Students will examine shifts in American domestic and foreign policy in post-war America, under President Eisenhower.

1. The Eisenhower Years; 1952-1956 Tues.-Wednesday,April 23-24
US History
Objectives: Students will…
Examine the direction change of domestic and foreign policies during the Eisenhower administration.
Instructions: Students will…
 Read the following and answer the 30 questions on Cornell Notes. Due tomorrow.
 Test Friday
Essential Question: How did domestic and foreign policy changes affect American society and
culture?
The Eisenhower Team,1952-1956
The last two years of the Truman Administration were marked by waves of partisan
propaganda which quite concealed the major improvements being made in the American
defense posture. The American people were irritated and puzzled by the stalemate in
Korea exactly as the Soviets intended them to be. Disruption of the lives of individuals in
a war which was not a war, in which nothing seemed to be achieved except unnecessary
casualties, and which disrupted the pleasures of the postwar economic boom with
military service, shortages, restrictions, and cost-of-living inflation could not help but
breed discontent.
1. Explain the meaning of the phrase “…a war which was not a war”,as it relates to the Korean
conflict.
The Republican-Dixiecrat alliance in the Congress made it impossible
to deal with domestic problems in any decisive way or with foreign problems outside the
independent authority of the presidential office. And through it all the mobilized wealth
of the country, in alliance with most of the press, kept up a constant barrage of
"Communists in Washington," "twenty years of treason,"or "corruption of the Missouri
gang"in the Truman Administration, and created a generalpicture of incompetence and
bungling shot through with subversion. In creating this picture the leaders of the
Republican Party totally committed themselves to the ... [policies] of the neo-isolationists
and of the ... Right.
In June 1951, Senator McCarthy delivered in the Senate a speech of 60,000 words
attacking General Marshall as a man "steeped in falsehood," who has "recourse to the lie
whenever it suits his convenience,"one of the architects of America's foreign policy
made by "men high in this Government [who] are concerting to deliver us to disaster . . .
a conspiracy of infamy so black that when it is finally exposed,its principals shall he
forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men...."
2. What can one infer about General Marshall, based on the quotes by Senator McCarthy?
When Truman tried to defend his subordinates, an action which Dulles resolutely
refused to do when he became Secretary of State in 1953, Senator Taft attacked the
President for this combination of human decency with the established legal privileges of
the English-speaking world: he was wrong, according to Taft,to "assume the innocence
of all the persons mentioned in the State Department....Whether Senator McCarthy has
legal evidence, whetherhe has overstated or understated his case, is of lesser importance.
The question is whether the communist influence in the State Department still exists."
Following the tendencies of the day, Taft reversed his previous support of the Korean
War, calling it an "unnecessary war,"an "utterly useless war,"a war "begun by President
Truman without the slightest authority from Congress or the people."

2. 3. When Senator Taft attacked Truman for assuming “…the innocence of all the persons
mentioned in the State Department”…what is Senator Taft questioning?
4. Explain how Truman could take the country to war without the authority from Congress?
A semiofficial version of the Republican position appeared in John Foster Dulles's
article "A Policy of Boldness," which was published in Life on May 19, 1952. This
advocated rejection of "containment" in favor of "liberation," to be achieved on a smaller
budget and with reduction of the armed forces leading to a conclusive victory in the near
future. All concessions to reality were rejected out of hand: containment itself was
damned as fragmentary reactions to Soviet pressure,as negative, endless, and partial, as
"treadmill policies which, at best, might perhaps keep us in the same place until we drop
exhausted."In place of these,Dulles offered liberation and massive retaliation. These two
were not expressly linked together since, apparently, the former (applied chiefly to
eastern Europe) would be achieved simply by making clear that the United States wanted
it. At least, Dulles believed it would come when American policy made "it publicly
known that it wants and expects liberation to occur."The disastrous consequence of this
... [policy] appeared in 1956 when East Germany and Hungary rose against the Russians
and were crushed by Soviet tanks without Dulles raising a hand to help. The threat of
instant massive retaliation as the sole weapon by which the United States would get
Russia to adopt more acceptable policies was equally unrealistic. No one, not even
Dulles, dared to use it in the face ofthe Soviet Union's capability for retaliation. Nuclear
blackmail is bad, but nuclear blackmail in which the blackmailer has no intention or
opportunity to inflict his penalty is pointless and dangerous—unless,perhaps,such
threats help to win elections.
