The Cold War Continues, 1953–1960

Abstract

The victory of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander in Europe during the Second World War, Army Chief of Staff after 1945 and latterly Supreme Commander of NATO, in the November 1952 presidential election — the first Republican to enter the White House since Herbert Hoover in 1929 — was partly attributable to the mounting frustration of the electorate with Truman’s seeming inability to end the long drawn out and inconclusive stalemate in Korea. Armistice talks between the communist and United Nations military commands had begun in the summer of 1951, but progress had been painfully slow, and in 1952 had come to an end altogether when the two sides had been unable to reach agreement on the question of the repatriation of prisoners of war. The communists insisted on their forcible repatriation, while the Americans, for humanitarian reasons and also because they sensed a propaganda victory if large numbers of communist prisoners refused to return to their homelands, demanded voluntary repatriation. Eisenhower had anchored his presidential campaign on a pledge to end the Korean War quickly if elected [44].