Secretly, Eisenhower prepared the nation to win a nuclear war far more than historians have previously thought, going so far as to disperse nuclear weapons to the soil of allies such as Canada, then later to Greenland, Iceland, Greece, Italy, and Japan, beginning in the 1950s.56 America kept ahead of the Soviets and far ahead of the Chinese, as seen in the 1958 confrontation with China over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the Formosa Straits. The Nationalist government claimed these islands, as did the communist mainland, which made plans to invade them. Quiet diplomacy provided an agreement, but looming over the discussions was the fact that the United States had an “ace in the hole,” as historian Timothy Botti called the nuclear weapons. Time and again, this nuclear backstop enabled the United States to pursue its national interests in ways that few large states in previous eras ever could have imagined. In short, the implicit threat of its large nuclear arsenal permitted the United States to engage in less than total war and to pursue localized, or limited, wars on several occasions.
Eisenhower also sought to develop a broader nuclear policy that would make use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. In December 1953, Ike delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations in New York City in hopes of breaking the deadlock over establishing international supervision of fissionable materials, and of approving an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that provided for research in nuclear energy in civilian areas under the direction of the National Security Council.57 Thus, the federal government assumed authority for the safety and regulation of all civilian nuclear plants in the nation. This expanded federal power on the one hand, but it opened up an untapped resource to be used with confidence on the other.
Sputnik: Cold War in Space
To America’s shock, in August 1957 the cold war took a new turn or, more appropriately, an upward arc when the USSR announced it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a rocket fired upward out of the earth’s atmosphere on an arc that would descend on a target and release warheads. Although the public did not immediately appreciate the import of these tests, in October the Soviet Union claimed the lead in the space race by launching Sputnik I into orbit, using a launcher similar to that on their ICBMs. To the man on the street, Sputnik represented little more than a Soviet scientific feat, but added to the ICBM test, Sputnik’s successful orbit suggested that now the USSR had the capability of raining atomic bombs on American soil safely from within bases inside Russia.
Realistically, the Soviets had merely skipped a step in the development of nuclear weapons, temporarily forgoing construction of a long-range bomber fleet. Eisenhower personally seemed unconcerned. Not so the general public. Popular media publications such as Life magazine headlined its post-Sputnik issue with the case for being panicky. The public did not know that General Curtis LeMay, of the Strategic Air Command, in an internal study reviewing the results of a simulated missile attack on American bomber bases, had concluded that the Soviet Union could have wiped out sixty of the major U.S. bases with a coordinated attack. Sputnik persuaded the United States to keep a force of long-range reconnaissance aircraft—the U-2 spy planes—in the skies over the USSR at all times to detect enemy preparations for an attack. Eisenhower also offered intermediate-range ballistic missiles to NATO allies, such as Britain, Turkey, and Italy.
Nevertheless, the public demanded a response to the threat of ICBMs. This came in a crash program aimed in two directions. First, money poured into education, particularly into universities and colleges for engineering, science, and math programs. Through the National Defense Education Act (1958), Congress “authorized grants for training in mathematics, science, and modern languages.”58 That might have kept the money in the labs where Congress intended it, but by also funding student loans and fellowships, the federal government flooded the humanities and other university departments with cash, providing the financial base for the student rebellions that would dominate the late 1960s.
Second, the United States moved with urgency to develop its own solid-and liquid-fueled rockets, resulting in some early spectacular crashes as American technology exploded on launching pads or flew apart in flight. Defense spending surged, and Congress turned the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA, created in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson) into a larger, more powerful agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In May 1961, Commander Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American into space; then, in February 1962, Colonel John Glenn was launched into orbit aboard a Mercury rocket. In both cases the Soviets beat the United States to the punch, placing their own “astronauts”—a new term coined to describe space travelers, although the Russian “cosmonauts” preceded American astronauts—into space, then into orbit. To the public, these activities merely confirmed that the communists continued to lead in the space race. The images of exploding American rockets remained fresh, and even with Glenn’s flight, American scientists feared the worst while they hoped (and planned) for the best. Military planners even had a plan (Operation Dirty Trick) that would blame Cuban communists if the Mercury flight failed.59 Soviet victories in space contributed to the cloud of anxiety that hung over what otherwise was a decade of prosperity and growth.
