Abstract
Historians have often commented on the roles played by President Eisenhower and Senator Johnson as the two protagonists in the sputniks crisis of 1957–8, usually to the detriment of the former and the credit of the latter. But none has ever prepared the ground for such a comparison by asking whether each man’s previous career made it likely that he would fail or pass the test of the sputniks by quite so decisive a margin as is usually claimed. The record of the Eisenhower administration on missiles and satellites, prior to Sputnik 1, will be examined below in its proper place, as will Johnson’s handling of the political opportunity with which he was presented in the fall of 1957. This chapter deals only with what is known about the two men’s previous encounters with the technology and its strategic implications.
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Notes and References
D. D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe ( London: Heinemann, 1948 ), pp. 284–5.
W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II vol. 3 (Chicago: Chicago U. Press, 1951 ), pp. 102–3, 527, 879.
B. Collier, The Battle of the V Weapons 1944–45 ( Morley: Elmfield Press, 1976 ), p. 111.
T. Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy (London: Michael Joseph, 1987), pp. 3, 134.
US Congress, House, Appropriations, Hearings: Military Appropriation for 1947 (1946 — ch. 1, n. 23 ), p. 1117.
US Congress, House, Appropriations, Subcommittee on War Department Appropriations, Hearings: Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1948 (80th Congress, 1st Session, 1947 ), p. 79.
S. E. Ambrose, Eisenhower vol. 1 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984 ), p. 506.
H. L. Goodwin, The Science Book of Space Travel ( New York: Franklin Watts, 1954 ), p. 3.
B. W. Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower ( Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981 ), pp. 13–15.
Ibid., pp. 126–33; J. Hale, Radio Power, Propaganda, and International Broadcasting ( London: Paul Elek, 1975 ).
DDEL — Pre-Presidential Papers: Subjects, Box 145, Folder: Hearings, 1951 (1), ‘Testimony to a Joint Executive Session of the Senate Committees on the Armed Services and on Foreign Relations, February 1, 1951’, carbon typescript, pp. 8, 75. Words underlined were omitted from the published version: US Congress, Senate, Armed Services and Foreign Relations, Hearings: Assignment of Ground Forces of the U. S. to Duty in the European Area (82nd Congress, 1st Session, 1951 ), pp. 10, 28.
B. Mooney, The Lyndon Johnson Story ( London: The Bodley Head, 1964 ), pp. 28–30.
S. L. Rearden, The Formative Years 1947–1960 part 1 of A. Goldberg (ed. ), History of the Office of Secretary of Defense ( Washington: OSD History Office, 1984 ), pp. 353–6.
L. B. Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–1969 ( London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1972 ), p. 271.
L. B. Johnson, ‘We Are Ahead of Russia — We Can Stay Ahead’, Preview Magazine, December 1950.
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© 1991 Rip Bulkeley
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Bulkeley, R. (1991). Ad Homines — Eisenhower and Johnson Before 1953. In: The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11981-3_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11981-3_2
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