The American Dream and Nightmare

When Americans think of the 1950s, many of us conjure up images of wives in aprons and dads returning home from work with a briefcase in hand shouting “Honey, I’m home!” Alternatively, maybe you picture teenagers gathering at the malt shop or the drive-in, girls in poodle skirts and boys in leather jackets with slicked-back hair.

Consider that the image that we have of the 1950s is pretty amazing considering we had just come out of World War 2 and were currently embroiled in the Cold War. We were even sending troops off to Asia to fight in Korea or advise in Vietnam. Much of this lingering image is due to the overwhelming prosperity that America experienced under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower Era

Eisenhower was a celebrated hero of the Second World War, well known to the public as the five-star general who had commanded Allied forces in Europe on D-Day. He won landslide victories in both the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections.

As a moderate Republican, Eisenhower didn’t dismantle the social welfare programs created by the New Deal. In fact, he signed an expansion to Social Security, established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, signed legislation increasing the minimum wage by a third, balanced the federal budget, and he funded the largest public works project in American history authorizing the expenditure of $25 billion to build more than 40,000 miles of four-lane interstate highways.

Suburbia

Those roads were needed because America was rapidly expanding into the suburbs. From 1945-1960 the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the U.S. grew by an astonishing 150%. And the economy wasn’t the only thing booming. Around 50 million babies were born during the continuing baby boom in the Eisenhower era.

Prior to the war, Americans had lived predominantly in metropolitan areas where they could find jobs and housing. But in the post-war years, population growth occurred not in central cities, but in the suburban areas that ringed the urban core. By 1960, almost as many Americans lived in suburban areas as in city centers.

Racial Discrimination

For those of us that enjoy living in Suburbia, this sounds like the American dream. However, there is a dark underbelly to the story of these idyllic developments. The original Levittown was built just outside of New York City, but other Levittowns popped up all over the northeast and many other developers across the country followed his lead.

Most of these suburbs were completely reserved for whites. William Levitt only sold houses to those “of the Caucasian race.” By 1953, the 70,000 people who lived in Levittown, NY constituted the largest community in the United States with no black residents. In 1957, there was outrage over a black family moving into Levittown, PA. Watch the video below and try to imagine the situation. We will look more at racism and Civil rights later this week, but this should help you to see that racism was not just an issue in the South and it wasn’t solved by the Civil War.

Nuclear Proliferation

Those that crafted this American dream of peace and family, freedom and prosperity had a fear deep in their minds. This was not simply the fear of racial hatred that we have just seen, but all people on the globe were aware of the potentially imminent threat of global nuclear warfare.

After the war in Korea had ended fighting with an armistice, it seemed that war was still just around the corner. As the fear of Communism spread across the country, it was easy to imagine that at any moment a bomb capable of destroying an entire city within a bright flash of light could fall from the sky.

One of the ways that this fear was continued was by popular culture whether government-sponsored propaganda or the general attitude of the creators. Television had become a regular part of most American’s homes by the end of Eisenhower’s presidency. Where there had been only 178,000 televisions in homes in 1948, by 1960, there were 52 million sets in American homes, which is one in almost nine out of ten households.

In 1953, Eisenhower addressed the general session of the United Nations with a speech that is now called “Atoms for Peace.” This speech created the impetus for forming an international agency to prevent the spread, or proliferation, of nuclear technology, warning that, if unchecked, it could result in “the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind.”

Despite Eisenhower’s warning, his “New Look” policy called for a cut to conventional military budgets and focused on a build-up of the nation’s nuclear arsenal as a deterrent from and preparation for war. The number of U.S. controlled warheads went from around 1000 when he took office to nearly 20,000 when he handed the keys to the Oval Office to his successor John F. Kennedy in 1961.

The idea was that these weapons would literally give the U.S. government more “bang for their buck” than traditional military spending would have. The surplus savings was used to build the economy and develop infrastructure as we have already discussed.

Eisenhower really did yearn for peace. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, his successor Nikita Khrushchev seemed to be softening some of the threatening behavior of the Stalin administration. It appeared that perhaps the US and the Soviet Union may come to a peaceful arrangement. Khrushchev actually toured the U.S. and met with Eisenhower in 1959. However, a controversy over a U.S. surveillance plane being shot down over Russia kept them from reaching any kind of deal and actually ratcheted up the tension between the two superpowers to heights that had not been seen since Korea.

Increased Tension

It was in the months after President Kennedy took office in 1961 that Nikita Khrushchev would order the building of the Berlin Wall. This was a barrier over 100 miles long which completely surrounded the area of West Berlin which sat deep in the heart of Russian controlled East Germany. This barrier was erected to stop the flood of the estimated 3.5 million East Germans that had defected to the economically prosperous western countries through West Berlin in the years since the end of World War 2. It came to be a symbol of the division between First World Capitalism and Second World Communism.

These tensions would deepen later in 1961 after the United States attempted to reverse a communist uprising in Cuba in an incident known as the “Bay of Pigs.” Communist revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara sought an alliance with the Soviet Union and Khruschev agreed and began to secretly send nuclear missiles to Cuba, less than 100 miles off the coast of Florida.

The days of the Cuban Missile Crisis are often seen as the highest point of tension in the Cold War. I would love to say that after this conflict that everything got better and there was no further issue, however that would be a lie. Crisis had been narrowly averted for now, but this tension over the threat of nuclear apocalypse would continue for another 30 years.

In fact, I remember as an elementary student in the late 1980s practicing duck and cover drills in my public school. I’m sure that this uneasiness must have caused some long term effects on the psyche of our country. We’ve covered a lot of ground today, and I’d love to your thoughts below.

If you are as fascinated with the nuclear age as I am, then you might enjoy the book written by Dr. Seuss in 1984 called “The Butter Battle Book.” There is no mistaking the allusions drawn between the Yukes and the Zukes who divide themselves over the way that they butter their bread. The ending is chilling.