Happy Days: Myth or Reality?
A popular television sitcom called Happy Days appeared from 1974 to 1984 and depicted life in 1950s America as lighthearted and easy, with intact families, supportive communities, and teenagers who, although prone to an occasional prank or misstep, nevertheless behaved like upstanding citizens. Even the antihero, the Fonz (Vincent Fonzarelli, played by Henry Winkler), who sported a motorcycle jacket and a tough-guy mystique, possessed a heart of gold and displayed loyalty, courage, and wisdom. Of course, in the cynical 1970s, critics salivated at the opportunity to lampoon Happy Days. They pointed out that the show did not deal at any length with racial prejudice (it did not, although Asian actor Pat Morita was the original owner of the diner) or family problems such as alcoholism and divorce (again, guilty as charged). But the very fact that so many critics, especially of the Left, responded so vehemently to Happy Days suggests that the show touched a raw nerve. Despite genuine social problems and hidden pathologies, despite racial discrimination and so-called traditional roles for women, and despite the threat of atomic warfare, for the vast majority of Americans, the 1950s were happy days.
One view of the 1950s, focused on those who had entered adulthood in the decade or slightly before, comes from generational pundits William Strauss and Neil Howe. They label the group born from 1901 to 1924 the GI generation. By 1946, GIs would have reached twenty-two at the youngest and forty-five at the oldest, putting them at the prime earning years of their lives. That coincided with the postwar economic boom that fitted together a generation viewed as “fearless but not reckless,” replete with heroes and full of problem solvers.60 As the inscription on the Iwo Jima shrine (itself a testament to their courage) puts it, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Adults of the 1950s included many of America’s greatest achievers, including Walt Disney, Ronald Reagan, Lee Iacocca, Lyndon Johnson, George Bush, Bob Hope, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Ann Landers, Billy Graham, Sidney Poitier, Walter Cronkite, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Lindbergh, and Joe DiMaggio. They produced such cultural monuments as Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners, and Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp and Bambi. They initiated a spiritual revival that spread the Gospel of Christianity more broadly through Billy Graham and the ministry of Oral Roberts. Epitomizing the spirit of the decade, the best-known comic strip character, Superman, fought for “truth, justice, and the American way.”
Nineteen fifties Americans received the benefit of the largest one-generation jump in educational achievement in the nation’s history; they had learned the importance of work, yet had worked less outside the home than any other group; and as a generation they had an uncanny knack for backing the winning cand
idate in every single major election. As adults, they won two thirds of all Nobel prizes ever won by Americans, including all fourteen prizes in economics. Supported in some of their affluence by grateful taxpayers, they received housing subsidies through mortgage interest deductions on taxes, and through the Veterans Administration, they received guaranteed mortgage loans to purchase houses. This group of adults also effectively changed the debate about racial segregation, with black intellectuals like Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) arguing that segregation not only was morally wrong, but also economically inefficient. By 1965, Look magazine would say—speaking mainly of the adults in society—“Americans today bear themselves like victory-addicted champions…. They are accustomed to meeting, and beating, tests.”61
This optimism hid a spiritual emptiness that characterized many of this generation, the efforts of preachers such as Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, and Oral Roberts notwithstanding. Later surveys would show the 1950s generation to be in many ways one of the least religious groups in American history, and this may in part account for why their success—while genuine and admirable in many cases—was fleeting. Sooner or later, a sandy foundation of civic virtue, unsupported by deeper spiritual commitments, would crumble.
