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UNIT 9READINGS The Cold War Origins and the 1950s AMSCO- Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1952World War II dramatically changed the United States from an isolationist country into a military superpower and leader in world affairs. After World War II, most of the Americans at home and the millions coming back from military service wished to return to normal domestic life and enjoy the revitalized national economy. However, during the Truman presidency, the growing conflict between the Communist Soviet Union and the United States- a conflict that came to be known as the Cold War- would dampen the nation’s enjoyment of the postwar boom.POSTWAR AMERICAThe 15 million American soldiers, sailors, and marines returning to civilian life in 1945 and 1946 faced the problem of finding jobs and housing. Many feared that the end of the war might mean the return of economic hard times. Happily, the fears were not realized because the war years had increased the per-capita income of Americans. Much of that income was tucked away in savings accounts, since wartime shortages meant there had been few consumer goods to buy. Pent-up consumer demand for autos and housing combined with government road-building projects quickly overcame the economic uncertainty after the war and introduced an era of unprecedented prosperity and economic growth. By the 1950s, Americans enjoyed the highest standard of living achieved by any society in history.GI Bill- Help for Veterans:The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the GI Bill of Rights, proved a powerful support during the transition of 15 million veterans to a peacetime economy. More than half the returning GIs (as the men and women in uniform were called) seized the opportunity afforded by the GI Bill to continue their education at government expense. Over 2 million GIs attended college, which started a postwar boom in higher education. The veterans also received over $16 billion in low-interest, government-backed loans to buy homes and farms and to start businesses. By focusing on a better educated workforce and also promoting new construction, the federal government stimulated the postwar economic expansion. Baby Boom:One sign of the basic confidence of the postwar era was an explosion in marriages and births. Younger marriages and larger families resulted in 50 million babies entering the US population between 1945 and 1960. As the baby-boom generation gradually passed from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, it would profoundly affect the nation’s social institutions and economic life in the last half of the 20th century. Initially, the baby boom tended to focus women’s attention on raising children and homemaking. Nevertheless, the trend of more women in the workplace continued. By 1960, one-third of all married women worked outside the home.Suburban Growth:The desperate need for housing after the war resulted in a construction boom. William J. Levitt led in the development of postwar suburbia with his building and promotion of Levittown, a project of 17,000 mass-produced, low-priced family homes on Long Island, New York. Low interest rates on mortgages that were both government-insured and tax deductible made the move from city to suburb affordable for almost any family of modest means. In a single generation, the majority of middle-class Americans became suburbanites. For many older, inner cities, the effect of the mass movement to suburbia was little short of disastrous. By the 1960s, cities from Boston to Lost Angeles became increasingly poor and racially divided.Rise of the Sunbelt:Uprooted by the war, millions of Americans made moving a habit in the postwar era. A warmer climate, lower taxes, and economic opportunities in defense-related industries attracted many GIs and their families to the Sunbelt states from Florida to California. By transferring tax dollars from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West, military spending during the Cold War helped finance the shift of industry, people, and ultimately political power from one region to the other. POSTWAR POLITICSHarry S. Truman, a moderate Democratic senator from Missouri, replaced the more liberal Henry Wallace as FDR’s vice president in the 1944 election. Thrust into the presidency after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Truman matured into a decisive leader whose basic honesty and unpretentious style appealed to average citizens. President Truman attempted to continue in the New Deal tradition of his predecessor.Economic Program and Civil Rights: Truman’s proposals for full employment and for civil rights for African Americans ran into opposition from more conservative Congresses.EMPLOYMENT ACT OF 1946- In September 1946, during the same week that Japan formally surrendered, Truman urged Congress to enact a series of progressive measures, including national health insurance, an increase in the minimum wage, and a bill to commit the US government to maintaining full employment. After much debate, the watered-down version of the full-employment bill was enacted as the Employment Act of 1946. It created the Council of Economic Advisers to counsel both the president and Congress on means of promoting national economic welfare. Over the next seven years, conservative Congresses and the beginning of the Cold War would hinder the passage of most of Truman’s domestic policies. INFLATION AND STRIKES- Truman asked Congress to continue the price controls of wartime in order to hold inflation in check. Instead, southern Democrats joined with Republicans in relaxing the controls of the Office of Price Administration. The result was an inflation rate of almost 25% in the first year and a half of peace. Workers and unions wanted wages to catch up after years of wage controls. Over 4.5 million workers went on strike in 1946. Strikes by railroad and mine workers threatened the national safety. Truman took a tough approach to this challenge, seizing the mines and using soldiers to keep them operating until the United Mine Workers finally called off its strike. CIVIL RIGHTS- Truman was the first modern president to use the powers of his office to challenge racial discrimination. Bypassing Southern Democrats who controlled key committees in Congress, the president used his executive powers to establish the Committee on Civil Rights in 1946. He also strengthened the civil rights division of the Justice Department, which aided the efforts of black leaders to end segregation in schools. Most important, in 1948 he ordered the end of racial discrimination in the departments of the federal government and all three branches of the armed forces. The end of segregation within the military also changed life on military bases, many of which were in the South. Recognizing the odds against passage of civil rights legislation, Truman nevertheless urged Congress to create a Fair Employment Practices Commission that would prevent employers from discriminating against the hiring of African Americans. Southern Democrats blocked the legislation. Republican Control of the 80th Congress:Unhappy with inflation and strikes, voters were in a conservative mood in the fall of 1946 when they elected Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Under Republican control, the 80th Congress attempted to pass two tax cuts for upper-income Americans, but Truman vetoed both measures. More successful were Republican efforts to amend the Constitution and roll back some of the New Deal gains for labor. 22nd AMENDMENT (1951)- Reacting against the fact that Roosevelt had been elected president four times, the Republican-dominated Congress proposed a constitutional amendment to limit a president to a maximum of two full terms in office. The 22nd Amendment was ratified by the states in 1951.TAFT-HARTLEY ACT 1947- In 1947, Congress passed the pro-business Taft-Hartley Act. Truman vetoed the measure as a “slave-labor” bill, but Congress overrode his veto. The one purpose of the Republican-sponsored law was to check the growing power of unions. For years afterward, unions sought without success to secure the repeal of the Act. It was a major issue dividing Republicans and Democrats into the 1950s. Its provisions included:Outlawing the closed shop (contract requiring workers to join a union before being hired).Permitting states to pass “right to work” laws outlawing the union shop (contract requiring workers to join a union after being hired).Outlawing secondary boycotts (the practice of several unions giving support to a striking union by joining a boycott of a company’s products). Giving the president the power to invoke an 80-day cooling-off period before a strike endangering the national safety could be called. The Election of 1948:As measured by opinion pools, Truman’s popularity was at a low point as the 1948 campaign for the presidency began. Republicans were confident of victory, especially after both a liberal faction and a conservative faction in the Democratic Party abandoned Truman to organize their own third parties. Liberal Democrats, who thought Truman’s aggressive foreign policy threatened world peace, formed a new Progressive Party that nominated former vice president Henry Wallace. Southern Democrats also bolted the party in reaction to Truman’s support for civil rights. Their States’ Rights Party, better known as the Dixiecrats, chose J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as its presidential candidate. The Republicans once again nominated NY Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who looked so much like a winner from the outset that he conducted an overly cautious and unexciting campaign. Meanwhile, the man without a chance toured the nation by rail, attacking the “do-nothing” Republican 80th Congress with “give-‘em-hell” speeches. The feisty Truman confounded the polling experts with a decisive victory over Dewey (a 2 million majority in the popular vote and 303-189 electoral votes). The president had succeeded in reuniting Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, except for four southern states that went to Thurmond and the Dixiecrats. Fair Deal:Fresh from victory, Truman launched an ambitious reform program, which he called the Fair Deal. In 1949, he urged Congress to enact national health care insurance, federal aid to education, civil rights legislation, funds for public housing, and a new farm program. Conservatives in Congress managed to block most of the proposed reforms, except for an increase in the minimum wage (from 40 to 75 cents an hour) and the inclusion of more workers under Social Security. Most of the Fair Deal bills were defeated for two reasons: (1) Truman’s political conflicts with Congress and (2) the pressing foreign policy concerns of the Cold War. Nevertheless, liberal defenders of Truman give him credit for at least maintaining the New Deal reforms of his predecessor and making civil rights part of the liberal agenda.ORIGINS OF THE COLD WARThe Cold War dominated international relations form the late 1940s to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The conflict centered around the intense rivalry between two superpowers, the Communist empire of the Soviet Union and the leading Western democracy, the United States. Competition between these powers and their allies was usually conducted by means short of armed conflict but, in several instances, the Cold War took the world dangerously close to a nuclear war. Among historians there is an intense debate over how and why the Cold War began. Many analysts see Truman’s policies as a reasonable response to Soviet efforts to increase Communist influence in the world. Critics, however, argue that Truman misunderstood and overreacted to Russia’s historic need to secure its borders. Conservative critics at the time, however, increasingly attacked his administration as being weak or “soft” on communism.US-Soviet Relations to 1945:The wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union against the Axis powers was actually a temporary halt in their generally poor relations of the past. The Bolshevik Revolution that established a Communist government in Russia in 1917 had been immediately viewed as a threat to all capitalistic countries. In the United States, it led to the Red Scare of 1919. The United States refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. Even then, after a brief honeymoon period of less than a year, Roosevelt’s advisers concluded that Joseph Stalin and the Communists could not be trusted. Confirming their view was the notorious Nonaggression Pact of 1939, in which Stalin and Hitler agreed to divide up Eastern Europe.ALLIES IN WWII- In 1941, Hitler’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union and Japan’s surprise attack of Pearl Harbor led to a US-Soviet alliance of convenience- but not of mutual trust. Stalin bitterly complained that the British and Americans waited until 1944 to open a second front in France. The postwar conflicts over Central and Eastern Europe were already evident in the negotiations of the Big Three (Britain, the Soviet Union, and the US) at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945. Roosevelt hoped that personal diplomacy might keep Stalin in check, but when Truman came to power, he quickly became suspicious of Soviet acts and intentions.POSTWAR COOPERATION: THE U.N.- The founding of the United Nations in the fall of 1945 was one hopeful sign for the future. The General Assembly of the United Nations was created to provide representation to all member nations, while the 15-member Security Council was given the primary responsibility within the UN for maintaining international security and authorizing peacekeeping missions. The five major allies of wartime- the United States, Great Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union- were granted permanent seats and veto power in the UN Security Council. Optimists hoped that these nations would be able to reach agreement on international issues. In addition, the Soviets went along with a US proposal to establish an Atomic Energy Commission in the United Nations. They rejected, however, a plan proposed by Bernard Baruch for regulating nuclear energy and eliminating atomic weapons. Rejection of the Baruch Plan was interpreted by some American leaders as proof that Moscow did not have peaceful intentions. The United States also offered the Soviets participation in the new International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The bank’s initial purpose was to fund rebuilding of a war-torn world. The Soviets, however, declined to participate because they viewed the bank as an instrument of capitalism. The Soviets did join the other Allies in the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials of 22 top Nazi leaders for war crimes and violations of human rights. SATELLITE STATES IN EASTERN EUROPE- Distrust turned into hostility beginning in 1946, as Soviet forces remained in occupation of the countries of central and Eastern Europe. Elections were held by the Soviets- as promised by Stalin at Yalta- but the results were manipulated in favor of Communist candidates. One by one, from 1946 to 1948, Communist dictators loyal to Moscow were installed in power in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Apologists for the Soviets argued that Russia needed buffer states or satellites (nations under the control of a great power), as a protection against another Hitler-like invasion from the West. The US and British governments were alarmed by the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe. They regarded Soviet actions in this region as a flagrant violation of self-determination, genuine democracy, and open markets. The British especially wanted free elections in Poland, whose independence had been the issue that started World War II.OCCUPATION ZONES IN GERMANY- At the end of the war, the division of Germany and Austria into Soviet, French, British, and US zones of occupation was meant to be only temporary. In Germany, however, the eastern zone under Soviet occupation gradually evolved into a new Communist state, the German Democratic Republic. The conflict over Germany was at least in part a conflict over differing views of national security and economic needs. The Soviets wanted a weak Germany for security reasons and large war reparations for economic reasons. The United States and Great Britain refused to allow reparations from their western zones because both viewed the economic recovery of Germany as important to the stability of Central Europe. Also, since Berlin lay within their zone, they attempted to force the Americans, British, and French to give up their assigned sectors of the city. IRON CURTAIN- “I’m tired of babying the Soviets,” Truman told Secretary of State James Byrnes in January 1946. News of a Canadian spy ring stealing atomic secrets for the Soviets and continued Soviet occupation of northern Iran further encouraged a get-tough policy in Washington. In March 1946, in Fulton, Missouri, Truman was present on the speaker’s platform as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared: “An iron curtain has descended across the continent” of Europe. The iron-curtain metaphor was later used throughout the Cold War to refer to the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe. Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech called for a partnership between Western democracies to halt the expansion of communism. Did the speech anticipate the Cold War- or help to cause it? Historians still debate this question. CONTAINMENT IN EUROPEEarly in 1947, Truman adopted the advice of three top advisers in deciding to “contain” Soviet aggression. His containment policy, which was to govern US foreign policy for decades, was formulated by the secretary of state, General George Marshall; the undersecretary of state, Dean Acheson; and an expert on Soviet affairs, George F. Kennan. In an influential article, Kennan had written that only “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies” would eventually cause the Soviets to back off their Communist ideology of world domination and live in peace with other nations. Did the containment policy attempt to do too much? Among the critics who argued that it did was the journalist Walter Lippmann, who had coined the term “Cold War.” Lippmann argued that some areas were vital to US security, while others were merely peripheral; some governments deserved US support, but others did not. American leaders, however, had learned the lesson of Munich and appeasement well and felt that Communist aggression, wherever it occurred, must be challenged.The Truman Doctrine:Truman first implemented the containment policy in response to two threats: (1) a Communist-led uprising against the government in Greece and (2) Soviet demands for some control of Turkey’s Dardanelles. In what became known as the Truman Doctrine, the president asked Congress in March 1947 for $400 million in economic and military aid to assist the “free people” of Greece and Turkey against “totalitarian” regimes. While Truman’s alarmist speech may have oversimplified the situation in Greece and Turkey, it gained bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats in Congress.The Marshall Plan:After the War, Europe lay in ruins, short of food and deep in debt. The harsh winter of 1946-47 further demoralized Europeans, who had already suffered through years of depression and war. Discontent encouraged the growth of the Communist Party, especially in France and Italy. The Truman administration feared that the western democracies might actually vote the Communists into power. In June 1947, George Marshall outlined an extensive program of US economic aid to help the nations of Europe revive their economies, and at the same time strengthen democratic governments. In December, Truman submitted to Congress a $17 billion European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan. In 1948, $12 billion in aid was approved for distribution to the countries of Western Europe over a four-year period. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites were also offered Marshall Plan aid, but they refused to take part, fearing that their countries might then become dependent on the United States. The Marshall Plan worked exactly as Marshall and Truman had hoped. The massive infusion of US dollars helped Western Europe achieve self-sustaining growth by the 1950s and ended any real threat of Communist political successes in that region. It also bolstered US prosperity by greatly increasing US exports to Europe. At the same time, however, it deepened the rift between the non-Communist West and the Communist East. The Berlin Airlift:The first major crisis of the Cold War focused on Berlin. In June 1948, the Soviets cut off all access by land to the German city. Truman dismissed any plans to withdraw from Berlin, but he also rejected any idea of using force to open up the roads through the Soviet-controlled eastern zone. Instead, he ordered US planes to fly in supplies to the people of West Berlin. Day after day, week after week, the massive airlift continued. At the same time, Truman sent 60 bombers capable of carrying atomic bombs to bases in England. The world waited nervously for the outbreak of war, but Stalin decided not to challenge the airlift (Truman’s stand on Berlin was partly responsible for his victory in the 1948 election). By May 1949, the Soviets finally opened up the highways to Berlin, thus bringing their 11 month blockade to an end. A major long-term consequence of the Berlin crisis was the creation of two Germanies: The Federal Republic of Germany (West German, a US ally) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, a Soviet satellite).NATO and National Security:Ever since Washington’s farewell address of 1796, the United States had avoided permanent alliances with European nations. Truman broke with this tradition in 1949 by recommending that the United States join a military defense pact to protect Western Europe. The Senate readily gave its consent. Ten European nations joined the United States and Canada in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance for defending all members from outside attack. Truman selected General Eisenhower as NATOs first Supreme Commander and stationed US troops in Western Europe as a deterrent against a Soviet invasion. Thus, the containment policy led to a military buildup and major commitments abroad. The Soviet Union countered in 1955 by forming the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance for the defense of the Communist states of Eastern Europe. NATIONAL SECURITY ACT 1947- The United States had begun to modernize its military capability in 1947 by passing the National Security Act. It provided for (1) a centralized Department of Defense (replacing the War Department) to coordinate the operations of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; (2) the creation of the National Security Council (NSC) to coordinate the making of foreign policy in the Cold War, and (3) the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to employ spies to gather information on foreign governments. In 1948, a permanent peacetime draft was instituted. ATOMIC WEAPONS- After the Berlin crisis, teams of scientists in both the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an intense competition- or arms race- to develop superior weapons systems. For a period of just four years (1945-1949), the United States was the only nation to have the atomic bomb. It also developed in this period a new generation of long-range bombers for delivering nuclear weapons. The Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in the fall of 1949. Truman then approved the development of a bomb a thousand times more powerful than the A-bomb that had destroyed Hiroshima. In 1952, this hydrogen bomb (or H-bomb) was added to the US arsenal. Earlier, in 1950, the National Security Council had recommended in a secret report that the following measures were necessary for fighting the Cold War: Quadruple US spending on defense.Form alliances with non-Communist countries around the world.Convince the American public that a costly arms buildup was imperative for the nation’s defense. EVALULATING US POLICY- Critics of NATO and the defense buildup argued that Truman only intensified Russian fears and started an unnecessary arms race. Time would prove, however, that NATO was one of the most successful military alliances in history. In combination with the deterrent power of nuclear weapons, NATO effectively checked Soviet expansion in Europe and thereby maintained an uneasy peace until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. COLD WAR IN ASIAThe success of the containment policy in Europe proved difficult to duplicate in Asia. Following World War II, the old imperialist system crumbled in India and Southeast Asia, as former colonies became new nations. Because these nations had different cultural and political traditions and also bitter memories of Western colonialism, they were less responsive to US influence. Ironically, the Asian nation that became most closely tied to the US defense system was its former enemy, Japan.Japan:Unlike Germany, Japan was solely under the control of the United States. General Douglas MacArthur took firm charge of the reconstruction of Japan. Seven Japanese generals, including Premier Hideki Tojo, were tried for war crimes and executed. Under MacArthur’s guidance, the new constitution adopted in May 1947 set up a parliamentary democracy. It retained Emperor Hirohito as the ceremonial head of state, but the emperor gave up his claims to divinity. The new constitution also renounced war as an instrument of national policy and provided for only limited military capability. As a result, Japan depended on the military protection of the United States. US/JAPANESE SECURITY TREATY- The occupation of Japan ended in 1951 with the signing of a peace treaty in which Japan agreed to surrender its claims to Korea and islands in the Pacific. A second treaty also signed and ratified in 1951 ended formal occupation of Japan but also provided for US troops to remain in military bases in Japan for that country’s protection against external enemies (communism). Japan became a strong ally and prospered under the American shield.The Philippines and the Pacific:On July 4, 1946, in accordance with the act passed by Congress in 1934, the Philippines became an independent republic, but the United States retained important naval and air bases there throughout the Cold War. This, together with US control of the United Nations trustee islands taken from Japan at the end of the war, began to make the Pacific Ocean look like an American lake.China:Since coming to power in the late 1920s, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) had used his command of the Nationalist, or Koumintang, Party to control China’s central government. During World War II, the United States had given massive military aid to Chiang to prevent all of China from being conquered by Japan. As soon as the war ended, a civil war dating back to the 1930s was renewed between Chiang’s Nationalists and the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong. The Nationalists were losing the loyalty of millions of Chinese because of runaway inflation and widespread corruption, while the well-organized Communists successfully appealed to the poor landless peasants.US POLICY- The Truman administration sent George Marshall in 1946 to China to negotiate an end to the civil war, but his compromise fell apart in a few months. By 194, Chiang’s armies were in retreat. Truman seemed unsure of what to do, after ruling out a large-scale American invasion to rescue Chiang. In 1948, Congress voted to give the Nationalist government $400 million in aid, but 80% of the US military supplies ended up in Communist hands because of corruption and the collapse of the Nationalist armies. TWO CHINAS- By the end of 1949, all of mainland China had fallen to the Communist forces. The only refuge for Chiang and the Nationalists was the island once under Japanese rule, Formosa (Taiwan). There, Chiang established his government, which still claimed to be the only legitimate government for all of China. The United States continued to support Chiang and refused to recognize Mao Zedong’s regime in Beijing (the People’s Republic of China) until 30 years later, in 1979. In the United States, Republicans were especially armed by the “loss of China” to the Communists and blamed the Democrats as wholly responsible for the disaster. In 1950, the two Communist dictators, Stalin and Mao, signed a Sino-Soviet pact, which seemed to provide further proof of a worldwide Communist conspiracy.The Korean War:After the defeat of Japan, its former colony Korea was divided at the 38th parallel by the victors. Soviet armies occupied Korean territory north of the line, while US forces occupied territory to the South. By 1949 both armies were withdrawn, leaving the North in the hands of the Communist leader Kim Il Sung and the South under the conservative nationalist Syngman Rhee. INVASION- On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army surprised the world, even possibly Moscow, by invading South Korea. Truman took immediate