Division of Germany
- July 1945 at Potsdam Germany was split into 4 zones of occupation
- Berlin, the capital, was also divided
- Berlin layed in the heart of Communist controlled East Germany
Stalin creates a blockade
- Stalin cut off supply lines to West Berlin
- His response to the Marshall Plan (what's that?)
- Americans had to find a way to feed the people of West Berlin or surrender it to the Soviets
- Kennedy is informed of Plan when he takes office
- The troops are not Prepared, not equipped
- Disastrous Failure
- Strengthened Castro's position
- Hurt U.S. in public eye
Cuban Missle Crisis
- The Closest we come to all out Nuclear War
- 1.5 years after Bay of Pigs we learned that the Soviets were building Nukes in Cuba
- Kennedy calls out Khrushcev
- Announces a Naval Blockade
- 6 days where Nuclear war seemed like it might happen
- U.S. Eventually agreed to remove our Nukes from Turkey and Greece if Soviets removed theirs from Cuba
- Khruschev loses prestige
- Victory for Kennedy and the U.S.
Cuban/U.S. tensions still exist today
Berlin Airlift
- America's Plan to help rebuild Europe after WWII
2A. Suburban Living
1A. Baby Boom
1B. Baby Boom
Levittown, L. I.: “The American Dream”
It seems to me that every other young housewife I see is pregnant. -- British visitor to America, 1958
1949 William Levitt produced 150 houses per week.
Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Anderson Quintuplets
$7,990 or $60/month with no down payment.
1957 1 baby born every 7 seconds
2B. Suburban Living
2A. Suburban Living: The New “American Dream”
2c. Suburban Living: The Typical TV Suburban Families
The Donna Reed Show 1958-1966
SHIFTS IN POPULATION DISTRIBUTION, 1940-1970
1940 1950 1960 1970
Central Cities 31.6% 32.3% 32.6% 32.0%
Suburbs 19.5% 23.8% 30.7% 41.6%
Rural Areas/ 48.9% 43.9% 36.7% 26.4%
Small Towns
U. S. Bureau of the Census.
Leave It to Beaver 1957-1963
1 story high
12’x19’ living room
2 bedrooms
tiled bathroom
garage
small backyard
front lawn
By 1960 1/3 of the U. S. population in the suburbs.
Father Knows Best 1954-1958
The Ozzie & Harriet Show 1952-1966
Class Discussion Topic:
3a. Consumerism
3B. Consumerism
4A. A Changing Workplace
1950 Introduction of the Diner’s Card
Automation:
1947-1957 factory workers decreased by 4.3%, eliminating 1.5 million blue-collar jobs.
By 1956 more white-collar than blue-collar jobs in the U. S.
Computers Mark I (1944). First IBM mainframe computer (1951).
Corporate Consolidation:
By 1960 600 corporations (1/2% of all U.S. companies) accounted for 53% of total corporate income.
WHY?? Cold War military buildup.
All babies were potential consumers who spearheaded a brand-new market for food, clothing, and shelter. -- Life Magazine (May, 1958)
The postwar era witnessed tremendous economic growth and rising social contentment and conformity. Yet in the midst of such increasing affluence and comfortable domesticity, social critics expressed a growing sense of unease with American culture in the 1950s.
Assess the validity of the above statement and explain how the decade of the 1950s laid the groundwork for the social and political turbulence of the 1960s.
5A. The Culture of the Car
5B. The Culture of the Car
4B. A Changing Workplace
Car registrations:
1945 25,000,000 1960 60,000,000
2-family cars doubles from 1951-1958
America became a more homogeneous nation because of the automobile.
New Corporate Culture: “The Company Man”
1956 Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
1958 Pink Cadillac
1959 Chevy Corvette
First McDonald’s (1955)
Drive-In Movies
1956 Interstate Highway Act largest public works project in American history!
Cost $32 billion.
41,000 miles of new highways built.
