Download The Truman Doctrine and the Four Points (1947,1949) During

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am fully aware of the broad implications in
volved if the United States extends assistance
to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these impli
cations with you at this time.
1947
During World War II, the United States and the
Soviet Union were allies. After the ivar, however,
the Soviets were determined to take over the Eastern
European countries that they had occupied. The United
States opposed this, and the two countries were soon
locked into a Cold War. At the same time, communist
parties in many European countries began gaining
power. President Truman sought ways to end this
spread of communism without war.
In 1947 communist rebels in Greece threatened
to overthrotv the conservative Greek government. Tru
man asked Congress for $400 million in aid for Greece,
stating a plan that became known as the Truman
Doctrine. Then, in his inaugural address in January
1949, he outlined his Four Point Foreign Policy,
which included his continued support of the European
Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan) and America’s
responsibility to the underdeveloped areas of the world.
As you read the excerpts from Truman’s address to
Congress, in which he outlined the Truman Doctrine,
and the fourth point of his Four Point Foreign Policy,
consider what Truman thought might happen if the
United States failed to provide aid to Greece.
The Truman
Doctrine and the
Four Points
(1947,1949)
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readinijs in American History, Volume 2
From Congressional
Record, 80th Congress,
1st Session; and
Congressional Record, 8 1st
Congress, 1st Session.
324
325
One of the primary objectives of the foreign
policy of the United States is the creation of condi
tions in which we and other nations will be able
to work out a way of life free from coercion [force
or the threat of force]. This was a fundamental issue
in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory
was won over countries which sought to impose
their will, and way of life, on other nations.
To insure the peaceful development of nations,
free from coercion, the United States has taken a
leading part in establishing the United Nations. The
• The
United Nations is designed to make possible lasting
freedom and independence for all its members. We United Nations
shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we is designed to
make possible
are willing to help free people to maintain their
free institutions and their national integrity against lasting freedom
aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them and
totalitarian regimes [systems of government in which independence
all aspects of people’s lives are rigidly controlled].
for all its
This is no more than a frank recognition that totali
members.
tarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct
or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations
of international peace and hence the security of the
United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the
world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced
upon them against their will. The government of
the United States has made frequent protests against
the coercion and intimidation, in violation of the
Yalta agreement, in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
I must also state that in a number of other countries
there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly
every nation must choose between alternative ways
of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the
majority, and is distinguished by free institutions,
representative government, free elections, guaran
tees
of individual liberty, freedom of speech and
religion,
and freedom from political oppression.
The Truman Doctrine and the Four Points
326
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The second way of life is based upon the will
of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority.
It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled
press and radio, fixed elections and the suppression
of personal freedoms,
I believe that it must be the policy of the United
States to support peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation [takeover or control] by armed minor
I believe that our
ities or by outside pressures.
help should be primarily through ecorcomic and
financial aid, which is essential to economic stability
and orderly political processes.
The world is not static [motionless] and the
status quo [present situation] is not sacred. But we
cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation
of the charter of the United Nations by such methods
as coercion, or by such subterfuges [deceptions] as
political infiltration. In helping free and independent
nations to maintain their freedom, the United States
will be giving effect to the principles of the charter
of the United Nations.
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize
that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation
are of grave importance in a much wider situation.
If Greece should fall under the control of an armed
minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would
be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder
might well spread throughout the entire Middle
East.
It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these
countries, which have struggled so long against over
whelming odds, should lose that victory for which
they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutiOnS
and loss of independence would be disastrous not
only for them but for the world. Discouragement
and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neigh
boring peoples striving to maintain their freedom
and independence.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured
by misery and want. They spread and grow in the
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Hictoiy, Volume 2
We must embark on a bold new program
for making
the benefits of our scientific advances and
industrial
progress available for the improvement and
growth
of underdeveloped areas.
More than half the people of the world
are
living in conditions approaching misery.
Their food
is inadequate. They are victims of disea
se, Their
economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their
poverty
is a handicap and a threat both to them and
prosper
ous areas.
