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Postwar America
The Cold War
In February 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed his belief that world
peace was nearer the grasp of statesmen than at any time in history. "It would be a great
tragedy," he said, "if they, through inertia or carelessness, let it slip from their grasp. History
would never forgive them if it did."
Peace did slip through their grasp. World War II was followed by a Cold War that pitted the
United States and its Allies against the Soviet Union and its supporters. It was called a Cold War,
but it would flare into violence in Korea and Vietnam and in many smaller conflicts. The period
from 1946 to 1991 was punctuated by a series of East-West confrontations over Germany,
Poland, Greece, Czechoslovakia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and many other hot spots.
The Origins of the Cold War
In March 1946, Winston Churchill announced that "an iron curtain has descended across"
Europe. On one side was the Communist bloc; on the other side were non-Communist nations.
One source of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was the fate of Eastern
Europe. The United States was committed to free and democratic elections in Eastern Europe,
while the Soviet Union wanted a buffer zone of friendly countries in Eastern Europe to protect it
from future attacks from the West.
Even before World War II ended, the Soviet Union had annexed the Baltic states of Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania, and parts of Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland, and Romania. Albania
established a Communist government in 1944, and Yugoslavia formed one in 1945. In 1946, the
Soviet Union organized Communist governments in Bulgaria and Romania, and in Hungary and
Poland in 1947. Communists took over Czechoslovakia in a coup d'etat in 1948.
Another source of East-West tension was control of nuclear weapons. In 1946, the Soviet Union
rejected a U.S. proposal for an international agency to control nuclear energy production and
research. The Soviets were convinced that the United States was trying to preserve its monopoly
on nuclear weapons.
A third source of conflict was post-war economic development assistance. The United States
refused a Soviet request for massive reconstruction loans. In response, the Soviets called for
substantial reparations from Germany.
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The Truman Doctrine
A presidential message to Congress in March 1947 proposed economic and military aid to
countries threatened by a Communist takeover.
In February 1947, Britain informed the United States that it could not longer afford to provide
aid to Greece and Turkey. The situation seemed urgent. The Greek monarchy was threatened by
guerrilla warfare, and the Soviet Union was seeking to control the Dardenelles in Turkey, a water
route to the Mediterranean. The U.S. government feared that the loss of Greece and Turkey to
communism would open Western Europe and Africa to Soviet influence. The U.S government
also worried that if the Soviet Union gained control over the Eastern Mediterranean, it could stop
the flow of Middle Eastern oil.
President Truman responded decisively. He asked Congress for $400 million in economic and
military aid for Greece and Turkey. This was an unprecedented amount of foreign aid during
peacetime. He also declared that it was the policy of the United States "to support free peoples
who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
Truman's overarching message described two ways of life that were engaged in a life-or-death
struggle, one free and the other totalitarian. The United States would help free people to maintain
their free institutions and their territorial integrity against movements that sought to impose
totalitarian regimes.
The Truman Doctrine committed the United States to providing aid to countries resisting
communist aggression or subversion and provided the first step toward what would become
known as the Containment Policy.
Containment Policy
An article in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, signed X, proposed that the West
adopt a policy of "containment" toward the Soviet Union. The article's author, George Kennan,
who set up the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1943, called on the United States to take steps to
prevent Soviet expansion. He was convinced that if the Soviet Union failed to expand, its social
system would eventually break down.
The Containment Policy would adopt two approaches. One approach was military; the other was
economic. In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a program to funnel
American economic aid to Europe. Faced with a rapid growth in the size of Communist parties,
especially in France and Italy, the U.S. proposed a program of direct economic aid.
The Marshall Plan
In June 1947, George C. Marshall proposed to give financial aid to European countries. He
called on Europeans to collectively agree on what kind of assistance they needed. Even the
Soviet Union was invited to participate in the planning.
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The Soviet delegation abruptly quit the summit in Paris to discuss the Marshall offer. When two
Soviet satellites--Czechoslovakia and Poland--indicated that they wanted to take part in the
Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union said no. The Soviet refusal to participate made it easier to secure
congressional passage for the plan. When the Czechoslovakian government was overthrown in a
Communist coup, congressional passage was assured.
