THE AGE OF CONSENSUS. COLD WAR AND AFFLUENT SOCIETY (1946-1960)

The United States dominated glob­al affairs in the years immediately after World War II. Victorious in that great struggle, its homeland undamaged from the ravages of war, the nation was confident of its mission at home and abroad. U.S. leaders wanted to maintain the dem­ocratic structure they had defended at tremendous cost and to share the benefits of prosperity as widely as possible. For them, as for publisher Henry Luce of Time magazine, this was the “American Century.”

For 20 years most Americans re­mained sure of this confident ap­proach. They accepted the need for a strong stance against the So­viet Union in the Cold War that unfolded after 1945. They endorsed the growth of government author­ity and accepted the outlines of the rudimentary welfare state first for­mulated during the New Deal. They enjoyed a postwar prosperity that created new levels of affluence. 

But gradually some began to question dominant assumptions. Challenges on a variety of fronts shattered the consensus. In the 1950s, African Americans launched a crusade, joined later by other mi­nority groups and women, for a larg­er share of the American dream. In the 1960s, politically active students protested the nation’s role abroad, particularly in the corrosive war in Vietnam. A youth counterculture emerged to challenge the status quo. Americans from many walks of life sought to establish a new social and political equilibrium. 

1. America in the Cold war 

A. Cold war aims - the Cold War was the most im­portant political and diplomatic is­sue of the early postwar period. It grew out of longstanding disagree­ments between the Soviet Union and the United States that developed af­ter the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Soviet Communist Party un­der V.I.Lenin considered itself the spearhead of an international move­ment that would replace the exist­ing political orders in the West, and indeed throughout the world. In 1918 American troops participated in the Allied intervention in Russia on behalf of anti-Bolshevik forces. American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union did not come until 1933. Even then, suspicions persist­ed. During World War II, however, the two countries found themselves allied and downplayed their differ­ences to counter the Nazi threat. 

At the war’s end, antagonisms surfaced again. The United States hoped to share with other countries its conception of liberty, equality, and democracy. It sought also to learn from the perceived mistakes of the post-WWI era, when American political disengagement and eco­nomic protectionism were thought to have contributed to the rise of dic­tatorships in Europe and elsewhere. Faced again with a postwar world of civil wars and disintegrating empires, the nation hoped to pro­vide the stability to make peaceful reconstruction possible. Recalling the specter of the Great Depression (1929-40), America now advocated open trade for two reasons: to cre­ate markets for American agricul­tural and industrial products, and to ensure the ability of Western Eu­ropean nations to export as a means of rebuilding their economies. Re­duced trade barriers, American policy makers believed, would pro­mote economic growth at home and abroad, bolstering U.S. friends and allies in the process.

The Soviet Union had its own agenda - the Russian historical tra­dition of centralized, autocratic government contrasted with the American emphasis on democracy. Marxist-Leninist ideology had been downplayed during the war but still guided Soviet policy. Devastated by the struggle in which 20 million Soviet citizens had died, the Soviet Union was intent on rebuilding and on protecting itself from another such terrible conflict. The Soviets were particularly concerned about another invasion of their territo­ry from the west. Having repelled Hitler’s thrust, they were determined to preclude another such attack. They demanded “defensible” bor­ders and “friendly” regimes in East­ern Europe and seemingly equated both with the spread of Commu­nism, regardless of the wishes of native populations. However, the United States had declared that one of its war aims was the restoration of independence and self-govern­ment to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

B. The beginning of the Cold war - the nation’s new chief executive, Harry S.Truman, succeeded Frank­lin D.Roosevelt as president before the end of the war. An unpretentious man who had previously served as Democratic senator from Missouri, then as vice president, Truman ini­tially felt ill-prepared to govern. Roosevelt had not discussed com­plex postwar issues with him, and he had little experience in international affairs. “I’m not big enough for this job,” he told a former colleague.

Still, Truman responded quickly to new challenges. Sometimes im­pulsive on small matters, he proved willing to make hard and carefully considered decisions on large ones. A small sign on his White House desk declared, “The Buck Stops Here.” His judgments about how to respond to the Soviet Union ulti­mately determined the shape of the early Cold War. 

ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR - the Cold War developed as dif­ferences about the shape of the postwar world created suspicion and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first — and most difficult — test case was Poland, the eastern half of which had been invaded and occupied by the USSR in 1939. Moscow demanded a government subject to Soviet in­fluence; Washington wanted a more independent, representative govern following the Western model. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 had produced an agreement on Eastern Europe open to different in­terpretations. It included a promise of “free and unfettered” elections. 

Meeting with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Mo­lotov less than two weeks after be­coming president, Truman stood firm on Polish self-determination, lecturing the Soviet diplomat about the need to implement the Yalta ac­cords. When Molotov protested, “I have never been talked to like that in my life,” Truman retorted, “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that.” Relations de­teriorated from that point onward.

During the closing months of World War II, Soviet military forces occupied all of Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow used its military power to support the efforts of the Communist parties in Eastern Eu­rope and crush the democratic par­ties. Communists took over one nation after another. The process concluded with a shocking coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948. 

Public statements defined the be­ginning of the Cold War. In 1946 Stalin declared that international peace was impossible “under the present capitalist development of the world economy.” Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a dramatic speech in Ful­ton, Missouri, with Truman sitting on the platform. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill said, “an iron curtain has ­descended across the Continent.” Britain and the United States, he de­clared, had to work together to coun­ter the Soviet threat. 

CONTAINMENT - containment of the Soviet Union became American policy in the postwar years. George Kennan, a top official at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, defined the new approach in the Long Telegram he sent to the State Department in 1946. He extended his analysis in an arti­cle under the signature “X” in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. Pointing to Russia’s traditional sense of insecurity, Kennan argued that the Soviet Union would not soften its stance under any circumstances. Moscow, he wrote, was “committed fanatically to the belief that with the United States there can be no perma­nent modus vivendi, that it is desir­able and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupt­ed.” Moscow’s pressure to expand its power had to be stopped through “firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies....” 

The first significant application of the containment doctrine came in the Middle East and eastern Medi­terranean. In early 1946, the Unit­ed States demanded, and obtained, a full Soviet withdrawal from Iran, the northern half of which it had oc­cupied during the war. That sum­mer, the United States pointedly supported Turkey against Soviet demands for control of the Turkish straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In early 1947, Amer­ican policy crystallized when Britain told the United States that it could no longer afford to support the gov­ernment of Greece against a strong Communist insurgency. 

The Truman Doctrine - In a strongly worded speech to Congress, Truman declared, “I be­lieve that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjuga­tion by armed minorities or by out­side pressures.” Journalists quickly dubbed this statement the “Truman Doctrine.” The president asked Congress to provide $400 million for economic and military aid, mostly to Greece but also to Turkey. After an emotional debate that resembled the one between interventionists and isolationists before World War II, the money was appropriated. 

Critics from the left later charged that to whip up American support for the policy of containment, Tru­man overstated the Soviet threat to the United States. In turn, his state­ments inspired a wave of hysterical anti-Communism throughout the country. Perhaps so. Others, how­ever, would counter that this argu­ment ignores the backlash that likely would have occurred if Greece, Tur­key, and other countries had fallen within the Soviet orbit with no op­position from the United States. 

