Lesson 19: The Fabulous Fifties

Objectives:

• Learn about American life after World War II
• Analyze international cooperation and competition
• Explore conflicts in Asia
• Discuss changes in the role of government
• Examine fifties-era culture and the rise of TV
• Analyze the fear of communism and McCarthyism
• Learn about Civil Rights victories and challenges

Post-War Life

The United States emerged from World War II as the richest and strongest nation on earth. Americans realized that the good old days of isolation from world responsibilities were gone. In contrast to its disillusionment and withdrawal in the wake of WWI, this time the U.S. was firmly committed to playing an active role in shaping the post-war international scene and confronting the challenges of a radically changed world.

Even before the United States entered WWII, the Allies were making plans for the kind of world they wanted after the shooting stopped. In 1941, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill drew up the Atlantic Charter, outlining their vision of the peace they hoped to see established. The principle of the charter served as the basis of discussion at the Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta conferences of 1944 and 1945. The result was the San Francisco conference of 1945, which created a new international organization to promote world peace, called the United Nations. The United Nations was based upon the model of the old League of Nations, but was much more effective because the United States was a key founder and active participant.

Despite these noble efforts, the peace that followed the great Allied victory was just as troubled as the peace that followed WWI. The victorious Allies soon abandoned their wartime unity and split into opposing camps, each headed by one of the two new "superpowers": the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. Their global rivalry, which lasted almost a half a century, was called the "Cold War" because unlike the recently concluded "hot war" of WWII, the hostility between the two countries did not into outright warfare.

Entering the Atomic Age

Despite the absence of outright fighting, the tensions of the Cold War were just as dangerous because of the constant threat of nuclear warfare. The American decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of WWII had ushered in the “Atomic Age.” Initially, the United States was the only nation in the world with nuclear weapons, but the Soviet Union soon developed a nuclear capacity. The unprecedented destructive capacity of nuclear weapons gave humans the power not only to destroy entire nations, but ultimately the entire world. Every international struggle for land and resources became loaded with the danger of total annihilation. Because of this danger, many nations hastened to sign treaties and alliances to lower the possibility of nuclear attack.

The United Nations

In 1944, the U.S., China, Britain, and the Soviet Union agreed to establish a multinational organization with the goal of preventing war and promoting social progress. The following year, representatives of fifty nations met in San Francisco to draw up the Charter of the United Nations (UN). Every nation in the world was invited to be represented in the UN General Assembly, with rotating seats on the UN Security Council, which is responsible for finding peaceful solutions to threats to international peace and security. Five especially powerful nations - the U.S., France, Britain, China, and the U.S.S.R. - were given vetoes and permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

The first UN-Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, was convinced that the UN could be an essential and effective means of promoting peace. His conviction would be tested in the coming years, as the UN attempted to deal with growing tensions between the nations of the world.

The increasingly strained relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union led to ongoing tension over control of the atomic bomb. In 1946, a new agency of the UN, called the International Atomic Energy Commission, was created for the purpose of controlling atomic energy and creating inspection teams to monitor world atomic weapon activity. Bernard Baruch was the first U.S. representative who presented the commission with an international atomic control plan that would allow one agency control over atomic energy. The United States agreed to destroy its atomic bombs if this agency’s plans were carried out. But the Soviet Union, insisting that the destruction of these weapons should take place before the details of the plan were worked out, effectively sabotaged the idea.

At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern half of Europe, and the Western democracies--France, Britain, and the United States--controlled the western half. Germany itself was split into two zones, East and West Germany. East Germany, occupied by Soviet troops, became communist like the rest of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, while West Germany became capitalist and democratic. The Eastern European nations conquered by Soviet communists were called “Soviet satellites.” Soviet Leaders believed that maintaining a buffer zone of subservient nations on its borders would prevent another surprise attack like Hitler's. The Americans believed that the Soviet military occupation of Eastern Europe threatened the freedom and security of the entire continent.

Primary Source

On March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a speech in the small Missouri town of Fulton. In this speech, he coined the term Iron Curtain to describe the division of Europe into two separate, armed camps.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies....From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone--Greece with its immortal glories--is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control.
R. R. James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Volume VII: 1943-1949, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974, p. 7285-7293.