The Marshall Plan committed more than 10 percent of the federal budget and almost 3 percent of
the United States' gross national product to rebuilding Western Europe. Over the next 40 months,
Congress authorized $12.5 billion in aid to restore Western Europe's economic health and to halt
the spread of communism. Marshall's plan actually cost the United States very little, since it was
largely paid for by European purchases of American coal, agricultural crops, and machinery.
The Fate of Germany
In March and April 1947, the United States, British, French, and Soviet officials met in Moscow
to discuss the future of Germany. The participants were unable to agree about whether to end the
occupation of Germany or to reunify the country. The conference's failure led the Western Allies
to unify their German occupation zones in June 1948 and to establish West Germany.
Berlin Blockade
Outraged by Western plans to create an independent West Germany, Soviet forces imposed a
blockade cutting off rail, highway, and water traffic between West Germany and West Berlin. A
day later, an airlift began flying in food and supplies for West Berlin's two million residents. By
September, the airlift was carrying 4,500 tons of supplies a day. Over the next 11 months,
277,000 flights brought in 2.5 million tons of supplies until the Soviet Union lifted the blockade.
NATO
In April 1949, a month before the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade, the United States,
Canada, Iceland and nine European nations formed NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization). Member states pledged mutual assistance against an armed attack and cooperation
in military training and strategic planning.
The U.S. stationed troops in Western Europe, assuring its Allies that it would use its nuclear
deterrent to protect Western Europeans against a Soviet attack.
The admission of West Germany into NATO in 1955 led the Soviet Union and its Eastern
European satellites to form a competing military alliance called the Warsaw Pact.
1949--The Soviets Get the Bomb & China Become Communist
In September 1949, President Truman announced that the Soviet Union had successfully
detonated an atomic bomb. Four months later, President Truman advised the Atomic Energy
Commission to proceed with the development of a hydrogen bomb.
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U.S. government officials had predicted that it would take the Soviet Union as long as a
decade to develop an atomic bomb. The speed with which the Soviets produced a bomb led
to charges that development of the device was a product of Soviet espionage.
The United States set off its first hydrogen bomb in 1953, and the Soviet Union tested its
first bomb in 1955.
In October 1949, Chinese Communists under Mao-Tse-tung proclaimed the birth of the
People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists were forced to flee
to Formosa (now Taiwan). The "fall" of China shocked many Americans and would
contribute to the myth that American government officials were somehow responsible for
the country's loss to the Communists.
The Korean War
On June 25, 1950, Communist North Korean forces invaded South Korea, beginning a threeyear war. Three days later, the South Korean capital of Seoul fell to the North Koreans.
President Truman immediately ordered U.S. air and sea forces to "give the Korean
government troops cover and support."
The conflict lasted until July 27, 1953. The United States suffered 54,246 battle deaths and
103,284 wounded.
Tensions had festered since the Korean peninsula had been divided into a Communist North
and a non-Communist South in 1945. With the partition, 10 million Koreans were separated
from their families.
For three months, the United States was unable to stop the communist advance. Then,
Douglas MacArthur successfully landed two divisions ashore at Inchon, behind enemy lines.
The North Koreans fled in disarray across the 38th parallel, the pre-war border between
North and South Korea.
The initial mandate that the United States had received from the United Nations called for
the restoration of the original border at the 38th parallel. But the South Korean army had
no intention of stopping at the pre-war border, and on Sept. 30, 1950, they crossed into the
North. The United States pushed an updated mandate through the United Nations, and on
Oct. 7, the Eighth Army crossed the border.
By November, U.S. Army and Marine units thought they could end the war in just five more
months. China's communist leaders threatened to send combat forces into Korea, but the
U.S. commander, Douglas MacArthur, thought they were bluffing.
