American History Hit - McCarthy & the Second Red Scare

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Who was Joe McCarthy? How did this Republican Senator come to lead a nationwide campaign against communism? And how did he bring about his own downfall?For this episode, Don is joined by the authors of ‘Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare’, Dr. Andrea Balis and Elizabeth Levy. Listen in to find out why McCarthyism happened when it did, and why it was a bad idea to make an enemy of the US Army.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. To start today's show, I will read out the list of people accused of witchcraft in a recent panel report. You are hereby ordered not to associate with these people.

They are enemies of the American state. You should not employ these people, nor house them, nor should you socialize with them. Certainly do not socialize. Everyone understands the severe consequences that come with any connection to a witch. They corrupt the innocent heart. They bring down those who believe in them. They cast aside those who don't first turn on themselves. Well, that's not really going to happen today.

I have no such list. No such report. This is a podcast. But back in the 1950s, here in the United States, there are a lot of such reports and a lot of such lists. And those who found themselves on them may not have been called witches, but they might have been called something even worse. Thank you for listening.

This is American History Hit, and we're grateful you're here. On today's episode, we discuss the red scare of the early 1950s, often referred to as the McCarthy era, McCarthyism, even, in which a senator from the state of Wisconsin made his name launching a dogged campaign to out individuals in the federal government, state department in particular, for their allegiance to or affiliations with the communist movement. Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? was the famously repeated question asked by Senator Joseph McCarthy from his seat as chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, the PSI. This subcommittee's investigations came on the heels of other investigations by Hueck, the House Un-American Activities Committee, which notably pursued famous figures in the film industry. Today, both of these congressional efforts tend to be conflated, generally perceived as a project of Cold War paranoia and persecution that finally faced.

with the downfall and humiliation of said Senator McCarthy. It's quite a tale to be guided through, and we have with us, Dr. Andrea Bayliss, from the faculty of John J. College of Criminal Justice in New York City, where she specializes in 20th century political history, and writer Elizabeth Levy, author of over 100 works of fiction and nonfiction, who have both collaborated on the recently published Witch Hunt, The Cold War, Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare,

which went on sale in April this year. Hello, Andrea. Hello, Elizabeth. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Dan. Before we dive into this complicated, dark, Cold War history, let's talk about your new book, which is intentionally not so, not complicated or dark. It is intended for young readers. Your second book together, as I understand, bringing down a president, the Watergate scandal, was back in 2019. Both these books created in this sort of open style meant to move the reader along at a clip. How do you choose to make these books and why this audience and style?

Yeah, we started to write these books because I'd been teaching a survey class at John Jay College for a long time, and I became aware of how little my students knew about these major events and how regretful it was that they had no sense of what went on in 20th century American politics, which was a pretty critical period in history of the United States. So we started with the Watergate story because it's so dramatic. And it was for so many people a sort of emblem of what had happened to the government and the needs to change the way the government actually functioned. And out of a concern of the loss of so much talent because of the Red Scare and because of the Cold War, So I think that that became a motivator afterwards of trying to pull those people back into the American culture and mainstream. And I would add that we had done theater many years ago. And I don't think that because you're writing for young people or adults, this book was really intended for both.

Kids can go through and live through dark periods. So it's not that you sugarcoat things for kids at all. Yeah, I can attest to the fact that the book is extremely informative and really involving in an adult fashion as well. I was really engrossed by all the quotes. It's just that the style is done in a very eclectic fashion and a really cool journey through quotations, et cetera. It's not the typical narrative style, which is fascinating. Myself, I will take this opportunity to say that I love diving into these iconic periods that have been over. time so distilled. I mean, I'm glad that I know more than, say, your students do, but,

but I still don't really understand details of so many things. And when you do get to the source of the matter, especially in the Red Scare, there's so much more that meets the eye. You know, the history that comes before it is as interesting as what you're studying alongside. And it's, it is a fact of American society that we see this kind of distillation happens so often in, in the case. Speaking specifically of this period, it really begins as a, as a, as a second phase, isn't it, really? This is the second red scare of the 20th century. That's right. We'll talk about the first one in just a moment, but I want to understand the origins of this second wave. It's, of course, post-World War II. In brief, explain to me how this whole thing

