Post-World War II Domestic Issues
Part 1: The 1940s and 1950s
Copyright © 2005-6, Henry J. Sage
Post World War II America saw changes in everyday life scarcely imaginable in the 1930s. The military requirements of war had generated enormous advances in technology, medicine, communications and of course in the implements of war. Medicines such as penicillin, antibiotics and techniques for the treating of injuries and diseases were greatly stimulated by the demands of warfare and its impact upon civilian populations. The research that went into the development of the atomic bomb also produced subsidiary information about the phenomenon of radiation and how it applied to such things as x-ray technology. The first jet aircraft were developed during the Second World War, and all-purpose vehicles such as the famous Jeep fostered advances in automotive design. Radar and other sophisticated technology devices had uses that would later be applicable in the civilian arena for civil air control. Methods developed by companies such as Kaiser advanced the technology necessary for building ships of all sorts.
As typified by the mythical figure of Rosie the Riveter, the roles of American women changed dramatically during the war—approximately 800,000 women served in the Armed Forces in a variety of capacities. For the mrn who served, the military experience was also eye opening: farm boys, city dwellers, college students, businessmen, teachers, musicians, artists, laborers and skilled technicians, not to mention an unparalleled mixing of racial and ethnic groups, gave new perspectives to the 12 million men who served in the armed forces during the World War II era.
The 1940s
Postwar social adjustments challenged the most enlightened of Americans. Young men, teenage boys really, went off to war in 1942 or 1943 and came back three years later as 21-year-old old men. The wives, mothers, sisters and sweethearts whom they had longed to see looked very different when they came home, and not just because they too had aged; the returning GI's saw them through different eyes, eyes that had seen sights unimaginable to them in 1940 or 41.
One of the great American films of all time, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” explores the readjustments that had to be made by returning veterans. The ex-Army Master Sergeant who goes back to his position as a banker views loan applications from his fellow ex-servicemen very differently from the men who had stayed behind. The sailor who returns with the metal hooks having replaced the hands lost in the shipboard fire discovers that his family has even more trouble adjusting to his injury and he had in adjusting to the mechanical devices. The former Army Air Force bomber pilot discovers that the skills required in leading 10 men in a complex machine over enemy territory do not translate readily into the postwar workplace. He also discovers that his bride, whom he had known for only days before they were married prior to his departure for overseas, is a total stranger; he can’t wait to get out of uniform, but she wants to parade him around in it to show him off to her friends.
This writer was nine years old when the war ended, but the memories remain vivid. My best friend and I each lost a brother. In the village of Pleasantville, New York, where I lived, every year the Memorial Day parade ended at the village plaza near the railroad station, where a scroll of honor had been erected with the names of all the young men from Pleasantville who had served in the war. Next to the name of each one killed was a gold star. As part of the ceremony ending the parade, the names of all those who had died were read over a loudspeaker. While I do not recall the numbers, I remember vividly the weeping of most of the people in the crowd, for everyone in the village knew at least one person who had been killed.
For those of you who have paid attention to the issues surrounding the creation of the World War II Memorial in Washington, or who have read or heard of Tom Brokaw’s book on “the greatest generation,” or who have seen “Pearl Harbor” or “Saving Private Ryan,” or one of the dozens of other World War II era films, you are well aware that although much of that generation is gone, they are not forgotten. But they lived in a different world from ours.
Looking back, it is hard to imagine how many things we now take for granted were different in 1945. To mail a first-class letter cost three cents. Practically no homes had television sets; even by 1949 less than 3% of homes had one. There were no pushbutton or dial telephones; you picked up the receiver and waited until an operator, inevitably female, would say “Number, please?”—and you gave her the number. You had to ask for a special operator for long-distance. A significant percentage of homes on farms were still without electricity or indoor plumbing; appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines and dryers were luxuries which many working-class families could not yet afford.
As virtually no automobiles had been manufactured from 1943 to 1945 because the auto companies were busy building tanks, jeeps, 5-ton trucks and military aircraft, the old 1940 and 41 models were brought out again until designs could be revamped. The Singer company went back to making sewing machines instead of machine guns, and silk was once again used for stockings instead of parachutes. Butter, sugar, meat and gasoline were no longer rationed. People took their old cars down off the blocks where they had sat during the war, and the top half of headlights no longer had to be painted black for air defense.
