GRC - During the Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1961 (Lesson)

During the Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1961

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration included two complete presidential terms that spanned most of the 1950s. This decade was known for the Soviet lead in the Space Race, advancements in medicine and technology, a bit more decolonization, the formation of international unions, and revolutions, rebellions, uprisings and wars. As you read through the timeline of world events that occurred during his presidency, keep in mind the background information that you read in the first lesson—be on the lookout for themes.

March 5, 1953—Soviet Union (USSR)

• For thirty years, Joseph Stalin governed the Soviet Union as its communist autocrat. Under his watch, the Soviet Union helped defeat the Axis powers during World War II and grew into a superpower during the Cold War that influenced the future of other nations far and wide. Due to this, Stalin was a very popular figure when he died of a stroke in 1953. For the next five years, the Soviet Union watched as the top figures within the Communist Party competed in a power struggle to replace him. In the end, Nikita Khrushchev—a man that had sharply criticized Stalin as a "cult of personality" along with Stalinism as "a violation of socialist legality"—took over the Soviet Union along with its policies on the Cold War. Khrushchev's rule was known as the "Khrushchev Thaw"—a period of relaxed repression and censorship (in comparison to the Stalin years) within the Soviet Union. But it soon became apparent that the Soviets' previous hold over its satellites was based more on repression than unity when the uprisings began. With the more liberal and open Khrushchev in office, many satellite nationalists felt empowered to contest the Soviet regimes in their nations and almost all of them experienced some form of uprising during Khrushchev's term in office. His "thaw" also extended to his relationship with the United States as he reached out to relax the tensions between the two nations. In 1959, Khrushchev participated—along with U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon—in a series of exchanges over which nation was superior at an American home exhibit in the Soviet Union known as the Kitchen Debate.

August 15, 1953—Iran

• In 1951, Mohammad Mossadeq was appointed the Iranian prime minister. During his time in office, he nationalized the nation's petroleum industry and oil reserves—making him very popular among his people who were tired of watching foreign businesses get rich from Iranian oil. As you can imagine, though, this action was less popular among the foreign oil businesses. In 1953, Prime Minister Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup funded and led by the United States and Great Britain (making this the first time the United States actually overthrew a sitting government during the Cold War.) With Mossadeq deposed, the United States encouraged the rise to power of the Iranian Shah—Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. As the monarch of Iran, the Shah grew in power with U.S. support but not in Iranian popularity. (As you will see in a couple of decades.)

November 9, 1953—Cambodia

• During its period of colonialism, Cambodia (combined with Laos and Vietnam) made up French Indochina. But after years of fighting, France granted Cambodia its independence in 1953; at which point, it became a constitutional monarchy that declared its neutrality regarding the Cold War and the Vietnamese fight for independence.

April 7, 1954—United States

• During a news conference, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower explained the theory known as the "Domino Theory" without actually using the term. While referencing the threat of communism in French Indochina and the reason for fighting it, Eisenhower argued "you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the 'falling domino' principle." His reasoning, based on the Domino Theory, centered on the idea that a political event in one country would lead to similar events in neighboring countries. Therefore, if French Indochina became communist, neighboring nations would follow suit. This line of reasoning dominated U.S. foreign policy and was the basis for American involvement in Vietnam. As China and North Korea had already "fallen" into communism, he argued that the United States could not allow the same fate to befall in Vietnam.

April 26, 1954—Science & Technology

• Two years earlier, Jonas Salk developed, what he argued to be, a vaccine to end polio (the disease that struck former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his late thirties causing his use of a wheelchair for the rest of his life.) Starting in April 1954, sponsored by the March of Dimes organization, Salk started what he called "a calculated risk" but became the largest and most publicized field tests of a vaccine ever conducted. Injecting over 600,000 American schoolchildren (while observing another million as "controls,") Salk tested the efficacy of his vaccine. The favorable results were announced the following year. Often called "the Greatest Public Health Experiment in History," the field trials led to the vaccination's widespread use over the next few years with the incidence of polio in the United States falling as much as 90%.