gets started. Russia had been an ally of the United States during World War II, although even before the war, people in the United States were very suspicious of communism. And indeed, the the Communist Party in 1922 had announced its intention of taking over the world. So they fought together during World War II, knowing full well that there was going to be conflict when the war ended. And indeed, as soon as World War II ended, what we call the Cold War began, which was this jockeying for power between basically Russia and the United States. And we called it a Cold War because theoretically, there was a war. was no shooting. There was plenty of other stuff going on, though, and even a little bit of gunfire

here and there through proxy wars and armies marching through countries. But basically, the idea was that these two powers were balanced in mutually assured destruction. And if either of them did anything, the other would retaliate. And that was how the world was safe by keeping these things in balance. So therefore, one side couldn't gain tremendous advantage or the entire system would be thrown off. But in the United States, as in the Soviet Union as well, people were quite convinced that the enemy was out there and that the enemy at any moment could take over and ruin the system. I just want to reiterate that accidents happen in history. McCarthy, it isn't ever a straight line, that makes sense. And you have to live with that if you're a human. And the wonderful thing,

oddly, about McCarthy, he was quite a wonderful politician. He would have probably looked for any issue. By chance, he was sent out for Republicans. You have to remember the Democrats had held power for almost 40 years. And he waved this paper in the air that said, I know that there are 46 a 216 communists in the State Department. Hoover told them never used numbers. And that became a big publicity. And many real humans, the teachers and librarians lost their jobs. So that's who we wanted to really understand that history happens in strange ways.

In addition, I want to add for the audience that to remind us that we're talking about almost 100 years ago at this point, And at this time, very fresh in people's minds are the Russian Revolution, which happened in 1917, World War I, of course. But along with that, this really paranoid feeling that there is this other system coming along, that communism is still new in people's minds, and they have declared that it is coming for them. You know, this was headline news back in the day that communism had that intention to it, that ethos, that it was here to destroy capitalism. So back then, people really bought into that paranoid feeling, right? And even before that, remember, it was the Depression. So many teachers and people lost their jobs. And there were people like Robert Oppenheimer, many of the Hollywood Ten, who felt that the world should be fair,

that we should be taking care of some of the people who had lost their jobs. And sometimes they did it just for to meet girls or to be social. so they would join socialist party or go to a party. It's never as clear-cut as you ever want it to be, and we have to live with that. In the 30s, during the Depression, when people were looking for ways to save the capitalist system, it became an even more freighted discussion,

and Roosevelt was accused of essentially being a socialist and bringing in those. So people were ready to fight that. To this day, the New Deal is still controversial among many quarters in society in American society. Back then, it was seen as a American representation of socialism in many ways. Anyway, my point is layering all of that, which starts in the a aughts and into the 40s, is a brew that is very difficult to drink for a lot of Americans. It represents a tilt left, well, a hard left turn for American society where capitalism is really what so many base their feelings of American freedoms on and so forth. So all that has been going on for decades when we come into this period of post-World War II America.

And so when Russia suddenly gets the bomb, you know, in 1949 and becomes on equal grounds with us, at least in nuclear warfare, that is terrifying to those, especially to those Americans who see communism as a direct and lethal threat to our way of life. With that setting the stage, along comes the Republicans stepping into power, as you say, for the first time. in decades. And they are grabbing on to whatever they can to really crowd the stage. And that starts to happen in the early 1950s under Truman's presidency. This is always confusing to me. We look back on Truman as being so anti-communist. But in those days, the Republicans were painting him otherwise, weren't they? Yes, so anti-communism, godless. In order to prove that he could be anti-communist, the sad thing about the McCarthy era is a lot of the damage to real people in the State Department and schools happened because Truman, as brave

and good a man as he was, and he can't look ahead in history. He didn't know what was going to happen. But he set up loyalty oaths and many people lost their jobs in wage because Truman, and then Eisenhower, wanted to prove that they also were anti-communists. This is where the Democratic Party has begins to be called soft on communism and begins to be called the label that it still bears to this day of being soft on militarism, soft on communism. This is the label that they were given at this period of time, and it stuck. It's stuck for a really long time. Well, also, but we don't want to ignore the fact that this was also a very, very powerful tool that was to be used by those. who needed to seize that control, which is going to be Joseph McCarthy, among others. It's a very strategic move.

