Category: 1950s

By Aidan Keillor

“So Great was the pent-up demand for houses, cars, washing machines, sofas, radios, sinks, and myriad other items large and small that had been unpurchased during the depression and unpurchasable during the war.” (H.W. Brands, American Dreams, p. 70)

The 1950s and the postwar period were often recollected by most as a time of significant change following World War II. The end of the Second World War brought the introduction of the suburbs, more leisure time, and more economic opportunities to families, and the introduction of the Civil Rights Movement. In H.W. Brand’s American Dreams, these stereotypical; associations were mentioned heavily in the book. Although these associations were true in more urban areas, these changes in American life were not as prevalent in small coal towns. Brands gave the narrative that the 1950s brought a great change in the entirety of the United States in every sense. The 1950s did bring some changes to these areas, with the introduction of more leisure activities like movie theaters, dance halls, and ice cream parlors and the increased availability of things, yet it was not to the extent as compared to urban and suburban areas. An individual whose life best exemplifies this idea is my grandfather, Bernard Grace, who spent his early life in Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, a small coal-mining town right outside of Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The importance of the town’s coal industry would keep the town prospering until the end of World War Two. St. Clair would change drastically with more availability of more materialistic things and an influx of leisure activities, but the coal industry of the town was on a steady decline from what it had been years before.

Bernard Grace was born in Saint Clair, Pennsylvania on July 10 of 1936. He would spend the first years of his childhood in the Great Depression and World War II. He would come into adolescence in the postwar period and be a teenager throughout the 1950s. He lived in Saint Clair, a small town that was created around its coal industry in the late 1800s, up until the coal industry would fail. He would live in St. Clair until he graduated from Pennsylvania State University, where he would move away in search of work.

The 1950s was a time when the modern United States was starting to take shape. The introduction of the middle class shaped the country economically and the growth of the suburbs brought people from cities and rural towns to live in them. The introduction of the GI bill and the reintegration of veterans from the Second World War into civilian life brought a time of prouise. With the war over, it brought along an availability of goods that hadn’t been seen since before the war. Bernard Grace remarks, “After the war was over, it seemed like everything was available again and things like that. During the war years we had ration books, and when the war was over, all that stuff stopped. Now again the town I lived in; things seemed to be available for you.”^[1] Bernard Grace would often recall this in comparison to the war. The war was rough on many Americans with all the sacrifices both home and abroad. The stark rationing of goods like food, rubber, and other goods was in great comparison to the availability of goods in the 1950s. In Brand’s American Dreams, he writes about the comparison of the availability of things in the war and after. Brands claimed, “So Great was the pent-up demand for houses, cars, washing machines, sofas, radios, sinks, and myriad other items large and small that had been unpurchased during the depression and unpurchasable during the war.”^[2] The availability and abundance of goods was a wave of relief for all people, especially people in coal mining towns which had been hit hard by rations.

Bernard Grace also remembers the leisure life of the 1950s. With the United States having a strong economy and abundance of goods and free time, movie theaters and dance halls became very popular drawing teenagers and young adults to them. Bernard Grace recollects, “We would go to ice cream parlors and use their jukeboxes. When you were older, and you knew somebody that had a car we would go to this place called The Globe and it was a dance hall. We would take people on dates and take them to the movies. It was a great way to grow up.”^[3] The 1950s brought in an astounding amount of recreational and leisure activities all over the country. In Nancy Hendricks’s Daily Life in 1950s America, the growth of recreational activities was very evident. Nancy Hendricks writes, “It could be argued that dance found its way into the daily lives of average Americans more than any other period in American history.”^[4] It was also evident that the movie business was also booming in the 1950s showing the growth in leisure activities and recreation in the 1950s. Brands states, “Entertainment, in its numerous forms–grew into a powerhouse of its own. Hollywood churned out movies by the hundreds, with an increasing portion of them aimed at children and families.”^[5] The extent of the growth of films and movie theaters was not just in suburbs and cities but had also made its way into St. Clair. The entertainer industry in all ways had grown due to the 1950s all over the county and was increasingly being geared towards family lifestyles.

Although there many fond aspects of the 1950s that Bernard Grace remembers, there were pitfalls that came with this era and some things in Bernard’s life in a small coal mining town did not change and seemed the same as compared to the suburbs and cities. H.W. Brands only covers the postwar period’s effect of the suburban but misses its effect on coal towns and how there was some change, yet not as much compared to other areas of the country. Brands often refers that both blue collar and white-collar families would be able to own expensive things and have a middle-class lifestyle. Brands notes, “In the 1950s factory workers and office workers alike earned enough money to support a thoroughly respectable middle-class lifestyle.”^[6] This was not evident for Bernard Grace. With his father working for the railroad and his mother at home, his family would not be able to afford this lifestyle. Bernard Grace remembers, “For my dad, he worked on the railroad, he had a labor-type job. The most money he made in his life, in a year, was $1,200 ($12,000 in today’s money). A lot of people didn’t have a lot, but you didn’t really miss not having it because nobody did.”^[7] Because of Bernard Grace’s family standings they would not be able to afford many of the newly affordable things of the 1950s like cars, telephones, and televisions. Bernard Grace also recalls, “Some families had cars, we (Bernard Grace’s family) never had a car, we never had a phone in our house. We used our neighbor’s phone for years. It depends where you were coming from. If you lived in the cities, I’m sure things were a lot different, but in a small coal-mining town, it was not.”^[8] Brands does not classify this and focuses more on how much cheaper and available for regular people electronics and cars were for people. Brands claims, “Much of the economic activity revolved around the physical needs and wants of the Baby Boomers and their families.”^[9] Brands only focuses on a broad scale that says that families were able to afford electronics and luxury items, yet not everyone was in this situation in the 1950s and in small coal towns like Bernard Grace’s. The 1950s did not change the lives of people to the extent of the suburbs and urban areas.

