Baby Boomers were born during ,or not long after, the Second World War. At the time, the world was in turmoil and young men everywhere were going "off to war". With the prospect of dying in this global conflict it's no surprise that the idea of immortality was on many people's minds. And the closest thing to immortality is having a son or daughter to carry on after you're gone. Survival of the Species. (Interestingly, the birth rate of most animals under extreme stress drops off dramatically and the very young die off first. We humans are a bit of an anomaly in the animal kingdon. There's a PhD paper here for someone). So there was a bulge in the Population Curve soon termed The Baby Boom and later just The Boomers", and it started in the mid 40s during a dangerous and trying time for the entire world.
World War II ended with the United States as the only world power left essentially unscathed and Russia, with its history of repeated invasion, understandably paranoid and led by Hitler's alter ego - Joseph Stalin. The US had The Bomb (Nagesaki, Hiroshima, Teller, Oppenheimer, Einstein) and Stalin had the largest standing army on the planet.
The "western world" was divided up (East vs West) by the victors and rebuilt, the latter the result of the US Marshall Plan (the victor rebuilding the vanquished - a very new idea at the time). China was in the midst of a revolution from feudalism to communism. The United States had lost its closest thing to a king, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a haderdasher from Kansas (Harry S. Truman), who had ended The War with two atomic bombs, as its new president. Two US Army general heroes were waiting in the wings, both headed for the Presidency - Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. The latter gentleman wanted to be the 20th Century Ceaser (see The Roman Empire-the Ceasers - there were a bunch of them!).
Russia expanded its influence and consolidated its hold over a major portion of the European Continent under the new Sovet Union. And they had there eye on getting even more. In the 50s the Soviets and their "Communist" allies - mainly the RED CHINESE - began exporting "Communism", first in Korea (Korean War/Police Action) and then in Eurpoe (Berlin Blockade, Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Uprising). The "IRON Curtain", a phrase coined by Winston Churchill, had become real in Berlin, with the construction of the Berlin Wall.
Meanwhile - German scientist, taken by both sides after The War, were working on a) new more powerful nuclear weapons and b) rockets that could deliver these weapons hundreds and conceivably thousands of miles away (see Werner Von Braun). The "Arms Race" had begun. Civil Defense, Air Raid Drills and Bomb Shelters in Back Yards - the fear of nuclear war hung over the "civilized world" . Then president Eisenhower, formerly General Eisenhower, warned of an even greater threat to "democracy" - The Military Industrial Complex. Combine the paranoia of the Military with Industry's desire for profit and you get more and better (read lethal) "weapons systems" with bigger and bigger price tags (see Stratgic Air Command - SAC, North American Radar Air Defense system - NORAD, inter continental missiles - ICBMs, Nuclear Submarines - Rickover, AWACs, B-2 Bomber, Stealth Fighters, Stealth Bombers, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Patriot Missiles ...).
At the United Nations, Nikita Krushev, the Soviet Union's premiere, literally pounded his shoe on the podium of the U.N. Assembly and shouted "We will bury you!". And then - in 1956, Sputnik, a small metal sphere orbiting the earth every 12 hours sending radio signals back to earth. Earth's first man made satellite, put there by THE REDS! Now even "outer space" became a place of conquest and nowhere on earth was "safe". The SPACE RACE was on - control space and you control the world.
To this volatile mix add a cunning, ruthless and not very intelligent politician who used the nation's fear of "Communism" to further his political ambitions. Joe McCarthy and his House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) destroyed peoples lives by labeling them Communists, Communist Sympathizers and Fellow Travelers. This mad man nearly destroyed the Constitution, amplified our nation's paranoia regarding Communism and crippled our State Department's knowledge of China and Indo China by making accusations that the State Department was riddled with COM-SYMPs. Some of his victims at the State Department were the few experts we had on an area that would become very significant 10 years later - specifically a little country called Viet Nam. Ironically, Richard M. Nixon, the only sitting president ever to leave the office one step ahead of impeachment and a possible prison sentence, jumped on McCarthy's Anti-Communist bandwagon and contributed to our "involvement " in the "Viet Nam Conflict" (the term WAR was one of the earliest words to be sanitized by what is now called Politically Correctness or PC for short - excuse me - vertically challenged).
Off the coast of Florida, within "spitting distance", the Cuban Revolutin brought Fidel Castro out of the mountains and into power. Initially seen as a hero by the United States for freeing the Cuban people from a corrupt and ruthless dictator, Castro soon aligned himself wi th the Soviet Union. And a few years later the Cold War got very very HOT.
The Sixties started off with a new President, John F. Kennedy, and almost with a VERY BIG BANG! There were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba! The world was on the brink of a nuclear holocost and both sides had their fingers on hair triggers - or more accurately - on the launch buttons. The term "brinksmanship" became very popular in the press as both sides tested each others sanity with threats and escalating actions.
Now let me give you a sanely insane strategy for the Nuclear Age - it's called MAD, short for Mutually Assured Destruction. I told you it was insane. Here's the strategy in a nutshell. "They" have nuclear weapons and "We" have nuclear weapons. Both sides have enough nuclear weapons to destroy all living things on the planet. But wait, not only are there enough nuclear weapons to kill all living things on the planet once - there's enough to kill all living things on the planet 10 or 20 times! Don't just kill the "enemy" - blow up the whole damn planet - multiple times! The idea is - "If you attack us or we attack you - EVERYONE and EVERYTHING goes up in a BIG MUSHROOM CLOUD of radioactive heat". If this makes you feel like Alice In Wonderland just after following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole don't feel alone (for those of you who haven't read the book - go visit the local library and check it and read it). It was crazy. And even crazier - it worked - at least so far. Now we get to deal with Nuclear Terrorists.
The decade of the sixties began at the height of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis, as it came to be known, occurred when many of us Baby Boomers were in high school and was to end with Richard M. Nixon in the White House promising that "peace with honor" was close at hand while thousands of "us" and tens of thousands of "them" were dying in a place called Viet Nam. In between, the nation came as close to a revolution as it did with the Civil War a hundred years earlier. There were urban riots (see Watts, Chicago, Detroit), student uprisings (see Chicago Democratic Convention Police Riot, Ken State), radical revolutionary groups (see Weathermen, Black Symbionese Liberation Army/Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Students for a Democartic Society), the Black Power Movement (see Black Panther Party, Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico Olympics) and many assassinations and attempted assassinations (John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Mayor George Moscone, Supervisor Harvey Milk, George Wallace, John Lennon).
Now add THE PILL - birth control pill that is, along with a veritable cornucopia of "mind expanding" drugs (read mainly hallucinogens), the beginnings of the Environmental Movement, throw in FREE LOVE , a lot of affluence and you have the makings of a very interesting decade, give or take a few years. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. (stole that from Tale of Two Cities - back to the library - check it out - a good read) We Boomers became "adults" while all this was going on.
For you Boomers, congratulations for surviving that decade. Pay attention to what your kids are into - there's a lot of changes going on that they are having to deal with. The Silicon Valley Syndrome is a family killer - don't let it get your family - it's just a job. For you "off spring" of the Boomers, poke around this site and perhaps get some insight into "where your parents are coming from" and perhaps how they got "there".