Marshal plan - Containment also called for ex­tensive economic aid to assist the re­covery of war-torn Western Europe. With many of the region’s nations economically and politically unstable, the United States feared that lo­cal Communist parties, directed by Moscow, would capitalize on their wartime record of resistance to the Nazis and come to power. “The pa­tient is sinking while the doctors de­liberate,” declared Secretary of State George C.Marshall. In mid-1947 Marshall asked troubled European nations to draw up a program “di­rected not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”

The Soviets participated in the first planning meeting, then depart­ed rather than share economic data and submit to Western controls on the expenditure of the aid. The re­maining 16 nations hammered out a request that finally came to $17,000 million for a four-year period. In early 1948 Congress voted to fund the “Marshall Plan,” which helped underwrite the economic resur­gence of Western Europe. It is gen­erally regarded as one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives in U.S.history. 

Postwar Germany was a special problem. It had been divided into U.S., Soviet, British, and French zones of occupation, with the for­mer German capital of Berlin (it­self divided into four zones), near the center of the Soviet zone. When the Western powers announced their intention to create a consoli­dated federal state from their zones, Stalin responded. On June 24, 1948, Soviet forces blockaded Berlin, cut­ting off all road and rail access from the West. American leaders feared that losing Berlin would be a prelude to losing Germany and subsequently all of Europe. Therefore, in a successful demonstration of Western resolve known as the Berlin Airlift, Allied air forces took to the sky, flying supplies into Berlin. U.S., French, and British planes delivered nearly 2,250,000 tons of goods, including food and coal. Stalin lifted the blockade after 231 days and 277,264 flights.

NATO - By then, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and especially the Czech coup, had alarmed the West­ern Europeans. The result, initiated by the Europeans, was a military al­liance to complement economic ef­forts at containment. The Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad has called it “empire by invitation.” In 1949 the United States and 11 other countries established the North Atlantic Trea­ty Organization (NATO). An attack against one was to be considered an attack against all, to be met by ap­propriate force. NATO was the first peacetime “entangling alliance” with powers outside the Western hemi­sphere in American history.

The next year, the United States defined its defense aims clearly. The National Security Council (NSC) — the forum where the President, Cabinet officers, and other execu­tive branch members consider na­tional security and foreign affairs issues — undertook a full-fledged review of American foreign and defense policy. The resulting docu­ment, known as NSC-68, signaled a new direction in American security “the Soviet Union was engaged in a fanatical effort to seize control of all governments wherever possible,” the document committed America to assist allied nations anywhere in the world that seemed threatened by Soviet aggression. After the start of the Korean War, a reluctant Truman approved the document. The United States proceeded to increase defense spending dramatically.

THE COLD WAR IN ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST - while seeking to prevent Com­munist ideology from gaining fur­ther adherents in Europe, the United States also responded to challenges elsewhere. 

In 1949, the communist leader Mao Zedong won control of mainland China in a civil war, proclaimed the People's Republic of China, then traveled to Moscow where he negotiated the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship. China had thus moved from a close ally of the U.S. to a bitter enemy, and the two fought each other starting in late 1950 in Korea. The Truman administration responded with a secret 1950 plan, NSC-68, designed to confront the Communists with large-scale defense spending. The Russians had built an atomic bomb by 1950—much sooner than expected; Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb. Two of the spies who gave atomic secrets to Russia were tried and executed. 

France was hard-pressed by Communist insurgents in the First Indochina War. The U.S. in 1950 started to fund the French effort on the proviso that the Vietnamese be given more autonomy. 

In China, Americans worried about the advances of Mao Zedong and his Communist Party. During World War II, the National­ist government under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist forces waged a civil war even as they fought the Japanese. Chiang had been a war-time ally, but his government was hopelessly inefficient and cor­rupt. American policy makers had little hope of saving his regime and considered Europe vastly more im­portant. With most American aid moving across the Atlantic, Mao’s forces seized power in 1949. Chiang’s government fled to the island of Tai­wan. When China’s new ruler an­nounced that he would support the Soviet Union against the “imperial­ist” United States, it appeared that Communism was spreading out of control, at least in Asia.

The Korean War - brought armed conflict between the United States and China. The United States and the Soviet Union had divided Ko­rea along the 38th parallel after lib­erating it from Japan at the end of World War II.Originally a matter of military convenience, the divid­ing line became more rigid as both major powers set up governments in their respective occupation zones and continued to support them even after departing. 

Stalin approved a North Korean plan to invade U.S.-supported South Korea in June 1950. President Truman immediately and unexpectedly implemented the containment policy by a full-scale commitment of American and UN forces to Korea. He did not consult or gain approval of Congress but did gain the approval of the United Nations (UN) to drive back the North Koreans and re-unite that country in terms of a rollback strategy. 

After a few weeks of retreat, General Douglas MacArthur's success at the Battle of Inchon turned the war around; UN forces invaded North Korea. This advantage was lost when hundreds of thousands of Chinese entered an undeclared war against the United States and pushed the US/UN/Korean forces back to the original starting line, the 38th parallel. The war became a stalemate, with over 33,000 American dead and 100,000 wounded  but nothing to show for it except a resolve to continue the containment policy. Truman fired MacArthur but was unable to end the war. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 campaigned against Truman's failures of "Korea, Communism and Corruption," promising to go to Korea himself and end the war. By threatening to use nuclear weapons in 1953, Eisenhower ended the war with a truce that is still in effect.

In June 1950, after consultations with and having obtained the assent of the Soviet Union, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung dispatched his Soviet-supplied army across the 38th parallel and attacked southward, overrunning Seoul. Truman, per­ceiving the North Koreans as Soviet pawns in the global struggle, read­ied American forces and ordered World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur to Korea. Meanwhile, the United States was able to secure a U.N. resolution branding North Korea as an aggressor. (The Soviet Union, which could have vetoed any action had it been occupying its seat on the Security Council, was boycot­ting the United Nations to protest a decision not to admit Mao’s new Chinese regime.)  
The war seesawed back and forth. U.S.and Korean forces were initial­ly pushed into an enclave far to the south around the city of Pusan. A daring amphibious landing at In­chon, the port for the city of Seoul, drove the North Koreans back and threatened to occupy the entire peninsula. In November, China entered the war, sending massive forces across the Yalu River. U.N. forces, largely American, retreated once again in bitter fighting. Com­manded by General Matthew B.Ridgway, they stopped the overex­tended Chinese, and slowly fought their way back to the 38th parallel. MacArthur meanwhile challenged Truman’s authority by attempting to orchestrate public support for bombing China and assisting an invasion of the mainland by Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces. In April 1951, Truman relieved him of his duties and replaced him with Ridgway. 

The Cold War stakes were high. Mindful of the European prior­ity, the U.S.government decided against sending more troops to Ko­rea and was ready to settle for the prewar status quo. The result was frustration among many Americans who could not understand the need for restraint. Truman’s popular­ity plunged to a 24-percent approval rating, the lowest to that time of any president since pollsters had begun to measure presidential popularity. Truce talks began in July 1951. The two sides finally reached an agree­ment in July 1953, during the first term of Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower. 

