Nightmare in red: the McCarthy era in perspective

251 Pages·1991·1.58 MB·English

by  Richard M. Fried

NIGHTMARE IN RED
NIGHTMARE IN RED
The McCarthy Era in Perspective
RICHARD M. FRIED
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1990 by Oxford University Press
First published in 1990 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1991
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fried, Richard M., 1941–
Nightmare in red: the McCarthy era in perspective/Richard M. Fried,
p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index.
ISBN-13 978–0-19–504360-0
1. Anti-Communist movements—United States—History—20th century.
2. McCarthy, Joseph, 1908–1957. 3. United States—Politics and government—
1945–1953. I. Title.
E743.5.F67 1990
973.921—dc20 89–32891 CIP
ISBN-13 978–0-19–504361-7 (PBK.)
13 15 17 19 18 16 14
Printed in the United States of America
For Barbara
Preface
There was far more to the “McCarthy era” than Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.
We have sensed this, on one or another level, for some time. In the five years
McCarthy bestrode American politics, some of his savvier opponents realized
that exaggerated impressions of his importance made their task harder, but the
capacity to perceive him on a merely human scale was not altogether
commonplace. Although the premise that McCarthy was only part of a larger
whole carries a burden of some banality, it is nonetheless crucial to an
understanding of anti-communism in mid-twentieth-century America.
In this book, I have sought to place McCarthy and “his” era in perspective.
Thus I have attempted to locate him chronologically in the continuum of
twentieth-century anti-Communist politics. With deep roots in American culture,
anti-communism flourished long before the Senator from Wisconsin adopted the
issue in 1950. It was a hardy perennial in American politics before 1947, when
historians who blame President Harry S. Truman and the Democratic Party for
McCarthyism date the onset of anti-Communist extremism; before 1944, when
the presidential campaign gave Americans an early sample of a political style
commonly associated with the 1950s; before World War II, when the
instrumentalities of the government’s later loyalty and security programs were
improvised; and even before 1938, when Congressman Martin Dies’s Special
House Committee on Un-American Activities pioneered techniques that
prefigured McCarthy’s. Similarly, coverage of anti-communism does not end
with McCarthy’s censure by the Senate in 1954. Though that event did
contribute to anti-communism’s decline as a force in American life, the death
scene was a lingering one.
In dwelling on the early stages of the development of the anti-Communist
impulse, my point is not simply to argue that McCarthyism always existed—a
sort of malign Snow White to be awakened by the right demagogue’s kiss. Such
an explanation risks oversimplification, because extreme anti-communism
appeared in different forms at various times. The events of 1950 were not a
carbon copy of the Palmer raids of 1919 or the various anti-subversive activities
of 1938–40, even though the resemblances are instructive.
I have also sought to put anti-communism in perspective by sketching a
crowded canvas, one which contains not only McCarthy but also his
predecessors, instructors, and imitators—as well as the targets and victims of
these political entrepreneurs. Moreover, I have tried to depict the broader culture
of anti-communism of which anti-Communist politics was a part. The variety of
anti-communism—the investigations, the accusations, the candidacies, and the
other types of exertions—helps to convey its pervasiveness in American life.
To illustrate the origins and consequences of McCarthyism (that imprecise
blunderbuss of a word again), I have gratefully used and synthesized the
growing body of scholarship on this broad subject. I have endeavored to
examine a number of interrelated topics: the role of partisan politics, the Truman
Administration, the FBI, and numerous interest groups in elevating the
Communist issue to national prominence; the effect of that style of politics upon
some of the groups it targeted and upon American life in general; and the waning
of McCarthyism. The demands of brevity have forced me at many points to
provide only a sampling of issues and events of importance. The desire to write a
book of moderate length has also led to a compressed mode of reference notes,
which I have used primarily to indicate sources of quotations and particular data.
I hope that the bibliographical essay locates the origins of the larger interpretive
schemes which inform the book.
I have incurred many scholarly debts in writing this book. A number of fellow
historians have shared information and research nuggets with me, lent me work
in progress, and/or provided useful commentary on fragments of this work in
preliminary form. For assisting me in one way or another, I wish to thank James
T. Patterson, Alonzo L. Hamby, Thomas C. Reeves, David M. Oshinsky, James
L. Baughman, Charles H. McCormick, Justus D. Doenecke, Robert P. Newman,
and William F. Vandercook. William E. Leuchtenburg provided a valuable
critique of the original proposal for this book, numerous suggestions, and a
model in his own scholarship. Thomas Bender and David Reimers first
suggested that I write the book and later gave the manuscript two careful
readings. Colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in conversations
too casual to be documented, have tolerated my fixations and helped me to
rethink aspects of this project. I am grateful to the administration and trustees of
the University of Illinois for a sabbatical leave in the early stages of my research
and to the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and Harry S. Truman Library Institute for
research grants which expedited it.
I am also beholden to archivists at many libraries and wish to thank in
particular the staffs of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the Harry S. Truman
Library, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, and the State Historical Society of
Wisconsin. I owe thanks as well to many staff members at the University Library
of the University of Illinois at Chicago, particularly of the Interlibrary Loan
Department. The Glen Ellyn Public Library staff was also helpful.
At Oxford University Press, Nancy Lane exhibited saintlike patience and gave
good counsel during this book’s long gestation. Marion Osmun’s editing did
much to improve it.
Finally, the members of my family have endured their own bout with the
McCarthy era, albeit by distant echo. Though Duffy remained underfoot while
the book took form, Rocky and Gail have matured more rapidly and engagingly
than the work itself. My mother and my late father instilled in me a taste for
history and a distaste for many of the events chronicled in these pages. My wife,
Barbara, tolerated years of prattle about the book, the mounds of clutter it
generated, and the nomadic research junkets, all the while presiding over an
environment that made the work pleasurable. To her this book is dedicated,
though words cannot convey the requisite gratitude and love.
R.M.F.
Glen Ellyn, III.
June 1989
Contents
1. Two Eras and Some Victims,
2. Trojan Horses and Fifth Columns,
3. “What Do You Think of Female Chastity?” Disloyalty in American
Politics,
4. The Rise of the Communist Issue,
5. The Age Finds Its Name,
6. “Bitter Days”: The Heyday of Anti-Communism,
7. “In Calmer Times.…,”,
Epilogue. Where We Came Out,
Notes,
Bibliographical Essay,
Index,
NIGHTMARE IN RED