Imagine what it was like to go from the consumer-oriented, free spirited “roaring twenties” to the depths of the Great Depression.  Look carefully at FDR's inaugural and think how you might have viewed him.  This is an era your grandparents and perhaps even parents may remember.  If you're in touch, ask them about what it was like being alive during the Depression.

The Postwar World: The Baby Boom. It is no secret to anyone familiar with the lives of men in war that aside from the desire to stay alive—which waxes and wanes depending on the proximity of the enemy or the likelihood of being shot at in one form or another—the thing that preoccupies men most is their deprivation from the company of the opposite sex. In fact, it may even be true that repeated exposure to danger over prolonged periods of time may intensify one's natural biological urges. Whatever the case, returning GIs were not hesitant to express their intention to make up for lost time. As one “deprived” British soldier put it when asked what was the first thing he intended to do upon returning home, he answered, "The first thing I'm going to do is make love to me wife; the second thing is take off these &^%$# boots!"

Thus, the baby boom. It wasn't all sex. Both men and women longed to get back to a "normal" existence, which for many meant starting a home and family, or resuming the life they had been forced to abandon when the war began and millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were shipped overseas, not to return for two or three years or more. There was no stateside R&R during World War II, no Christmas leave, no relief from the tedium and occasional terror of the military life. Except in case of grave personal emergency or a serious wound, the average GI or Marine knew he was not going home until it was over-and so did his wife, his fiancee, his girlfriend.

The difficulty was that when those men returned, they had changed, often drastically, and so had the women they had left behind. The men had gone off as boys of 18 and returned as old men of 21. The girls had gone to work in factories, businesses, USOs and Red Cross or other patriotic agencies and were now independent-minded women, not necessarily ready to resume the status quo. The end of the war was indeed a time for celebration, and the returning GIs were treated as heroes. But getting back to a "normal" life was more difficult, and casualties occurred here as well. Men and women who had married during whirlwind courtships of weeks or even days before the men shipped out discovered that their spouses were strangers, and even what little they had learned about the other before the war was often changed. The result was that marriage, birth and divorce rates all rose dramatically in the postwar years.

• See the film: "The Best years of Our Lives" for a dramatic account of the problems of postwar readjustment.
• "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" also deals with the way in which wartime experiences continued to intrude on people's lives long after it was officially over.

The Postwar Economy. Another thing that was obviously true after the war was that the Depression was over. Massive government spending during the war-twice as much as in all of America's prior history combined-had ended unemployment and created tens of thousands of new jobs for men and women. Dust bowl farmers who had arrived in California destitute in the 1930s had found jobs in aircraft and ship building plants and were well off by 1943. Soldiers with families sent their paychecks home-there was little to spend them on in many places where they were stationed-and those paychecks went into savings accounts because their wives were working and little to spend the extra income on: no appliances, no new cars, very few luxury items, for industry had devoted its full attention to the war effort.

Fears that the returning GIs would cause economic hardships did not materialize, for the need to shift the economy back to peacetime production demanded a lot of labor, and although local conflicts occurred over hiring priorities and preferences for veterans, there was plenty of work to go around. Americans spent, but not wildly, for memories of the Depression returned as those of the war faded, and though the economy boomed, it did not get out of control. Fear of another Depression gradually waned, but the postwar agonies historically faced by many nations-rampant inflation, rioting, labor disorders-while not completely absent in the U.S. from 1945-1955-did not rise above manageable proportions. For one thing, the demands of the cold war and other factors kept government spending at high levels, and the demand for consumer goods and new homes kept the economy moving upward. Americans had never had it so good, and they knew it and were proud and happy about it-feeling they had earned it.

The Housing Boom. The critical need as the returning men married and they and their wives started families was housing. University campuses provide an interesting glimpse of how different effects of the war came together. The G.I. Bill of Rights, which included provisions for college tuition assistance, as well as job training and help with home loans, helped create a new phenomenon. Veterans who might never have thought about going to college decided that it was worth a try, since Uncle Sam was footing part of the bill. Whereas in prewar times men going off to college had generally postponed marriage until after graduation, these postwar college men had already done enough postponing and were therefore often already married. They might delay having children so that their wives could work, but they were still families, and around the fringes of college campuses makeshift structures such as tin Quonset huts, old military barracks or other temporary building were converted into cheap apartments. The married college student-until 1945 an oddity for the most part-was now a fixture on the campus.

Elsewhere the demand for housing was equally strong, and thousands of young families were willing to move into new suburban communities such as Levittown, Long Island, where prefabricated houses were constructed from one set of plans in row after row, even to the placing of a single tree in the same place in every yard. Some social critics found such communities appalling in their sameness, but the occupants, who perhaps remembered growing up in the 1930s, found that paint, do-it-yourself landscaping and other improvemetns-where permitted by community rules-could create some sense of identity. All the same, cartoonists and song writers had fun with this "ticky-tacky" life style.