Along with the introduction of affordable technology for people, the 1950s and the end of World War II would bring in many technological innovations in the energy industry that were cleaner and less taxing on resources. One of these innovations was the development of nuclear energy after the Second World War. The development of this energy was in part with the development of the nuclear bomb and offered a clean source of energy to power the United States. According to Jay Lehr, “Nuclear power was commercially attractive because it offered the opportunity to generate power without the air pollution that accompanied the burning of fossil fuels.”^[10] Brands does not disclose the importance of this development of energy and does not show how its developments affected other industries like coal. In Bernard Grace’s town the coal mining business was the backbone of the creation of St. Clair and was one of the driving economies of the town. Bernard Grace recollects, “In this town I lived in [St. Clair], the garment industry was a big thing and coal mining was big”^[11] The industry was the reason for the development of the town in the late 1800s. This is supported by Anthony F.C. Wallace’s St. Clair- A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town’s Experience With a Disaster-Prone Industry. Wallace states, “Three main groups of businessmen were responsible for the development of St. Clair: the owners of the underground mineral rights (the “landowners”); the colliery operators who extracted and processed the coal; and the transportation companies.”^[12] These important coal companies being the backbone of the town would lead to the decline of the town and its industries. This was due to the introduction of nuclear energy. Bernard Grace would remark, “Coal mining was starting to reduce in popularity at that time because of new energy sources [nuclear energy], so people got out of the mines and people started to move away. I know when I got out of college, I had to relocate because there was no work where I came from, so I ended up going to a city to work.”^[13] The introduction of nuclear energy would put the town in a steady decline leading it to mass unemployment and a closure of the mines. This situation goes against Brand’s stereotype of the 1950s as being a prosperous time in the United States because of St. Clair’s dying industry and dying town.

With the 1950s often associated with change, there was a push for racial change that marked the beginnings of the civil rights movements in the 1950s. In Michael J. Klarman’s “Brown, Racial Change, and the Civil Rights Movement” in Virginia Law Review. Klarman stated, “In the years immediately following the war, desegregation as a Cold War imperative became standard for political fare.”^[14] The growth of civil rights and the fight against segregation was a growing topic and many civil rights leaders rose in the 1950s seeking political reform. Jim Crow and segregation still plagued the country and were a topic of protest. Brands claims, “Blacks numbered some seventeen million in the mid-1950s, or about 10 percent of the population, and despite the migrations to the North during the two world wars, most still lived in the South, where the Jim Crow system of racial segregation remained.”^[15] Brand’s association of racial change and Jim Crow to the 1950s and the postwar period was apparent but because of the smallness of St. Clair and the ruralness of the town, it seemed like race had never been a pressing issue, because of the little to no presence of African Americans. Bernard grace would remark, “Back in the 50s, in my town, there was one black family and there must have been 2500 people living there. There was never an issue with color because nobody was there so we didn’t have that situation.”^[16] The small to no presence of African Americans in St. Clair would go against the association of the growth of civil rights and fight against segregation and the 1950s because there was no diversity in the town, he lived in. Bernard Grace was not exposed to these issues until later in his life because of the smallness of St. Clair.

The 1950s brought great changes to the United States and offer many opportunities for all Americans following the Second World War. The availability of goods in the United States and the introduction to family-oriented leisure activities would offer a good time to be alive. Race and the birth of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s would help institute civil change in the United States and new energy sources would create cleaner sources of energy. Bernard Grace’s experience in the 1950s brought him many opportunities and fond life experiences, yet it was not to the extent of others that lived in the suburbs and cities.

^[1] Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

^[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 70.

^[3] Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

^[4] Nancy Hendricks, Daily Life in 1950s America (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2019) 176 [ProQuest].

^[5] Brands, 73

^[6] Brands, 80

^[7] Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

^[8] Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

^[9] Brands, 71

^[10] “Nuclear Energy: Past, Present and Future,” excerpted in Jay lehr, Energy and Environment (London: Sage Publications Inc., 2010) 97 [JSTOR].

^[11] Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

^[12] Anthony F.C. Wallace, St. Clair- A Nineteenth- Century Coal Town’s Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, inc.,1987), 54.

^[13] Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

^[14] “Brown, Racial Change, and the Civil Rights Movement” excerpted in Michael J. Klarman, Virginia Law Review (Charlottesville: Virginia Law Review, 1994), 27 [JSTOR].

^[15] Brands, 84

^[16]  Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace, April 13, 2022.

Interview Subject

Bernard Grace, age 85, spent his childhood and adolescent years in Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, a small coal-mining town outside of Pottsville, Pennsylvania where he experienced the changes brought to the US during the 1950s until he attended Pennsylvania State University.

Interviews

– Recording Zoom Interview with Bernard Grace on April 13, 2022

– In-person interview with Bernard Grace on April 17, 2022

Selected Transcript

Q. How drastic was the change in the way of life after the Second World War?

A. “In the town that I came from, it didn’t seem like it was that different other than, during the war in the 40s, you couldn’t get things. After the war was over, it seemed like everything was available again and things like that. During the war years we had ration books, and when the war was over, all that stuff stopped. Now again the town I lived in, things seemed to be available for you.”

“You didn’t sorta notice the change. Things might have been a little different, but I graduated from high school, in this town I lived in, the garment industry was a big thing and coal mining was big”

Q. With the influx of better jobs/ pay, did your family go on vacations, did they get a car or have a television because they got paid more?

A. “For my dad, he worked on the railroad, he had a labor-type job. The most money he made in his life, in a year, was $1,200 ($12,000 in today’s money). A lot of people didn’t have a lot, but you didn’t really miss not having it because nobody did. Some families had cars, we (Bernard Grace’s family) never had a car, and we never had a phone in our house. We used our neighbor’s phone for years. It depends where you were coming from. If you lived in the cities, I’m sure things were a lot different, but in a small coal-mining town, It was not.”

“Coal mining was starting to reduce in popularity at that time because of new energy sources [nuclear energy], so people got out of the mines and people started to move away. I know when I got out of college, I had to relocate because there was no work where I came from, so I ended up going to a city to work.”

Q. How was leisure life in the 1950s? Was there more to do outside of work and school?

A. “After the war things were a lot better. Things were available. The 50s was a good time to be alive. Everything was available and there were a lot of things to do with a lot of fun involved. We would go to ice cream parlors and use their jukeboxes. When you were older and you knew somebody that had a car we would go to this place called The Globe and it was a dance hall. We would take people on dates and take them to the movies. It was a great way to grow up.”

