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Course: US history > Unit 8
Lesson 2: 1950s AmericaThe Eisenhower era
Learn about Eisenhower's domestic and foreign policies.
Overview
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a popular war hero whose eight-year presidency was characterized by peace and prosperity, despite Cold War tensions and nuclear anxieties.
- During his presidency the nation’s consumer culture flourished. Workers’ wages rose, the baby boom reached its peak, and the suburbs grew rapidly.
- A moderate Republican, Eisenhower continued federal government activism in the economy and supported the largest public works project in history: the interstate highway system.
- In 1957 Eisenhower deployed troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling that public schools be desegregated.
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism
Dwight Eisenhower was a celebrated hero of the Second World War, well known to the public as the five-star general who had commanded Allied forces in Europe on D-Day. Eisenhower won landslide victories in both the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections over his Democratic rival Adlai Stevenson, the former governor of Illinois.
Eisenhower was a moderate Republican. Eisenhower did not try to dismantle the social welfare programs of the New Deal; on the contrary, the federal government continued to grow during his presidency. He signed an expansion to Social Security—to cover the self-employed, and disabled—and established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He also signed legislation increasing the minimum wage by a third.
Eisenhower also emphasized the importance of a balanced federal budget, and his administration worked for modestly lower taxes on corporations and the highest income earners. He called his brand of politics Modern Republicanism, and said he wanted to lead the country “down the middle of the road.”
With the Federal-Aid Highway Act, he funded the largest public works project in American history—authorizing the expenditure of $25 billion to build more than 40,000 miles of four-lane interstate highways.
1950s prosperity
The Eisenhower era of the 1950s was a time of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. GDP (gross domestic product) grew by an astonishing 150% in the period from 1945 to 1960. In the 1950s, with only five percent of the world’s population the U.S. economy produced almost half of the world’s manufactured products.
Americans drove three-quarters of the world’s cars and consumed half of the world’s energy. Union membership reached its historic peak in American history in 1954 when almost 35% of the nation’s workforce was unionized. The GI Bill and Marshall Plan expenditures, along with Cold War defense spending, contributed to economic growth. So, too, did the nation’s growing population—some 50 million babies were born during the continuing baby boom in the Eisenhower era.
Eisenhower and civil rights
Eisenhower was a limited supporter of civil rights legislation. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights bill passed by Congress since the nineteenth century, and appointed a Commission on Civil Rights to ensure that citizens were not being “deprived of their right to vote.” In 1960, he signed the Civil Rights Act, which introduced penalties for anyone who destroyed voter registration records or attempted to block a person from registering to vote.
Eisenhower's foreign policy
Eisenhower’s eight years in office were relatively peaceful ones for the nation. He ended the Korean War with a July 1953 armistice, and did not take the country into war in Vietnam when communists took over part of that country in 1954 (though he did supply South Vietnam with military advisers and equipment). In concert with Nikita Khrushchev, his Soviet counterpart, Eisenhower voluntarily suspended nuclear atmospheric testing in 1958, although an official test-ban treaty would not be signed until after he left office.
The Cold War framed Eisenhower’s foreign policy. Cold War thinking frequently took on an "us-versus-them" mindset, and this view of the world as one polarized between Soviet totalitarian communism (them) and American democracy and freedoms (us) saw Eisenhower’s administration both provide aid to dictators friendly to US interests (the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, for example) and authorize covert CIA missions to overthrow governments sympathetic to the Soviets. For example, in 1954 Eisenhower authorized the CIA to depose the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz.
The Eisenhower administration’s national security strategy was called the New Look. It relied on strategic nuclear weapons and air power while scaling back conventional army and navy forces. A nuclear arsenal was cheaper to maintain than paying a standing army: "more bang for the buck," the popular slogan went.
