6.03 The Cold War at Home

communist or not communist?

1) Future president Ronald Reagan testifies before the HUAC in 1947. Reagan was an actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) at the time. Not Communist. Reagan was known for his strong anti-Communist views. In his testimony, Reagan accused some SAG members of being communists but did not give names. 2) Lionel Stander (seated, right) acted in the movies during the 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s. He also starred in the 1980s television show, Hart to Hart. Communist. Lionel Stander was exposed as a member of the Communist Party in 1953 by HUAC. He refused to answer questions during his hearing. He was blacklisted and did not work in Hollywood again until the 1960s. 3) Dalton Trumbo (center) was one of the best-known screenwriters in Hollywood during the 1940s. He won an Oscar for Best Original Story in 1956 for The Brave One. Communist. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to answer questions about his political leanings. He had joined the Communist Party of America in 1943. He spent 10 months in jail and was blacklisted in Hollywood. He wrote many screenplays during the 1950s under pen names, including The Brave One, which was attributed to "Robert Rich." 4) Two of the most famous stars of Hollywood, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, walk to testify before HUAC. Not Communist. Bogart, Bacall, and several other stars formed the "Committee for the First Amendment" to protest the HUAC hearings. Members of this group were then accused of communist sympathies. 5) Russian-born novelist and screenwriter Ayn Rand testified before HUAC in October 1947 about an American film titled Song of Russia during HUAC's investigation of the movie industry. Not Communist. Rand was strongly opposed to government interference in people's lives, and her political views were frequently reflected in her work. Rand testified that she thought the movie Song of Russia was filled with Communist propaganda. 6) African American baseball star Jackie Robinson was called to testify before HUAC on the loyalty of African Americans. Not Communist. Robinson said African Americans would fight for the United States "against Russia or any other country."

How Did the Red Scare Affect National Politics?

By 1946, the Cold War had created a climate of fear in the United States. This fear led to political conflicts. During the mid-term elections of 1946, candidates used the Red Scare for political advantage. The Republican Party, as well as the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, and conservative anti-labor groups charged that Truman had allowed communist agents to infiltrate the government. Much like the HUAC hearings, an accusation was all that was needed to create suspicion. Republicans campaigned against Democrats with slogans such as "Communism vs. Republicanism." In response to these charges, Truman created a committee to find ways to make certain that federal employees were loyal. The result was Executive Order 9835, also known as the Loyalty Order. This order came just as Republicans swept back to power. Privately, Truman was not concerned about communism in the government. He wrote to an advisor, "People are very much wrought up about the Communist 'bugaboo' but I am of the opinion that the country is perfectly safe so far as Communism is concerned—we have too many sane people." Despite his private feelings, Truman enforced the Federal Employee Loyalty Program. The FBI ran background checks on millions of federal employees. Any check that found "derogatory" information meant that the employee had to appear at a Loyalty Review Board hearing. However, the FBI rarely allowed its agents to testify. This meant that a federal employee could not ask his or her accuser any questions. Many Americans considered the program a violation of constitutional rights. And of the three million employees investigated, only 300 were fired as security risks. While Truman submitted to political pressure with the loyalty program, he refused to sign other legislation. He vetoed an act passed by Congress in 1950 that required communists to register with the federal government. It also prevented communists from obtaining a passport or from entering the United States. Truman believed the act was unconstitutional. Congress overrode Truman's veto. The Subversive Activities Control Act, also known as the McCarran Act, became law. As the new decade began, the mood of anxiety among Americans deepened. Today with a society that has become very inclusive of most groups, how do you think the government would respond to a congressman who claimed to be Communist?

How Did the Cold War Cause the Red Scare?