Churchill saw the "Iron Curtain" and the rise of Communism as a serious threat, perhaps even more serious than Fascism.

The Widening Divide Between East and West

As it became clear that the split between East and West Germany would become permanent, tensions increased, particularly in the old German capital Berlin, which had been divided into communist and capitalist sections. In 1948, the Soviets decided to pressure the Americans and their allies by cutting Berlin off from contact with West. Truman responded to the Soviet blockade by ordering a massive airlift - called the Berlin Airlift - to get food and supplies into West Berlin, ultimately causing the Soviets to back down.

The Berlin Airlift was part of President Truman's policy, called the Truman Doctrine, of aiding countries who were under threat from communism. This policy of "containing" communism was first applied in Greece and Turkey, which received American military and economic aid to help them oppose communist insurgencies in their countries. The Marshall Plan, proposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall, was another integral component of the Truman Doctrine. The plan called for enormous economic aid for war-torn Europe, on the assumption that a prosperous Europe would be more likely to remain at peace and resist communism. The Marshall Plan helped Europeans get their transportation, farms, and factories running again and was a tremendous success. Truman also extended the reach of the United States in other beneficial ways. Under his so-called "Point Four Program" of 1949, Truman declared the U.S. interest of providing technological skills, knowledge, and equipment to poor nations throughout the world. The program also helped encourage private investment in these developing nations.

As the lines hardened between the Soviet Bloc and the American-led West, two new organizations came into existence. In 1949, the United States, Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the Washington Treaty. The treaty created theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which united the countries together for common defense. The purpose of the organization was to forge a permanent alliance between free and independent countries to create a collective security system. An attack on one of the members would be considered an attack on all of them. Over the years, as more countries became stable, they were invited to join NATO.

In 1955, the Soviets responded to the perceived threat of NATO by creating the Warsaw Pact, a similar organization composed of its allies. The two opposing blocs of NATO, led by the U.S., and the Warsaw Pact, led by the U.S.S.R., teetered on the brink of overt war for many years.

The Communist Threat At Home

In the years before World War II, communism had gained a number of supporters in the United States, in large part because of the activities of the Soviet-sponsored organization Communist International (Comintern). The ideology was particularly popular among artists, intellectuals, and some activists in the labor movement.

As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated, anti-communist sentiment grew in the United States. Americans became increasingly fearful of communist infiltration. This fear was exacerbated by high-profile cases, like those of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg, in which Americans gave important secrets to the Soviets.

In the late forties, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), originally designed as a monitor for all political groups, began to focus almost exclusively on investigating subversive communist movements. In one notorious investigation, HUAC attempted to root out supposed communist infiltration in Hollywood by forcing hundreds of actors, screenwriters, and directors to name which of their colleagues held leftist views. Hundreds of people, including many who refused to tell on their friends, were blacklisted and lost their jobs.

The most well-known anti-communist crusader of this period was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. In early 1950, Senator McCarthy claimed to have a list of over 200 people in the State Department who were known to be members of the American Communist Party. McCarthy’s accusations touched off a communist witch-hunt. Capitalizing on the public’s fear of internal subversion, McCarthy led a series of investigations into various government departments as he searched out any connection to leftist ideologies. The anti-communist hysteria McCarthy unleashed became known as "McCarthyism."

As the hysteria grew, McCarthy branched beyond investigating government departments to essentially accusing anyone who opposed him of holding anti-American views. He also began a campaign to remove any books deemed anti-American. Over 30,000 books were named and removed from library shelves. It was not until 1954 that the government, realizing McCarthy was out of control, took steps to reign him in.

President Eisenhower instructed Vice- President Richard Nixon, who had come to political prominence as a member of HUAC, to attack McCarthy in speeches and slowly they stemmed the tide of hysteria. Once others realized they didn’t have to be scared of speaking out against McCarthy, his opponents grew. McCarthyism died as McCarthy lost his political support and the media stopped printing stories of communist conspiracies.

