The Anti-communist Crusade

Introduction
- Cold war: effect on domestic and foreign affairs
- Fear of USSR → fear of communism
- Containment policy of the US → crusade to root out communist influence in America
- All Americans were vulnerable due to the Great Depression (+expansion of Communist
Party among university students)
- Truman:
o Starting containment policy by rooting out communists in the US
o 1947: Federal Employee Loyalty Program – FBI investigated files, bring
suspects before a Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board
o HUAC (1938; permanent in 1945) – investigations of the Congress on its own
o Impression that something is wrong within the US
Hollywood and HUAC
- One of the early targets of congressional investigations
- 1947, HUAC: many Hollywood figures have left-wing sympathies compromising their
work
- Films have power
- Certain pictures in films undermine American values (they sympathize with
communism)
- HUAC issued subpoenas (legal documents) → Hollywood figures appear in front of the
committee
- Heated and contentious hearings
- Ring Lardner Jr.
- 19 Hollywood figures altogether (ten of them didn’t answer → they went to prison)
- Hollywood capitulated totally – meeting at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in NYC (Hollywood
Ten)
o Measures to head off further committee attacks
o Statement
o Blacklist
Chambers vs. Hiss
- Another highly visible case, against Alger Hiss (distinguished member of Roosevelt’s
administration)
- 1948: Whittaker Chambers (communist) accused him of having been communist
- Hiss: highly respected → if he had such ties, then maybe also the whole US government
- August 5: Hiss testified before the Committee of Un-American Activities, denying he
had ever met Chambers → proclaim innocence
- Investigators: Stripling + Representatives (Mundt, Rankin, McDowell)
The Rosenbergs on Trial:
- Summer of 1950: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg arrested
o NYC couple
o radical political sympathies
 o allegedly passing atomic secrets to USSR during WW2
- Liberals: they were innocent ↔ conservatives: examples of subversion
- Ethel’s brother was an employee in the Manhattan Project. He shared secrets with Julius,
who told them to the Soviets.
- Ethel was testified only to make Julius admit, but he didn’t
- April 5, 1951: sentencing of Rosenbergs
o Judge Irving Kaufman
o Statement blaming US servicemen’s deaths in Korean War on them
- February 25, 1952: death sentences by US Circuit Court of Appeals
o Opposition and supporters
o Worldwide attention
o Two orphans
o Julius and Ethel communicated in writing
- June 19, 1953: execution (electric chair)
Senator Joe McCarthy:
- February 9, 1950: senator addressed the Women’s Republican Club of Wheelin, West
Virginia
o List of 205 communists in the State Department → handing out to the President
- He had no copy of the speech
- Congressional Record: insertion of a reconstruction of the speech, claiming the names
of 57 subversives
- Mudslinging for 4 years
- McCarthy: demagogue, used obscene language
o Assorted targets – e.g. George C. Marshall
o His power grew after 1952 – chairman of the Government Operations
Committee + head of its Permanent Investigations Subcommittee
o Assistants: Roy M. Cohn, G. David Schine
o Public opinion on his side
Cultural Responses:
- The fear of communism permeated American culture
- Hard time for Americans who symphathized with radical causes
o E.g. W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson
- Vivid protests on the stage and on the screen
o Arthur Miller: The Crucible (1952)
o Gary Cooper & Grace Kelly: High Noon (1952)
Army vs. McCarthy:
- McCarthy went too far
o The army drafted Schine + refused to give him preferential treatment
o He wanted to investigate the army itself
- Army hearings began in April 1954 and lasted for 36 days
o Televised nationwide
o Savage attacks + fabricated evidence
o People were less inclined to support McCarthy
 o Boston Lawyer Joseph Welch challenged McCarthy
- McCarthy: ridden roughshod over Senate for years, only occasional voices
- 1950: Declaration of Conscience – criticizing McCarthy’s methods
o No effect back then
o 1954: Senate took a stand
 Motion of censure (Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont)
- December 2, 1954: resolution to condemn McCarthy
- He died in 1957