U.S. History II:
Chapter 28: The Eisenhower Administration

Computer survey next week: Room 2260

Dwight David Eisenhower won the 1952 election on a promise to end the Korean War. Eisenhower’s extensive military experience as Allied commander of the Normandy invasion and as supreme commander of NATO forces shaped his insight regarding foreign policy and the containment of the Soviet Union.

Domestically, Eisenhower appointed capable business leaders for his Cabinet and then trusted their judgment. Eisenhower, however, did not allow his advisors to touch the New Deal programs from FDR’s administration. Eisenhower supported Social Security, unemployment insurance, and a minimum wage. In fact, Eisenhower pushed for a hike in the minimum wage to $1 an hour (from $.75 an hour). This wage hike was passed in 1956.

Eisenhower supported a balanced budget as much as possible. Both federal spending and income taxes were cut by 10% in his first year as president. Eisenhower was the last president to balance the federal budget until Clinton’s second term in the 1990’s.

Eisenhower forged close ties with the Democrats in Congress, primarily because the Republican Party was too divided on governing philosophy. This alliance helped Eisenhower balance the budget while building a military capable of defending the Free World during his persidency.

Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, became Eisenhower’s most trusted aide in foreign affairs. Dulles had been trained from birth to serve his God and his nation and willingly became the front man for many of Eisenhower’s most unpopular foreign policy decisions.

First, Eisenhower moved to end the Korean War. True to his word, Eisenhower visited the Korean front a month after his inauguration. Dulles helped negotiate a truce in the war by warning the Chinese the Americans were prepared to use nuclear weapons to end their involvement. The truce was signed in July 1953. The Koreans lost 2.4 million civilians killed or wounded; 850,000 South Korean and 520,000 North Korean troops were killed or wounded; the Chinese lost roughly 950,000 men in the war. The U.S. provided most of the troops supporting South Korea and accordingly suffered most of the Allied casualties after the South Koreans. More than 50,000 American soldiers died and 103,000 were wounded.

The fight against Communism raged both at home and abroad. In the U.S. itself, Eisenhower issued an executive order expanding the Federal Loyalty Security Program. Within months, Eisenhower announced that 1,456 federal workers had been fired as security risks. Most of the workers fired were not Communists but were released for other matters, including alcoholism and “subversive” activities.

Congress also conducted hunts for Communists. Senator Joseph McCarthy was in full swing in 1952, working as chairman of the Committee on Government Operations. McCarthy used ex-FBI agents and former prosecutors to scour the government for Communists, especially the State Department. Although McCarthy uncovered no Communists, many federal careers were ruined in his efforts.

In the midst of McCarthy’s investigations, the FBI arrested Julius Rosenberg and charged him with spying for the Soviet Union and passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, were both members of the Communist Party. Julius and the spies he recruited passed secrets to the Soviets that included a proximity fuse and the complete documentation for Lockheed’s F-80 jet-powered fighter. Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, worked on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb. The Rosenbergs and Greenglass, along with other members of their spy ring, were arrested in May 1950. Greenglass turned upon his arrest and testified for the State. Both Rosenbergs took the Fifth Amendment on the stand; the jury was not moved. Julius and Ethel were both convicted and sentenced to death. Both died in the electric chair on 19 June 1953.

[Note: For decades, liberals in the United States claimed the Rosenbergs were innocent victims caught up in the McCarthy era’s fear of a nonexistent Communist threat. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, documents released by the American and Russian governments confirmed their guilt and role in the Soviet atomic bomb.]

The Republicans had been willing to give McCarthy wide latitude during the 1952 elections because he accused the Democratic Party of being “soft on Communism.” However, once the elections were over, many in the GOP began silently criticizing McCarthy for his overbearing and churlish tactics in committee meetings. Many in the party wanted Eisenhower to do something to rein in McCarthy, but Eisenhower flatly stated, “I just will not — I refuse to get into the gutter with that guy.”

Eisenhower’s “hands off” policy regarding McCarthy changed when McCarthy shifted his attacks from the federal bureaucracy to the military. Any officer of Eisenhower’s stature would refuse to tolerate any such lout attacking the U.S. Army.