For the first time in history, humanity poss
esses
the knowledge and the skill to relieve the
suffering
of these people.
The United States is pre-eminent among natio
ns
in the development of industrial and scientific
tech
niques. The material resources which we can
afford
to use for the assistance of other people are limit
ed.
But our imponderable resources in technical
knowl
edge are constantly growing and are inexhaus
tible.
I believe that we should make available to peac
eloving peoples the benefits of our store of
technical
knowledge in order to help them realize their
aspira
tions for a better life. And, in cooperation with
other
nations, we should foster capital investment
in areas
needing development.
Our aim should be to help the free peoples
of the world, through their own efforts, to
produce
1949
evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach
their full
growth when the hope of a people for
a better life
has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to
us for
support in maintaining their freedoms. If
we falter
in our leadership, we may endanger the
peace of
the world—and we shall surely endanger
the welfare
of our own nation. Great responsibilities have
been
placed upon us by the swift movement of
events. I
am confident that the Congress will face
these re
sponsibilities squarely.
327
The free peoples
of the world look
to us for support
in maintaining
their
freedoms.
The Truman Doctrine and the Four
Points
more food, more clothing, more materials for hous
ing, and more mechanical power to lighten their
burdens.
We invite other countries to pooi their techno
logical resources in this undertaking. Their contribu
tions will be warmly welcomed. This should be a
cooperative enterprise in which all nations work to
gether through the United Nations and its special
ized agencies wherever practicable. It must be a
worldwide effort for the achievement of peace,
plenty, and freedom.
With the cooperation of business, private capi
tal, agriculture, and labor in this country, this pro
gram can greatly increase the industrial activity in
other nations and can raise substantially their stan
dards of living.
Such new economic developments must be de
vised and controlled to benefit the peoples of the
areas in which they are established. Guarantees to
the investor must be balanced by guarantees in the
interest of the people whose resources and whose
labor go into these developments.
The old imperialism—exploitation for foreign
profit—has no place in our plans. What we envisage
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Histoiy, Volume 2
President Harry Tru
man addresses a joint
session of Congress to
propose the foreign pol
icy initiative later called
the Truman Doctrine.
328
do you think Truman visualized the carry
ing out of his two plans? What do you
think he saw as a long-range end result
of the programs he proposed?
3. Using Your Historical Imagination. How
President Truman think the United States
could offer to underdeveloped cOuntries?
Which American resources did he say
were limited?
2. What resources of the United States did
thought might happen if the United States
failed to provide aid to Greece?
I. What do you think President Truman
REVIEWING THE READING
is a program of development based on the concepts
of democratic fair-dealing.
All countries, including our own, will greatly
benefit from a constructive program for the better
use of the world’s human and natural resources. Expe
rience shows that our commerce with other countries
expands as they progress industrially and economi
cally.
Greater production is the key to prosperity and
peace. And the key to greater production is a wider
and more vigorous application of modern scientific
and technical knowledge.
Only by helping the least fortunate of its mem
bers to help themselves can the human family achieve
the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all
people.
Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force
to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant
action, not only against their human oppressors, but
also against their ancient enemies—hunger, misery,
and despair.
The Truman Doctrine and the Four Points
32c
he social costs of what came to be called McCar
thyism have yet to be computed. By conferring
its prestige on the red [communist] hunt, the state
T
During the late 19405 a new wave of fear swept
across the United States. Several incidents led Ameri
cans to believe that communists had infiltrated the
highest levels of the U.S. government. Public hearings
held by the House Un-American Activities Committee
followed, with informers accusing scores of public
figures of communist activities or connections. Careers
were destroyed virtually overnight.
In 1950 Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy,
in an attempt to further his own career, claimed that
he knew of 205 “card-carrying communists” who
held high positions in the State Department. Although
he never produced the names or provided any form
of proof McCarthy attacked and ruined the careers
of an untold number of government officials over the
next four years. Finally, McCarthy went too far.
His irrational tactics became obvious to the public,
and the people turned against him. Later that year
the Senate passed a vote of condemnation against
him, and his star fell as quickly as it had risen.