April 27, 1954—Vietnam

• The French Indochina War to maintain French colonialism in the region ended with the signing of the Geneva Agreements between North Vietnam and France in 1954. At this point, the French recognized Vietnam's independence and divided the nation into North and South Vietnam with the promise of an election to be held in 1956 regarding unification. However, the United States and South Vietnam rejected the proposal—suspecting that it would lead to Vietnam becoming one communist nation. This marked the year when U.S. involvement in Vietnam stepped up as it supported the regime governing South Vietnam—leading to the Vietnam War.

September 1954—International

• The United States, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in 1954 as an alliance to prevent communism from gaining ground in the region. Known as SEATO, it became the eastern version of NATO but without the military and intelligence resources of the latter. From its beginning, many people were skeptical of its motivations as very few Southeast Asian nations actually joined the pact. And when the United States used the goals of SEATO to prevent elections within Vietnam over reunification in 1956—skepticism grew. Neither France nor Pakistan supported U.S. involvement during the resulting Vietnam War; therefore, both pulled away from the organization at the height of the war. When Vietnam fell and the United States pulled out of the war, the main reason for SEATO disappeared as well and the organization ended in 1977.

November 1, 1954—Algeria

• Following World War II, France regained its colonial claim on Algeria in North Africa—but not without protest. In 1954, Algerians stepped up their push for independence when the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) embarked upon a guerrilla campaign against the French colonial government. For the next seven years, Algeria experienced a civil war that led to independence in 1962.

May 14, 1955—International

• In response to the West German entrance into NATO, the Soviet Union signed the Warsaw Pact with seven European Soviet satellite nations in 1955. The Warsaw Pact served as a collective defense alliance against NATO despite the fact that there was never a direct confrontation between the organizations' member nations. However, the Warsaw Pact continued in operation until the end of the Cold War.

July 18, 1955—International

• Held in Geneva, Switzerland, the leaders of the "Big Four" (the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union) reunited to discuss possibilities of peace and global security in a world consumed by the Cold War. Foremost on their list of topics were trade agreements and the status of Germany. Many, at the time, felt that this meeting symbolized a reduction in international tensions between the East and the West. But later events testified to the short-lived nature of that reduction—if it ever existed at all.

April 26, 1956—Science & Technology

• In January 1956, American entrepreneur Malcolm McLean bought two World War II-era tankers that he converted to carry containers on and below deck. On April 26^th, he launched one of the tankers from a port in New Jersey on its maiden voyage to deliver cargo to Texas. Aboard, nearly sixty containers carried the ship's cargo—a transition from the previous method of loading and containing cargo by hand. McLean's introduction of the intermodal shipping container (a large standardized container that is used to ship cargo using different modes of transportation—from ship to rail to truck,) caused a transformation in the way cargo was shipped around the world—making it vastly cheaper and quicker to load and unload.

July 30-November 12, 1956—Egypt

• In 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal—the man-made waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas through the Suez Isthmus—ending the private Suez Canal Company's control. At that point, Egypt denied Israel the use of the canal. Israel responded by invading most of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula (the location of the Suez Isthmus) and the Gaza Strip. British and French troops joined the invasion and occupied the canal area. The three nations jointly planned to oust Nasser from power and secure Western control over the important canal. However, the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations intervened with an embargo against the three invading nations. Plus, the United Nations deployed its first peace-keeping military force to the area. In the end, Israel, Great Britain and France withdrew from Egypt in humiliation—this was the first time that Great Britain had ever been forced to back down and the event exemplified their loss of status as a global superpower—and Nasser gained strength and popularity at home.

October 23-November 10, 1956—Hungary

• Following the elections held in Hungary after World War II, the nation was a democratic republic. But within three years, Hungarian communists had taken over the government. In 1956, displeasure with the communist government led to an anti-Soviet revolution. At first, it looked like the student-led protest would be successful; but then the Soviet army came in and crushed the rebellion. Thousands of Hungarians died and hundreds of thousands fled towards Western Europe. The Hungarian Communist Party leader took over the nation and ruled for more than thirty years.