Many of the feelings that we have about things today that are fresh in our minds, of course, from yesterday and beyond and before, are all the same kinds of things. We see it all the time in present, current events where politicians are grabbing onto issues and saying this really matters, really in order to get their time in front of the cameras these days more than then. But it was the newspapers that we were looking for, and you needed a position. And so anti-communism became one of those things. That being said, it was very real in certain quarters, wasn't it?

Very, but the fear overtook people who had real lives. One of the teachers in Massachusetts, she was a second grade teacher. Yes, in the 30s, she joined the Communist Party and easily left. So by the time she was teaching, that was when she was in her early 20s. She believed in the Pledge of Allegiance. The FBI came and they had found that she had been a Communist Party member. She lost her job as a teacher. She then ended up working for the SBA, sweeping out dog poop.

And the FBI came to the SBCA, and she lost her job from that. So that's the actual, we talk about collateral damage, but that often sounds easy to think about. that these were your teachers, your librarians who were afraid. They wrote to Einstein, the famous scientist, what shall we do? And he said, do anything, but don't sign a loyalty of. But their accuses were also afraid. They lived in this world where giant powers, most of whom were invisible,

could rain down death on any of them, and they were helpless. But one thing they could do is they could phone the local authorities if they noticed that neighbor is flying red curtains because that neighbor could be signaling to red communist red communist forces somewhere in the community. You could do those things and they did them. Exactly. I guess what I'm saying is that there's been an upswelling for decades of this guarded feeling that this other way of life is out there beyond our shores, but coming fast.

And this all becomes a kind of self-examining. nation on a national level. Let's not forget not only Russia, but also China is in the process of this, this is going on right now with Shanghai Shack being chased across the country by communist forces and all of this stuff in the world seems like, wow, what the heck is going on here to Americans who are just trying to get back to life. Also, another really interesting tension is that we forget all those millions coming home from war created a whole problem in labor and the economy had to reabsorption. these folks who had been away, you know, being paid by the government, essentially, are now

coming home for jobs. There has been a great migration from the South over the last decades as well. There's a lot of demographic movements in America that are informing all of this, you know, that are swelling this, this soil, as I say. And this comes to bear on the anti-communism movement that really takes off in the 50s. So it's never as simple as you think in history. That's our motto. And the other was just so sad. is that you're right, that's how people felt. But honestly, it was the best economy of the United States had almost had ever. The 50s was booming. There, you know, there was this hunger for consumer goods that had been dampened down by the war. And plus the black soldiers who came back

fighting fascism, feeling they had fought the worst racism in the world, that they would be treated better and they weren't. And not only that, but some of the people in power, Jay Edgar Hoover, was convinced that the only reason they were fighting for their rights was because they were communist. So it turns into a stew, but that's part of history that you have to be able to understand if you're going to be able to get through these times. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a matter of the United States suddenly becoming the world power it was destined to be, but had been fighting off that, that had been not taking the mantle for so many decades. Suddenly World War II puts that mantle straight on people's shoulders and the leadership,

such as Hoover, then McCarthy and others like him, Eisenhower for sure, begin to figure out how do we fit into this world? How do we paint the picture of this world for Americans so that they can handle this massive new role that we are going to play for a. very long time to come, as we find out, a century to come. The Smith Act of 1940 was part of this, wasn't a backdrop of anti-communism in the post-war period, wasn't it? Yes. Again, it's that idea that's a little disconcerting that you can keep ideas out. It's actually possible to quarantine yourself off from a bunch of ideas that are dangerous. That's pretty frightening in

and of itself. First of all, is doomed to failure. And it's also obviously limiting the kinds of responses that you have. And so you're responding out of nothing but fear. And this gets complicated by the fact that there are strong issues about civil rights going on during the same period. And so you have a real sense of things both from without and within, and they're probably linked in some way in people's minds, of this long-coming, unsettled period in African-American politics and social relations. And it wildly breaks down during World War II, and particularly as people come back at the end of World War II. One aspect of this is so of present day is. how this affects the educational world, the teachers. Many are accused of being communists in the classroom,

right? I mean, there's a sort of terror being sped about these people who are so close to the children. I think we were most excited in how we started the book, and it seemed sad to say we were excited when we found that they tried to ban Robin Hood because he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. And when they tried to ban books about Robin Hood, what we love is people fought bad. There were kids in Indiana who loved Robin Hood, and we love bringing these details that we didn't know into our books. Andrea loves the Feather's story. I'll send it over to her. Yes, thanks. The thing is, when we first started looking at banned books, which we understood were an issue,

I started going through a list, and I couldn't believe that Robin Hood was on that list. It seemed just so astonishingly unfair, and so did the students in Indiana, where the law was passed banning Robin Hood. And so they went and they collected tons of chicken feathers from a nearby chicken farm, which they had there. And they dyed them green. And they brought them back in big sacks. And it's a lot of feathers in a sack.

