Promise and Fear in the 1950s
The phase “DROP! DUCK! And COVER!” and the arrival of the fallout shelter were as familiar to 1950s Americans as the television show I Love Lucy and the suburban tract home. But with all the prosperity of the 1950s, the threat of communism and nuclear attack was always looming close by. Never before had there been so much promise at home but so much danger abroad. The dichotomy of this unique time in American history is the focus of the newest exhibition, Cold War: Promise and Fear in the 1950s, at the Museum of History, through December 30, 2001.
Johnson County’s modern identity was forged during the dangerous year of the early Cold War. As Johnson Countians tried to return to a routine life following World War II, they were quickly confronted with a world polarized by two very different points of view: the capitalist “West” vs. the communist “East.” The United States and the Soviet Union were the only superpowers remaining after the destruction of World War II and each struggled for dominance. The Cold War erupted largely as a result of their differing political, economic, and social philosophies. As Johnson Countians pursued the good life, they did so under the shadow of Soviet communism and the looming threat of nuclear war.
The Korean War
The first “hot war” of the Cold War erupted in 1951. The Korean Conflict tested America’s long-term commitment to containing the spread of communism. The United States decided to “draw the line” in Korea, believing that the Soviets were behind the civil war between North and South. Americans, under the leadership of President Truman, fought a “limited war” – one without the use of nuclear weapons and confined to Korea. Support of President Truman’s decision to enter the war was initially very high in Johnson County. However, as reports of casualties and deaths increased, local support for Truman waned. As well, many sided with Douglas MacArthur when the famous general was relieved of his command.
The wrong man was fired. In relieving General MacArthur President Truman sought to drape himself with the Constitution. Where was his concern for the Constitution when he precipitated us – wholly unprepared – into the Korean War – without Congressional action?
Johnson County’s U.S. Congressman Errett P. Schrivner, April 1951
At the end of 1953, 756 Johnson County men and women were serving in the Armed Forces; ten men from the county were killed in action during the Korean Conflict. When an armistice was finally signed, North and South Korean remained divided. For many Americans accustomed to victory, the frustrating war was considered a defeat. However, the goals of the United States were accomplished: communism was contained to Korea and the war did remain limited.
The Arms Race
After the Korean War, the United States and Soviet Union sought to match each other’s military strength in an escalating arms race. Fearing that each increase in arms jeopardized national security and upset the balance of power in the world, the two nations competed by building massive arsenals of both nuclear missiles and conventional weapons. Although the U.S. was at peace throughout much of the 1950s, the military and government still purchased billions of dollars worth of weapons and new military technology from private defense contractors every year. This relationship, known as the military industrial complex, kept the nation prepared but also continued to fuel the Cold War.
The military industrial complex manifested itself in Johnson County at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant and with the newly created Nike Hercules nuclear missiles. Sunflower was not closed after Korea, as it had been after World War II. Still owned by the government, but operated by the Hercules Powder Company, Sunflower continued to produce rocket propellants until the plant was placed on “stand-by” status in 1958.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. also implemented the Nike system – the world’s first successful, surface-to-air guided missile system – to defend the nation’s cities from Russian bomber aircraft. Gardner, in Johnson County, was home to one of four Nike missile bases built around Kansas City. The other three were located in Lawson and Pleasant Hill, Missouri, and Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Together they were designated the 5th Missile Battalion of the Army’s 55th Artillery. The state-of-the-art Nike Hercules missiles at these bases were armed with nuclear warheads and designed to destroy entire formations of incoming Soviet bombers. The Nike Hercules could carry either a conventional warhead or one of three nuclear warheads: a “small” 3-kiloton (kt) device, a “medium” 20-kt, or a “high” 30-kt. By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15-kt.
The missile is as safe as a well run service station and is as important as the police and fire department…
Colonel Leslie J. Straub, Army Air Defense Command, August 1957
Civil Defense
The detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 also fueled the arms race and was the impetus for the United States Congress to pass legislation creating the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in 1950. The FCDA coordinated efforts to help people prepare for, and survive, a nuclear attack. Local civil defense organizations sponsored meetings to educate the public on matters such as radiation, home preparation, bomb shelter construction and supply, first aid, fire fighting, and evacuation.
Americans were encouraged to prepare themselves for atomic war by building home bomb shelters. The government advised citizens that while millions of Americans would be killed by the heat and blast of a nuclear attack, millions could survive if they protected themselves from radioactive fallout. Local civil defense agencies provided designs for “do-it-yourself” home bomb shelters, while private construction companies commercialized the concept. Bomb shelters ranged from inexpensive “foxhole models” which sold for as little as $13.00, to more deluxe “suites” that cost as much as $5,000.
Nearly all organized civil defense programs in Johnson County operated on the premise that because it was so close to Kansas City, as well as home to the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, the Olathe Naval Air Station, and the Nike missile base, Johnson County could reasonably expect “a bombing attack disaster.”
…there is no question in my mind that we will eventually get the A-bomb dropped on us.
Captain James H. Flatley, commanding officer, Olathe Naval Air Station, April 1951
By 1960, civil defense agencies advised that Johnson County could expect a 100 percent death rate if Kansas City were hit. If Richards-Gebaur Air Force base in rural Jackson County, Missouri, were the target, the prediction was 50 percent dead, 35 percent injured, and only 15 percent uninjured.
