the armed forces at the end of the war, and the Republican Party majority in the Congress, anxious to enact numerous tax cuts, approved of Truman's plan to "hold the line" on defense spending. In addition, Truman's previous experience in the Senate during World War II had left him with lingering suspicions that large sums had been, and were continuing to be, wasted in the Pentagon. Impressed by U.S. advances in nuclear weapons development, both Truman and Johnson had initially believed that the atomic bomb had rendered all conventional military forces, particularly naval forces (e.g., the Navy and the Marine Corps), largely irrelevant to the modern battlefield, thus justifying cuts to all but strategic nuclear forces that largely resided in the U.S. Air Force and the Strategic Air Command. Matthews also subscribed to this view and it became the cornerstone of postwar U.S. defense policy prior to the establishment of the communist nation of East Germany by the Soviet Union in its occupation zone of Germany in 1949 and the outbreak of hostilities in Korea in 1950. One of the key events of Matthews' time at the Department of the Navy prior to the start of the Korean War was the so-called "Revolt of the Admirals" in 1949, an intense controversy between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force over funding and strategic roles, of which the cancellation of the supercarrier USS United States and the resignation of former SECNAV Sullivan had been a catalyst. The Air Force, its senior leadership consisting of mainly bomber generals who had led the then-U.S. Army Air Forces strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan during World War II, wanted control of the strategic nuclear bombing role and control of all U.S. military aircraft as well. It argued that the Navy's aircraft carriers were obsolete and the Air Force did not want the Navy (to include that portion of Naval Aviation organic to the Marine Corps) to have its own "competing" air force. The Navy wanted to continue Naval Aviation in both the Navy and Marine Corps and build much larger aircraft carriers to handle the larger, heavier and more powerful jet fighter and heavy attack (e.g., nuclear bomber) aircraft coming into service. Such a carrier, the Navy argued, could also play a strategic role in nuclear deterrence. The flush-deck carriers planned (known as "supercarriers") were the forerunner of the modern nuclear-powered aircraft