And then they dumped them over the balcony in the Indiana state legislature to make it clear that they were standing up for Robin Hood and his merry man, even if the state of Indiana was going to turn their back on them. So it was an exciting moment to realize both how deep it had reached and how fast the pushback was. Yeah, there's nothing new under the sun, boy, bandbooks has been going on forever. Okay, so I mentioned in the opening, sorry, conflation that people do between the two famous committees, House un-American activities and also the PSI, the permanent subcommittee on investigations, which is the first is the representatives, and the latter is the Senate. So it begins this sort of era in terms of these hearings with the Hugh Act.

About October 1947, we begin the broadcast on the radio networks, also filmed. Take me through that first phase of committee hearings that involves so many famous film individuals. Yes, well, we've always said that if you're going to hold public hearings, you should be careful if you bring in writers and ad livers and actors, because you will not win. It's a really, really bad idea. But in addition to the exposure that children got from their teachers, they clearly got exposure from television, and television could sneak in all kinds of communist messages into the ears of your children, so you had to watch really. really, really carefully. And so a first group that was brought before the Congress was indeed a group of Hollywood writers and actors and performers, and they were brought in front of the committee in front

of television cameras. And their lie was a big mistake. And they testified as to their belief about communism, as to their beliefs about whether whether they could be silenced, whether the United States government had the right to silence them and wasn't, in fact, protest the very essence. What it meant to be an American is that's how we started. And the committees did not agree. And yes, several of the writers did go to jail. Ringlardner Jr. actually ended up writing the Robin Hood story in England. And you're in broadcasting. We interviewed somebody who was one of the, his mother was one of the first people

to be a producer and behind the scenes on a show called Candid Camera. And they knew they would be blacklisted or redlisted, as it were. And they quit before they were fired. They bought a farm. And one of our favorite, again, little details, their son remembers the FBI came to visit the farm and he was very scared and his father said, don't worry, communist chickens don't make headlines. The FBI wants headlines. So I think the thing to remember is that so many people tried to instill in their children a sense that this was scary, but you could live through it. And they weren't ashamed of what they did. Well, this is sure the beginning or at least seriously underscores the idea that Hollywood is filled with liberals and dangerous people who are, you know, wanting to undermine the American way of life. I'm not ever really sure how that starts because you're also, there's a huge mix of very conservative people like John Ford, etc. out there. Disney and Walt Disney. But these guys are brought before, I mean, at least Disney is brought before the committee. And he very famously explains that there is this communist element in Hollywood that needs to be smoked out. He uses the words and shown for what they are. So,

that all the good free causes in this country, all the liberalisms that are really American, can go without the taint of communism. That is my sincere feeling on it. I'm quoting, or at least paraphrasing Walt Disney, who was a big figure in this statement. Later on, we see Ronald Reagan and people like that in other times. But it really is the moment when Washington is looking out with a suspicious eye at this very growing influential group of people in Hollywood, who are kind of the victims of their own success, because they return to, to, to, create this war propaganda for World War II, and the Hollywood business became very, very profitable. Nonetheless, there are these suspicious people, and we can't forget the anti-Semitism involved in this, who are in charge of Hollywood. And this is that moment when anti-communist forces in Washington really take a look. Yes, they do. And it becomes a way to make yourself famous, is by looking. I mean, you could be a martyr for American democracy if you went out and tracked.

down some Robin Hood reading adolescents somewhere and dragged them in before a disciplinary committee. How long do the Huac committee hearings go on? Well into the 60s. Oh, my goodness. It was still the Red Scare. The Hollywood hearings really did only last a few months because they became so popular on television and the politicians were not coming off well. Trumbo and the sort of very witty screenwriters came off much better.