The Age of the Automobile. One extra that did not come with suburban houses but which was often indispensable to this new suburban way of life was the automobile. In the immediate postwar years, once Ford, GM, Chrysler, Kaiser, Studebaker and the other manufacturers had retooled their plants from making trucks, tanks and jeeps, they dusted off prewar designs and began producing cars that looked very much like 1939 and 1940 models. But within two or three years newer, sleeker, more streamlined and modern designs appeared, and the automobile age took off. Cars and gasoline were cheap-and in fact the gas war became a roadside feature in the 1950s, as did the drive-in restaurant with curbside service, the drive-in movie theater and a new form of temporary lodging-the motel. At first few new cars had air-conditioning, fancy radios or automatic transmissions-which through the 1950s were often expensive extras-but they were bright, shiny and colorful, and when the Interstate highway system was begun under President Eisenhower in the 1950s, they would take you almost anywhere in unprecedented comfort and speed.

Life in the 1950s in America had about it rather glaring inconsistencies. On the surface, much seemed well. People were making more money than ever before, men and women were going to college in far greater numbers than ever before, television was a new form of entertainment which by the mid-1950s was a feature of a majority of households, sports were more popular than ever, popular music was going off in new directions and industries like aircraft changed people's transportation habits almost as much as the train or automobile. As nostalgic films have shown, the 1950s, while bland and often uninteresting, were seen as good-comfortable, at least , maybe even boring, but overall, still good.

But there were dark sides. In the South, and in parts of the North as well, racial tensions that had been smoldering since Reconstruction began to emerge with the birth of the modern civil rights movement. And while the world was relatively at peace, various crises in Europe, Asia and the Middle East kept tensions high. And above all-there was the bomb. Until 1949 the U.S. was the only nation that had produced (and used) atomic weapons. When the Soviet union, aided many believe by secrets stolen from the U.S. exploded its first atomic device, the atomic (later nuclear) arms race was on. The two superpowers established what became known as the balance of terror as more and more powerful weapons were produced and tested. School children were drilled on what to do in case of a nuclear attack, subterranean bomb shelters were built (sometimes in people's back yards), and for a long time the assumption was that sooner or later World War III-more horrible than World Wars I and II put together-was bound to start. One did not have to be a pessimist to think the unthinkable-that it was not "if" but "when."

Note: See sections on Civil Rights and the Cold War.

The Sixties. While the fifties were a "laid back" time, the 1960s were in many ways the opposite. Whereas in the 1950s a popular television program proclaimed that "Father Knows Best," by the end of the 1960s young people had convinced themselves that father did not know much of anything. Beginning with the "free speech" movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, a series of rebellions spread from campus to campus and dealt with an ever-widening variety of issues, from women's rights, to the Vietnam War, to the nature of the university itself. Although in retrospect people think of those rebellions in terms of the "anti-war" movement, the student protests were much wider in their scope. In fact, Vietnam protests comprised only a minority of campus disturbances, many of which were directed at societal problems in general.

(See the "Port Huron Statement" of the Students for a Democratic Society.)

While often high-minded, the student demonstrations were ferquently violent, and they triggered responses from university officials that ranged from acquiescence to forcible resistance to what many students perceived as outright oppression. When college police forces proved inadequate to handle the growing level of disruption, local police forces and even national guard troops were called in, with predictable results. Taunted by what they viewed as foul-mouthed, "spoiled brats" of the upper classes who shouted epithets such as "pigs," at them, the police often reacted with violence of their own, and the riots often turned bloody, even deadly. The more strongly the police reacted, the more rebellious the students became, and the larger their numbers grew. Across the nation, at hundreds of campuses, buildings were damaged or even destroyed, offices were ransacked, and professors who were unsympathetic to the students demands were driven from classrooms. In many cases the university was obliged simply to shut down. While cynics may have noted that the level of student protest seemed to rise the closer it got to exam time, the students were often addressing serious issues in thoughtful manner. On the other hand, many leaders of the student movement-men and women whose names became well known beyond their own campuses-had fairly obvious political agendas and sometimes seemed to be exploiting the rebellious conditions for their own purposes.

In the best sense, the students and their sympathizers were trying to bring about positive change in American society. They saw themselves as friends of the working classes, a voice for the oppressed, and many of them made positive contributions to the civil rights movement. In the South, Black students led the sit-ins and freedom marches and were on the front line when things got rough, as they usually did. For most white students the Vietnam War, while not the only issue, was the biggest issue, and their feelings were probably complicated by the fact that as college students they were deferred from the draft. Draft eligible young man had to remain in good standing, however, and professors often went out of their way to see to it that they did. The Vietnam protests also called attention to what many saw as an unholy alliance between universities and government-more particularly the military establishment. Weapons research, for example, was attacked by students who felt that such work was morally objectionable in a university setting.

