, and even murdered. In the mid-1960s these mass demonstrations often degenerated into violent clashes, as the militant Black Power movements replaced the non-violent organizations.

America has made great progress - Congress has passed laws mak­ing segregation illegal, making job discrimination illegal, and strength­ening voting rights. Still much remains to be done for King's dream of true equality for all to fully come true. He said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".

 

EXERCISES:

I FIND RUSSIAN EQUVALENTS OF THE FOLLOWING PHRASES:

To dig up facts about the work of po­litical machines; to make big com­panies lose control of the elections; go on a hunger strike; to buy durable goods on the install­ment plan; to run into trouble;to crash the stock market ;go out of business; to cut down production, to stay in line to get handouts; to break the old tradition; the largest sin­gle-day loss; to drop atomic bombs;to face impeachment for rea­sons of perjury; tremendous supply of powerful armaments; to carve on tomb­stone; suffer a great loss; to overshadow achievements; to recover from the shock of first-ever defeat in war.

II ANSWER THE QUESTIONS:

1 What reformatory changes were taken in 1900’s?

2 What is the name of Robert M.La Follette associated with?

3What did the sruggle of suffragists lead to?

4 What was the segregation of the society in the South of the country connected with?

5 What was the role played by the USA in the World War I?

6 When did the Great Depression begin?

7 What were the consequences of this hard period?

8 What were the measures proposed by Franklin D.Roosevelt to overcome the crises?

9 How was America drawn into the war with Japan, Italy and Germany?

10 What was the tragedy of Pearl Habour?

11 Why were two Japanese towns wiped out by American atomic bombs?

12 When and why was the United Nations formed?

13 What was the cold war between Soviet Union and United Nations caused by?

14 What are the landmarks of the cold war?

15 What political and military incidents and war actions encreased international tension in the XXth century?

16 What political events of the XX th century have lowered the prestige of the nation's political insti­tutions in the USA?

17 How did black people fight for ther civil rights?

18 Why is Martin Luther King considerd to be a national hero of black people?

 

III TRANSLATE INTO ENGLISH:

1 Нападение гитлеровской Германии на СССР изменило военно-политическую расстановку сил в мире. Сделали свой выбор США, стремительно выходившие на передовые позиции во многих отраслях хозяйства и особенно в военно-промышленном производстве. Правительство Франклина Рузвельта заявило о намерении оказать поддержку СССР и другим странам анти­гитлеровской коалиции всеми имеющимися в его распоряжении средствами. 14 августа 1941 года Рузвельт и Черчель подписали знаменитую "Атлантическую хартию "программу целей и конкретных действий в борьбе против германского фашизма.

2 К концу 1941 года японцы считали, что ключом к успеху в борьбе за контроль над Тихим океаном является уничтожение Пёрл Харбора, главной американской военно-морской базы на Тихом океане. 7 декабря 1941 года на американские корабли, которых в узкой гавани было около 70, обрушилось примерно 200 японских бомбардировщиков, торпедоносцев и истребителей. Одновременно в бухту ворвались японские подводные лодки. Менее чем через час налет повторили еще 160 самолетов. Потери американцев были огромны. Название "Пёрл-Харбор" стало таким же символическим, как Сталинград и Курская дуга.

 

 

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