McCarthy first attacked the Army when a military dentist was honorably discharged even though he refused to answer charges about possible Communist activity. McCarthy was miffed when he summoned a general to his committee and the general refused to answer McCarthy’s charges about the incident. The general, Ralph Zwicker had to endure an attack in which McCarthy declared he “was not fit to wear the uniform of a General.”

In 1954, the Army accused McCarthy of attempting to arrange preferential treatment for one of his staffers was drafted. McCarthy accused the Army of trying to smear him for the Zwicker hearings. The Senate created a special committee to hear the charges. Eisenhower convinced Senate leaders to televise the hearings that April. In front of a nationwide audience, McCarthy attempted to browbeat Army lawyer Joseph Welch. After one charge, Welch launched an attack of his own: "Have you no decency, sir?" The audience in the chamber erupted in applause. McCarthy’s moment of fame had ended. In July 1954, the Senate introduced a resolution accusing McCarthy of conduct unbecoming a member of the United States Senate. That December, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure McCarthy.

Containment & MAD

Eisenhower accepted George Kennan's policy of containment as the best way to deal with the Soviets. However, Eisenhower wanted to avoid massive military buildups and the expense they would incur. Eisenhower knew the U.S. could not match the Communist armies “gun for gun;” therefore, he crafted a policy known as the “New Look.” Secretary of State Dulles developed a foreign policy that built on Kennan’s philosophy but took Eisenhower’s caution into mind.

Dulles proposed the U.S. build a massive nuclear deterrent that would prevent the Soviets (and Chinese) from attacking anywhere out of fear the U.S. would retaliate with nuclear weapons. Dulles called the policy “brinksmanship,” but critics called it “MAD:” Mutual Assured Destruction. MAD proved an effective deterrent for the next 4 decades.

Eisenhower and Dulles realized that MAD would work only if the U.S. had viable options for situations that didn’t qualify for brinksmanship. Eisenhower found his man in Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles’ brother. In 1953, Eisenhower appointed Allen Dulles as the first civilian head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A. Dulles was a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II. During the War, Dulles had worked in intelligence against the Nazis in Switzerland. Dulles was a master of covert actions. Under Dulles, the CIA undertook numerous operations to support friendly governments and to thwart Communist actions that threatened other governments.

Dulles’ first covert operations took place in Iran. The Soviets inherited the Russian obsession with warm-water ports (Russia has none that aren’t bottled by hostile or at least unfriendly nations). In 1953, the Socialist Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, nationalized the oil fields and production facilities in Iran, taking them from their British owners. Britain faced an energy crisis as a result. Mossadegh also deposed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The U.S. saw Soviet interference as the reason for Mossadegh’s moves. The British and American spy agencies composed Operation Ajax, in which the CIA funded and supported guerilla groups to overthrow Mossadegh. The operation was led by Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a grandson of Teddy Roosevelt. The operation was wildly successful; before the year ended, Mossaddegh was overthrown, the Shah was restored, and the oil production of Iran was split between the British, Americans, and Dutch. The Shah proved to be one of America’s staunchest allies during the Cold War.

The success of Operation Ajax came in handy later in 1954, this time in Guatemala. Guatemala’s new president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, nationalized land owned by the American company United Fruit Company. UFC controlled much of Guatemala’s economy. Arbenz then supported a strike by UFC’s banana workers for higher wages. The final blow came when Arbenz instituted land reform to give land to the peasants. Much of the land for the peasants came from UFC’s plantations. The Arbenz government offered $1.2 million for 234,000 acres of land.

UFC had powerful allies in Washington, including Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles (whose law firm represented UFC). Both the Dulles brothers were UFC stockholders. Eisenhower and his government feared a Communist takeover of Guatemala that would spread Communism throughout Central America. In response, the CIA put Operation PBSUCCESS into action. The operation supported a coup of Guatemalan army officers invading from Honduras. Arbenz was forced to flee; he was replaced by General Carlos Castillo Armas, who quickly established a military dictatorship and returned the land to United Fruit Company.