Communism was not new to the United States in the 1940s. Although it was small, the American Communist Party had existed since 1919. When the United States and the Soviet Union became Allies in World War II, membership in the American Communist Party grew. However, few Americans found communism attractive. As the horrors of Joseph Stalin's rule emerged, Americans became fearful of communism. Stalin's refusal to allow free elections after World War II added to the fear. Many Americans believed that the Soviet Union was focused on world domination. Whenever it looks like evil forces are taking over the world, Christians are reminded from II TImothy 1:7, "for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." For unbelievers, fear is common in everyday life without a solid foundation upon which to plant their faith and hope. In this atmosphere, Congress began investigating communist influence in the United States. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) led the investigation in 1945. One of the first areas HUAC investigated was the entertainment industry. Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi explained, "one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood ... the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States." In October 1947, a number of actors and other Hollywood personalities appeared before HUAC. Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, testified that communists had indeed infiltrated the movie labor unions. Other leading Hollywood figures said the HUAC investigation violated their constitutional rights. Many screenwriters, actors, and directors were directly accused of being communists. A number of these people were called before the committee. Ten of these "unfriendly witnesses" refused to answer whether they had been members of the Communist Party. They cited their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. In truth, each had at one time or another been a member. These so-called "House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Ten" were charged with contempt of Congress. They were later found guilty in a federal court and sentenced to time in prison. Most of the group was permanently blacklisted from working in Hollywood. Other people in the industry were blacklisted when they refused to testify. Some in Hollywood who hoped to avoid the same fate provided names to the HUAC. The lists of names launched subsequent investigations into those accused of being disloyal. Many Americans resented what they called the government "witch hunt" for communists. By the late 1940s, non-government groups such as the American Legion began to issue their own blacklists of people they suspected of "Communist sympathies." Newspaper columnists such as Walter Winchell printed the names of people suspected of being communist sympathizers. In this era, a simple suggestion of disloyalty could ruin a person's life.

Case Study: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Ethel Greenglass (1915-1953) and Julius Rosenberg (1918-1953) were the children of Russian and Austrian immigrants born in New York City. Both grew up in New York City and joined the Young Communists League USA. They met in 1936 and were married in 1939. Ethel was employed as a secretary at a shipping company. Julius completed a degree in electrical engineering. In 1940, Julius began work for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He began passing research information to the Soviets in 1942. Rosenberg then recruited others to pass information to the Soviets. This included Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, who was working on the Manhattan Project. Julius convinced his wife to recruit Greenglass to pass atomic secrets to the Soviets. Greenglass agreed and passed information to a courier named Harry Gold on the direction of Julius. Gold then passed it on to Klaus Fuchs, who passed it on to the Soviets. In 1945, Julius was discharged from the army because he had lied about being a Communist. In 1950, Gold was arrested in connection after Klaus Fuchs had identified him as a contact. That arrest led to the arrest of Greenglass, which led to the Rosenbergs. Another friend of Julius's, Morton Sobell, was also arrested in connection with the case. In March 1951, the Rosenbergs and Sobell were tried and convicted of espionage. While the evidence against Julius was strong, it was less so in the case of Ethel. However, in April, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. Sobell received thirty years in prison. Greenglass and Gold also received prison sentences. The Rosenbergs' case was brought up on appeal seven times to no avail. A final appeal to President Dwight Eisenhower asked that Ethel's life be spared to avoid making the Rosenbergs' two young sons orphans. Eisenhower refused, explaining that if he did so, the Soviet Union would send only women spies to the United States. In 1953, the Rosenbergs were executed by electric chair. The Rosenbergs were the first civilians in American history to be executed for espionage.

How Did Actual Espionage Increase Fears of Communism at Home?

For the first several years after World War II, the fear of Soviet infiltration was everywhere. The wide net cast by federal investigations turned up several cases of espionage. The cases added weight to some Americans' argument that communism was pervasive in American society. case #1: The Alger Hiss case was the most notable of these Red Scare episodes. In 1948, Hiss, a former State Department employee, was accused of being a participant in a communist spy ring before World War II. His accuser, Whittaker Chambers, a journalist, said he was also a member of the same ring. He charged that Hiss had given him top-secret State Department papers to be sent to the Soviet Union. Hiss denied Chambers' statements in front of HUAC. In 1949, Hiss was then tried for perjury—or lying under oath—regarding his involvement with Chambers. His trial ended in a hung jury. He was tried again in 1950 and found guilty. He served three years in prison. Hiss maintained his innocence until he died in the 1990s. In 1996 the U.S. government released secret cables from the Soviet Union during World War II that strongly implicated Hiss in spying for the Soviets. case #2: The fear of espionage became even greater in 1949. In August, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb. Now the United States faced a foe that possessed the most dangerous weapon in history. The United States was no longer the world's sole atomic power. Soon, events in Great Britain led to the discovery of a Soviet spy ring in the United States. case #3: In 1950 a German-born physicist named Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Great Britain. He was convicted of passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviets. Fuchs, who had been a member of the German Communist party, had left Germany before World War II. He became a British citizen and worked on the development of an atomic bomb while in Great Britain. Fuchs realized that the atomic bomb was a major technological development. He passed information to the Soviets while still in Britain. He continued to do so after moving to the United States in the early 1940s to work on the Manhattan Project. case #4: Upon his arrest in Britain in 1950, Fuchs admitted that he had been passing information to the Soviets since 1943. During his interrogation, he said that he had given information to an American named Harry Gold in Berkeley, California. Fuchs was sentenced to prison, and the information he gave British investigators was shared with the FBI. Suddenly, the most famous espionage case of the atomic age unfolded. The spy trail led from Harry Gold to a man named David Greenglass. From there it led to Greenglass's sister, Ethel Rosenberg. She and her husband, Julius, became household names in the early 1950s. case #5: The Rosenbergs were tried and convicted of espionage, or spying. Some critics of the trial compared it to the Sacco and Vanzetti trial of the 1920s. That case had arisen from anti-immigrant attitudes of the time. While it was likely that Sacco was guilty, the crime had basically been a robbery gone wrong. The Rosenbergs were U.S. citizens who had joined the Communist Party and passed important information to an enemy state. Their crime had more far-reaching implications. After numerous appeals, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953. With a much laxer American justice system in place which struggles to carry out capital punishment when warranted, how do you think the Rosenbergs would have been punished today?