The outcomes are hard to assess. The Vietnam War did come to an end, and substantial progress was made in civil rights and other areas. Perhaps those changes would have come about anyway, maybe more slowly, but maybe without arousing as much resentment. One outcome is certain: the university was changed forever. It no longer stood "in loco parentis," but was obliged to recognize that its students were adults, that they had rights, and that it was not proper for college officials to rule their charges with too heavy a hand, no matter how well intentioned such guidance might have been.

The Space Race. During the mid 1950s most Americans were aware that the government was doing research on the exploration of space and that one day, probably in the far distant future, men would go to the moon and beyond. But when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, an artificial satellite, into Earth orbit in 1957, Americans were stunned. Russian scientists had been portrayed as less capable than their American counterparts, and Soviet successes were supposedly based on borrowing of western ideas. But when the Soviets leaped out on front in space exploration, even with a primitive vehicle, Americans reacted with a combination of disbelief and panic. Articles with titles like "Why Johnny Can't read-And Why Ivan Can" began to appear, and the entire U.S. educational system was hauled into court and placed under scrutiny. Reflecting people's attitudes, Congress passed legislation that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and passed additional laws meant to improve American science and math curricula. The Space race was seen as part of the cold war, and Americans felt they had to win.

No one played this theme more strongly than President Kennedy. Early in his administration he dedicated that nation to putting a man on the moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade, defined as January 1, 1970. With the assistance of former German V-weapon rocket scientists and an aviation industry with much talent, the American caught up with and passed the Soviets and reached Kennedy's goal: Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in July, 1969.
 

• See Tom Wolfe, "The Right Stuff" and the film of the same title;
• Norman Mailer, "Of A Fire on the Moon";
• Also dramatic and historically sound are the film "Apollo 13" and the HBO series, "From the Earth to the Moon."
• The NASA site is one of the most popular and frequently visited on the World Wide Web.

President John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 was another shock to the nation. Young and vibrant, with a lovely wife ands two small children, the President was extremely popular among young Americans. When he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, the sixties as they are remembered may be said to have begun. Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's successor, was a powerful President who achieved a great deal of what Kennedy had intended, and much more. His "Great Society" even went a step or two beyond the New Deal in terms of fundamental reform, but lingering doubts over Kennedy's death remained alive. To this day, many believe a Kennedy's murder was part of a conspiracy, one in which the government itself may have been involved.

Achievements of Lyndon Johnson included:

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Medicare and Medicaid
• The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
• The Job Corps
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act
• The Head Start program

Johnson also sponsored legislation that revised immigration policies, toughened anti-crime systems, and sought to improve public housing and clean up urban slums and the environment at large. Although many of these programs failed to meet their objectives, it was the greatest reform movement since the early days of FDR's New Deal.

Watergate. Like his predecessor, Richard Nixon was distracted by the Vietnam War. Well versed in foreign policy matters, Nixon made considerable progress in that area. He also streamlined many Great Society programs and attempted to shift the burden of and responsibility for much government action from the federal government to the states. As the Vietnam War seemed to be winding down in 1972, and Nixon's “Vietnamization” program was brining American fighting men home, Nixon was a strong bet for reelection, which he qon by a huge landslide.

In June, 1972, a group of overzealous underlings broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington in order to bug the phones and were caught and arrested. The actual events of the burglary would had little if any impact on the election results, and if the incident had been handled swiftly and properly, the story would have gone away. Nixon's staff, however, panicked and began what eventually became a massive cover-up of the “Watergate” events and their aftermath, and the President himself became deeply involved, even though he had nothing to do with the break-in beforehand.

Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had covered the original break-in and had written follow-up articles from time to time, stayed with the story, even after it stopped being interesting following President Nixon's landslide reelection and inauguration on January 20, 1973. Soon thereafter the break-in offenders were found guilty and sentenced to jail terms, but it was obvious to many that the story didn't end there. as additional White House staff members were found to have been involved in the process, the story began to grow rapidly. By June, 1973, the Senate had convened a special committee under the leadership of Senator Sam Ervin to investigate the Watergate charges and the White House involvement in all that had happened.

The hearings were broadcast live on television and widely watched. Top Nixon officials were forced to resign, and following the lengthy senate hearings and subsequent debates in the House, it became clear that President Nixon would be impeached and perhaps convicted of various "high crimes and misdemeanors." In order to avoid the embarrassment and distraction of a House impeachment and Senate trial, President Nixon resigned in August, 1974. Thus Vice President Gerald Ford became president of the United States. Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein were widely praised for their dogged persistence in following the story, the Post won a Pulitzer Prize, and many young Americans came to see investigative journalism as a career that they hoped to pursue.

On May 31, 2005, the identity of Woodward and Bernstein's confidential informant known as “Deep Throat” was revealed. He turned out to be W. Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI at the time. Thus some 30 odd years after the original story broke, Watergate was once again front-page news.

See the film All the President's Men for an account of Woodward and Bernstein's search for the story.

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