New Look policy gave rise to talk of the need to employ a diplomacy of brinksmanship: a willingness on the part of American leaders to take the world to the brink of a nuclear war with the hope that the Soviets would back down in the face of a potential US nuclear strike. But the stakes were high. If brinksmanship failed, nuclear war might result. Consequently, fear of nuclear war weighed heavily on the minds of Americans during the Eisenhower era.
What do you think?
Why do you think President Eisenhower was so popular?
What accounted for the incredible rise in the nation’s wealth during the 1950s?
How would you characterize President Eisenhower’s domestic politics?
Want to join the conversation?
Why do you think President Eisenhower was so popular?(6 votes)
Eisenhower was mainly popular because he was a war hero, much like how Ulysses S. Grant was elected president following Lincoln and Johnson. Other than that, Eisenhower was very much Anti-Communist and supported the US infrastructure by creating the interstate highway system. Eisenhower ended the Korean war, and was the type of un-political politician that the US wanted after the two world wars. The US experienced pretty much constant economic growth during his two terms, which also contributed to Eisenhower's popularity.(16 votes)
Would the Cold War programs like the Marshall plan worsen the economy. A lot of money was spent to stop containment. Why would all the defense spending increase economic growth?(7 votes)
Hello,
The Marshall plan was not detrimental to the economy because the Marshall plan rebuilt European economies and gave Americans, people to sell goods to, which in the long run, helped the American Economy. Also, defense spending helped the economy because the American government bought American made war machines which helped those defense companies and boosted the economy.
- Manish V.(8 votes)
How does the Eisenhower Era affect global policy, culture, and economics today?(3 votes)
Let me hazard an opinion. I was born not long before Eisenhower took office, and grew up as one of those golden children in Southern California while he was president. The atmosphere of anti-communism and being armed for war that prevailed during those years had a powerful effect on Americans. Though there was not a shooting war going on after 1953, all of America's young men were liable to be called for military service, and most were. That meant being disciplined and trained to be soldiers at a very formative time of life. Even though I was a child, I was taught that America could be attacked any minute, and we had those nuclear war drills where we hid under tables.
So, as for your question. The echoes of the Eisenhower Era are that American people my age who look at the world tend to see it in terms of "us and them" and tend to trust in use of the military to settle issues. Far too many of "my age cohort" are in charge of things in the halls of power in Washington DC.(9 votes)
I'm doing this for a research project. How exactly did he contribute to the stopping of D-day?(2 votes)- I think you may be confused. Eisenhower didn't STOP D-day, he managed it. He was the chief executive officer of the entire thing.(10 votes)
why am i doing this.(4 votes)- It may not mean much to you now, and, in fact, may never be of much use at all. But by learning how to deal with information, you are developing skills that will serve you well if you grow up to be an adult.(5 votes)
in the 11th paragraph, why is he a hero?(1 vote)
he made the new look policy and helped the us through the war(3 votes)
how many terms can a president have?(3 votes)- The constitution was amended in the 1950s to limit presidents to two terms. The only president to have been elected to more was FDR, and he only served a couple months into his fourth term before he died.(3 votes)
- How would you characterize President Eisenhower’s domestic politics?(3 votes)
- They were akin to those of Calvin Coolidge, a Republican president from an earlier era.(3 votes)
- Why is the President Eisenhower so popular?(3 votes)
- After the second world war, if you were a white person in America, prosperity was yours. With the industrial bases of both Europe and Asia destroyed by the war, the American economy became the world's supplier.
General Eisenhower was the manager of the American forces in Europe. He got a lot of good press for his work there. That translated into political capital.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who had learned to respect their commanders saw Eisenhower as a "commander writ large" and trusted him.
Eisenhower was non political, until the Republicans persuaded him to be their man for the upcoming 1952 election.
Again, he was popular with veterans and with white people. In the 1950s, that was pretty much a guarantee of becoming president.(2 votes)
- What are domestic politics(2 votes)
- Domestic politics happen within a nation. Foreign politics happen between nations.(4 votes)