Did You Know?

Hollywood was not the only target of Congress. Some believed that communists were working at the highest levels of government. In one famous case in 1953, J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the lab that developed the atomic bomb, was accused of associating with communists. Oppenheimer was removed as an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission and his government security clearances were revoked.

How Did the Arms Race Affect Americans?

If there is one image that signifies American life in the early 1950s, it is the mushroom cloud from an atomic blast. The constant tension between the Soviet Union and the West grew enormously when the Soviets acquired the atom bomb. This news arrived in American living rooms shortly after the victory of Chinese Communists in the Chinese Civil War. Americans feared that it was only a matter of time before a bomb was dropped on the United States. American military leaders began stockpiling atomic weapons for potential future use. In addition, scientists were working on a new, even deadlier nuclear weapon—the hydrogen bomb. This new device was known as a thermonuclear weapon. It was smaller, but many times more powerful, than an atomic bomb. The atomic bomb's force came from fission, the splitting of atoms. A hydrogen bomb's force would come from fusion, the joining of hydrogen atoms. The weapon was so powerful that some scientists argued that it should not be created. For the military, the two weapons presented an additional dilemma. The Army favored "smaller" atomic weapons that could be used in battlefield situations. Army weapons developers, for example, had developed an atomic cannon for use in the field. On the other hand, the newly created Air Force favored the development of thermonuclear weapons. These could be delivered by bombers or by guided missiles, both Air Force weapons systems. President Truman argued in favor of the hydrogen bomb, believing that the United States needed all the advantages it could possibly have against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In November 1952, scientists successfully tested a hydrogen bomb on an island in the Marshall Islands. Witnesses declared that after the explosion, the island had ceased to exist. Less than a year later, the Soviets also successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could successfully keep a technological advantage over the other. For this reason, they began an arms race to stockpile weapons. Instead of spending money on troops and more conventional means of warfare, defense dollars were poured into building up a major nuclear arsenal. Scientists also worked on systems to make the weapons' delivery more accurate. A goal for both countries was to create accurate, long-range missiles that could carry thermonuclear weapons. The strategy in the buildup was that the threat of massive nuclear retaliation by either side in a conflict would keep an enemy from attacking. The graph shows the rapid buildup of nuclear arms beginning in the 1950s. The arms race and the threat of nuclear war influenced Americans in ways beyond the Red Scare. U.S. leaders conveyed the message that every citizen was a soldier in the Cold War. In addition to the arms buildup, the federal government sought to prepare its citizens for nuclear warfare through a civil-defense program. "Duck and cover" air raid drills were held in schools and other public facilities. The Eisenhower Interstate System was developed to allow rapid evacuation of urban areas in case of attack. In the early years of the civil defense program, the hydrogen bomb had not been developed. With the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the understanding that the fallout from radiation would spread far and wide, much civil defense planning became useless. Still, the government put forth the idea that planning was necessary in order to survive a blast. Many Americans invested in building shelters beneath their homes in case of nuclear war. The reality was that if a full-scale nuclear war occurred, very few people would survive. Americans continued to live with the fear of nuclear annihilation—or total destruction—for years until the Cold War came to an end in the late 1980s. With so much concern over the power that these atomic elements produced, those who have put their faith in Christ are connected to the One who holds all of these powerful components together.

