The 1950s: the Fearful, the
Fabulous, the Forgotten
The not so Happy Days
The Fearful
The Fabulous
The Forgotten
The Fearful Fifties
The Cold War
1947-1991
The Cold War was a sustained state of political and military tension between
the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies,
and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and
allies. This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against
Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with
profound economic and political differences.
• Containment
• Atomic Bomb
• The Space Race
• Red Scare
• Abroad
• The Close
Containment
By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the
best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.”
In 1946, in his famous “Long Telegram,”
the diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005)
explained this policy:
The Soviet Union, he wrote, was
“a political force committed fanatically to
the belief that with the U.S. there can be no
permanent modus vivendi [agreement
between parties that disagree]”; as a result,
America’s only choice was the “long-term,
patient but firm and vigilant containment
of Russian expansive tendencies.”
Containment
President Harry Truman (1884-1972)
agreed.
“It must be the policy of the United
States,” he declared before Congress in
1947, “to support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation…by
outside pressures.”
This way of thinking would shape
American foreign policy for the next four
decades.
President Harry
S. Truman
Atomic Bomb
• The containment strategy also provided the
rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in
the United States. In 1950, a National Security
Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed
Truman’s recommendation that the country use
military force to "contain" communist
expansionism anywhere it seemed to be
occurring. To that end, the report called for a
four-fold increase in defense spending.
• In particular, American officials encouraged the
development of atomic weapons like the ones
that had ended World War II. Thus began a
deadly "arms race."
• In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their
own. In response, President Truman announced
that the United States would build an even more
destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb,
or "superbomb." Stalin followed suit.
Atomic Bomb
• As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously
high. The first H-bomb test, in the Eniwetok atoll in the
Marshall Islands, showed just how fearsome the nuclear
age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that
vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor
and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan.
Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed poisonous
radioactive waste into the atmosphere.
• The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a
great impact on American domestic life as well. People
built bomb shelters in their backyards. They practiced
attack drills in schools and other public places. The 1950s
and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that
horrified moviegoers with depictions of nuclear
devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other
ways, the Cold War was a constant presence in
Americans’ everyday lives.
Manhattan Project
Bomb Drills
The Space Race
• Space exploration served as another dramatic arena
for Cold War competition.
• On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental
ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for
"traveler"), the world's first artificial satellite and the
first man-made object to be placed into the Earth's
orbit.
• Sputnik's launch came as a surprise, and not a
pleasant one, to most Americans.
• In the United States, space was seen as the next
frontier, a logical extension of the grand American
tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to
lose too much ground to the Soviets.
• In addition, this demonstration of the
overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly
capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air
space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet
military activities particularly urgent.
The Space Race
• In 1958, the U.S. launched its own
satellite, Explorer I, designed by
the U.S. Army under the direction
of rocket scientist Wernher von
Braun, and what came to be known
as the Space Race was underway.
• That same year, President Dwight
Eisenhower signed a public order
creating the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration
(NASA), a federal agency
dedicated to space exploration, as
well as several programs seeking to
exploit the military potential of
space.
• Still, the Soviets were one step
ahead, launching the first man into
space in April 1961.
President Dwight
D. Eisenhower
The Space Race
• That May, after Alan Shepard become the first
American man in space, President John F.
Kennedy (1917-1963) made the bold public
claim that the U.S. would land a man on the
moon by the end of the decade.
• His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when
Neil Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission,
became the first man to set food on the moon,
effectively winning the Space Race for the
Americans.
• U.S. astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate
American heroes, and earth-bound men and
women seemed to enjoy living vicariously
through them.
• Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate
villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to
surpass America and prove the power of the
communist system.
The Space Race
President John
F. Kennedy
Neil Armstrong
Red Scare
• Meanwhile, beginning in 1947, the
House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) brought the
Cold War home in another way.
• The committee began a series of
hearings designed to show that
communist subversion in the United
States was alive and well.
• In Hollywood, HUAC forced
hundreds of people who worked in
the movie industry to renounce leftwing political beliefs and testify
against one another.
• More than 500 people lost their jobs.
