Nick Tipsword

English 3

Mr. Greer

May 20, 2015

The Anti-Legitimacy of the Red Scare

During the 1940’s and 1950’s the spread of communism to the United States was a

thought that haunted all citizens. The idea of communism terrified American citizens because

they feared the Soviets and other communist countries would take away the freedoms on which

their country was built. At this time the tension between the Soviet Union and the U.S. had

grown to be a serious threat. The increasing chance of nuclear war caused thousands of people

to suspect any common citizen of being a spy against their country. Despite the fact that

Communism had a very weak influence and following in the United States, our legislators still

supported measures that grossly limited citizens’ constitutional rights and basic social freedoms.

People that we uniformly accept as brilliant leaders and innovators like Martin Luther King Jr.

were painted as anti-government democracy hating Communists. Fueling the fires of

intolerance, fear, and misinformation were the House on Un-American Activities and Wisconsin

senator Joseph McCarthy. At the time these concerns were thought to be completely reasonable,

but in retrospect were nothing more than hysteria inspired by extreme xenophobia.

With the end of World War II the divide of defeated Germany led to tensions between the

Communist east and the Capitalist west. West Germany was split between The United States,

Great Britain, and France while the East was governed by the Soviet Union. Since the end of the

war, the relationship between the Soviets and the rest of the Allies had slowly deteriorated

because of the introduction of new currency in West Berlin (National Archives and Records
Administration). This outraged the Soviets and they slowly began to restrict the supply of goods

between Berlin and the rest of Germany. By June of 1948, the flow of surface traffic to Berlin

had completely ceased giving birth to the Berlin Blockade. As a way to avoid a military

challenge, the west issued a series of supply drops via aircraft to ensure the delivery of essential

supplies. This display of military force by the United States made most Americans feel another

armed conflict was imminent, thus creating a great deal of mistrust toward communist regimes

overseas. As public awareness of communism grew, so did the fear of an all-out attack on the

democratic values for which every American stood.

America’s mistrust of the Soviets was quickly reciprocated as the U.S. was reluctant to

share nuclear secrets during and after the war. This secrecy caused Soviet Russia to conduct

spying and espionage missions in an attempt to obtain documents and technology that would

make the production of nuclear arms possible which, for the most part, was successful. Widely

considered the most publicly known act of espionage was the conspiracy planned and executed

by Jewish-American spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Through his work as an engineer in the

U.S. Army Corps, Julius was able to gain access to classified information that he later supplied

to Soviet scientists hoping to build nuclear arms (Wang, 262). One of those Soviet scientists,

Klaus Fuchs, was eventually discovered by the United States. An exhaustive investigation

uncovered Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, who later implicated the pair as masterminds of the plot

(Nova Website). Despite the fact that Ethel is now commonly suspected of being innocent, she

was also convicted for this capital crime along with her husband. Both Julius and Ethel were

executed on June 19, 1953. This event, widely reported by the media, started a dramatic push of

popular opinion that resulted in the average American believing they were under imminent threat

of an all-out nuclear war against Soviet Russia.

 While Americans were troubled by the looming fear of war, there were some that used it

as an opportunity for political advantage. Joseph McCarthy was a republican senator from

Wisconsin who began his political career in 1946 and quickly rose to fame for his relentless and

well publicised investigations of presumed Communists. His term as a United States Senator

was relatively uneventful before his campaign against supposed communists, though he was

widely regarded as an effective speaker and kind person by most social circles. His colleagues in

the Senate, however, often frankly spoke about his short tempered and often rageful treatment of

his aides and peers (Herman, 44). It was not long before McCarthy isolated himself from other

members of congress, often taking controversial views on issues. Ironically, despite his self

proclaimed title as savior of democracy, it should be noted that he lobbied for the commutation

of a known Nazi’s death sentence for war crimes (Herman, 54).