The reputations and careers of McCarthy’s victims,
however, would never be the same. As you read the
following excerpts from journalist Victor Navasky’s
book on McCarthyism, try to determine the meaning
of the term “McCarthyism” as it might be used today.
Victor Navasky
Describes the Costs
of “McCarthyism”
(1950s)
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Histoiy, Volume 2
From Naming Names by
Victor S. Navasky.
334
335
did more than bring misery to the lives of hundreds
of thousands of Communists, former Communists,
fellow travelers [associates of hidden communists],
and unlucky liberals. It weakened American culture
and it weakened itself.
Unlike the Palmer Raids [nationwide raids by
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer against sup
posed subversives] of the early 1920s, which were
violent hit-and-run affairs that had no long-term ef
fect, the vigilante spirit [Joseph] McCarthy repre
sented still lives on in legislation accepted as a part
of the American political way. The morale of the
United States’ newly reliable and devoted civil service
was savagely undermined in the I 950s, and the purge
of the Foreign Service contributed to our disastrous
miscalculations in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and
the consequent human wreckage. The congressional
investigations of the 1940s and 1950s Fueled the
Senator Joseph McCar
thy displays photo
anti-Communist hysteria which eventually led to
graphs of alleged
the investment of thousands of billions of dollars
in a nuclear arsenal, with risks that boggle the minds communists at a Senat
of even those who specialize in “thinking about the hea ring.
Victor Navasky Describes the Costs of”McCarthyism”
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American History, Volume 2
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unthinkable.” Unable to tolerate a little subversion
(however one defines jO—if that is the price of free
dom, dignity, and experimentation—we lost our
edge, our distinctiveness. McCarthyism decimated
[partially destroyed] its target—the American Com
munist Party, whose membership fell from about
seventy-five thousand in 1957 (probably a high per
centage of these lost were FBI informants)—but the
real casualties of that assault were the walking
wounded of the liberal left and the already impaired
momentum of the New Deal. No wonder a new
generation of radical idealists came up through the
peace and civil-rights movements rather than the
Democratic Party.
The damage was
The damage was compounded by the state’s
chosen
compounded by
instruments of destruction, the professional
informers—those ex-Communists whom the sociolo
the state’s
gist Edward Shils described in 1956 as a host of
chosen
frustrated, previously anonymous failures.
instruments of
It is no easier
destruction, the thyism on culture to measure the impact of McCar
than on politics, although emblems
professional
of the terror were ever on display. In the literary
informers
community, for example, generally thought to be
more permissive than the mass media.
the distin
guished editor-in-chief of the distinguished publisher
Little, Brown & Co. was forced to resign because
he refused to repudiate [give up] his progressive
politics and he became unemployable. Such liberal
publications as the New York Post and the New Republic
refused to accept ads for the transcript of the trial
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg [husband and wife
who were tried and convicted in 1951 of passing
atomic secrets to Soviet agents; electrocuted in
1953]. Albert Maltz’s short story “The Happiest Man
on Earth,” which had won the 0. Henry Memorial
Short Story Award in 1938 and been republished
seventy-six times in magazines, newspapers, and an
thologies, didn’t get reprinted again from the time
he entered prison in 1950 until 1963. Ring Lardner,
Jr., had to go to England to find a publisher for
336
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What is the meaning of the term ‘McCar
thyism”?
What does Navasky think of the informers
used by the government in its attempt
to rid the country of communists?
Using Your Historical Imagination. Na
vasky says that McCarthyism weakened
American culture and it weakened itself.
What examples does he give to prove
his point? What does he believe to be
the only possible good to come out of
McCarthyism?
1.
2.
3.
REVIEWING THE READING
his critically acclaimed novel The Ecstasy of Owen
Muir.
The FBI had a permanent motion-picture
crew stationed across the street from the Four Conti
nents Bookstore in New York, which specialized
in literature sympathetic to the Soviet Union’s brand
of Marxism, How to measure a thousand such pollu
tions of the cultural environment?