5. John Foster Dulles was in favor of using massive retaliation as the sole weapon against the
Soviets to liberate nations from communism. Explain why this position was unrealistic.
It helped win an election for Eisenhower in 1952. The candidate had no particular
assets except a bland and amiable disposition combined with his reputation as a
victorious general. He also had a weakness,one which is frequently found in his
profession, the conviction that anyone who has become a millionaire, even by
inheritance, is an authoritative person on almost any subject. With Eisenhower as
candidate, combined with Richard Nixon, the ruthless enemy ofinternal subversion,as a
running mate, and using a campaign in which the powers of Madison Avenue publicity
mobilized all the forces of American discontent behind the neo-isolationist program,
victory in November, 1952, was assured. The coup de grâce was given to the Democratic
candidate, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, darling of the academic intellectuals,
when Eisenhower adopted Emmet Hughes's suggestion that he promise, if elected, to go
to Korea to make peace.
6. Identify Eisenhower’s running mate in the ’52 presidential election and what does Quigley call
him?
Although not himself a neo-isolationist or a reactionary, Eisenhower had few deep
personal convictions, and was eager to be President. When his advisers told him that he
must collaborate with the ... Right, he went all the way,even to the extent of condoning
Senator McCarthy's attack on General Marshall. This occurred when Eisenhower, under
McCarthy's pressure,removed from a Wisconsin speech a favorable reference to
Marshall.
7. How did Eisenhower go along with the Right and its purge of communists from the government?
Once elected, the new President reintroduced the Republican conception of the
Presidency which had been used in 192l-1933. This conception saw the President as a
kind of titular chairman of the board who neither acted himselfdirectly nor intervened
indirectly in the actions ofhis delegated assistants. Fully aware of his own limitations of

3. both knowledge and energy, Eisenhower allotted the functions of government to his
Cabinet members ("eight millionaires and a plumber,'' according to one writer) and
expected to be consulted himself only in unsettled disputes or major policy changes.
8. How did President Eisenhower see the office of the Presidency?
Over-all government operations were divided into two parts, with John Foster Dulles,
as secretary of state,in charge of foreign affairs, and ex-Governor Sherman Adams of
New Hampshire (in place of Taft, who died in 1953) as assistant President in charge of
domestic matters. Apart from these, the realtone of the Administration was provided by
three businessmen: George Humphrey, a Taft Republican and president of the great
holding company of M. A. Hanna and Company, was secretary of the treasury and the
most influential member of the Cabinet; Charles Wilson, president of General Motors,
was secretary of defense; and Joseph M. Dodge, a Detroit banker with extensive
government experience, was director of the budget, the only man in the government who
could, with impunity, do or undo Acts of Congress.
9. How did Eisenhower divide government operations?
The chief aim of the Administration, and almost the sole aim of these three,was to reduce government
spending, and subsequently business taxes,by the greatest amount that would not jeopardize reelection
in 1956. Dulles and Adams had to work within the financial framework thus provided.
Within this framework foreign policy was boxed, even more narrowly, between the
realities of the country's world position and the constant hounding of the neo-isolationist
groups in Congress who had been roused to a pitch of unholy expectation by the
encouragement they had received from Eisenhower and Nixon during the electoral
campaign of 1952. In that campaign they had discovered that Eisenhower could be
pushed. They now concluded that their pushing from without, combined with the pulling
of Dulles and Nixon from within, could overthrow the foreign-policy lines established by
the Truman Administration in the preceding six years and create a new policy more in
accord with their ... ideas of the nature of the world. Opposed to this change were the old
defenders of the Atlantic System, the remnants of former Wall Street influence, the Ivy
League colleges, the foundations, the newspaper spokesmen of this point of view (The
New York Times and Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Post)
led by Walter Lippmann, and the unrepentant scientists and “eggheads” straggling behind
Adlai Stevenson.