Many of these "blacklisted" writers,
directors, actors and others were
unable to work again for more than a
decade.
The Hollywood Blacklist: 1947-1960
The Hollywood Ten
Red Scare
• HUAC also accused State
Department workers of engaging in
subversive activities. Soon, other
anticommunist politicians, most
notably Senator Joseph McCarthy
(1908-1957), expanded this probe to
include anyone who worked in the
federal government.
• Thousands of federal employees
were investigated, fired and even
prosecuted.
• As this anticommunist hysteria
spread throughout the 1950s, liberal
college professors lost their jobs,
people were asked to testify against
colleagues and "loyalty oaths"
became commonplace.
Senator Joseph
McCarthy
Edward Murrow
Abroad
• The fight against subversion at home
mirrored a growing concern with the
Soviet threat abroad.
• In June 1950, the first military action of
the Cold War began when the Sovietbacked North Korean People’s Army
invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the
south.
• Many American officials feared this was
the first step in a communist campaign
to take over the world and deemed that
nonintervention was not an option.
• Truman sent the American military into
Korea, but the war dragged to a
stalemate and ended in 1953.
Overview of the Korean War
Abroad
Other international disputes followed.
• In the early 1960s, President Kennedy faced a number of troubling situations
in his own hemisphere.
• The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following
year seemed to prove that the real communist threat now lay in the
unstable, postcolonial "Third World"
• Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam, where the collapse of the
French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed
nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist nationalist Ho
Chi Minh in the north.
• Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an
anticommunist government in the region, and by the early 1960s it seemed
clear to American leaders that if they were to successfully "contain"
communist expansionism there, they would have to intervene more actively
on Diem’s behalf.
• However, what was intended to be a brief military action spiraled into a 10year conflict.
The Close
Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994)
began to implement a new approach to international relations.
• Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, "bipolar" place, he suggested, why not use
diplomacy instead of military action to create
more poles?
• To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to
recognize the communist Chinese government
and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish
diplomatic relations with Beijing. At the same
time, he adopted a policy of "détente"–
"relaxation"–toward the Soviet Union.
• In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev
(1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation
Treaty (SALT I), which prohibited the
manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and
took a step toward reducing the decades-old
threat of nuclear war.
President Richard
Nixon
The Close
Despite Nixon’s efforts, the Cold War heated up again under
President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004).
• Like many leaders of his generation,
Reagan believed that the spread of
communism anywhere threatened
freedom everywhere.
• As a result, he worked to provide
financial and military aid to
anticommunist governments and
insurgencies around the world.
• This policy, particularly as it was applied
in the developing world in places like
Grenada and El Salvador, was known as
the Reagan Doctrine.
President Ronald
Reagan
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.“
President Reagan
• Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet
Union was disintegrating. In response to severe economic problems and
growing political ferment in the USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-)
took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that redefined Russia's
relationship to the rest of the world: "glasnost," or political openness, and
"perestroika," or economic reform. Soviet influence in Eastern Europe
waned.
• In 1989, every other communist state in the region replaced its government
with a noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall–the
most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally destroyed, just
over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." By 1991, the
Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.
Assignment
The Butter Battle Book Part 1
The Butter Battle Book Part 2
The Yooks believe firmly that bread should
only ever be eaten with the butter side up
while the Zooks believe just as strongly
that bread should only ever be eaten with
the butter side down. A grandfather gives
an account to his grandson of how the two
societies segregated themselves by
increasingly threatening means until the
present day has come when the
grandfather and his Zook rival VanItch
come to an ultimate standoff over how far
their mounting aggressions will go.
During the film list tools each power used to encourage and discourage
war.
The Fabulous Fifties
If one word could describe American society during the Eisenhower era, it
would be "restless."
We tend to imagine the Fifties as a tranquil decade, but in fact Americans spent
the years moving and searching. They moved physically, from the Northeast to
the South and West—California's population grew by 49% during the Fifties,
Florida's by 79%. They moved from rural areas to cities and from cities to
suburbs. By 1960, a third of the country's population lived in the “burbs.”