What Did Americans Fear?

In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt famously told Americans, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." By the late 1940s, Americans feared much more than fear itself. They feared the spread of communism around the world. They feared that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government and society. And, by 1950, they feared atomic war. In some ways, the post-World War II period resembled the post-World War I period in the United States. Both eras were known as the time of the "Red Scare." However, the Red Scare after World War I was a fear of immigrants who would cause labor and political unrest. During the First Red Scare, laws were passed to limit the number of immigrants who could enter the United States, and those who did come faced restrictions on their civil rights. Many suspected anarchists and Communists were arrested and deported, with little to no evidence of wrongdoing. The Second Red Scare, which followed World War II, was a specific fear of a powerful enemy who infiltrated American society at every level. This was an enemy that could annihilate the United States. In many ways, those fears were valid. The Soviet Union was a powerful foe, and there were cases of espionage by Soviet spies that came to light during this period. However, there were also American politicians and other public figures who used people's fears for personal gain. Among the Americans who rose to fame in this era was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. His wild accusations became known as McCarthyism, one of the most dishonorable terms in American political history.

What Was McCarthyism?

While the HUAC hearings opened the curtain on the Red Scare era, Senator Joseph McCarthy played a leading role in those dramatic years. In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have direct knowledge of "205" employees of the U.S. State Department who were members of the Communist Party. In later speeches, McCarthy's numbers varied, but one thing did not—he could not produce names or evidence. This did not stop the Republican senator from Wisconsin, however. He accused the Democrats of "twenty years of treason," for supporting Communism. He charged that Secretary of State George Marshall, widely admired for the Marshall Plan, was part of a "conspiracy." Despite his lack of facts, many Americans supported McCarthy. His sensationalist approach encouraged, and even pressured, other Americans to charge people based on suspicion rather than evidence. Local committees formed to seek out Communists in schools and other local organizations. Hundreds of teachers and other workers lost their jobs as a result. Critics, including many fellow Senators, accused McCarthy of playing on people's fears for personal gain. One critic, political cartoonist Herbert Block, labeled McCarthy's tactics "McCarthyism " in a cartoon published on March 29, 1950, in the Washington Post. The name stuck. It seemed McCarthy would stop at nothing. In the 1950 elections, McCarthy contributed to the defeat of one of President Truman's prominent supporters. His team produced a fake photograph of Democratic Senator Millard E. Tydings meeting with Earl Browder, head of the American Communist Party. The photograph was a composite—a combination of two different photographs. Tydings was running for reelection and had served on the committee that investigated McCarthy's statements about Communists in the State Department. Tydings had declared that McCarthy's accusations were a "fraud and a hoax." Though a caption in the tabloid newspaper in which the photograph appeared labeled it as a composite, no one glancing at the photograph realized that it was a fake. Tydings's Republican opponent won election. Tydings was one of the first of many casualties of McCarthyism. McCarthy was reelected to the Senate in 1952 and stepped up his activities. In 1953, he became chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The committee was supposed to investigate fraud and waste in the executive branch. However, McCarthy quickly switched the focus of the investigations to Communist activities. Most members of the committee eventually resigned, and McCarthy handled the investigations with his own staff. He continued his charges against innocent victims. In 1954, McCarthy accused officials in the U.S. Army of communist sympathies. The hearings on the case were nationally televised, one of the first such events to appear on television. As he accused a young lawyer involved with the case of Communist activities, another lawyer representing the Army spoke the famous words: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency ...?" Many Americans around the nation realized that McCarthy had gone too far, viewing his hearings as publicity stunts. His popularity began to diminish. McCarthy was later censured, or publicly reprimanded, by the U.S. Senate for his actions. He died three years later, at the age of 48, from alcoholism.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC):

a committee formed by the House of Representatives to investigate people thought to be disloyal to the United States, especially those believed to be communist or communist sympathizers

blacklisted:

a term used to describe people, especially in the motion picture industry, who were unable to find work after being accused to communist sympathies

McCarran Act:

legislation passed by Congress in 1950 over President Harry Truman's veto that required Communists to register with the federal government, outlawed any group from making a plan to create a dictatorship, and prevented Communists from obtaining a passport or from entering the United States

Federal Employee Loyalty Program:

program created in 1947 by President Harry Truman to investigate all federal employees in order to establish their loyalty to the United States

McCarthyism:

the name given to Senator Joseph McCarthy's tactics of spreading fear of communism through false charges of radical activities