The sticking point in Eisenhower’s first-term foreign policy came in Indochina. Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had led the Viet Minh, his resistance group, in guerilla warfare against the Japanese during World War II. After the War, Ho declared Vietnam an independent nation; his declaration of independence from France borrowed terms verbatim from the American Declaration of Independence. The French insisted on restoring their empire in Indochina. The Americans needed French support in the United Nations and therefore reluctantly supported the reassertion of French control. The Vietnamese shifted their guerilla war to target the French.

Ho was a Communist, but he was not a Moscow puppet as Washington feared. Ho once said, “I only follow one party: the Vietnamese party.” The Eisenhower administration refused to send troops to Indochina but sent almost $3 billion in military aid to the French in Indochina.

The French, however, could never regain control. The Viet Minh refused to meet the French army in battle, preferring to wage guerilla warfare. In March 1954, the frustrated French finally sent an army to the jungle village of Dien Bien Phu and dared the Viet Minh to come after them. Ho complied. The Viet Minh actually dismantled artillery weapons and carried the pieces by hand through the jungle to the hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu, where the weapons were reassembled and used to blast the French troops. Without American air support, the French had chosen a hopeless place for their battle. The Viet Minh crushed the French forces; the remaining French troops surrendered on 7 May 1954.

The peace talks for Indochina were held in Geneva in 1954. France and Ho agreed to temporarily partition Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with the French to control territory south of the parallel and Ho to control territory north of the parallel. Free elections would be held in 1956 to determine the fate of the nation.

The U.S. refused to recognize the settlement, fearing that a united Vietnam would be a Communist Vietnam. Eisenhower feared a “domino theory” scenario whereby a Communist Vietnam would lead to Communist South Asia. When the French withdrew from the south, the American government formed an anti-Communist government supported by American economic and military aid, including military advisors. The first American troops arrived in South Vietnam on 12 February 1955. America suffered its first casualties in Vietnam when Dale Buis and Charles Ovnand were killed on 8 July 1959.

The containment policy suffered its first major setback in Hungary in 1956. Stalin died in 1953. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his policies at the Twentieth Communist Party Congress in Moscow. Eastern Europeans thought they detected a note of contrition in Khrushchev’s words. Hungary plunged into civil war, with protesters battling the Communist government in the streets. Eisenhower feared all-out war with the USSR if America intervened. The Americans refused to aid the anti-Communist forces in Hungary when the Soviets sent the Red Army in to restore control. Roughly 50,000 Hungarians and 7,000 Russians were killed in the Hungarian Revolution, and nearly 250,000 Hungarians poured out of the country. Among the dead were former prime minister Imre Nagy, who was executed by the Soviets for his part in the revolution.

Eisenhower faced one other major foreign policy crisis. In 1956, the new Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal and blockaded the Israeli port of Elat on the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel’s only outlet to the Red Sea. Israel responded by smashing into the Sinai Peninsula and destroying the Egyptian army there. British and French forces simultaneously retook the Suez Canal. Eisenhower and Dulles feared that the British and French participation would drive the Arab nations into the Soviet fold. Britain, France and Israel were pressured privately by the White House to withdraw from the captured areas; they complied, but grudgingly so. Nassar declared victory even though he accomplished nothing more than building a statue in Cairo to commemorate his “defeat” of the Jews.

The Suez Crisis had long-reaching consequences. British Prime Minster Anthony Eden was forced to resign. French premier Charles de Gaulle had never liked the Americans since World War II and certainly disliked them now after Dien Bien Phu and Suez. de Gaulle would later pull French troops from NATO command.

Eisenhower’s Domestic Policies: The Battle Against Segregation

Racism remained a huge stain on the American nation. Issues such as segregation continued to mar society in the 1950’s, but change was in the wind.

