HIS-144-T5

.docx

School

Grand Canyon University *

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Course

144

Subject

History

Date

Apr 3, 2024

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docx

Pages

4

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Grade: 90/90 Instructor comments: this is another excellent effort that responds to all parts of the prompt in a way that's thorough and sophisticated. Very nice work - keep it up! HIS-144: America after World War II Directions: Using resources from the Topic 5 Readings, including your textbook, materials provided by your instructor through class discussion, and materials from the GCU Library Guide for HIS-144 US History Themes, respond to the six prompts below. Each answer to the questions should be a minimum of 100-200 words The overall assignment must include three to five relevant scholarly sources in support of your content. While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. Wikipedia, Ask.com, ehow.com and other online information sites, encyclopedias, or dictionaries are not considered university academic sources and are NOT TO BE USED . 1. Explain the G.I. Bill. In what ways does it change America? The G. I. Bill ( Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) It promised unemployment benefits, educational opportunities, low-interest housing loans, and medical care to millions of soldiers (Schultz, 2018). Many of the returning servicemen would enroll into colleges following WWII. Which was a big change for Americans, college was typically exclusive to the upper-middle class and wealthy. Bound and Turner (2002), for example, documented that WWII and the subsequent GI Bill increased collegiate completion rates by approximately 40 % (Larsen, 2015). This would have also changed American in a sense with marriage. More men attending college who may not have attended are now considered more desirable to a higher class of women. Affordable home loans became available to help the soldiers to buy in new developing suburbs from the G.I. Bill. Unfortunately, not all soldiers would benefit from the G. I. Bill, racism was still in America and many of the opportunities white soldiers had African Americans did not. 2. Why did suburbanization occur after World War II? What changes does suburbia bring to American society? The cookie-cutter homes that sprang up outside metropolitan areas after World War II weren't grand palaces, but to the generation that had survived the Great Depression and World War II these little cottages represented almost unimaginable luxury (Kutz, 2015). 1
America was changing, from previous years many who would move to America would live in the city near the factories where they were employed. During the 1940s and 1950s many Americans would migrate to the suburbs. Through the G.I. Bill many veterans and working- class Americans were able to buy homes using the affordable home loans with low interest. Suburbs were starting to develop with the idea of having more space and leaving the cities or farms where you once lived. Levittown was one of the first suburb, a 4,000-acre potato field was bought up in Long Island. Levitt and Sons created the largest housing project in American history. They created the use of the assembly-line to help produce all the houses. Every house in the division had exactly the same floor plan; residents reported that at night they sometimes walked into the wrong house by accident (Kutz, 2015). 3. Why is the automobile so important to post war America? Automobile also transformed American life and became a staple in every household. People could now afford to purchase a car and had a home to park it at. Also, the federal government passed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which authorized $25 billion to build 41,000 miles of interstate highways over the following ten years (Schultz, 2018). Eisenhower felt Americans needed a safe way to travel especially because of the fear of Americans unable to escape if there was a nuclear disaster. America was no longer isolated to living in the city. They could drive back and forth from home and to work (which was near or in the city) back home again. Construction on streets were better than before from all the New Deal developments Roosevelt had created for jobs. Tourism was now becoming more popular. People could take road trips to visit other states or family members. Gas stations were become more popular as well, giving people the freedom to travel farther than before. 4. Describe gendered spheres in American society before WWII and how they changed after the war. The American household before WWII consisted of the wife staying at home tending to the children, cooking, mending, and cleaning while the men of the house would go to work some 10 to 12 hours a day. During WWII the roles started to change, with many of the husband's deployed into the war wives and young women replaced the man’s role. All these changes led Americans to rethink their ideas about gender, about how women and men 2
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