Night | Historical Context

Night Historical Context

The Eisenhower Years

Eisnehower was reelected in 1956 to continue his leadership of an America that had emerged literally overnight as the most awesome industrial military complex the world had ever seen. At the start of WWII, while Hitler was invading Poland, there were more men employed in Henry Ford's car plants than in the Army. However, the U. S. had what nobody else on the planet did—an incredible surplus of electric power. The Grand Coulee and Bonneville Dams had just been completed with the result that immediately in 1942 the European skies were full of American planes— planes that could be instantly replaced. All this wartime manufacture was retooled for the domestic economy to produce record numbers of cars, jeeps, appliances, track housing, and a whole range of consumer items to be seen in glossy magazines like Life and Playboy. The Broadway hit about the Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank, was...
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