Fifties (121 page)

He was the poet as scientist: Robert Oppenheimer’s face always seemed to reflect some kind of inner anguish, but when he took his doubts about the hydrogen bomb public, he became a target of a vast array of conservative forces and was judged a security risk.
ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/
LIFE
/TIME WARNER. INC.

Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb, testifying before the Senate Disarmament Subcommittee in 1958 against what he thought were overly cautious controls on weapons testing.
UPI/BETTMANN

A group of ordinary citizens gathers on a Las Vegas Street in 1952 to watch an immense mushroom cloud from a particularly powerful nuclear explosion.
UPI/BETTMANN

Corporal Lake Hodge carries a homemade regimental sign to the top of Heartbreak Ridge. The hill was the scene of fierce fighting between U.N. forces and North Koreans, who lost an estimated four divisions in the twenty-nine days of battle.
CULVER PICTURES

Soldiers of the 11th Airborne Division watching an atomic explosion at the Atomic Energy Commission’s testing grounds near Las Vegas in 1951 during the first-ever deployment of troops on maneuvers involving a nuclear weapon.
UPI/BETTMANN

General Douglas MacArthur barks out his orders during the Inchon landing. It was his last great victory, an operation carried out against the advice of most pundits. American forces came to be haunted by Inchon, for it convinced MacArthur that he was beyond civilian control and made almost inevitable his subsequent terrible defeat near the Yalu in late November 1950.
CARL MYDANS/
LIFE
/TIME WARNER, INC.

Matt Ridgway (left) was one of the true heroes of the Korean War. After the American forces’ reversal of fortune at the Yalu, Ridgway took over, steadied the line, made his soldiers get out of their vehicles, and gave them back their pride. He is seen here with Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy.
BLACK STAR

Douglas MacArthur’s return to America after Harry Truman had fired him was one of the most dramatic moments of the decade. Rarely had the nation been so divided in opinion along ethnic and class lines, but his support soon slipped away—no one wanted a larger war.
WAYNE MILLER, MAGNUM PHOTOS, INC.

Joseph McCarthy on the attack. He was the most prominent demagogue of the Cold War period, and his name was used to describe a larger phenomenon, McCarthyism, in which politicians attacked not the wisdom of policies they disliked, but the loyalty of the architects of those policies.
HANK WALKER/
LIFE
/TIME WARNER, INC.

McCarthy made a fatal mistake when he failed to realize that his usefulness to the Republican party had come to an end with Dwight Eisenhower’s election, when the Republicans reclaimed the White House. He is seen with his nemesis Joseph Welch during the climax of the Army-McCarthy hearings.
ROBERT PHILLIPS, BLACK STAR

Levittown was one of the great success stories of the postwar years; ultimately, 17,000 homes were built, and although critics bemoaned the homogenization of taste, the young buyers were delighted with their purchases.
BURT GLINN, MAGNUM PHOTOS, INC.