Contrary to popular assumptions about women's absence from the politics of national defense and war during the early Cold War era (1945–1965), women indeed participated politically, supporting and influencing as well as opposing American militarization. Venues for their activism included clubs, churches, unions, civil defense planning organizations, civil rights groups, and peace groups. Especially before the 1960s, however, women tended not to portray their activism in explicitly feminist terms, in many cases because they did not conceive of their causes as feminist, even when they empowered women to shape American society and politics, and in other cases because they feared a conservative backlash. Women in groups such as the Families Committee of Smith Act Victims (created in 1951) and Women Strike for Peace (founded in 1961) used women's traditional roles as mothers and protectors of families in...