McCarthy’s assault against alleged communist had somewhat of a quiet and unexpected

start. In February of 1950, while speaking to the Republican Woman’s Club for Lincoln Day,

McCarthy reportedly produced a piece of paper and theatrically announced the following:

"The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205
—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of
the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the
State Department." (Griffith, 49)
With the lack of an audio recording, the number of supposed communists McCarthy sought to

uncover was aggressively argued, ranging anywhere between 57 and 205. When entering the

speech into congressional record, McCarthy sent a telegram to President Truman officially

putting the number at 57 (Congressional Record). With tensions so high with the recent

discovery of Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs, the public was quick to accept these allegations as a

probable reality. This, combined with McCarthy’s love of sensationalism and bold charges
against the State Department, it was a logical choice to make him the frontline soldier against

what people thought was an impending Soviet takeover.

It was clear at this point that some kind of political action must be taken to protect the

public from communism. State officials and legislators were naturally curious about how the

Senator was able to obtain the amount of evidence required to accuse a large number of State

Department employees. During a five hour speech, McCarthy changed his number of would be

communist spies to 81 and presented a thorough analysis of each of the 81 “loyalty risks” that

lay dormant in the State Department. It is now widely accepted that this list was not produced by

means of any kind of secret investigation, but instead from a report compiled by the House

Appropriations Committee three years earlier citing several “incidents of inefficiencies”

investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. McCarthy, of course, hid the source of his

investigations claiming that he had, with the help of “some good, loyal Americans in the State

Department”, penetrated the “iron curtain” of State Department secrecy (Griffith, 55). It can be

speculated that if the source of his information was revealed to have been borrowed from a report

unrelated to the issue of Communism, it is probable that lawmakers would not have felt so

compelled to pursue the investigation as far as was realized.

The seed of fear was planted, however and Senator McCarthy was given free reign on

the issue of hidden communist spies. The United States Senate voted unanimously to investigate

the threat of Communist infiltration and the Tydings Committee hearings were ordered (Barrett,

65). A subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Tydings

Committee was charged with “a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons

who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State"

(Reeves, 243). Some of the people accused of such disloyalty were minorities. For example, it
was argued that, because of their lifestyles, homosexuals were more susceptible to bribes and

manipulation by Soviet operatives (Prono). Also in the crosshairs of the committee were people

that appeared to have committed no other crime than being a political enemy of McCarthy. Of

the State Department employees targeted for investigation, McCarthy seemed to be most

interested in nine specific people. Their names were Dorothy Kenyon, Esther Brunauer, Haldore

Hanson, Gustavo Durán, Owen Lattimore, Harlow Shapley, Frederick Schuman,John S. Service,

and Philip Jessup. Though they were considered an apparent higher threat than the other people

investigated by the committee, not all of the people on this list worked for the State Department

anymore and some were not employees at any time. The rhetoric used against them though was

extremely aggressive and damaging, going as far to say that one subject of the investigation,

Owen Lattimore, was a “top Russian spy”. The characterizations assigned to people who testified

before the committee were severely damaging to their careers and ensured that their life of

government service was ended. With no clear evidence or reason of suspicion, Senator McCarthy

was able to end the careers of many people on just a whim, the motives of which became very

clear throughout the course of the investigation.

The founding of the Tydings Committee was not accepted by everyone as a responsible

and patriotic act done in the name of national security. It was immediately suspect to many that a

Republican Senator would attack the administration of a President who happened to be a

Democrat. In fact, the committee was comprised of both Republican and Democratic senators,

the chairman of which was Democratic Senator Millard Tydings. It was reported that Tydings

said “Let me have him [McCarthy] for three days in public hearings, and he'll never show his

face in the Senate again.” (Oshinsky, 119) Through the course of the investigation, McCarthy’s

unapologetic pursuit of targets who seemed to be political enemies was met by opposition by
Democratic lawmaker. At the conclusion of the investigation, a report written by the Democratic

majority summarized the activities of the committee as being fraudulent and a hoax (Griffith,

101). Not a single person brought before the committee to testify was found to be communist or

even in favor of the Soviet government. The report specifically targeted McCarthy saying that

the purpose of his attempt to paint Americans as Communist was to "confuse and divide the

American people [...] to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves" (Griffith,

101). The Republican opposition fired back, of course, accusing Senator Tydings as having

committed "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history” (Griffith, 101).

When submitting the report for congressional approval, the Senate voted three separate times,

each time with only Democrats moving to accept the report and Republicans moving to reject it.