Conflict in Asia

The issue of communism dominated America’s relations with Eastern European countries, and was also a major source of conflict in Asian countries. In China, the founder and leader of the Communist Party was Mao Tsetung (or Zedong). His opponent in the struggle for control of China was Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the anti-communist Kuomintang Party. After a long struggle, the Communists under Mao finally drove the Kuomintang off the mainland of China in 1949. Chiang Kai-shek and his followers took refuge on the island of Taiwan, where they founded the anti-communist Republic of China.

Middle Eastern countries were also affected by the spread of communism. In the mid-1940s, the Soviets had withdrawn their troops from Iran, but conflict soon emerged from another source - the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 after a UN plan partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian halves. The subsequent war pitted the new Israeli nation against Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Republic of Egypt, led by its first president, Gamal Nasser.

The Israelis were able to hold onto the Jewish territories and even expanded into UN-designated Palestinian land. With the help of Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Ralph Bunche (the grandson of a former slave and Under Secretary of the United Nations for many years), an armistice was signed, though the remnants of this conflict continue to the present day.

The role of the United States in occupying part of Korea illustrated the Cold War policy of containment. At the end of WWII, the Americans had occupied the southern half of Korea and the Soviets the north because Korea was divided in the same manner as Germany had been. Syngman Rhee became the first President of South Korea in 1948. The Korean War broke out in 1950 when North Korea, with the assistance of the U.S.S.R. and newly communist China, attacked the South. The Soviets were boycotting the UN at the time and China's Security Council seat was still controlled by the Nationalists, so the U.S. was able to organize a UN resolution to aid South Korea.

Map of North and South Korea

The UN forces, under the command of the American General Douglas MacArthur, succeeded in driving back the North Korean advance. The UN forces were on the verge of driving the North Koreans over the border into China when the Chinese army poured over the border. The Soviets did not commit ground troops, but did supply Soviet pilots and planes.

After three long years of brutal fighting, the battle line stabilized around the original dividing line between the North and South, the 38th parallel. An armistice was signed in 1953, but no peace treaty. The battle line is still defended to this day by North Korean troops on one side and South Koreans on the other. The Korean War was the first so-called "proxy war" between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the two superpowers fought each other indirectly, without allowing the conflict to escalate into a nuclear war.

The Eisenhower Years

In 1953, former Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first Republican president in twenty years. Two decades of Democratic control had resulted in an enormous expansion of the role of the federal government through social programs, as well as modest action on civil rights, like when Truman integrated the U.S. Army.

Eisenhower generally favored more aggressive tactics against the Soviets and a smaller role for the federal government. But he embraced the policy of containment and did not radically overturn the social programs that had been implemented under his Democratic predecessors. While Eisenhower was not an activist president on civil rights issues, several important civil rights milestones occurred during his presidency. Eisenhower also bought an end to the Korean War in July 1953.

A few months later, Joseph Stalin, the longtime dictator of the Soviet Union, died - leading to hope that Cold War tensions would diminish. In 1957, Nikita Khrushchev became the Premier of the Soviet Union and was very critical of Stalin. Khrushchev granted concessions to the Poles as a way to rebel against Stalin’s way of doing things and gave Poland a little more freedom, loosening the grip (a little) of communism in Eastern Europe.

Although the fear of communism seems to have permeated the minds of Americans during the post-WWII period, life was good. Social legislation, like social security, rent controls, and the minimum wage, had improved the lives of working people. Although the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 weakened union protections and the power of organized labor, postwar economic prosperity led to rising wages and low unemployment. As men returned from the war to a prosperous economy, marriages mushroomed, resulting in a large increase in the birth rate, called the "Baby Boom."

Other domestic legislation dealt with civil rights, the basic rights of the citizen, and labor issues directly. One big win for the labor movement happened when General Motors signed a contract with an escalator clause. The escalator clause said that wages would increase based upon increases in productivity and in the cost of living.

Another success came from the Employment Act of 1946. It required the president to submit an annual economic report and create policies to help retain high employment. One aim of the act was to help the president and Congress keep a closer eye on the nation's economy.

Domestic legislation of the postwar period included a new Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, and it helped do just that—help servicemen readjust financially to living a non-military life. Under the provisions of this act, Congress attempted to compensate returning veterans for their service to the country. Some members of the Senate attempted more changes with employment laws, but were unsuccessful.