Howard Johnson’s
THE 1950s:
“Conservatism, Complacency, and Contentment”
OR
“Anxiety, Alienation, and
Social Unrest” ??
Final Outcome
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/maps/koreatxt.html
The War Ends
- Eisenhower stayed true to his word to end the war
- Bombing raids increased by the U.S. in North Korea in May of 1953
- July 27th, 1953 an armistice was agreed upon.
- The outcome of the war was the same dividing line that was present before the start of the war, approximately around the 38th parallel
- American Military Spending increased dramatically and would never return to peacetime spending (Militarism)
Election of 1952
- Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Democrat candidate Adlai Stevenson
- Eisenhower promised to end the Korean war yet still resist the spread of Communism
- Eisenhower won the electoral college 442-89
President Eisenhower
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/de34.html
Truman’s Response
- President Truman opposed MacArthur’s plan
- Truman removed MacArthur from his position in April 1951
- The war had reached a stalemate by the summer of 1951.
- The war became a hot button issue in election of 1952
China’s Involvement
- China aided North Korea in late November.
- Due to China’s involvement, General MacArthur called for a major expansion of the war. His proposal included:
- Blockading China’s coast
- Invading the interior of China
- A-Bomb?
Fighting Begins
- North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950.
- The UN became involved and asked for an immediate cease fire
- The Soviets were boycotting the U.N. due to the denial of admittance of China to the world governing body
- U.S. forces entered South Korea under the direction General MacArthur
Chinese Revolution
- China had a long history of struggling against Communism
- America supported Nationalists, reluctant to fight
- Soviets supported Communists
- Nationalists – Chiang Kai Sheck
- Communists – Mao Tse Tung
- Nationalists lose and China becomes Communist
U.S. Involvement
10A. Progress Through Science
10C. Progress Through Science
6A. Television
- South Korea was unstable economically
- The United States feared that South Korea would fall to communism
- U.S. government helped to build up the South Korean military (Truman Doctrine)
- Both the U.S. and the Soviets removed their troops from Korea in 1949.
5C. The Culture of the Car
10B. Progress Through Science
6B. Television – The Western
UFO Sightings skyrocketed in the 1950s.
The U. S. population was on the move in the 1950s.
NE & Mid-W S & SW (“Sunbelt” states)
1946 7,000 TV sets in the U. S. 1950 50,000,000 TV sets in the U. S.
Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier
1957 Russians launch SPUTNIK I
Background
Television is a vast wasteland. Newton Minnow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, 1961
- Korean Peninsula was under Japanese control in 1945
- After A-Bomb, Soviets and Americans split country at 38th Parallel
- North Korea – Kim Il Sung (Communist)
- South Korea – Syngman Rhee
1951 -- First IBM Mainframe Computer
1952 -- Hydrogen Bomb Test
1953 -- DNA Structure Discovered
1954 -- Salk Vaccine Tested for Polio
1957 -- First Commercial U. S. Nuclear Power Plant
1958 -- NASA Created
1959 -- Press Conference of the First 7 American Astronauts
Sheriff Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke
1955 Disneyland opened in Southern California. (40% of the guests came from outside California, most by car.)
Mass Audience TV celebrated traditional American values.
The Lone Ranger (and his faithful sidekick, Tonto): Who is that masked man??
War of the Worlds
Korean War
Hollywood used aliens as a metaphor for whom ??
1958 National Defense Education Act
Frontier Land
Main Street
Tomorrow Land
Truth, Justice, and the American way!
10D. Progress Through Science
The 50s Come to a Close
7A. Teen Culture
7B. Teen Culture
6C. Television - Family Shows
1959 Nixon-Khrushchev “Kitchen Debate”
“Juvenile Delinquency” ???
Atomic Anxieties:
“Duck-and-Cover Generation”
In the 1950s the word “teenager” entered the American language.
By 1956 13 mil. teens with $7 bil. to spend a year.
Glossy view of mostly middle-class suburban life.