McCarthyism
The fight against communism was not just fueled by global politics. Convinced that “Reds” were lurking everywhere, ready to undermine the country from within, America became obsessed with identifying and investigating communists, spies, and those considered “security risks.” The most notorious figure of the national witch hunt for communists was Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Paranoid citizens were taught to be suspicious of others and to question the “Americanism” of those who expressed dissenting viewpoints or lived alternative lifestyles. Thousands were falsely accused of being communists by loyalty probes and congressional hearings.
Anti-communism also influenced the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Often, opponents accused civil rights activists of being communists in the hope that the damaging stigma would discourage them. Esther Brown and her husband Paul, of Merriam, were among of the first targets of this type of anti-communist intimidation in Johnson County. Esther was involved in the Civil Rights movement and worked to desegregate the South Park Elementary School in Merriam in late 1940s. As a result of her activities, unknown informants went to the FBI with false accusations that the Browns were disloyal and associated with communists. Paul Brown was forced to leave his job and the Air Force Reserve pressured him to resign his post because he had “supported and sympathized with unspecified Communist-front organizations.” Reproduced copies of the couples’ censored FBI files are included in the exhibition. The Browns, innocent of all charges, continued to work for social justice in spite of the accusations against them.
We were among the first targets of virulent McCarthyism.
Paul Brown
In addition the abuses of McCarthyism, anti-communism also helped create something of a national consensus. By constantly contrasting the “virtue” of the U.S. to the “evil” of the Soviet Union, Americans in the 1940s came together to celebrate common patriotic, religious, and political values. Newspapers regularly admonished Johnson County residents to “…promote a crusade on just plain unadulterated patriotic pride,” in response to the Soviet menace. Likewise, in 1954 Congress modified the Pledge of Allegiance to include the phrase “one nation under God.” In this way American children could distinguish this key difference between the religious “Free world” and the atheist “Communist World” because Soviet children could not claim that their nation was under God.
The Eisenhower Presidency
Despite the strife at home, President Dwight D. Eisenhower did succeed in giving Americans steady leadership in this very dangerous era. The folksy “Ike” projected a comforting image of grandfatherly calm, integrity, and self-assurance. Between 1953 and 1961, the former General successfully combined his concerns for domestic needs with his strength in foreign policy. And although Eisenhower was unsuccessful in thawing the Cold War or ending the arms race, the U.S. enjoyed one of the most prosperous decades of the 20th century under his presidency.
America liked Ike and so did Johnson Countians. In a county of around 63,000, Eisenhower received a record 29,023 votes in 1952 compared to his Democratic opponent, Adalai Stevenson’s 10,960. Ike carried all but one of his home state’s 105 counties that year with his biggest majorities coming in Johnson and Sedgwick. In his reelection bid in 1956, Johnson County again gave Ike 35,511 votes to Stevenson’s 14,185.
In Olathe the day was virtually a semi-holiday. Business houses borrowed TV sets from dealers, school children watched the ceremony and parade through the noon hour and those who could stayed home and spent the day watching the historic event.
Description of President Eisenhower’s inauguration, Olathe Mirror, January 22, 1953
One of the key areas where Eisenhower successfully incorporated his concern for domestic needs with his strength in foreign policy was the creation of the Interstate and Defense Highway System. The President feared that the nation’s existing highways were inadequate to either evacuate major cities in the event of a nuclear attack or move the military cross-country. In response, he passed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, which authorized the construction of a new 41,000-mile interstate highway system. Build over a 13-year period, the $31 billion project was intended to promote commerce as well as aid in national defense. The word “Defense” eventually faded from the official name, but the national system of highways encouraged tourism while helping more Americans get to the suburbs.
The first stretch of the new interstate system in the nation was an 8-mile section of Interstate 70 west of Topeka completed in November 1956. In fact, in the first 3-year phase (1956-1959) of the Interstate and Defense Highway System, three routes were approved for Kansas: (1) Interstate 70 extending over the Kansas Turnpike from Kansas City to Topeka and then west to Oakley, Colby, and the Colorado line; (2) Interstate 135 from Wichita north to Newton and Salina; and (3) Interstate 35 beginning at Kansas City and running southwest to Olathe, Ottawa, Emporia, Wichita and the Oklahoma line. Since Olathe was roughly the midway point of the section of I-35 from Kansas City to Ottawa, the official opening ceremony of I-35 was held there on October 1, 1959.
Beyond the 1950s
After coming close to nuclear destruction during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the United States and Soviet Union began working toward some type of “peaceful coexistence.” Still, the Cold War continued for over 25 more years, through another was of containment in Vietnam in the 1960s, a “détente,” or lessening, in the 1970s, and a renewal in the 1980s. Finally, by the late 1980s, the two nations were forced to move toward a more lasting peace. Faced with trillions of dollars of debt, neglected social programs, deteriorating infrastructure, and a diminished position in the world, both the United States and Soviet Union chose to end the conflict in order to restore their badly damaged economies and preserve their global position.
--ALBUM vol. 14, no. 2 (spring 2001)