Cold War struggles also occurred in the Middle East.The region’s stra­tegic importance as a supplier of oil had provided much of the impetus for pushing the Soviets out of Iran in 1946. But two years later, the United States officially recognized the new state of Israel 15 minutes after it was proclaimed — a decision Truman made over strong resistance from Marshall and the State Department. The result was an enduring dilemma — how to maintain ties with Israel while keeping good relations with bitterly anti-Israeli (and oil-rich) Arab states. 

C. The Cold War at home - not only did the Cold War shape U.S. foreign policy, it also had a pro­found effect on domestic affairs. Americans had long feared radi­cal subversion. These fears could at times be overdrawn, and used to jus­tify otherwise unacceptable politi­cal restrictions, but it also was true that individuals under Communist Party discipline and many “fellow traveler” hangers-on gave their po­litical allegiance not to the United States, but to the international Com­munist movement, or, practically speaking, to Moscow. During the Red Scare of 1919-1920, the govern­ment had attempted to remove per­ceived threats to American society. After World War II, it made strong efforts against Communism within the United States. Foreign events, espionage scandals, and politics cre­ated an anti-Communist hysteria. 

When Republicans were victo­rious in the midterm congressio­nal elections of 1946 and appeared ready to investigate subversive activ­ity, President Truman established a Federal Employee Loyalty Program. It had little impact on the lives of most civil servants, but a few hun­dred were dismissed, some unfairly. 

In 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activities investi­gated the motion-picture industry to determine whether Communist sentiments were being reflected in popular films. When some writers (who happened to be secret mem­bers of the Communist Party) re­fused to testify, they were cited for contempt and sent to prison. After that, the film companies refused to hire anyone with a marginally ques­tionable past. 

In 1948, Alger Hiss, who had been an assistant secretary of state and an adviser to Roosevelt at Yal­ta, was publicly accused of being a Communist spy by Whittaker Chambers, a former Soviet agent. Hiss denied the accusation, but in 1950 he was convicted of perjury. Subsequent evidence indicates that he was indeed guilty. 

In 1949 the Soviet Union shocked Americans by testing its own atomic bomb. In 1950, the government un­covered a British-American spy net­work that transferred to the Soviet Union materials about the develop­ment of the atomic bomb. Two of its operatives, Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel, were sentenced to death.

Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel

Attorney General J.Howard McGrath declared there were many American Communists, each bear­ing “the germ of death for society". 

Anti-Communism and McCarthyism: 1947–54 - the most vigorous anti-Commu­nist warrior was Senator Joseph R.McCarthy, a Republican from Wis­consin. He gained national attention in 1950 by claiming that he had a list of 205 known Communists in the State Department. Though McCar­thy subsequently changed this figure several times and failed to substan­tiate any of his charges, he struck a responsive public chord. 

McCarthy gained power when the Republican Party won control of the Senate in 1952. As a commit­tee chairman, he now had a forum for his crusade. Relying on exten­sive press and television coverage, he continued to search for treachery among second-level officials in the Eisenhower administration. Enjoy­ing the role of a tough guy doing dirty but necessary work, he pursued presumed Communists with vigor. 

McCarthy overstepped himself by challenging the U.S. Army when one of his assistants was drafted. Television brought the hearings into millions of homes. Many Ameri­cans saw McCarthy’s savage tactics for the first time, and public sup­port began to wane. The Republican Party, which had found McCarthy useful in challenging a Democratic administration when Truman was president, began to see him as an embarrassment. The Senate finally condemned him for his conduct. 

McCarthy in many ways repre­sented the worst domestic excesses of the Cold War. As Americans re­pudiated him, it became natural for many to assume that the Communist threat at home and abroad had been grossly overblown. As the country moved into the 1960s, anti-Communism became increasingly suspect, especially among intellectu­als and opinion-shapers. 

In 1947, well before McCarthy became active, the Conservative Coalition in Congress passed the Taft Hartley Act, designed to balance the rights of management and unions, and delegitimizing Communist union leaders. The challenge of rooting out Communists from labor unions and the Democratic Party was successfully undertaken by liberals, such as Walter Reuther of the autoworkers union and Ronald Reagan of the Screen Actors Guild (Reagan was a liberal Democrat at the time). Many of the purged leftists joined the presidential campaign in 1948 of FDR's Vice President Henry A. Wallace.

With anxiety over Communism in Korea and China reaching fever pitch in 1950, a previously obscure Senator, Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, launched Congressional investigations into the cover-up of spies in the government. McCarthy dominated the media, and used reckless allegations and tactics that allowed his opponents to effectively counterattack. Irish Catholics (including conservative wunderkind William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Kennedy Family) were intensely anti-Communist and defended McCarthy (a fellow Irish Catholic). Paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969), a very active conservative Democrat, was McCarthy's most ardent supporter and got his son Robert F. Kennedy a job with McCarthy. McCarthy had talked of "twenty years of treason" (i.e. since Roosevelt's election in 1932). When, in 1953, he started talking of "21 years of treason" and launched a major attack on the Army for promoting a Communist dentist in the medical corps, his recklessness proved too much for Eisenhower, who encouraged Republicans to censure McCarthy formally in 1954. The Senator's power collapsed overnight. Senator John F. Kennedy did not vote for censure. Buckley went on to found the National Review in 1955 as a weekly magazine that helped define the conservative position on public issues. 

"McCarthyism" was expanded to include attacks on supposed Communist influence in Hollywood, which resulted in a black-list whereby artists who refused to testify about possible Communist connections could not get work. Some famous celebrities (such as Charlie Chaplin) left the U.S.; other worked under pseudonyms (such as Dalton Trumbo). McCarthyism included investigations into academics and teachers as well.

2. America in 1950s

A. The Affluent society 

THE POSTWAR ECONOMY: 1945-1960 - in the decade and a half after World War II, the United States ex­perienced phenomenal economic growth and consolidated its position as the world’s richest country. Gross national product (GNP), a measure of all goods and services produced in the United States, jumped from about $200,000-million in 1940 to $300,000-million in 1950 to more than $500,000-million in 1960. More and more Americans now considered themselves part of the middle class - 60 %. 

The growth had different sourc­es. The economic stimulus provided by large-scale public spending for World War II helped get it started. Two basic middle-class needs did much to keep it going. The number of automobiles produced annually quadrupled between 1946 and 1955. A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages for returning servicemen, fueled the expansion. The rise in defense spending as the Cold War escalated also played a part. 

After 1945 the major corporations in America grew even larger. There had been earlier waves of mergers in the 1890s and in the 1920s; in the ­1950s another wave occurred. Fran­chise operations like McDonald’s fast-food restaurants allowed small entrepreneurs to make themselves part of large, efficient enterprises. Big American corporations also de­veloped holdings overseas, where la­bor costs were often lower. 

Workers found their own lives changing as industrial America changed. Fewer workers produced goods; more provided services. As early as 1956 a majority of employ­ees held white-collar jobs, working as managers, teachers, salesper­sons, and office operatives. Some firms granted a guaranteed annual wage, long-term employment con­tracts, and other benefits. With such changes, labor militancy was under­mined and some class distinctions began to fade. 