1951 J. D. Salinger’s A Catcher in the Rye
1951 “race music” “ROCK ‘N ROLL”
Atomic Testing:
1946-1962 U. S. exploded 217 nuclear weapons over the Pacific and in Nevada.
But...
I Love Lucy
The Honeymooners
Cold War -----> Tensions
<----- Technology & Affluence
Social Winners?... AND… Losers?
Elvis Presley “The King”
James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953)
7C. Teen Culture
7D. Teen Culture
8A. Religious Revival
Today in the U. S., the Christian faith is back in the center of things. -- Time magazine, 1954
The “Beat” Generation:
Jack Kerouac On The Road
Allen Ginsberg poem, “Howl”
Neal Cassady
William S. Burroughs
Behavioral Rules of the 1950s:
Church membership: 1940 64,000,000 1960 114,000,000
Obey Authority.
Control Your Emotions.
Don’t Make Waves Fit in with the Group.
Don’t Even Think About Sex!!!
Television Preachers:
1. Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen “Life is Worth Living”
2. Methodist Minister Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking
3. Reverend Billy Graham ecumenical message; warned against the evils of Communism.
“Beatnik”
“Clean” Teen
9B. Well-Defined Gender Roles
8B. Religious Revival
9A. Well-Defined Gender Roles
Hollywood: apex of the biblical epics.
Changing Sexual Behavior: Alfred Kinsey: 1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
The ideal modern woman married, cooked and cared for her family, and kept herself busy by joining the local PTA and leading a troop of Campfire Girls. She entertained guests in her family’s suburban house and worked out on the trampoline to keep her size 12 figure. -- Life magazine, 1956
Premarital sex was common.
Extramarital affairs were frequent among married couples.
Marilyn Monroe
The ideal 1950s man was the provider, protector, and the boss of the house. -- Life magazine, 1955
The Robe The Ten Commandments Ben Hur
1953 1956 1959
1956 William H. Whyte, Jr. The Organization Man a middle-class, white suburban male is the ideal.
Kinsey’s results are an assault on the family as a basic unit of society, a negation of moral law, and a celebration of licentiousness.
-- Life magazine, early 1950s
It’s un-American to be un-religious! -- The Christian Century, 1954
Cuba falls to Communism
- Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban President
- Castro began nationalising land owned by Americans
- Also began taking aid from the Soviet Union
- The United States had to respond to the threat of Communism in their own Hemisphere
Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba
Effects of Communist Cuba
Started by Eisenhower
Used the C.I.A. and Cuban Exiles to plan an invasion of Cuba
Think NATO only in the southeast
(containment)
S.outh
E.ast
A.sia
T.reaty
O.rganization
Operation Rolling Thunder
- United States joins SEATO to support anti-communist S. Vietnamese gov't
- Vietcong (commies) gain power
- U.S. president Kennedy (1960) sends in troops
- s. Vietnamese puppet president Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated in a military coup d'etat
All Hell Breaks Loose
- First real bombing campaign against N. Vietnam
- Used Napalm & Agent Orange
- Tiger vs. Elephant (guerilla warfare)
- Vietnam was a colonial possession of the French
- After WWII, Vietnam wanted it's Independence
- Began leaning towards communism
1965-
1972
1954-
1963
1800's-
1945
1964
1965
1950-
1954
The War Drags On & On
Gulf of Tonkin
- '68 Tet Offensive
- Draft kills American Morale
- Television makes the war real for everybody
- My Lai, Pentagon Papers, & Cambodia
What is the "domino theory"?
- The United States contributes over $2 billion to the French War Effort
- Remember we are trying to contain the spread of communism (Domino Theory)
- Vietnamese forces eventually win independence from French
- New independent Vietnam is split into 2 countries in 1954
- N. Vietnamese fire on U.S. ship in Gulf of Tonkin
- Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed
- Gave LBJ broad military powers to "take all necessary measures".