action, applying his containment policy to this latest crisis in Asia. He called for a special session of the UN Security Council. Taking advantage of a temporary boycott by the Soviet delegation, the Security Council under US leadership authorized a UN force to defend South Korea against the invaders. Although other nations participated in this force, US troops made up most of the UN forces sent to help the South Korean army. Commanding the expedition was General Douglas MacArthur. Congress supported the use of US troops in the Korean crisis but failed to declare war, accepting Truman’s characterization of the US intervention as merely a “police action.”COUNTERATTACK- At first the war in Korea went badly, as the North Koreans pushed the combined South Korean and American forces to the tip of the peninsula. However, General MacArthur reversed the war by a brilliant amphibious assault at Inchon behind the North Korean lines. UN forces then proceeded to destroy much of the North Korean army, advancing northward almost as far as the Chinese border. MacArthur failed to heed China’s warnings that it would resist threats to its security. In November 1950, masses of Chinese troops crossed the border into Korea, overwhelmed UN forces in one of the worst defeats in US military history, and drove them out of North Korea.TRUMAN V. MACARTHUR- MacArthur managed to stabilize the fighting near the 38th parallel. At the same time, he called for an expanded war, including the bombing and invasion of mainland China. As commander in chief, Truman cautioned MacArthur about making public statements that suggested criticism of official US policy. The general spoke out anyway. In April 1951, Truman with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled MacArthur for insubordination. MacArthur returned home to a hero’s welcome. Most Americans understood his statement, “There is no substitute for victory,” better than the president’s containment policy and concept of “limited war.” Truman and the Democrats were viewed by many as appeasers for not trying to destroy communism in Asia. ARMISTICE- In Korea, the war was stalemated along a front just north of the 38th parallel. At Panmunjom, peace talks began in July 1951. The police action dragged on for another two years, however, until an armistice was finally signed in 1953 during the first year of Eisenhower’s presidency. Before the fighting ended, more than 54,000 Americans had died in Korea.POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES- From the perspective of the grand strategy of the Cold War, Truman’s containment policy in Korea worked. It stopped Communist aggression without allowing the conflict to develop into a world war. The Truman administration used the Korean War as justification for dramatically expanding the military, funding a new jet bomber (the B-52), and stationing more US troops in overseas bases. The Republicans, however, were far from satisfied. In fact, the stalemate in Korea and the loss of China provided Republican politicians with plenty of material to characterize Truman and the Democrats as “soft on communism.” They attacked leading Democrats as members of “Dean Acheson’s Cowardly College of Communist Containment” (in 1949 Acheson had replaced George Marshall as Secretary of State). THE SECOND RED SCARECuriously, just as a Red Scare had followed US victory in WW I, a second Red Scare followed US victory in WW II. The Truman administration’s tendency to see a Communist conspiracy behind civil wars in Europe and Asia contributed to the belief that there were also Communist conspirators and spies in the US State Department, military, and all institutions in US society.Security and Civil Rights:In 1947, the Truman administration- under pressure from Republican critics- set up a Loyalty Review Board to investigate the background of more than 3 million federal employees. Thousands of officials and civil service employees either resigned or lost their jobs in a probe that went on for four years (1947-1951). PROSECUTIONS UNDER THE SMITH ACT- In addition, the leaders of the American Communist Party were jailed for advocating the overthrow of the US government. In the case of Dennis et al v. United States (1951), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Smith Act of 1940, which made it illegal to advocate or teach the overthrow of the government by force or to belong to an organization with this objective. MCCARRAN INTERNAL SECURITY ACT 1950- Over Truman’s veto, Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, which (1) made it unlawful to advocate or support the establishment of a totalitarian government, (2) restricted the employment and travel of those joining Communist-front organizations, and (3) authorized the creation of detention camps for subversives.UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES- In the House of Representatives, the Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), originally established in 1939 to seek out Nazis, was reactivated in the postwar years to find Communists. The committee not only investigated government officials but also looked for Communist influence in such organizations as the Boy Scouts and in the Hollywood film industry. Actors, directors, and writers were called before the committee to testify. Those who refused to testify were tried for contempt of Congress. Others were blacklisted from the industry. The American Civil Liberties Union and other opponents of these internal security measures argued that the First Amendment protected the free expression of unpopular political views and membership in political groups, such as the Communist Party. Espionage Cases: The fear of a Communist conspiracy bent on world conquest was supported by a series of actual cases of Communist espionage in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The methods used to identify Communist spies, however, raised serious questions about whether the government was going too far and violating civil liberties in the process. HISS CASE- Whittaker Chambers, a confessed Communist, became a star witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948. His testimony, along with the investigative work of Richard M. Nixon, a young Congressman from California, led to the trial of Alger Hiss, a prominent official in the State Department who had assisted Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference. Hiss denied the accusations that he was a Communist and had given secret documents to Chambers. In 1950, however, he was convicted of perjury and sent to prison. Many Americans could not help wondering whether the highest levels of government were infiltrated by Communist spies.ROSENBERG CASE- When the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in 1949, many Americans were convinced that spies had helped them to steal the technology from the United States. Klaus Fuchs, a British scientist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, admitted giving A-bomb secrets to the Russians. An FBI investigation traced another spy ring to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York. After a controversial trial in 1951, the Rosenbergs were found guilty of treason and executed for the crime in 1953. Civil rights groups raised questions about whether anticommunist hysteria had played a role in the conviction and punishment of the Rosenbergs. The Rise of Joseph McCarthy:Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, used the growing concern over communism in his reelection campaign. In a speech in 1950, he charged that 205 Communists were still working for the State Department. This sensational accusation was widely publicized in the American press. McCarthy then rode the wave of anticommunist feelings to make himself one of the most powerful men in America. His power was based entirely on people’s fear of the damage McCarthy could do if his accusing finger pointed their way.MCCARTHY’S TACTICS- Senator McCarthy used a steady stream of unsupported accusations about Communists in government to keep the media focused on himself and to discredit the Truman administration. Working-class Americans at first loved his “take the gloves off,” hard-hitting remarks, which were often aimed at the wealthy and privileged in society. While many Republicans disliked McCarthy’s ruthless tactics, he was primarily hurting the Democrats before the election of Eisenhower in 1952. He became so popular, however, that even President Eisenhower would not dare to defend his old friend, George Marshall, against McCarthy’s untruths. ARMY-MCCARTHY HEARINGS- Finally, in 1954, McCarthy’s “reckless cruelty” was exposed on television. A Senate committee held televised hearings on Communist infiltration in the Army, and McCarthy was seen as a bully by billions of viewers. In December, Republicans joined Democrats in a Senate censure of McCarthy. The “witchhunt” for Communists (McCarthyism) had played itself out. Three years later, McCarthy died a broken man. Truman in Retirement:The second Red Scare, the stalemate in Korea, the loss of China, and scandals surrounding several of Truman’s advisers made his prospects of reelection unlikely. Truman decided to return to private life in Missouri- a move that he jokingly called his “promotion.” In the election o f1952, Republicans blamed Truman for “the mess in Washington.” In time, however, even Truman’s critics came to respect his many tough decisions and, in retrospect, admire his direct and frank character. Newman, John J., and John M. Schmalbach. "Truman and the Cold War 1945-1952." United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination. New York, NY: Amsco School Publications, 1998. 545-60. Print.COLD WAR- Europe Reborn: The Marshall Plan From George C. Marshall, Address at Harvard University, June 5, 1947In late 1946 the conservative constitutional monarchy of Greece- faced with economic collapse and a civil war instigated by Communist guerillas supplied and supported by the satellite countries to the north- was being held together by British support. But in February 1947 the British, sapped by their own economic troubles at home, announced an imminent withdrawal of aid. In Turkey, meanwhile, the USSR pressed hard for territorial grants and for de factor Soviet control of the Dardanelles. To meet these crises, the Truman administration, in cooperation with a bipartisan Congressional group, responded rapidly. On March 12, 1947, President Truman asked Congress to appropriate $400 million for military and economic aid to these two beleaguered countries. In making this request, he stated the principle which became known as the “Truman Doctrine,” with implications stretching far beyond the eastern Mediterranean. “I believe that it must be the policy of the US to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.” Within two months Congress had approved the President’s request, and the US had assumed its first major postwar responsibility for economic and military aid to countries threatened by Russian domination.Greece and Turkey were saved, but economic collapse and internal Communist pressures were still threatening the countries of Western Europe, and in Asia the regime of Chiang Kai-shek was tottering. After careful study, the Truman administration decided that the US could not afford a full-scale effort in both Europe and Asia and that the future of Europe was more immediately important to American security. On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed that the European nations together work out a plan to restore their shattered economies and that American financial aid be granted to back this economic reconstruction. In the months following, 16 European nations- all those not under Russian domination- came together, set agricultural and industrial goals, began discussions toward the establishment of a common European market, and developed a four year plan for rebuilding the economy (predictably, the Soviet bloc refused the American offer to join the program, although several satellite countries had to be held back from temptation). On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed an Act of Congress embodying the Marshall Plan. When the European Recovery Program terminated on December 31, 1951, the US had spent some $12.5 billion. The Marshall Plan was a dramatic departure from tradition in international relations, and an almost unqualified success. Within four years the nations of Europe had emerged from the danger of anarchy and communism and were, for the most part, making remarkable economic gains. Many Europeans agreed with the English magazine The Economist when it wrote: “Marshall Aid is the most straightforwardly generous thing any country has ever done for others, the fullest expression so far of that American idealism on which all the hopes of the West depend.”COLD WAR: CONTROVERSY OVER THE MARSHALL PLANHenry Wallace Opposes the Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan or European Recovery Program set forth by Secretary of State George C. Marshall on June 5, 1947, met strong opposition within the US from both conservatives and liberals when Congress began its debates over the plan in January 1948. Republican Senator Robert A. Taft and his supporters initially opposed the plan because to them it represented “global New Dealism,” threatened to cripple the US economy, and emphasized European- to the exclusion of Asian- interests. Strong opposition also came from pro-Russian Henry Wallace, who denounced the Marshall Plan as a war-breeding “Martial Plan” against the Soviet Union. Wallace was a former secretary of agriculture and vice president under President Truman, former editor of the New Republic, and in 1948, the Progressive party candidate for president. In the following excerpt from an article on “My Alternative for the Marshall Plan,” published in the January 12, 1948 issue of the New Republic, Henry Wallace expressed his opposition to the Marshall Plan and discussed his alternate proposal for European recovery.… Steadily during 1947 our help to foreign lands has been in the spirit of fighting Russia, not in the spirit of helping starving humanity. Steadily the military, the Wall Street press and the State Department have been waging psychological warfare against the American people to blind them to the fact that our unilateral help to Europe intervenes in the internal politics of nearly every Western European nation, that the ordinary European worker looks on it as naked imperialism- or even worse, in the case of Greece- and that in the end the cold war will end in bombs and expeditionary forces across Canada and the Scandinavian peninsula…The original Marshall Plan speech sounded good to me when it was delivered. The principles of self-help, mutual aid and American support were the same that I had suggested on many occasions. The differences now are clear. They are fatal differences. When the Marshall Plan was announced, I declared that the Truman Doctrine would have to be scrapped to give it meaning. It has not been scrapped. With the Truman Doctrine as its core, the so-called European Recovery Program is a plan to interfere in the social, economic, and political affairs of countries receiving aid. We are saying, “We will help you it you have our kind of government and subordinate your economy to ours.” We have invested $400 million in Greece and Turkey; $2 billion in China and $25 billion for our armed forces to support a foreign policy which leads to war, not peace. We can afford to invest in European reconstruction, but our policy must not require billions of dollars for arms, and millions of men in arms to back it up… The Russians certainly aren’t blameless for the cold war. But even if we should accept every charge made against the Russians, it does not excuse an American policy which runs contrary to American principles.A practical policy must begin with genuine support for the United Nations. We have been ignoring the UN. We circumvent the UN in the name of “emergency” to send military help to Greece and Turkey. We killed UNRRA [the Unified Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration], which had Europe on the road to recovery. We ignored the UN in proposing the Marshall Plan. We must reaffirm our faith in the UN. It cannot succeed if the most powerful nation in the world destroys confidence in the principle of world organization and operates in direct violation of that principle. We can’t talk the language of one world and use our economic and political power to split that one world in two. Today, when there is almost unanimous agreement on the necessity for helping Europe, is the time to “get practical.” If we reject the Marshall Plan as it is now proposed to apply it, this does not mean that we are without a plan. We propose a plan based on world unity and friendship that will lay the foundation of peace, not a plan based on world division and conflict that sows the seeds of war. We propose a plan that will effectuate the fine words spoken by Secretary Marshall at Harvard last June- not a plan whose deeds contradict those words. The experience of UNRRA proved that such a plan [based on European recovery through a United Nations agency] is eminently practical- that such a plan will work. That experience showed indeed that only such a plan will work for peace- not war. Arthur Vandenberg Supports the Marshall PlanRepublican Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was the most outspoken advocate of the Marshall Plan and worked ceaselessly through compromise to win bipartisan Senate support for the plan. To meet his opposition in the Senate, he proposed to set up an independent agency to administer the Marshall Plan, to appropriate only $5,000,000,000 rather than the full sum, for the first year, and to send economic and military aid to Asia, outside of the Marshall Plan. After the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, and with the threat of a Communist victory in Finland and Italy, Vandenberg won much support for the plan from previous opponents. On March 1, 1948, Senator Vandenberg delivered a major speech to the Senate in support of the Marshall Plan. This speech is excerpted below.Mr. President, with the unanimous approval of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I report the economic Cooperation Act of 1948 in its perfected text. In the name of peace, stability, and freedom it deserves prompt passage. In the name of intelligent American self-interest it envisions a mighty undertaking worthy of our faith. It is an economic act- but economic usually control national survivals these days. The act itself asserts that “disruption following in the wake of war is not contained by national frontiers.” It asserts that “the existing situation in Europe endangers the establishment of a lasting peace, the general welfare and national interest of the United States, and the attainment of the objectives of the United States.” Every Senator knows that these dangers are even greater than they were when those words were written only two short weeks ago. The fate of Czechoslovakia, where any semblance of democracy has just been gutted by subversive conquest, underscores this solemn thesis. The kindred fate of brave little Finland may be adding to the ominous score this very afternoon… The act asserts sound doctrine when it says that it is “the policy of the people of the United States to sustain and strengthen principles of individual liberty, free institutions and genuine independence through assistance to those countries of Europe which participate in a joint recovery program based upon self-help and mutual cooperation.” Mr. President, this act may well become a welcome beacon in the world’s dark night, but if a beacon is to be lighted at all it had better be lighted before it is too late… The greatest nation on earth either justifies or surrenders its leadership. We must choose. There are no blueprints to guarantee results. We are entirely surrounded by calculated risks. I profoundly belive that the pending program is the best of these risks…This legislation… seeks peace and stability for free men in a free world. It seeks them by economic rather than by military means. It proposes to help our friends to help themselves in the pursuit of sound and successful liberty in the democratic pattern. The quest can mean as much to us as it does to them. It aims to preserve the victory against aggression and dictatorship which we thought we won in World War II. It strives to help stop world war III before it starts. It fights the economic chaos which would precipitate far-flung disintegration. It sustains western civilization. It means to take western Europe completely off the American dole at the end of the adventure. It recognizes the grim truth- whether we like it or not- that American self-interest, national economy, and national security are inseverably linked with these objectives…Within the purview of this plan are 270,000,000 people of the stock which has largely made America. These are 26% of all the literates of the earth. Before the war they operated 68% of all the ships that sailed the sea. They grew 27% of all the world’s cereals. They produced 37% of the world’s steel. They sold 24% of the world’s exports and bought 39% of the world’s imports. They are struggling, against great and ominous odds, to regain their feet. They must not be allowed to fail. The world- America emphatically included- needs them as both producers and consumers. Peace needs their health restoration to the continuing defense of those ideals by which free men live. This vast friendly segment of the earth must not collapse. The iron curtain must not come to the rims of the Atlantic charter either by aggression or by default…… [T]here is nothing in this plan which threatens the Soviet police empire with any sort of consequence which she does not herself choose voluntarily to invite. It is not a plan against Eastern Europe… It is a plan for Western Europe. It is not external conquest. It is not dictation. It is internal recuperation by self-chosen methods. Eastern Europe was invited in. It was her own decision that keeps her out. It seems obvious that at least three of these countries behind the curtain would have joined if left to their own free wills. But, Mr. President, there are no free wills in police states.East-West flow of trade in Europe is necessary to both. Its resumption will be profitable to both. There is nothing in this plan which retards this resumption, unless Moscow itself so elects. The healthy recuperation of Western Europe should facilitate this resumption for the good of all concerned, if we can have a peaceful world. All poisoned propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, both at home and abroad, this is America’s incentive and her dearest wish…The committee has rewritten the bill to consolidate the wisdom shed upon the problem from many sources. It is the final product of 8 months of more intensive study by more devoted minds than I have ever known to concentrate upon any one objective in all my 20 years in Congress… It is a plan for peace, stability, and freedom. As such, it involves the clear self-interest of the United States. It can be the turning point in history for 100 years to come. COLD WAR: CONTROVERSY OVER THE CONTAINMENT POLICYGeorge F. Kennan Proposes a Policy of ContainmentThe following selection is an excerpt from George F. Kennan’s famous anonymous article (he signed it “By X”) entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” which was published in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. It was in this article that Kennan, a noted Kremlinologist and chairman of the State Department’s Policy Planning Committee, set forth the containment policy.… [I]t is clear that the main element of any US policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient, but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies… [I]t will be clearly seen that the Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence… [S]uppose that the western world finds the strength and resourcefulness to contain Soviet power over a period of ten to fifteen years. What does that spell for Russia itself?The Soviet leaders, taking advantage of the contributions of modern technique to the arts of despotism, have solved the question of obedience within the confines of their power. Few challenge their authority… The Kremlin has also proved able to accomplish its purpose of building up in Russia, regardless of the interests of the inhabitants, an industrial foundation of heavy metallurgy… All of this, however, both the maintenance of internal political security and the building of heavy industry, has been carried out at a terrible cost in human life and in human hopes and energies. It has necessitated the use of forced labor on a scale unprecedented in modern times under conditions of peace. It has involved the neglect or abuse of other phases of Soviet economic life, particularly agriculture, consumers’ goods production, housing and transportation. To all that, the war has added its tremendous toll of destruction, death and human exhaustion. In consequence of this, we have in Russia today a population which is physically and spiritually tired…In addition to this, we have the fact that Soviet economic development, while it can list certain formidable achievements, has been precariously spotty and uneven… Here certain branches of economic life, such as the metallurgical and machine industries, have been pushed out of all proportion to other sectors of economy. Here is a nation striving to become in a short period one of the great industrial nations of the world while it still has no highway network worthy of the name and only a relatively primitive network of railways. Much has been done to increase efficiency or labor and to teach primitive peasants something about the operation of machines. But maintenance is still a crying deficiency of all Soviet economy. Construction is hasty and poor in quality. Depreciation must be enormous…It is difficult to see how these deficiencies can be corrected at an early date by a tired and dispirited population working largely under the shadow of fear and compulsion. And as long as they are not overcome, Russia will remain economically a vulnerable, and in a certain sense an impotent, nation, capable of exporting its enthusiasms and of radiating the strange charm of its primitive political vitality but unable to back up those articles of export by the real evidences of material power and prosperity.Meanwhile, a great uncertainty hangs over the political life of the Soviet Union. That is the uncertainty involved in the transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to others… Thus the future of Soviet power may not be by any means as secure as Russian capacity for self-delusion would make it appear to the men in the Kremlin. That they can keep power themselves, they have demonstrated. That they can quietly and easily turn it over to others remains to be proved. Meanwhile, the hardships of their rule and the vicissitudes of international life have taken a heavy toll of the strength and hopes of the great people on whom their power rests…It is clear that the US cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect the Soviet policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and weakening of all rival influence and rival power.Balanced against this are the facts that Russia, as opposed to the western world in general, is still by far the weaker party, that Soviet policy is highly flexible, and that Soviet society may well contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the US entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroachment upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world. But in actuality the possibilities for American policy are by no means limited to holding the line and hoping for the best. It is entirely possible for the US to influence by its actions the internal developments, both within Russia and throughout the international Communist movement, by which Russian policy is largely determined… This is not only a question of the modest measure of informational activity which this government can conduct in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, although that, too, is important. It is rather a question of the degree to which the US can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time. To the extent that such an impression can be created and maintained, the aims of Russian Communism must appear sterile and quixotic [unrealistic], the hopes and enthusiasm of Moscow’s supporters must wane, and added strain must be imposed on the Kremlin’s foreign policies…By the same token, exhibitions of indecision, disunity and internal disintegration within this country have an exhilarating effect on the whole Communist movement. At each evidence of these tendencies, a thrill of hope and excitement goes through the Communist world; a new jauntiness can be noted in the Moscow tread; new groups of foreign supporters climb on to what they can only view as the band wagon of international politics; and Russian pressure increases all along the line in international affairs.It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the US has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, Messianic movement- and particularly not that of the