10. Explain the chief aim of the Eisenhower administration and identify whom was opposed to these
new policies.
Eisenhower as President can be summed up in one word: amiability. He not only liked
people; he was also eager to be liked, and was,indeed, likable. If he gave the impression
that he had no firmly held convictions, that was because of two other qualities: he was
relaxed, fully willing to live and let live, in an easy-going tolerance of anything which did
not disturb his own peace of mind. He was quick-tempered but not a fighter. He had
convictions, none of them very firm, but he was not prepared to sacrifice his own rest and
relaxation for them, except for brief occasions. His span of attention was neither long nor
intense. As a consequence,he was a wonderful companion, but not a leader.
11. Describe,in your own words, Eisenhower’s Presidency.
In all this, the President was the antithesis of his secretary of state. John Foster Dulles
was a tireless and energetic fighter, full of convictions, most of which he saw in black-and-

4. white terms. He rarely rested and had little time for any relaxation because the world
was full of evil forces with which he must wage constant battle. Tolerance and the right
to be neutral were to him largely words which had little realmeaning in his tightly wound
neurological system. To Dulles it was a realeffort not to equate opposition with evil. As
he hurried throughout the world, traveling 226,645 miles in his first three years in office,
in pursuit of Communism, he was like John Wesley, two centuries earlier, racing through
England in pursuit of sin, both men fully convinced that they were doing the work of
God.
12 . Describe,in your own words, the character of John Foster Dulles. Contrast his character to that
of Eisenhower.
Eisenhower, who saw the world as a place almost without evil, once told an adviser,
"You and I can argue issues all day and it won't affect our friendship, but the minute I
question your motives you will never forgive me."This lesson would have been lost on
the secretary of state,for Dulles, almost alone in a world full of sin, was always seeking
the reason behind the event, the motive behind the action, and was obligated by his own
alignment with righteousness to denounce the reason and the motive when he had
discovered them.
It must be evident from this that Eisenhower and Dulles, in spite of their close
cooperation and almost unruffled personal relations, were very dissimilar, both in
personality and in outlook. Dulles was considerably to the right of Eisenhower, and the
Republican congressional party was far to the right of Dulles. As a result, the two were
under constant pressure from the party's isolationist leaders in Congress and from the
party's big financial supporters to go further toward neo-isolationism and the Right than
either Dulles or Eisenhower considered safe.
13. Identify where Eisenhower,Dulles and the Republican Congress were on the political spectrum.
14. Explain why both Dulles and Eisenhower considered it un-safe to go more to the Right?
To avoid this, the Administration had to do two basically contradictory things: to make verbal
concessions to the Right and to find its congressional legislative support among the Democrats. In 1953
alone, according to the Congressional Quarterly Almanac, the "Democrats saved the President . . . fifty-
eight times"by their votes in Congress. Some examples of this skirmishing, in what was locally known as
the "Battle of the Potomac," form a necessary background to the development of international affairs in
Eisenhower's eight years.
15. What did Eisenhower’s administration have to do to make both sides, Right and Left, happy and
what were these political skirmishes known locally as?
The Republican platform of July 1952 had promised to "repudiate all commitments contained in secret
understandings such as those of Yalta which aid Communist enslavements."In his first speech as
secretary,Dulles spoke of the liberation of satellite peoples, and told them, "You can count upon us."
The Republicans in Congress from then on kept demanding support of these two promises, beginning
with a resolution to repudiate Yalta and Potsdam. The Administration ... oppose[d] this congressional
desire to take campaign talk seriously, since any repudiation of past agreements could be done by Russia
more easily than by us.... Eventually the resolution was dropped.
16. Explain the Republican platform of promising to “repudiate all commitments contained in secret
understandings…”.