“We would take people out on dates. In our crowd, we had a lot of that. Somebody would date someone one night, and then the next week somebody else would take them out. It wasn’t very serious but it was fun all the time. It was a great way to grow up and in this generation when we get together and talk, we talk about how good it was to grow up in that time. It’s gotta be tough today for people compared to back then.”

Q. Did you remember any racial issues either happening in your town, on the radio, or in the news?

A. “Back in the 50s, in my town, there was one black family and there must have been 2500 people living there. There was never an issue with color because nobody was there so we didn’t have that situation.”

Further Research

• Anthony F.C. Wallace, St. Clair- A Nineteenth- Century Coal Town’s Experience With a Disaster-Prone Industry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, inc.,1987)
• Nancy Hendricks, Daily Life in 1950s America (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2019) [ProQuest]
• “Nuclear Energy: Past, Present and Future,” excerpted in Jay Lehr, Energy and Environment (London: Sage Publications Inc., 2010) [JSTOR]
• “Brown, Racial Change, and the Civil Rights Movement” excerpted in Michael J. Klarman, Virginia Law Review (Charlottesville: Virginia Law Review, 1994) [JSTOR]

 

 

Audio clip from phone interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr.

“Oh, we were just watching the frontier and reinforcing the 38^th parallel. They were assaulting once in a while and we would have to shoot at them and go back into our foxholes. They gave us some trouble but not a lot. It was nasty how the weather was. God, it was cold and sometimes hot, just terrible. It got very boring, very boring but it was day after day.”[1] Retired United States Marine,

Joseph M. Micci Sr., remembers his daily activity of monitoring the 38^th parallel from September 1954 to November 1955. At a time when the armistice had been signed for over a year and thousands of United States troops have been demobilized, many people believed that was the end of conflict and US involvement in Korea. However, it was just the start for Micci, who came to Korea as a replacement infantry man for the demobilized troops. During this period, keeping stability and peace within the region was an important task for reestablishing the two sides and trying to create unification. When remembering what stood out most to him during the war, he recollected, “Just the people were so poor.”[2] As Micci and his fellow marines drudged through the Korean terrain along the 38^th parallel in an attempt to keep peace, when the time finally came for him to go back to the US he felt, “happy we were able to go home and not have a big, long war…in that respect I was happy, but down deep I sort of wanted to go on and finish the thing…I think that was a general consensus of many people.”[3]

The Korean War started with Kim Il-sung ordering the invasion of South Korea on Syngman Rhee’s troops. Within days, the North Koreans captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea. President Harry S. Truman viewed the attack as an attack on world order and free government, and wanted to stop the potential spread of communism. In a response to the attack, “Truman’s first step was to order American air and naval forces to the combat zone. These were followed by ground troops dispatched from Japan to South Korea.”[4] As the Soviets boycotted the Security Council, the council voted in favor of allowing member states to help protect South Korea. The war did not go as planned at the beginning. However, on September 15, 1950, the American commander, Douglas MacArthur came up with a brilliant, yet risky plan. The plan was “a daring operation planned and executed under extremely difficult conditions…the landing suddenly reversed the tide of the war, forcing the invading North Korean army to retreat in disorder up the Korean peninsula.”[5] Recalling how he

felt after the re-capturing of Seoul, Micci stated, “That was great oh my God. That was so great we were so happy. We thought the war was all over.”[6] As MacArthur’s plan boosted the morale of the United States troops, and certainly American citizen’s outlook on the war, he looked to ride the momentum for as long as he could. Despite orders from the UN to not invade the North Koreans because the US involvement was only meant to defend South Korea, MacArthur pushed on and up to the Yalu River. At this point, the Chinese government warned the US of being too close, a warning that was taken likely by the Americans. The US would pay the price in late November when the Chinese attacked American and South Korean troops. After suffering heavily casualties, the US involvement became questioned and the war grew unpopular in America.

After years of stalemate and a growing negative opinion on the war, Americans desperately needed someone who they could place their trust in. Luckily, they found their man in Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a World War II hero. In his campaign promise, he promised to go to Korea in an effort to find a solution to the war. On November 29, 1952, “Making good on his most dramatic presidential campaign promise, newly elected Dwight D. Eisenhower goes to Korea to see whether he can find the key to ending the bitter and frustrating Korean War.”[7] Showing his seriousness and commitment over the conflict, Eisenhower helped to find a solution. “On July 27, 1953, the armistice agreement was finally concluded, providing for a cease-fire [and] a demilitarized zone 4,000 meters wide between the opposing forces.”[8]

The end of the war marked for the demobilization of thousands of troops because the fighting came to an end. However, in 1955, “there were 85,500 American soldiers in the country, against 325,000 in 1953.”[9] Although the number of troops stationed in South Korea after the armistice was smaller than two years earlier and these troops were not fighting, they were essential in keeping stability within the region. The Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of Korea, signed October 1st, 1953 and effective November 18^th, 1954, called for the US to remain in South Korea around the 38^th parallel and DMZ zone to keep watch and defend a potential attack from the North Koreans. In order to be prepared for such an attack, “the 1st Marine Division had conducted an active small-unit amphibious

training program during its postwar Korea duty.”[10] This was a crucial time because as the US helped reconstruct South Korea politically, economically, and militarily, peace had to be kept and the troops had to be prepared to fight. As Micci and his fellow marines patrolled to keep peace, he recalled that they would help reestablish the people of South Korea. He stated, “Yeah we did a lot of work. We helped them with their homes especially. We had carpenters and plasters. A lot of [the homes] were blasted out a little bit and we tried to help with the reconstruction. Also, I was helping some of the children. Mainly guarding the frontier up there that was about it. Nothing was happening…. very rarely any action.”[11]

The descriptions from Mr. Micci shed light on an interesting period of time after the armistice, which is often glanced over in history, and hardly mentioned by Brands. The two years following the armistice were truly a stalemate and bluntly put by Micci as very boring. Despite the lack of action, the actual act of keeping peace and stability in the region was key, as South Korea suffered greatly during the war and was vulnerable to a North Korean attack at any minute. Although he was very young, Micci explained how he felt like he had an impact on the people of South Korea who he and his men helped. The tension filled and anxiety-ridden years immediately following the armistice are evident when Sheila Jager stated, “Although the killing had stopped, the war continued, solidifying cold war arrangements for the next fifty years.”[12]

One could appreciate the work done by the soldiers who are easily forgotten in the shadow that is the post-armistice era. Tedious days and nights patrolling not knowing if there would be an attack, rebuilding broken homes that were easier to repair than the broken hearts of the families they held, and traumatic experiences, such as planes diving down low in an attempt to scare as explained by Micci, all hold truth to Jager’s point that war continued.