Victor Navasky Describes the Costs of”McCarthyism”__337
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APRIMAjOURES
On Joining NATO
As the Soviet threat loomed in the aftermath of World War II, the international
community sought ways to ensure world peace and stability. In the United
States, debates raged over whether U.S. membership in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) would deter Soviet aggression or intensify competition
between the two superpowers.
As you read the passages, try to identify the different consequences that were predicted to
result from U.S. membership in NATO.
Charles E. Bohien, Witness to History,
1929—1969
NATO was simply a necessity. The developing
situation with the Soviet Union demanded the
participation of the United States in the defense of
Western Europe. Any other solution would have
opened the area to Soviet domination.
NATO
was. regarded as a traditional military
alliance of like-minded countries. It was not
regarded as a panacea for the problems besetting
Europe, but only as an elementary precaution
against Communist aggression.
It is difficult now to recapture the mood of
the late 1940s. The Soviet Union was on the move,
not only in carrying out the traditional objectives
of Russian foreign policy but also in utilizing to
the full the existence of Communist parties sub
servient to it the world over. Had the United States
not inaugurated the Marshall Plan. and [not]
agreed to join NATO, the Communists might easily
have assumed power in most of Western Europe.
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Walter Lippmann, politicaljournalist, from a letter
to Thomas Finletter April 18, 1949
Here there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that the
Senate will eventually ratify the Atlantic Pact,
but on the question of money for arming Europe
there is going to be a great big fight.
If the
budget has to be increased after the Pact, it will
be very hard to answer the feeling that it doesn’t
inaugurate a still more intense phase of the race
of armaments—and that rather knocks into a
cocked hat the argument that the Pact works
for security. I myself am convinced that if the
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Russians ever intended to start an overt war, they
will not start it when it is certain that they cannot
win the war unless they defeat the United States.
Therefore, the security of all Europe is greater
than it was once the Pact has been ratified.
Senator Tom Connally (D-Texas), Chairman,
Committee on Foreign Relations, in an address
before the United States Senate, 1949
It is obvious that the United States gains much by
declaring now, in this written pact, the course of
action we would follow even if the treaty did not
exist. Without a treaty, we were drawn into two
world wars to preserve the security of the North
Atlantic community. Can anyone doubt that we
would become involved in a third world conflict
if it should ever come?...
From now on, no one will misread our motives
or underestimate our determination to stand in
defense of our freedom. By letting the world
know exactly where we stand, we erect a funda
mental policy that outlasts the daily fluctuations
of diplomacy, and the twists and turns of psycho
logical warfare which the Soviet Union has chosen
to wage against us. This public preview of our
intentions has a steadying effect upon the course
of human events both at home, where our people
want no more Normandy beachheads, and
abroad, where men must work and live in the
sinister shadow of aggression.
The greatest obstacle that stands in the way
of complete [European] recovery is the pervading
and paralyzing sense of insecurity. The treaty is a
powerful antidote to this poison. It will go far in
dispelling the fear that has plagued Europe since
the war.
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(continued)
an attack against it, only filled me with impa
tience. What in the world did they think we had
been doing in Europe these last four or five years?
Did they suppose we had labored to free Europe
from the clutches of Hitler merely in order to
abandon it to those of Stalin? What did they
suppose the Marshall Plan was all about?...
The danger that the European NATO partners
faced in the political field—the danger, that is,
of a spread of communism to new areas of the
continent by political means—was still greater, I
wrote, than any military danger that confronted
them.
This preoccupation with military affairs was
already widespread, I noted. It was regrettable. It
addressed itself to what was not the main danger.
But it behooved us to bear in mind that the
need for alliances and rearmament in Western
Europe was primarily a subjective one, arising
from the failure of the Western Europeans to
understand correctly their own position. Their best
bet was still the struggle for economic recovery
and internal political stability. Intensive rearma
ment represented an uneconomical and regrettable
diversion of their effort—a diversion that not only
threatened to proceed at the cost of economic
recovery but also encouraged the impression that
war was inevitable.