What was at first a disguised attempt to strengthen the United States against Soviet control

became a thinly veiled crusade against political enemies, minorities, and homosexuals.

Unfortunately, McCarthy’s crusade did not damage just the career and lives of the

accused. His actions brought about a dangerous precedent of civil rights and privacy violations,

calling for laws and statutes previously written as safeguards to be twisted and wielded against

the public in an effort to uproot non existent Soviet operatives. One such provision was an

executive order issued by President Harry S. Truman. It was designed to be a loyalty program

that supported the President’s Cold War policies and was to be a device used to safeguard against

Communist influence over federal employees and politicians. In the early 1950’s, however, this

order was used to investigate well over 4 million government employees, as well as some

500,000 applicants. The yielding result of which caused the termination of roughly 300 people,

with an additional 5,000 offering resignations because of information uncovered by

investigations (Ferrell, 301). Not a single one of these investigations, however, led to a
successful espionage investigation or conviction. One must wonder out of the 5,000 resignations,

how many were due to issues that had nothing to do with communism (Ferrell 301).

Throughout history we as a people have endured the fear of war and the threat of

invasion. We have fought injustice around the world and delivered relief to the fearful, yet in our

past we have allowed ourselves to be fearful of dangers that never existed. In the 1950’s, we

allowed this “Red Scare” to spiral out of control and gave a national platform to a malicious and

opportunistic Senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. With the use of colorful rhetoric

and lacking any real evidence, he was able to convince us that we should be afraid. Afraid of

communism. Afraid of Soviet Russia. Afraid of anything as long as he was able to advance his

agenda without political opposition. He singlehandedly coaxed us into sacrificing our civil

liberties in the name of national security and the preservation of the American way. It is clear to

us now that, not only was the Red Scare illegitimate, but it was a much larger threat to our way

of life than communism ever was. We have faced similar issues since and we still, from time to

time, find ourselves victim to the same brand of fear but we have learned from this dark period in

history that we are too strong for invasion - whether it come from the Soviets, the Middle East,

or our politicians.
Info

● Joseph R. McCarthy

○ Wisconsin Senator

○ McCarthyism - Attorney General’s List of Subversive organizations

○ Was elected in 1946

○ In February 1950 McCarthy was propelled into the spotlight when he announced

that he had a list of 205 known communist party members who were working in

the state department (later proven to be wrong)

○ McCarthy was put in charge of the Committee of government operations in 1953

 ■ with this added power he furthered his interrogation of alleged

communists

■ over 2.000 government employees lost their jobs as a result

○ Was undermined when he began interrogating the armed forces

■ the Army-McCarthy hearings

● The Crucible

● The Rosenberg’s

● KKK more crazy?

I., Introduction

a. Thesis

II. Brief History

a. paint historical picture

b. J McCarthy

c. Rosenbergs

d. Berlin Blockade

III. Arguments

A. several different paragraphs - one for each argument

B. We weren’t scared of communism until fear created by McCarthy

a. Communist party had no political power or support in America.

 b. People hated communists, but weren’t actively preoccupied by them

C. Led to legislation that limited personal freedoms (Executive Order

9835)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9835#Outcome_of_the_order

D. Hollywood Blacklist http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/blacklist.html

a. House UnAmerican Activities Committee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-

American_Activities_Committee#Whittaker_Chambers_and_Alger_Hiss

b. Hollywood Ten

E. Taft-Hartley Act - Anti union bill. Anti-communism section later declared

unconstitutional by SCOTUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947#A
nti-communism
F. McCarran Internal Security Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Internal_Security_Act#Constitutionality

G. Led to discriminatory social practices against women and gays (us)

a. “lavender” scare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare

b. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_social_policy_during_the_Second_Red_S

care

IV. Opposition Research

a. Refute opposing premises

V. Conclusion

Bib list

https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.49495
ISBN 978-0-8078-4749-7.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/inte_19440921.html
ISBN 0-684-83625-4.

ISBN 0-87023-555-9.

http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/government/mccarthy01.html

David M. Barrett, CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), p.

65

ISBN 1-56833-101-0

Prono, Luca. "McCarthyism". glbtq.com. RetrievedMarch 9, 2015.

ISBN 0-19-515424-X

ISBN 978-0-8262-1050-0.