[1] Phone Interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr., December 6, 2017

[2] Phone Interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr., November 3, 2017

[3] Phone Interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr., November 3, 2017

[4] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 56.

[5] “Inch’ŏn landing” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Inchon-landing

[6] Phone Interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr., November 3, 2017

[7] “Eisenhower goes to Korea” History.com. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-goes-to-korea

[8] Harrison, Selig S. “Ending the Korean War.” In Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, 154-73. PRINCETON; OXFORD: Princeton University Press, 2002. JSTOR

[9] Gabriel Jonsson. “The Peace-keeping Role of the American troops in South Korea” http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:482372/FULLTEXT01.pdf

[10] “U.S. Marine Operations in Korea Vol 5 1950-1953” U.S. Marine Corps. http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/U.S.%20Marine%20Operations%20in%20Korea%20Vol%205%201950%20-%201953%20%20PCN%2019000264000_3.pdf?ver=2012-10-11-164146-607

[11] Phone Interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr., December 6, 2017

[12] Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 2013), 286.

 

Transcript from phone interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr. on November 3, 2017. Recorded on MacBook Pro, Carlisle, PA

Q. How did you feel when war broke out?

A.We had just finished World War 2 a few years before and we thought we were going to have peace. People in the United States were relieved because the war was so long. We really didn’t like it at all. We were not prepared for another war at all and we just disbanded millions of people from the war. No one liked going to war again and they were just a little, dinky country and we had enormous power, even to this day. We were tired of war. World War 2 was so long and so many people died when I was just a kid so we didn’t want another war. It was just terrible!

Q. Did you enjoy any part of the war?

A. I was just a young kid. I wasn’t very political and didn’t know much and all I knew was bullets. They were shooting and I was a little bit scared. The main thing I was scared of was the planes. They would dive down over us. They weren’t shooting at us though. The “migs” would come in close and scare us. I think a lot of the people didn’t want another war. We weren’t afraid of them at all. In those days you know I was going with your grandmother and I was more interested in having fun with her. I loved all the swimming and canoeing…everything.

Q. Once Douglas MacArthur was fired, did you have any belief in Eisenhower?

A. He was sort of a weakling. He didn’t want to go into North Korea and he wanted peace. MacArthur wanted to continue the war because he said you’re always going to have war with these people, and he was right. When they were firing MacArthur we didn’t want that, he was a big hero in World War 2.

Q. Do you feel like your efforts were worth it with thousands of Americans dying and thousands more wounded only for the war to end in a treaty and not even finish the war?

A. I was sort of happy we were able to go home and not have a big, long war because we just lived through a big war with World War 2. In that respect I was happy, but down deep I sort of wanted to go on and finish the thing because I think I believed more in MacArthur than Eisenhower. I think that was a general consensus of many people. I think maybe we wouldn’t have what we have now, which is imminent threat of nuclear weapons, if we had dealt with North Korea when we should have.

Q. What do you remember most about being in Korea and the war?

A. Just that the people were so poor and the [North Koreans] wanted to fight. You know they were communists and the Cold War was in full swing. It divided the peninsula and we wanted peace and some North Koreans didn’t want that and they wanted the whole peninsula.

Q. Did the capturing of Seoul kind of change the morale or the outlook of the war?

A. That was great oh my God. That was so great we were so happy. We thought the war was all over. Of course then the Chinese got involved.

Transcript from phone interview with Joseph M. Micci Sr. on December 6, 2017. Recorded on MacBook Pro, Carlisle, PA

Q. What was your typical day like?

A. Oh, we were just watching the frontier and reinforcing the 38^th They were assaulting once in a while and we would have to shoot at them and go back into our foxholes. They gave us some trouble but not a lot. It was nasty how the weather was. God, it was cold and sometimes hot, just terrible. It got very boring, very boring but it was day after day.

Q. Did you help reestablish the people of South Korea?

A. Yeah we did a lot of work. We helped them with their homes especially. We had carpenters and plasters. A lot of them were blasted out a little bit and we tried to help with the reconstruction. Also, I was helping some of the children. Mainly guarding the frontier up there that was about it. Nothing was happening, for you it was probably very boring. Very rarely any action.

By: Jordan Forry

H.W. Brands devotes three chapters of his book, American Dreams, to the early Cold War era. As the primary purpose of his book appears to be to provide an overview of modern American history in narrative form, most of these chapters focus on big picture trends. Brands does an excellent job of conveying the major events that occurred in that time period and the formal policies set out by the government. However, this big picture approach leads to many generalizations, especially regarding the home front. In this essay, I will use information gained from an interview with a woman who lived through the early Cold War (Lois Shaffer), as well as, other primary and secondary sources to both confirm Brands’ observations regarding the home front and also elaborate on  parts of Brands’ story which may have been over-generalized.

