Why learn about the 1950s and the Cold War?

Figure 1. Is This Tomorrow? warned Americans about the potential horrors of living under a Communist dictatorship. Postwar propaganda such as this comic book, the cover of which showed invading Russians attacking Americans and the U.S. flag in flames, served to drum up fear during the Cold War.

Is This Tomorrow?, a 1947 comic book, highlights one way that the federal government and some Americans revived popular sentiment in opposition to Communism. Between the end of WWII in 1945 and 1947 long-standing tensions drove apart war-time allies, and solidified into a decades long “Cold War.”

The Cold War was a global political and ideological struggle between capitalist and communist countries, particularly between the two surviving superpowers of the postwar world: the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). “Cold” because it was never a “hot,” direct shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union, the generations-long, multifaceted rivalry nevertheless bent the world to its priorities. Tensions ran highest, perhaps, during the first phase of the Cold War, which lasted from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s. This was followed by a period of relaxed tensions and increased communication and cooperation, known as détente, until the second phase of the Cold War interceded from roughly 1979 until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War reshaped the global political order and affected the generations of Americans that lived under its shadow. The list of events and movements, and developments in the U.S that were shaped or reflected Cold War issues is extensive. From technological advances and volatile negotiations in foreign affairs to changes in society and popular culture, hardly any sector of American life was untouched.