Kremlin- can face frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one way or another to the logic of that state of affairs. Walter Lippmann Opposes the Containment PolicyAlmost immediately after the article by “X” in Foreign Affairs magazine, the containment policy was attacked by a number of newspaper columnists. One of the most important of these columnists was Walter Lippmann, who, in a series of articles published in the NY Herald Tribune during 1947, challenged the validity of the containment policy and suggested another course of action. Lippmann’s articles were combined into a book entitled The Cold War: A Study in US Foreign Policy, from which the following excerpt is taken.I find it hard to understand how Mr. X could have recommended such a strategic monstrosity… On his own testimony no single victory will easily defeat or discourage the patient persistence of the Kremlin. Yet Mr. X says that the US should aim to win a series of victories which will cause the Russians to “yield on individual sectors of the diplomatic front.” And then what? When the US has forced the Kremlin to “face frustration indefinitely” there will “eventually” come “either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of the Soviet power.”There is, however, no rational ground for confidence that the US could muster “unalterable counterforce” at all the individual sectors. The Eurasian continent is a big place, and the military power of the US, though it is very great, has certain limitations which must be borne in mind if it is to be used effectively. We live on an island continent. We are separated from the theaters of conflict by the great oceans. We have a relatively small population, of which the greater proportion must in time of war be employed in producing, transporting, and servicing the complex weapons and engines which constitute our military power. The US has, as compared with the Russians, no adequate reserves of infantry. Our navy commands the oceans and we possess the major offensive weapons of war. But on the ground in the interior of the Eurasian continent, as we are learning in the Greek mountains, there may be many “individual sectors” where only infantry can be used as the “counterforce.”These considerations must determine American strategy in war and, therefore, also in diplomacy, whenever the task of diplomacy is to deal with a conflict and a contest of power. The planner of American diplomatic policy must use the kind of power we do have, not the kind we do not have. He must use that kind of power where it can be used. He must avoid engagements in those “individual sectors of the diplomatic front” where our opponents can use the weapons in which they have superiority. But the policy of firm containment as defined by Mr. X ignores these tactical considerations. It makes no distinction among sectors. It commits the US to confront the Russians with counterforce “at every point” along the line, instead of at those points which we have selected because, there at those points, our kind of sea and air power can best be exerted…… American military power is distinguished by its mobility, its speed, its range and its offensive striking force. It is, therefore, not an efficient instrument for a diplomatic policy of containment. It can only be the instrument of a policy which has as its objective a decision and a settlement. It can and should be used to redress the balance of power which has been upset by the war. But it is not designed for, or adapted to, a strategy of containing, waiting, countering, blocking, with no more specific objective than the eventual “frustration” of the opponent. The Americans would themselves probably be frustrated by Mr. X’s policy long before the Russians were…The [containment] policy can be implemented only by recruiting, subsidizing, and supporting a heterogeneous array of satellites, clients, dependents, and puppets. The instrument of the policy of containment is thereby a coalition of disorganized, disunited, feeble or disorderly nations, tribes, and factions around the perimeter of the Soviet Union. To organize a coalition among powerful modern states is, even in times of war and under dire necessity, an enormously difficult thing to do well. To organize a coalition of disunited, feeble, and immature states, and to hold it together for a prolonged diplomatic siege, which might last for 10 or 15 years, is, I submit, impossibly difficult. It would require, however much the real name for it were disavowed, continual and complicated intervention by the US in the affairs of all the members of the coalition which we are proposing to organize, to protect, to lead and to use. Our diplomatic agents abroad would have to have an almost unerring capacity to judge correctly and quickly which men and which parties were reliable containers. Here at home Congress and the people would have to stand ready to back their judgments as to who should be nominated, who should be subsidized, who should be whitewashed, who should be seen through rose-colored spectacles, who should be made our clients and our allies…I am contending that the American diplomatic effort should be concentrated on the problem created by the armistice- which is on how the continent of Europe can be evacuated by the three non-European armies which are now inside Europe. This is the problem which will have to be solved if the independence of the European nations is to be restored. Without that there is no possibility of a tolerable peace. But if these armies withdraw, there will be a very different balance of power in the world than there is today, and one which cannot easily be upset. For the nations of Europe; separately and in groups, perhaps even in unity, will then, and then only, cease to be the stakes and the pawns of the Russian-American conflict. The material cause and reason of the conflict will have been dealt with… For if, and only if, we can bring about the withdrawal of the Red Army from the Yalta line to the new frontier of the Soviet Union- and simultaneously, of course, the withdrawal of the British and American armies from continental Europe- can a balance of power be established which can then be maintained. For after the withdrawal, an attempt to return would be an invasion- an open, unmistakable act of military aggression. Against such an aggression, the power of the US to strike the vital centers of Russia by air and by amphibious assault would stand as the opposing and deterrent force. And until treaties are agreed to which bring about the withdrawal of the Red Army, the power of the US to strike these vital centers would be built up for the express purpose of giving weight to our policy of ending the military occupation of Europe.All the other pressures of the Soviet Union at the “constantly shifting geographical and political points,” which Mr. X is so concerned about- in the Middle East and in Asia- are, I contend, secondary and subsidiary to the fact that its armed forces are in the heart of Europe. If is to the Red Army in Europe, therefore, and not to ideologies, elections, forms of government, to socialism, to communism, to free enterprise, that a correctly conceived and soundly planned policy should be directed. Touhill, Blanche M. "Power and Responsibility in a World of Turmoil: 1946-1960." Readings in American History. River Forest,Illinois: Laidlaw Brothers, 1970. 458-65. Print. The 1950sAMSCO- The Eisenhower Years, 1952-1960 The 1950s have the popular image of the “happy days” when the nation prospered and teens enjoyed the new beat of rock music. To a certain extent, this nostalgic view of the 50s is correct- but limited. The decade started with a war in Korea and the incriminations of McCarthyism. From the point of view of African Americans, what mattered about the 50s was not so much the music of Elvis but the resistance of Rosa Parks and MLK to segregation in the South. While middle-class suburbanites enjoyed their chrome-trimmed cars and tuned in “I Love Lucy” on their new TVs, the Cold War and threat of nuclear destruction loomed. EISENHOWER TAKES COMMANDMuch as FDR dominated the 1930s, President Dwight (“Ike”) Eisenhower personified the 1950s. The Republican campaign slogan, “I Like Ike,” expressed the genuine feelings of millions of middle-class Americans. They liked his winning smile and trusted and admired the former general who had successfully commanded Allied forces in Europe during WWII.The Election of 1952: In 1952, the last year of Truman’s presidency, Americans were looking for relief from the Korean War and an end to political scandals commonly referred to as “the mess in Washington.” Republicans looked forward with relish to their first presidential victory in 20 years. In the Republican primaries, voters had a choice between the Old Guard’s favorite, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, and the war hero, Eisenhower. Most of them liked “Ike,” who went on to win the Republican nomination. Conservative supporters of Taft balanced the ticket by persuading IKE to choose Richard Nixon for his running mate. This young California senator had made a name for himself attacking Communists in the Alger Hiss case. The Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson, popular Illinois governor, whose wit, eloquence, and courage in facing down McCarthyism appealed to liberals.CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS- As a nonpolitician, IKE had a spotless reputation for integrity that was almost spoiled by reports that his running mate, Richard Nixon, had used campaign funds for his own personal use. Nixon was almost dropped from the ticket. He managed to save his political future, however, by effectively using the new medium of TV to defend himself. In his so-called Checkers speech, Nixon won the support of millions of views by tugging on their heartstrings. With his wife and daughters around him, he emotionally vowed never to return the gift of their dog, Checkers, which the whole family loved. What really put distance between the Republicans and Democrats was IKE’s pledge during the last days of the campaign to go to Korea and end the war. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket went on to win over 55% of the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide of 442- 89.Domestic Policies:As president, IKE adopted a style of leadership that emphasized the delegation of authority. He filled his cabinet with successful corporate executives who gave his administration a businesslike tone. His Secretary of Defense was Charles Wilson, the former head of General Motors. IKE was often criticized by the press for spending too much time golfing and fishing and perhaps entrusting important decisions to others. Later research showed that behind the scenes IKE was in charge.MODERN REPUBLICANISM- IKE was a fiscal conservative whose first priority was balancing the budget after years of deficit spending. Although his annual budgets were not always balanced, he came closer to curbing federal spending than any of his successors. As a moderate on domestic issues, he accepted most of the New Deal programs as a reality of modern life and even extended some of them. During IKE’s two terms in office, Social Security was extended to 10 million more citizens, the minimum wage was raised, and additional public housing was built. In 1953, IKE consolidated the administration of welfare programs by creating the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under Oveta Culp Hobby, the first woman in a Republican cabinet. For farmers, a soil-bank program was initiated as means of reducing farm production and thereby increasing farm income. On the other hand, IKE opposed the ideas of federal health care insurance and federal aid to education. As the first Republican president since Hoover, IKE called his balanced and moderate approach “modern Republicanism.” His critics called it “the bland leading the bland.”INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM- The most permanent legacy of the IKE years was the passage in 1956 of the Highway Act, which authorized the construction of 42,000 miles of interstate highways linking all the nation’s major cities. When completed, the US highway system became a model for the rest of the world. The use of federal money to build highways was justified by IKE as a means of improving the national defense. This immense public works project created jobs, promoted the trucking industry, accelerated the growth of the suburbs, and contributed to a more homogenous national culture. But the emphasis on cars, trucks, and highways hurt the railroads. Little attention was paid to public transportation, which the old/poor depended on.PROSPERITY- IKE’s domestic legislation was modest. During his years in office, however, the country enjoyed a steady growth rate, with an inflation rate averaging a negligible 1.5%. Although the federal budget had a small surplus only 3 times in 8 years, the deficits fell in relation to the national wealth. For these reasons, some historians rate IKE’s economic policies as the most successful of any modern president’s. Between 1945 and 1960, the per-capita disposable income of Americans more than tripled. By the mid-1950s, the average American family had twice the real income of a comparable family during the boom years of the 1920s. The postwar economy gave Americans the highest standard of living in the world. The Election of 1956:Toward the end of his first term, IKE suffered a heart attack in 1955 and had major surgery in 1956. Democrats questioned whether his health was strong enough for election to a second term. Four years of peace and prosperity, however, made Ike more popular than ever, and the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket was enthusiastically re-nominated by the Republicans. The Democrats again nominated Adlai Stevenson. In this political rematch, IKE won by an even greater margin than in 1952. It was a personal victory only, however, as the Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.EISENHOWER AND THE COLD WARMost of Eisenhower’s attention in both his first and second terms focused on foreign policy and various international crises arising from the Cold War. The experienced diplomat who helped to shape US foreign policy throughout IKE’s presidency was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.Dulles’ Diplomacy: Dulles had been critical of Truman’s containment policy as too passive. He advocated a “new look” to US foreign policy that took the initiative in challenging the USSR and the People’s Republic of China. He talked of “liberating captive nations” of Eastern Europe and encouraging the Nationalist government of Taiwan to assert itself against “Red” (Communist”) China. Dulles pleased conservatives- and alarmed many others- by declaring that, if the US pushed Communist powers to the brink of war, they would back down because of US nuclear superiority. His hard line became known as “brinkmanship.” In the end, however, Eisenhower prevented Dulles from carrying his ideas to an extreme.MASSIVE RETALIATION- Dulles advocated placing greater reliance on nuclear weapons and air power and spending less on conventional forces of the army and navy. In theory, this would save money (“more bang for the buck”), help balance the federal budget, and increase pressure on potential enemies. In 1953, the US developed the hydrogen bomb, which could destroy the largest cities. Within a year, however, the USSR caught up with a hydrogen bomb of their own. To some, the policy of massive retaliation looked more like a policy for mutual extinction. Nuclear weapons indeed proved a powerful deterrent against the superpowers fighting an all-out war between themselves, but such weapons could not prevent small “brushfire” wars from breaking out in the developing nations of Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Unrest in the Third World:The collapse of colonial empires after WWII may have been the single most important development of the postwar era. Between 1947 and 1962, dozens of colonies in Asia and Africa gained their independence. In Asia, India and Pakistan became new nations in 1947 and the Dutch East Indies became the independent country of Indonesia in 1949. In Africa, Ghana threw off British colonial rule in 1957, and a host of other nations followed. These new, Third World countries (in contrast to the industrialized nations of the Western block and the Communist bloc) often lacked stable political and economic institutions. Their need for foreign aid from either the USA or the USSR often made them into pawns of the Cold War.COVERT ACTION- Part of the new look in IKE’s conduct of US foreign policy was the growing use of covert action. Undercover intervention in the internal politics of other nations seemed less objectionable than employing US troops and also proved less expensive. In 1953 the CIA played a major role in helping to overthrow a government in Iran that had tried to nationalize the holding of foreign oil companies. The overthrow of the elected government allowed for the return of Reza Pahlavi as shah (monarch) of Iran. The shah in return provided the West with favorable oil prices and made enormous purchases of US arms. In Guatemala, in 1954, the CIA overthrew a leftist government that threatened American business interests. US opposition to communism seemed to drive Washington to support corrupt and often ruthless dictators, especially in Latin America. This tendency produced growing anti-American feeling, which became manifest when angry crowds in Venezuela attacked Vice President Nixon’s motorcade during his goodwill tour of South American in 1958. Asia:During Eisenhower’s first year in office, some of the most serious Cold War challenges concerned events in East Asia and Southeast Asia.KOREAN ARMISTICE- Soon after his inauguration in 1953, IKE kept his election promise by going to Korea to visit UN forces and see what could be done to stop the war. He understood that no quick fix was possible. Even so, diplomacy, the threat of nuclear war, and the sudden death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 finally moved China and North Korea to agree to an armistice and an exchange of prisoners in July 1953. The fighting stopped and most (but not all) US troops were withdrawn. Korean would remain divided near the 38th parallel, and despite years of futile negotiations, no peace treaty was every concluded. FALL OF INDOCHINA- After losing their Southeast Asian colony of Indochina to Japanese invaders in WWII, the French made the mistake of trying to retake it. Wanting independence, native Vietnamese and Cambodians resisted. French imperialism had the effect of increasing support for nationalist and Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. By 1950, the anti-colonial war in Indochina became part of the Cold War rivalry between Communist and anticommunist powers. Truman’s government started to give US military aid to the French, while China and the USSR aided the Viet Minh guerillas led by Ho Chi Minh. In 1954, a large French army at Dien Bien Phu was trapped and forced to surrender. After this disastrous defeat, the French tried to convince IKE to send in US troops, but he refused. At the Geneva Conference of 1954, France agreed to give up Indochina, which was divided into the independent nations of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.DIVISION OF VIETNAM- By the terms of the Geneva Conference, Vietnam was to be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel until a general election could be held. The new nation remained divided, however, as two hostile governments took power on either side of the line. In North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh established a Communist dictatorship. In South Vietnam, a government emerged under Ngo Dinh Diem, whose support came largely from anti-communist, Catholic, and urban Vietnamese, many of whom had fled from Communist rule in the North. The general election to unite Vietnam was never held, largely because South Vietnam’s government feared that the Communists would win. From 1955 to 1961, the US gave over $1 billion in economic and military aid to South Vietnam in an effort to build a stable, anti-communist state. In justifying this aid, President Eisenhower made an analogy to a row of dominoes. According to this domino theory (later to become famous), if South Vietnam fell under Communist control, one nation after another in Southeast Asia would also fall, until Australia and New Zealand were in dire danger.SEATO- To prevent the “fall” to communism of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, Dulles put together a regional defense pact called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Agreeing to defend one another in case of an attack within the region, eight nations signed the pact in 1954 (USA, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan).The Middle East:In the Middle East, the US had the difficult balancing act of maintaining friendly ties with the oil-rich Arab states while at the same time supporting the new nation of Israel. The latter nation was created in 1948 under UN auspices, after a civil war in the British mandate territory of Palestine left the land divided between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel’s neighbors, including Egypt, had fought unsuccessfully to prevent the Jewish state from being formed.SUEZ CRISIS- Led by the Arab nationalist General Gamal Nasser, Egypt asked the US for funds to build the ambitious Aswan Dam project on the Nile River. The US refused, in part because Egypt threatened Israel’s security. Nasser turned to the USSR to help build the dam. The Soviets agreed to provide limited financing for the project. Seeking another source of funds, Nasser precipitated an international crisis in July 1956 by seizing and nationalizing the British & French-owned Suez Canal. Loss of the canal threatened Western Europe’s supply line to Middle Eastern oil. In response to this treat, Britain, France, and Israel carried out a surprise attack against Egypt and retook the canal. A furious IKE, who had been kept in the dark by his old allies the British/ French, sponsored a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Egypt. Under pressure from the US and world public opinion, the invading forces withdrew. After the Suez crisis, Britain & France would never again play the role of major powers in world affairs. EISENHOWER DOCTRINE- The US quickly replaced Britain and France as the leading Western influence in the Middle East, but it faced a growing Soviet influence in Egypt and Syria. In a policy pronouncement later known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, the US in 1957 pledged economic/military aid to any Middle Eastern country threatened by communism. IKE first applied his doctrine in Lebanon in 1958 by sending 14,000 marines to that country to prevent the outbreak of a civil war between Christians & Muslims.OPEC AND OIL- In Eisenhower’s last year in office, 1960, the Arab nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran joined Venezuela to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil was shaping up to be a critical foreign policy issue. The combination of growing Western dependence on Middle East oil, spreading Arab nationalism, and a conflict between Israelis and Palestinian refugees would trouble American presidents for the next four decades. US-Soviet Relations:In terms of US security, nothing was more crucial than US diplomatic relations with its chief political and military rival, the Soviet Union. Throughout Eisenhower’s presidency, the relations between the two superpowers fluctuated regularly from periods of relative calm to periods of extreme tension.SPIRIT OF GENEVA- After Stalin’s death in 1953, IKE called for a slowdown in the arms race and presented to the UN an atoms for peace plan. The Soviets too showed signs of wanting to reduce Cold War tensions. They withdrew their troops from Austria (once that country had agreed to be neutral in the Cold War) and also established peaceful relations with Greece and Turkey. By 1955, a desire for improved relations on both sides resulted in a summit meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, between IKE and the new Soviet premier, Nikolai Bulganin. At this conference, the US president proposed that the superpowers agree to “open skies” over each other’s territory- open to aerial photography by the opposing nation- in order to eliminate the changes of a surprise nuclear attack. The Soviets rejected the proposal. Nevertheless, the “spirit of Geneva,” as the press called it, produced the first thaw in the Cold War. Even more encouraging, from the US point of view, was a speech by the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in early 1956 in which he denounced the crimes of Joseph Stalin and supported “peaceful coexistence” with the West. HUNGARIAN REVOLT- The relaxation in the Cold War encouraged workers in East Germany and Poland to demand reforms from the Communist governments of these countries. In October 1956 a popular uprising in Hungary actually succeeded in overthrowing a government backed by Moscow. It was replaced briefly by more liberal leaders who wanted to pull Hungary out of the Warsaw Pact, the Communist security organization. This was too much for the Kremlin, and Khrushchev sent in Soviet tanks to crush the freedom fighters and restore control over Hungary. The US took no action in the crisis. Eisenhower feared that if he sent troops to aid the Hungarians, it would touch off a world war in Europe. In effect, by allowing Soviet tanks to toll into Hungary, the US gave de facto recognition to the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and ended Dulles’ talk of “liberating” this region. Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt also ended the first thaw in the Cold War. SPUTNIK SHOCK- In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the US and surprised the world by launching the first satellites, Sputnik I and Sputnik II, into orbit around the earth. Suddenly, the technological leadership of the US was open to question. To add to American embarrassment, US rockets designed to duplicate the Soviet achievement failed repeatedly. What was responsible for this scientific debacle? Some blamed the schools and “inadequate” instruction in the sciences. In 1958, Congress responded with the National Defense and Education Act (NDEA), which authorized giving hundreds of millions in federal money to the schools for science and foreign language education. Congress in 1958 also created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to direct the US efforts to build missiles and explore outer space. Billions were appropriated to compete with the Russians in the space race. Fears of nuclear war were intensified by Sputnik, since the missiles that launched the satellites could also deliver thermonuclear warheads anywhere in the world in ten minutes, and there was no defense against them.SECOND BERLIN CRISIS- “We will bury capitalism,” Khrushchev boasted. With new confidence and pride based on Sputnik, the Soviet leader pushed the Berlin issue in 1958 by giving the West 6 months to pull its troops out of West Berlin before turning over the city to the East Germans. The US refused to yield. To defuse the crisis, IKE invited Khrushchev to visit the US in 1959. At the presidential retreat of Camp David (Md.), they agreed to put off the crisis and scheduled another summit in Paris for 1960. U-2 INCIDENT- The friendly “spirit of Camp David” never had a chance to produce results. Two weeks before the planned meeting in Paris, the Russians shot down a high-altitude US spy plane- the U2- over the USSR. The incident exposed a secret US tactics for gaining information. After its open-skies proposals had been rejected by the Soviets in 1955, the US had decided to conduct regular spy flights over Soviet territory to find out about its enemy’s missile program. Eisenhower took full responsibility for the flights- after they were exposed by the U2 incident- but his honesty proved a diplomatic mistake. Khrushchev had little choice but to denounce Eisenhower and call off the Paris summit. Communism in Cuba:Perhaps more alarming than any other Cold War development during the Eisenhower years was the loss of Cuba to communism. A bearded revolutionary, Fidel Castro, overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. At first, no one knew whether Castro’s politics would be better or worse than those of his ruthless predecessor. Once in power, however, Castro nationalized American-owned businesses and properties in Cuba. IKE retaliated by cutting of US trade with Cuba. Castro then turned to the Soviets for support. He also revealed that he was a Marxist and soon proved it by setting up a Communist totalitarian state. With communism only 90 miles off the shores of Florida, IKE authorized the CIA to train anti-communist Cuban exiles to retake their island, but the decision to go ahead with the scheme was left up to the next president, Kennedy.Eisenhower’s Legacy:After leaving the White House, IKE claimed credit for checking Communist aggression and keeping the peace without the loss of American lives in combat. He also started the long process of relaxing tensions with the USSR. In 1958, he initiated the first arms limitations by voluntarily suspending above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.“MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX”- In his farewell address as president, Eisenhower spoke out against the negative impact of the Cold War on US society. He warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex.” If the outgoing president was right, the arms race was taking on a momentum and logic of its own. It seemed to some Americans in the 1960s that the US was in danger of going down the path of ancient republics, and, like Rome, turning into a military, or imperial state. McCarthyism: Years of Shock by Eric GoldmanA veritable anti-Communist hysteria swept over the United States in the Truman and early Eisenhower years, as Americans saw red conspiracies at home as well as abroad. It had happened before. In 1919, two years after Russia had fallen to bolshevism, American patriots warned that a Bolshevik plot was under way to overthrow the United States, too. Convinced that this was so, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer- “the fighting Quaker”- announced that he would round up all Bolsheviks and deport them to Russia on a special ship called the Soviet Ark. Authorities then set about apprehending hundreds of thousands of suspicious-looking people, and newspapers ran pictures of what a Bolshevik looked like (he was bearded, bespectacled, and sinister) so that Americans might root out any such conspirators in their churches, schools, and homes. Finally the red scare subsided, but not before many innocent people had suffered. Now in the 1940s and 1950s- in another postwar period- it was happening again as thousands of insecure Americans began to suspect that many other citizens had succumbed to communism. And out of their fears emerged a conspiracy view of history, which held that since 1932 a Communist plot had been under way to take over the United States from within and to hand the country over to Moscow. The chief agent in this plot was Franklin Roosevelt; the cast of villains also included the Brains Trusters and most of the New Dealers in the cabinet and Congress. The New Deal itself, with all its welfare measures, seemed part of a sinister world conspiracy directed by Moscow. Truman, too, in spite of his tough-guy stance toward the Russians, was linked to the Great Conspiracy. Had he not been Roosevelt’s vice president? And look at his Fair Deal domestic program, the patriots said. It consisted of such “socialist” programs as civil rights legislation for African Americans, federal aid to schools, federal health insurance, and public housing. From the American right, where the patriots were clustered, came resounding accusations that the Truman administration was brimming with traitors and that all liberals were Communists.The communist scare, however, was not confined to the American right. The fact was that Truman and the liberals were obsessed with communism, too, and out of that obsession came nuclear diplomacy and the containment policy. Furthermore, it was the liberals who went to war against communism, first in Korea and later in Vietnam. At home, moreover, Truman instituted a sweeping loyalty oath program and began extensive security checks for federal employment. In truth, the liberals’ preoccupation with communism helped create a national mood in which hysterical anticommunism flourished. And flourish it did. Thousands of conservative and moderate Americans were very much afraid that Communists had infiltrated the schools, the churches, and the federal government itself. The House Un-American Activities Committee only fanned the flames when it unearthed alleged Communists in the universities and in Hollywood. Then came the sensational trial of Alger Hiss.Hiss had been a New Deal luminary and an official in the State Department. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers stood before the House Un-American Activities Committee and accused Hiss of being a Communist spy during the 1930s. Chambers, turning state’s evidence, admitted that he had belonged to the Communist Party and insisted that Hiss had given him classified State Department documents. When Hiss sued him for libel, Chambers produced microfilms of the papers. In 1949 Hiss came to trial on a charge of perjury (the statute of limitations prevented his being charged with espionage). The first trial ended in a hung jury, but the second found him guilty of perjury- and, by implication, of treason. For many Americans, the Hiss trial was unchallengeable proof that the New Deal had been alive with Communists in government, proof that the conspiracy thesis was true, proof that the United States was in danger of being overthrown from within. Other developments in 1949- that “year of shocks”- convinced thousands of Americans (Republicans and Democrats alike) that disaster was imminent. First, China fell to communism. Then came the stunning news that Russia also had the atomic bomb. And 1950 came on. “For the frightened and embittered,” writes Eric Goldman, “there was only more incitement to fright and bitterness.” Key People:Herbert Block- Washington Post cartoonist who coined the term “McCarthyism” to describe anticommunist zealotry.Roy Cohn- Chief counsel for McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations who ferreted out “subversion” in the State Department’s overseas information program and assisted McCarthy in the Army-McCarthy hearings.Fred Fisher- Joseph Welch’s young assistant who had once belonged to the Lawyers Guild; in the Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy impugned Fisher’s patriotism by labeling the Lawyers Guild “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.” Dr. Klaus Fuchs- British atomic scientist who gave the Soviets “the inmost scientific secrets of the Western powers.”Owen Lattimore- Sometime consultant for the State Department and a noncommunist liberal; McCarthy named him “the top Russian espionage agent” in America.Irving Peress- Army dentist who was promoted and given an honorable discharge after he refused to sign a loyalty oath and to answer questions before McCarthy’s subcommittee; McCarthy used the Peress case to start subcommittee hearings on the army’s alleged softness on communism.Senator Millard Tydings- Senator from Maryland and militant chairman of the Senate subcommittee set up to investigate McCarthy’s claim that the State Department was overrun with Communists.Edmund Walsh- Georgetown University vice president and author of Total Power who alerted a young senator McCarthy to the evils of world communismJoseph Welch- chief army counsel in the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, Welch received an ovation in the hearings when he challenged McCarthy’s cruel accusations against Welch’s young assistant, Fred Fisher.Brigadier General Ralph Zwicker- Esteemed army officer humiliated during the Army-McCarthy hearings; afterward, Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens and the Eisenhower administration moved to deflate the crusading senator. On January 31, Presidential Press Secretary Charles Ross handed reporters a statement from President Truman: “It is part of my responsibility as Commander in Chief of the armed forces to see to it that our country is able to defend itself against any aggressor. Accordingly I have directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or superbomb.” Once again a terrifying announcement had been made with all the studied toning down of a mimeographed sheet- this time the President even saw to it that he was casually lunching at Blair House when Ross met the reporters. Once again nothing could really cushion the news… A hydrogen bomb [would] have been one hundred to one thousand times the power of the largest atomic weapon. Twelve distinguished scientists immediately issued a joint statement which pointed out that “in the case of the fission bomb the Russians required four years to parallel our development. In the case of the hydrogen bomb they will probably need a shorter time.”Some Americans talked tough. Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson told an alumni gathering at the University of Virginia: “I want Joe Stalin to know that if he starts something at four o’clock in the morning, the fighting power and strength of America will be on the job at five o’clock in the morning.” Other Americans raised harsh, portentous questions. Senator Brian McMahon, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, brought solemn handshakes from both sides of the chamber by a speech in which he asked: “How is it possible for free institutions to flourish or even to maintain themselves in a situation where defenses, civil and military, must be ceaselessly poised to meet an attack that might incinerate fifty million Americans- not in the space of an evening, but in the space of moments?” The most authoritative voice of all talked doom. Albert Einstein went on television, the simple sweater jacket, the scraggly gray hair, the childlike face with the brilliant eyes all adding to the aura of an otherworldly wisdom beyond the power of ordinary mortals. With the order of President Truman to produce an H-bomb, Einstein said, “radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and hence annihilation of any life on earth has been brought within the range of technical possibilities… General annihilation beckons.” Another four days and another jolting headline. On February 3, the British government announced the confession of Dr. Klaus Fuchs, a high-level atomic scientist. The descriptions of Fuchs sitting behind the cast-iron grill of the prisoner’s dock in Bow Street police court, plainly dressed, bespectacled, quiet-mannered, gave him every inch the appearance of the dedicated scientist- “the last man in the world you would expect to be a spy,” as one English reporter commented. Yet Fuchs’ confession stated that from 1943 through 1947, while engaged in government atomic research in the United States and Britain, he had systematically passed over to Soviet agents the inmost scientific secrets of the Western powers. “I had complete confidence in Russian policy,” he told the police, “and I had not hesitation in giving all the information I had.” The knowledge Fuchs handed over, his superior, Michael Perren, stated, had been “of the highest value to a potential enemy,” and no doubted speeded up the Russian production of an atom bomb “at least a year.”Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana stood up in the Senate and stormed: “How much more are we going to have to take? Fuchs and Acheson and Hiss and hydrogen bombs threatening outside and New Dealism eating away the vitals of the nation. In the name of Heaven, is this the best America can do?” The applause was loud and long, from the floor and from the galleries.That afternoon the regular plane from Washington to Wheeling, West Virginia, began loading. The stewardess did her duty, noted a United States Senator on the passenger list, and greeted him with a smiling, “Good afternoon, Senator McCarthy.” The reply was a bit plaintive. “Why good afternoon- I’m glad somebody recognizes me.”Getting recognized was no new concern of Joseph McCarthy. The Irish settlement in northern Wisconsin where he grew up respected money and looks; the McCarthys were a struggling brood of nine and Joe was the ugly duckling, barrel-chested and short-armed with thick eyebrows and heavy lips. Mother Bridget McCarthy threw a special protective wing around the shy, sulky boy and when the rough teasing came, he sought out her big warm apron. “Don’t you mind,” she would console. “You be somebody. You get ahead.”Joe took heed. He would get back; he would show everybody. The shy sulkiness turned into a no-holds-barred ambition curiously mixed with a gawky, grinning likability. The boy worked so furiously on the family farm that neighbors joked he must have spent his babyhood wearing overalls instead of diapers. Starting his education late, he talked, wheedled, and shoved his way through Marquette University with so much corner-cutting that Wisconsin educators still gasp at the record.Associates noted the fierce, blinding drive in everything McCarthy did. When he boxed and his awkwardness was getting him cut to pieces, he would keep coming in, slashed and bleeding but flailing away in the hope of striking a knockout blow. When he played poker, he played all-or-nothing. He had the “guts of a burglar,” one friend remembers. “He was brutal. He’d take all the fun out of the game, because he took it so seriously.” When he ran for office in college, he dropped his homework, cut school for weeks at a time, devoted night and day to buying coffees and cokes and making lavish promises. He and his opponent agreed that each would vote for the other until the election was decided. The first ballot was a tie. On the next McCarthy won by two votes. “Joe,” the defeated candidate said, “did you vote for yourself?” McCarthy grinned his big, disarming, tail-between-the-legs grin. “Sure. You wanted me to vote for the best man, didn’t you?”Once out of Marquette, he bashed his way to a Wisconsin Circuit Judgeship and soon converted it into a political stump, knocking off divorces in five minutes or less, racing around to please people by trying as many cases as possible After Pearl Harbor he entered the Marine Corps, turning the whole Pacific Theater of War into a headquarters of McCarthy for United States Senator, blithely giving himself the name of “Tail-gunner Joe” although most of the time he was actually serving as an intelligence officer and doing the paperwork for a squadron of pilots. Elected to the Senate in 1946, he thrashed about for ways to secure his political hold. McCarthy served the interests of the Pepsi-Cola Company so faithfully he became known to fellow Senators as the “Pepsi-Cola Kid.” He delighted the real-estate interests in Wisconsin by battling public housing and he pleased some of his large German-American constituency by defending the Nazis on trial for the murders of [American prisoners at] Malmédy [Belgium in 1944]. It was a great life, this being a United States Senator. “Pretty good going for a Mick from the backwoods, eh?” McCarthy would grin at the cocktail parties and the ladies thought he was awfully cute- “such an engaging primitive,” as one debutante put it. But there was a problem and the engaging primitive was no more patient with a problem than he had ever been. On January 7, 1950 McCarthy sat having a troubled dinner at the Colony Restaurant in Washington. The get-together had been arranged by Charles H. Kraus, a professor of political science at Georgetown University, and William A. Roberts, a well-known Washington attorney. Kraus in particular had been seeing a good deal of the Senator and had been suggesting books for him to read- especially the potent anti-Communist volume Total Power by Father Edmund A. Walsh, vice-president of Georgetown and regent of its School of Foreign Service (McCarthy was hardly a booklover but he did like to skim hurriedly and had spoken of his desire “to read some meaty books”). The prime purpose of the dinner was to permit the Senator to meet Father Walsh, whom both Kraus and Roberts profoundly admired.McCarthy soon brought the conversation around to what was uppermost in his mind. His situation was bad, the Senator said. Here it was already the beginning of 1950, with his term running out in two years, and he had neither the national publicity which would attract Wisconsin voters nor any specific issue likely to stir them. Within months, Kraus, Roberts, and Walsh were all to repudiate McCarthy but at this time they were well disposed toward the youthful Senator. Kraus and Roberts were also Marine veterans of WWII; everyone at the table was a Catholic; the Senator’s shaggy affability could attract men as well as women. Eager to help McCarthy, the group threw out suggestions.“How about pushing harder for the St. Lawrence seaway?” Roberts proposed. McCarthy shook his head. “That hasn’t enough appeal. No one gets excited about it.” The Senator then thought aloud about a Townsend-type pension plan for all elderly Americans. Why not start a campaign to pay one hundred dollars a month to everybody over 65 years of age? But the three other men agreed that the idea was economically unsound.After dinner the group went to Robert’s office in the adjoining DeSales Building and continued the discussion. McCarthy and Roberts, both voluble men, did most of the talking but at one point Father Walsh spoke at length. He emphasized the world power of Communism and the danger that it would infiltrate any Democratic government. He was sure, Walsh declared, that vigilance against Communism was of such importance that it would be an issue two years hence.The Senator’s face brightened. Communist infiltration- wasn’t this what everybody was talking about? And wasn’t this, after all, a real issue? The priest’s remarks touched chords that reached far back into McCarthy’s life. In the 1930s, the Irish settlement of northern Wisconsin voted for Franklin Roosevelt; the farms were in too desperate a condition for anything else. But the New Dealism had its own Midwestern, new-immigrant, Irish-Catholic coloration. It was filled with suspicion of Easterners, “radicals,” “aristocrats,” the British, and the “striped-pants fellows” of the State Department. McCarthy had started in politics a New Deal Democrat but as soon as the prosperity came he shifted to a more congenial Taft Republicanism. Whether a Democrat or a Republican, he had always more or less consciously assumed that the big trouble with America, as his boyhood neighbor Jim Heegan used to put it, was “those Leftists.”McCarthy cut in on Father Walsh. “The Government is full of Communists. The thing to do is to hammer at them.” Roberts, a longtime liberal attorney, spoke a sharp warning. Such a campaign would have to be based on facts; the public was weary of “Wolf! Wolf!” cries about “Reds.” The Senator said offhandedly he would get the facts.Lincoln’s Birthday, the traditional time for Republican oratory, was approaching, and McCarthy- probably at his own request- was assigned by the Senate Republican Campaign Committee to speak on the topic, “Communism in the State Department.” The Senator’s office put together some materials drawn mostly from hearings and staff investigations of a House Appropriations subcommittee. Three weeks after Hiss was convicted, ten days after President Truman ordered work on the H-bomb, six days after the British announced the Fuchs confession, on February 9, 1950, McCarthy took the plane to deliver his speech before the Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling West Virginia. He would give it a try. He would see if he could not get someone besides polite airline stewardesses to recognize the name Joseph McCarthy. “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency [in international affairs],” the Senator told the club, “ is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated too well by this Nation…” Where was the situation most serious? “Glaringly” so in the State Department. And what kind of men were the offenders? “The bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been worst… In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important government departments, is thoroughly infested with Communists.” Most dangerous of all was Dean Acheson, that “pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent.”McCarthy had always believed that a speaker had to get specific in order to make his points stick. Near the end of his speech he talked about a list “I hold here in my hand.” Exactly what he said about the list will probably never be known with certainty. James E. Whitaker and Paul A. Meyers, news editor and program director respectively of the Wheeling radio station that broadcast the speech, WWVA, later swore in an affidavit that McCarthy’s words were: “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 nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.” The Senator’s friends later insisted that his point was something like: “I have here in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.” One man who would never be sure what he said was Joseph McCarthy. Frederick Woltman, the responsible reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspapers, has described how “on a number of occasions- mostly in my apartment at the Congressional- I heard McCarthy and his advisors wrack their brains for some lead as to what he said in that Wheeling speech. He had no copy; he had spoken from rough notes and he could not find the notes… The Senator’s staff could find no one who could recall what he’s said precisely. He finally hit on the idea of appealing to ham radio operators in the area who might have made a recording of the speech. He could find none.”For the moment there was no such interesting problem. There was only another plane to catch, another polite stewardess to greet Senator McCarthy. The speech seemed to disappear; it was not even reported except in the Wheeling newspapers and in the Chicago Tribune. The Senator kept flailing away. On February 10, in Salt Lake City, he made a speech similar to his Wheeling talk and charged that there were “57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party” in the State Department. The next day he repeated substantially the same talk in Reno and wired President Truman demanding that the White House do something. Things began to happen. Newspapers in many parts of the country headlined the Salt Lake City and Reno charges. President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson issued angry statements of denial. The Senate stirred, authorizing a subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee to investigate the Senator’s statements.But what was happening did not seem to bode well for Joseph McCarthy. The materials that he had used for his speeches were largely old and none too sturdy charges. The Senate subcommittee, chairmanned by the militantly Democratic Millard Tydings of Maryland, kept McCarthy pinned in the worst possible light. Veteran Republican Senate leaders were plainly hesitant about backing this rambunctious upstart. Then, gradually, support came. By an instinct born of the whole climate of ideas in which he had grown up, McCarthy was attacking precisely in the way most likely to capture the groups in America who were most disturbed about foreign policy- the whole conspiracy theory of international affairs down to the last suspicion of Dean Acheson’s striped pants. By the same instinct, he kept broadening the sense of conspiracy, catching more strands of the rebelliousness abroad in the country. Within a month after his Wheeling speech he was assailing as Communists the “whole group of twisted-thinking New Dealers [who] have led America near to ruin at home and abroad.” Many others had been saying these things. No one had kept naming names, dozens of specific, headline-making names. And no one had attacked with such abandon- McCarthy politicking as he had done everything else, ignoring the rules, always walking in, taking his beatings, endlessly throwing wild, speculative punches. Shortly after the Tydings subcommittee did its most telling job on the charge of 57 card-carrying Communists in the State Department, the Senator closed his eyes completely and swung so hard he shook the country.He could “stand or fall on this one,” McCarthy let it be known. He was naming “the top Russian espionage agent” in the United States and a man who had long been “one of the top advisers on Far Eastern policy”- Owen Lattimore. In the ensuing uproar only the most informed Americans could make out the fact that Lattimore was a non-Communist liberal who had been called into consultation infrequently by the State Department and whose suggestions had been almost totally ignored.By late March private contributions were pouring into the Senator’s office. The awards began. The Marine Corps League of Passaic, New Jersey, announced that it had selected Joseph McCarthy to receive its 1950 citation for Americanism. Leading Taft Republicans, including Senator Taft himself, the two powerhouses, Senators Kenneth Wherry and Styles Bridges, and the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Guy Gabrielson, were giving a respectful and cooperative attention to the rambunctious upstart. Various groups which had their own special uses for McCarthy’s kind of anti-Communism came to his support- including the potent manipulators who were soon known as the “China Lobby.”Now the grin was as broad as Mother Bridget’s apron. The Senator was affable, endlessly affable. In the course of a discussion in McCarthy’s apartment, Mrs. Frederick Woltman asked testily: “Tell me, Senator, just how long ago did you discover Communism?” The Senator grinned. “Why, about two and a half months ago.” In the office of Herbert Block, the strongly New Dealish cartoonist of the Washington Post, there was no grinning. Herblock angrily sketched a harassed Republican elephant, being pushed and pulled by Taft, Wherry, Bridges, and Gabrielson toward a stack of buckets of tar with an extra big barrel of tar on top. The cartoonist hesitated for a moment, thinking over possible one-world labels. Then he was satisfied. On the large barrel of tar he printed the letters, MC-CARTHYSIM. Immediately, and so naturally that people promptly forgot where the term had first been used, the word McCarthyism passed into the language. The revolt that set off the shocks of 1949 had its name and the expression of its most violent, most reckless mood…The shocks of 1949 had given Senator Joseph McCarthy his start. The frustrations of 1950 and 1951 blasted wide his road to power. With America tangled in deadlocks at home and abroad, the man with the simple answer, the furious, flailing answer, had his day. In early 1951 Mickey Spillane’s One Lonely Night started on its way to selling more than three million copies. The hero, Mike Hammer, gloated: “I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it… They were Commies, Lee. They were red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago… They never thought that there were people like me in this country. They figured us all to be soft as horse manure and just as stupid.” Hammer’s tough-guy certainty that he was solving the world’s problems by bludgeoning Communists hardly hurt the sales of One Lonely Night. It was a day for Mike Hammerism, in books or in politics.Week after week Senator McCarthy became bolder and more reckless. For years General of the Army George Marshall, the over-all architect of victory in World War II, had been one of the most generally esteemed figures in the United States. But Marshall was associated with the Truman policy in the Far East and on June 14, 1951 McCarthy stood up in the Senate and delivered a 60,000 word speech which charged that Marshall was part of “a conspiracy so immense, an infamy so black, as to dwarf any in the history of man… [a conspiracy directed] to the end that we shall be contained, frustrated and finally fall victim to Soviet intrigue from within and Russian military might from without.” The more reckless McCarthy became, the more his influence mounted. Fewer and fewer Senators rose to gainsay him. Pollsters found that steadily increasing percentages of Americans were ready to answer yes to questions like, Do you in general approve of Senator McCarthy’s activities?Outside of politics, the flood of McCarthyism mounted- the people who were chasing alleged Communists, the men and the institutions who were abetting McCarthyism by acquiescing in its attitudes. Some of the furor was simply ridiculous. Monogram Pictures canceled a movie about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Hiawatha, the studio explained, had tried to stop wars between the Indian tribes and people might construe the picture as propaganda for the Communist “peace offensive.” Wheeling, West Virginia, staged the kind of comic-opera terror that was going on in scores of cities. In Wheeling the hubbub began when a policeman announced his discovery that penny-candy machines were selling children’s bonbons with little geography lessons attached to the candies. The very tininess of the messages, half the size of a postage stamp, was suspicious; most rousing of all was the revelation that some of the geography lessons bore the hammer-and-sickle Soviet flag and the message: “USSR- population 211,000,000. Capital- Moscow. Largest country in the world.” City Manager Robert L. Plummer thundered: “This is a terrible thing to expose our children to.” Stern measures were taken to protect the candy-store set from the knowledge that the Soviet Union existed and that it was the biggest country in the world. Much of the furor, far from being ridiculous, was sinister. The United States Government was tainting the names of innocent men and costing itself the services of invaluable specialists. Senator McCarthy decided that Philip Jessup, a distinguished professor of international law at Columbia and a skilled diplomat, was a man with “an unusual affinity for Communist causes”; supinely a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee turned down Jessup’s nomination as a delegate to the UN General Assembly. Trying to fight off McCarthyism, the Truman Administration adopted loyalty procedures that were increasingly dubious. In