Destroyed voter registration records or attempted to

destroyed voter registration records or attempted to block a person from registering to vote.The
integration of the United States armed services, which began under President Truman, was
completed during Eisenhower's administration. Finally, in 1957 Eisenhower deployed federal
troops to aid with the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Eisenhower's foreign policy
Eisenhower’s eight years in office were relatively peaceful ones for the nation. He ended the
Korean War with a July 1953 armistice, and did not take the country into war in Vietnam when
communists took over part of that country in 1954 (though he did supply South Vietnam with
military advisers and equipment). In concert with Nikita Khrushchev, his Soviet counterpart,
Eisenhower voluntarily suspended nuclear atmospheric testing in 1958, although an official test-
ban treaty would not be signed until after he left office.
The Cold War framed Eisenhower’s foreign policy. Cold War thinking frequently took on an
"us-versus-them" mindset, and this view of the world as one polarized between Soviet
totalitarian communism (them) and American democracy and freedoms (us) saw Eisenhower’s
administration both provide aid to dictators friendly to US interests (the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio
Batista in Cuba, for example) and authorize covert CIA missions to overthrow governments
sympathetic to the Soviets. For example, in 1954 Eisenhower authorized the CIA to depose the
democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz.
The Eisenhower administration’s national security strategy was called the New Look . It relied
on strategic nuclear weapons and air power while scaling back conventional army and navy
forces. A nuclear arsenal was cheaper to maintain than paying a standing army: "more bang for
the buck," the popular slogan went.
New Look policy gave rise to talk of the need to employ a diplomacy of brinksmanship : a
willingness on the part of American leaders to take the world to the brink of a nuclear war with
the hope that the Soviets would back down in the face of a potential US nuclear strike. But the
stakes were high. If brinksmanship failed, nuclear war might result. Consequently, fear of
nuclear war weighed heavily on the minds of Americans during the Eisenhower era.
What do you think?
Why do you think President Eisenhower was so popular?
What accounted for the incredible rise in the nation’s wealth during the 1950s?
How would you characterize Presi dent Eisenhower’s domestic politics?
Anticommunism in the 1950s
Learn about the Rosenberg trial, HUAC, and Joseph McCarthy.
Overview

Revelations that spies in the US atomic program had passed secrets to the Soviet Union set off a
nationwide panic that communist spies might be infiltrating many American institutions.

Allegations that Hollywood was rife with communists led the House Committee on Un-
American Activities (HUAC ) to investigate many actors, writers, and directors during the
1950s. Alleged communists were placed on a blacklist and barred from working in Hollywood.