Question 8.

Describe and analyze the political rise and fall of McCarthyism in the United States.

  • Cold war and fear of communists following WWII
  • In May, 1938, Democratic congressman from Texas, Martin Dies started the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) (It started as the Dies committee in 1938 & became known as the HUAC in 1946; it was co-chaired by Samuel Dickstein who was named in the Venona project as a Soviet agent)
  • HUAC investigated communists, nazis, the KKK, and other groups seen as subversive
  • Loyalist review board established
  • Federal employees required to take loyalty oaths, swearing that they were not communists
  • HUAC investigations into Hollywood resulting in the Hollywood Blacklist of those in the film industry with communist sympathies
  • Wide publicity when spies were found in important positions
  • Whitaker Chambers, admitting that he was also formerly a spy, accused Alger Hiss, an official in the State Department of being a spy (he was with Roosevelt at Yalta)
  • Alger Hiss sued Whitaker Chambers for libel after Chambers made the claim on the radio
  • In court, Chambers produced microfilm with secret documents in Hiss' handwriting, but Hiss could not really be convicted of spying because of the statute of limitations; his first trial ended with a hung jury; the second trial ended with a conviction for perjury & a 5-year jail sentence
  • Hiss' conviction fed fears of a powerful communist underground
  • Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of treason for their espionage and executed
  • British scientist Klaus Fuchs betrayed atomic secrets to the Russians; his American counterpart Harry Gold was also convicted (1950)
  • Ultimately, nuclear secrets leaked to the Soviets had sped up their development of nuclear weapons
  • John Carter Vincent, a China specialist in the State Department, as well as others around him lost their jobs because they were blamed for losing CHina to the communists (1949)
  • Richard Nixon, famous from the Hiss trial, ran against liberal Democrat Ellen Douglas and was elected to the Senate (1950) criticizing Douglas for being soft on communism by calling her the "Pink Lady"
  • The obscure Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin jumped onto the anti-communist bandwagon in 1950
  • In a speech to the Ohio County Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy stated that America was most threatened by traitors from inside the U.S., and that the State Department was infested with communists; he claimed that he has a list of 205 people still working and shaping policy who were known to the Secretary of State to be members of hte communist party.
  • McCarthy said that he could not reveal any of the names on the list because it was classified information (this sounded very suspicious, but since then the Venona Project has proven it true)
  • Even though McCarthy could not present evidence to back up his claims, the speech still caused a sensation
  • McCarthy soon went overboard in his anti-communist vendetta, resorting to blackmail and outright lies to try to get people to admit to being communists
  • Because so many of McCarthy's accusations of individuals were wild and unfounded, he never exposed a single spy or unknown communist
  • In 1954, McCarthy turned his sights on the army, accusing Pentagon officials of trying to blackmail him and his committee.
  • In the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy came off as a jerk; he was finally asked by the Army's attorney general Joseph Welch, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
  • McCarthy's support plummeted
  • The senate censured McCarthy
  • McCarthy died in disgrace in 1957 of cirrhosis of the liver
  • The VENONA project run by US and British intelligence agencies intercepted and decrypted many Soviet communications; when the VENONA project was declassified in 1995, it provided some justification for some of McCarthy's accusations