Cities - the West and the Southwest grew with increasing rapidity, a trend that would continue through the end of the century. Sun Belt cities like Houston, Texas; Miami, Florida; Al­buquerque, New Mexico; and Phoe­nix, Arizona, expanded rapidly. Los Angeles, California, moved ahead of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the third largest U.S.city and then sur­passed Chicago, metropolis of the Midwest. The 1970 census showed that California had displaced New York as the nation’s largest state. By 2000, Texas had moved ahead of New York into second place. 

Wartime rationing was officially lifted in September 1945, but prosperity did not immediately return as the next three years would witness the difficult transition back to a peacetime economy. 12 million returning veterans were in need of work and in many cases could not find it. Inflation became a rather serious problem, averaging over 10% a year until 1950 and raw materials shortages dogged manufacturing industry. In addition, labor strikes rocked the nation, in some cases exacerbated by racial tensions due to African-Americans having taken jobs during the war and now being faced with irate returning veterans who demanded that they step aside. The huge number of women employed in the workforce in the war were also rapidly cleared out make room for their husbands. Following the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1946 elections, President Truman was compelled to reduce taxes and curb government interference in the economy. With this done, the stage was set for the economic boom that, with only a few minor hiccups, would last for the next 23 years. After the initial hurdles of the 1945-48 period were overcome, Americans found themselves flush with cash from wartime work due to there being little to buy for several years. The result was a mass consumer spending spree, with a huge and voracious demand for new homes, cars, and housewares. Increasing numbers enjoyed high wages, larger houses, better schools, more cars and home comforts like vacuum cleaners, washing machines—which were all made for labor-saving and to make housework easier. Inventions familiar in the early 21st century made their first appearance during this era. The live-in maid and cook, common features of middle-class homes at the beginning of the century, were virtually unheard of in the 1950s; only the very rich had servants. Householders enjoyed centrally heated homes with running hot water. New style furniture was bright, cheap, and light, and easy to move around. As noted by John Kenneth Galbraith in 1958:

"the ordinary individual has access to amenities – foods, entertainments, personal transportation, and plumbing – in which not even the rich rejoiced a century ago." 

Suburbs - an even more important form of movement led Americans out of in­ner cities into new suburbs, where they hoped to find affordable hous­ing for the larger families spawned by the postwar baby boom. 

With Detroit turning out automobiles as fast as possible, city dwellers gave up cramped apartments for a suburban life style centered around children and housewives, with the male breadwinner commuting to work. Suburbia encompassed a third of the nation's population by 1960. The growth of suburbs was not only a result of postwar prosperity, but innovations of the single-family housing market with low interest rates on 20 and 30 year mortgages, and low down payments, especially for veterans. William Levitt began a national trend with his use of mass-production techniques to construct a large "Levittown" housing development on Long Island. Meanwhile, the suburban population swelled because of the baby boom. Suburbs provided larger homes for larger families, security from urban living, privacy, and space for consumer goods.

Develop­ers like William J. Levitt built new communities — with homes that all looked alike — using the tech­niques of mass production. Levitt’s houses were prefabricated — partly assembled in a factory rather than on the final location — and modest, but Levitt’s methods cut costs and allowed new owners to possess a part of the American dream. 

As suburbs grew, businesses moved into the new areas. Large shopping centers containing a great variety of stores changed consumer patterns. The number of these cen­ters rose from eight at the end of World War II to 3,840 in 1960. With easy parking and convenient eve­ning hours, customers could avoid city shopping entirely. An unfortu­nate by-product was the “hollowing-out” of formerly busy urban cores. 

mission valley shopping center

Old Orchard Shopping Center. Skokie, Illinois - 1950's

New highways created better ac­cess to the suburbs and its shops. The Highway Act of 1956 provided $26,000-million, the largest public works expenditure in U.S.history, to build more than 64,000 kilometers of limited access interstate highways to link the country together. 

Consumerism - represented one of the consequences (as well as one of the key ingredients) of the postwar economic boom. The initial quest for cars, appliances, and new furniture after the end of World War II quickly expanded into the mass consumption of goods, services, and recreational materials during the Fifties. Between 1945 and 1960, GNP grew by 250%, expenditures on new construction multiplied nine times, and consumption on personal services increased three times. By 1960, per capita income was 35% higher than in 1945, and America had entered what the economist Walt Rostow referred to as the "high mass consumption" stage of economic development. Short-term credit went up from $8.4 billion in 1946 to $45.6 billion in 1958. 

       

As a result of the postwar economic boom, 60% of the American population had attained a "middle-class" standard of living by the mid-50s (defined as incomes of $3,000 to $10,000 in constant dollars), compared with only 31% in the last year of prosperity before the onset of the Great Depression. 

Television, too, had a powerful impact on social and economic pat­terns. Developed in the 1930s, it was not widely marketed until after the war. In 1946 the country had fewer than 17,000 television sets.Three years later consumers were buying 250,000 sets a month, and by 1960 three-quarters of all families owned at least one set. In the middle of the decade, the average family watched television four to five hours a day. Popular shows for children included Howdy Doody Time and The Mickey Mouse Club; older viewers preferred situation comedies like I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best. Ameri­cans of all ages became exposed to increasingly sophisticated advertise­ments for products said to be neces­sary for the good life. 

By the end of the decade, 87% of families owned a TV set, 75% a car, and 75% a washing machine. Between 1947 and 1960, the average real income for American workers increased by as much as it had in the previous half-century.

With the prosperity of the era, the prevailing social attitude was one of belief in science, technology, progress, and futurism. There was comparatively little nostalgia for the prewar era and the overall emphasis was on having everything new and more advanced than before. Nonetheless, the social conformity and consumerism of the 1950s often came under attack from intellectuals (e.g. Henry Miller's books The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and Sunday After The War) and there was a good deal of unrest fermenting under the surface of American society that would erupt during the following decade. 

In addition to the huge domestic market for consumer items, the United States became "the world's factory", as it was the only major power who's soil had been untouched by the war. American money and manufactured goods flooded into Europe, South Korea, and Japan and helped in their reconstruction. US manufacturing dominance would be almost unchallenged for a quarter-century after 1945.

One of the key factors in postwar prosperity was a technology boom due to the experience of the war. Manufacturing had made enormous strides and it was now possible to produce consumer goods in quantities and levels of sophistication unseen before 1945. Acquisition of technology from occupied Germany also proved an asset, as it was sometimes more advanced than its American counterpart, especially in the optics and audio equipment fields. The typical automobile in 1950 was an average of $300 more expensive than the 1940 version, but also produced in twice the numbers. Luxury makes such as Cadillac, which had been largely hand-built vehicles only available to the rich, now became a mass-produced car within the price range of the upper middle-class.

The rapid social and technological changes brought about a growing corporatization of America and the decline of smaller businesses, which often suffered from high postwar inflation and mounting operating costs. Newspapers declined in numbers and consolidated, both due to the above-mentioned factors and the event of TV news. The railroad industry, once one of the cornerstones of the American economy and an immense and often scorned influence on national politics, also suffered from the explosion in automobile sales and the construction of the interstate system. By the end of the 1950s, it was well into decline and by the 1970s became completely bankrupt, necessitating a takeover by the federal government. Smaller automobile manufacturers such as Nash, Studebaker, and Packard were unable to compete with the Big Three in the new postwar world and gradually declined into oblivion over the next 15 years. Suburbanization caused the gradual movement of working-class people and jobs out of the inner cities as shopping centers displaced the traditional downtown stores. In time, this would have disastrous effects on urban areas. 

