Mccarthy and the Cold War One Aspect

McCarthy and the Cold War One aspect of history is that a country's so-called "friend" one day, can be an enemy the next and visa versa. The United States and Soviet Union during World War II joined ranks against the real threat of Nazi Germany. However, it did not take long after the end of the war for Russia and the United States to once again bully each other.

Even before the final surrender of Germany in 1945, the two super powers rapidly found themselves in a new military and diplomatic rivalry. Meanwhile, in the United States, the economy was taking time to build and unemployment was growing. Thoughts of the Depression loomed in people's minds. The friction with the Russians, which would receive the name of Cold War, did not help. Yet it did create a scapegoat for fears and feelings of paranoia. As the tensions between the U.S. And U.S.S.R.

mounted, the Communist threat reached American shores. Surely, Russia was infiltrating the government. The Rosenberg's trial in 1951 put all the props on the stage for the director Joseph McCarthy. The "Red Scare" was nothing new to the United States. Years earlier, when Russia overthrew its tsar and became a communist state, the United States was already leery. It was difficult for the U.S. To understand a non-democratic government. After Germany was defeated in World War II, the Allies met at Yalta and divided Germany into four occupation zones.

The Soviet Union would have the greatest influence in eastern Europe, where its troops were concentrated. It already occupied Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and parts of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. However, elections would be free in these countries, but the governments would be "friendly to the Soviet Union." This is the beginning of what Winston Churchill would later call the "Iron Curtain" that split Europe for the next four decades. When the Allies later met at the Postsdam Conference, the relationships between the U.S. And Soviet Union were already crumbling.

This was especially true, since U.S. President Truman had heard of the successful test of the atomic bomb by the U.S.S.R. In addition, America had stopped giving money to the Soviet Union because of what was occurring in Eastern Europe. The nations of Western Europe still had Hitler on their minds and began to see Stalin as a similar threat. As Halberstam notes in The Fifties (1993, p. 9), the war had ended, but it had not brought true peace because it allowed hegemony over Eastern Europe.

"There had to be an answer; there had to be a scapegoat: These things could not merely have happened, not in a fair and just world." The American public looked at the U.S.S.R. As that scapegoat. During WWII, the Red Scare was subdued and the media painted the U.S.S.R. In a better light as the Germans came in for the attack. Yet after the war's end, the hesitancy felt at Potsdam began to spread across the U.S.

The National Police Gazette's cover blasted the headline "The Truth About Stalin's Bomb" and the Sunday, January 6, 1946, centerfold of the New York Daily News illustrated the Soviet domination in a map headed "The Bear Grows and Grows." Magazines were the next to pick up the Communist theme with articles on Stalin, the U.S. Communist Party and the possibility of a war with Russia.

The March 4, 1947 issue of Look entitled "How to Spot a Communist" warned readers to "Check before you sign that petition or join that little-known club; you might be supporting a secret cause (Barson, 1991, p. 63). As 1947 continued, the Red Scare mounted.

Other Look issues explained how a photo-reporter found the Russians unfriendly and how America could lose the next war in seven days and "bring down the curtain on civilized society." The Saturday Evening Post wrote that "nowhere else in this country are there as many commies per square foot as in New York's garment district.

Yet the Reds have been licked time after time in their campaign to gain control of the clothing workers' unions" and Look questioned "Does Communism threaten Christianity?" The media coverage in 1948 and 1949 continue to spur the fears about the threat of the U.S.S.R. And the infiltration of the Communists in America. Films such as those called the "The Iron Curtain," "The Red Menace," "I Married a Communist," and "Red Nightmare," were abundant and added to the Cold War fears (ibid, p. 83).

The House Un-America Activities Committee (HUAC), originally established in 1937 to investigate subversive activities, was still in force although it had been quiet for some time. In the mid-1940s, the HUAC consisted of racists and reactionaries (Halbertson, 1993, p.12). In 1947, the HUAC began looking into the Hollywood motion picture industry. In September, it interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as so-called "friendly witnesses." During their interviews they named several people who they accused of holding left-wing views.

In 1948, a shady character by the name of Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss, who earlier had filled a minor role in the State Department and was then head of the Carnegie Foundation Endowment, as a fellow Communist. Although HUAC did not give credence to Chambers initially, Richard Nixon, then California Representative, kept pushing the committee to act. In time, the name of Chambers disappeared and Hiss became a symbol for the beginning of the Cold War.

The American public became totally wrapped up in the Hiss case and it did not matter that the evidence was slight if anything at all. Hiss received a five-year term, of which he served 44 months.

Oakley (1986, p.49) calls this an ugly time in American history when large numbers of Americans were caught up in an irrational fear of a great Communist conspiracy, orchestrated from the Kremlin, that was supposedly subverting the country from within, causing the setbacks the nation was suffering in foreign affairs, and contributing to the onward march of world communism. The fear somewhat resulted from the long-term American suspicion of anyone or anything that threatened, or appeared to threaten, democracy, capitalism or Christianity.

It is recalled that after the Pearl Harbor bombing, a similar situation arose with the Japanese-Americans. On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which called for the evacuation of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of ten internment camps in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.

The Internal Security Act of 1950, named for Nevada's Senator Pat McCarran, who picked up wording from an earlier version by Richard Nixon, argued for the fingerprinting and registration of all subversives at large in the U.S. It also authorized concentration camps for emergency situation.

