8.3 The Red Scare

Several shocks came close together: Soviet control of Eastern Europe, the Soviet atomic bomb and the communist victory in China (both 1949), and the Korean War (1950). Many Americans asked how the Soviets had advanced so fast, and some concluded that traitors inside the U.S. were helping them.

There was real espionage. Physicist Klaus Fuchs passed atomic secrets to the Soviets, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted in 1951 of conspiring to give atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. Soviet cables decoded by the U.S. Army's Venona project, made public in 1995, confirmed that Julius Rosenberg and others spied, though historians still debate Ethel's role and whether her death sentence was justified.

• Loyalty Review Program (1947): Truman ordered loyalty investigations of federal employees. Several million were checked, a few thousand resigned and a few hundred were fired, usually without proof of disloyalty.
• HUAC: the House Un-American Activities Committee held hearings on communists in Hollywood in 1947. The 'Hollywood Ten', writers and directors who refused to answer, went to prison, and studios blacklisted hundreds of people, refusing to hire them.
• Alger Hiss: a former State Department official accused in 1948 by ex-communist Whittaker Chambers of spying, Hiss was convicted of perjury (lying under oath) in 1950. The case made young Congressman Richard Nixon famous.
• McCarran Internal Security Act (1950): required communist organizations to register, passed over Truman's veto.
• Dennis v. United States (1951): the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of U.S. Communist Party leaders under the Smith Act for conspiring to teach the violent overthrow of the government.
• The Lavender Scare: the government also purged thousands of gay and lesbian employees, claiming they were security risks.

In February 1950 Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy claimed, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, to have a list of communists working in the State Department. He never proved his charges, but for four years he made accusations against government officials, often based on rumor or guilt by association. Fear of being labeled 'soft on communism' kept many politicians quiet.

McCarthy went too far when he attacked the U.S. Army. In the televised Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954, millions watched him bully witnesses, and Army lawyer Joseph Welch asked him whether he had no sense of decency. Journalist Edward R. Murrow had also criticized him on television. The Senate censured McCarthy in December 1954, and he lost his influence. McCarthyism now means making reckless accusations of disloyalty without evidence.

Teachers, scientists, union leaders and entertainers lost jobs, many for long-past political activity. Unions expelled communist-led locals. The scare discouraged dissent and pushed liberals toward strong anticommunism. Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1953) compared the hunt to the Salem witch trials.

Historians debate the balance. Some stress that Soviet spying was real and a serious threat. Others stress that the response, especially McCarthy's, ruined innocent lives and violated civil liberties while catching very few actual spies. Strong answers acknowledge both.