Ch 15 Sec 3

The Cold War and American Society

The Red Scare

• In 1945, Americans started to become very scared because of a man named Igor Gouzenko

• Igor had worked at the Soviet embassy in Canada, and he defected (meaning he came to our side) to the US and gave the government a ton of info on what the Soviets had been up to

The Red Scare • Igor explained that the Soviets had been working to infiltrate the government and certain groups to find secrets about the atomic bomb

• This scared may Americans, and then a great hunt for communist subversives (Americans that favored or supported the Soviet/Communists) started

The Loyalty Review Program

• Nine days after the establishment of the Truman Doctrine, Truman started the Loyalty Review Program to check all government employees to see if they were communists

• Truman’s actions seemed to spread the fear of communism even more

The Loyalty Review Program

• Employees were screened for viewing certain movies, traveling overseas, belonging to certain groups, and even for what the read

• Total: 2,000+ quit because of the questioning, and 212 were fired for “questionable loyalty”

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

• FBI Director Edgar Hoover wanted to search out more communists using the FBI, so he expanded the HUAC which was started in 1938

• He was not only after active communists, but also their supporters or “sympathizers”

(HUAC)

• One of their first trials was on the potential communists in the film industry

• There was a group of 10 screenwriters that refused to testify against themselves (5th Amendment) that became known as the “Hollywood Ten”

• The result of this trial was 151 actors, directors, writers, and broadcasters getting their names put into a pamphlet call Red Channels = they were then blacklisted and nobody would hire them or work with them

Alger Hiss

• Hiss had worked for FDR and was even at the Yalta Conference, and he was accused of being a communist by Whittaker Chambers, who was an editor for TIME magazine

• Hiss denied it, but was eventually found guilty of lying under oath during the case

The Rosenbergs• By 1949 the Soviets had made an

atomic bomb, and many believed that they could not have done it on their own, so America started looking for spies

• In 1950, the US had tracked down a British scientist who said that he given the Soviets information, after hearing his testimony, the FBI arrested Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

The Rosenbergs• The Rosenbergs were then accused of leading a spy ring and selling nuclear secrets to the Soviets

• They were found guilty and sentenced to death

• Many people protested and believed that they were innocent and just caught up in the anti-communist hype

• They were both executed in June 1953

Project Venona

• What nobody knew was that the government had worked with the British to crack the Soviet codes

• Secretly the US had been decoding thousands of messages the Soviet Union and the US

• The project itself was called Venona, and the fact that it existed was not released until 1995

• Information from the decoding did provide strong evidence that the Rosenbergs were guilty

The Red Scare Spreads

• Many groups, organizations, and local/state governments followed the federal governments lead in seeking out communists

• Everything from unions to churches searched for communists within their ranks

• Many employees/members of groups and companies had to take an oath of loyalty to the US so that they could keep their jobs or membership, and those that refused were fired or removed

McCarthyism

• 1949 was a bad year, the Russians got the bomb and China fell to communism, this caused many Americans to believe that the US was losing the Cold War

• In 1950, while doing a small speech in West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy made the statement that he had a list of 205 Americans that were spies or communist working in the State Department

McCarthyism • McCarthy then used the excitement from his “list”

(a list that never appeared or was proven to exist) to do whatever he wanted

• McCarthy used the hype to win elections and to speak poorly of anyone he did not like or agree with

• It got to the point where people were afraid to speak out for fear of being called a communist

Internal Security Act/McCarran Act

• The McCarran act made it illegal for people to organize, conspire, or work on “establishing a totalitarian government” in the US

• It gave the government the power to take the records of communist groups and to seize all of their information

• It also gave the government the power to detain communist or communist sympathizers

• Truman vetoed it, he was overridden, and the Supreme Court later limited the power of the act

McCarthyism• Republicans won control of Congress in 1952, and

this put McCarthy in a position of power to hunt for communists in the government

• McCarthy would use weak evidence against the accused, and then harass them during their hearings and not even allow them to answer his question

McCarthyism

• McCarthy got a lot of publicity and popularity for his tactics and style

• People would not speak out against the unfairness and method of his hunt because of fear of being called a communist themselves

McCarthy’s Downfall • McCarthy eventually turned his attention to the US

Army, and trying to find communists there • These trials were on the news, and people truly

started to see what he was doing and how unfair it was to those on trial

• McCarthy tried bringing up the past of a young lawyer under Joseph Welch, who exploded in the defense of the young man

• The audience cheered as Welch blasted McCarthy, and from that point on, his witch hunts had no validity

Life During the Cold War • The fears and circumstances of

the Cold War forced many Americans to become more active

• This increased activity ranged from preparing to survive a nuclear war to becoming more politically active to prevent nuclear war

• All in all Americans were taking notice and action

Facing the Bomb • Americans were shocked in 1949 when the Soviets

set of their first nuke, but we were even more freaked out when they tested their own H-Bomb (hydrogen) in 1953 just one year after we set of our first

Facing the Bomb• The US prepared for an all out

surprise nuclear attack from the Soviets

• Schools prepared their student by doing “duck and cover” drill, which would have done nothing to save the students from a nuclear blast, but it made everyone feel a little safer

Facing the Bomb • Some American prepared fallout shelters incase the

survived the initial attack• These fallout shelters were usually well stocked

with supplies so that the people inside would be able to survive the radiation or “fallout” that would follow an attack

Popular Culture and the Cold War• As you can tell, America was very involved and

worried about the Cold War, so it naturally found its way into everything from movies to plays to comics

The Crucible • One of the most notable pieces of

work from this era was Arthur Miller’s The Crucible that makes a literary relation between the witch hunts of the past and the communist hunts of the 1950’s

• The story is a play that is still performed today on Broadway

Movies • The movie I Was a

Communist for the FBI was about an agent that infiltrated the communist party in Pittsburgh

• Walk East on Beacon was another suspense movie based on FBI work while seeking out communist in the US

Other Cold War Entertainment • The TV show I Led Three Lives was a week to week

show about an FBI agent that was working inside the communist party

• The radio played “Atomic Boogie” and “Atom Bomb Baby”

• Philip Wylie wrote the book Tomorrow! to tell American about the horrible things that would happen to an American city if it were attacked

• Wylie wrote this book because he was angry at the government for not making more shelters for the average person to go to

Other Cold War Entertainment• John Hersey wrote the book

Hiroshima, which was the story of six people that survived the US atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima

• This book made Americans rethink what we did to Japan, and made them think about what it would be like if it happened here

Overall• Americans were confused and scared about the

Cold War, McCarthyism, atomic attacks, communism, the Korean War and where the US actually stood

• On the other hand, the country was very prosperous and confident with the economy doing great as Americans were making and spending more and more money

• Leading into the elections of 1952, we were looking for a sense of security and stability