Brands spends a decent amount of space describing the Berlin blockade by the Soviets and the corresponding airlift conducted by the U.S. in 1948-1949. He describes Truman as being determined to “not be pushed out of Berlin by Soviet pressure” and points out the incredible logistics required to coordinate “Hundreds of American and British cargo planes… landing and taking off as frequently as once per minute.” [1] What is lacking in this analysis of arguably the first major showdown between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. is the attitudes of Americans on the home front. Lois Shaffer recalls that after following the situation on the radio, she and her husband became impressed with the feat that the U.S. military was able to accomplish, but she was also quick to point out that they did not necessarily follow the progress of the airlift on a day to day basis. [2] Part of the support for the airlifts on the home front undoubtedly came from national pride for what the U.S. could accomplish, but it did help that the U.S. military proclaimed its military prowess openly in the news. One example of this includes a Boston Daily Globe article from 1948 in which The Globe reported on the Air Force’s claim that it had the capacity to continue the airlift operation for as long as public support existed for the program. [3]  With guarantees from the military that the U.S. could continue indefinitely with the airlifts, Americans had every reason to be optimistic with and support the airlifts under Truman’s leadership.

Brands also describes the Korean War within a policy-oriented framework that leaves out much of the story from the perspective of the home front. He describes the aggression of North Korea against South Korea as follows: “Communism was on the march and the forces of freedom needed to stop it. Korea was a test; if the United States and its allies exhibited resolve, the fighting might go no farther.” [4] Brands does get around to stating that the war, “grew unpopular,” but fails to further elaborate on the complexities of public opinion. [5]  Shaffer, whose brother Lester Degroft fought in Korea, expressed conflicting opinions of the war. On one hand, she recalled that the war almost seemed like a continuation of WWII, being that the country had been at peace for only a few years between the wars. On the other hand, she claims that she and other Americans understood the significance of the war and supported Truman. [6] Others, such as Pierpooli Jr. better delineate the stages of American support and rejection of the war effort. Pierpooli claims that in the early stages of the war, Americans largely supported the war effort, but after intervention by communist China in November of 1950, widespread fear and defeatism crept in. [7] The public further lost confidence in the war effort after President Truman’s attempt to seize the striking steel mills ended in public embarrassment with a Supreme Court repudiation of his actions. [8] In sum, Pierpooli concludes that the Korean War “reflected a house divided. It engendered bitter rhetoric… (and) fostered a poisonous atmosphere of paranoia and fear…”[9] These conflicting stories of initial public support for the War and then partial to total rejection of the effort are lost in Brands’ broad overview of the War.

Another important aspect of life on the home front during the early Cold War was the constant threat and psychological toll of a nuclear attack. Brands suggests that Americans were comforted by the slight, but apparent, military advantage the U.S. held in the early years of the Cold War, but “the reassurance could be no more than fleeting, for the nuclear arms race continued, and the shadow across the American future-and the future of the world-grew ever longer.”[10] This quote from Brands suggests three things: that Americans were in grave danger of nuclear attack, that they accurately sensed this danger, and that they felt fear in response to these facts. However, fear may not have been as prevalent as suggested. Russell Baker recalls that just days after the first atomic bombs exploded over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he and his mother had exchanged letters in which neither of them “indicated that we even realized anything very extraordinary had happened.” [11]  Shaffer recalls that the threat of an atomic attack was always on the back of her mind, but it was not something that consumed her on a day-to-day basis or caused her to lose sleep at night. Rather, it represented a dinner conversation piece depending on the news that night. [12] This general nonchalance is reflected by the fact that polls during this period only showed a little more than half of all Americans (53%) thought there was a good or fair chance that their hometowns would be attacked. [13] This means that half of all Americans believed they faced only slim odds of experiencing a nuclear disaster, which seems to be a far less dire situation than which Brands paints. Perhaps individuals instead, as Elaine May hypothesizes, put their efforts into building a family, instead of fearing for the future, as the “home represented a source of meaning and security in a world run amok.” [14]

On the other hand, Americans did have things to fear and did take actions and altered their lifestyles in significant ways to combat the threat of a nuclear attack. For example, Shaffer remembers schools started to have bomb drills and the government encouraged citizens to consider building bomb shelters, even as she and her neighbors did not build them for lack of money.[15] The bomb drills Shaffer recalls are most likely the “Duck and Cover” program that the U.S. government started running in schools that instructed kids to seek shelter under desks, chairs, or against walls whenever they heard an explosion or saw the flash of the bomb. [16] Also, while Shaffer never built a bomb shelter for her family, some cities, such as New York, petitioned the federal government for money to construct such facilities. In 1950, the City Planning Commissioners from New York City determined the cost of building bomb shelters for New York City would total $450,000,000, and that this project represented something “that is practical, can be completed within a reasonable time, and that is needed in view of the world situation.” [17] Finally, in addition to bomb shelters, some individuals also took steps to ensure that they and their families would be ready to survive a nuclear disaster after the initial blast. This would require having enough food stocked to last through the apocalypse. As more and more people sought to prepare themselves for the worst, guides, such as “Grandma’s Pantry to Nuclear Survival,” arose that provided recommendations for how much water, food, and other essentials to have on hand.[18]

In conclusion, life on the home front during the early Cold War was complicated. One of the drawbacks of writing a seventy year narrative of U.S. history like Brands does is it forces one to focus on the overarching themes and policies in American history and can cause one to overlook the complexities of certain times or the effects of certain historical events on the lives of ordinary Americans. By exploring other primary sources from the time, by interviewing a historical witness of the period, and by analyzing other secondary sources, a more complex picture of the U.S. home front during the early Cold War develops; one in which people are allowed to have differences in opinion and experiences. Through this analysis, it becomes evident that although the Cold War weighed heavily on everyone’s minds, it did not completely consume the day-to-day lives of all Americans. In these ways, life on the home front was more complicated than Brands is able to convey in American Dreams.

Footnotes:

1. H. W. Brands, The United States Since 1945: American Dreams (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 40-41.

2. Interview with Lois Shaffer, Spring Grove, PA, March 12, 2015. (Interview was conducted face-to-face, but not recorded. As such, all material used in the paper is a close approximation of responses given unless quotations are provided).

3. Carlyle Holt, “Lemay Declares U.S. can Maintain Berlin Airlift as Long as Necessary,”Daily Boston Globe, September 14, 1948 (Pro-Quest).

4. Brands, American Dreams, 56.

5. Ibid., 58.

6. Interview with Lois Shaffer, March 12, 2015.

7. Paul G. Pierpaoli, Jr., “Truman’s Other War: The Battle for the American Home Front, 1950-1953,” OAH Magazine of History 14, no. 3 (2000):16-17 (JSTOR).