But the HUEC did go on well into the 60s. We interviewed somebody who went in the 1960s when her mother was called before the Communist Party, she was really, I mean, into Huaq rather. She was scared. It was a house that you went in as an American and came out as an un-American. So it went on long after McCarthy lost power and died. The Hollywood 10 are the most famous, I would say, victims of this. I mean, at least those who were famously named.

Dalton Trumbo is probably the biggest name of that group, very prominent screenwriter in those days, has the very famous quote, very many questions can be answered, yes or no, but only by a moron or a slave. These are the wrong people to drag in front of the public eye and ask for admissions of guilt.

They're able to parse much more subtle and nuanced responses than these politicians are looking for. And I don't know if you write this way, but he used to like to write in a bathtub with a cigar and his drink on a platform in front of him. Exactly. He finally writes, as far as I was concerned, because he's convicted of contempt of Congress, he believed it was a completely just verdict.

I had contempt for that Congress, he once said, and I've had contempt for several since. I grew up with World War II parents. So many people, you must remember, this country is divided. It's not like everybody was out in this country, you know, their placards and their pitchforks. This was an enormously polarizing experience for. for so many Americans. It really set people up for the, basically, it's the 60s later on, didn't it? Yes. And those divisions become clear somehow in the beginning of the 60s. These two things

begin to overlap. Exactly. Jay Edgar Hoover is a big name in this. We've covered him on a previous episode, which I invite people to listen to her. He begins to work his magic in the midst of all of this, serious anti-communist, of course. But there are other issues as well, racial issues, etc. of civil rights issues. This is fertile ground for the growing of the FBI in Hoover's vision. Yes, very much. And the other is that he really was a brilliant collector of details. He started the library of Congress when he was in his 20s. And they wanted to keep him. They were very sad during the Red Scare that they lost him. So much more than McCarthy, he was a strategic thing. and really could go through details in ways no one else could.

But his career rested on any communism. During the first Red Scare, when lots of door knocking went on in 1917 and 18 and 19, it was Hoover who was leading the charge, and it was Hoover who was gathering up immigrants and feminists and communists and anybody with an is that he didn't like and deporting them. post-el deporting them. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. When prison sentences were handed out, how long are we talking about?

For the Hollywood 10, it was really months. It was the greatest damage was that you lost your job for many more people who were not famous. This was the teachers, the librarian, scientists. That was the fear that really hit regular people. We had a really moving quote in one of the books about teachers. in education that just sort of said bluntly, you know, for students, for kids, teachers were really important. They were a real cornerstone and given social prominence in place in the 50s and 60s and to have your teacher disappear out of the classroom suddenly. To find your teacher labeled in this

way was a truly just concerning and somewhat horrifying event for small children. How does the Red Scare then become synonymous? with Joseph McCarthy. Where does McCarthyism come from? Well, McCarthy is from the very beginning. He makes himself a name as tail gunner Joe and turns himself into a war hero, although in fact, he was not a tail gunner. And he made himself famous from that point on. But he needed an issue. He wanted to be famous. He wanted to be a power in Washington, and he was going to need a crusade. and he thought about other issues. This wasn't the only one that popped in his mind,

but this one seemed like it just fit the time. He was a big self-promoter. Let's be clear. This was a guy who came out of the war. As you say, Tail Gunner Joe was kind of a misnomer because he really hadn't fought so much. He went on a few missions. He was primarily working in intelligence.

But he comes home and realizes that there's a vulnerable seat that he can go for with La Follette. And the anti-communism fervor becomes a real lever he can pull in this regard. And that's true of a lot of people. We have to remember that McCarthy was not the only one doing this. This was a big movement among many politicians, especially the GOP, who are trying to grab more power at this point. There's a very famous moment for him, which is in Wheeling, West Virginia, 1950. He tells the Ohio County Republican Women's Club, I have here in my hand a list of 205 names.

that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party. How true was this 205 names? Well, he lost the list. He claimed between when he was flying and reporters asked him about it. As I said, Hoover always said, don't ever give a specific number. He had no specific number, but it did make him famous. From then on, the Republican Party couldn't control him. And as opposed to the Huac who went for Hollywood, he's really going for the State Department, much safer territory for Americans to stomach.