Many people were content, but many others felt ill at ease because of the speed
at which the world was changing. Searching for new ways of coping, they
embraced religion and visited psychiatrists in unprecedented numbers.
• The Automobile Revolution
• The Interstate Highway
System
• The Impact of the Auto
• A More Religious Nation?
• The Critics
• Teenagers Take the Stage
The Automobile
Revolution
• Americans were well on the way to becoming a
motorized society before the 1950s, but the
Depression and the halt in auto production
during World War II slowed the growth of
America's car culture.
• During the Fifties, though, the number of cars in
the US nearly doubled from 39 million to 74
million. By 1960, 80% of American families had at
least one car and 15% had two or more.
• By making radical year-to-year design changes,
Detroit automakers encouraged consumers to
scrap older cars to buy the latest models, even as
often as once a year.
• On average, 4.5 million cars were junked every
year during the 1950s. By 1960, Americans owned
more cars than all the rest of the world put
together.
General Motors: The Inside
Story
The Interstate Highway
System
• Eisenhower was an opponent of extravagant federal spending, yet one of
his most enduring legacies is the Interstate Highway System, which his
Secretary of Commerce called "the greatest public works program in the history
of the world.“
• The idea had entered Eisenhower's head in 1919 when, as a young army
officer, he had accompanied a cross-country military convoy to test the
quality of the nation's roads. The journey of 81 trucks and autos took two
months to cross the United States—at an average of only 50 miles a day.
• Roads were "from average to non-existent," Second Lieutenant Eisenhower
noted. When he saw the modern autobahns of Germany after World War II,
he again grew enthusiastic about the possibility of a new high-speed US
highway system.
Highway Construction
The Interstate Highway
System
The New Interstate Highway
• The new freeway system, officially known as
the National System of Interstate and
Defense Highways, had a military as well as
civilian purpose: it could be used to rapidly
evacuate cities in case of a Soviet missile
attack.
• It was a monumental undertaking to build
41,000 miles of four-lane roads. The
nationwide construction project, which
involved building more than 16,000 entrance
ramps and 55,000 bridges, would not be fully
completed until the early 1990s.
• The roads, whose wide shoulders and easy
curves were designed for high-speed driving,
would end up costing a grand total of some
$129 billion.
• To satisfy urban interests, sections of
highway were constructed into and around
cities.
The Interstate Highway
System
The historian Lewis Mumford
predicted that Americans would regret
"all the damage to our cities and our
countryside . . . that this ill conceived and
preposterously unbalanced program will
have wrought.“
No one listened.
Lewis Mumford
Americans were delighted with the ability to drive from place to place at
high speed, with no stoplights or intersections to worry about.
The Impact of the Auto
• Mumford's warnings began to resonate
with more Americans by the 1970s,
when oil shortages left Americans
waiting in long lines to fill up at the gas
station. The nation's growing
dependence on the automobile proved
to be a mixed blessing.
• Many Americans wanted to escape the
cities and live in surrounding suburbs,
and the automobile allowed them to do
so. Of the 12 largest cities in the United
States, 11 lost population during the
1950s. (The one exception was Los
Angeles, which became a kind of carculture mecca.) The cities suffered
economically and culturally as a result.
The Impact of the Auto
While enormous public investment went into accommodating automobiles,
much less was devoted to mass transit. Buses and subways accounted for 35%
of urban passenger miles in 1945; by 1965 they made up only 5%. Highway
construction near cities displaced residents and divided neighborhoods,
further hastening urban deterioration.
Let’s Go to Town
The Impact of the Auto
•
•
•
•
•
On the other hand, new businesses catering to car
owners flourished.
Drive-in movie theaters boomed—there
were 3,000 in operation nationwide by
1956.
Motels became common, led by chains
like Holiday Inn.
Shopping malls, offering new shopping
convenience, began to appear
everywhere.
By the middle of the decade, 1,800
shopping centers had appeared in the
United States.
Fewer and fewer people went to the
inner city to shop, leaving the streets of
many cities largely deserted at night.