8. Ibid., 18.

9. Ibid., 19.

10. Brands, American Dreams, 67.

11. Russell Baker, Growing Up (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 292.

12. Interview with Lois Shaffer, March 12, 2015.

13. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 25 (eBook).

14. Ibid., 26-27.

15. Interview with Lois Shaffer, March 12, 2015.

16. “Duck and Cover,” U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration Video,9:15 (1951), posted by Archer Productions Incorporated, 2004. https://archive.org/details/DuckandC1951.

17. “Atomic Bomb Shelters?,” The New York Times, August 7, 1950 (Pro-Quest).

18. May, Homeward Bound, 100-101.

 

By Kassidy Lesher

“Poverty in the 1960’s is invisible and it is new, and both these factors make it more tenacious,” Michael Harrington proclaimed in his groundbreaking study, The Other America (1962), “It is more isolated and politically powerless than ever before.” [1] To most individuals, the baby boom evokes an age full of growth and prosperity. Unfortunately though, that was not always the case. There were people born and raised in the baby boom who did not find a prosperous nation. Living conditions were horrible for the poor and little was being done to help change it. This was the case for Ann Marie Harpel, a child of the baby boom era who was born in 1948, along with her four other sisters. She recalls the difficulties of her life growing up in a time. Her story illustrates a darker side of the baby boom era. It shows that post-war American life also had extensive poverty.

Harpel’s father served in World War II, returned home and then began to start a family. Her parents always wanted to have a large family, and with her father coming back from service allowed for them to finally make it happen. With five daughters arriving almost one right after another, however, it was not easy on her parents to provide. Money was tight around the house with Harpel’s father being the only one with a job. Some families were doing well which is why historian H.W. Brands observes that  “rising postwar incomes enabled families to thrive with single breadwinners.” [2] Yet this was not the case for the Harpel family. Harpel remembers, “my life was very hard growing up. I did not have the advantages that other children had. I was always lacking the necessities.” [3]. She owned one dress and one jacket growing up. The jacket came from the Salvation Army, and she wore it for years. She felt like she was always at a disadvantage. Unlike many other children around the neighborhood, she did not have money to take the bus to school. She and her siblings walked.  Yet, the worst part about going to school was lunch. “I never had enough to buy a meal though” Harpel recalls, “When I could afford food, it was only two rolls because they were only a nickel at school. On the days I was able to eat rolls, were the days that I was happy.” [4]

Harpel’s father worked as hard as he could at a steel mill from the time he returned from service until the business was shut down. Yet even though it would have benefited the family for her mother to work, she never did. Harpel’s mother instead enjoyed her freedom and would do whatever she pleased, without worrying about her family. Brands states, “their wives could devote themselves to caring for the children.” [5]  Unfortunately though, that was not the case for Harpel.  She had to take care of herself and her siblings because her mother did not bother with them. “My life would have been one big happy memory if I did not have any worries” Harpel says, “Instead, I have sad memories of my childhood because I never got to do what I wanted and just be a child.” [6] As soon as she got home from school, she had to help her siblings with their homework and then do the chores. Cleaning and cooking were almost always her responsibility, for as long as she can remember. Her siblings contributed, but with her being the oldest a majority of the tasks fell on her.

Harpel was also forced to help out by getting a job. She started working around the age of twelve. Her mother found her a job as a babysitter for the local district attorney. She would babysit for them any night of the week when the family needed help.  She also had to clean the house when it was asked of her. Harpel said, “The job was not so bad because I already knew how to take care of children and how to clean a house, because they were both things I was doing for my own family.” [7] She normally received around $8 dollars a week and of that money she could only keep $2-$3 if she was lucky. Either all of the money, or most of it, went to things for the house. Her job was not for her own benefit or enjoyment, it was simply to help provide for the family. After babysitting and cleaning, Harpel would attempt to do her homework. Sadly, schoolwork was not always an option, because whatever she needed to do to for herself came last.

Harpel recalls the moment of receiving her diploma was “one of my proudest moments because I felt like I achieved something completely and solely for myself.” [8] Yet this moment turned sour because he mother told her that if she had not forced her to attend school every day, she would never have graduated. Harpel particularly remembers this moment because it was the first time when she fully realized that her mother was unable to show any love towards her. Harpel had been so proud of herself for achieving something special and her mother had stripped her of it. Parents are supposed to be happy for their children’s success,  but Harpel sadly did not receive that. Luckily for her and her siblings, however, there lived a kind elderly women down the street who would always help out the girls whenever their mother was not around and father was at work. She would open up her home for the girls, so they would have a place to bathe.

Harpel notes, “Also, there was no running water or a flushing toilet. We would have to use a bucket to flush the toilet. We had no tub either to bathe in.” [9] Her living conditions were a prime example of the poverty she was in. The house she grew up in only had two bedrooms, and she does not remember her parents ever sleeping in one. Each room to her memory had a double bed and the sisters shared those two beds. The living room was the only place with heat during the winter, and Harpel believes her parents used to sleep on the floor by the fire to stay warm. Every other place in the house though was without heat, because they could not afford a heating system. The house also lacked appliances such as a washer and dryer. If laundry needed to be done, Harpel would have to take it to the nearby laundry mat. The money she made from working would contribute to things as such. Her family was unable to afford a house as nice and simple as the Levitt model homes that were being produced around the nation. Not everyone could afford to enjoy the new American lifestyle .

As Harrington wrote, “The poor are not like everyone else. They are a different kind of people. They think and feel differently; they look upon a different America than the middle class looks upon.” [10] In the early 1960s, Harrington showed the growing divide that existed in America. Most people did not want to acknowledge the troubles of that time though. Instead the people wanted to only see the good in the nation that was happening, and not work on fixing the hardships that still existed. Poverty was a problem that needed to be dealt with, and unfortunately for many it was an issue that people forgot about. Irene Brown, a sociologist of Emory University, points out that, “The odds of being poor for the cohort born between 1959 and 1964 is 33 times that of the oldest cohort.” [11] In other words, poverty actually increased as the baby boom continued. “For every cohort of white household heads born since the beginning of the baby boom,” Brown observes, “each new generation has been facing a higher risk of impoverishment than the cohorts preceding it.” [12] The issue of poverty was not properly addressed and taken care of during the rise of the baby boom, and thus families such as Harpel’s had to suffer growing up. Yet too many historians have overlooked their struggles in their happy depictions of the post-war era.