or out of government, utterly innocent people were losing their jobs. Irene Wicker, the “Singing Lady” of television, who was soon to have an audience with the Pope and be given a special blessing for her work with children, found her TV contract canceled. The McCarthy-type magazine Counterattack, which was connected with the pressure to dismiss her, made everything clear. The Daily Worker had listed Miss Wicker as a sponsor of a Red councilman candidate in New York and “the Daily Worker is very accurate; they never make a mistake.” Everywhere in the United States, the fury against Communism was taking on- even more than it had before the Korean War- elements of a vendetta against the Half-Century of Revolution in domestic affairs, against all departures from tradition in foreign policy, against the new, the adventurous, the question in any field. Self-confident Yale University felt it necessary to appoint a committee of distinguished alumni to protect itself against a recent undergraduate, William F. Buckley, who talked, in the same burst of indignation at the Yale faculty, about the menace of Communist and the threat of “atheists” and of men who criticized “limited government” or economic “self-reliance.” For most of 1951 the bestseller lists of the country included Washington Confidential by two newspapermen, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer. The book was a jumble of breathless revelations about “Communism” in Washington, quotations like the one from an unnamed African American dope peddler who told an unnamed federal agent, “You can’t arrest me. I am a friend of Mrs. Roosevelt,” and such observations as “Where you find an intellectual in the District you will probably find a Red.” In a number of cities, educators reported, anything “controversial” was being stripped from the schools- and more than a few times the “controversial” writing turned out to be factual information about UNESCO or New Deal legislation. A battle over a textbook in Council Bluffs, Iowa, produced the kind of statement that was commonplace. Ex-Congressman Charles Swanson opened the meeting with a roaring denunciation of “all these books… They should be thrown on a bonfire- or sent to Russia. Why according to this book, Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were outstanding Presidents- what about William Howard Taft?”In Washington, William Howard Taft’s son Robert was in a new phase of his career. “The sad, worse period,” his sympathetic biographer, William S. White, has called it. Certainly Senator Robert Taft was moving closer to McCarthyism. Even before the Korean War, in March 1950, several responsible reporters asserted that Taft had remarked: “McCarthy should keep talking and if one case doesn’t work out he should proceed with another.” The Senator protested that this quotation misrepresented him but there can be no question about the meaning of statements he made after the Korean intervention. Taft complained that Truman had the bad habit to “assume the innocence of all the persons mentioned in the State Department.” He also declared: “Whether Senator McCarthy has legal evidence, whether he has overstated or understated his case, is of lesser importance. The question is whether the Communist influence in the State Department still exists. “This sort of thing,” William White could only sadly comment, “was not the Taft one had known.”In domestic affairs the Senator’s attacks became sharper and edged closer to the arguments that Fair Dealism was a conspiracy of socialists. In foreign affairs, all the matters that were “open to question” in Taft’s speech at the time the United States entered the Korean War were now settled and settled against the Administration. The American intervention was “an unnecessary war,” an “utterly useless war,” a war “begun by President Truman without the slightest authority from Congress or the people.” And in explaining the international policy of the Administration the Senator was more and more using phrases that suggested a plot on the part of- to use a 1951 statement of Taft- “men who did not and do not turn their backs on the Alger Hisses.”If the Senator was going far, a large part of the GOP was moving in the same direction. In part this trend represented out-and-out McCarthyism. More of it came from the feeling- to use the phrase current then- that “I don’t like some of McCarthy’s methods but his goal is good.” To the largest extent the development resulted from a fundamental disquietude with foreign and domestic affairs that showed itself in a violent anti-Trumanism, particularly on the issue of Far Eastern policy… General Republicans, Taftite Republicans, McCarthyite Republicans, McCarthyite Democrats, and millions of Americans who fitted none these categories- in late 1951 and 1952 much of the nation was restlessly, irritably seeking to break through the sense of frustration. People flailed Harry Truman as a caged animal as its bars. The President’s Gallup rating sank to a minuscule 26% and the personal attacks were so extreme the pro-Truman New York Post found itself pleading: “After all, the President of the United States is a member of the human race.” Men and women were looking for some bright shining light, some road without endless roadblocks… [For a majority of Americans that “bright shining light” was Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who won the presidency in 1952 and assumed office in 1953. But the fears of Communist subversion remained, and even Eisenhower had to worry about Joe McCarthy]. On Capitol Hill Senator Joseph McCarthy was asked his judgment of the new Administration and he smiled loftily. The Administration’s record on anti-Communism, he said, was “fair.” Circumstances were hardly such as to curb the arrogance of Joseph McCarthy. The Republican capture of the Senate in 1952 had made him for the first time the chairman of his own committee- the powerful Committee on Government Operations- and he also headed its formidable subcommittee, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. With a handful of exceptions the whole Senate treated him with respect or at least with care. He seemed to have proved what a politician respects most- an awesome ability to affect votes. He himself had been reelected in 1952 by a majority of more than 140,000. No less than eight of the men in the Senate- six who had been elected in 1952- were thought to owe their seats largely to his campaigning. Around the country his name had an increasing potency. A belligerent if small pro-McCarthy faction was making itself heard even among the group which had shown the most solid bloc resistance to him, the intellectuals of the United States.Probably most of all, the man in the White House had a conception of his role which very specifically ruled out openly battling McCarthy. Eisenhower not only wanted to respect the Constitutional division between the Executive and Legislative divisions. He was keenly aware that he was the head of a divided party and anxious to unite it along the lines of his own thinking. Whatever the President’s own tendencies toward the right, his views were quite different from those of the right-wingers, who for the most part were bitter anti-New Dealers, all out-isolationists with respect to Europe, all-out interventionists with respect to Asia, and enthusiast for the kind of anti-Communism represented by McCarthy. These men followed the President reluctantly when they followed him at all and Eisenhower wanted to do nothing to increase the friction. It was the President’s “passion,” his aid C.D. Jackson remarked, “not to offend anyone in Congress” and this attitude soon permeated most of his subordinates.Month after month McCarthy went to further extremes and month after month the Administration sidestepped, looked the other way, or actually followed his bidding. At the beginning of the Administration McCarthy declared that he believed there were still Communists in the States Department and that [Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles could go a long way toward rooting them out by naming a good security officer. The Secretary named a good security officer- Scott McLeod, widely assumed to be a McCarthy disciple. [In] March 1953 the Senator announced that he had negotiated with Greek ship-owners to stop trading at Soviet and satellite ports. Director of Mutual Security Harold Stassen angrily pointed out that this was a flagrant Senatorial interference with functions of the Executive Branch and that by negotiating with a small group “you are in effect undermining and are harmful to our objective” of stopping the general trade with the Communists. Immediately a mollifying statement came from Frank Nash, Assistant Secretary of Defense for international affairs; and Secretary of State Dulles and McCarthy got together for a congenial lunch. At his press conference, the President did the final smoothing over by suggesting that both McCarthy and Stassen had gone a bit far. The Senator had probably made a “mistake” and the Director of Mutual Security probably meant “infringement” rather than “undermining.”All the while McCarthy was stepping up his campaign against the State Department’s overseas information program. The country began to hear about the two 27-year-olds, Roy Cohn, the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, and G. David Schine, an unpaid Subcommittee consultant. They left on an 18 day whirl through Western Europe to ferret out “subversion” in the overseas program. 17 hours in Bonn, 20 hours in Berlin, 10 hours in Frankfurt- these and a sprinkling of other stops and McCarthy was proclaiming “appalling infiltration.” The State Department reacted dutifully. It asked for resignations- including those of men like Theodore Kaghan who had probably dabbled with radicalism in the late 1930s and who now was known through central Europe as one of the most effective organizers of anti-Communist propaganda (When the Subcommittee made its charges Leopold Figl, the ultra-conservative former Chancellor of Austria, wrote Kaghan: “What goes on? After all, April Fool’s Day has long passed by…). The State Department also issued a new directive banning from American information activities all “books, music, paintings, and the like… of any Communists, fellow travelers, et cetera” and ordering that “librarians should at once remove all books or other material by Communists, fellow travelers, etc., from their shelves and withdraw any that may be in circulation.”Many librarians, taking no change on having a work by an “et cetera” on their shelves, removed the books of authors like Bert Andrews, chief of the Washington bureau of the Republican New York Herald Tribune; Walter White, head of the anti-Communist National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Richard Lauterbach, former European correspondent of Time; Clarence Steit, chief figure in the strongly democratic movement for a federal union of the North Atlantic democracies; and Foster Rhea Dulles, a decidedly anti-Communist professor at Ohio State and cousin of the Secretary of State. Some librarians stored the books they removed; others burned them…McCarthy rampaged on. With the opening of 1954 he and his staff concentrated increasingly on the Department of the Army and a number of top Army officials tried hard to work with them. In January the Senator began to hammer on the case of Major Irving Peress, a New York dental officer. Peress had been permitted to receive his regularly due promotion after granted an honorable discharge after he had refused to sign an Army loyalty certificate and after he had refused, on the grounds of possible self-incrimination, to answer a number of questions at a Subcommittee hearing. In a letter to McCarthy, Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens acknowledged that the Peress case had been mishandled and stated that if he found the promotion had been anything but routine he would discipline the officers involved. He also ordered that in the future Reserve officers who refused to sign a loyalty certificate were to be given an other than honorable discharge.Unappeased, the Senator summoned Peress and a group of Army officials, including Brigadier General Ralph Zwicker, to a Subcommittee hearing. At one point, when the hearing was in executive session, McCarthy demanded that Zwicker answer questions concerning the processing of the Peress case and Zwicker replied that such information was inviolate under a Presidential order. The Senator was furious. According to Zwicker, McCarthy shouted at the General: “You are a disgrace to your uniform. You’re shielding Communist conspirators. You are going to be put on public display next Tuesday. You’re not fit to be an officer. You’re ignorant.”Zwicker was a highly esteemed officer who was obviously simply following orders. The Army seethed with resentment. Secretary Stevens heatedly accused McCarthy of humiliating Zwicker and of undermining Army morale, and ordered two officers not to appear before the Senate’s Subcommittee. McCarthy promptly replied that Stevens was an “awful dupe” and summonsed the Secretary himself to testify. Stevens decided to go and prepared a strong statement which he intended to read at the hearing. But the statement was never read. Instead Stevens met with McCarthy and other members of the Subcommittee and accepted a “Memorandum of Agreement.” When the memorandum was released few commentators, pro or anti-McCarthy, interpreted it as anything but complete and abject surrender on the part of the Secretary of the Army.That afternoon the White House was filled with glum discussions of ways to do something about the Stevens debacle. In the Capitol a reporter passed by the hearings room of the Subcommittee, notices the door open, and looked in. He saw McCarthy and Roy Cohn sitting at the end of the table and “laughing so hard,” the newsman remembered, “that the room seemed to shake”…From the day of the Memorandum of Agreement the Administration moved against McCarthy, sometimes indirectly but steadily. Secretary Stevens countered the Memorandum with a strong statement and the President made plain that he backed his Secretary “100%.” On March 11, 1954, the Army attacked with the charge that Senator McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Francis Carr, the Subcommittee staff director, had sought, separately and collectively, by improper means, to obtain preferential treatment in the Army for G. David Schine, the Subcommittee consultant who was now a private in the Army. McCarthy and “associates” promptly replied with 46 charges against the Army, of which the key one was that Secretary Stevens and John Adams, the department counselor, had tried to stop the Subcommittee’s expose of alleged Communists at Fort Monmouth and that they used Private Schine as a “hostage” to this end. Four more days and the Subcommittee voted to investigate the Army-McCarthy clash, with TV cameras in the room and with McCarthy temporarily replaced by the next ranking Republican, Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota. Once again a TV spectacle would transfix the country and once again television would have a major part in shaping opinion on a critical national issue.Shortly after 10 AM on April 22, 1954, the red lights in the cameras went on amid the florid Corinthian columns and the brocaded curtains of the large Senate Caucus Room. Senator Mundt tapped his big pipe, leaned forward, and delivered a little speech about how everything was going to be done with “dignity, fairness, and thoroughness.” The ranking Democrat, John McClellan, said a few words to the same effect.“Thank you very much, Senator McClellan,” Chairman Mundt declared. “Our counsel, Mr. Jenkins, will now call the first witness.” Ray Jenkins opened his mouth but the words came from down along the table. “A point of order, Mr. Chairman,” McCarthy was saying. “May I raise a point of order?”For 36 days and more than 2,000,000 words of testimony the hearings went on. A thousand impressions were driven into the public mind- Senator Mundt, roly-poly and pliable and so torn between his McCarthyite sympathies and the fact that he was supposed to be an impartial chairman that someone thought to call him the “tormented mushroom”; the Subcommittee’s special counsel, Ray Jenkins, the homicide lawyer from Tellico Plains, Tennessee, chin stick forward, intoning away with his questions; Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, the real terror of the Subcommittee, cadaverous and saturnine and pursuing everyone with a rasping logic; Robert Stevens, earnest and decent but having to pour out his, the Secretary of War’s, pathetic attempts to mollify the friends of buck private G. David Schine; Roy Cohn, leaning over to make a point to McCarthy with a mouth that seemed perpetually pouting, obviously tremendously attacked to Schine, obviously tremendously attacked to Roy Cohn; Cohn and Schine, endlessly Cohn and Schine. But with each passing day one impression was having an increasingly potent effect on the millions at their TV sets. It was Joseph McCarthy, full-life, acting precisely like Joseph McCarthy.“Point of order, point of order, Mr. Chairman,” the Senator would interrupt in his scowling, sneering way until the children of the United States were imitating him on the streets. He repaid loyalty, like that of bumbling Senator Howard Dworshak of Idaho, by riding contemptuously over what the supporter was trying to say. He seized the floor from opponents by physical force, repeating in his strong, sing-song voice until the opponent wearily gave way. McCarthy flung smears and constantly accused others of smearing; his aides tried to use a cropped photograph and he cried deceit at the Army; he sidetracked, blatantly sidetracked, and demanded the end of “diversionary tactics.” Day after day he was still Joe McCarthy of the boyhood fights, ceaselessly, recklessly swinging for the knockout.The more reckless McCarthy became, the more strongly the Administration opposed him. In mid-May the President threw the Constitution of the United States at him. McCarthy became involved in demands that were flagrant violations of the rights of the Executive and from the White House came a blunt statement of those rights, which “cannot be usurped by any individual who may seek to set himself above the laws of our land.” No one, not even the President of the United States, not even a President of his own party, was immune to the Senator’s standard weapon, the charge of softness on Communism. McCarthy’s answer to Eisenhower was to talk once again of “the evidence of treason that has been growing over the past 20-“ Then he paused and added darkly: “21 years.” The hearings ground on. The changing national mood, the Presidential opposition, and the appearance McCarthy was making on TV were costing the Senator heavily in public support. But he was still not a ruined man. The evidence was certainly not giving either side a clear-cut victory in the issues immediately at stake. Had the McCarthy group sought preferential treatment for Schine? Clearly they had. Had the Army tried to stop McCarthy’s investigation at Fort Monmouth? Equally clearly it had- though it was emphasizing that it was anxious to get “that type” of hearing ended because it demoralized the Army. Other charges and countercharges were tangled in a maze of conflicting testimony. Throughout the country a good many pro-McCarthy or anti-anit-McCarthy people were wavering but they were only wavering. The Senator could have emerged from the hearing partially intact if he had now made some moves to present himself as a reasonable, responsible person. But Joseph McCarthy was not interested in being partially intact. He went on looking for the haymaker and the right man was present to see to it that when the Senator swung his wildest, he swung himself flat on his face. The chief Army counsel, Joseph Welch, was a senior partner of the eminent Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr and he had a well-deserved reputation as an infinitely shrew trial lawyer. But friends emphasized more Welch’s innate sense of human decency and his gift of ironic laughter. They associated him with his spacious colonial home in Walpole, where he puttered around studying his thermometers (there were 12 in the house), spending a day fishing or an evening in a game of carom or cribbage, delighting more than anything else in kindly, bantering talk about the cosmos. Mrs. Welch had a favorite story about the whimsicality of the man. She liked to tell how she had urged him to take up gardening, which he loathed, and he countered that he would garden if she would drink beer, which she detested. So on weekends the two would alternately garden in the broiling sun and stop for a beer in the shade, both grinning through their periods of suffering.At the hearings Welch sat questioning away, his long, drooping face quizzical, his questions softly spoken and deftly insidious, dropping a damaging little jest and looking utterly surprised when people laughed. The sessions were only 8 days old when the Army counsel drew blood. Welch was driving hard at a photograph which the McCarthy forces had produced, cropped to show only Stevens and Schine together although the original photograph contained two other men. The Army counsel brought out that the original had hung on Schine’s wall and he questioned James Juliana, a Subcommittee employee who had arranged the cropping, as to why he had not brought the whole picture.JULIANA: “I wasn’t asked for it…”WELCH: “… You were asked for something different from the thing that hung on Schine’s wall?”JULIANA: “I never knew what hung on Schine’s wall…”WELCH: “Did you think this came from a pixie? Where did you think this picture that I hold in my hand came from?”JULIANA: “I had no idea.”There was a stir of voices and McCarthy interrupted. “Will counsel for my benefit define- I think he might be an expert on that- what a pixie is?” Welch’s face was beatific. “Yes, I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy. Shall I proceed, sir? Have I enlightened you?” The spectators roared. Roy Cohn’s pouting lips hardened into angry lines. The Senator glowered. In the world of Joseph McCarthy nothing was more alien than the deft, and the Senator’s feeling about Welch steadily mounted. He denied the Army counsel, or was wary of giving him, what he considered the ordinary camaraderie. McCarthy would walk up to friends and opponents alike, hand extended and the other hand grasping an arm, but he moved a wide circle around Joseph Welch. He first-named almost everybody- Secretary Stevens was “Bob” and the obviously hostile Senator Stuart Symington was “Stu.” Welch was “Mr. Welch” or “the counsel.” Eight days before the hearings ended, on June 9, the Army counsel led Roy Cohn through a mocking, destructive cross-examination and McCarthy sat fuming. Now Welch was pressing Cohn as to why, if subversion was so serious at Fort Monmouth, he had not come crying alarm to Secretary Stevens. When Welch went ahead along this line, McCarthy began to grin broadly. The Army counsel got in another dig at Cohn: “May I add my small voice, sir, and say whenever you know about a subversive or a Communist or a spy, please hurry. Will you remember these words?” McCarthy broke in, bashed his way to attention. “In view of Mr. Welch’s request that the information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, incidentally, to do work on this committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh, years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party…”The Senator was grinning ever more broadly, a pausing now and then to lick his lips and savor his words. Roy Cohn sat in the witness chair, his legs dangling apart, the blood drained from his face, and once his lips seemed to be forming the words, “Stop, stop.” McCarthy went on: “Knowing that, Mr. Welch, I just felt that I had a duty to respond to your urgent request… I have hesitated bringing that up, but I have been rather bored with your phony requests to Mr. Cohn here that he personally get every Communist out of government before sundown…”“I am not asking you at this time to explain why you tried to foist him on this committee. Whether you knew he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don’t know. I assume you did not Mr. Welch, because I get the impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh, I don’t think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist Party. I don’t think you yourself would every knowingly aid the Communist cause. I think you are unknowingly aiding it when you try to burlesque this hearing in which we are trying to bring out the facts, however.” Welch was staring at McCarthy with the look of a man who was watching the unbelievable. The puck was gone; his face was white with anger. “Senator McCarthy,” Welch began, “I did not know-“. McCarthy turned away contemptuously and talked to Juliana. Twice the Army counsel demanded his attention and the Senator talked to Juliana in a still louder voice, telling him to get a newspaper clipping about Fisher so that it could be put in the record. Welch plunged ahead. “You won’t need anything in the record when I have finished telling you this. Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us.”“When I decided to work for this committee I asked Jim St. Clair… to be my first assistant. I said to Jim, ‘Pick somebody in the firm who works under you that you would like.’ He chose Fred Fisher and they came down on an afternoon plane. That night, when we had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about, Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, ‘Boys, I don’t know anything about you except that I have always like you, but if there is anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case you speak up quick.’”“Fred Fisher said, ‘Mr. Welch, when I was in law school and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers Guild’… I said, ‘Fred, I just don’t think I am going to ask you to work on this case. If I do, one of these days that will come out and go over national television and it will just hurt like the dickens.’ So Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston.”“Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.” The Senate Caucus Room was hushed. McCarthy fumbled with some papers, began saying that Welch had no right to speak of cruelty because he had “been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours.” Welch cut off McCarthy. “Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild, and Mr. Cohn nods his head at me.” Cohn was plainly nodding. WELCH: “I did not, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn.”COHN: “No, sir.”WELCH: “I meant to do you no personal injury, and if I did, I beg your pardon.” Cohn nodded again. The Army counsel turned back to McCarthy and his emotion was so great that on the TV screens his eyes seemed to be filling with tears. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy tried to ask the Army counsel a question about Fisher. Welch cut him off again. He had recovered his composure now and his voice was cold with scorn. “Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this with you further. You have sat within 6 feet of me, and could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have brought it out. If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness.” For a long few seconds the hush in the room continued. One of the few rules Chairman Mundt had tried hard to enforce was the once against demonstrations and 6 policemen were present to assist him. But suddenly the room shook with applause. For the first time in the memory of Washington observers, press photographers laid aside their cameras to join in the ovation for Welch. Chairman Mundt made no effort to interfere and instead soon called for a five-minute recess. Joseph McCarthy sat slouched in his chair, breathing heavily. Spectators and reporters avoided him. Finally he found someone to talk to. He spread out his hands in a gesture of puzzlement and asked: “What did I do wrong?” Joseph McCarthy would never know. And that June day, 1954, millions at their TV sets learned once and for all that Joseph McCarthy would never know.Joseph McCarthy vs. The US Army: Charge and CounterchargeFrom US Senate, Report of the Special Subcommission on Investigations on Charges and Countercharges Involving: Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens… and Senator Joe McCarthy, 1954… On the 13th of April, the Army submitted its formal charges or bill of particulars which had been requested by the subcommittee. They speak for themselves and for the purpose of making a complete record are set out in full herein. April 13, 1954The Department of the Army alleges that Senator Joseph R. McCarthy as Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (hereinafter called the “Subcommittee”), United States Senate, and its Chief Counsel Roy M. Cohn, as well as other members of its staff, sought by improper means to obtain preferential treatment for one Private G. David Schine, US Army, formerly Chief Consulate of this Subcommittee, in that:One. On or about July 8, 1953, Senator McCarthy sought to obtain a direct commission in the US Army for Mr. Schine and informed Major General Miles Reber, Chief of Army Legislative Liaison (OCLL) of his intrest in obtaining such a commission as speedily as possible. Mr. Cohn, at the same time, in the presence of Mr. McCarthy emphasized the necessity for rapid action in obtaining the said commission…Six. During the period from on or about October 18, 1953, to on or about November 3, 1953, Mr. Cohn, by telephone conservations and otherwise, sought to persuade or induce John G. Adams, Counselor of the Department of the Army, to procure an assignment for Mr. Schine in the New York City area upon his induction into the Army. Mr. Cohn coupled these requests with threats that if they were not granted he would cause the Army to be exposed in its worst light and demonstrate to the country how shabbily it was being run. These requests and threats are believed to have been made with the knowledge and consent of Senator McCarthy…Eight. On or about November 6, 1953, Senator McCarthy, Mr. Cohn, and Mr. Carr sought to induce and persuade Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams to arrange for the assignment of Private Schine to New York City to study and report evidence, if any, of procommunist leanings in West Point textbooks. Mr. Cohn in the presence of and with the consent of Senator McCarthy and Mr. Carr sought to induce and persuade Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams to arrange to make Private Schine available for Subcommittee work while he was undergoing basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. These requests were coupled with promises reasonably to limit or to terminate Subcommittee hearings on Fort Monmouth.Nine. On or about November 14, 1953, Mr. Cohn threatened to continue the Subcommittee investigations on the Army installation at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, which had theretofore resulted in exaggerated headlines damaging to the morale of the personnel at Fort Monmouth…Thirteen. On or about November 17, 1953, Senator McCarthy, Mr. Cohn and Mr. Carr made known to Secretary Stevens the importance attached by them to Private Schine’s military assignment and there by innuendo and inference indicated that their plans for continuing further investigation of the military instillation at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, were related to the importance attached by them to Private Schine’s military assignment…Twenty-four. On or about January 13, 1954, Mr. Cohn, upon learning that Private Schine might be assigned to overseas duty, threatened to cause the discharge of Secretary Stevens, and that he would cuased the Subcommittee to “wreck the Army”… Twenty-nine. On or about February 15, 1954, and on several other occasions, Mr. Carr and a person purporting to act as a representative of Senator McCarthy indicated that the investigations of the Army then contemplated by this Subcommittee would either be terminated or be conducted along reasonable lines if the Army would accede to Senator McCarthy’s and Mr. Cohn’s request for a special assignment for Private Schine.Sgd. Joseph N. WelchSpecial CounselOn the 20th of April, Senator McCarthy on behalf of himself, Messrs. Cohn and Carr, filed a denial and countercharges against Secretary Stevens, Mr. Adams, and Mr. H. Struve Hensel, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Defense, as follows…Dear Senator Mundt:This statement is being submitted on behalf of Frank Carr, Executive Director of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; Roy Cohn, the Chief Counsel; and of myself, as Chairman of the Subcommittee. It is being submitted in accordance with the request of your temporary subcommittee. We are submitting herewith what we consider to be pertinent data concerning the attempt by two Army civilians, Mr. Robert T. Stevens and Mr. John G. Adams, to discredit the Investigations of the Subcommittee, and to force a discontinuance of our hearings exposing Communist infiltration in their department.One. The most recent document furnished by Mr. Stevens and Mr. Adams contains 29 allegations against the Subcommittee and against me. Insofar as these allegations suggest the use of “improper means” they are without basis in fact. The statements, “innuendoes,” and “implications,” contained therein are wholly unfounded insofar as they allege “improper means.” It is noted that before we had any opportunity to submit an answer to these allegations, they were released publicly, in violation of the unanimous agreement arrived at previously. Two. It is further noted that these allegations are not signed by either Secretary Stevens or by Mr. Adams, but by a Mr. Joseph N. Welch, who is described as “Special Counsel” for the Department of the Army, and who came into the situation long after all of the alleged incidents were supposed to have taken place and who could, therefore, have had no personal knowledge of the matter. It should be noted also that a law partner of Mr. Welch has, in recent years, belonged to an organization found by the House Un-American Activities Committee to be the “legal bulwark” of the Communist Party, and referred to by the Attorney General of the United States as the “legal mouthpiece” of the Communists. This same law partner was selected by Mr. Welch to act as his aide in this matter, and was discharged only when his Communist-front connection became publicly known. Three. The report of the Pentagon officials now purports to be “allegations of the Department of the Army.” So broad a description is inaccurate and presumptuous. In their attempt to stop our exposure of the mishandling of Communist infiltration in the Army, Mr. Stevens and Mr. Adams have no right to represent that they speak for the entire Department of the Army, or persons connected with it, any more than we could claim the right to speak for the United States Senate. It is therefore suggested that Mr. Stevens and Mr. Adams be instructed to file their charges henceforth in their own names, and to assume responsibility for their own acts, rather than to hide behind the cloak of the entire Department of the Army and the millions of loyal Americans who have been, and are now, connected with it and who are not in any way involved in the present maneuvers of these Pentagon civilians. They should further be instructed to tell the Subcommittee once and for all who is pulling the strings to protect those in turn have protected Fifth Amendment Communists. Four. The so-called original report is not made in the course of any official function, nor in the regular course of Pentagon procedure, nor is it even signed. The “report” has had the planned effect of derailing the inquiry into security matters pertaining to Communist infiltration in the Army and to Secretary Stevens’ administration thereof. At the threshold, the core of the matter stands in bold relief: there are, and were, Communists and other security risks in the Army, which needed and received- until stopped- public exposure. The present tactic by Pentagon politicians cannot obscure that underlying fact. The gross mishandling of the Communist infiltration in the Army- exposed by the Subcommittee- has been acknowledged by the Defense Department, which has now adopted a wholly new step of corrective regulations as a result of the Subcommittee’s investigation…Six. We must look then for the motive and reasons behind this self-serving “report” which was first leaked, next privately disseminated, and finally published. When placed in proper perspective, it will be found to have given greater aid and comfort to Communists and security risks than any single other obstacle ever designed…Fourteen. The recently contrived attempt to direct fire at the Chairman and to accuse him of attempting to secure special treatment for Private Schine is branded as false by reference to the written record and to the prior Stevens-Adams report itself. At an early date the Chairman, in the presence of Mr. Cohn and Mr. Schine, suggested to Secretary Stevens that he lean over backward to avoid giving anything which might be even remotely construed as special consideration of Schine. The fact that no special consideration of any kind for Schine was desired was made clear, the reason given being that anything which could be twisted and distorted by the left-wing press as special consideration for Schine would be bad for both the Committee and the Army…Sixteen. On or about September 7, 1953, and directly following the first executive session of Subcommittee hearings on instances of Communist infiltration in the Army, after the exposure of a Fifth Amendment Communist employed as an Army civilian, Chairman McCarthy publicly announced his determination to pursue these investigations to the point of calling those connected with the personnel and loyalty procedures of the Army responsible for the clearing of Communists. Secretary Robert T. Stevens then communicated with the Chairman and commenced a series of efforts to interfere with the investigation, to stop hearings, and to prevent various of his appointees from being called by the subcommittee…Nineteen. After mid-September, when the Chairman directed open hearings on Communist infiltration in the Army, Mr. Stevens named John G. Adams to the post of Army counselor, for the principal purpose of “handling the committee” and persuading it to cease its investigation of Communist infiltration in the Army…Twenty-one. From that time henceforth, and in repeated instances both personally and telephonically, Mr. Adams attempted to interfere with the investigation of Communist infiltration in the Army. Mr. Adams’ early attempts to end the hearings were carried out by his using every effort to ingratiate himself personally with Subcommittee personnel, and then appealing to them as a personal favor to half hearings so that he would be secure in his new post.Twenty-two. Failing in his tactic of having the investigation halted to help him personally, Mr. Adams next attempted to cause the Chairman and personnel of the Subcommittee to end it on the ground that it was becoming personally embarrassing to Mr. Stevens, who was a “very nice man who shouldn’t be hurt.” Mr. Adams’ attempt on this basis was supported by Mr. Stevens on November 6, 1953, when at a luncheon in his office, called at his request, he stated that if the facts he knew were fully developed he would have to resign as Secretary of the Army. He made an appeal for the end of hearings on the ground of his personal friendship with the Chairman. Mr. Stevens was assured that there would be no effort to embarrass him personally, but that there could be no whitewash and that the investigation and hearings would continue.Twenty-three. As a part of the attempt to half the Subcommittee’s investigation of Communist infiltration in the Army, Mr. Adams frequently, and Mr. Stevens on two occasions, offered up the Navy, the Air Force, and the Defense Establishment proper, as substitute “targets”…Thirty-four. From the inception of the investigation, the Chairman declared his intention of examining Army personnel responsible for the clearing, retention, and favorable treatment of Communists in the Army. He specifically stated that among those called would be members of the so-called Screening Board in the Secretary’s Office, also known as the Loyalty-Security Board… Mr. Adams violently objected to any examination of the clearing of security risks. He was told that in view of information which both he and the Subcommittee had that numerous persons with Communists records had been cleared by this Board, a whitewash of them was impossible. At various times in December and January he told Mr. Cohn and Mr. Carr that he “would stop at nothing” to prevent the Subcommittee from going into this…Forty-two. Mr. Adams continued his entreaties that the investigation be terminated, and when he was refused, he and other Pentagon officials planned the issuance of the report as he had threatened to do…Forty-six. The pattern followed by Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams is clear. As long as only individual Commiunists were the object of the Subcommittee’s investigation, they made continuing offers of cooperation with the investigation. But as soon as the probe turned to the infinetly more important question of who was responsinble for protecting Communist infiltration, and protecting Communists who had infiltrated, every conceivable obstacle was placed in the path of the Subcommittee’s search for the truth…Sincerely yours, Joe McCarthy, ChairmanJoseph McCarthy vs. The US Senate: The JudgmentFrom: US Senate, Report of the Select Committee Pursuant to the Order on Senate Resolution 301, “A Resolution to Censure the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy,” 1954Recommendations of Select Committee:For the reasons and on the facts found in this report, the select committee recommends:One. That on the charges in the category of “Incidents of Contempt of the Senate or a Senatorial Committee,” the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, should be censured.Two. That the charges in the category of “Incidents of Encouragement of United State Employees to Violate the Law and Their Oaths of Office or Executive Orders,” do not, under all the evidence, justify a resolution of censure.Three. That the charges in the category of “incidents Involving Receipt or Use of Confidential of Classified or Other Confidential Information From Executive Files,” do not, under all the evidence, justify a resolution of censure.Four. That the charges in the category of “Incidents Involving Abuse of Colleagues in the Senate,” except as to those dealt with in the first category, do not, under all the evidence, justify a resolution of censure.Five. That on the charges in the category of “Incident Relating to Ralph W. Zwicker, a general officer of the Army of the United States,” the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, should be censured…Incidents of Contempt of the Senate or a Senatorial Committee:The evidence on the question whether Senator McCarthy was guilty of contempt of the Senate or a senatorial committee involves his conduct with relation to the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. An analysis of the three amendments referring to this general matter… reveals these specific charges: That Senator McCarthy refused repeated invitations to testify before the subcommittee.That he declined to comply with a request by letter dated November 21, 1952, from the chairman of the subcommittee to appear to supply information concerning certain specific matters involving his activities as a Member of the Senate.That he denounced the subcommittee and contemptuously refused to comply with its request.That he has continued to show his contempt for the Senate by failing to explain in any manner the six charges contained in the Hennings-Hayden-Hendrickson report, which was filed in January 1953. We have decided to consider and discuss in our report under this category the incident with reference to Senator Hendrickson, since the conduct complained of is related directly to the fact that Senator Hendrickson was a member of the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. This incident is referred to in the amendment proposed by Senator Flanders (30), the specific charge being:That he ridiculed and defamed Senator Hendrickson in vulgar and base language, calling him: “A living miracle without brains or guts”…We feel that the fact that Senator McCarthy denounced the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections is established by reference to a few of the letters in the exchange of correspondence. In his letter of December 6, 1951… to Chairman Gillette, Senator McCarthy states that when the subcommittee, without Senate authorization, is “spending tens of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars for the sole purpose of digging up campaign material against McCarthy, then the committee is guilty of stealing just as clearly as though the members engaged in picking the pockets of the taxpayers and turning the loot over to the Democrat National Committee.” Such language directed by a Senator toward a committee of the Senate pursuing its authorized functions is clearly intemperate, in bad taste, and unworthy of a Member of this body.These accusations by Senator McCarthy are continued and repeated in his letter to Chairman Gillette dated December 19, 1951… Under date of March 21, 1952… Senator McCarthy wrote to Senator Hayden, chairman of the parent Committee on Rules and Administration that: “As you know, I wrote Senator Gillette, chairman of the subcommittee, that I consider this a completely dishonest handling of taxpayers’ money.” Similar language is used in Senator McCarthy’s letters down to the last dated December 1, 1952… If Senator McCarthy had any justification for such denunciation of the subcommittee, he should have presented it at these hearings. His failure to do so leaves his denunciation of officers of the Senate without any foundation in this record. The members of the subcommittee were Senators representing the people of sovereign States. They were performing official duties of the Senate. Every Senator is understandably jealous of his honor and integrity, but this does not bar inquiry into his conduct, since the Constitution expressly makes the Senate the guardian of its own honor. It is the opinion of the select committee that these charges of political waste and dishonesty for improver motives were denunciatory and unjustified. In this connection, attention is directed to the charges referred to this committee relating to words uttered by the junior Senator from Wisconsin about individual Senators. It has been established, without denial and in fact with confirmation and reiteration, that Senator McCarthy, in reference to the official actions of the junior Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Hendrickson, as a member of the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections, questioned both his moral courage and his mental ability. His public statement with reference to Senator Hendrickson was vulgar and insulting. Any Senator has the right to question, criticize, differ from, or condemn an official action of the body of which he is a Member, or of the constituent committees which are working arms of the Senate in proper language. But he has no right to impugn the motives of individual Senators responsible for official action, nor to reflect upon their personal character for what official action they took. If the rules and procedures were otherwise, no Senator could have freedom of action to perform his assigned committee duties. If a Senator must first give consideration to whether an official action can be wantonly impugned by a colleague, as having been motivated by a lack of the very qualities and capacities every Senator is presumed to have, the processes of the Senate will be destroyed… The report of the subcommittee [on privileges and elections] was filed on January 2, 1953. Since that time Senator McCarthy has given to the Senate, on the Senate floor, an explanation of the Lustron matter only. Of the other 5 matters, mentioned in the November 21, 1952 letter by Chairman Hennings, 3 are of a serious nature, reflecting upon Senator McCarthy’s character and integrity and have not been answered either before the Senate or before any of its committees.It is our opinion that the failure of Senator McCarthy to explain to the Senate these matters: (1) Whether funds collected to fight communism were diverted to other purposes inuring to his personal advantage; (2) whether certain of his official activities were motivated by self-interest; and (3) whether certain of his activities in senatorial campaigns involved violations of the law; was conduct contumacious toward the Senate and injurious to its effectiveness, dignity, responsibilities, processes, and prestige…Conclusions:It is therefore, the conclusion of the select committee that the conduct of the junior Senator from Wisconsin toward the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections, toward its members, including the statement concerning Senator Hendrickson acting as a member of the subcommittee, and toward the Senate, was contemptuous, contumacious, and denunciatory, without reason or justification, and was obstructive to legislative processes. For this conduct, it is our recommendation that he be censured by the Senate…Charges Not Included in the Public Hearings:Senate Resolution 301 provides that the committee “shall be authorized to hold hearings, to sit and act at such times and places during the sessions, recesses, and adjourned periods of the Senate, to require by subpoena or otherwise the attendance of such witnesses and the production of such correspondence, books, papers, and documents, and to take such testimony as it deems available, and that the committee be instructed to act and make a report***”At the outset of our deliberations, the committee decided, preliminarily, that it was advisable to proceed with hearings upon 13 of the charges in the 5 major categories outlined in the notice of the hearing. The other charges, however, remained pending before the committee and its staff. We have studied them in the light of the law and testimony developed in the hearings and have also investigated the evidence suggested in the charges. The committee thereafter confirmed its tentative decision not to conduct hearings on these other items. The committee believes it desirable under the resolution from which its powers and duties stem, to express its reasons for determining that formal hearings need not be conducted on these remaining charges.The committee eliminated some of the charges for reasons of legal insufficiency, having concluded that the particular conduct charged was not in it judgment a proper basis for Senate censure. The determination of what constituted “legal insufficiency” in the context of a charge intended to support a proposed motion to censure a Member of the United States Senate was the most difficult task imposed upon this committee. No precedents found by the committee were particularly helpful in connection with this task. The path is narrow and the guideposts few. Only three Senators have previously been censured by the Senate. Two, Senators McLaurin and Tillman, in 1902, for abusive and provocative language and engaging in a physical altercation on the floor of the Senate. The third, Senator Hiram Bingham, was censured in 1929 for having brought into an executive session of the Finance Committee’s meeting on the tariff bill, as his aid, the assistant to the president of the Connecticut Manufacturing Association. The Senate found this action by Senator Bingham, “while not the result of corrupt motives” to be “contrary to good morals and senatorial ethics*** (tending)*** to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute***. The very paucity of precedents tends to establish the importance placed by the Senate on its machinery of censure.Obviously, with such limited precedents, the task of this committee in undertaking to determine what is and what is not censurable conduct by a United States Senator was indeed formidable. Individuals differ in their view and sensitivities respecting the propriety or impropriety of many types of conduct. Especially is this true when the conduct and its background present so many complexities and shadings of interpretations. Moreover, it is fairly obvious that conduct may be distasteful and less than proper, and yet not constitute censurable behavior.We begin with the premise that the Senate of the United States is a responsible political body, important in the maintenance of our free institutions. Its Members are expected to conduct themselves with a proper respect for the principles of ethics and morality, for senatorial customs based on tradition, and with due regard for the importance of maintaining the good reputation of the Senate as the highest legislative body in the Nation, sharing constitutional responsibilities with the President in the appointment of officials and judges through advice and confirmation and participating in the conduct of foreign affairs through the ratification of treaties. At the same time we are cognizant that the Senate as a political body imposes a multitude of responsibilities and duties on its Members which create great strains and stresses. We are further aware that individual Senators may, within the bounds o political propriety, adopt different methods of discharging their responsibilities to the people.We did not, and clearly could not, undertake here to establish any fixed, comprehensive code of noncensurable conduct for Members of the United States Senate. We did apply our collective judgment to the specific conduct charged, and in some instances to the way a charge was made and the nature of the evidence preferred in support of it. And on that basis of the precedents and our understanding of what might be deemed censurable conduct in these circumstances, we determined whether, if a particular charge was established, we would consider it conduct warranting the censure of the Senate.In concluding that certain of the charges dropped were legally insufficient for Senate censure, we do not want to be understood as saying that the committee approves of the conduct alleged. Yet disapproval of conduct does not necessarily call for official Senate censure. [Among the charges made by several Senators and eliminated by the committee, for lack of evidence, relevance, or other reasons, are:]… Amendments proposed by the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Flanders:… Two. He has permitted his staff to conduct itself in a presumptuous manner. His counsel and his consultant (Messrs. Cohn and Schine) have been insolent to other Senators, discourteous to the public, and discredible to the Senate. His counsel and consultant traveled abroad making a spectacle of themselves and brought discredit upon the Senate of the United States, whose employees they were.Three. He has conducted his committee in such a slovenly and unprofessional way that cases of mistaken identities have resulted in grievous hardship or have made his committee, and thereby the Senate, appear ridiculous (Annie Lee Moss, Lawrence W. Parrish, subpoenaed and brought to Washington instead of Lawrence T. Parish).Four. He has proclaimed publicly his intention to subpoena citizens of good reputation, and then never called them (Gen. Telford Taylor, William P. Bundy, former President Truman, reporters Marder, Joseph Alsop, Friendly, Bigrant, Phillip Potter)…Six. He has attempted to intimidate the press and single out individual journalists who have been critical of him or whose reports he has regarded with disfavor, and either threatened them with subpoena or forced them to testify in such a manner as to raise the possibility of a breach of the first amendment of the Constitution (Murray Marder of Washington Post, the Alsops, James Wechsler).Seven. He has attempted “economic coercion” against the press and radio, particularly the case of Time magazine, the Milwaukee Journal, and the Madison Capital Times (On June 16, 1952, McCarthy sent letters to advertisers in Time Magazine, urging them to withdraw their advertisements)… Nine. He has posed as savior of his country from communism, yet the Department of Justice reported that McCarthy never turned over for prosecution a single case against any of his alleged “Communists” (The Justice Department report of December 18, 1951). Since that date not a single person has been tried for Communist activities as a result of information supplied by McCarthy.Eleven. He has used distortion and innuendo to attack the reputations of the following citizens: Former President Truman, General George Marshall, Attorney General Brownell, John J. McCloy, Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen, Senator Raymond Baldwin, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna Rosenberg, Philip Jessup, Marquis Childs, Richard L. Strout of the Christian Science Monitor, Gen. Telford Taylor, and the three national press associations… Fifteen. He has used his official position to fix the Communist label upon all individuals and newspapers as might legitimately disagree with him or refuse to acknowledge him as the unique leader in the fight against subversion (deliberate slips such as calling Adlai Stevenson “Alger”; saying that the American Civil Liberties Union had been “listed” as doing the work of the Communist Party; calling the Milwaukee Journal and Washington Post local “editions of the Daily Worker”). Sixteen. He has attempted to usurp the functions of the executive department by having his staff negotiate agreements with a group of ship owners in London; and has infringed upon functions of the State Department, claiming that he was acting in the “national interest”…Nineteen. His rude and ruthless disregard of the rights of other Senators has gone to the point where the entire minority membership of the Permanent Investigating Subcommittee resigned from the committee in protest against his highhandedness (July 10, 1953).Twenty. He has intruded upon the prerogative of the executive branch, violating the constitutional principles of separation of powers (within a single week, February 14-20, 1953) McCarthy’s activities against the Voice of America forced the State Department three times to reverse administrative decisions on matters normally considered internal operating