Prosperity and overall optimism made Americans feel that it was a good time to bring children into the world, and so a huge baby boom resulted during the decade following 1945 (the baby boom climaxed during the mid-1950s, after which birthrates gradually dropped off until going below replacement level in 1965). Although the overall number of children per woman was not unusually high (averaging 2.3), they were assisted by improving technology that greatly brought down infant mortality rates versus the prewar era. Among other things, this resulted in an unprecedented demand for children's products and a huge expansion of the public school system. The large size of the postwar baby boom generation would have significant social repercussions in American society for decades to come.

Aside from the unfolding Civil Rights Movement, women had been forced out of factories at the end of WWII for returning veterans and many chafed at the social expectations of being an idle stay-at-home housewife who cooked, cleaned, shopped, and tended to children. Alcohol and pill abuse was not uncommon among American women during the 1950s, something quite contrary to the idyllic image presented in TV shows such as Leave It To Beaver, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best. In 1963, Betty Friedan publisher her book The Feminine Mystique which strongly criticized the role of women during the postwar years and was a best-seller and a major catalyst of the women's liberation movement. Sociologists have noted that the "idle housewife" of the 1950s was the exception in American history rather than the norm, where women generally did work or labor in some capacity. 

Prosperity also brought about the development of a distinct youth culture for the first time, as teenagers were not forced to work and support their family at young ages like in the past. This had its culmination in the development of new music genres such as rock-and-roll as well as fashion styles and subcultures, the most famous of which was the "greaser", a young male who drove motorcycles, sported ducktail haircuts (which were widely banned in schools) and displayed a general disregard for the law and authority. The greaser phenomenon was kicked off by the controversial youth-oriented movies Blackboard Jungle (1953) starring Marlon Brando and Rebel Without A Cause (1955) starring James Dean.

The American economy grew dramatically in the post-war period, expanding at a rate of 3.5% per annum between 1945 and 1970. During this period of prosperity, many incomes doubled in a generation, described by economist Frank Levy as "upward mobility on a rocket ship." The substantial increase in average family income within a generation resulted in millions of office and factory workers being lifted into a growing middle class, enabling them to sustain a standard of living once considered to be reserved for the wealthy. As noted by Deone Zell, assembly line work paid well, while unionized factory jobs served as "stepping-stones to the middle class." By the end of the Fifties, 87% of all American families owned at least one T.V., 75% owned cars, and 60% owned their homes. By 1960, blue-collar workers had become the biggest buyers of many luxury goods and services. In addition, by the early 1970s, post-World War II American consumers enjoyed higher levels of disposable income than those in any other country.

The great majority of American workers who had stable jobs were well off financially, while even non-union jobs were associated with rising paychecks, benefits, and obtained many of the advantages that characterized union work. An upscale working class came into being, as American blue-collar workers came to enjoy the benefits of home ownership, while high wages provided blue-collar workers with the ability to pay for new cars, household appliances, and regular vacations. By the 1960s, a blue-collar worker earned more than a manager did in the 1940s, despite the fact that his relative position within the income distribution had not changed. 

As noted by the historian Nancy Wierek:

"In the postwar period, the majority of Americans were affluent in the sense that they were in a position to spend money on many things they wanted, desired, or chose to have, rather than on necessities alone." 

Between 1946 and 1960, the United States witnessed a significant expansion in the consumption of goods and services. GNP rose by 36% and personal consumption expenditures by 42%, cumulative gains which were reflected in the incomes of families and unrelated individuals. While the number of these units rose sharply from 43.3 million to 56.1 million in 1960, a rise of almost 23%, their average incomes grew even faster, from $3940 in 1946 to $6900 in 1960, an increase of 43%. After taking inflation into account, the real advance was 16%. The dramatic rise in the average American standard of living was such that, according to sociologist George Katona:

"Today in this country minimum standards of nutrition, housing and clothing are assured, not for all, but for the majority. Beyond these minimum needs, such former luxuries as homeownership, durable goods, travel, recreation, and entertainment are no longer restricted to a few. The broad masses participate in enjoying all these things and generate most of the demand for them." 

More than 21 million housing units were constructed between 1946 and 1960, and in the latter year 52% of consumer units in the metropolitan areas owned their own homes. In 1957, out of all the wired homes throughout the country, 96% had a refrigerator, 87% an electric washer, 81% a television, 67% a vacuum cleaner, 18% a freezer, 12% an electric or gas dryer, and 8% air conditioning. Car ownership also soared, with 72% of consumer units owning an automobile by 1960. From 1958 to 1964, the average weekly take-home pay of blue-collar workers rose steadily from $68 to $78 (in constant dollars). In a poll taken in 1949, 50% of all Americans said that they were satisfied with their family income, a figure that rose to 67% by 1969.

The period from 1946 to 1960 also witnessed a significant increase in the paid leisure time of working people. The forty-hour workweek established by the Fair Labor Standards Act in covered industries became the actual schedule in most workplaces by 1960, while uncovered workers such as farm workers and the self-employed worked less hours than they had done previously, although they still worked much longer hours than most other workers. Paid vacations also came to be enjoyed by the vast majority of workers, with 91% of blue-collar workers covered by major collective bargaining agreements receiving paid vacations by 1957 (usually to a maximum of three weeks), while by the early Sixties virtually all industries paid for holidays and most did so for seven days a year. Industries catering to leisure activities blossomed as a result of most Americans enjoying significant paid leisure time by 1960, while many blue-collar and white-collar workers had come to expect to hold on to their jobs for life. 

Educational outlays were also greater than in other countries while a higher proportion of young people were graduating from high schools and universities than elsewhere in the world, as hundreds of new colleges and universities opened every year. Tuition was kept low—it was free at California state universities. At the advanced level American science, engineering and medicine was world famous. By the mid-Sixties, the majority of American workers enjoyed the highest wage levels in the world, and by the late Sixties, the great majority of Americans were richer than people in other countries, except Sweden, Switzerland, and Canada. Educational outlays were also greater than in other countries while a higher proportion of young people was at school and college than elsewhere in the world. As noted by the historian John Vaizey:

"To strike a balance with the Soviet Union, it would be easy to say that all but the very poorest Americans were better off than the Russians, that education was better but the health service worse, but that above all the Americans had freedom of expression and democratic institutions." 

In regards to social welfare, the postwar era saw a considerable improvement in insurance for workers and their dependents against the risks of illness, as private insurance programs like Blue Cross and Blue Shield expanded. With the exception of farm and domestic workers, virtually all members of the labor force were covered by Social Security. In 1959 that about two-thirds of the factory workers and three-fourths of the office workers were provided with supplemental private pension plans. In addition 86% of factory workers and 83% of office had jobs that covered for hospital insurance while 59% and 61% had additional insurance for doctors. By 1969, the average white family income had risen to $10,953, while average black family income lagged behind at $7,255, revealing a continued racial disparity in income amongst various segments of the American population. The percentage of American students staying on in education after the age of 15 was also higher than in most other developed countries, with more than 90% of 16-year-olds and around 75% of 17-year-olds in education in 1964-66. 

