McCarthyism: Anti-Communism at Home

As the smoke and rubble of World War II began to clear, it became apparent that the world was dividing itself into two camps: Communist and non-Communist. Without doubt America and Great Britain had been grateful for having the powerful Soviet Union with its vast human resources on its side in the struggle against Hitler. Indeed, it is quite likely that had Hitler not turned his wrath against Joseph Stalin, with whom he had made a non-aggression pact in 1939, he might well have kept most of Europe outside Russia under his thumb for years or even decades. The millions of German troops occupied on the Eastern Front made the Allied invasion of Normandy possible. But once the European war was over, the specter of international Communism once again shifted from being seen as a relatively benign institution to being held as a menace to capitalist free societies.

As the Cold War progressed, and as the presence of Soviet spies operating in the West, including in the United States, became known, many Americans began to see communism is an immediate threat to their way of life. With revelations of the spying of Klaus Fuchs, who had smuggled atomic bomb secrets out of New Mexico, and as Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were revealed to be spies, a fear gripped much of America that the nation was in peril from within. Thus by 1950 the time was ripe for a demagogue to seize the issue of anti-Communism and turn it to his own ends. What resulted was one of the most disgraceful episodes in American politics, a trend which had already begun with the blacklisting of anyone in Hollywood or other areas of the country about whom it could be claimed that they had the slightest degree of sympathy for the Communist movement. (See Guilty by Suspicion with Robert De Niro, 1991.)

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, looking for an issue on which to run for reelection in 1952, hit on the idea of anti-Communism, which he certainly did not have to invent.  He launched his “project” with a speech in February, 1950, which got attention then it deserved probably because it was a slow news weekend.  But the press zeroed in on McCarthy's charges, which sounded serious (though they were fabricated) and McCarthysim was born.  Taking the already present suspicion and fear of the Soviets to new levels, McCarthy went on a frantic chase after communist conspirators which he claimed existed in virtually every corner of American life. With little or no evidence he carried out what can only be called a witch hunt, ruining lives and reputations in the process and eventually bringing himself into disgrace. 

McCarthy attacked all branches of government (except perhaps the courts) including the State Department and the U.S. Army, the latter of which proved more than a match for McCarthy’s recklessness. In a series of televised hearings, McCarthy and aide Roy Cohn (many called him McCarthy’s hatchet-man) tangled with a tough Army lawyer named Joseph Welch. Welch put Cohn on the spot over some doctored photographs, and when McCarthy tried to protect his protégé by attacking a lawyer in Welch’s law firm in a slanderous manner, Welch turned on McCarthy with a withering indictment. He accused the Senator in front of television cameras of being shameless and dishonorable, as spectators applauded.  McCarthy was eventually censured by the Senate, but not before he had done considerable damage.

The first Senator to attack McCarthyism on the floor of the Senate was Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. McCarthy, an alcoholic, died in 1957, but much of the damage done by the Senator's aides such as Roy Cohn could not be repaired.

See the HBO Film, “Citizen Roy Cohn” and Margaret Chase Smith, “Declaration of Conscience.”