I mean, he's a guy who went after teachers and local politicians and any other group that he could find that had some power that, but not a lot, that he could just slip right in and taint. And once Eisenhower and the Republicans took over the Senate in 1952, they did give him this investigative committee that they thought at that point didn't have much power. But he did hire a very brilliant young lawyer who had helped convict the Rosenberg's Roy Cohn. And Roy Cohn, as it turned out in history, knew how to keep the headlines coming. Boy, oh, boy. Can't wait to do the episode on Roy Cohn, direct line between this era of McCarthy and our present era of Donald Trump, advisor to both. Yes. Yes, indeed. And equally useful to

Just a real fighter, much more strategic than Joe McCarthy. Yeah, I mean, this is where this pugnacious kind of 20th century right wing really gets its feet. It had realized that, you know, after years of years of being on the back burner under Roosevelt's time, the way to do this was to fight hard. And McCarthy really lays out that, lays down the groundwork for that stuff. Describe to me the difference between the Hugh Act and the Senate hearings, the PSI hearings. Well, certainly Chihuac was the dog that ran down the names. It was they had big investigative panels. They established a lot of local investigative panels so that people could find their communists

in their very own school systems. They built a power structure on top of that. The Senate was less likely to support it. And in fact, the only opposition to McCarthy in the early day, came from Margaret Chase Smith, who was a senator from Maine, and she did make a speech in which she pointed out that McCarthy and McCarthyism was destroying every ideal of American politics and the American way of life.

And she received virtually no support for this. In fact, McCarthy labeled her as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, that she had such a small number of followers, and they certainly, in the end, did not have the courage of their convictions and the courage of rebalancing the political system. Because after all, there's also a period in which the Congress is trying to seize power because Roosevelt had so much of it centered in his hands. So there's an attempt to expand the power of the legislature there too. Can you explain to me or just describe for us how these hearings were conducting?

in terms of like how long do they go on? Did people see them every day on television? Did they take up the whole day? I mean, how did Americans see this? You have to remember the accidents of history. The Army McCarthy hearings that are so famous had really nothing to do with communism. McCarthy's committee really only lasted two years where he got caught up in Roy Cohn's own scandal because Roy Cohn's best friend. However you want to define it, we have no real proof, but young David Schein was drafted. And he didn't, he wanted David Schein to be assigned to him and not have to do active duty. And since he was investigating scientists who worked for the generals, he started threatening Eisenhower's generals.

Andrea, how did Eisenhower feel about regard to being threatening his generals? He didn't like it. He was pretty... Eisenhower was one thing, if not anything else, he defended his generals. And Eisenhower had managed, after all, to keep the generals from most of the world fighting together and in a unified army. So he was pretty good at figuring out strategy and coming out with his hands clean. So he gently allowed Roy Cohen to pull himself down. And Eisenhower literally set a trap for him.

He had his aides write down every threatening thing that Roy Cohn said. And the one thing Americans will not stand for, if their son has to go or daughter peel potatoes for the army, and you're going to get this rich kid out of the army, that was really what the Army McCarthy hearings were. They were not about communism. They were about who lied about trying to get David Schein out of the army. me, I love those accidents of history, and I love just it makes it fun. They're about stripping McCarthy

of his power. That's what they were really about. We've been conflating ourselves that Truman and Eisenhower administrations in this. And in a way, that's correct. And in other ways, there isn't. Truman really had to react to this. He'd been called soft on communism. The Korean war begins. And that is an anti-communism war being fought. It begins really the Truman Doctrine. Much of that doctrine, and what we now think of as Harry Truman, is a reaction to this movement, isn't it? Yes, and to real threats from China and Russia in taking a real balance of power away. Andrew is better at that. In 1949, China became a communist country, and people talked about the Democrats losing China. And it wasn't. lost, and it wasn't the Democrats. But that became a real focus, and that really heightened

America's anti-war paranoia and concern. And it led to a further need for Truman to prove that he was a strong leader and to resist members of his own military who wanted to move much more aggressively into Korea and China and cause indeed a third world war. Yeah. It's a terrifying prospect when the dog is wagged by the tail, but in some ways, that's what this political use of anti-communism becomes, where the leadership in America all the way up to the White House is having to deal with the public's perception of this in so much as, I mean, to the degree that it sort of carries over into policy and perhaps even war. I mean, the Korean War probably happens without the screaming.