B. Poverty and inequality in the postwar era - despite the prosperity of the postwar era, a significant minority of Americans continued to live in poverty by the end of the Fifties. In 1947, 34% of all families earned less than $3,000 a year, compared with 22.1% in 1960. Nevertheless, between one-fifth to one-fourth of the population could not survive on the income they earned. The older generation of Americans did not benefit as much from the postwar economic boom especially as many had never recovered financially from the loss of their savings during the Great Depression. It was generally a given that the average 35-year-old in 1959 owned a better house and car than the average 65-year-old, who typically had nothing but a small Social Security pension for an income. Many blue-collar workers continued to live in poverty, with 30% of those employed in industry in 1958 receiving under $3,000 a year. In addition, individuals who earned more than $10,000 a year paid a lower proportion of their income in taxes than those who earned less than $2,000 a year. In 1947, 60% of black families lived below the poverty level (defined in one study as below $3000 in 1968 dollars), compared with 23% of white families. In 1968, 23% of black families lived below the poverty level, compared with 9% of white families. In 1947, 11% of white families were affluent (defined as above $10,000 in 1968 dollars), compared with 3% of black families. In 1968, 42% of white families were defined as affluent, compared with 21% of black families. In 1947, 8% of black families received $7000 or more (in 1968 dollars) compared with 26% of white families. In 1968, 39% of black families received $7,000 or more, compared with 66% of white families. In 1960, the median for a married man of blue-collar income was $3,993 for blacks and $5,877 for whites. In 1969, the equivalent figures were $5,746 and $7,452, respectively. 

As Socialist leader Michael Harrington emphasized, there was still The Other America. Poverty declined sharply in the Sixties as the New Frontier and Great Society especially helped older people. The proportion below the poverty line fell almost in half from 22% in 1960 to 12% in 1970 and then leveled off. 

C. Rural life - The farm population shrank steadily as families moved to urban areas, where on average they were more productive and earned a higher standard of living. Friedberger argues that the postwar period saw an accelerating mechanization of agriculture, combined with new and better fertilizers and genetic manipulation of hybrid corn. It made for greater specialization and greater economic risks for the farmer. With rising land prices many sold their land and moved to town, the old farm becoming part of a neighbor's enlarged operation. Mechanization meant less need for hired labor; farmers could operate more acres even though they were older. The result was a decline in rural-farm population, with gains in service centers that provided the new technology. The rural non-farm population grew as factories were attracted by access to good transportation without the high land costs, taxes, unionization and congestion of city factory districts. Once remote rural areas such as the Missouri Ozarks and the North Woods of the upper Midwest, with a rustic life style and many good fishing spots, have attracted retirees and vacationers. 

D. The culture of the 1950s - during the 1950s, many cul­tural commentators pointed out that a sense of uniformity pervaded American society. Conformity, they asserted, was numbingly common. Though men and women had been forced into new employment pat­terns during World War II, once the war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed. Men expected to be the breadwinners in each family; wom­en, even when they worked, assumed their proper place was at home. In his influential book, The Lonely Crowd, sociologist David Riesman called this new society “other-directed,” characterized by conformity, but also by stability. Television, still very limited in the choices it gave its view­ers, contributed to the homogenizing cultural trend by providing young and old with a shared experience re­flecting accepted social patterns. 

Yet beneath this seemingly bland surface, important segments of American society seethed with rebellion. A number of writers, collectively known as the “Beat Gen­eration,” went out of their way to challenge the patterns of respect­ability and shock the rest of the culture. Stressing spontaneity and spirituality, they preferred intuition over reason, Eastern mysticism over Western institutionalized religion. 

The literary work of the beats displayed their sense of alienation and quest for self-realization. Jack Kerouac typed his best-selling novel On the Road on a 75-meter roll of ­paper. Lacking traditional punctua­tion and paragraph structure, the book glorified the possibilities of the free life. Poet Allen Ginsberg gained similar notoriety for his poem “Howl,” a scathing critique of mod­ern, mechanized civilization. When police charged that it was obscene and seized the published version, Ginsberg successfully challenged the ruling in court. 

Musicians and artists rebelled as well. Tennessee singer Elvis Presley was the most successful of several white performers who popularized a sensual and pulsating style of Af­rican-American music, which began to be called “rock and roll.” At first, he outraged middle-class Ameri­cans with his ducktail haircut and undulating hips. But in a few years his performances would seem rela­tively tame alongside the antics of later performers such as the British Rolling Stones. Similarly, it was in the 1950s that painters like Jackson Pollock discarded easels and laid out gigantic canvases on the floor, then applied paint, sand, and other mate­rials in wild splashes of color. All of these artists and authors, whatever the medium, provided models for the wider and more deeply felt social revolution of the 1960s. 

E. Origins of the civil rights movement - African Americans became in­creasingly restive in the postwar years. During the war they had chal­lenged discrimination in the mili­tary services and in the work force, and they had made limited gains. Millions of African Americans had left Southern farms for Northern cit­ies, where they hoped to find better jobs. They found instead crowded conditions in urban slums. Now, African-American servicemen re­turned home, many intent on reject­ing second-class citizenship. 

Jackie Robinson dramatized the racial question in 1947 when he broke baseball’s color line and be­gan playing in the major leagues. A member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he often faced trouble with oppo­nents and teammates as well. But an outstanding first season led to his acceptance and eased the way for other African-American players, who now left the Negro leagues to which they had been confined. 

Government officials, and many other Americans, discovered the connection between racial problems and Cold War politics. As the leader of the free world, the United States sought support in Africa and Asia. Discrimination at home impeded the effort to win friends in other parts of the world. 

Harry Truman supported the early civil rights movement. He per­sonally believed in political equality, though not in social equality, and recognized the growing importance of the African-American urban vote. When apprised in 1946 of a spate of lynchings and anti-black violence in the South, he appointed a com­mittee on civil rights to investigate discrimination. Its report, To Secure These Rights, issued the next year, documented African Americans’ second-class status in American life and recommended numerous fed­eral measures to secure the rights guaranteed to all citizens. 

Truman responded by sending a 10-point civil rights program to Congress. Southern Democrats in Congress were able to block its en­actment. A number of the angriest, led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, formed a States Rights Party to oppose the president in 1948. Truman thereupon issued an executive order barring discrim­ination in federal employment, or­dered equal treatment in the armed forces, and appointed a committee to work toward an end to military segregation, which was largely ended during the Korean War. 

African Americans in the South in the 1950s still enjoyed few, if any, civil and political rights. In gener­al, they could not vote. Those who tried to register faced the likelihood of beatings, loss of job, loss of credit, or eviction from their land. Occa­sional lynchings still occurred. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation of the races in streetcars, trains, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, recreational facilities, and employment. 