17. Identify what eventually became of this resolution?
Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., confided to a businessmen's luncheon in
Chicago that President Truman, knowing that Harry Dexter White was a Russian spy, had
promoted him from assistant secretary of the treasury to executive director of the United

5. States Mission to the International Monetary Fund in 1946. Chairman Harold Velde of
the House Committee on Un-American Activities at once issued a subpoena to the ex-
President to testify before the committee. The summons was ignored. In the resulting
controversy Senator McCarthy attacked the Administration over a nationwide broadcast
for its failure to force all nations, beginning with Britain, to cease their trade with Red
China by threatening to cut off our economic aid. We should say, "If you continue to ship
to Red China . . . you will not get one cent of American money."
The fact that our allies provided us ... with military bases on their own soil from which
our strategic pressure on the Soviet Union was maintained meant nothing to the Right.
18. What did Attorney General Brownell revealabout Truman’s knowledge of Harry Dexter White
and how did White benefit from this knowledge?
19. What legal action was taken against the former president and how did he respond?
20. What did Senator McCarthy then call for, from nations receiving aid from the U.S.?
Under Right-wing attacks such as these,Eisenhower was largely disillusioned with his job by the summer
of 1953 and spent much time over the next two years considering how he might get rid of the dominant
Republican Right and form a new, middle-of-the-road Eisenhower Party. The impracticality of this
became apparent to him long before the election of 1956.
These attacks from the Right were much less disturbing to Dulles than they were to the President. The
Secretary of State was clear in his own mind on what his aims in foreign policy should be. These aims
were largely acceptable to the neo-isolationists and congressional Republicans. Basic to these ideas was
his conception of "massive retaliation."This was publicly announced in his speech of January 12, 1954,
before the Council of Foreign Relations, but had been forecast in his article in Life almost two years
earlier. "Massive retaliation"here meant nuclear reprisal by strategic bombing. It was conceived
as an alternative to limited war and was intended to be a deterrent to Soviet instigation of
such local limited wars.
21. Why is Eisenhower largely disillusioned with his job by 1953?
22. What does Secretary of State Dulles mean by “massive retaliation” and what was this intended to
be used for? Explain
The points at which it would be applied or the degree of aggression necessary to trigger it were both left
ambiguous, in the hope that the threat would deter aggression in all areas and on all levels. Dulles
was really rejecting the whole idea oflimited war, and sawlocal defense only as a trigger
mechanism for tripping massive retaliation. In this view he was at one with most of the Eisenhower
Administration. Secretary Wilson, for example, said, "'We can no longer afford to fight
limited war."Of course,he was thinking in monetary terms. General Gavin, who heard
this statement,replied, "If we cannot afford to fight limited wars, then we cannot afford to survive, for
that is the only kind of war we can afford to fight." He was thinking of the cost in terms of human lives.
23. How is Secretary of State Dulles hoping to deter aggression on all levels?
As a corollary to the idea of massive retaliation as deterrence, Dulles had the
additional idea of local defense,and especially local alliances, as triggers. Combined with
this was his refusal to accept anything but a two-bloc world, by his resolute refusal to
recognize any right to anyone to be neutral. On June 9, 1956, in a speech at Iowa State
College, he said that America had made bilateral treaties with forty-two countries and
that these agreements "abolish, as between the parties, the principle of neutrality, which
pretends that a nation can best gain safety for itself by being indifferent to the fate of
others. This has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very
exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception."Thus the
Secretary of State indicated his readiness to abandon the nonaligned countries to the
Soviet bloc, and gave Stalin's successors in the Kremlin a tactical opportunity they were

6. already exploiting.
24. How is Secretary of State Dulles ready to abandon non-aligned countries to the Soviets? Explain.
At the same time, as we shall see in a moment, Dulles's treatment of
our chief allies was generally so autocratic and even contemptuous that they were soon
alienated, especially France,which did not have the "special relationship"with us which
kept Great Britain at our side through any slights.