Senator Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), in an address
before the United States Senate, 1949
So, Mr. President, I am opposing the treaty.
This whole program in my opinion is not a peace
We are commit
program: it is a war program.
ting ourselves to a policy of war, not a policy of
peace. We are building up armaments. We are
undertaking to arm half the world against the
other half. We are inevitably starting an arma
ment race. The more the pact signatories arm, the
more the Russians are going to arm. It is said they
are armed too much already. Perhaps that is true.
But that makes no difference. The more we arm,
the more they will arm, the more they will devote
their whole attention to the building up of arms.
The general history of armament races in the
world is that they have led to war, not to peace.
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Geoige F. Kennan, American diplomat,
Memoirs, 1925—1950
The suggestion, constantly heard from the
European side, that an alliance was needed to
assure the participation of the United States in the
cause of Western Europe’s defense, in the event of
From MEMOIRS: 1925-1950 by George Kennan. Copyright © 1967
by George F. Kennan. By permission of Little, Brown and Co.
QUESTIONS TO
Discuss
1. According to Connally, how would NATO aid the European economic recovery?
2. Explain why some commentators feared that the U.S. commitment to NATO would
accelerate the arms race.
3. Why did Connally and Lippmann think that U.S. membership in NATO would
deter Soviet aggression in Europe?
4. Why was George Kennan opposed to NATO?
5. Predicting Consequences Both Robert Taft and Tom Connally were
partially correct—there was an arms race, but it did not result in war between the
superpowers or a takeover of Western Europe. Explain the
logic used by each senator to predict what he believed would be the
consequences of NATO.
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“Uncle Joe”
President Franklin Roosevelt and wartime media affectionately referred to Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin as “Uncle Joe.” As relations between the United States and
the Soviet Union worsened in the postwar era, so did Americans’ image of Stalin.
In the passage below, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana describes her father in the last
years of his life. Stalin died in 1953.
As you read, compare Svetlana ‘.s description with the image most Americans have
of the Soviet leader.
owadays when I read or hear somewhere
that my father used to consider himself
practically a god it amazes me that people who
knew him well can say such a thing.
It’s true my father wasn’t especially demo
cratic, but he never thought of himself as a god.
His life was most solitary of all towards the
end, his trip south in the autumn of 1951 being
the last he ever took anywhere. He never left
Moscow again and stayed at Kuntsevo practically
all the time. Kuntsevo, meanwhile, was re-built
over and over again. In his latter years a little
wooden house was built near the main house, as
the air was fresher there. Often he spent days at a
time in the big room with the fireplace. Since he
didn’t care for luxury, there was nothing luxurious
about the room except the wood paneling and the
valuable rug on the floor.
As for the presents which were sent to him
from all corners of the earth, he had them collected
in one spot and donated them to a museum. It
wasn’t hypocrisy or a pose on his part, as a lot
of people say, but simply the fact that he had no
idea what to do with this avalanche of objects....
He let his salary pile up in packets every
month on his desk. I have no idea whether he had
N
a savings account, but probably not. He never
spent any money—he had no place to spend it
and nothing to spent it on. Everything he needed,
his food, his clothing, his dachas and his servants,
all were paid for by the government. The secret
police had a division that existed specially for this
purpose and it had a book-keeping department of
its own. God only knows how much it cost and
where the money all went. My father certainly
didn’t know.
Sometimes he’d pounce on his commandants
or the generals of his bodyguard, someone like
Vlasik, and start cursing: You parasites! You’re
making a fortune here. Don’t think I don’t know
how much money is running through your fingers!’
But the fact was he knew no such thing. His
intuition told him huge sums were being frittered
away, but that was all. From time to time he’d
make an attempt to audit the household accounts,
but nothing ever came of it, of course, because the
figures they gave him were faked. He’d be furi
ous, but he couldn’t find out a thing. All-powerful
as he was, he was impotent in the face of the
frightful system that had grown up around him
like a huge honeycomb, and he was helpless
either to destroy it or bring it under control.