procedures…Twenty-three. He has held executive sessions in an apparent attempt to prevent the press from getting an accurate account of the testimony of wtineeses, and then released his own versions of that testimony, often at variance with the subsequently revealed transcripts, and under circumstances in which the witness had little opportunity to correct or object to his version.Twenty-four. He has questioned adverse witnesses in public session in such a manner as to defame loyal and valuable public servants, whose own testimony he failed to get beforehand, and whom he never provided a comparable opportunity for answering the charges…Twenty-seven. He has publicly threatened publications with withdrawal of their second-class mailing privilege because he disagreed with their editorial policy (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time magazine). Letter To Postmaster General Summerfield made public August 22, 1953. See Washington Post, August 23, 1953.Twenty-eight. He has exploited his committee chairmanship to disseminate fantastic and unverified claims for the obvious purpose of publicity (McCarthy's hint that he was in secret communication with Lavrenti P. Beria and would produce him as a witness when Beria was on the verge of execution in Moscow). Washington News, September 21, 1953 (announcement of plan to subpoena Beria). Twenty-nine. He has denied Members of Congress access to the files of the committee, to which every Member of Congress is entitled to under the Reorganization Act (title II, sec. 202, par. D). Thirty-one. He has announced investigations prematurely, subsequently dropping these investigations so that the question whether there was every any serious intent to pursue them may be justifiably raised, along with the inevitable conclusion that publicity was the only purpose (Central Intelligence Agency, Beria, and so forth).Thirty-two. Checking through hearings, one will note that favorable material submitted by witnesses will usually have the notation “May be found in the files of the subcommittee,” whereas unfavorable materials is printed in the record.Thirty-three. He has permitted changing of committee reports and records in such a way as to substantially change or delete vital meanings (Senator Margaret Chase Smith felt compelled to object to the filing of his 1953 subcommittee reports without their first being sent through the full committee)… McCarthy died in 1957 and with him died the worst flames of the communist scare that had produced him. Still, McCarthyism retained a powerful hold on thousands of Americans, who regarded the late senator as “the finest American who ever lived.” Nor did the country at large reject him as rapidly as many historians have contended. In fact, as Robert Griffith observes in The Politics of Fear (1970), 36% of the American people still approved of McCarthy after the Army-McCarthy hearings. And in the 1950s, a national television network that reran the hearings received countless letters to know where McCarthy was now that American needed him. The Korean War: Calculated Risk: Police Action in KoreaFrom Dean Acheson, Statement Before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Armed Services, June 1, 1951The policy of “containment” faced its most critical test when, on June 24, 1950, the Republic of Korea was invaded by North Korean Communist forces. On June 26, President Truman ordered United States sea and air forces to aid the South Koreans: on June 27, the United Nations Security Council (in the absence of the Soviet Union) called on all members to aid in resisting North Korean aggression; and on June 30, American ground forces were ordered into the conflict. At first, the American public was almost unanimous in its support of the war and the principle of resisting aggression, but events began to take strange turns for a nation accustomed to the idea of complete and unqualified victory at arms. After an almost disastrous start, American troops rapidly moved up the Korean peninsula; past the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea and almost to the Yalu River on the Manchurian border. Then, in November of 1950, as General MacArthur issued his orders for the final offensive of the war, two hundred thousand Chinese “volunteers” were loosed upon the forces of the United Nations, who fell back down the peninsula to the 38th parallel in bitter and costly retreat. At this point the Korean conflict entered a new phase, and the United States was confronted with a critical decision. Should it limit the action in Korea, running the risk of a long, futile, and costly stalemate but probably preventing WWIII and Russian intervention, or should it accept a general war, bomb the mainland bases of the Chinese armies, and perhaps even invade China, thereby risking Russian intervention and international holocaust. Many Americans agreed with General MacArthur, hero of WWII and United Nations commander in Korea, that it was folly to conduct a war without attacks on enemy bases in Manchuria and mainland China and that the risk of Russian intervention was outweighed by this necessity. This was not the view of the Truman administration and its military council, however. In a highly controversial move, President Truman, rebuking General MacArthur for open opposition to the official concept of a limited war, exercised his own authority as Commander in Chief to remove the General from his Korean command. The Truman administration’s defense of its policies was presented by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in testimony from which the following selection is taken.The attack on Korea was a… challenge to the whole system of collective security, not only in the Far East, but everywhere in the world. It was a threat to all nations newly arrived at independence. This dagger thrust pinned a warning notice to the wall which said: “Give up or be conquered.” This was a test which would decide whether our collective security system would survive or would crumble. It would determine whether other nations would be intimidated by this show of force. The decision to meet force with force in Korea was essential. It was the unanimous view of the political and military advisers of the President that this was the right thing to do. This decision had the full support of the American people because it accorded with the principles by which Americans live. As a people we condemn aggression of any kind. We reject appeasement of any kind. If we stood with our arms folded while Korea was swallowed up, it would have meant abandoning our principles, and it would have meant the defeat of the collective security system on which our own safety ultimately depends.What I want to stress here is that it was not only a crucial decision whether or not to meet this aggression; it was no less important how this aggression was to be dealt with. In the first place, the attack on Korea has been met by collective action. The United States brought the aggression in Korea before the United Nations, not only because the Charter requires it, but also because the authority and even the survival of that organization was directly involved. The response of some members of the United Nations, in terms of their capacities and their other security responsibilities, has been generous and wholehearted. The total action is admittedly an imperfect one, as might be expected of beginning steps in a collective security system. But the development of this system requires us to take into consideration the dangers and interests of those associated with us, just as we want them to take into consideration our dangers and interests.In the second place, our response to the aggression against Korea required a careful estimate of the risks involved in the light of the total world situation. There was the risk that the conflict might spread into a general war in Asia, a risk that the Chinese Communists might intervene, a risk that the Soviet Union might declare itself in. We take it for granted that risk of some sort is implicit in any positive policy, and that there is also a risk in doing nothing. The elements of rick and the means of reducing that risk to us and to the rest of the free world quite properly influenced our policy in Korea.It has been our purpose to turn back this Communist thrust, and to do it in such a way as to prevent a third World War if we can. This is in accord with one of the most fundamental tenets of our policy- to prevent, in so far as we can do so, another world war. It is against this basic principle that the operation in Korea, and the plans for carrying it to a conclusion, need to be considered. The operation in Korea has been a success. Both the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists declared it to be their purpose to drive the United Nations forces out of Korea and impose Communist rule throughout the entire peninsula. They have been prevented from accomplishing their objective. It has been charged that the American and allied forces fighting in Korea are engaged in a pointless and inconclusive struggle. Nothing could be farther from the fact. They have been magnificent. Their gallant, determined and successful fight has checked the Communist advance and turned it into a retreat. They have administered terrible defeats to the Communist forces. In so doing, they have scored a powerful victory. Their victory has dealt Communist imperialist aims in Asia a severe setback. The alluring prospect for the Communist conspiracy in June 1950- the prospect of a quick and easy success which would not only win Korea for the Kremlin but shake the free nations of Asia and paralyze the defense of Europe- all this has evaporated. Instead of weakening the rest of the world, they have solidified it. They have given a powerful impetus to the military preparations of this country and its associates in and out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We have doubled the number of our men under arms, and the production of material has been boosted to a point where it can begin to have a profound effect on the maintenance of the peace. The idea of collective security has been put to the test, and has been sustained. The nations who believe in collective security have shown that they can stick together and fight together. New urgency has been given to the negotiation of a peace treaty with Japan, and of initial security arrangements to build strength in the Pacific area. These are some of the results on Korea, unexpected by- and I am sure most unwelcome to- the Kremlin. I should like briefly to address myself to the alternative course which was placed before this Committee. This course would seek to bring the conflict in Korea to an end by enlarging the sphere of hostilities. I will not try to review the military considerations involved in this proposed course, since these have been thoroughly discussed by the previous witnesses before you Committees. It is enough to say that it is the judgment of the President’s military advisers that the proposed enlargement of our military action would not exercise a prompt and decisive effect in bringing the hostilities to an end. To this judgment there must be added a recognition of the grave risks and other disadvantages of this alternative course. Against the dubious advantages of spreading the war in an initially limited manner to the mainland of China, there must be measured the risk of a general war with China, the risk of Soviet intervention, and of World War III, as well as the probable effects upon the solidarity of the free world coalition. The advocates of this program make two assumptions which require careful examination. They assume that the Soviet Union will not necessarily respond to any action on our part. They also assume that in the build-up of strength relative to the Soviet Union and the Communist sphere, time is not necessarily on our side. As to Soviet reactions, no one can be sure he is forecasting accurately what they would be, but there are certain facts at hand that bear on this question. We know of Soviet influence in North Korea, of Soviet assistance to the North Koreans and to Communist China, and we know that understandings must have accompanied this assistance. We also know that there is a treaty between the Soviets and the Chinese Communists. But, even if the treaty did not exist, China is the Soviet Union’s largest and most important satellite. Russian self-interest in the Far East and the necessity of maintaining prestige in the Communist sphere make it difficult to see how the Soviet Union could ignore a direct attack upon the Chinese mainland. I cannot accept the assumption that the Soviet Union will go its way regardless of what we do. I do not think that Russian policy is formed that way anymore than our own policy is formed that way. This view is certainly not well enough grounded to justify a gamble with the essential security of our nation… We should also analyze the effect on our allies of our taking steps to initiate the spread of war beyond Korea. It would severely weaken their ties with us and in some instances it might sever them. They are understandably reluctant to be drawn into a general war in the Far East- one which holds the possibilities of becoming a world war- particularly if it developed out of an American impatience with the progress of the effort to repel aggression, an effort which in their belief offers an honorable and far less catastrophic solution. If we followed the course proposed, we would be increasing our risks and commitments at the same time that we diminished our strength by reducing the strength and determination of our coalition. We cannot expect that our collective security system will long survive if we take steps which unnecessarily and dangerously expose the people who are in the system with us. They would understandably hesitate to be tied to a partner who leads them to a highly dangerous short cut across a difficult crevasse. In relation to the total world threat, our safety requires that we strengthen, not weaken, the bonds of our collective security system. The power of our coalition to deter an attack depends in part upon the will and the mutual confidence of our partners. If we, by the measures proposed, were to weaken that effect, particularly in the North Atlantic area, we would be jeopardizing the security of an area which is vital to our own national security. What this adds up to, it seems to me, is that we are being asked to undertake a large risk of general war with China, risk of war with the Soviet Union, and a demonstrable weakening of our collective security system- all this in return for what? In return for measures whose effectiveness in bringing the conflict to an early conclusion are judged doubtful by our responsible military authorities.Before concluding, I should like to deal briefly with the related proposition that we may need to take extreme risks now because time may not be on our side. I believe this is wrong. The basic premise of our foreign policy is that time is on our side if we make good use of it. This does not necessarily mean that time must bring us to a point where we can match the Soviet Union man-for-man and tank-for-tank. What it does mean is that we need to use the time we have to build an effective deterrent force. This requires us to create sufficient force-in-being, both in the United States and among our allies, to shield our great potential against the possibility of a quick and easy onslaught, and to ensure that our allies will not suffer occupation and destruction. And back of this shield we need to have the potential that would enable us to win a war. This is the measure of the force we need; as we approach it, we approach our objective of preventing war. Can we do this? I believe we can. We and our allies have the capacity to out-produce the Soviet bloc by a staggering margin. There is no doubt about that. Our capacity to produce has been set in motion and is rapidly getting to the point where its output will be vast and ifs effect significant. There is also the critical factor of our will. The future belongs to freedom if free men have the will to make time work on their side. I believe the American people and their allies do have the will, the will to work together when their freedom is threatened. This is the ultimate source of our faith and our confidence. A free society can call upon profound resources among its people in behalf of a righteous cause. CONTROVERSY OVER THE KOREAN WAR Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson Defend American Involvement in KoreaOn June 25, 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the Republic of (South) Korea. President Syngman Rhee of the Republic of Korea appealed to the US and the UN to help against the aggressors. Within two days both had pledged their support. In the following excerpts, President Truman, in a policy statement to the press on June 27, and Secretary of State Acheson, in a speech in Washington DC on June 29, explains the reason for American involvement in Korea. PRESIDENT TRUMAN:In Korea, the Government forces, which were armed to prevent border raids and to preserve internal security, were attacked by invading forces from North Korea. The Security Council of the United Nations called upon the invading troops to cease hostilities and to withdraw to the 38th parallel. This they have not done, but on the contrary have pressed the attack. The Security Council called upon all members of the United Nations to render every assistance to the United Nations in the execution of this resolution. In these circumstances I have ordered United States air and sea forces to give the Korean Government troops cover and support. The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war. It has defied the orders of the Security Council of the United Nations issued to preserve international peace and security. In these circumstances, the occupation of Formosa by Communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area. Accordingly, I have ordered the 7th Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa. As a corollary of this action, I am calling upon the Chinese Government on Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland. The 7th Fleet will see that this is done. The determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.I have also directed that US Forces in the Philippines be strengthened and that military assistance to the Philippine Government be accelerated. I have similarly directed acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina and the dispatch of a military mission to provide close working relations with those forces. I know that all members of the United Nations will consider carefully the consequences of this latest aggression in Korea in defiance of the Charter of the United Nations. A return to the rule of force in international affairs would have far-reaching effects. The US will continue to uphold the rule of law. I have instructed Ambassador Austin, as the representative of the United States to the Security Council, to report these steps to the Council.SECRETARY OF STATE ACHESON:… On Saturday afternoon [June 24]- it was just before daybreak of Sunday morning in Korea- without warning and without provocation, Communist forces of the north launched a coordinated full-scale assault on the Republic of Korea. After heavy artillery fire, Communist infantry began crossing the 38th parallel at three points, while amphibious forces were landing at several points on the east coast, some 20 miles to the south…Ambassador Muccio’s cable reached the State Department code room at 9:26 Saturday night, having crossed an inquiry the Department had sent to him a few minutes before, based on the first flash of action. Within a matter of minutes, the message was decoded and the Department was alerted for action. By 10:30 pm, our Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, Dean Rusk, and the Secretary of the Army, Frank Face, were conferring at the Department. By 11:00, Secretary Pace had alerted the Department of Defense, a full operating staff was on duty at our Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs, and h had discussed the situation by phone with the President. Action developed along two fronts in the State Department during the night.One group of Department officers worked through the night preparing for a meeting of the Security Council which we had immediately requested. The United Nations had established the Republic of Korea and had, since early 1948, maintained a Commission in Korea. We, therefore, felt a primary responsibility to bring this matter to the immediate attention of the United Nations. By Sunday afternoon [June 25]. Within 20 hours of the time of the first official word of this invasion was received here, the Security Council had taken its first action. Representatives of 10 member nations of the Security Council had been assembled from their Sunday places of rest- the 11th was the representative of the Soviet Union, who stayed away. After hearing the report of the United Nations Commission concerning the unprovoked act of aggression, the Security Council passed a resolution which called for an immediate end to the fighting and for the assistance of all members in restoring the peace. All actions taken by the United States to restore the peace in Korea have been under the aegis of the United Nations… The President flew to Washington. By the time he had arrived, at 7:20 Sunday evening, completed staff work and recommendations had been prepared and were laid before him… During Sunday night and early Monday morning, actions flowing from the conference with the President were set in motion. General MacArthur was authorized to respond at once to urgent appeals from the Government of Korea for additional supplies of ammunition and in a matter of hours was flying into Korea loaded transport planes with fighter protection to assure their safe arrival. At about the same time, the 7th Fleet with all men aboard was steaming north out of Subic Bay, to be on hand in case of need… From the size and speed of the Communist attack, it was evident that it was a premeditated action; that it had been carefully plotted for many weeks before. The initial thrust, supported by planes and tanks, had clearly caught the Korean Government troops by surprise. Although the defending forces rallied and launched several small counteractions, it did not appear that they were in a position to bar the tank-and-plane-supported Communist thrust down the corridor to the capital city.By Monday night, in the light of this situation, recommendations were prepared by the President’s civil and military advisers on the course of action to be taken. In preparing these recommendations, it was clear to all concerned that this act of aggression had brought in issue the authority and, indeed, the continued existence of the United Nations and the security of the nations of the free world, including the United States and its forces in the Pacific. These recommendations were prepared with the sober realization of the issues involved and with the full agreement of all the President’s advisers. As in many other situations which have arisen in the years in which I have served as Under-Secretary and Secretary, the President was faced with difficult decisions which had to be made quickly. And as in the previous cases, the President assumed the responsibility, made the decisions, and has given leadership and direction to the entire action of the Government of the United States. Consultations with Congressional leaders on Tuesday morning demonstrated a complete unity in understanding the problem and the course of action which needed to be taken. At Tuesday noon [June 27], the President announced the actions which this Government would take to support the United Nations and uphold a rule of law in the Pacific area.In the interval between the meetings of the Security Council on Sunday and again on Tuesday, the United Nations Commission on Korea had confirmed the fact that the Communist authorities in North Korea had ignored the cease-fire order and defied the authority of the United Nations. Therefore, the Security Council recommended at its meeting Tuesday night that member nations give aid to the Republic of Korea and help to restore peace and security to the area. Yesterday- 4 days after the fighting began- the fall of Seoul was confirmed, but American air and sea support for Korean Government troops was beginning to make itself felt, and peace-loving nations the world over were able to hope that this act of brutal, unprovoked, and naked aggression would not be allowed to succeed. In conclusion, the action of the United States Government in Korea is taken in support of the authority of the United Nations. It is taken to restore peace and security to the Pacific area. Robert A. Taft Questions American Involvement in KoreaAt the beginning of the Korean War, there was relatively little opposition to American involvement in it. On June 28, 1950, however, the day after President Truman had issues his policy statement in defense of American involvement, Republican Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio spoke in Congress. In his speech, excerpted below, Taft stated his support of the president’s policy but questioned the method by which the US had entered the war.… Korea itself is not vitally important to the United States. It is hard to defend. We have another instance of Communism picking out a soft spot where the Communists feel that they can make a substantial advance and can obtain a moral victory without risking war. Farm the past philosophy and declarations of our leaders, it was not unreasonable for the North Koreans to suppose that they could get away with it and that we would do nothing about it.The President’s statement of policy [on June 27] represents a complete change in the programs and policies heretofore proclaimed by the administration. I have heretofore urged a much more determined attitude against communism in the Far East, and the President’s new policy moves in that direction. It seems to me that the time had to come, sooner or later, when we would give definite notice to the Communists that a move beyond a declared line would result in war. That has been the policy which we have adopted in Europe/ Whether the President has chosen the right time or the right place to declare this policy may be open to question. He has information which I do not have.It seems to me that the new policy is adopted at unfortunate time, and involves the attempt to defend Korea, which is a very difficult military operation indeed. I sincerely hope that our Armed Forces may be successful in Korea. I sincerely hope that the policy thus adopted will not lead to war with Russia… If we are going to defend Korea, it seems to me that we should have retained our Armed Forces there and should have given a year ago, the notice which the President has given today. With such a policy, there never would have been an attack by the North Koreans. In short, this entirely unfortunate crisis has been produced first, by the outrageous, aggressive attitude of Soviet Russia, and second, by the bungling and inconsistent foreign policy of the administration. I think that it is important to point out… that there has been no pretense of any bipartisan foreign policy about this action. The leaders of the Republican Party in Congress have never been consulted on the Chinese policy or Formosa or Korea or Indochina. Republican members of the Foreign Relations Committee and of the Armed Forces Committee were called to the White House at 10:30 am on June 27, and were informed with regard to the President’s statement, but, of course, they had no opportunity to change it or to consult Republican policy committees in either the House of Representatives or the Senate…Furthermore, it should be noted that there has been no pretense of consulting the Congress. No resolution has ever been introduced asking for the approval of Congress for the use of American forces in Korea… But I may say that if a joint resolution were introduced asking for approval of the use of our Armed Forces already sent to Korea and full support of them in their present venture, I would vote in favor of it. Douglas MacArthur Favors a Policy of Total War in KoreaDuring the summer of 1951, the UN forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur were pushed back by the invading North Korean army, but beginning in September 1950, he led a counter-offensive which forced the North Korean army out of South Korea and north toward the Yalta River, the boundary between N. Korea and Communist China (Manchuria). Then in November, Communist China intervened with 200,000 troops which in a few weeks forced the UN army, suffering from heavy casualties, back across the 38th parallel. At this point violent controversy arose in the US over the Korean War policy. Gen. MacArthur wanted to fight for quick victory in a total war and bomb enemy bases in Manchuria and other parts of Communist China. In April, 1951, President Truman dismissed MacArthur as the leader of the United Nations forces. In the senate hearings, excerpted below, which were held in the US over the crisis, Gen. MacArthur, questioned by various senators, defended his position. SEN. SALTONSTALL: … [O]n April 15, the Assistant Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, in a television and press broadcast, stated, in part- and this is the pertinent part of his speech, as I read it: “What we are trying to do is to maintain peace and security without a general war. We are saying to the aggressors, ‘You will not be allowed to get away with your crime. You must stop it.’ At the very same time, we are trying to prevent a general conflagration which would consume the very things we are now trying to defend.” I would appreciate it very much, with your knowledge of the Far East, if you will give me your opinion of that statement, and if that is a practical policy. GEN. MACARTHUR: That policy, as you have read it, seems to me to introduce a new concept into military operations- the concept of appeasement, the concept that when you use force, you can limit that force. The concept that I have is that when you go into war, you have exhausted all other potentialities of bringing the disagreements to an end. As I understand what you read, that we would apply to the military situation in Korea certain military appeasements- that is, that we would not use our Air Forces to their maximum extent, only to the limited area of that [part of] Korea; that we would not use our Navy, except along the border lines of Korea. To me, that would mean that you would have a continued and indefinite extension of bloodshed, which would have limitless- a limitless end. You would not have the potentialities of destroying the enemy’s military power, and bringing the conflict to a decisive close in the minimum of time, and with a minimum of loss. It seems to me the worst possible concept, militarily, that we would simply stay there, resisting aggression, so-called, although I do not know what you mean by “resisting aggression.” The very term of “resisting aggression,” it seems to me that you destroy the potentialities of the aggressor to continually hit you. If that is the concept of a continued and indefinite campaign in Korea, with no definite purpose of stopping it until the enemy gets tired or you yield to his terms, I think that introduces into the military sphere a political control such as I have never known in my life or have ever studies. SALTONSTALL: In other words, you fell that the Korean situation, having gone into an armed conflict, it should be brought to an end in the quickest possible way through a military victory.MACARTHUR: I do, Senator, exactly; and I believe if you do not do that, if you hit soft, if you practice appeasement in the use of force, you are doomed to disaster. I believe that if you continue that way, you are inviting the very thing that you desire to stop- the spread of the conflict…SEN. GREEN: What I would like to ask is a question which seems to me to go to the basis of the whole difference that has been developed. It is this: The theory that we could win a quick victory in China simply by lending logistic support to the Chinese troops now in Formosa and in bombarding the coast cities and in establishing blockage would, in the first place, would it not, indicate we would proceed alone and not with any help from the other United Nations? MACARTHUR: My hope would be of course that the United Nations would see the wisdom and utility of that course, but if they did not, I still believe that the interest of the United States being the predominant one in Korea, would require our action. GREEN: Alone? MACARTHUR: Alone, if necessary. If the other nations of the world haven’t got enough sense to see where appeasement leads after the appeasement which led to the Second World War in Europe, if they can’t see exactly the road that they are following in Asia, why then we had better protect ourselves and go it alone… I believe that the Chinese, the potential of China to wage modern war, is limited. She lacks the industrial base upon which modern war is based. She is unable herself to turn out an air force or to turn out a navy. She is unable to supply herself with some of the heavier munitions. I believe that the minute the pressure was placed upon her distributive system, the minute you stop the flow of strategic materials which has been going on so extensively since the Korean War started, that she would be unable to maintain in the field even the armies that she has now… I believe that against the modern scientific methods of the United Nations, the potential of the United Nations, of the United States, if you would have it so, is sufficient to force the Chinese to stop their aggression in Korea…GREEN: As I understand it, the pressure that could be brought in the south, you count upon to reduce the pressure in Korea to such an extent that it would be a quick victory in Korea? MACARTHUR: What I said, Senator, was that if you use the Chinese forces on Formosa for a diversionary effect, and force the enemy to operate on another front, you will unquestionably diminish the pressure upon our forces in Korea, and thereby you will save American blood and American efforts.GREEN: I understand how it might save that in Korea, but would it not increase it in China by more than what you save in Korea? If you get or you could get thereby a quick victory in Korea, it does not assure, or dies it assure, you of a quick victory in China? Have we not substituted a great problem for a lesser one? That is the thing that bothers me, and that is the reason I am asking these questions. MACARTHUR: I believe that if you will hit the Chinese and stop their potentials for war, you will bring peace not only to Korea but you will bring peace to China- that is as far as you can bring it.Omar Bradley Favors a Policy of Limited War in KoreaPresident Truman and General Omar Bradley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, preferred a stalemate on the 38th parallel to the risk of a third world war which they believed MacArthur’s policy might precipitate. Truman and Bradley favored a limited war under a policy of “resisting aggression.” In the following except from the Senate hearings in 1951, General Bradley defended the position of the Truman administration in the Korean War.The fundamental military issue that has arisen is whether to increase the risk of a global war by taking additional measures that are open to the United States and its allies. We now have a localized conflict in Korea. Some of the military measures under discussion might well place the US in the position of responsibility for broadening the war and at the same time losing most if not all of our allies. General MacArthur has stated that there are certain additional measures which can and should be taken, and that by so doing no unacceptable increased risk of global war will result. The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that these same measures do increase the risk of global war and that such a risk should not be taken unnecessarily… From a global viewpoint- and with the security of our Nation of prime importance- our military mission is to support a policy of preventing communism from gaining the manpower, the resources, the raw materials, and the industrial capacity essential to world domination… Three times in the past 5 years the Kremlin-inspired imperialism has been thwarted by direct action. In Berlin, Greece, and Korea, the free nations have opposed Communist aggression with a different type of action. But each time the power of the US has been called upon and we have become involved. Each incident has cost us money, resources, and some lives. But in each instance we have prevented the domination of one more area, and the absorption of another source of manpower, raw materials, and resources.Korea, in spite of the importance of the engagement, must be looked upon with proper perspective. It is just one engagement, just one phase of this battle that we are having with the other power central in the world which opposes us and all we stand for. For 5 years this “guerilla diplomacy” has been going on. In each of the actions in which we have participated to oppose this gangster conduct, we have risked world war III. But each time we have used methods short of total war. As costly as Berlin and Greece and Korea may be, they are less expensive than the vast destruction which would be inflicted upon all sides if a total war were to be precipitated. I am under no illusion that our present strategy of using mean short of total war to achieve our ends and oppose communism is a guarantee that a world war will not be thrust upon us. But a policy of patience and determination without provoking a world war, while we improve our military power, is one which we believe we must continue to follow… There are many critics who have become impatient with this strategy and who would like to call for a showdown. From a purely military viewpoint, this is not desirable. We are not in the best military position to seek a showdown, even if it were the Nation’s desire to forfeit the chances for peace by precipitating a total war… There are also those who deplore the present military situation in Korea and urge us to engage Red China in a larger war to solve this problem. Taking on Red China is not a decisive move, does not guarantee the end of the war in Korea, and may not bring China to her knees… I would say that from past history one would only jump from a smaller conflict to a larger deadlock at greater expense. My own feeling is to avoid such an engagement if possible because victory in Korea would not be assured and victory over Red China would be many years away. We believe that every effort should be made to settle the present conflict without extending it outside Korea. If this proves to be impossible, then other measures may have to be taken. In my consideration of this viewpoint, I am going back to the basic objective of the American people- as much peace as we can gain without appeasement. Some critics of our strategy say if we do not immediately bomb troop concentration points and airfields in Manchuria, it is “appeasement.” If we do not immediately set up a blockade of Chinese ports- which to be successful would have to include British and Russian ports in Asia- it is “appeasement.” These same critics would say that if we do not provide the logistical support and air and naval assistance to launch Chinese Nationalist troops into China it is “appeasement.” These critics ignore the vital questions: Will these actions, if taken, actually assure victory in Korea? Do these actions mean prolongation of the war by bringing Russia into the fight? Will these actions strip us of our allies in Korea and in other parts of the world? From a military viewpoint, appeasement occurs when you give up something, which is rightfully free, to an aggressor without putting up a struggle, or making him pay a price. Forsaking Korea- withdrawing from the fight unless we are forced out- would be an appeasement to aggression. Refusing to enlarge the quarrel to the point where our global capabilities are diminished, is certainly not appeasement but is a military sound course of action under the present circumstances. It is my sincere hope that these hearings will encourage us as a Nation to follow a steadfast and determined course of action in this world, which would deny any free nation to Soviet imperialism, and at the same time preserve the peace for which so many men died in World War I, World War II, and in Greece, Indochina, Malaya, and Korea. Touhill, Blanche M. "Power and Responsibility in a World of Turmoil: 1946-1960." Readings in American History. River Forest, Illinois: Laidlaw Brothers, 1970. 465-73. Print. “We Had Not Moved an Inch”- Fighting the Cold War in Korea (by James Brady)Communism spread to Asia after WWII. In 1949, communist forces won the Chinese civil war that resulted when the Japanese were expelled. Korea also was torn by war after it was divided at the 38th parallel into South Korea, backed by the United States, and North Korea, backed by the Soviet Union. In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea to reunify the country under communist rule. The United Nations voted to defend South Korea, and US forces led the unified command. When UN troops advanced into North Korea as far as the Chinese border in late 1950, Chinese forces counterattacked. Fearing war with China, President Harry Truman favored a limited war to preserve South Korea’s boundaries, rather than total victory over North Korea. By July 1951, fighting had stabilized along the 38th parallel while an armistice was being negotiated. In early 1951, Lieutenant James Brady commanded a company of Marines in the Korean cold. Here he describes Operation Clam Up, a fake withdrawal intended to lure the enemy out- with few gains. To Brady, it became a metaphor for the entire war.The operation, bizarre as it was, went smoothly. Everyone got wet and cold and our flu worsened and a mortarman sprained an ankle climbing in the dark, but we went down the hill, sat miserably in the drifting snow as the shells clattered overhead, then climbed back to the bunkers to stand watch or go to bed… The five days of Clam Up passed. Prince and I sat in our bunker without even the luxury of a firing port to give light, coughing up lampblack from the candles we had to burn to see, reading again the one book and two magazines we had between us. My throat was still bad, but I was smoking. It was something to do…Each night we went out in turn to defecate and to empty the tin cans of urine from the day. Fortunately, my bowels were tranquil and I was able to wait for the evening stroll to the ammo box. Chafee [John Chafee, later a US senator from Rhode Island] kept us informed. Apparently here and there Clam Up was actually working, with gooks [a slang derogatory term for Asians] coming out of their holes, some of them venturing surprisingly high up our forward slope, reconnoitering, and going back. It was expected they would return in greater numbers, probably by might. I’d given the North Koreans credit for more sense… On the fourth day, Operation Clam Up fetched the first gooks to Dog Company.Mack Allen’s people saw them first, six tiny figures like alpinists at the end of a Swiss telescope making their way slowly uphill through deep snow… Toward noon the six North Koreans reached the aprons of barbed wire protecting the second platoon. They deployed belly down in the snow, and one of them fired bursts of burp-gun fire at the nearest bunkers. The marines made no reply. I could hear Allen whispering over the platoon phones, “Hold your fire, hold it.” Then they cut through the first strands of wire and began to come in. Mack reported this to Chafee, finishing by asking hoarsely, “Now?” The one word came back, and I could hear Mack shout into his phone, “Hit them now! Grenades. Give them the grenades!” The crack of bursting grenades rolled up the hill to us, dulled by distance and by the bunker, but after four days of relative silence they sounded like Niagara Falls. Then a burp gun ripped through the explosions, followed by the heavier, slower firing of M-1s. It was over in maybe a half minute. “Secure, secure, secure!” shouted Mack. Then to Chafee, “They’re all dead. Skipper, two of them inside the wire, the rest hanging on it. Can we go out and bring them in?” “Negative, Allen. Let me get Battalion on the line.” There was a long pause… Then Chafee came on. “Leave them out there until dark and then bring them in. Battalion wants the bodies sent down after Clam Up is secured. They’re pretty excited. This is about the biggest bag anyone’s gotten.” They secured Clam Up the next afternoon around four. By now Mack Allen’s six gooks, neatly lined up on their backs on the reverse slope near where the gook train could pick them up, were frozen stiff. Marines drifted down to look at them. Clam Up hadn’t been much of an operation; all that …. Planning, and less than a dozen enemy killed all the way along the Division line. Three Marines were dead, shelling. Two more were killed around seven o’clock when, apparently in anger, the North Korean artillery slammed our lines… That was the kind of war it was that winter, casualties counted on your fingers, both sides halfhearted about really starting anything, the generals assigning busywork rather than doing anything that might achieve real results. To kill a lot of people you had to lose a lot of people. I supposed some… believed that’s precisely what we should have been doing that January and February. But the hills and the snow and the cold stopped them… A week later we were relieved and the regiment came down off the line… I’d not taken off my underwear in 46 days… I was not the same man who had gone up the hill January 10. No better, or any worse, just different. In a month and a half of fighting we had not moved an inch, forward or back. A few men had died on both sides… The men changed but the war did not.“No One Knew Why They Were Dying”- Questioning the Korean War’s Cost (by Corporal Martin Russ)Negotiations to end the Korean War lasted two years, while fighting continued. Finally, in July 1953 an armistice was signed that recognized the 38th parallel as the border between North and South Korea. Many Americans grew frustrated with a limited war that cost lives without a clear-cut victory. Corporal Martin Russ, a Marine, voiced that frustration in his journal. Memorial services were held yesterday at the regimental parade ground. There were thirteen companies of Marines present. A four-mile walk. General Ballard made a speech- a typical droning, platitudinous, meaningless speech. I doubt that anyone listened. A chaplain and a rabbi spoke. Isolated phrases that I remember: “in glory… that they will not have died in vain… not forgotten,” etc. None of those men died gloriously. Only the ones that died while saving the lives of others did not die in vain. The most disturbing thing of all is that not one of them knew why they were dying. I still have a book called The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton. I have underlined a sentence or two. “Why is the death of an ordinary man a wretched, chilling thing, which we turn from, while the death of a hero, always tragic, warms us with the sense of quickened life?” I don’t know, Miss Hamilton. You tell me. You’re the one who felt that sense of quickened life. I never felt it. The roll of the dead was read off. Many, many names, some familiar. Edward Guyol. John Riley. Willy Mayfield. Waldron, Carlough. All ordinary men, no heroes. POPULAR CULTURE IN THE FIFTIESAmong white suburbanites, the 1950s were marked by conformity to social norms. Consensus about political issues and conformity in social behavior were safe harbors for Americans troubled by the foreign ideology of communism. At the same time, they were the hallmarks of a consumer-driven mass economy.Consumer Culture and Conformity:Television, advertising, and the middle-class move to the suburbs contributed mightily to the growing homogeneity of American culture. TELEVISION- Little more than a curiosity in the late 1940s, television suddenly became a center of family life in millions of American homes. By 1961, there were 55 million TV sets, about one for every 3.3 Americans. Television programming in the fifties was dominated by three national networks, which presented viewers with a bland menu of situation comedies, westerns, quiz shows, and professional sports. Such critics as FCC chairman Newton Minnow called television a “vast wasteland” and worried about the impact on children of a steady does of five or more hours of daily viewing. Yet the culture portrayed on television- especially for third and fourth generations of white ethnic Americans- provided a common content for the common language.ADVERTISING- In all the media (TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines), aggressive advertising by name brands also promoted common material wants, and the introduction of suburban shopping centers and the plastic credit card in the 1950s provided a quick means of satisfying them. The phenomenal proliferation of McDonald’s yellow arches on the roadside was one measure of how successful were the new marketing techniques and standardized products as the nation turned from “mom and pop” stores to franchise operations. PAPERBACKS AND RECORDS- Despite TV, Americans read more than ever. Paperback books, an innovation in the 1950s, were selling almost a million copies a day by 1960. Popular music was revolutionized by the mass marketing of inexpensive long-playing (LP) record albums and stacks of 45 rpm records. Teenagers fell in love with rock and roll music, a blend of African American rhythm and blues with white country music, popularized by the gyrating Elvis Presley. CORPORATE AMERICA- In the business world, conglomerates with diversified holdings began to dominate such industries as food processing, hotels, transportation, insurance, and banking. For the first time in history, more American workers held white-collar jobs than blue-collar jobs. Many hoped to work for one of Fortune magazine’s top 500 companies. Belong to such organizations came at the expense of one’s individuality, learning to conform to the corporate team, and for male managers, dressing in a dark suit, white dress shirt, and conservative tie. The social scientist William Whyte documented this loss of individuality in his book The Organization Man (1956). Big unions became more powerful after the merger of AFL and CIO in 1955. They also became more conservative, as blue-collar workers began to enjoy middle-class incomes. For most Americans, conformity was a small price to pay for the new affluences of a home in the suburbs, a new automobile every two or three years, good schools for the children, and maybe a vacation at the recently opened Disneyland (1955). RELIGION- Organized religions expanded dramatically after WWII with the building of thousands of new churches and synagogues. Will Herberg’s book Catholic, Protestant, Jew (1955) commented on the new religious tolerance of the times and the lack of interest in doctrine, as religious membership became a source of both individual identity and socialization. Women’s Roles: The baby boom and running a home in the suburbs made homemaking a full-time job for millions of women. In the postwar era, the traditional view of a women’s role as caring for home and children was reaffirmed in the mass media and in the best-selling self-help book, Baby and Child Care (1946) by Dr. Benjamin Spock. At the same time, evidence of dissatisfaction was growing, especially among well-educated women of the middle class. More married women, especially as they reached middle age, entered the workforce. Yet male employers in the 1950s saw female workers primarily as wives and mothers, and women’s lower wages reflected this attitude.Social Critics:Not everybody approved of the social trends of the 1950s. In The Lonely Crowd (1958), Harvard sociologist David Riesman criticized the replacement of “inner-directed” individuals in society with “other-directed” conformists. In The Affluent Society (1958), the economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about the failure of wealthy Americans to address the need for increased social spending for the common good (his ideas were to influence the JFK/Johnson administrations). The sociologist C. Wright Mills portrayed dehumanizing corporate worlds in White Collar (1951) and threats to freedom in The Power Elite (1956). NOVELS- Some of the most popular novelists of the 50s wrote about the individual’s struggle against conformity. JD Salinger provided a classic commentary on “phoniness” as viewed by a troubled teenager in The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Joseph Heller satirized the stupidity of the military and war in Catch-22 (1961).“BEATNIKS”- A group of rebellious writers and intellectuals made up the so-called Beat generation of the 1950s. Led by Jack Kerouac (On the Road 1957), and poet Allen Ginsberg (“Howl” 1956), they advocated spontaneity, use of drugs, and rebellion against societal standards. The Beatniks of the 50s would become models for the youth rebellion of the 60s. UNIT 9Name: ______________________________________________________________________ Date: _____________________QUESTIONS- Cold War and the 1950s ReadingsWhich of the following was NOT a major issue between the Soviet Union and the US in the postwar years 1945-1950?Establishment of Communist governments in Eastern Europec. Access to BerlinOccupation zones in Japand. Marshall Plan aid“In these circumstances, it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient, but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics, with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures or outward ‘toughness.’” This statement is taken from:President Roosevelt’s speech at the Yalta Conferencec. George Kennan’s article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”George Marshall’s introduction to his Marshall Pland. Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speechThe primary purpose of the Marshall Plan was to:End the rift between the USA and the USSRc. Set up a military alliance of anti-communist nationsAid the economic recovery of war-devastated Europed. Hinder the economic recovery of Soviet-controlled nationsSet up a military alliance of anti-communist nationsHinder the economic recovery of nations under Soviet controlWhich of the following BEST describes Truman’s foreign policy from 1945 to 1952?Reluctance to involve the US in foreign conflicts c. Aggressive use of US troops in Europe and AsiaWillingness to negotiate difference with the Soviet Uniond. Commitment to contain Communist challengesWhich US action is NOT correctly paired with an event in international politics?Airlift-Soviet Blockade of Berlinc. Truman Doctrine- Civil War in GreeceTroops sent to Korea-Churchill’s Iron Curtain speechd. Development of hydrogen bomb- A Bomb tested in USSRWhich of the following contributed the LEAST to the growth of the Red Scare in the 1950s?Loss of atomic bomb secrets to the Sovietsc. Alger Hiss caseArmy-McCarthy hearingsd. Fall of China to the communists President Truman’s domestic policies included support for all of the following EXCEPT:A full-employment billc. Desegregating the armed forcesIncrease in the minimum waged. The Taft-Hartley Act Desegregating the armed forcesThe Taft-Hartley ActA principal reason for the defeat of most Fair Deal programs was:Opposition by Republicans in Congressc. Truman’s lack of experience in domestic policyOutbreak of the Second Red Scared. Dewey’s speeches in the election of 1948Which of the following was NOT an issue during the Korean War?Whether to expand the war by attacking Chinac. Whether Congress should have declared warWhether North Korea had committed aggressiond. The removal of General Douglas MacArthurPresident Eisenhower’s “modern Republicanism” can BEST be described as:A return to the economic policies of Coolidge and HooverA general acceptance of the New Deal programs and a balanced budgetOpposition to all liberal causes, including civil rightsAn effort to shift taxes from the wealthy to lower income AmericansJohn Foster Dulles’ “new look” to US foreign policy included all of the following EXCEPT:Taking Communist nations to the brink of war to force them to back downThreatening massive retaliation with nuclear weapons to prevent Soviet aggressionRecognizing the Communist government of ChinaSupporting the liberation of “captive” nationsUS intervention in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 are examples of:The use of covert actions by the CIAc. Using troops to stop the proliferation of nuclear weaponsThe application of the Eisenhower Doctrined. The policy of brinkmanship Which of the following represented a major crisis during Eisenhower’s presidency?Cuban missile crisisc. British, French, and Israeli invasion of EgyptInvasion of South Koread. Blockade of Berlin “We declare that however acute the ideological differences between the two systems- the socialist and the capitalist- we must solve questions in dispute among states not by war, but by peaceful negotiation.” This statement by Nikita Khrushchev in 1957 expressed the idea of:Massive retaliationc. The inevitability of the triumph of communism De-Stalinizationd. Peaceful coexistence During the 1950s, all of the following contributed to a more homogeneous culture EXCEPT:The soil-bank programc. Spread of franchise operationsTelevision programmingd. Growth of the suburbs The US during the Eisenhower years was characterized by:Decreased spending for defensec. Increased middle-class affluenceBreakup of conglomeratesd. Radical protests on college campusesAll of the following represent a criticism of the society and conformity of the 1950s EXCEPT:David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowdc. John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent SocietyWilliam Whyte’s The Organization Mand. David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest “The Cold War hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union was inevitable.” Assess the validity of this statement.Was the containment policy realistic or unrealistic? Why or why not? Support your answers with specific references from the readings. “The 1950s were an era of conformity and complacency.” Give reasons for either agreeing or disagreeing with this statement. ................
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