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Between 1950 and 1953, nearly 40,000 temporary and 6,000 permanent employees and their families—almost 180,000 persons in all—poured into the relatively sparsely populated three-county region that played host to the Savannah River Plant (srp). Many of these new residents chose to live close to the city of Aiken, in South Carolina, some thirteen miles from the plant. State political leaders and industrial boosters heralded the arrival of the plant as just the latest in what they hoped would be an endless succession of federal projects . Local residents likewise anticipated an unprecedented economic boost from the plant and its high-paid scientific and technical personnel. But the problems that accompanied the construction and operation of this massive, high-tech facility were formidable, and the long-term changes to the region that resulted from this and other defense installations constitute an important yet mostly untold story of the modern South and Cold War development. The development of critical defense areas, such as the tricounty region that was home to the srp, was profoundly shaped by the emergence of the national security state during the early Cold War years. As the arms race with the Soviets accelerated and the conflict in Korea worsened, top administration officials pondered a central question: Could the nation appropriately arm itself for a permanent condition of total war without resorting to the creation of a garrison state in which the preponderance of resources were harnessed for military and defense purposes, and in which ultimate power shifted from civilian to military authorities? At the center of the national security state was the nation’s expanding nuclear arsenal. The creation of the srp, then, forced administration officials to confront this central issue of the Cold War. Wishing to avoid the implementation of excessive governmental controls and planning that are fundamental to a garrison state, the Truman administration chose instead to rely C H A P T E R F I V E Rejecting the Garrison State National Priorities and Local Limitations 108 · C H A P T E R F I V E on existing infrastructure and private enterprise to prepare the country for and maintain a permanent state of war-readiness. Because the srp was the largest installation operated by the Atomic Energy Commission (aec), the experiences and problems encountered there would provide a blueprint for future Cold War communities. The srp was the first large aec installation created without an accompanying “company town.” The dispersal of this and other Cold War facilities to far-flung locations somewhat removed from large population centers brought rapid growth and development to areas poorly equipped to handle those changes. In the case of the srp and the small communities surrounding it, Cold War necessities regularly ran up against the peculiarities and particularities of southern culture. Serious miscalculations by the aec, underdeveloped rural infrastructures, and the traditional ambivalence of southern communities to urban planning and controls resulted in housing and sprawl problems that ranged from serious to disastrous. Such issues particularly plagued the city of Aiken, South Carolina, and its immediate outlying areas. The specter of the garrison state, combined with the aec’s faith in private enterprise and the inability and unwillingness of it and other federal agencies to adequately plan for the human tidal wave that would descend on this region, foreshadowed the rapid modernization that would wash over large swaths of the South in the decades to come. Citizens of the latest Cold War critical defense area eagerly anticipated the economic windfall expected to accompany the srp’s arrival. Likewise, they were willing to endure change in the interest of national security, but not indefinitely , and not for free. Faced with rapidly deteriorating and overburdened communities, residents of the counties affected by the srp’s creation became active in the marketplace of federal dollars, pressing their claims as citizens who had sacrificed for the good of the country but were unwilling to suffer prolonged deprivation because of it. South Carolina residents’ demands for government intervention, controls, and assistance illustrate their level of comfort with the idea of the compensatory welfare state as well as their antipathy toward the garrison state. They interjected themselves into high-level discussions about the realities of the garrison state by insisting on butter along with guns. Their actions directly contradicted those called for by nsc-68, which argued that victory in the global struggle required American citizens to make sacrifices. Southern residents placed limits on those sacrifices and demanded...

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