Following the end of Reconstruction, many states adopted restrictive Jim Crow laws which enforced segregation of the races and the second-class status of African Americans. The Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 accepted segregation as constitutional. Voting rights discrimination remained widespread in the South through the 1950s. Fewer than 10% voted in the Deep South, although a larger proportion voted in the border states, and the blacks were being organized into Democratic machines in the northern cities. Although both parties pledged progress in 1948, the only major development before 1954 was the integration of the military.

Brown v. Board of Education and "massive resistance" - in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, litigation and lobbying were the focus of integration efforts. The U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954); Powell v. Alabama (1932); Smith v. Allwright (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer (1948); Sweatt v. Painter (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) led to a shift in tactics, and from 1955 to 1965, "direct action" was the strategy—primarily bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and social movements. 

DESEGREGATION - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in efforts to overturn the judicial doctrine, es­tablished in the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, that seg­regation of African-American and white students was constitutional if facilities were “separate but equal.” That decree had been used for de­cades to sanction rigid segregation in all aspects of Southern life, where facilities were seldom, if ever, equal. 

African Americans achieved their goal of overturning Plessy in 1954 when the Supreme Court — pre­sided over by an Eisenhower ap­pointee, Chief Justice Earl Warren — handed down its Brown v. Board of Education ruling.The Court de­clared unanimously that “separate facilities are inherently unequal,” and decreed that the “separate but equal” doctrine could no longer be used in public schools. A year later, the Supreme Court demanded that local school boards move “with all deliberate speed” to implement the decision. 

Eisenhower, although sympathet­ic to the needs of the South as it faced a major transition, nonetheless act­ed to see that the law was upheld in the face of massive resistance from much of the South. He faced a ma­jor crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus attempted to block a desegregation plan calling for the admission of nine black students to the city’s previ­ously all-white Central High School. After futile efforts at negotiation, the president sent federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the plan. 

Governor Faubus responded by ordering the Little Rock high schools closed down for the 1958-59 school year. However, a federal court ordered them reopened the follow­ing year. They did so in a tense at­mosphere with a tiny number of African-American students. Thus, school desegregation proceeded at a slow and uncertain pace throughout much of the South. 

Another milestone in the civil rights movement occurred in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African-American seamstress who was also secretary of the state chapter of the NAACP, sat down in the front of a bus in a section reserved by law and custom for whites. Ordered to move to the back, she refused. Police came and arrested her for violating the seg­regation statutes. African-American leaders, who had been waiting for just such a case, organized a boycott of the bus system. 

Martin Luther King Jr., a young minister of the Baptist church where the African Americans met, became a spokesman for the pro­test. “There comes a time,” he said, “when people get tired ...of being kicked about by the brutal feet of op­pression.” King was arrested, as he would be again and again; a bomb damaged the front of his house. But African Americans in Montgomery sustained the boycott. About a year later, the Supreme Court affirmed that bus segregation, like school segregation, was unconstitutional. The boycott ended. The civil rights movement had won an important victory — and discovered its most powerful, thoughtful, and eloquent leader in Martin Luther King Jr. 

African Americans also sought to secure their voting rights. Although the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right to vote, many states had found ways to circumvent the law. The states would impose a poll (“head”) tax or a lit­eracy test — typically much more stringently interpreted for African Americans — to prevent poor Afri­can Americans with little education from voting. Eisenhower, working with Senate majority leader Lyn­don B.Johnson, lent his support to a congressional effort to guarantee the vote. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such measure in 82 years, marked a step forward, as it authorized federal intervention in cases where African Americans were denied the chance to vote. Yet loopholes remained, and so activ­ists pushed successfully for the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which provided stiffer penalties for interfering with voting, but still stopped short of au­thorizing federal officials to register African Americans. 

Relying on the efforts of African Americans themselves, the civil rights movement gained momen­tum in the postwar years. Working through the Supreme Court and through Congress, civil rights sup­porters had created the groundwork for a dramatic yet peaceful “revolu­tion” in American race relations in the 1960s.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark case of the United States Supreme Court which explicitly outlawed segregated public education facilities for blacks and whites, ruling so on the grounds that the doctrine of "separate but equal" public education could never truly provide black Americans with facilities of the same standards available to white Americans. One hundred and one members of the United States House of Representatives and 19 Senators signed "The Southern Manifesto" condemning the Supreme Court decision as unconstitutional.

Governor Orval Eugene Faubus of Arkansas used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent school integration at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. President Eisenhower nationalized state forces and sent in the US Army to enforce federal court orders. Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace of Alabama physically blocked school doorways at their respective states' universities. Birmingham's public safety commissioner Eugene T. "Bull" Connor advocated violence against freedom riders and ordered fire hoses and police dogs turned on demonstrators during the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade. Sheriff Jim Clark of Dallas County, Alabama, loosed his deputies during the "Bloody Sunday" event of the Selma to Montgomery march, injuring many of the marchers and personally menacing other protesters. Police all across the South arrested civil rights activists on trumped-up charges.

3. Presidential administrations in 1950s 

A. Truman (1945–53) - Truman, a self-educated farm boy from Missouri, stood in sharp contrast to the urbane and imperious Roosevelt who kept personal control of all major decisions. Truman was a folksy, unassuming president who relied on his cabinet, remarking "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen." Truman faced many challenges in domestic affairs. His poll ratings were sky high when he took office in April 1945 after Roosevelt's sudden death, then plunged to low levels for most of his eight years in office. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages of housing, meat, appliance, automobiles and other rationed goods. The country was hit by long strikes in major industries in 1946. The Republicans took control of Congress in a landslide in 1946 and passed the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto. He used executive orders to end racial discrimination in the armed forces and created loyalty checks that dismissed thousands of communist fellow travelers from office. Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the defeat of Nazi Germany and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan of 1948 to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine of 1947 to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift of 1948, and in 1949 the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance. 

Official White House portrait of Harry S. Truman

Truman confounded all predictions to win election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour which reinvigorated the New Deal Coalition. His victory validated his domestic liberalism, his foreign policy of containment, and the new federal commitment to civil rights.

The defeat of America's wartime ally in the Chinese Civil War brought a hostile Communist regime to China under Mao Zedong. Soon the US became bogged down fighting China in the Korean War, 1950-53. Corruption in Truman's administration, which was linked to cabinet-level appointees and senior White House staff, was a central issue in the 1952 presidential campaign. Truman's third term hopes were dashed by a poor showing in the 1952 primaries. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, the famous wartime general, won a landslide in the 1952 presidential election by campaigning against Truman's failures in terms of "Communism, Korea and Corruption." 

THE FAIR DEAL - The Fair Deal was the name given to President Harry Truman’s domes­tic program. Building on Roosevelt’s New Deal, Truman believed that the federal government should guaran­tee economic opportunity and social stability. He struggled to achieve those ends in the face of fierce political op­position from legislators determined to reduce the role of government. 

Truman’s first priority in the immediate postwar period was to make the transition to a peacetime economy. Servicemen wanted to come home quickly, but once they arrived they faced competition for housing and employment. The G.I.Bill, passed before the end of the war, helped ease servicemen back into ci­vilian life by providing benefits such as guaranteed loans for home-buy­ing and financial aid for industrial training and university education. 