The reason for these actions by Dulles was that he was really an isolationist,
convinced that American defense rested wholly on American strength, and, accordingly,
he did not regard his treaty partners as allies at al1, but rather as a part of an elaborate
network oftriggers surrounding the Soviet Union.The chief portions of this network
were three regional pacts: NATO,the Baghdad Pact (later called CENTRO,or Central
Treaty Organization), and SEATO (or Southeast Asian Treaty Organization). NATO
included the United States, Canada,and thirteen other states from Iceland to Turkey (by
May 1955).
25. Secretary of Defense Dulles, was convinced that American defense rested on what? What did he
think of American allies and their role in this defense?
26. Identify the three regional pacts in this network of allies.
Objectives: Students will…
Describe how music changes in the 1950’s to reflect changes in American society?
By Charles F. McGovern, Associate Professor of American Studies and History,
College of William and Mary http://americasmusic.tribecafilminstitute.org/session/view/rock
The music we know as rock and roll emerged in the mid 1950s, although its advent had been on the
horizon for at least a decade. A quarter of the American population moved during World War II,
and that brought southern, rural, sacred and secular traditions into newcontact with urban based
music and audiences. The product of many regional musical scenes and independent record labels, rock
and roll emerged in Memphis, Los Angeles, Shreveport, New York, Detroit, Baltimore, and dozens of
other cities. It was, in historian Charlie Gillett’s words, the “Sound of the City”.
27. How did southern traditions influence music and audiences in the 1950s?
Rock and roll drew on many different styles. Combining the boogie woogie rhythms of R&B, the
hillbilly twang of country, the fervor of gospel and the moans of the blues, the new mongrel music excited
a worldwide generation of young listeners, while upsetting established social, cultural and musical
authorities. The charisma and musical bravado of early rock and roll heroes such as Elvis Presley,Chuck
Berry and Little Richard inspired fans and young musicians alike. With the maturing of an
unprecedentedly vast and affluent teenage audience, rock and roll music became the sound of young
America and soon spread around the world.
It is difficult today to understand the bitter criticism the new music generated. Some radio stations
refused to play the new music, claiming that its lyrics promoted sex and delinquency. Moral authorities,
black and white, were quick to condemn the music for its supposed sexual references,and they targeted
key performers from Elvis Presley to Fats Domino for censorship or ridicule.
28. Why did rock and roll pose such a threat to middle class propriety in its first few decades? What
were the greatest threats perceived by the opponents of rock and roll?

7. Finally, columnists, critics, educators and police all feared the overt racial mixing of not only the music,
but its audiences. At a time when American race relations were severely tested by massive white
Southern resistance to integration, and northern dismissal of black rights, rock and roll remade integration
in a cultural form. Sexual, working class and multi-racial, rock and roll transgressed the most fiercely
guarded social boundaries of the time.
29. Some musicians have claimed that rock and roll did as much for civil rights as many politicians.
Why would they make such a claim, and why would it be true?
30. Listen to the following and explain (evidence by example) how the lyrics and actions of the
performers frightened conservative parents during the 1950s.
Little Richard “Tutti Frutti”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pjP_XkK4U&list=RDX7pjP_XkK4U
Original lyrics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP2fzGGvDX4
Elvis Presley “Jailhouse Rock” sexually suggestive?
"Jailhouse Rock"
T he warden threw a party in the county jail.
T he prison band was there and they began to wail.
T he band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing.
Y ou should've heard those knocked out jailbirds sing.
Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.
Spider M urphy played the tenor saxophone,
Little Joe was blowin' on the slide trombone.
T he drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang,
the whole rhythm section was the P urple Gang.
Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.
Number forty-seven said to number three:
"Y ou're the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
come on and do the Jailhouse Rock with me."
Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.
T he sad sack was a sittin' on a block of stone
way over in the corner weepin' all alone.
T he warden said, "Hey, buddy, don't you be no square.
If you can't find a partner use a wooden chair."
Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.
Shifty Henry said to Bugs, "For Heaven's sake,
no one's lookin', now's our chance to make a break."
Bugsy turned to Shifty and he said, "Nix nix,
I wanna stick around a while and get my kicks."
Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock.