McCarthyism, 1950-54

On 9 February 1950, recently-elected Senator Joseph R McCarthy gave a talk to the Women's Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.  What he had to say shocked the nation:

The four years that followed are known as the 'McCarthy Witch-hunt':

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic accounts from BBC Bitesize 

The film Good Night and Good Luck (2005) tells the story of how TV presented Ed Morrow dared to take on McCarthy.  If you can, watch the whole film.

  Essay: Why was there such a fear of communism in early 1950s America?

  Essay: How did McCarthyism affect American society?

Causes of the Witch-hunt  [FASCISM]

1. Fear of Communism

   The long-standing embedded belief, going back to the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1920s, that Communism was about to destroy American democracy, freedom and way of life, and the government had been taking action against Communism before McCarthy. 

   • HUAC: The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had been created by Congress in 1938 to investigate private citizens, public employees and organizations suspected of disloyalty.  Before the war it also investigated Nazis and Japanese Americans, but its focus was always on Communists. 

   • The Smith Act of 1940 made it a criminal offence to "advocate, abet, advise or teach [the] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States".   

   • In 1942, the Department of Justice started keeping a list of (154) organizations it deemed subversive.

2. Anti-Union sentiment

   The Unions were seen as by many, especially Republicans, as damaging to the US economy & capitalism, and hotbeds of sedition. 

   • In 1947 the Taft-Hartley Act imposed restrictions on Unions, prohibiting secondary picketing, closed shops, allowing states to pass ‘right-to-work’ laws, and requiring all union officials to sign an affidavit that they were not Communists. 

   • The strikes of 1949: In fact, Union activity was much reduced in the years after 1946, but a small economic downturn in 1949 caused some prominent strikes, including a 3-week strike by 60,000 Ford workers, and strikes by 1 million miners and 500,000 steelworkers, both demanding pensions & insurance as well as significant wage increases.  This created a sense of alarm. 

3. Spy cases

   • Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers: were two Soviet spies who in return for immunity accused a number of government officials of being spies (including Alger Hiss). 

   • Alger Hiss: In 1948 Alger Hiss, a US government official who had helped set up the United Nations, was accused of spying for the USSR in the 1930s.  Hiss was eventually sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for perjury.  This was the case that prompted McCarthy to make his speech at Wheeling. 

   • Ethel and Julius Rosenberg : in 1953 man-and-wife team Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed, and a number of co-conspirators imprisoned, for leaking information to the USSR about American radar, jet technology, and nuclear weapons. 

4. Cold War

   After WWII, the USA and the USSR had entered into a period of enmity-without-fighting called the ‘Cold War’ – in 1947 President Truman had declared the Truman Doctrine that it was America’s duty to intervene in foreign affairs to ‘contain’ communism and protect democracy. 

   In the late 1940s a number of events led to a significant fear of a nuclear war with the USSR and a Communist invasion:

   • Click on the u orange arrow to reveal more information. 
     • •  In 1948 Communists took over the government of Czechoslovakia, the last free democratic country in eastern Europe – an event which prompted Congress to agree the Marshall Plan, pumping $_millions in the economies of western Europe. 
     • •  In June 1949, Stalin closed all land access to West Berlin – the ‘Berlin Blockade’.
     • •  In August 1949 the USSR successfully tested an atomic bomb, leading to an arms race.  In US schools, children were taught to ‘Duck and Cover’ in case of a nuclear missile attack.
     • •  In October 1949, Communists took over the government of China.
     • •  In June 1950, Communist North Korea invaded and almost conquered democratic South Korea – leading America into the three-year Korean War.

      

5. Intelligence

   In 1943, the National Security Agency started the Venona Project to monitor Soviet spying; when some Venona materials were declassified in 1995 it became clear that a level of espionage was indeed taking place. 

6. Swing to the Republican Party

   President Truman was a Democrat.  However, during his Presidency support for the more right-wing Republican Party began to grow; Republicans generally supported McCarthyism, using it as a central theme which helped them gain political power in the Congressional and Presidential elections of 1952. 

7. Media sensationalism

   All these factors created a sense of panic in the public mind, to which the media played:

   •  As you saw in your study of Popular Culture, many of the films of the 1950s were about invasions of alien ceatures and Communists taking over America. 

   • Newspapers, magazines and cinema newsreels sensationalised stories about alleged communist infiltration, often without evidence. 

Source B

This 1947 comic book, published by the Catholic Guild Educational Society in 1947 – a story of how Communism took over the USA – claimed there were 85,000 Communists in the USA, working "day and niight to overthrow YOUR GOVERNMENT!"

Source C

This 1960 comic book, also by the Catholic Guild and distributed to thousands of Catholic school children, warns of Communist successes in the Cold War.

McCarthyism [HELPER]

1. Hollywood Ten

   • In 1947 HUAC investigated the ‘Hollywood Ten’ – ten Hollywood filmmakers – resulting in them being blacklisted. 

   • Some 300 other actors, screenwriters, artists, civil rights activists scientists and celebrities were accused and blacklisted, including Charlie Chaplin, comedienne Lucille Ball, NAACP founder WEB Du Bois, Robert Oppenheimer (of atomic bomb fame), playwright Arthur Miller, and protest singer Pete Seeger. 

2. Exposing suspects

   • The FBI, led by J Edgar Hoover, sought out Communists by illegal means, including burglaries, opening mail, wiretaps, undercover operations and planting forged documents.  From 1951-55 the FBI leaked FBI files to the employers of suspected teachers, lawyers etc. 

   • Government departments regularly carried out loyalty reviews – it has been suggested that one in five government employees were investigated. 

   • Groups such as the American Legion and the Minute Women of the USA organised tens of thousands of people into study groups, letter-writing networks and patriotic clubs dedicated to rooting out communism. 

   • Private investigative firms, such as AWARE, were set up which accused people of being Communists, causing them to be fired just because accused.  Journals such as Counterattack published lists of accused organisations and individuals.

3. Lavender Scare

   • Homosexuality was against the law, and homosexuals were put under surveillance because they were deemed susceptible to blackmail by Soviet agents.  As a result Truman sacked 425 government employees accused of homosexuality, and Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, barring homosexuals from working in the federal government, as a result of which some 5,000 gay people lost their jobs … and were outed to friends and family. 

4. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

   • From 1953, the PSI was chaired by McCarthy.  It held 169 hearings 1953-54, calling 653 people. 

   • McCarthy’s methods were immoral and undemocratic.  He publicly accused people with little or no evidence, and intimidated the accused by attacking their personal character and questioning their loyalty to America. 

5. End of the Scare

   The McCarthy witch-hunt alarmed many people, some of whom dared to speak out:

   • In 1953, Truman called it “the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process law.  It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism”.

   • In 1953, and again in 1954, the CBS newscaster Ed Murrow ran episodes attacking McCarthy.

   • Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (1953) was about 17th century witch-hunts, but it highlighted the cruelty of McCarthyism. 

   • In 1954, McCarthy accused Army personnel of being ‘soft’ on Communism; the hearings were televised, and people were horrified at the way McCarthy treated the accused; as a result the Senate voted to censure McCarthy. 

   • In November 1954, the Republicans lost the Senate elections, and McCarthy lost his chairmanship of the PSI. 

   • In 1956-58 the Supreme Court curtailed the powers of HUAC, notably overturning its tendency to see ‘taking the Fifth’ as an admission of guilt. 

6. Results

   • HUAC called more than 3,000 individuals to testify.  Many ‘took the Fifth’, but once accused “a man is ruined everywhere and forever". 

   • Hundreds were imprisoned, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs.

   • The FBI continued its COINTELPRO counterintelligence program to discredit organizations considered subversive to U.S. until 1971. 

   • The Communist Party was destroyed. 

   • Many people hesitated to protest about anything long into the 1950s, and there was little criticism of US foreign policy until the Vietnam War. 

   • McCarthyism is today used as an example of the misuse of power to stifle personal freedoms. 

Source D

This cartoon was pubished in the Washington Post in 1947. The artist, Herblock, criticised Stalin and the Soviets, but thought that McCarthyism was an overreaction.

Source E

1950: The Hollywood Ten stage a demonstration with family members at Los Angeles airport on their way to prison.