The Cold War at Home
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Post-war Anxieties
A.
Communism
B.
The Bomb
C.
Conformity
Cold War Liberalism
A.
The New Deal Status Quo
B.
Critics-- The Elections of 1948 and 1952
The Communist Party of the US
The Great Fear
A.
Laws and Institutions
B.
Targets--Artists, Government
C.
Effects
Anxiety
• Fear of subversion
• Fear of science
• Fear of destruction
• Fear of conformity
Election of 1948
Harry Truman
Democratic Party
Thomas Dewey
Republican Party
Strom Thurmond
States’ Rights
Henry Wallace
Progressive Party
Truman defeats Dewey
• Truman wins without his left and right wings
• Affirms New Deal Status Quo
Election of 1952
• Eisenhower defeats Adlai Stevenson
• Ike is relatively moderate
Paul Robeson
• Rutgers, Columbia Law
– Star athlete
– Valedictorian of his class
• Stage and film
performer
• Visits USSR in 1934
Legal Apparatus
• Smith Act, 1940
– crime to advocate revolution
• Dennis v. United States, 1951
– upholds Smith Act convictions
• Internal Security Act, 1950
– registration, deportation of radicals
• McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, 1952
– restricts immigration of radicals
Federal Bureau of Investigation
• J. Edgar Hoover
• Card index with 450,000
names, 60,000 bios
• In 1959 Hoover had 489
agents spying on
Communists but only 4
investigating the Mafia
HUAC
• House Un-American
Activities Committee
• Established 1937 by
Martin Dies (D-TX)
Hollywood
• 1947-- HUAC investigates
• Sends 10 to prison
• Blacklist--Red Channels
• 320 artists blacklisted
– Hammett, Wright, Hellman
Peekskill Riot
• Robeson concerts
– Aug. and Sept. 1949
• Mob Violence
Alger Hiss
• Whittaker Chambers
• Richard Nixon
• Pumpkin Papers
• Perjury
The Rosenbergs
• Communist Party members
• Her brother worked at Los Alamos
• Delivered atomic secrets to the USSR
• Sentenced to death
Julius and Ethel
McCarthyism
Roy Cohn
David Schine
• Senator Joseph McCarthy
• Joseph Welch
Climate of Fear
• People
punished for
their political
beliefs rather
than any
treasonous
behavior.
• Dampens free
exchange of
ideas.
Communists convicted of conspiring “to teach the
overthrow of the US government,” 1949