March 6, 1957—Ghana

• Following World War II, a young man returned from his studies in the United States to the British colony of the Gold Coast and established the Convention Peoples Party with the slogan— "Self-government Now!" The young man's name was Kwame Nkrumah and when the British did not give his nation self-government immediately, Nkrumah led a general strike that caused economic gridlock. The British arrested Nkrumah (along with his compatriots) but eventually released him when they came to better understand his popularity. After his release and while still under British rule, the Gold Coast elected Nkrumah as its first prime minister. Tired of the work involved in maintaining its colony, Great Britain granted independence in 1957. Renamed Ghana, the new nation was the first Sub-Saharan African nation to gain its independence from a European colonial power. It soon converted to a republic and elected Nkrumah as its president. Immediately, the new nation of Ghana became a leader in pushing for more Sub-Saharan African nations to throw off their colonial rulers and people were very optimistic about Ghana's future.

March 25, 1957—International

• Created by the Treaty of Rome, the European Economic Community was a regional organization designed to integrate the economies of its member nations. Its creation in 1957 further strengthened the economic conditions in Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany that had been steadily improving during the rebuilding process after World War II. Also known as the Common Market, one of its first acts was to establish common prices for agricultural products. In later decades, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Norway joined. In 1993, it was renamed the European Community.

October 4, 1957—Science & Technology

• The Cold War entered a new location—outer space—when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 . At that moment, the Space Race began with the Soviet Union in the lead. Sputnik 1 (whose name means "traveling companion" in Russian) was the first man-made object to be sent into space. Just a bit larger than a beach ball, Sputnik 1 carried only a radio beacon and a thermometer—but its impact was much greater than its size as it forced the United States to step up its space program as the two Cold War nations now competed for domination in a new location.

November 3, 1957—Science & Technology

• Within a month of besting the United States in the race for space, the Soviet Union again demonstrated its superior space program by launching the first animal into space. Placed within Sputnik 2, Laika—a dog found on the streets of Moscow—entered history in the successful Soviet attempt to prove that an animal could survive an initial launch into space. Laika did not live much longer than that though (but as the goal was not to prove survival in space, it was considered a successful test.)

1957—Vietnam

• To end the First Indochina War, a peace treaty split Vietnam into two halves—North Vietnam with a communist government led by Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam with a non-communist government eventually led by Ngo Dinh Diem—in 1954. The two halves were supposed to hold an election over whether or not to unify, but Ngo Dinh Diem (who was barely holding his South Vietnam together) refused to allow such an election. By 1957, communist guerrillas in the south were causing Ngo Dinh Diem's government to enter into chaos and the United States accepted his request to increase aid there as part of its containment policy. To aid the communist guerrillas in the south (known as the Vietcong,) Ho Chi Minh sent in North Vietnamese troops and the Second Indochina War (commonly referred to as the Vietnam War) began.

January 1958—China

• In 1953, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin died and was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev. Chairman Mao and Premier Khrushchev did not get along and relations between the world's two largest communist countries began to sour despite their public friendliness. Frustrated by the limits of Soviet help in rebuilding China, Chairman Mao implemented a new system in 1958. Called "The Great Leap Forward," the plan called for everyone to drop what they were doing and join a campaign to industrialize China since "all eat out of the same pot." Private property was handed over to the government who set up farming and industrial communes where people worked day and night growing food and making steel in backyard furnaces. As part of the Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao also initiated the "Four Pests Campaign" to rid China of rats, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows. The Chinese were tasked with waging a war on all the sparrows and other natural pests in China. Despite it being a Five-Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward and Four Pests Campaign ended in 1961 as a disastrous failure. With the killing off of the sparrows, locusts were able to swarm China free from attack by their natural predators, causing the Great Chinese Famine. In combination with an unexpected drought, over 20 million people died for lack of food during the Great Chinese Famine.

 

 

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