President Truman, who had imposed the Loyalty Order for federal government employees in 1947 vetoed the legislation because, he said, it "would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights [and] would actually weaken our internal security measures." But his veto was overridden by an 89% majority vote, and McCarran's newly formed Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and Hoover's FBI started their hearings (ibid, p. 51) Thus, both the government and the public were prepped for a major witch hunt of communists infiltrating the U.S.

government, and not too many individuals were better than playing on fears than Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. The former circuit judge and marine had been elected to the Senate in 1946 after using smear tactics to defeat Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr. In the primary and Democrat Howard McMurray in the general election (ibid, 56). McCarthy was looking for a cause that would give him notoriety. A friend suggested hitching himself to the communists-in-government issue. This would give attract national publicity and enhance his reelection bid.

Earlier, McCarthy had somewhat raised this concern in his speeches, but now he saw how this could become the way to build his career. "That's it," he told his companions (ibid, 57). The Wisconsin Senator was given a boost by external events. In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were on trial for committing "The Crime of the Century." The Rosenbergs were born and raised in the Lower East Side of New York City. They were married in 1939.

Julius joined the United States Army Signal Corps in 1940, but was discharged five years later after being accused for being a Communist. After leaving the Army, he worked with Ethel's brother David Greenglass in a small self-owned machine shop in New York City. Prior to running the shop, Greenglass had worked at the U.S. government's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico as a machinist on a project to make an atomic bomb.

In 1950, the government arrested Greenglass as a spy for the Soviet Union when he worked at Los Alamos. In a plea bargain to reduce his sentence, Greenglass confessed and told federal prosecutors and the FBI that his brother-in-law recruited him to get information. The Rosenbergs were arrested and accused of providing important information about the atomic bomb to Soviet agents in 1944 and 1945 during the time of World War II. Again, it did not matter that the evidence was flimsy.

Although admitting to be members of the American Communist Party, the Rosenbergs denied any involvement in espionage. They accused Greenglass of making up the story to protect himself. Federal prosecutors and the FBI were seeking the death penalty, but offered a more lenient punishment if they pleaded guilty. The Rosenbergs stood by their earlier statements, despite the fact that if found guilty they would be the first in the U.S. To be executed for espionage.

In 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917; they were put to death two years later (Bennett, 1988, p. 251). McCarthy kicked off his anti-Communist campaign in 1951 at a Republican women's dinner gathering in Wheeling, West Virginia, to celebrate the 141 birthday of Abraham Lincoln, Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time. And, ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down -- they are truly down.

The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful, potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this nation... This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been worst....(ibid, p.

293) He then went on to say that he had in his hand a list of 57 individuals who are shaping the countries foreign policy, but are card-carrying Communists or loyal to the party. The Hiss case was used as an example of what could happen within the government. After the speech, a controversy arose whether McCarthy said 57 or 205 of individuals on his list. Since a copy of the speech did not exist, he stated 57 at the next speech.

The next time, in front of the Senate, he came up with the number 81. He took six hours, from the late afternoon to just before midnight, explaining in detail a number of cases of supposed Communists in the State Department. McCarthy always used the press to his advantage. His name was constantly in the headlines, "McCarthy Outlines New Red-Hunting Plan. Television was just coming into its own, and it gave McCarthy a new way to reach out to millions of people. He may have been controversial, but he was followed.

Now recognized from coast to coast as an enemy to Communism, the donations began flooding in. Some people sent him several dollars, and some sent him thousands. He responded to each donor with a thank you and another request to keep up the fight against Communism. In a nationwide poll, a full fifty percent approved of McCarthy and his methods, with twenty-one percent undecided (Rovere, 1959, p. 23). For publicity, he had a talent unmatched by any other politician of the century," states Rovere (ibid, p.162).

"Or perhaps it was instinct." Today, politicians are well trained in sound bites. Then, McCarthy knew how to "top" or "blanket" a story unfavorable about him. A journalist remembers the time when McCarthy could top a story of foreign affairs with a picture of him at a barbeque, while political scientists called him the worst senator in the U.S. history. He just knew how to make something out of nothing. In 1951, the Senate was discussing McCarthy's defiance of the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections.

Things were not going his way -- he had accused the members of the Subcommittee of stealing the taxpayers' money, by spending it on an investigation on him. He was able to get the story buried in the press with a resolution calling for the continuation of the investigation and for an extension of it to Senator Benton. The Senator was also a master at using inflammatory rhetoric that covered up his untruths. These early sound bites stuck in the minds of his listeners and made newspaper headlines.

It did not matter whether or not they were substantiated. For four years, the public watched McCarthy rant and rave about "left-wing bleeding hearts," "egg-sucking phony liberals," "Communists and queers who sold China into atheistic slavery," and "Parlor Pinks and Parlor Punks" (Lewis, 1978, p. 74-75)). For four years, McCarthy also fed the Red Scare fear with the pledge to continue his fight against communism "regardless of how high-pitched becomes the squealing and screaming of the those left-wing, bleeding heart, phony liberals." (Oakley, 1986, p. 62).

Communism in government was a helpful ploy to further his own gain. He could just as easily have ridden the fears of a fascist, Jewish, or black "menace" to the top of the glory pole. He may have never uncovered one communist, but he had the.