In mid-October, the first of 300,000 Chinese soldiers slipped into North Korea. When U.S.
forces began what they expected to be their final assault in late November, they ran into
the Chinese army. There was a danger that the U.S. Army might be overrun. The Chinese
intervention ended any hope of reunifying Korea by force of arms.
General MacArthur called for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to unleash American air and naval
power against China. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Omar
Bradley, said a clash with China would be "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong
time, and with the wrong enemy."
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By mid-January 1951, Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway succeeded in halting an American
retreat 50 miles south of the 38th parallel. A week and a half later, he had the army
attacking northward again. By March, the front settled along the 38th parallel and the South
Korean capital of Seoul was back in South Korean hands. American officials informed
MacArthur that peace negotiations would be sought.
In April, President Truman relieved MacArthur of his command after the general, in defiance
of Truman's orders, commanded the bombing of Chinese military bases in Manchuria. The
president feared that such actions would bring the Soviet Union into the conflict.
The Korean War was filled with lessons for the future. First, it demonstrated that the United
States was committed to the containment of communism, not only in Western Europe, but
throughout the world. Prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, the Truman administration
had indicated that Korea stood outside America's sphere of vital national interests. Now, it
was unclear whether any nation was outside this sphere.
Second, the Korean War proved how difficult it was to achieve victory even under the best
circumstances imaginable. In Korea, the United States faced a relatively weak adversary
and had strong support from its allies. The United States possessed an almost total
monopoly of sophisticated weaponry, and yet, the war dragged on for almost four years.
Third, the Korean War illustrated the difficulty of fighting a limited war. Limited wars are, by
definition, fought for limited objectives. They are often unpopular at home because it is
difficult to explain precisely what the country is fighting for. The military often complains
that it is fighting with one armed tied behind its back. But if one tries to escalate a limited
war, a major power, like China, might intervene.
Finally, in Korea U.S. policymakers assumed that they could make the South Korean
government do what they wanted. In reality, the situation was often reversed. The South
Korean government played a pivotal role in defining military strategy and shaping the peace
negotiations. In the end, the United States was only able to extricate itself from the war by
making a long-term commitment to the South Korean government in terms of money, men,
and materiel.
The Death of Stalin and the Cold War
In March 1953, Joseph Stalin, who had ruled the Soviet Union since 1928, died at the age of
73. His feared minister of internal affairs, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, was subsequently shot
for treason. Nikita Khrushchev then became first secretary of the Communist Party.
Stalin's death led to a temporary thaw in Cold War tensions. In 1955, Austria regained its
sovereignty and became an independent, neutral nation after the withdrawal of Soviet
troops from the country. The next year, Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his policies at the
20th Communist Party conference. After a summit between President Eisenhower and the
new Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Geneva, the Soviets announced plans to reduce its
armed forces by more than 600,000 troops. In early 1956, Khrushchev called for "peaceful
coexistence" between the East and West.
Relaxation of economic and political controls encouraged Eastern Europeans to demand
greater freedom. In 1953, after Communist authorities in East Germany attempted to
increase working hours without raising wages, strikes and riots broke out in East Berlin and
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other cities. Some three million East Germans fled to the West. To halt this mass exodus, in
August 1961, East German authorities erected a wall separating East and West Berlin.
In 1956, Polish workers rioted to protest economic conditions under the Communist regime.
Poles also demanded removal of Soviet officers from the Polish army. More than a hundred
demonstrators were killed as authorities moved to suppress the riots. Communist
authorities did, however, release Polish prelate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszinski, from custody to
help end efforts to collectivize Polish agriculture.
In Hungary, university students expressed solidarity with the Polish rebels. More than
100,000 workers and students demanded a democratic government, the withdrawal of
Soviet troops, and the release of Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, who had been held in solitary
confinement since the end of 1948. Sixteen Soviet divisions and 2,000 tanks crushed the
Hungarian revolution after Hungary's Premier Imre Nagy promised Hungarians free elections
and an end to one-party rule and denounced the Warsaw Pact. Soviet authorities feared
that their intermediate ballistic missiles could only reach targets in Southern Europe if
launched from bases in Hungary. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled the country after the
suppression of the uprising.