The Armed Forces led the way. During World War II, many segregated black units fought with distinction around the world. The most famous of these units included the Tuskegee Airmen, pilots who trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and flew fighter pilots in Italy. 992 men graduated from the program, and 450 went overseas to fight. 150 died in training or combat flights. The airmen joined the 99th Fighter Squadron and joined in escorting bombers. The Luftwaffe soon learned to avoid the 99th as its pilots fearlessly attacked anyone threatening their bombers, even if they were hopelessly outnumbered. The 99th never lost a bomber to enemy fighters. Harry Truman officially desegregated the Armed Forces with Executive Order 9981 in 1948.

As men returned home from the War, the black veterans were unprepared to accept the former status quo. However, the battle would be hard-fought, and victory would come in unlikely places.

In September 1953, Eisenhower nominated California Governor Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court as Chief Justice. The Senate approved him, and Warren set out to remake the Court.

Black attorneys had been attacking segregation for over a decade, choosing their battles in such a way as to negate Plessy v. Ferguson. The NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, headed by Thurgood Marshall and William Hastie, chose cases from areas of educational fields to set precedents as they fought up the judicial ladder to the Supreme Court.

In 1950, the Court had ruled in Sweatt v. Painter that the all-white law school in Austin, Texas must admit a black applicant because there was no comparable facility in the state, violating the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma, the Court ruled against the state when its graduate school of education admitted a black student but provided a separate space in which he had to sit in class and in the library.

Public schools were next. The NAACP looked for a situation that would strike Plessy from elementary schools. In Topeka, Kansas, Rev. Oliver Brown sued the school district because his daughter could not attend a neighborhood school only a few blocks from their home. Instead, Brown’s daughter had to attend a colored school a mile from their home. The Supreme Court heard Brown’s case in 1953 in conjunction with 4 other cases. Chief Justice Warren insisted on unanimity in the ruling. On 7 May 1954, the Court ruled 9-0 against the Topeka Board of Education, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1955, the Court finished its ruling in Brown by ordering state compliance “with all deliberate speed.”

Reaction in the South was furious. Southern Senators urged defiance of the ruling, the KKK re-emerged, and 96 Southern Senators and Congressmen — all Democrats — signed the “Southern Manifesto” accusing the Supreme Court of overstepping its bounds and calling for resistance to integration.

Tensions grew worse with the murder of Emmett Till, a black Chicago teenager visiting relatives in Mississippi. After Till was accused of flirting with a white woman, he was kidnapped, tortured and killed. Till’s mother held his wake with the casket open so everyone could see what the lynch mob had done to her son. Pictures of Till’s mutilated body swept the nation as newspapers published them on front pages. In Mississippi, however, the two white men charged with his murder were set free over the jury deliberated only an hour.

The battleground shifted to Montgomery, Alabama in the most unlikely way. The Montgomery bus system was segregated; blacks had to sit in the back, and if too many whites were on the busses, black patrons had to stand. On 1 December 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks (a member of the local NAACP) boarded a bus to go home from work. When a white rider boarded the bus, Parks refused to surrender her seat. The bus driver called the police, who arrested Parks.

News of Parks’ arrest spread quickly. Blacks began boycotting the Montgomery bus system, led by a group called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Over 35,000 handbills were printed and distributed encouraging blacks to boycott the busses. The MIA chose new minister Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the boycott.

King had become the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1953. He was chosen because of his youth (he was only 26) and his occupation. King was steeped in the writings of Henry David Thoreau and had studied Mahatma Ghandi’s successful resistance to the British in India. King decided that only a non-violent struggle would succeed in overturning segregation.

The boycott was wildly successful. Black riders organized carpools; local insurance companies began pulling auto insurance policies. The black organizers arranged insurance coverage through Lloyd’s of London. Black taxi drivers dropped their fares to match bus fares. The bus system teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, while white merchants in the downtown area suffered enormous economic losses. King’s home, along with that of Ralph David Abernathy, another black minister, was bombed. 156 boycotting protesters were arrested, including King. King’s arrest brought nationwide attention to the boycott. One boycotter, “Mother” Pollard, summarized the boycott with her famous phrase, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.”

In June 1956, federal courts struck down Alabama’s segregation laws in public transportation in Browder v. Gayle. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling in November, and the boycott ended in victory on 21 December.

