Transcript The Red Scare

The Red Scare
The Second Red Scare
• Concern over communism in America rises
like a tsunami
• At first, people are concerned during WWII
about U.S.S.R.’s intentions about postwar
goals
• After the war, with politicians on both sides of
the aisle mud slinging and calling each other
communists or preferred by the Nazis, the
public begins to swell with anti-communist
feelings (Why might this be the case?)
The Second Red Scare
• In response to heavy Democratic losses in the
1946 elections, Truman institutes a loyalty
program through Executive Order 9835 (5 extra
credit points to the first two people to name two
previous Executive Orders and what they did)
• Public employees of Federal and State
governments must admit ANY association with
“totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or subversive”
groups and they would be grounds for dismissal
• 1,210 firings and 6,000 resignations result from
the loyalty program under Truman with
comparable numbers under Eisenhower
House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC)
• A House of Reps permanent committee
whose purpose is to investigate ANYTHING
they FEEL could be “un-American
propaganda”
• Hollywood was the best target (Why? How is
pop culture still the same now as it was then?)
• Foreign directors, left-leaning writers, Jewish
producers, and a general liberal lifestyle
provided ample hunting grounds for HUAC
members
The Hollywood Ten
• 8 screenwriters and 2 directors invoke their
rights under the 1st amendment refuse to
testify before the committee
• HUAC cites them for contempt
• The Hollywood Ten appeal to the Supreme
Court and lose
• They go to jail for contempt
• Why did they cite the 1st amendment and not
the 5th?
• Could this have led to a different outcome?
The McCarran Committee
• The McCarran Committee worked with HUAC to
identify “subversives” in labor unions,
diplomatic corps, professors and teachers
• The goal was not to elicit confessions, rather it
was to get them to “name names” of friends or
associates who MIGHT have Communist
connections (This is what you might call trolling
for data. Any examples of this in current times?)
• Many people asserted their rights against selfincrimination granted under the 5th amendment
The McCarran Committee
• Unfortunately, the public assumed pleading
the 5th meant that the people were guilty of
being communists
• Once your name is mentioned in this context,
you will find it difficult to hold even the most
basic job
• Even if you had no connection to
communism, your name was forever
tarnished
• People who invoked their rights were labeled
“Fifth Amendment Communists”
Subversion Trials
• 11 leaders of the American Communist Party
are convicted for advocating to violently
overthrow the government
• Alger Hiss, who had held important posts in
the State Department, is convicted for lying
about copying low level secret files
• Klaus Fuchs, a British nuclear physicist
confessed to passing atomic secrets to the
Soviets while working at Los Alamos in 1944
and 1945
Subversion Trials
• Fuchs implicate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
New York radicals who didn’t have much
ability to act on their beliefs
• The Rosenbergs are convicted and executed in
the electric chair
• Questions remain about their guilt,
specifically Ethel as she was probably charged
to pressure her husband
• Instead of naming names in for a reprieve,
they choose to go to the electric chair
Homework (Don’t worry, I hate to grade it)
1. Begin researching McCarthyism and HUAC.
2. Start with your textbook.
3. Then pick up an old Encyclopedia (those are what people
used to use to broaden their knowledge of a subject
before the internet) and look up McCarthyism, Joseph
McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow, the Hollywood Ten, etc…
4. Start writing down some key points about the big picture
behind the Red Scare and American response to it.
5. You are (soon) going to be assigned a prominent person
involved in this time period.
6. You will write an essay (3-4 pages, double spaced, 12 point
Times New Roman font) on this person. Their background
prior to the hearings, what happened to them during, and
the resulting fallout and how it impacted their life.