The Cold War in the Developing World
In Europe, there was less violence in the half century following World War II then in almost
any previous period of modern European history. Yet outside of Europe and North America,
violent conflict became commonplace. In the decades following World War II, many
underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were wracked by civil war,
guerrilla movements, and other social conflicts.
Some of these conflicts were traditional wars pitting one nation against another in struggles
for territory, natural resources, or national honor; however, most of these were conflicts
within societies. At first, many of these conflicts were struggles to achieve independence
from colonial rule. In succeeding years, however, new conflicts pitted various ethnic,
economic, and political groups against one another.
Since World War II, American foreign policy makers seriously questioned how to respond to
social conflicts within developing societies. In many instances, the United States viewed
revolutionary efforts to redistribute land or to overthrow corrupt, repressive governments as
part of Soviet attempt to expand communism throughout the world.
Guatemala
In 1954, a CIA-backed coup overthrew the elected government of Guatemala, which had
nationalized property owned by the United Fruit Company. President Eisenhower's Secretary
of State, John Foster Dulles, accused the Guatemalan president of installing "a communisttype reign of terror" and plotting to spread communism throughout the region. As proof that
Guatemala had ties to the Soviet Union, CIA operatives planted Soviet weapons in
Guatemala, and CIA pilots bombed airfields in Honduras.
The Guatemalan president had allowed Communists to participate in his government and
had instituted a land reform program that had expropriated land owned by the Bostonowned United Fruit Company. The company owned Guatemala's telephone and telegraph
system, its railroad lines, its harbor, and monopolized the banana business.
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To undermine the government's support, the CIA bribed military officers to turn on their
commanders and to broadcast combat sounds from the U.S. embassy roof. Finally, it sent
American pilots to bomb Guatemalan buildings.
The Military-Industrial Complex as a By-Product of the Cold War
Beginning with George Washington, presidents have used their farewell address to look back
on their experience in office and to offer the public practical advice. In his farewell address,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower said that a high level of military spending and the
establishment of a large arms industry in peacetime were something "new in the American
experience." In the most famous words of his presidency, Eisenhower warned that the
country "must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the militaryindustrial complex."
President Eisenhower believed that the United States had "to maintain balance" between
defense spending and the needs of a healthy economy. During his second term, Congress,
the press, and the armed services had pressured Eisenhower to increase defense spending.
But even after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth, he
refused to let defense spending unbalance the federal budget. Eisenhower worried that
presidents who did not have his military experience would be poor judges of the country's
defense needs.
In his speech, Eisenhower warned that the United States faced a "hostile ideology--global in
scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose," and must bear "without complaint the
burdens of a long and complex struggle." He also feared that the arms industry, military
officers, and members of Congress with military installations and defense plants in their
districts, would lead the country to build unnecessary weapons. He worried that the
"military-industrial complex" would skew national priorities and dictate the direction of
American foreign policy.
The election of a new president, John F. Kennedy, was accompanied by intensified Cold War
tensions. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy spoke of a "missile gap" and
claimed that the Soviet Union had achieved an advantage in long-range missiles. In
response to Soviet Premier Khrushchev’s pledge to support wars of liberation, Kennedy
called for the training of counter-insurgency forces that could combat guerrilla warfare.
Cuba
In 1959, rebel leader Fidel Castro toppled Cuban dictator Fugencio Batista. In Washington,
Castro told U.S. officials that "The [Cuban] movement is not a Communist movement.... We
have no intention of expropriating U.S. property, and any property we take we'll pay for."
The next year, the Soviet Union agreed to provide Cuba with $100 million in credit and to
purchase five million tons of Cuban sugar. After President Eisenhower declared that the
United States would not allow a regime "dominated by international Communism" to exist in
the Western hemisphere, Havana nationalized all banks and large commercial industrial
enterprises in Cuba. The United responded by imposing a trade embargo.
