The Cold War at Home

Section 16.4

Cold War and Culture

• Fighting in Korea• “lost” of China• “Space Race”• Threat of nuclear

weapons• Spread of Communism

into Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Cuba

• Add it all up = US vs. Them

Another Red Scare?• FEDERAL EMPLOYEE

LOYALTY PROGRAM (March 1947) – Permitted the FBI (and

other agencies) to screen federal employees for political disloyalty

– Attorney General made lists of “totalitarian, fascist, or subversive organizations”

– 3,000 people fired or laid off from the gov’t

The Smith Act

• Made it illegal to teach the violent overthrow of the US gov’t–11 found guilty in

NY and imprisoned–Crippled the

Communist Party

House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) - 1938

• Created in WWII to find Nazis, re-tasked to find communists in the Red Scare

• Investigated gov’t, military, unions, schools, media, science

The Hollywood 10• HUAC accuses 10 in

Hollywood of being communists

• They claim 5th Amendment rights – you are not able to say something that will incriminate yourself

• Prison and Blacklisting

Watkins vs. United States (1957)

• Supreme Court decided witnesses before HUAC could not be forced to name radicals they knew

The Case of Oppenheimer

• Manhattan Project Planner• Head of the U.S. Atomic

Energy Commission• But…his wife and brother

were members of the communist party

• He was denied access to classified information – No evidence

Let the Spy Games Begin• Alger Hiss– Educated at Johns Hopkins

University – Important gov’t official• Worked on New Deal, helped

organize UN

– Accused by converted agent (Whittaker Chambers)• Hiss denied he knew Chambers

– Richard Nixon leads the case against him

– Convicted to 5 years in prison

The Rosenbergs • Convicted for passing atomic secrets

to the Soviets during WWII– Contact was British physicist Klaus Fuchs

• Fuchs confessed that Harry Gold was the courier he passes his information to– Gold turned in David Greenglass

• Greenglass then confessed and turned in his sister and brother-in-law Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

• Some claimed they were scapegoats; others that they got what they deserved

1947 & American Espionage

• 1947 - CIA and NSA (National Security Council) created to spy on the Soviets

• FBI created in 1935

The Media’s Response

• Wave of Anti-Red movies and books released– Like “Is This Tomorrow”,

“Red Planet Mars”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”

McCarthyism • February 1950 – Joseph

R. McCarthy from Wisconsin claimed he had a list of communist members of the gov’t– Hundreds imprisoned, 10-

12 thousand lost their jobs• Accuses those who

complain– Fear in the US– Ruthless in his tracking

down of “communists”

McCarran Act of 1950

• Forced communist political groups to register with gov’t

• Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) investigated membership– No foreign members– Citizens found could lose

citizenship• Allowed for detention of

dangerous, disloyal, or subversive persons

The Army Hearings

• Using Korean War, McCarthy goes after the army for being “infiltrated”– Televised bullying

• Eisenhower angry• McCarthy censured• End of Korean War 1953

and McCarthy’s downfall in 1954 signaled the end of the Red Scare