The Cold War at Home
Section 16.4
Cold War and Culture
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Fighting in Korea
“lost” of China
“Space Race”
Threat of nuclear
weapons
• Spread of Communism
into Eastern Europe,
China, North Korea,
Cuba
• Add it all up = US vs.
Them
Another Red Scare?
• FEDERAL EMPLOYEE
LOYALTY PROGRAM (March
1947)
– Permitted the FBI (and other
agencies) to screen federal
employees for political
disloyalty
– Attorney General made lists
of “totalitarian, fascist, or
subversive organizations”
– 3,000 people fired or laid off
from the gov’t
The Smith Act
• Made it illegal to
teach the violent
overthrow of the US
gov’t
–11 found guilty in
NY and imprisoned
–Crippled the
Communist Party
House Un-American Activities
Commission (HUAC) - 1938
• Created in WWII to
find Nazis, re-tasked to
find communists in the
Red Scare
• Investigated gov’t,
military, unions,
schools, media, science
The Hollywood 10
• HUAC accuses 10 in
Hollywood of being
communists
• They claim 5th
Amendment rights –
you are not able to
say something that
will incriminate
yourself
• Prison and
Blacklisting
Watkins vs. United States
(1957)
• Supreme Court decided witnesses before
HUAC could not be forced to name
radicals they knew
The Case of Oppenheimer
• Manhattan Project Planner
• Head of the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission
• But…his wife and brother
were members of the
communist party
• He was denied access to
classified information
– No evidence
Let the Spy Games Begin
• Alger Hiss
– Educated at Johns Hopkins
University
– Important gov’t official
• Worked on New Deal, helped
organize UN
– Accused by converted agent
(Whittaker Chambers)
• Hiss denied he knew Chambers
– Richard Nixon leads the case
against him
– Convicted to 5 years in prison
The Rosenbergs
• Convicted for passing atomic secrets
to the Soviets during WWII
– Contact was British physicist Klaus Fuchs
• Fuchs confessed that Harry Gold was
the courier he passes his information
to
– Gold turned in David Greenglass
• Greenglass then confessed and turned in his
sister and brother-in-law Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg
• Some claimed they were scapegoats;
others that they got what they
deserved
1947 & American Espionage
• 1947 - CIA and NSA
(National Security
Council) created to
spy on the Soviets
• FBI created in 1935
The Media’s
Response
• Wave of Anti-Red movies
and books released
– Like “Is This Tomorrow”,
“Red Planet Mars”,
“Invasion of the Body
Snatchers”
McCarthyism
• February 1950 – Joseph
R. McCarthy from
Wisconsin claimed he
had a list of communist
members of the gov’t
– Hundreds imprisoned, 1012 thousand lost their jobs
• Accuses those who
complain
– Fear in the US
– Ruthless in his tracking
down of “communists”
McCarran Act of 1950
• Forced communist political
groups to register with
gov’t
• Subversive Activities
Control Board (SACB)
investigated membership
– No foreign members
– Citizens found could lose
citizenship
• Allowed for detention of
dangerous, disloyal, or
subversive persons
The Army Hearings
• Using Korean War,
McCarthy goes after the
army for being “infiltrated”
– Televised bullying
• Eisenhower angry
• McCarthy censured
• End of Korean War 1953
and McCarthy’s downfall in
1954 signaled the end of
the Red Scare