From TWENTY LETTERS TO A FRIEND by Svetlana Alliluyeva.
Translated from the Russian by Priscilla Johnson. (Penguin Books, 1967)
QuEsTIoNs TO DIscuss
1. According to Svetlana, what was Joseph Stalin like? What kind of life did
he live?
2. Distinguishing False from Accurate Images
Wh
portrayed by his daughter would most Americans
32
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The Rise of Joseph McCarthy
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In the 1950s, Senator Charles E. Potter (R-MI) was a member of the Senate
Government Operations Committee. The excerpt below is from Days of Shame,
Potter’s behind-the-scenes account of the Army-McCarthy hearings.
T
As you read, think about conditions in society that made it possible for someone like
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Joseph McCarthy to gain power.
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26
believe that a great many factors were involved
in the rise to power of Joe McCarthy. For one
thing, the atmosphere of the post-World War II
years seemed made to order for his particular
tactics. He preyed on the fears of a war-weary
nation. My generation, the World War II genera
tion, had reached maturity during the depression
years. Our earliest teenage memories were those
of hardship in the home and a dispirited feeling
of hopelessness in our parents. Then the war had
brought prosperity and many millions of us in
the Armed Services found our first security as
a premium in return for some of the physical
dangers we faced.
In uniform we ate well, which had not always
been true in the past; we were well clothed, warm
and well sheltered except in actual combat; many
of us went to a dentist for the first time in our
lives because we never had been able to afford it;
we traveled all around the earth to places that
had been tiny spots in our geography books and
we met strange people and watched new customs.
Many died, but those of us who lived could,
in honesty, look back on those years and repeat
the corny phrase of the time: “We never had it so
good.” But by 1946, after the war years of priva
tion, or what we liked to think of as privation, we
came back looking for a better life for ourselves
and our parents. The emotional drive was ending.
We had matured from boyhood to manhood too
quickly. And when we got home we found things
not at all the way we expected them to be.
All of a sudden our Russian allies had become
the new enemy, and the Germans and Japanese
were being called our good friends. This strange
and rapid switch in national thinking took place
while we were still learning more and more details
of what the Germans had done to the Jews and
what the Japanese had done to our own men in
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Chapter 26 Primary Source Activity
their prison camps. Now we were told we must
hate the Russians because they were Communists
although I could not remember any such com
plaint about them when they blasted their way
out of Stalingrad and started to roll westward
over the German armies.
The tendencies toward war still rumbled
in Eastern Europe. In 1947, Greece and Turkey
were threatened and it was then that the President
announced the Truman Doctrine, a sweeping
commitment to defend freedom in the Middle
East. Later on, President Eisenhower would
slap down aggression in the Middle East, but
always the trumpet sounded against Communism,
ignoring Arab Nationalism,
“The stage was set for an opportunist
who would be willing and able to
take full advantage of the national
confusion and frustration and send
it ballooning into hysteria.
Joseph Stalin moved against Berlin in 1948,
and it was then that President Truman started
the famous airlift of supplies into the city which
saved our interests there and sent Stalin’s hopes
scuttling back toward Moscow.
It was a period of extreme unrest in this
country and it was not long before politicians,
writers, and self-appointed advisers with all
possible motives learned that denouncing
Communism was a profitable occupation.
Many, of course, were sincere, but few gave
their message with restraint and, as always,
the press poured out the big, black headlines.
© Prentice-Hall, Inc.
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(continued)
Many people had joined groups during the
depression years which were later to be put on
various lists as Communist fronts. They had
joined in despair, and sometimes in the hope that
somehow they might make a better world for
themselves. There was no reason to believe that
every person who joined these groups was an
advocate of the violent overthrow of the United
States Government. However, many of them were
soon to learn that they might be so labeled by the
loudest voices of demagoguery.
The American Legion and other veterans’
groups added their belligerent shouts to the
confusion, and, all over the country, many ethnic
groups, through their own publications and
communications, spread the new theory that
Communism was one hundred percent wrong
and that it was safe to call anyone with whom
you disagreed a Communist.