What is amazing about all this is that the 1950s still had plenty of structure. Marriage and motherhood were considered the main destiny of young women—with teaching and nursing considered their only “acceptable” careers—and magazines such as Seventeen or Mademoiselle or popular books such as Mary McGee Williams’s On Becoming a Woman all operated under this assumption. “It’s Not Too Soon to Dream of Marriage” ran a typical chapter title in Williams’s book. Yet at the same time, the prominent female movie stars were the sexy Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell, and Brigitte Bardot. Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which appeared in 1953, even if tainted by flawed data still indicated that women were having sex before marriage in large numbers, perhaps—if Kinsey’s statistics were to be believed—up to half of the six thousand women he had interviewed. Certainly men thought about sex all the time, or at least that was the premise behind the launch of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine in 1953, wherein photos of nude women were legitimized for viewing by middle-class men by packaging them with interviews, fiction, and “serious reporting.” The standard joke of the day was that a male, when caught in possession of a Playboy, would claim to read it “just for the articles.” As if to follow Hefner’s lead, in 1957 the Searle pharmaceutical company brought out the birth-control pill, which proved instrumental in delinking sexual intercourse from childbearing or, put another way, in separating consequences from actions.
Before the Pill, in the early 1950s, young adults, especially those married in the late 1940s, produced the largest boom in childbirths ever witnessed in the United States. Aptly labeled baby boomers, these children grew up in unprecedented affluence by the standards of the day. Adult expectations were that the boomers stood “on the fringe of a golden era” and would “lay out blight proof, smog-free cities, enrich the underdeveloped world, and, no doubt, write finis to poverty and war.”62 New foods developed specifically for babies had experienced slow growth before the boomers began consuming boxcars full of Frank Gerber’s baby products and pediatrics “reached its height of physical aggressiveness: No generation of kids got more shots or operations.”63
Clothes designers targeted babies and children as distinct consumer groups rather than viewing them as little adults. Manufacturers made clothes tailored for babies’ and children’s bodies, for play, and for, well…accidents. Barbie dolls, Hula-Hoops, Davy Crockett coonskin caps, and other toys aimed at children appeared on the market, and other toys invented earlier, like Tinkertoys and Lionel trains, saw their sales soar. In short, the baby boomers in general wanted for no material thing.
In addition to growing up in abundance, the boom generation also was raised on the theories of the best-selling baby book of all time, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946). Spock, thoroughly steeped in psychoanalysis and Freudianism, had been a Coolidge Republican in early adulthood, but along with his wife had moved steadily leftward, advocating positions that would have made Coolidge quiver. He advised parents to refrain from disciplining their children and to let children determine when and where everything took place, from bathroom habits to education. American homes overnight became child centered, whereas spanking and other physical discipline was viewed as psychologically unhealthy. The dangerous combination of material comfort and loose control made for a generation that lacked toughness, one that literally fell apart under the pressures of civil rights, the Vietnam War, and economic stagnation. Not surprisingly, boomers turned to drugs and sex in record numbers, and divorce among the generation skyrocketed.
Along with the permissiveness at home came an unparalleled freedom of travel and movement. Some of this movement was permanent relocation for jobs or better living conditions, including climate. Most of it was from north and east to south and west: between 1947 and 1960, a quarter of a million Americans left the Great Lakes region and the mid-Atlantic/New England areas for the far West, Southwest, and Southeast. At the same time, only twenty-one thousand—virtually all black—left the South for higher wages and greater social freedom in the North. Thus, the Sun Belt regions netted a huge population gain in just over a decade, dramatically shifting both the economy and political balance of the country.
Central cities saw their rate of growth slow as suburbs appeared around all the major metropolitan areas. Levittown, New York—built by William Levitt in 1947—created such a demand that by the time it was finished in 1951, it covered 1,200 acres with more than 17,000 homes, most of them owned by young families. Levittown quickly acquired the nickname Fertility Valley. Levitt’s basic house consisted of a 720-square-foot Cape Cod, constructed on a concrete slab, including a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bath, a living room with fireplace, and an attic with the potential for conversion into two more bedrooms. Basic models sold for just under $7,000, whereas larger versions went for $10,000.