In April 1961, a U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba led by anti-Castro Cuban émigrés turned
into a rout. The members of the invasion force, who had been trained by the CIA in Florida,
Louisiana, and Guatemala, were defeated in just three days. On Christmas 1962, the United
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States traded $53 million worth of medical supplies and food stuff for 1,113 captured
invaders and 922 of their relatives.
In October 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States went eyeball-to-eyeball and were
on the brink of nuclear war.
Surveillance photographs taken by a U-2 spy plane over Cuba revealed that the Soviet
Union was installing intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Once operational, in about 10
days, the missiles would need only five minutes to reach Washington, D.C.
President Kennedy decided to impose a naval blockade. Soviet freighters were steaming
toward Cuba. The president realized that if the ships were boarded and their cargoes seized,
the Soviet Union might regard this as an act of war.
Soviet Premier Khrushchev sent a signal that he might be willing to negotiate. In exchange
for the Soviets agreeing to remove the missiles, the United States publicly pledged not to
invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove its aging missiles from Turkey.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cold War tensions eased. In July 1963, the United States, the
Soviet Union, and Britain approved a treaty to halt the testing of nuclear weapons in the
atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. The following month, the United States and
Soviet Union established a hotline providing a direct communication link between the White
House and the Kremlin.
McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare
Joseph McCarthy could destroy political careers on a whim. Even the president of the United
States treaded warily around him. Dwight D. Eisenhower said of McCarthy: "Never get in a
pissing match with a skunk."
A charismatic demagogue, Joe McCarthy grew up on a Wisconsin farm and attended a oneroom schoolhouse. While still a teenager, he established a thriving business as a chicken
farmer. He dropped out of school after eighth grade, but returned at the age of 20 and
finished four years of schoolwork in just nine months. He worked his way through law
school and, at the age of 30, became the youngest circuit court judge in Wisconsin history.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served as an
intelligence officer in the South Pacific. In 1946, at the age of 38, he was elected to the U.S.
Senate.
McCarthy had an unsavory side. While a Marine, he forged a letter from his commander to
obtain a citation for a phony combat wound. He also cheated on his taxes and violated
campaign laws.
In an address in 1950 to a Republican women's club in Wheeling, W. Va., Senator Joseph
McCarthy, R-Wis., claims to have a list of a great many "known Communists" employed by
the state department:
I have here in my hand a list of 205--a list of names that were known to the secretary of
state as being members of the Communist Party and who are nevertheless are still working
and shaping the policy in the State Department.
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When asked by a reporter to produce his list, McCarthy replied: "That was just a political
speech to a bunch of Republicans. Don't take it seriously."
McCarthy's stock-in-trade was reckless accusations. Centering around Communist victories
in China and Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, McCarthy charged that Secretary of State
Dean Acheson had sold the country out to the Communists; that the Truman administration
was riddled with subversion; and that the men who guided the country for the previous 20
years were dupes of the Communists. In 1951, Senator McCarthy called George C. Marshall
a Communist agent. Senator Millard E. Tydings, D-Md., attacked McCarthy for perpetrating
"a fraud and a hoax."
In 1954, McCarthy charged that a Communist spy ring was operating at a U.S. Army Signal
Corps installation in New Jersey. McCarthy also accused the secretary of the Army of
concealing evidence. The secretary retained a Boston attorney, Joseph Nye Welch, to
represent him. When McCarthy made a vicious charge, Welch said:
Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness....
Have no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
Senator Joseph McCarthy did not create the national obsession with communist subversion.
It had arisen in the late 1930s, years before McCarthy had come to public notice. Angry that
they had been barred from the corridors of power for 20 years, conservative Republicans
used everything they could to discredit the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.
Opponents of the New Deal were not always scrupulously careful to distinguish between
liberals and Communists and used anti-communism as a way to attack labor unions and
liberal social programs.
In fact, most liberals did not deny the threat of domestic and global communism. Most
adopted a staunchly anti-communist stance from the middle 1940s onward. Labor leader
Walter Reuther employed stern measures to purge Communists from the CIO in the 1940s.