shouting in Congress, but it's certainly part of the mix. Another name in here that I've always been curious about is Whitaker Chambers. Again, I'm backing up to the Hugh Act hearings at this point, but where does he fit into this story? He was an anti-communist. He had joined the Communist Party, but then figured in the 30s and 40s that he would be better as somebody who went to the FBI and we'd report to them on it. And he went to some events with some of the State Department.

people who, many of these, I'm not saying that Russia wasn't interested in spying on us. They just often wouldn't pit old leftists as their spies. They knew enough to find better people than these old leftists. And Whitaker Chambers was one who was able to come before the house of un-American activities and said he had proof that there were real spies in the State Department. and my favorite is he hid film in the pumpkin patch. But it was, again, he was, I don't know if everyone in the picture, sort of a slumpy guy, and the State Department people were very elegant.

And so they got compared. And again, reading history, you have to understand how both personal and odd it is. We always say that history is gossip about dead people. You can hear People magazine now commenting on some of these things that eventually will become solemn facts in history books, but that's where they start out. He said, she said, and I know he's going to say this unless I do that. And why we use a fly on the wall and actual quotes from people is Andrea always teaches, and we believed it when we were writing in the 70s, you can't look ahead in history. When history is happening to you, you don't know what the future is going to be. And we have to have more compassion for the people, actors, in history, instead of Monday morning.

How could they have been this silly or stupid? They weren't. Yeah. One of the remarkable things about your book is how much territory it really covers. And you do that because of that style, because of this eclectic style that can sort of fly on the wall for those who are wondering is kind of a returning feature of the book. throughout the narrative where you're really catching the reader up to the information at hand in this particular chapter. But there's so many chapters because there's so many events.

I mean, this conversation we're having demonstrates how much really happened in this condensed period of time. It's incredible. And each one of these subjects that we're discussing is its own long conversation. The Rosenbergs figure into this in the early 50s, part of the spy ring about the atomic secrets, the hydrogen bomb being at the center of it all. Where do they fit into this story? You have a chapter about it. Rosenbergs mean so many things for so many people. They seem to be proof that in fact, if you look under every cabbage patch, you'll find low-level spies. They seem to be betrayed by their

family. They seem to be hunted down by the government judicial system because the Rosenbergs were executed. And as increasing information is released, it becomes clear that they were not both equally culpable and that there was more to the story than was released. But Roy Cohen, this is how Roy Cohen that made his future is by fighting to see that the Rosen's, that the Rosenbergs were executed? Well, he actually said to Alan Dershowitz that he didn't want Ethel to be executed, that he was hoping that would make them talk. But the point is that they really didn't have many more secrets to give.

They weren't the top spies that helped Russia get the bomb. And Russia had its own great scientists, and then Karl Fuchs and other scientists in England, who gave them much more material than the Rosenberg. ever had. And again, that's the way history often unfolds. And there are two young sons and people who knew them. It's just both fascinating and really hard about the way that things can happen. But we want people to know that so that when you're living through those times of history, you don't think you know everything. You don't. And while we use 300, 162 footnoted quotes, as we say in the introduction, because it's footnoted doesn't make it true.

Just because someone said it, people lie. We try to read the context, but, you know, just because someone said it doesn't make it true. You have to try to understand. I'm clutching my pearls as we speak. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. That's, I think, one of the most important things for us is just because somebody's says something doesn't mean it's true. And fact, it's not necessarily a good guide to the truth at all. We know this in our real lives. We know people lie all the time. So there's

no reason to assume the historical figures don't do the same thing. What was the public reaction to the Rosenberg's execution or Ethel's execution? I mean, there was a famous, famous front page picture on the New York Post, I believe, that shows her. I mean, it was so scandalous what had happened. It wasn't just scandalous. It had a deep sadness. I was alive then and I was Jewish and for someone to look so much like my mother and to see it in the movie theaters because at that point they would have the news passed in the movie theater. And I remember I had a friend, Rosenberg is a common name. I had a friend named Rosenberg and her boyfriend dropped her hand. You would refuse to. to hold her hand in the movie theater anymore when that came on. So I think people felt that you were seeing, you know, it was very rare for a woman to be executed, much less a mother, much less a middle class woman like that. There was outrage. The evidence was shaky in the case of, particularly in the case of Ethel Rosenberg. It does play out that they were in the files at some point,

and then that is refuted. The Russian intelligence files go public in the 1990s. after the fall of the Soviet Union. But even that is a questionable situation. Some documents were revealed. The idea that they were all revealed seems highly unlikely. Tell me about the letter that Ethel left for her sons. It's the letter that's left by a grieving mother for two little boys knowing full well that this is the last direct contact they'll have with their mother.

