Fifty Years Ago

The Republicans Get Their Man
Summer 1952
By Bret Hovell
Although the summer of 1952 was a time of domestic prosperity, that did not necessarily connote domestic tranquility. The economy of the United States was on its way to producing an output of $350 billion, the largest to date. General Motors began building cars with air conditioning and the U.S. won seventy-six medals in the Olympic games in Helsinki, Finland, seven more than our Soviet rivals. Puerto Rico became the first self-governed commonwealth of the U.S.; Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine. America was reading Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, and watching I Love Lucy.

Winter of Discontent
Winter 1951-52
By JT Dykman
1951-1952 was indeed a "winter of discontent" for the United States. Americans were frustrated by a stalemated war in Asia that had ended the career of General Douglas MacArthur because he wanted to win it and had tarnished President Truman who only seemed to want not to lose it. Americans were being killed and wounded in a conflict without movement, and no end was in sight. Senator Joseph McCarthy, (R) Wisconsin, was at the height of his domestic anticommunist accusations and could ruin any citizen with a whisper. National primaries would begin in late winter to select the next President and both parties were in disarray. President Truman refused to say if he would run again and no other candidate predominated the Democratic Party. The Republicans were split between conservative isolationists led by Senator Taft of Ohio and moderates like Henry Cabot Lodge who were shaken by the defeat of Dewey in 1948 and believed that in order to win this time the party needed entirely new, less dogmatic, leadership.

Eisenhower calls for a "United States of Europe"
Summer 1951
By JT Dykman
The Treaty of Washington, which created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had been signed in April of 1949, but eleven of the twelve signatory nations were only just beginning to rebuild their war-wrecked economies; their peoples were largely dispirited, their leaders remained badly divided on issues of defense and suspicious of collective security itself.