The post-war era was a time of economic boom. Soldiers returned with hundreds of dollars in back pay, and wives who had been working had been able to save because there were few luxuries on which to spend income. Many consumer products had been mostly unavailable; companies that had made appliances had been building the implements of war. American labor had prospered; by 1945 union membership was at almost 15 million, over 35% of the nonagricultural labor force, an all-time high. In 1946 President Truman recommended measures to Congress designed to help the economy recover. With the huge demand for consumer goods and new homes, anti-inflation measures were instituted to keep the overheating economy under control. Life did not return to what it had been in 1940—it took off in exciting and often confusing new directions.
The Truman Years: 1945-1953
As Franklin Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry Truman faced enormous challenges. Truman had not even wanted to be vice president, and when he received the shocking news of the president's death from Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House, his first words were, “Mrs. Roosevelt what can we do for you?” Maintaining her composure, the president's widow answered, “No, Harry, what can we do for you? For you are the one in trouble now."
At the time of President Roosevelt's death in April, 1945, about a month before Germany surrendered, Harry Truman actually knew nothing of the atomic bomb project except for the fact that an awful lot of federal funds were going to a project called “Manhattan,” about which he had been told virtually nothing. Harry Truman was the last president of United States who had never gone to college. He was, however, well read and therefore well educated. He became a senator from Missouri in 1934, and during World War II he was chairman of the committee that vigorously investigated war mobilization. He was sharply critical of what he often saw as opportunism and profiteering on the part of big business. General Marshall claimed that Senator Truman's service on the committee had been “worth two divisions” to the war effort.
By 1947 the Armed Forces had been reduced to a size of 1.5 million, and the discharged veterans were eager to take advantage of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the “GI Bill of Rights.” Veterans were entitled to financial support for education and vocational training, medical treatment, unemployment and loans for building houses or starting businesses. They were eager to marry and start families, and by 1946 the well-known baby-boom was underway; the birth rate in 1946 was 20% higher than in 1940 and continued at a high rate until the 1960s.
With a strong labor force feeling its oats, and with the huge demand for consumer goods, the American economy was vibrant. But workers were in a position to make demands, and they did. President Truman was at the center of the struggle between labor and management, and in order to strengthen his position with labor, a natural Democratic constituency, he vetoed the controversial Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which was called by some the “slave labor act” because it was seen as unfriendly to labor and unions. Harry Truman was tough and honest, but he was no Franklin Roosevelt, even if he wanted to continue the New Deal, which he now called the Fair Deal. In the off-year elections of 1946 the Republicans gained majorities in both the House and Senate for the first time since 1928.
Despite conflict between President Truman and the Republican Congress, much was accomplished in the postwar years. The National Security Act of 1947 revised the Armed Forces, creating the United States Air Force and the new National Security Council. In addition the law made the Joint Chiefs of Staff a permanent entity and established the Central Intelligence Agency, an outgrowth of the wartime Office of Strategic Service, or OSS, to coordinate intelligence gathering activity. In 1951, in a reaction against the extended term of Franklin Roosevelt, Congress passed and the states ratified the 22nd amendment, which limited all presidents after Truman to two terms.
The 1948 presidential election was one of the most memorable in American history. The Republican candidate was Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, who had gained fame for his anti-crime work and who had run against Roosevelt in 1944. Because of Harry Truman's support for civil rights, including the integration of the Armed Forces and the United States Civil Service, a number of Southern Democrats left the Democratic party and nominated South Carolina Governor J. Strom Thurmond on a States Rights Democratic ticket—they were called the “Dixiecrats.” Meanwhile the left wing of the Democratic Party nominated Henry A. Wallace on a Progressive Party ticket. Those two defections from the Democratic ranks seemed to doom President Truman's chances for reelection.
By mid-September the polls were predicting a sure victory for Governor Dewey, and taking the polls seriously Dewey conducted a lethargic campaign, assuming that he had the election won. President Truman, however, went on a whistle-stop campaign by train in which he covered 31,000 miles and made speeches all along the way. He criticized the “do-nothing Congress,” and people in the audience yelled, “Give 'em hell, Harry!” The President responded, “I don't give them hell —I just tell the truth and they think it's hell!” His supporters would roar with laughter and applause. Post- election analyses later showed that Truman was closing the gap rapidly in the last few days before the election, but without the assistance of modern computers the polls were unable to keep up with the changes Thus on election night everyone still assumed that Governor Dewey could rest easy. In one of the most famous journalistic gaffes in American political history, the Chicago Tribune came out with its famous headline, “Dewey defeats Truman.” The next morning a victorious Harry Truman held up the paper grinning broadly—he had won 49% of the vote and had achieved a 303 to 189 margin in the electoral college. Harry Truman had won his second term.
For more on the political career of Harry Truman see the biography “Truman” by David McCullough, and the film of the same name based on the book, starring Gary Sinise.
The 1950s were a decade of both stability and change. Inflation was tamed even as the economy continue to grow; for example government workers and military personnel receive no pay raises from 1955 to 1963 because inflation remained at near zero. The civil rights revolution in the South got started in 1954 and 55 with theSupreme Court decision in Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka and the Montgomery bus boycott begun by the courageous Rosa Parks. For most of middle America, however, the 1950s were a time of flashier cars, the expansion of television, the rise of rock 'n roll, mass production, the accelerated movement to suburbia, and a rising but strangely dissatisfied middle class. Underneath the somewhat tranquil exterior of American society the beat generation brought a foretaste of the of the rebellious 1960s.
The Eisenhower Years: 1953-1960
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952. He was nominated over conservative Senator Robert Taft of Ohio following a lively contest at the Republican convention. He selected as hie vice president Senator Richard Nixon of California. By election day it was clear that everyone liked Ike, and despite his experiencing a serious heart attack in 1955, he was reelected comfortably in 1956. Eisenhower was better prepared for teh Presidency than many imagined, for in his job as SUpreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war he had had to del with political as well as military matters, often sorting out issues generated by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchilland France's General Charles de Gaulle, not to mention riding herd on feisty gnerals of his own such as George Patton.
The Soviets had exploded the first their first atomic bomb in 1949 and the Cold War was heating up after the death of Stalin in 1953. Americans valued President Eisenhower's military experience and were reassured by what they saw as a steady hand on the helm of the ship of state. Under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's foreign-policy seemed aggressive, even belligerent, but behind the scenes President Eisenhower kept to a steady path that did not lead to confrontation with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower's farewell message to the nation warned the country of the growing power of what he called the military-industrial complex, a judgment that became more sharply focused with the anti-military attitudes that he evolved during the Vietnam War.
Along with the civil rights turmoil in the South that increased during the 1950s, an undercurrent of fear and anxiety persisted because of the nuclear arms race, called the “balance of terror.” Both the United States and the Soviet union tested weapons hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than the one ones that had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With the growing threat from the Soviet Union, the military was enlarged, and military spending helped stimulate the economy. One project begun by President Eisenhower as a national defense measure was the creation of the interstate highway system. By the mid 1950s the Depression years seemed far away. Most Americans were enjoying a standard of living that was unprecedented.
Not all of the economic news was good, however. Americans had benefited in the immediate postwar years because their industrial facilities had been untouched by the war. But as the European nations built new factories to replace the ones that had been bombed out, American industries faced obsolescence. As farming methods continued to improve, fewer farmers were able to produce more and more, driving the prices of agricultural goods down, and causing the federal government to initiate various price supports for farm commodities.
Suburban life centered around the family, and that life was focused on the automobile. Although a significant number of families still did not own a car, and few families had two cars, the automobile had become by any measure a necessity rather than a luxury for most Americans. An undercurrent of frustration, however, persisted. One tale about the apparent sameness of the suburbs had a man getting off his commuter train, walking absently toward his home, accidentally walking a block too far, entering a house that seemed to be just like his, to be greeted by a wife who seem familiar. Only after the couple had sat down to dinner and started to talk did everyone realize that the man had arrived at the wrong house. Sloan Wilson’s novel, “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,” and the film of the same name starring Gregory Peck reveal the pressures of 1950s conformity and the haunting memories of the Second World War. Although the modern feminist movement had not yet begun, its seeds were being planted among bright, educated women who were finding that being a housewife and mother were not always fulfilling.
For all that, Americans were generally self-assured and confident in their ability to meet life challenges, both domestic and international. That certitude and was ruptured, however, with the startling announcement in 1957 that the Soviet Union had launched the first orbital satellite. It was called Sputnik, and while fascinating to scientists, it struck fear in the hearts of many who believed that the Soviets would convert their successes in outer space into military advantage. Before the United States could get its first satellite aloft, the Russians had sent a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. While Soviet rockets seemed capable of sending large payloads into space, American rockets often blew up on the launch pad. It was not until President Kennedy announced a national goal of landing an astronaut on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade of the 1960s that America began closing the gap in the space race.
In reaction to the launching of Sputnik Congress passed a bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and passed another, the National Defense Education Act, to improve American education by beefing up programs in mathematics and science. While Americans continued to like and respect President Eisenhower, he seemed like a grandfather figure, and by the election of 1960 Americans sought a younger more vigorous president, whom they got in John Fitzgerald Kennedy.