Then came the Korean war and with it the
license to denounce Communism more loudly
than ever and with less concern as to who might
be the target.
The stage was set for an opportunist who
would be willing and able to take full advantage
of the national confusion and frustration and sent
it ballooning into hysteria.
Another important factor in the creation of
the disgraceful situation which absorbed our
country in 1954 was the birth and distortion and
growth of investigative committees in Congress.
Governmental investigating committees for leg
islative purposes were not new and even predate
the founding of our country. Their proper pur
poses are to investigate the functioning of existing
laws and considerations for either amending or
drafting new legislation. However, it was never
intended that these legislative bodies should con
duct quasi trials with power of punishment.
Into this unfortunate situation came a man
who had a tremendous need to be the center of
attraction, a man who must have hated himself
violently for he found it so easy to drench others
with hatred. He was a man of strong ambition but
his ambitions had no substance, his dreams
reached no further than tomorrow’s headlines.
In February 1950, he was invited to speak
to the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club
at Wheeling, West Virginia, and it was there that
he either did or did not wave a piece of paper—
reports were contradictory—and say that it
contained the names of 205 Communists in the
State Department.
At that moment, a poison pellet was dropped
into our society and the fumes would never
entirely blow away.
From Days of Shame. Copyright © 1965 by Charles Potter.
Reprinted by permission of the Putnam Berkeley Group.
AcnvITY
By the end of 1953, 50 percent of those sampled in a Gallup poll held a positive
opinion of Joseph McCarthy, with 29 percent having an unfavorable opinion.
Conduct your own “survey” to determine how people today view Joseph
McCarthy. Interview older relatives and neighbors as well as classmates and
teachers. Report your findings to the class.
© Prentice-Hall, Inc.
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United States History: Book 3
Lesson 30
Handout 30 (page 1)
Date
Korea: War Without Victors
Cleveland News war correspondent Howard Beaufalt’s report from
Korea entitled “Yanks Eager to Go on Offense, End War Quickly.” Consider it as well as your
The reading below is
textbook’s account of the Korean Conflict in answering the questions at the end.
WITH U.S. SEVENTH DIVISION, KOREA—I often wondered what war was like. Now I
know. For a week I lived with the horror of a big battle, the smell of blood on raw earth, the
pounding noise and danger.
War as I see It in Korea, the broken little finger of Asia. Is dying and suffering on the
mountains and slopes of undreamed of places.
Places like Old I3aldy. a mammoth granite skeleton rising out of a dead valley. Or Pork
Chop, the seared and misshapen hill, or Its crippled companion, T-Bone, or one of the teeth
of Alligator Jaws, which reaches out toward the ImJln River.
Outlandish places you only find on a soiled military map because the 01’s felt they had
to give them names before they could defend them. These names are not a part of the
civilized geography of the world.
They are lonely places for an infantryman to die, the 01 whose heart is always so close
to home.
The 01, caught again In the swinging door of history, fights a war In Korea he doesn’t
believe In. He dies and suffers wounds in places he despises, for a cause he doesn’t
understand. He fights alongside soldiers who can’t understand him, the Colombians, the
Ethiopians, the Porto Ricans, the grinning Katusas (Korean augmentation troops, U.S.
Army)—against Red Chinese who scream like hyenas whether they are winning or losing.
How can a GI understand a war like this? A dirty hootchie war? Living in a cave or a
bunker like a mole, blinking at the sunlight? A war fought mostly at night when he can’t
see who he Is fighting?
The only kind of a war the 01 understands Is to step up to the guy who Is challenging
him, lick him and go home. But in Korea he feels his hands are tied behind his back. He
gets hit and defends himself as best he can.
But defense Is a sissy game. He wants to go out and get the enemy, not sit back and
wait to be shoved off a mountain, and then have to fight to get It back again.
The infantryman is the real hero of any war, He fights the kind of a war he is told to
fight. And he dies in Korea completely cut off from everything that makes sense. His last
picture of the world Is hazy with smoke, flame and flying mortar fragments and awful noise
mixed up with the piercing yells of the Chinese Commies.