Many communities like Levittown were planned cities that sought to control the types of businesses, architecture, and developments that were permitted in an attempt to beautify the environment.64 Oversight by professionals in city planning represented the culmination of the dreams of the Progressives who had once thought that central cities would evolve into what the suburbs, in fact, became. Yet once the planned communities arose, criticism of them from academics and urban advocates sprang up almost as fast: the “soulless” suburbs, it was said, were draining away the talent and wealth from the inner cities. Instead of praising lower crime rates in the suburbs, critics blamed the suburbanites for abandoning the core city.65 They failed to understand the basic human desire for security, privacy, and property.
Travel for business and pleasure also expanded at geometric rates, thanks to the widespread availability of the family automobile. Autos had started to permeate American culture in the 1920s, but the expansion of auto travel slowed during the Depression and war. After 1946, however, people had several years’ worth of wartime savings to spend, and General Motors and Ford, the giants, began to offer their own financing programs, making it still easier to acquire dependable transportation. A feedback loop—a self-reinforcing cycle—occurred as it had in the 1920s: as more people obtained autos, they demanded better roads, which state governments started to provide; and as more roads were laid, reaching more towns and cities, more people wanted cars. The Big Three automakers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) dominated the market, but many other small companies remained competitive, such as Jeep, Rambler, Nash, Checker, Willys, and the short-lived (but high-selling) Kaiser-Frazer cars. In the 1950s, U.S. auto production exceeded that of Great Britain, France, Japan, Sweden, and all other nations put together several times over, and Ford and GM—both of which produced their 50 millionth vehicles in the 1950s—posted healthy profits.
Even before the 1956 Nationa
l Highway Act was passed, building 41,000 miles of interstates, 60 percent of all American households owned a car, but most trips were local. The nation’s more than 40 million cars traveled on some 1.6 million miles of surfaced highways, testifying to the fact that auto ownership had become common. Average annual highway driving rose 400 percent after the act, making interstate travel commonplace. But on the negative side, the fuel taxes remained in place long after the highway construction ended, and nearly fifty years later, almost half of the price of a gallon of gasoline consisted of federal, state, and local taxes. Indeed, the leftist notion that roads use tax dollars to subsidize auto travel fails to confront the reality that gasoline taxes ensured that the people who used the highways would, in fact, pay for them—even as they were also paying for the mass transit systems that the “experts” promoted. The unbridled liberty of the automobile irks those enamored of planning and control, those who see government-dominated mass transit systems as an ordered and structured alternative.
Air travel also entered a new democratic age. While still expensive, passenger flights became increasingly more available to more people. Air carriers, such as Trans World Airlines, American, Pan Am, and others, flew enough routes at low enough prices that by the late 1950s average American families could consider taking an airplane flight to a vacation site or to see relatives. Juan Trippe’s Pan American World Airways, which had flown directly to England by the 1930s and had mapped South American routes for security purposes during the war, emerged as a leading overseas carrier. Howard Hughes, who owned enough of Trans World Airlines (TWA) to assume hands-on management, started designing his own giant passenger aircraft even before the war, resulting in the Lockheed Constellation, which set an “industry standard for size, comfort, and range.”66 New technology converged with a glut of war-trained pilots who came on the market after 1945, producing lower fares. Eastern, American, and TWA offered coach-class tickets that made air travel competitive with rail travel, resulting in a doubling of airplane passengers between 1951 and 1958. The ease with which people traveled by air was, ironically, symbolized by the first air traffic jam over New York City in 1954, when three hundred airliners lined up in holding patterns in the airspace around the metropolis, involving forty-five thousand passengers in delays.
A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror Page 108