 

[1] Michael Harrington, The Other America (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), 14.

[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 70.

[3] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 22, 2015.

[4] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 22, 2015.

[5] Brands, 70.

[6] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[7] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[8] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[9] Email interview with Ann Marie Harpel, March 23, 2015.

[10] Harrington, 146.

[11] Irene Browne, “The Baby Boom and Trends in Poverty” Social Forces Vol. 73 No. 3 (Mar. 1995): 1071-1095 [JSTOR].

[12] Browne, 1088.

 

By Patrick Meier

My grandfather, Stephen Patrick Meier, participated in the creation of the deadliest weapon of its time.  One could say that the Cold War was fought not with guns, but with science and political maneuvering. H.W. Brands focuses on the political debate surrounding the hydrogen bomb, but my grandfather’s story is about the science and actual creation of the hydrogen bomb.  In the end, however, Stephen Meier’s opinions on the matter reinforce Brands’s interpretation about the development of thermonuclear weapons.  Some have called it a dangerous escalation in the Cold War.  Others, my grandfather included, think of it as a necessary evil, one that “kept us safe” despite its danger.

Stephen Patrick Meier graduated Earlham college in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in physics.  After a year in Indiana working for RCA, he was drafted into the Army.

Basic training occurred that year at Fort Knox, after which Meier was assigned to Aberdeen, Maryland.  From there he was transferred to Edwards Air Force Base, and transferred yet again a few months later to Kirkland Air Force Base.  In the span of only a few months Meier went from basic training in Kentucky, to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, to the Aberdeen Bombing Mission outside of Los Angeles, and finally to Kirkland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico as part of the Aberdeen Bombing Mission Special Weapons Liaison Group.

Being a physics major, Meier’s main role was creating bombing tables for the new hydrogen bombs.  In layman’s terms, he conducted tests to determine how the fallout from bombs would disperse in the air.  In his own words, “depending on the way the bomb acted when it was released we would put numbers into the bombing system to make the sure the bombs went toward the target.  Of course if you’ve got 8 and half megatons it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference!” [1]

Meier’s involvement with the hydrogen bomb began in 1953, an entire year after the United States’ first detonation of a fusion device, and months after the Soviet Union’s creation of a weaponized hydrogen bomb [2].  At the time of his involvement, the Soviet Union had already successfully created a hydrogen bomb that could be dropped from a plane.  The Cherokee test (which Meier had worked on), according to nuclearweaponarchive.org, “was the first U.S. air drop of a thermonuclear weapon. This… was intended to gather weapon effects data for high yield air bursts, but also was a political demonstration of the United States capability to deliver H-bombs by air to pressure the Soviet Union.” [3].

His work then ended in 1955, so while important and interesting work, his story itself says little about the political concerns that factored into President Truman’s decision to go ahead with development of thermonuclear weaponry.  When asked about what he thought of his project at the time, Meier said, “Politics didn’t enter into it as far as we were concerned.  It might have somewhere else but not for us.” [4]

That somewhere else was Washington, where debate over whether or not to even create fusion weapons had raged for years previously.  The General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission was a panel made up of scientists tasked with helping to decide what course of action the United States should take in terms of nuclear weapons.  The panel published the Acheson-Lilienthal Report on October 30, 1949.  Their report was split into two sections, signed by two different groups within the committee, as each side could not agree unanimously on certain issues.  One thing, however, was clear.  “Although the members of the Advisory Committee are not unanimous in their proposals as to what should be done with regard to the super bomb,” explains the report, “there are certain elements of unanimity among us. We all hope that by one means or another, the development of these weapons can be avoided.” [5]

In this report, they condemned the creation of the hydrogen bomb, on the basis that current weapons were sufficient for destroying military targets.  The hydrogen bomb, on the other hand, seemed too dangerous for civilians. They wrote:

“It is clear that the use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives; it is not a weapon which can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations of military or semi-military purposes. Its use therefore carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of exterminating civilian populations.” [6]

The project was meant to be a secret.  Meier says, “security wise I was top secret and q-clearance, which was atomic energy clearance.  Actually I think the q-clearance was higher than top secret.  And really it was pretty well contained right on the base.  We didn’t talk about it.” [7] Brands says little on the actual development of the hydrogen bomb, choosing instead to focus on the debate surrounding its creation and the impact its construction had on the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.  Brands states that although the debate over the hydrogen bomb was meant to be secret, it didn’t stay that way for long.  Details were soon leaked to the press and public opinion was not one-sided.  One expert, Ralph Lapp, even claimed that “for America to build the bomb would be like ‘the man who lives in a tar paper shack and develops a flame thrower to defend himself’.” [8]

Meier’s stance, then and now, is that creating the hydrogen bomb was the right thing to do at the time.  However, he is not without his qualms.  He says, “it was such a dramatic increase in destructive capability.  And you know you had to be thinking long and hard, I don’t care what kind of madman you were, to even unleash such a thing.  It was terrible.” [9]

We can see hints of this uneasiness in this letter written by Chief Herman Miller, Meier’s supervisor at the Aberdeen Bombing Mission Special Weapons Branch.  This letter was sent to RCA notifying them of the end of Meier’s military service and return to work at RCA.  He says in the letter that “Cpl Meier has proven himself to be an outstanding individual who has placed duty far above his own personal feelings and comforts.” [10]  In hindsight however, during my interview with him, Meier decided that “I think we should have [created the hydrogen bomb] to be honest about it.  It kept us safe.”  [11]

He was not the only one with that opinion.  Lewis Strauss believed that “the United States must be as completely armed as any possible enemy.” [12]  Essentially, the United States was obligated to create fusion weapons just in case the Soviets were creating them too.  This eventually motivated President Truman to go ahead with development of the hydrogen bomb.  Additionally, the fear of the Soviets being able to make a hydrogen bomb turned out to be justified.  The Trinity Test at Alamogordo in July 1945 predated the Soviet’s first atomic bomb by almost four years.  [13] America’s first hydrogen bomb, however, beat the Soviet’s first hydrogen bomb by only one year.  The gap was closing.  However, The United States had one more card to play yet in the race for thermonuclear superiority: Turkey.

