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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07buRRJ6s4k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_uTbVfDtgI
“I have here in my hand a list. . .” Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism
1.What events were happening that made people fearful of communism? Why do you think people believed McCarthy?
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2. What happened during the Senate’s televised Army-McCarthy hearings?
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3. How many communists did McCarthy actually uncover within the U.S. government? ______
4. Could another McCarthy appear in U.S. politics? Why or why not? Explain in detail.
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“I have here in my hands a list…”
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin made one of the most explosive speeches in U.S. history. Addressing a Women’s Republican Club meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia, he waved some papers in the air and shouted, “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy of the State Department.”
McCarthy claimed to have uncovered a dangerous spy ring. When he was questioned by reporters in the next few days, the number of Communists on his list shifted to 207, then 57 then 81. It turned out that McCarthy had no real list. But his anti-Communist campaign escalated until it came to dominate American politics, wrecking innocent lives and fueling a period of national hysteria called the Red Scare.
Americans were ready for McCarthy’s message. The Communist-led Soviet Union had installed puppet governments in Eastern Europe, and looked like a worldwide menace. Communists had taken over China in 1949. The U.S. had lost its monopoly on atomic weapons in 1949, when the Soviets startled the world by announcing their own A-bomb. Klaus Fuchs, a German-turned-British scientist who had worked on the U.S. atom-bomb project, was discovered to have given the Soviet secrets that sped up their bomb development by at least a year.
McCarthy played on the nation’s fears to build his own political power. The smear tactics he used still bear his name: McCarthyism.
“Loyal Stooges of the Kremlin”
A Senate committee investigated McCarthy’s initial accusations in 1950. It concluded they were false, and criticized McCarthy for attacking innocent people. But McCarthy turned the Senate report to his advantage, charging that it proved that Communists had wormed their way into the U.S. government.
“The report is a green light to the Red Fifth Column [spies] in the United States. It is a signal to the traitors, Communists, and fellow travelers [non-Communists who sympathize with Communists] in our government that they need have no fear of exposure…The most loyal stooges of the Kremlin could not have done a better job of giving a clean bill of health to Stalin’s fifth column in this country.”
-Sen. Joseph McCarthy, July 1950
Communism became a national obsession. Movies, books, TV and radio shows, comic books, celebrities, and politicians all warned about the “Red menace.” Miss America contestants were asked for their views on Karl Marx, Communism’s founder. For a while, the Cincinnati Reds changed its name to the Redlegs.
A number of accused Communists were sent to prison or deported, and one author estimates that from 10,000 to 12,000 people were “blacklisted” and lost their jobs. Some committed suicide as a result.
Republicans hoped to win the White House in 1952 by accusing the Democrats of being soft on Communism. Many of them thought McCarthy, a Republican, went too far, but were afraid to speak out for fear of being branded a Red. Only a handful courageously opposed him, including Senator Margaret Smith of Maine:
“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American his reputation…I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny--fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear.”
-Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), “Declaration of Conscience,” June 1950
But many people supported McCarthy when he sought re-election to the Senate in 1952. One Wisconsin Democrat explained:
“The people are against Communism. They are afraid of Communism. They see the vast gains Communism has made since 1945. They feel frustrated because the whole situation seems completely beyond them. McCarthy offers a simple ‘cops and robbers’ explanation that they can understand.”
-Thomas Amilie, letter to historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,September 29, 1952
The support McCarthy enjoyed made him increasingly arrogant. He pressured government employees to inform on each other, in an effort to ferret out respective Communists. Some of those employees used the opportunity to get back at bosses with lies.
Many had expected McCarthy to ease up after Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President in 1952. Instead, he accused top Republicans and even the U.S. Army of being sympathetic to Communists. The Senate called special hearings to investigate his charges, which became known as the Army-McCarthy hearings. They were televised, giving most Americans their first good look at McCarthy in action. At one point he accused the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, of having an assistant with Communist ties. Welch’s reply helped people begin to see how damaging McCarthy’s actions were:
“Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad…I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for you reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”
McCarthy kept pushing Welch on the matter, and Welch replied again:
“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
-Army-McCarthy hearings, June 1954
The Bitter End
McCarthy’s attack-dog tactics did not play well with the viewing public. In January 1954 his poll ratings had been sky-high. But after the hearings—and a damaging TV exposé by journalist Edward R. Murrow of CBS—they plunged. By the end of that year, his Senate colleagues had censured him, and he retreated into alcoholism. He died in 1957.
Joseph McCarthy was not solely responsible for the post-World War II Red Scare. It had begun before he launched his personal crusade. But he was its best-known and most reckless champion. And, after all was said and done, he had never uncovered a single Communist in the U.S. government