Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History
William P. Tishler, Producer
 

Lecture 24
 

The 1950s: The Cold War and the Affluent Society

The Cold War and the spread of Communism in Eastern Europe, China, and Korea in the late 1940s and early 1950s prompted the United States to increase dramatically its defense spending. As more and more companies came to rely on defense contracts, the power of the military-industrial complex grew. One domestic result of this was relationship was a wave of prosperity and the growth of the middle class in the United States. This lecture examines America's foreign policy in the 1950s and the effect of that policy on the American people.

Some questions to keep in mind:

1. How did American leaders respond to the perceived threat of Communist aggression during the 1950s?
2. How did Americans define "The American Dream" during the 1950s?
3. Describe the impact of the "Military-Industrial Complex" on the American economy.
4. Compare the migration patterns (i.e., where did people live?) of Americans during the 1950s to those of the 1940s.
5. How did Americans view the role of the capitalist economy in world affairs?

Foreign Affairs

President Truman and "Mr. X"

The Truman Doctrine, put forth by President Harry Truman when he addressed Congress on March 12, 1947, essentially stated:

"The United States will defend free people and their free institutions at any place at any point in the world where outside communist aggression threatens that nation's internal stability."

1. The history of Russia has been one of hostile neighbors and a constant fear of attack; it's inevitable that Russia will try to take over its neighbor states to provide a buffer zone.
2. The United States has a duty to confront Soviet aggression with "unalterable counterforce."
3. The United States must maintain a policy of long-term containment of Soviet aggression.

Critics of this policy pointed out that it is often difficult to determine when "containment" is required. When is revolution the self-determination of a free people and when is it Communist aggression orchestrated by the Kremlin?

The policy of containment required the United States to react to Soviet initiatives. This policy, however, gave the President much greater military power. The need to respond quickly to foreign crises did not allow the President the luxury of waiting for Congress to approve military action. Recall that after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt appeared before Congress to request a declaration of war. Since the Truman Doctrine, many United States military actions, including those in Korea, Vietnam, and Somalia, have been undertaken by presidential order.

The Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift

The United States was now committed actively to opposing the spread of Soviet-style Communism. The first plan that put this policy to use on a large scale was the Economic Recovery Plan of 1947, also known as the "Marshall Plan." In a commencement speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, George C. Marshall, a former general and now Truman's secretary of state, proposed that the nation make a huge economic commitment to rebuild the war-torn nations of Western Europe. His objective was to "restore the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole." Marshall believed that the American economy depended on open markets. Thus, rebuilding the economies of Europe would guarantee American prosperity by providing an outlet for the nation's goods. Marshall also contended that economic stability in Europe would translate into political stability, that Communism would have little appeal to well-fed and employed Europeans. Between 1948 and 1951, the United States sent $13 billion in aid to Western European nations. West Germany benefited the most from the plan. Between 1947 and 1951, a period that historians refer to as the "German miracle," West Germany's economic output increased 312%.

As the United States invested heavily in the reconstruction of Western Europe, it also struggled with the Soviet Union for influence in Eastern Europe. This struggle became evident during the 1948 Soviet blockade of Berlin. After the end of World War II, the Allies had divided the city of Berlin, and the country of Germany as a whole, into four zones, one controlled by the Soviet Union, and the other three controlled by Great Britain, France, and the United States. In response to growing American economic and military power  in Europe, the Soviet Union cut off western links to Berlin, which was located inside the Soviet-occupied zone. Truman, in turn, ordered a massive, year-long airlift of medical supplies, food and clothing for West Berliners. Eventually, the Soviets lifted the blockade. In 1948 and 1949, however, the Soviet Union sponsored Communist revolutions in Eastern-bloc countries such as Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary. In response, in April 1949, twelve nations of Western Europe and North America signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The goal of NATO was to coordinate the defense of Western Europe. An attack on any of its member nations was equal to an attack on all, with each nation obliged to battle their common foe. Primary support, both militarily and monetarily, came from the United States.

The Chinese Civil War

Secret Security

All of these events called for a full review of American foreign policy. In response, the federal government created the National Security Council in 1947. In 1950, the Council drew up a policy statement: NSC-68. This statement viewed conflict between East and West as inevitable, but in the gravest of terms: any such conflict threatened not just the United States, but also all of civilization. The paper advocated an increase in defense spending from 5% of the federal budget to 20%, as well as an increase in American aid to foreign nations. NSC-68 remained a secret document for twenty years, but it dictated American foreign policy for decades.

Domestic Affairs

American foreign policy had an enormous domestic impact. It influenced both the Second Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism. But other factors also shaped the home front during this period. Features of the 1950s included:

1. The Cold War
2. Rising income and affluence
3. Many older Americans had grown weary of depression and war. Younger Americans were often apolitical.

Americans often associate the 1950s with a series of powerful cultural symbols: the "American Dream" meant a home in the suburbs, job security in a large corporation, and a new car every few years. Other symbols also defined middle-class success: Muzak, Marilyn Monroe, and television. Americans of both generations were eager to pursue the politics of tranquility, best represented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"Swords into Frisbees:" The Military-Industrial Complex

In large part, the "American Dream" was supported by expanded military investment. The federal government increased military spending after the "fall" of China and the Korean War. Companies that had never been involved in the military came to see the Department of Defense as their best customer. By the mid-1950s, there were over 40,000 defense contractors working for the federal government. By the 1960s, more than half of all government expenditures went to the military. By the 1970s, the Department of Defense had more economic assets than the 75 largest corporations in America. With so many people depending directly on companies supported by the Department of Defense, a number of social critics charged that the United States had established a permanent wartime economy. Indeed, when an economic recession struck in 1956, President Eisenhower responded by allocating more money to defense, not by supporting public works projects as Roosevelt had done. At the end of his second term, Eisenhower, himself, warned Americans that the growing relationship between defense contractors and the federal government posed a threat. In this 1961 farewell address, he coined the term "military-industrial complex."