The eventual incorporation of Turkey into NATO lent the United States a distinct advantage at this stage of the war.  Turkey’s airfields and America’s new, powerful, deliverable thermonuclear bombs kept pressure on Soviet borders. [14] The Cold War, however, was only beginning.

 

 

[1] Stephen Meier, phone interview, March 21, 2015.

[2] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 66.

[3] “Operation Redwing.” Operation Redwing. Accessed March 25, 2015. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Redwing.html.

[4] Phone interview with Stephen Meier.

[5] PBS, American Experience, Race for the Superbomb. Accessed April 28, 2015.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/primary/extractsofgeneral.html

[6] Ibid

[7] Phone interview with Stephen Meier.

[8] Brands, 66

[9] Phone interview with Stephen Meier.

[10] Herman Miller to W.F. Warrender, June 2, 1955.

[11] Phone interview with Stephen Meier.

[12] Brands, 66.

[13] Ibid, 66.

[14] Ibid, 67.

 

 

The Living Room Candidate website, courtesy of the Museum of the Moving Image, has collected televised presidential campaign advertisements from 1952 to the present day. They offer a great window for understanding some key trends in US history since 1945.

Here is a pioneering TV ad from the 1952 campaign, presented in what was then popular movie newsreel style, for the Republican campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Think carefully about what the commercial is emphasizing –and also what it omits.

Compare that 1952 effort to this more polished, 1960 John F. Kennedy campaign ad, designed to invoke some of the more popular TV jingles of the 1950s.

Perhaps the most famous (or infamous) ad in the history of modern presidential campaigns appeared as a paid advertisement on TV only once –the so-called “Daisy ad” from 1964. Students should be able to explain what this ad was about, and why it was so powerful and controversial.

The Richard Nixon campaign in 1968 revolutionized the use of TV commercials in presidential contests, relying on them more than any other previous campaign organization. These two notable examples show some of the new techniques of advertising and also help highlight the shift in national climate since 1952.

The foreboding nature of those 1968 ads helps explain the strategy of calculated optimism behind this biographical short from the 1976 Jimmy Carter campaign.  What’s also especially useful about this effort is how it captures several political and social trends from modern US history.

In the 1984 presidential election, Ronald Reagan won 49 out of 50 states. This commercial, known popularly as the “Morning Again in America” ad helps illustrate the broad appeal of the reelection campaign –and the sophisticated selling techniques of modern presidential politicking.

H.W. Brands labels his chapter on the 1950s as “The Golden Age of the Middle Class,” but even Brands seems unsure how much to believe in this label.  Were the Fifties a “Golden Age,” or a new “Gilded Age,” or more ominously, still the “Dark Ages” for race and gender discrimination?  There were certainly real signs of widespread growth and prosperity for the American nation in this defining post-war decade, but also significant underlying tensions and growing social problems.  Trying to fit all of these trends into a single narrative is challenging, but students in History 118 should be able to explain the contours of the period with a series of notable examples.

The starting point might well be a consideration of population growth and the cultural consequences of the celebrated “Baby Boom.”  US population soared between 1940 and 1960, from about 132 million people to over 180 million.  The country gained about 30 million people during the 1950s alone –roughly equivalent to the entire population of Civil War era America.  During this era of limited immigration (between the 1924 National Origins Act and the 1965 Immigration Act), the vast majority of these demographic gains came from an increased national birthrate.  By 1964, Brands reports, four out of every ten Americans were Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964).  The question for discerning students is how did all of these new children affect what Brands labels the “child-based culture” of the 1950s?  One way to answer that question is by pointing to various trends in television, entertainment, music, sports, and other aspects of an emerging mass culture.  But how much of this was a by-product of demographics or of new technologies remains an issue worth discussing.

Another way to interpret the period is by focusing on the economics of the Baby Boom, and considering how changing living and working patterns spurred important developments in post-war America.  The 1950s certainly marked an era of industrial supremacy, big cities, interstate highways, and general stability for American capitalism, but also showed signs of a new more turbulent, suburban-oriented and service-based economy.  During the early years of the post-war period, this combination of economic factors seemed to work wonders, with a greater equality of income than had been true across recent American history, but still, all was not equal in the society.

The most obvious inequality of the period was racial.  The 1950s marked the resurgence of civil rights protests for the roughly 17 million American blacks who still endured Jim Crow in the South or faced other forms of persistent discrimination in the North.  Brands illustrates the post-war civil rights movement by focusing on the impact of the two monumental Supreme Court decisions in the 1954 and 1955 Brown cases, and also on the 1955-6 Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Students should be able to explain the significance of these milestone events.

Many historians, including Brands, also find a revealing linkage between the domestic civil rights movement and the international Cold War.  In particular, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the struggle to contain communism seemed to migrate toward what was increasingly called the “Third World,” as American policymakers sought (often unsuccessfully) to influence events in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Thus, questions of race and geopolitical strategy often overlapped.  Regardless of the regional challenge of the moment, however, leading the globalized Cold War proved to be an enormous burden for American policymakers.  Brands ends his sprawling chapter on the 1950s by quoting from President Dwight Eisenhower’s now-famous farewell address (January 1961), which invoked a warning about the rising “military-industrial complex.”  Yet this warning, however “sobering” in Brands’s words, was complicated, because Eisenhower, the former general and sometimes belligerent commander-in-chief, was by no means prepared to stand down in the global fight against what he termed in that speech a “hostile ideology … ruthless in purpose and insidious in method.”  Clearly, whatever had been so golden about 1950s was also competing against many ominous shadows.