Eisenhower's America: Anti-Communism and Civil Religion in the 1950s

In the aftermath of World War II, the former colonial powers finally lost their last vestiges of power on the global stage. Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan were set about the task of rebuilding, leaving a significant power vacuum which two new rising powers were more than happy to fill. The shaky alliance between the United States and Russia was no longer a necessity, and the two superpowers began moving to spread their rival spheres of influence to the newly independent former colonies.

The United States and the Soviet Union would become both the antithesis and the reflection of one another, each looming on the other's horizon, an unseen hand hovering over a button that would bring the world as they knew it to a terrible end. In the United States, the "Soviet Menace" shaped American society like no other force that had come before it. Conformity, traditional values, and civil duty were the cornerstones of mainstream society.

Women left the factories, replaced by men returning from the war, and returned to the home to fulfill a more traditional female role. Congress, eager to justify its extensive defense budget, employed propaganda promoting civil duty and creating an atmosphere of fear. Joseph McCarthy waged his war against communists in the state department, while all over the country professional "black-lists" swelled with the named of suspected communists. Automobiles began to dominate the landscape, bringing with them not only increased mobility, but a new sense of freedom which would spark the development of a distinct and recognizable youth culture. In the south, the first rumblings of the Civil Rights movement were just beginning, and in the north, rock and roll was creeping onto the airways. Revolutionary writers like Jack Kerouac and JD Salinger butted heads with conservative social mores, setting the tone for the tumultuous Sixties and Seventies.