Many Americans ignored his warnings. After all, why worry when the economy was prosperous? Americans made up only 6% of the world population, yet they produced and consumed 1/3 of the world's goods and services. During the 1950s, America's Gross National Product (GNP) increased 51%. Defense spending helped fuel this growth. Home consumption, however, also drove economic expansion. GIs returning from World War II and Korea were eager to spend money and to have children. In the 1950s, 29 million new Americans were born. The birth rate of the United States was comparable to that of India. To meet the consumer demands of this increasing population, American industry expanded at an amazing pace and turned out new cars, clothing, Frisbees, and a plethora of other consumer items.

Meeting the Demand

Nothing did more to increase productivity than "automation," the use of self-regulating electronic machines to run complex industrial operations. Automation made its greatest long-term impact with the introduction of the computer. Many blue-collar workers feared they would lose their jobs to machinery, to robots, and they were right to be frightened. White-collar professionals, on the other hand, profited from automation. Job growth largely benefited college graduates, not blue-collar workers or skilled laborers. Much of the new technology owed its rise to "R&D" -- research and development departments. Such departments existed not only within big corporations like IBM, but at universities. The connections of modern research universities like the University of Wisconsin to the military-industrial complex, in fact, made campuses a focal point for anti-war protest during the 1960s.

Growth of the Middle Class

During the 1950s, the real weekly earnings of factory workers increased 50%. The traditional "pyramid" of income distribution began to look more like a "diamond" with the burgeoning middle class. If we consider an annual income of $10,000 a middle-class income, then, in the 1940s, 9% of families fit that definition. By 1960, however, more than 30% of the population was middle class. Changes in education and housing further demonstrated the growth of the middle class. The year 1960 marked the first time in United States history that a majority of high-school aged people actually graduated from high school. Aided by the GI Bill, college enrollments also increased. Owning a home also became a tangible reality for more and more Americans, as the availability of housing increased and veterans could secure low-interest mortgages. By 1960, 25% of all housing available had been built in the prior decade.

The "Kitchen Debate"

The American consumer economy became the heart of the so-called "Kitchen Debate" between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In 1959, Moscow hosted an international exhibition. The United States delegation, led by Nixon, displayed a modern, fully-stocked American kitchen in order to demonstrate America's success in providing its people with consumer goods. At this exhibition, Nixon and Khrushchev got into a heated argument over which economy and which form of government would outlast the other.

Overall, however, this new American economy was largely ephemeral: brief, fleeting, and transitory. In the past, Americans had longed for lasting necessities like houses and cars. Now, many Americans seemed obsessed with collecting stuff. The growing youth culture of the times demonstrated this trend, although older people also began to emulate their teen-aged sons and daughters and tried out jeans, hula hoops, and surfboards. For the first time in American history, teenagers became major consumers. They supported the popular music industry, especially the new "rock and roll." New industries were geared essentially at youth, and not without reason. By 1960, America's teenagers spent $22 billion a year on consumer items. To put this in perspective, $22 billion a year was twice the gross national product of Austria.

The Televised Society

The biggest consumer revolution was the growth of the television industry. The technology for television had existed since the late 1920s, but American companies did not mass produce TVs until after World War II. In 1946, there were 17,000 television sets in the nation, mostly in the East. By 1949, Americans purchased 250,000 sets every month. By 1953, two-thirds of American homes had at least one TV. Television had a lasting influence on political campaigns. The presidential election of 1952 was the first time that a candidate for president made use of television advertising. Eisenhower used 15- and 30-second spots produced by Baton, Barton, Derstein, and Osbourne. You'll recall that Bruce Barton, a founder of this firm, had earlier sold Jesus in his book, The Man Nobody Knows.

The growing impact of television and the rise of youth culture led many social critics to charge that America was becoming homogenized, conformist society. By 1960, about 30.5% of Americans, or 55 million out of 180 million, lived in suburbs. Stereotypical images of suburbia supported the view that the nation was becoming conformist: Levittown houses, housewives raising children at home, husbands struggling their way up the corporate ladder, backyard barbecues. Critics also believed that the growth of non-denominational churches indicated that religion was becoming a thing of the past in America.  Even after Congress added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" to the nation's currency, real spirituality seemed to be disappearing from American society.

If all these claims of cultural conformity were true, than there was no more perfect politician for this era in American history than Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower practiced "the politics of tranquility" -- a new executive style that was quite different from the social activism of Roosevelt and Truman. Yet, as Americans emerged from this decade of tranquility, a new president, John F. Kennedy, would help usher in a new age of social activism and cultural unrest. As a matter of fact, the story of these two presidents and their contrasting decades is better than an episode of The Honeymooners. It's so interesting, in fact, that we'll take it up in Lecture 25: "The Thousand Days of Knights: The Kennedy Years."

Lecture 24	Related Web Links
Content	Presentation	Audience	Link	Info
		College	Cold War Hot Links
		College	Interview with George Kennan, David Gergen (April 18, 1996)
		College	Jack Kerouac
		High School	"The Twilight Zone," from the Sci-Fi Channel
		High School	Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - Elvis Presley
		College	The Berlin Airlift

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