And even the perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate, Norman Thomas, supported
efforts to ban Communists from teaching positions on grounds that they had surrendered
their right to academic freedom through subservience to Moscow.
The Hatch Act of 1938 made membership into the Communist Party grounds for refusal of
federal employment. That same year, the House of Representatives established the House
Committee on Un-American Activities to investigate communist and fascist subversion. Two
years later, the Smith Act made it a federal offence to advocate the violent overthrow of the
government. In 1949, under the Smith Act, eleven top U.S. Communists were sent to prison
for up to five years.
Investigations by executive agencies into the loyalty of federal employees began as early as
1941. In 1947, the first general loyalty program was established by executive order.
Executive Order 9835, signed in 1947 by President Truman, called for a loyalty investigation
of all federal employees. Truman hoped that these investigations would help to rally public
opinion behind his Cold War policies, while quieting those on the right who thought that the
Democrats were soft on Communism. Of the three million government employees who were
investigated, 308 were fired as security risks.
If the president had thought that his investigation would end the call to rid government of
subversive influences, he was wrong. Accusations that a former high state department
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official named Alger Hiss had passed classified documents to Soviet agents fueled fears of
subversion.
In August 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a Time magazine editor and a former Communist,
told the House Un-American Activities Committee that Alger Hiss, a former State
Department official and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
supplied Soviet agents with classified U.S. documents.
A federal grand jury indicted Hiss for perjury after Chambers produced a microfilm he had
kept hidden in a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. The microfilm contained photographs of the
documents Hiss allegedly passed to Chambers. Hiss's first trial ended in a hung jury, but in
1950, he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. The Hiss case was offered
as proof that there had been Communists in high government positions.
In February 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had charged that the Department of State
knowingly harbored Communists. Hearings on McCarthy's accusations were held under the
chairmanship of Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland. The committee exonerated the State
Department. Critics called the proceedings a "whitewash."
Following McCarthy's charges, anxiety over domestic communism intensified. In 1950, the
Supreme Court upheld the conviction of 11 top leaders of the Communist Party under the
Smith Act. The court also refused to review the convictions of two Hollywood writers who
had refused to answer questions before a Congressional committee about possible
Communist connections. Meanwhile, a Justice Department official, Judith Coplon, was
convicted of conspiracy with a Soviet representative at the United Nations (later reversed on
procedural grounds), and four people--Harry Gold, David Greenglass, and Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg--were arrested on charges of atomic espionage. Around the same time, a grand
jury issued indictments for the illegal transfer of hundreds of classified documents from the
State Department to the offices of a journal calledAmerasia.
In September 1950, Congress passed the McCarran Act over President Truman's veto. The
act required members of Communist-front organizations to register with a Subversive
Activities Control Board. A book by a former U.S. Naval Intelligence officer, Vincent Hartnet,
titled Red Channels, made sweeping accusations about Communist influence in the
entertainment industry. The book's charges led the House Un-American Activities
Committee to investigate actors, producers, and screenwriters, all of whom were accused of
using film, stage, and radio as vehicles for Communist propaganda.
In 1951, the head of the FBI assured Congress that his organization was ready to arrest
14,000 dangerous Communists in the event of war with the Soviet Union. A foundation
offered $100,000 to support research in creating a device for detecting traitors.
Standing up to McCarthy
Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman elected to both houses of Congress. She was the
first woman to enter the Senate without being appointed to the position. During World War
II, she was the only civilian woman to go to sea in a Navy ship in wartime. She was also the
first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president at a major party
convention. With only a high school education, she entered politics after her husband, a
Republican member of Congress, died. She served four terms in the House and four terms
in the Senate.
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Smith, known as "the conscience of the Senate," gained a reputation for courage and
independence when she became the first person in Congress to condemn the anticommunist witch hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. In a 15-minute speech
on June 1, 1950, barely a year after entering the Senate, she denounced McCarthy for
destroying reputations with his reckless charges about Communists and "fellow travelers" in
government. She never mentioned the anti-communist crusader by name; although, no one
doubted who she referred to. She told the Senate it was time to stop conducting "character
assassination" behind "the shield of congressional immunity."