The Impact of the Auto
In 1954, businessman Ray Kroc purchased the franchise rights to an
assembly-line hamburger operation that had been started in San
Bernardino, California by Maurice and Richard McDonald. Kroc
standardized the concept, took it national, and by 1959 had opened his
100th McDonald's restaurant. By then he had sold 50 million burgers
for 15¢ each and fast food was becoming part of the American way of
life.
Ray Kroc
A More Religious Nation?
President Eisenhower was not a religious man; he officially joined the
Presbyterian Church only in 1953, because he thought some form of piety
was appropriate for a president. But during the Fifties, religion made a big
resurgence in America. In 1950, 49% of Americans were church members; by
1960, the figure had jumped to 69%.
A More Religious Nation?
In keeping with the split personality of the decade, there were really two
separate religious revivals.
• The first was the type of public religion
typified by Eisenhower's stance. This
was a reaction to the "godless"
Communism of America's enemies.
• The president said, "Our government
makes no sense unless it is founded on a
deeply felt religious faith—and I don't care
what it is." Eisenhower was worried
about citizens "deadened in mind and soul
by a materialistic philosophy of life."
• In 1954, he signed a bill to add "one
nation under God" to the Pledge of
Allegiance.
• Two years later, Congress made "In God
We Trust" the national motto of the
United States.
A More Religious Nation?
• Related to this generic, public religion
was the success of Norman Vincent
Peale.
• He was an author and preacher who
merged religion and the growing selfhelp movement.
• In 1952, Peale published The Power of
Positive Thinking, one of the most
successful inspirational books of all
time.
• In it, he argued that a combination of
faith and self-confidence could allow
anyone to surmount any obstacle.
The Power of Positive
Thinking clip: Dr.
Norman Vincent Peale
A More Religious Nation?
• A different kind of religious impulse motivated
evangelical Christians, typified by the Reverend
Billy Graham.
• Graham founded his Evangelistic Association in
1950 in a small office with a single secretary. Eight
years later, he employed 200 people, had a weekly
television show, and was taking in $2 million a year.
• Graham promoted a traditional type of religion that
saw the materialism, hedonism, and secularism of
the modern world as evils to be avoided.
• His followers wanted to cleanse themselves of sin,
not to improve themselves through "positive
thinking."
• Though Graham's revivals drew huge crowds,
evangelicals of the day did not have a much political
impact at the time. But the movement continued to
grow until it became a major social and political
force in later decades.
Reverend Billy Graham
The Critics
After two difficult and tumultuous decades, Americans in the Fifties had
enough leisure and material comfort to step back and reflect.
• They listened to experts and critics like sociologist David Riesman, who
published The Lonely Crowd in 1950.
• The American character was changing, Riesman asserted. Citizens were
substituting conformity for individualism.
• Riesman's critique was the first in a series of books, many of them
bestsellers, that analyzed perceived problems in the American society.
• They included The Organization Man by William H. Whyte Jr., which
criticized the growing bureaucracies of many corporations for encouraging
uncreative group thinking.
• C. Wright Mills, another critic, wrote in The Power Elite that Americans had
lost autonomy to a small number of powerful decision-makers in business
and government.
The Critics
It may seem odd that during an era often remembered as the "good old
days," Americans were so bothered by self-doubt… but it's just another
paradox of the Fifties.
• Critics were especially hard on the
suburbs.
• This was the heartland of conformity,
critics charged, a wasteland of ticky-tack
houses, bored men commuting to work,
unhappy housewives popping
tranquilizers, and greedy, demanding
children.
• Citizens had become consumers,
purchasing goods in an endless attempt
to keep up with their neighbors.
The Critics
Were the critics right? Certainly there were elements of truth in their opinions.
But later analysts have dismissed many of these criticisms.
• Conformity is a feature of every society; the Fifties had no monopoly on it.
• The suburbs let city dwellers escape crowded urban neighborhoods and gave
many their first opportunity to own a home.
• For those who could afford the suburban dream, suburbanization was an
opportunity, not a curse. As one suburbanite put it, "It was exhilarating to own
my own home. I felt like I had finally achieved something.“
• Americans in the 1950s were just as hardworking, ambitious, and
entrepreneurial as they had ever been.
• As their basic needs for food and shelter were met, it was natural for them to
look further and grab for even more material goods.
