Download Video Questions for “The Fifties: The Fear and the Dream”

Video Questions for “The Fifties: The Fear and the Dream”
1. What effect did the death of FDR have on America? How did people react to the news of his death?
2. What changes did the American family experience in the postwar years? How many couples were
married in the years after the war and how many babies were born by the end of the 50s?
3. What problem did new families encounter in the postwar years?
A Gift From Heaven
1. William Levitt did for housing what Henry Ford did for automobile manufacturing. What did Levitt
do? How did Levitt revolutionize the building industry?
2. How was Levittown received by middle-class Americans? What did the houses offer that people had
not had before?
3. Levittown was for white families only. African-Americans were not permitted to buy these houses or
live in these new suburbs. How was this possible? Why did this new neighborhood refuse AfricanAmericans? What does this say about attitudes in the 1950s?
4. What was the appeal of Levittown homes to middle-class Americans? What did Levittown represent
to city-dwellers? Did all Americans embrace the uniformity of Levittown?
The Quest for the Super
1. How did the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb in August 1949 affect Americans? What effect
did this have on the scientific community?
2. How was U.S. foreign policy affected by the development of the atomic bomb?
3. Who was Edward Teller and what role did he play in the development of the hydrogen bomb?
4. Why did some of the scientists who worked on the original bomb, most notably J.R. Oppenheimer,
refuse to aid in the creation of the hydrogen bomb? What were the moral dilemmas and questions
raised about building the hydrogen bomb?
1950 – Truman authorized the H-bomb program.
1952 – First U.S. test of the H-bomb. 9 months later, the Soviets tested their own H-bomb.
Learning to Live with the Bomb
1. What were American children trained to do in the event of a nuclear attack?
The U.S. govt. deliberately played down the destructiveness of the bomb.
2. How did Americans react to life in the atomic age?
Spies Under the Bed
1. How did Americans react to the Communist threat in the United States? What did most Americans
want in the postwar era and how did that affect their reaction to the communist threat at home?
2. How did popular culture play to American’s fears of the communist threat at home?
3. In the late 1940s, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) targeted communists in
Hollywood. How did Hollywood react to this barrage of accusations?
1946 – news broke of real spies in North America, series of arrests and deportations
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Executed.
The Witch-Finder General
1. Who was Joe McCarthy and how did he propel himself to power in the late 1940s and early 1950s?
2. What accusation did McCarthy make regarding the State Department in his Feb. 9, 1950 Wheeling,
West Virginia speech? How did these accusations change over time?
3. What weakness in the press did McCarthy exploit? What was McCarthy’s relationship with the press
and how did this influence his status in American society?
4. Who was John Service and what did McCarthy do to him? How did McCarthy’s accusations affect
his life?
5. How did McCarthyism shape American politics?
6. By the mid-1950s, Joe McCarthy had fallen from grace and out of favor with the American public.
What was the reason for McCarthy’s downfall?
Post-film Discussion Questions:
1. The decade of the 1950s has been called the decade that “remade America.” What changes occurred
in America during the 1950s? How was America “remade?”
2. How did nuclear and atomic power influence the 1950s? How might the 1950s have been different if
there were no atomic or hydrogen bombs?
3. How did the Cold War of the 1950s and McCarthyism shape social attitudes during the decade? In
what ways do you think these events influenced how Americans thought and behaved in the postwar
era?