Smith then read a "Declaration of Conscience," signed by six fellow Republicans. "The nation
sorely needs a Republican victory," she declared, "but I don't want to see the Republican
Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny [misrepresentation]--fear,
ignorance, bigotry, and smear."
McCarthy threatened to destroy her political career. But she was so highly regarded that
voters easily re-elected her to the Senate. Many speculated that she would run for president
in 1952. Asked what she would do if she woke up in the White House, she replied: "I'd go
straight to Mrs. Truman and apologize. And then I'd go home."
In 1954, a Senate committee found that Senator McCarthy had wrongfully defied the
authority of the Senate and certainly of its committees, and that he had been abusive of his
colleagues (one he had called them "a living miracle, without brains or guts"). After the fall
elections of 1954, the Senate voted to condemn McCarthy for conduct unbecoming to his
office. The final vote was bipartisan, with 22 Republicans joining 44 Democrats, and 22
Republicans opposed.
Domestic Communism
In the 1930s, the Communist Party and associated organizations attracted the support of a
glittering array of novelists, screenwriters, critics, and artists. Within the Communist Party,
these individuals had found comradeship, acceptance, and a sense of mission.
From its earliest days, the American Communist Party received substantial funding from the
Soviet government. In January 1920, the Communist International (or Comintern) supplied
the Communist journalist John Reed with approximately $2 million dollars worth of gold,
silver, and jewelry to foster Communism in America. The party also received a constant
stream of Soviet political directives that it implemented without question.
In the early 1930s, some 35 states had criminal syndicalism laws, and foreign-born
Communists (a large proportion of party membership in the 1920s and early 1930s) were in
danger of deportation. In a California case, a young woman was sentenced to ten years in
prison for raising the Communist banner on a flagpole at a children's camp.
During the 1930s, the U.S. Communist Party’s involvement in espionage was ad hoc,
amateurish, and sporadic, and mainly involved pilfered State Department documents. But
during World War II, Soviet intelligence agents successfully penetrated the Manhattan
Project, the top-secret program to develop an atomic bomb.
Perhaps as many as 300 American Communists were accomplices of Soviet espionage
during World War II. From small beginnings in the 1930s, Soviet espionage efforts in the
United States increased exponentially during the war years. Pro-Soviet Americans, many of
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them secret members of the Communist Party working within such sensitive agencies as the
State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Strategic Services (the
forerunner of the CIA), provided K.G.B. agents with information ranging from well-informed
political comments to purloined classified documents. Recently declassified government files
indicate that Alger Hiss was involved in passing on government documents; while others,
who had been accused of links with the K.G.B., including the head of the Manhattan Project,
J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the journalist I.F. Stone, were innocent.
With the end of World War II, the Soviet Union's most valuable sources within the U.S.
government dried up. The defection of Elizabeth Bentley, the notorious "spy queen" who
gathered information for transmission to Moscow from dozens of Federal employees, was a
critical blow. Some departed under suspicion and pressure.
Spying and Communist Party membership were not identical categories. Of the
approximately 50,000 party members in the war years, only about 300 were involved in
spying. Some members refused to disclose knowledge when approached for information;
others used indiscretion in the company they kept; while others convinced themselves that
the information they leaked was intended chiefly for Communist Party leaders in New York.
Most of the Americans who betrayed their country did not participate because they were
blackmailed, needed money or were psychological misfits; they joined in because of a
"romantic anti-fascism" notion--a commitment to such causes as civil rights and
improvement in the lives of the working class.
Following the war, support for the Communist Party rapidly declined. In 1956, following the
suppression of the Hungarian uprising, three-quarters of U.S. Communists, including many
of its most dedicated members, left the party.
Cold War Paranoia
The film was titled Invasion of the Body Snatcher. Winds carried seed pods into the small
California town of Santa Mira. Apparently a result of nuclear tests in the New Mexico desert,
the pods had acquired the capacity to gain possession of human bodies. In Santa Mira, the
pods began to replace individual townspeople. Children began to notice that adults weren't
themselves, that they lacked emotion. A local doctor investigated only to discover that the
police chief and other local dignitaries had become pawns of the invaders.