• It wasn't conformity that drove them, but a desire for comfort and security
and status.
Women’s Roles Redefined
American society in the 1950s was geared toward the family. Marriage and
children were part of the national agenda. And the Cold War was in part a
culture war, with the American family at the center of the struggle.
• Embedded in the propaganda of the time was the
idea that the nuclear family was what made
Americans superior to the Communists.
• American propaganda showed the horrors of
Communism in the lives of Russian women. They
were shown dressed in gunnysacks, as they toiled in
drab factories while their children were placed in
cold, anonymous day care centers.
• In contrast to the "evils" of Communism, an image
was promoted of American women, with their
feminine hairdos and delicate dresses, tending to the
hearth and home as they enjoyed the fruits of
capitalism, democracy, and freedom.
Women’s Roles Redefined
In the 1950s, women felt tremendous societal pressure to focus their
aspirations on a wedding ring.
• The U.S. marriage rate was at an
all-time high and couples were
tying the knot, on average,
younger than ever before.
• Getting married right out of
high school or while in college
was considered the norm.
• A common stereotype was that
women went to college to get a
"Mrs." (pronounced M.R.S.)
degree, meaning a husband.
Women’s Roles Redefined
• Although women had other aspirations in life, the
dominant theme promoted in the culture and
media at the time was that a husband was far
more important for a young woman than a
college degree.
• Despite the fact that employment rates also rose
for women during this period, the media tended
to focus on a woman's role in the home.
• If a woman wasn't engaged or married by her
early twenties, she was in danger of becoming an
"old maid."
Can a Monkey Do My Job?
The Trouble with Women
Women and Education
Job Switching
Fifties television does an excellent job of communicating the social
expectations placed on women in the 1950s.
• In this episode of I Love Lucy, Ricky and
Fred trade places with Lucy and Ethel.
• The story satirizes the idea of women
going to work and men filling the domestic
role at home in the 1950s.
• It is simply absurd and hysterical and the
stereotypes are concrete: women who work
are militant, masculine and undesirable.
• Lucy and Ethel, demonstrate their
After Ricky and Fred get upset
femininity and frailty at the candy factory
about the girls' spending, Lucy
while Ricky and Fred destroy the kitchen, and Ethel go to work in a candy
but stay determined to iron well and to
factory while the boys do the
have the dinner meal prepared when the
housework.
“girls” get home from work.
Job Switching
Assignment
1. Read the list of helpful hints for young women
wanting to please their potential husband from a
1950s Home Economics Text.
2. Watch the video clip The Good Wife’s Guide
3. Rewrite five of the rules applying society’s
expectations of women today.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
• In 1989, singer Billy Joel released a
popular song entitled We Didn't Start the
Fire.
• The song simply lists historical
personalities and events from 1949 until
1989.
• The lyrics of the song proved to be a
good summary of the history of that era.
• The chorus of the song is interesting in
saying that "we (that generation) didn't
light the fire (cause the problems), but we
tried to fight them."
• What he is saying that the generation of
young people in each era were not
responsible for the problems and culture
of the times, but many tried to rebel or
even fought to solve the problems.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
with Lyrics
Sources
“Cold War.” 2012. The History Channel website. Aug 15 2012, 8:05
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war.
‘"We Didn't Start the Fire" (Lyrics) History Summary from 1949-1989.” 2012.
School for Champions website. August 15, 2012, http://www.school-forchampions.com/history/start_fire_lyrics.htm
“Cold War.” 2012. Wikipedia website. August 15, 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War
Shmoop Editorial Team. Society in The 1950s Shmoop.com. Shmoop
University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 16 Aug. 2012.
About 20th Century History. 1954-Segregation Ruled Illegal in U.S.
About. Com website.2012
”http://history1900s.about.com/od/1950s/qt/segregationends.htm
Sources
CliffsNotes.com. Segregation in the United States. 16 Aug 2012
< http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/topicArticleId-65383,articleId65545.html>.
American Experience. People & Events: Mrs. America: Women's Roles in the
1950s. The Pill. 16 Aug 2012 PBS website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/p_mrs.html