Chapter 18
Part 3
Pages 616-621
Terms to Know
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Hollywood 10
Blacklist
Alger Hiss
Rosenbergs
Joseph McCarthy
McCarthyism
The Red Scare
• 1949 China fell to communism
• 1949 The USSR had the bomb
• Over 100,000 Americans had joined the
Communist Party by the time WWII was over
• Stalin had not allowed free elections in
Eastern Europe
Truman and Democrats
• Were called soft on communism
• The Loyality Review Board was established in
1947 to investigate government employees to
establish that they were loyal to the U.S.
• The Attorney General had a list of “subversive”
organizations
Between 1947-1952
• Millions of government employees (3.2) were
investigated
• 212 were dismissed from their jobs
• 2,900 resigned on principle
HUAC by 1947
• House un-American Activities Committee
• Was formed by congress to investigate
communist influence in the film industry
• 43 witnesses were called
• Most were “cooperative”
• 10 were not…called the Hollywood Ten
Blacklisted!
• Those witnesses who were not cooperative
(did not give up names of others) were often
jailed, fined without cause
• They also discovered that they could not get
work
• Actors, actressses, teachers, doctors, writers,
etc
In the meantime
• Congress did not believe that the Loyalty
Review Board was enough
• They passes the McCarran Internal Securities
Act: it was illegal to plan any action that
might result in a totalitarian regime in the U.S.
Spies
• When the USSR tested its atomic bomb in
1949, everyone knew that it could only have
been done if secrets had been stolen from the
U.S.
• It should have taken the soviets 3-5 years to
come up with the bomb on their own
New investigations
• Alger Hiss…a former high ranking official in the
State Department was accused of passing
sensitive government documents to the
Russians in the 30’s
• Accuser was Whitaker Chambers…a self=admitted former communist
Alger Hiss
• Although Chambers WAS in possession of the
Pumpkin Papers (sensitive government
documents) there was no way to prove that
Hiss had anything to do with it so Hiss was
acquitted
Hiss sued Chambers
• For defamation of character
• Richard Nixon…a junior congressman from
California got involved
• In the end Hiss was found guilty…not of
espionage but of perjury!
Hiss continued to claim he ws innocent
• BUT in the 1990’s after the fall of the Soviet
Union, Russia came up with documents
proving that Hiss DID smuggle secrets to the
Communists
The Rosenbergs
• Klaus Fuchs was a British physisist who
claimed to have given secrets of the bomb to
the Soviets
• He said the documents were given to him by
David Greenglass
Greenglass made a deal
• He said that his sister and her husband, Ethel
and Julius Rosenberg, were the masterminds
behind the operation
• On trial, the Rosenbergs took the 5th.
• They were convicted of espionage and went to
the electric chair.
• Both continued to claim they were innocent.
By 1946
• The CIA was formed
• To gather information that threatened U.S.
security
• They gathered information overtly and
covertly
Joe McCarthy
• A senator from Wisconsin
• Wanted to continue to be re-elected
• Decided to put himself out there as a
champion against communism
McCarthyism 1950-1953
• McCarthy had a problem with alcohol
• He specialized in The Big Lie
• Claimed to have evidence that there were 205
card-carrying communists in the State
Department in his briefcase
All he really had in there
• Was a bottle of hooch
• And a list of names of people who had been
interviewed by the Loyalty Review Board
• His tactics were unethical, unfair, bullying
• BUT he was popular with the American people
Most other Senators
• Saw him for what he was but few spoke up
against him
• He was really popular
• In the end, his undoing came when he claimed
that there were communists in the U.S> Army
The Army Hearings
• Since McCarthy was so popular, TV stations
wanted to put the Army hearings on TV
• When the American people saw what a bully
he was they stopped supporting him
• THEN he was censored by the Senate
In 1954
• He was found dead in a hotle room
• Alcohol-related death
• NOTE: Nixon steered clear of McCarthy…even
at the height of his popularity
• Nixon will be Eisenhower’s Vice-President
(later)