The film's themes--infiltration and mind control--reflected some of the preoccupations of the
Cold War period. A certain paranoid style, a way of viewing everything in conspiratorial
terms, permeated the early Cold War years. It was seen in the ratings of Joe McCarthy and
in the tough language of the Truman Doctrine. It was also seen in popular culture.
Hearts and Minds
The Cold War was a struggle for the hearts and minds of people across the globe. By the
early 1960s, a third of the world's population lived under Communism and another third
lived in non-aligned countries. Public service advertisements on television showed Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev warning Americans that their grandchildren will live under
Communism.
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During the Cold War, the Soviet Union exploited the glaring discrepancy between American
ideals of liberty and equality and the harsh reality of racial discrimination. During the late
1940s and 1950s, there were strenuous efforts to bring American realities in line with the
country's founding ideals. In May 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants
prohibiting the sale of homes to blacks and Jews are not legally enforceable. Two months
later, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the U.S. armed
forces.
The Cold War and the Space Race
In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.
The 184-pound, 22.5-inch sphere orbited the earth once every 96 minutes. Sputnik
transmitted radio signals for 21 days and later burned up in the earth's atmosphere. A
second Sputnik, launched in November 1957, carried a dog named Laika. This satellite
weighed a thousand pounds.
In December, the United States made its first attempt at a satellite launch. A Navy
Vanguard rocket, carrying a payload only one-fortieth the size of Sputnik, lifted a few feet
off of its launch pad before falling back to earth. It exploded in a ball or orange flames and
black smoke. Premier Khrushchev boasted that "America sleeps under a Soviet moon."
Because Sputnik was launched on an intercontinental ballistic missile, Soviet leaders cited it
as proof that they could deliver hydrogen bombs at will.
Sputnik's launch meant that the Cold War competition between the Soviet Union and the
United States would take place, not only on earth, but also in outer space. Americans, who
thought of themselves as the world's technology pacesetters, felt vulnerable; a sensation
that was reinforced in 1959, when the Soviet Union fired the first rockets to circle the moon
and brought back pictures of its dark side. In April 1961, the Soviets launched the first
manned spaceship into orbit, piloted by 27-year-old Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. In
1966, the Soviets were the first to land an unmanned vehicle on the moon.
Sputnik led Congress to pass a series of massive federal aid-to-education measures.
Science became a priority in schools and universities. Soviet space successes led President
John F. Kennedy to tell a joint session of Congress in May 1961 that the United States would
land a man on the moon and bring him home by the end of the 1960s.
The U.S. space program passed through several stages. There were six one-man flights in
the Mercury program, which expanded from suborbital flights to an orbital mission that
lasted more than 34 hours. The Gemini program followed with ten two-man flights,
including the first spacewalk and the rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft. One
mission lasted 14 days.
Then disaster struck. In January 1967, a fire destroyed a prototype command module,
killing the crew of Apollo 1. Four manned flights in late 1968 and early 1969 paved the way
for a historic launch of Apollo 11. The launch was witnessed by a million people assembled
along Florida's beaches.
At 4:17 p.m. Eastern time, July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong announced:
"Houston...the Eagle has landed." The landing vehicle had less than a minutes worth of fuel
remaining. The astronauts spent only two-and-a-half hours walking on the lunar surface.
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Eight years after President Kennedy had called on the United States to land a man on the
moon, the mission had been successfully accomplished. A total of 400,000 American
employees from 20,000 companies had worked directly on the Apollo program. The cost
was $25 billion.
Today, more than half of all Americans are too young to remember that historic mission. At
the Johnson Space Center in Houston, a Saturn V rocket--bigger than a 40-story building-lies on the ground. It is not a mockup. It was intended to carry Apollo 18 to the moon. But
due to budget cutbacks, the mission was never carried out.
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