He falls In yellow mud, convinced It is all a bad dream and he will suddenly wake up
in Cleveland where all the crazy pieces of the puzzle dissolve into a comforting pattern
called home.
War comes Into sorrowful focus at the battalion aid station, first stop for the wounded
and the dead when the battle for them is over, and the medics and chaplains get busy.
I was there on a cold grey morning when the fight had been blazing 48 hours. Medics
who had been without rest for two days were methodically cutting clothing from the
wounded.
I saw several truck loads of replacements arrive to relieve weary troops on the line. The
new arrivals sat on the ground. resting their backs against the sandbags of the hootchle
bunkers, clutching rifles between their legs. They silently watched the trucks with the big
Red Cross unload their bloody burdens Into Ethel tender hands of the medics.
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United States History: Book 3
Name
Lesson 30
Handout 30 (page 2)
Date
The first glimpse of war was frightening and sickening. They turned away from their
own wounded and looked with quiet falsicination upon the rows of Chinese dead.
So that was the enemy. Up to now he had only been a word In a military textbook, a
name in a practice maneuver. Red China’s Joe didn’t really look like much. His equipment,
piled nearby, wasn’t so hot—some Russian, some Japanese. His clothing was of poor
quality and dirty. Funny red underwear with dozens of pockets. What does he need pockets
there for? Wearing tennis shoes that looked as If some GI had thrown them away.
Most impressive thing about Joe were his legs, bulging calf muscles, his short
powerful arms and shoulders, strong from carrying enormous loads Impossible distances,
up and down impossible mountains.
The boys on the way up to the line for the first time looked with scorn upon the enemy
rations strapped around his waist. A small roll of rice, linked together like sausage, and a
soybean cake, But it’s enough to keep the squat little guy with the sturdy legs going for
eight days—while the CI is having his three hot, nourishing meals a day.
The replacement wonders What’s Red Joe got that we haven’t got. Nothing, but
unlimited numbers, and ferocity. The uninitiated recruits took what comfort they could
from the dead Chinese. But there was a cold lump In the pit of their stomachs.
I crawled into a warm sleeping bag that night In a tent at division headquarters. It was
bitter cold, but it was raining. The artillery could be heard booming its rhythmic assault
above the sound of the cold rain beating on the canvas.
I thought about the boys up on the MLR (main line of resistance,) at Baldy. Pork Chop,
T-Bone. Their bunkers and trenches were collapsed by the shelling. Some of the Colombian
dead had not yet been removed from Baldy.
Up there the rain had turned to wet snow. GI’s huddled in shell holes and caves half
filled with water.
Some of them were saying their prayers. Some were wondering what their girls were
doing back home, of if the Indians really do have a chance to win the pennant this year.
That’s what one little acre of the war is like.’
1. What is meant by each of these phrases from the article:
a. “the broken little finger of Asia”:
b.
“Red China’s Joe”:
2, Why were Americans fighting along with Colombians, Ethiopians. and Porto Ricans?
3. Why
had the Chinese entered the war?
4. Why
weren’t Americans allowed to go on the offensive?
‘Howard Beaufait, “Yanks Eager to Go on Offense, End War Quickly,” Cleveland News, 6 AprIl 1953, 1.
© COPYRIGHT. The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
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United States History: Book 3
Lesson 30
Handout 30 (page 3)
Name
Date
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5. Why did the soldiers feel just the sort of frustration that got General MacArthur fired?
6. Is the Korean War presented in histories today as a success or failure? Explain your
answer.
7. In your opinion, did the 33,000 American men who were killed in battle die in vain?
Explain your reasoning.
8. a. How would you justify the war to a mother whose son was killed In the war?
b. How would Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt—both firm believers in collec
tive security—have viewed the outcome of the war?
9. Has history vindicated President Truman’s decision to fire General MacArthur?
Explain your answer.
10. What other limited wars has the world witnessed since the end of the Korean Conflict?
Why are we likely to have more frustrating wars of this kind in the future?
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