President Encyclopedia 1953-1969

President Encyclopedia 1953-1969 — page 1
4 America in the 1950s and 1960s America in the 1950s and 1960s When President Dwight D Eisenhower won the presidential election the 1950s were just getting underway When President Lyndon B Johnson left office the 1960s were just ending These were two exceptionally lively decades for the United States Battles over Communism raged at home and abroad and American society underwent great upheavals The changes in world governments that followed World War II which ended in 1945 shaped the world of the 1950s Tensions developed between the Soviet Union and its satellite republics those formerly independent countries over which it now had at least some if not complete political control on the one side and the United States and Western European democracies on the other The situation became known as the Cold War When the U S discovered in 1949 that the Soviet Union had atomic capabilities these tensions increased dramatically The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 8 1991 Norwegian Sea Arctic Ocean Barents Sea Laptev Sea Kara Sea Republics Satellite Black Sea Union of Soviet Socialist Republics U S S R Sea of Yellow Sea President Lyndon Johnson at right listens as Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin speaks at the Glassboro Summit Conference in 1967 The two leaders met to discuss Arab-Israeli tensions in the Middle East and U S Soviet arms limitations