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February 15 - February 16, 2018
Second, Eisenhower knew that missiles carrying nuclear warheads were soon to become main-line military weapons.
In supporting massive retaliation Eisenhower and Dulles adopted historically familiar American approaches to defense: faith in high technology, and aversion to large standing armies in times of peace.
Eisenhower was also afraid that high levels of defense spending would give too much power to military leaders and defense contractors. The result could be a "garrison state" that distorted priorities.
Two of these angry generals, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor, were army chiefs of staff in the 1950s; both wrote books in retirement that protested the reductions.38
Ike indeed resorted to blackmail against the People's Republic of China in standoffs over the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu in 1955.39
Moreover, although Ho was first and foremost a nationalist, he was also a Moscow-trained Communist. Then and later this basic fact was the single most important determinant of American policy toward the region.
Shown an NSC paper recommending use of atomic weapons, he exploded, "You boys must be crazy. We can't use those awful things against Asians for the second time in less than ten years. My God."54
Ridgway ridiculed the "old delusive idea . . . that we could do things the cheap and easy way."55
How to judge the record of the Eisenhower administration concerning events in Vietnam between 1953 and 1956? The answer is: critically.
No one was more persistent on behalf of Chiang than GOP Senate leader Knowland of California.
Congress responded quickly and enthusiastically. In so doing it ceded for practical purposes some of its constitutional authority to declare war. Few events in the history of the Cold War exposed so starkly the power of anti-Communist feelings and the way that these feelings abetted the expansion of executive power.
If the Soviets intervened, he warned, the United States would send in its own troops to resist them. This was the tensest moment of the crisis and one of the most frightening of the entire Cold War.
Stevenson actually received a million fewer votes in 1956 than he had in 1952; his margin of defeat was almost 3 million greater.
But he did not sweep his party in with him. The Democrats retained control of Congress, gaining one seat in both the House and the Senate.
It was the first time since 1848 that a presidential candidate had won without carrying either house of Congress with him.
A staggeringly high total of 61.9 percent of homes were owner-occupied in 1960, compared to 43.6 percent in 1940 and 55 percent in 1950.
It is doubtful that this highly favored group received a more rigorous education than earlier generations of university graduates.
R&D helped spur impressive advances in science and technology, keys to leaps in productivity and real per capita income.
America's population leaped from 151.7 million in 1950 to 180.7 million in 1960.
Private indebtedness jumped from $104.8 billion to $263.3 billion during the decade.12
The phenomenal financial success of the Dodgers in Los Angeles depended not only on westward migration (California surpassed New York as the nation's most populous state in 1965) but also on the ability of people to drive to the ball park, for the growth of L. A. rested on the megabuilding of multi-lane freeways.
Sales of passenger cars jumped from 6.7 million in 1950 to a record 7.9 million in 1955.
By 1960 nearly 80 percent of American families had at least one car, and 15 percent had two or more. There were then 73.8 million cars registered, as opposed to 39.3 million ten years earlier.17
All these developments promoted grand expectations, especially among the educated middle classes, about the potential for further scientific and technological advances. This optimistic spirit—the feeling that there were no limits to progress—defined a guiding spirit of the age and, over time, unleashed ever more powerful popular pressures for expanded rights and gratifications.
In fact, physicians and scientists claimed too much. Better nutrition—a blessing of affluence—promoted a good deal of the improvement in life expectancy.24
Still, growing numbers of middle-class Americans, rapidly enrolling in private medical insurance plans and enjoying easier access to care, grew enamored with the medical profession.
ECONOMIC GROWTH AND AFFLUENCE, many contemporaries thought, were further eroding the class, ethnic, and religious divisions of American society. The onset of "post-industrial society," they said, was ushering in a world of relative social calm and of "consensus."30
By the early 1960s millions of American employees could count on annual paid vacations—an unthinkable blessing for most people in the 1930s.31
By 1951 roughly 75 percent of employed workers and their survivors had become part of the system.32
The number of families receiving Social Security checks increased from 1.2 million in 1950 to 5.7 million in 1960; in the same period the total paid in benefits rose from $960 million to $10.7 billion.
Labor leaders in the 1950s, moreover, largely abandoned hope of achieving governmental direction of such social policies as health insurance, concentrating instead on wringing benefits from employers.
These workers, to be sure, recognized that American society remained unequal, and they were far too sensible to buy into myths about progress from rags to riches.
In fact, however, nothing quite so dramatic happened either then or later. While the percentage of people defined by occupation as manual workers declined over time, the numbers of workers so employed continued to rise slowly but steadily (from 23.7 million in 1950 and 25.6 million in 1960 to 29.1 million in 1970).
p. 19; Time, Aug. 20, 1945. See chapter 5 for a fuller account of American decisions to drop the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 13. Wittner, Rebels Against War, 105.
Many historians believe that Japan was on the verge of surrender before Hiroshima and that America's use of the bomb was unnecessary.
Virtually the entire Japanese garrison at Okinawa—some 107,500 men—fought to the death, causing United States casualties of nearly 12,000 dead and 37,000 wounded. Another 150,000 civilians perished.