The fight against segregation would continue past the boycott, but the combination of Brown and the Montgomery bus boycott sounded the death nell of state-instituted segregation.

Eisenhower’s Second Term

As the 1956 elections approached, the country saw no reason to change presidents. Eisenhower won even bigger in 1956 than he had in 1952, but the Democrats won larger majorities in both Houses of Congress. The nation seemed optimistic regarding the future.

Part of the optimism revolved around a new nationwide project. At Eisenhower’s urging, Congress passed the Federal Highway Act of 1956 authorizing $25 billion in new taxes to build a 40,000 mile system of federal highways connecting all cities with more than 50,000 people. In 1919, the young officer Eisenhower had tried to cross the nation with an Army unit; the trip lasted 62 days. Eisenhower had been impressed with the German Autobahn system he found in Europe.

The Interstate system proved Eisenhower’s greatest legacy. The system took nearly 40 years to complete, but it opened the nation’s economy to the greatest prosperity known in the world. Companies such as Roy Kroc’s McDonald’s and Kemmons Wilson’s Holiday Inn sprang up across the nation, following the highways.

The optimism of the Interstate system, however, could not withstand further events in the war on segregation.

Eisenhower had disagreed with the Brown decision, but he declared, “... the Supreme Court has spoken, and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional processes in this country; and I will obey.” The time for Eisenhower’s obedience came in 1957. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus defied a federal court order to integrate Central High School, the all-white high school.

In retrospect, events showed that Faubus made his stand solely on political grounds; he was facing a tough re-election bid and needed something to overcome the unpopularity of a new statewide tax to increase teachers’ salaries. However, Faubus’ stand against integration was never forgotten by black leaders in the state.

On 4 September 1957, 9 black students (later known as the Little Rock Nine) attempted to attend school at Central High. A mob of over 1,000 white protestors showed up. When Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending the school, Eisenhower decisively responded by nationalizing the Guard and then sending 1,200 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students to their classes. The paratroopers remained in Little Rock until Eisenhower was convinced the trouble had passed.

Eisenhower’s problems with education increased on 4 October 1957, when the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. Americans had thought the nation was ahead scientifically and technologically; Sputnik shocked the nation. Suddenly critics charged the American education system was failing to produce scientists and engineers to match the Soviet threat.

In December, America attempted to launch a satellite of its own; instead the Vanguard rocket crashed and burned on takeoff. People began clamoring for a national space program, but Eisenhower continued to insist the U.S. was well ahead in rocket technology.

Eisenhower could not tell the nation how he obtained his information, but U-2 spy planes had been flying over the USSR at 70,000 feet for years. The flights were illegal because they violated Soviet airspace. Eisenhower could not reveal the source of his information without admitting the reality of the flights.

Eisenhower’s problems grew in May 1960, when he was on his way to a summit with Khrushchev in Paris. Khrushchev revealed that a U-2 spy plane had been shot down over Soviet territory. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, survived the crash and then failed to commit suicide. Powers was shown on worldwide television. Eisenhower took full responsibility for the flight, but Khrushchev angrily withdrew an offer for Eisenhower to visit the USSR.

Eisenhower was preparing to retire in 1960. In his farewell, address, the president warned the nation against giving too much power to a “military-industrial complex” fed by federal dollars defending the Free World.

The 1960 Elections

Since Eisenhower could not run again, his vice-president, Richard Nixon, ran on the Republican ticket. The Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy surprised everyone by choosing Lyndon Baines Johnson as his running mate.

JFK was everything Nixon wasn’t: Young, flamboyant, and immensely charismatic. The nation was taken with his wife, Jacqueline. However, Kennedy was a Roman Catholic. Kennedy met this challenge directly, stating that “if this election is decided on the basis that 40,000,000 Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser in the eyes of history.”

Kennedy carried the day in televised debates with Nixon. Kennedy appeared relaxed and well-informed on TV, while Nixon appeared tired and rattled. In the end, JFK won the election 303 electoral votes to 219; however, the popular vote was the closest since 1888.