History 118: US History Since 1877

By Jessica Snydman

Matthew Snydman joined the New Jersey Air National Guard (NJANG) in his early 20’s. He was young, recently married, and working at a sweater factory in Philadelphia, PA.[1] It was the late 1950’s and at the same time, the United States found itself in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.[2] In 1957, the Soviets shocked the West when they launched Sputnik, the world’s “first artificial earth satellite.”[3] The advancement proved the Soviets were developing military technology at a faster rate than expected. [4] As Matthew Snydman recalls, “the Sputnik satellite was different [from other developments in outer space and missile technology at the time] because we really didn’t want to hear anything good about the Russians and especially them beating us on anything.”[5] In response to Sputnik, the United States increased their efforts in building new military and space technology, but advancements on both sides of the conflict did not come without a price. As historian H.W. Brands explains, “the paradoxical effect of the arms race was that the more weapons the two sides deployed, the less secure they were.”[6]  Snydman’s experience in the Air National Guard confirms the wisdom of that insight.

Two years after the launch of Sputnik, Snydman enlisted in the NJANG .[7] When asked why he decided to enlist he said, “There may have been a draft at that time but most of my friends were joining the NJANG as a chance to fulfill our obligation to our country and at the same time, begin our families and working careers. I think the choice of the Jersey Guard was because there were more openings available at the time than in Pennsylvania [his home state] and also the Air Force seemed a little more glamorous than the Army.”[8]

In June of 1961, Kennedy met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, where they discussed the looming issue of what to do about Berlin.[9] The city of Berlin was divided between the free, NATO-occupied Western half, and the East German and Soviet controlled, communist Eastern half.[10] Because the city of Berlin was situated “110 miles behind the Iron Curtain” in East Germany, “surrounded by Soviet troops,” the stakes were high for NATO and Western powers in West Berlin.[11] Therefore, when Khrushchev threatened “to make a peace treaty with East Germany, which would end Western access to Berlin,” Kennedy reacted firmly.[12]  Soon after the meeting in Vienna, Kennedy addressed the nation in regards to how the United States would react to the Soviet Union, declaring he would increase military forces to prepare for conflict if need be, including the Air National Guard.[13]

Matthew Snydman’s unit, the 177th Tactical Fighter Squadron (177th TFS), was called into active duty that summer as a result of the speech. He remembers there being “mucho, mucho excitement!” at the prospect of being activated into the regular Air Force, saying he was “happy to finally [be] doing something more productive”.[14] Stationed at a base in Atlantic City, NJ, the 177th TFS was never actually deployed during their active duty, however. Snydman describes his work as “a refueler, the guy who, after the plane was down and positioned, plugged in my tank truck line to a port under the wing, watched the gallon counter and filled the plane with gas (JP4 fuel),” adding, “I drove a 10,000 gallon tank truck back and forth, back and forth.”  He admitted it was “Boring as hell”.[15] For the most part, however, he remembers the time as being enjoyable. He sarcastically described it as a “tough life, living on or near the beach, water skiing and drinking a little beer and going to work and driving a truck and not thinking about much except if and when we were leaving for Germany which we never did”.[16]

Fortunately for Snydman, and the world, the combat deployment never came.

 

FOOTNOTES

[1] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

[2] Unknown, “The Widening Conflict, 1953-1963,” in Cold War: An International History, (New York: Westview Press, 2014). [Credo Reference]

[3] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 95.

[4] Unknown, “The Widening Conflict, 1953-1963”. [Credo Reference]

[5] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

[6] H.W. Brands, American Dreams, 96.

[7] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

[8] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

 

[9] Unknown, “Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963),” in A Dictionary of Contemporary History – 1945 to the Present, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). [Credo Reference]

[10] John F. Kennedy, “Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Berlin Crisis, July 25, 1961,” John F Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum (accessed March 2015). http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Berlin-Crisis_19610725.aspx

[11] Kennedy, “Radio and Television Report.”

[12] Unknown, “Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963).” [Credo Reference]

[13] Kennedy, “Radio and Television Report.”

[14] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

[15] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

[16] Email interview with Matthew Snydman, March 25, 2015.

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.

Here are video clips of Walter Cronkite’s original February 27, 1968 CBS Evening News Broadcast on the Tet Offensive and also an oral history from Cronkite about that pivotal TV moment recorded in 1999.  Explain why this was such a pivotal moment in the history of US involvement in Vietnam.

The result of rising anti-war sentiment in the Democratic primaries and clear signposts of mainstream concern from sources such as Cronkite’s February special report convinced President Lyndon Johnson to announce on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek reelection after all.  Here is the full broadcast of his address to the nation that evening.  His remarks on quitting the presidential race begin around the 38 minute mark.

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.