The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

the new missile age. He finally admitted that Americans had been spooked by Sputnik and demanded a response. He proposed a series of “imperative” actions to fix the problems that the Sputnik crisis had revealed. He wanted a reorganized Defense Department to halt the crippling interservice rivalries that had slowed missile progress. He wanted an immediate infusion of cash to improve radar capability, bomber dispersal, missile production, nuclear submarines, and mobile conventional forces. He wanted to help America’s allies by lowering barriers to trade and by sharing nuclear secrets so they could better defend themselves. And he wanted major federal investment in scientific education. Such actions would ensure that America’s military and scientific power, already strong, would never lapse. Such a program would require “sacrifice”—a word he used throughout the speech. The people must know that to counter the Soviet Union’s “total cold war” against America, they would have to toil and strive with common purpose. “The world is waiting to see,” he declared, “how wisely and decisively a free representative government will now act.”