More troubling was labor unrest. As war production ceased, many workers found themselves without jobs. Others wanted pay increases they felt were long overdue. In 1946, 4.6 million workers went on strike, more than ever before in American history. They challenged the automo­bile, steel, and electrical industries. When they took on the railroads and soft-coal mines, Truman intervened to stop union excesses, but in so do­ing he alienated many workers. 

While dealing with immediately pressing issues, Truman also provid­ed a broader agenda for action. Less than a week after the war ended, he presented Congress with a 21-point program, which provided for pro­tection against unfair employment practices, a higher minimum wage, greater unemployment compen­sation, and housing assistance. In the next several months, he added proposals for health insurance and atomic energy legislation. But this scattershot approach often left Tru­man’s priorities unclear.

Republicans were quick to attack. In the 1946 congressional elections they asked, “Had enough?” and vot­ers responded that they had. Re­publicans, with majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928, were determined to re­verse the liberal direction of the Roosevelt years. 

Truman fought with the Congress as it cut spending and reduced taxes. In 1948 he sought reelection, despite polls indicating that he had little chance. After a vigorous campaign, Truman scored one of the great up­sets in American politics, defeating the Republican nominee, Thomas Dewey, governor of New York. Re­viving the old New Deal coalition, Truman held on to labor, farmers, and African-American voters. 

When Truman finally left of­fice in 1953, his Fair Deal was but a mixed success. In July 1948 he banned racial discrimination in fed­eral government hiring practices and ordered an end to segregation in the military. The minimum wage had risen, and social security programs had expanded. A housing program brought some gains but left many needs unmet. National health in­surance, aid-to-education measures, reformed agricultural subsidies, and his legislative civil rights agenda never made it through Congress. The president’s pursuit of the Cold War, ultimately his most important objective, made it especially difficult to develop support for social reform in the face of intense opposition. 

B. Eisenhower (1953-1961) - Eisenhower was elected in 1952 as a moderate Republican, bringing along a Republican Congress. He ended the Korean war, maintained the peace in Asia and the Middle East, and worked smoothly with NATO allies in Europe while keeping the policy of containing Communism rather than trying to roll it back. 

34th President of the United States

While frugal in budget matters he expanded Social Security and did not try to repeal the remaining New Deal programs. He launched the interstate highway system (using a tax on gasoline) that dramatically improved the nation's transportation infrastructure. The economy was generally healthy, apart from a sharp economic recession in 1958. Eisenhower remained popular and largely avoided partisan politics; he was reelected by a landslide in 1956.

In both foreign and domestic policy Eisenhower remained on friendly terms with the Democrats, who regained Congress in 1954 and made large gains in 1958. His farewell address to the nation warned of the dangers of a growing "military industrial complex." 

In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower be­came the first Republican president in 20 years. A war hero rather than a career politician, he had a natu­ral, common touch that made him widely popular. “I like Ike” was the campaign slogan of the time. After serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Western Europe during World War II, Eisenhower had been army chief of staff, presi­dent of Columbia University, and military head of NATO before seek­ing the Republican presidential nomination. Skillful at getting peo­ple to work together, he functioned as a strong public spokesman and an executive manager somewhat re­moved from detailed policy making. 

Despite disagreements on detail, he shared Truman’s basic view of American foreign policy. He, too, perceived Communism as a mono­lithic force struggling for world supremacy. In his first inaugural ad­dress, he declared, “Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery, lightness against dark.”

The new president and his secre­tary of state, John Foster Dulles, had argued that containment did not go far enough to stop Soviet expansion. Rather, a more aggressive policy of liberation was necessary, to free those subjugated by Communism. But when a democratic rebellion broke out in Hungary in 1956, the United States stood back as Soviet forces suppressed it. 

Eisenhower’s basic commitment to contain Communism remained, and to that end he increased Ameri­can reliance on a nuclear shield. The United States had created the first atomic bombs. In 1950 Truman had authorized the development of a new and more powerful hydrogen bomb. Eisenhower, fearful that defense spending was out of control, re­versed Truman’s NSC-68 policy of a large conventional military buildup. Relying on what Dulles called “mas­sive retaliation,” the administration signaled it would use nuclear weap­ons if the nation or its vital interests were attacked. 

In practice, however, the nuclear option could be used only against extremely critical attacks. Real Communist threats were generally peripheral. Eisenhower rejected the use of nuclear weapons in Indochi­na, when the French were ousted by Vietnamese Communist forces in 1954. In 1956, British and French forces attacked Egypt following Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal and Israel invaded the Egyp­tian Sinai. The president exerted heavy pressure on all three countries to withdraw. Still, the nuclear threat may have been taken seriously by Communist China, which refrained not only from attacking Taiwan, but from occupying small islands held by Nationalist Chinese just off the mainland. It may also have deterred Soviet occupation of Berlin, which reemerged as a festering problem during Eisenhower’s last two years in office. 

In 1953, Stalin died, and after the 1952 presidential election, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the opportunity to end the Korean War, while continuing Cold War policies. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was the dominant figure in the nation's foreign policy in the 1950s. Dulles denounced the "containment" of the Truman administration and espoused an active program of "liberation", which would lead to a "rollback" of communism. The most prominent of those doctrines was the policy of "massive retaliation", which Dulles announced early in 1954, eschewing the costly, conventional ground forces characteristic of the Truman administration in favor of wielding the vast superiority of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and covert intelligence. Dulles defined this approach as "brinkmanship". 

A dramatic shock to Americans' self-confidence and its technological superiority came in 1957, when the Soviets beat the United States into outer space by launching Sputnik, the first earth satellite. The space race began, and by the early 1960s the United States had forged ahead, with President Kennedy promising to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s—the landing indeed took place on July 20, 1969.

Trouble close to home appeared when the Soviets formed an alliance with Cuba after Fidel Castro's successful revolution in 1959. 

EISENHOWER’S APPROACH - when Dwight Eisenhower suc­ceeded Truman as president, he accepted the basic framework of gov­ernment responsibility established by the New Deal, but sought to hold the line on programs and expendi­tures. He termed his approach “dy­namic conservatism” or “modern Republicanism,” which meant, he explained, “conservative when it comes to money, liberal when it comes to human beings.” A critic countered that Eisenhower appeared to argue that he would “strongly recommend the building of a great many schools ...but not provide the money.” 

Eisenhower’s first priority was to balance the budget after years of deficits. He wanted to cut spending and taxes and maintain the value of the dollar. Republicans were willing to risk unemployment to keep infla­tion in check. Reluctant to stimulate the economy too much, they saw the country suffer three economic recessions in the eight years of the Eisenhower presidency, but none was very severe.

In other areas, the administra­tion transferred control of offshore oil lands from the federal govern­ment to the states. It also favored pri­vate development of electrical power rather than the public approach the Democrats had initiated. In general, its orientation was sympathetic to business. 

Compared to Truman, Eisen­hower had only a modest domes­tic program. When he was active in promoting a bill, it likely was to trim the New Deal legacy a bit — as in reducing agricultural subsidies or placing mild restrictions on la­bor unions. His disinclination to push fundamental change in either direction was in keeping with the spirit of the generally prosperous Fifties. He was one of the few presi­dents who left office as popular as when he entered it.