In 1946, the Senate rejected pleas by minority leaders to establish a bill for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee. The action against it disappointed minority leaders. Between 1949 and 1952, Congress:

• Extended Social Security benefits to include 10 million more people, in the form of old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and help for the handicapped
• Raised the minimum wage for workers in interstate industries
• Authorized the federal government to clear slums and to build 810,000 units of low-income housing, or housing subsidized by the federal government for people earning small incomes
• Continued rent control
• Established farm price supports, federal payments to keep the prices that farmers receive for their crops from dropping below a minimum level, with a new Agricultural Act
• Brought more federal employees under civil service, meaning government employees as a group
• Worked, through the Reclamation Bureau on irrigation projects, hydroelectric plants, and flood control—the building of dikes, dams, and other structures to reduce the chance that streams and rivers will overflow their banks

Also, the National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to gather knowledge abroad. The United States wanted advanced kn owledge of political and military events in other countries.

Cultural Developments In the 1950s

Have you ever heard of Leave it to Beaver, rock-and-roll, Chuck Berry, or hula-hooping? Welcome to the fifties! This is the period of the generation of people called “baby boomers." This generation resulted from the Baby Boom, or postwar population explosion.

The Baby Boom occurred after WWII. During the Depression, the American population increased by only 9 million, and only by 19 million during the 1940s. In the 1950s the population exploded with an unprecedented 28 million babies born. During and after World War II, men and women married earlier and had larger families, resulting in what we now call The Baby Boom.

The fifties helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1963, the first such law passed since Reconstruction. This act secured votes for black citizens following the integration of schools and public buildings.

The fifties witnessed the birth of the suburbs, areas people began to move to right outside of a city's boundaries. Because of this suburban growth, cities began to dwindle and urban renewal programs were instituted. Urban renewal programs grew in direct response to the decay of central cities in the 1950s.

Suburban growth greatly contributed to the economy in the 1950s because so many homes were built. Home ownership rose drastically during this growth. The invention of TV into everyday life helped create an outlet for sales. Thus, we ended up with an economy of abundance, a system that produces more goods and services than citizens can consume. People were bombarded with consumerism every minute of the day.

Not only did the fifties bring about a population explosion and the growth of suburbs, it also was host to a “knowledge explosion.” The amount of information available to each individual was growing at a remarkable rate.

The booming economy and labor legislation of the 1950s created more leisure time for the American middle class than ever before. Between 1940 and 1960, the average workweek decreased from 44 to 40 hours, and paid vacation was more common. More families owned cars and had disposable income. Americans took to the mountains, beaches, and country like never before. Fast food chains and motels (which used to be called "Motor Hotels") became booming businesses along highways that vacationers traveled.

Civil Rights

After many debates in the political arena, the Supreme Court, in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, declared the “separate but equal” rule of racially segregated schools unconstitutional. Segregated schools conflicted with the “separate but equal” concept because in that phrase, the values underlying equality and segregation are in conflict. The previous Supreme Court precedent held that as long as equal facilities were provided, it was legal to separate the races. But, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision actually solved the conflict by declaring “separate but equal” unconstitutional based on the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that education was the most important focus of state and local government. Moreover, he said that it was important because it is the foundation of good citizenship and helps people succeed in life.

In 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, chose to sit in a seat in the front of a bus, which at the time was designated for whites only; blacks were forced to sit at the back of the bus. The bus Rosa rode on was empty, and she refused to sit in the back. The driver demanded that she move to the back of the bus, but she would not. The police arrested her.

Within a day, Martin Luther King, Jr., who was 26 at the time, organized 50,000 blacks to boycott the entire Montgomery, Alabama bus system. Blacks constituted 70% of the system's passengers, and they boycotted the Montgomery busses for 364 days. The bus system was dangerously close to going bankrupt and King and other boycott leaders faced arrest. In 1956 the Supreme Court banned segregation on public transit.

The victory of the Montgomery boycott inspired black leaders. In 1957 Martin Luther King called a conference of southern leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed. The organization's intent was to battle discrimination all over the nation by nonviolent, direct action. The first test of Brown v. Board of Education occurred in 1957, when the Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus, ordered the National Guard to prevent a group of black students from integrating Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower broke the crisis when he gave the federal government control of the National Guard and ordered them to enforce desegregation.