And it's what every mother would write. It's so absolutely what every mother would write. We love you. We're thinking of you. You're in our hearts. You'll always be in our hearts. It's the thing that any parent would say. And they did go on to lead successful, committed lives and to teach, to work.

And to be loving. Both loving teachers and loving family people. We mentioned the Army hearings earlier. this is really the late phase of this PSI chapter and the beginning of McCarthy's downfall. He has overstepped wildly, and he begins to go after the U.S. Army as being infiltrated by communists, a bridge too far. Yes, well, it wasn't even that he went after the army for communists. He threatened to blackmail the army. Andri, you take it.

Yes, I mean, he did. he tried to throw his power around within the army. The other thing he did is he started attacking Republicans. And the Republican Party was pretty much fine with it as long as he attacked Democrats. But when he started moving and attacking Republicans as well, then he became a real danger to the party. And people who had been holding their nose and putting up with him, it became really concerned at that point. And he began to lose the powers behind him that were holding him up. He was no longer useful to them.

When he began at the army and started suggesting that there was corruption in the army, in the armed forces, that was an infuriating and dangerous thing for him to do. And he was shut down really fast once he started doing that. It doesn't help that the president is the former Supreme Commander of. It doesn't. He's also, for all the advantages of having television on his side in the beginning, it begins to turn against him. I mean, the likes of Edward Morrow and the CBS crew and all that, it just steers against, the wave begins to turn against McCarthy. He sees it coming.

He's a troubled man. Alcoholism is a big part of his life. And then he suddenly, it's as if a movie. I mean, then he suddenly dies in 1957. And as a broadcaster finding those little stories, Murrow is most of the moment. mostly remembered for the famously at now, where he put clips of McCarthy on and he sort of looked like a fool. But even before that, he found a young Air Force man who had been told to leave the Air Force because his father was Serbian and bought a Serbian newspaper.

And his sister read it. Yeah, and his sister read it and supported Paul Robson, the singer. and he refused to leave the Air Force. When Murrow and his men grabbed that story, and unfortunately was mostly men then, the way you've grabbed a story that interests you, that really also started the downfall for McCarthy. Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Yep. The most famous ending of a career right there. We should mention another group that McCarthy went after. And again, we don't know really too much about why, but he went after homosexuals in a big way. And this part of his campaign is known as the Lavender Scare. And he sacked a good portion of the State Department, got rid of an awful lot of people who accused either of being gay

or of being too sympathetic to communist forces. As a result, when the United States started the Vietnam or began to be involved in the military, Vietnam. We had almost no Vietnam speakers left in the State Department. They'd all been purged over these. That's a sort of graphic example of how it left us hopeless or damaged because of this crusade. And there was a woman who would have been the first general in the Air Force, and she refused to take a promotion because she was gay and she felt that she might be hounded out and what it would do to her family.

And the irony, of course, of that is that there's massive amounts of rumors and hearsay about McCarthy's double life that he was leading and certainly Roy Cohen over the years. All of this hypocrisy, all of it is so difficult to sort of figure out what's real and what's not over the course of decades. But it speaks to the complications behind this time, you know, how much it was real versus how much ambition was involved. Extraordinarily difficult thing to figure out. Dr. Andrea Bayless is a faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City,

where she specializes, as I said, in 20th century political history, also has written extensively for the theater, worked as a director, and she is the author of What Are You Using, a Birth Control Guide for Teenagers, as well as another book, a novel called PJ. Elizabeth Levy is the award-winning author of more than 100 fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adults. Her work is known for its humor and research from studying stand-up comments, for my life as a fifth-grade comedian

to working with renowned historians from America's funny but true history. And if you were there when they signed the Constitution. This book we're talking about today is Witch Hunt, the Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare, and I invite you to order it. It's a really fun read and good

for having around the house if you have any younger people. Thank you, Andrews. Thank you, Liz. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Nice to meet you. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we released new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us

out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.