Daily Notes by C. Memorandum, Stanley M. Rumbough Jr. Joseph R. Diary entries by James C. Hagerty Papers, Box 1, January 1-April 6, ]. Hagerty Papers, Box 1, May ]. Notes by L. A massive witch hunt to root out communist sympathizers ensued. The Red Scare phenomenon has occurred twice in U. S history. Government officials and citizens alike were afraid of a nuclear war with the Soviets, and the U. Their fears were not unfounded, as numerous soviet agents and sympathizers had indeed infiltrated the U.
The federal government established multiple defenses against Soviet espionage. In President Harry Truman issued Executive Order , also referred to as the Loyalty Order, which mandated that all federal employees had to be analyzed as to whether they were truly faithful to the government or not.
Federal employees were also required to take an oath of loyalty to the U. HUAC focused on locating communists within the government, sub-committees of the government, and Hollywood. The pressure to ostracize communists was so intense that film producers created a black list to prevent suspected communists from gaining employment and influence.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI was expanded to handle the increase in inquiries and trials of accused communist supporters. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, was an ardent anti-communist whose influence had perpetuated the first Red Scare. Hoover and his investigators used espionage tactics of their own to locate potential communists, including wiretaps, surveillance, and infiltrating leftist organizations.
The efficiency of the FBI was critical in many high-profile cases. Their evidence aided the prosecution of twelve potent communist leaders in ; later, in the s, evidence gathered by the FBI proved Julius and Ethel Rosenberg guilty. Senator Joseph McCarthy fed the increasing panic, using unfounded rumors and intimidation to gain notoriety as a potent government figure; with this newfound fame and influence, McCarthy denounced numerous public figures as being communist supporters.
Scholarship on the second Red Scare has emerged in waves, responding to the availability of new sources, changing historical methodologies, and shifting political contexts. Initial debates centered on assessing the causes of, or motivations behind, the anticommunist furor. Some accounts emphasized the partisan pressures from Republicans and southern Democrats on the Truman administration.
Some of these scholars wrote from a critical stance influenced by the Vietnam-era disillusionment of the New Left, while others applauded liberal anticommunism and focused on how McCarthy had discredited it. Edgar Hoover, who put citizens under illegal surveillance, leaked information to congressional conservatives, and stood by informants known to be unreliable.
That disjuncture was soon mitigated by an outpouring of studies of Communist activity at the grassroots, in diverse local contexts usually far removed from foreign affairs. The tenor of debate shifted again when the end of the Cold War made available new evidence from Soviet archives and U. That evidence indicated that scholars had underestimated the success of Soviet espionage in the United States as well as the extent of Soviet control over the American Communist Party.
Alger Hiss, contrary to what most liberals had believed, and contrary to what he maintained until his death in , was almost certainly guilty of espionage. The new evidence did not resolve scholarly differences, but it produced a more complicated, frequently less romantic view of the American Communist Party CPUSA.
The paradoxical lesson from several decades of scholarship is that the same organization that inspired democratic idealists in the pursuit of social justice also was secretive, authoritarian, and morally compromised by ties to the Stalin regime. The opening of government records also afforded a clearer view of the machinery of the second Red Scare, and that view has reinforced earlier judgements about its unjust and damaging aspects.
Scholarship since the late 20th century has tried to transcend the old debates by turning to new approaches. Comparative studies have been useful in exploring the interaction between popular and elite forces in generating and sustaining anticommunism. Michael J. These and other local- and state-level studies demonstrate that the intensity of Red Scare politics was not a simple function of the strength of the Communist threat.
Rather, Red Scares caught fire where rapid change threatened old regimes. Varying mixtures of elite and grassroots forces mobilized to defend local hierarchies, whether of class, religion, race, or gender. Attention to gender as a category of historical analysis has added another dimension to our understanding of the second Red Scare.
Domestic anticommunism was fueled by widespread anxiety about the perceived threats to American masculinity posed by totalitarianism, corporate hierarchy, and homosexuality. Congressional conservatives used charges of homosexuality—chiefly male homosexuality—in government agencies to serve their own political purposes. High-ranking women in government too were especially frequent targets of loyalty charges, as conservative anticommunists tapped popular hostility to powerful women to rally support for hunting subversives and blocking liberal policies.
A related trend in the literature situates McCarthyism within a longer anticommunist tradition. Aided by newly accessible materials such as FBI files and the unpublished records of congressional investigating committees, historians are documenting in concrete detail how the fear of communism, and the fear of punishment for association with communism, affected specific individuals, organizations, professions, social movements, public policies, and government agencies.
In a useful survey of archival sources on McCarthyism, Ellen Schrecker suggests looking for evidence created by various categories of players: inquisitors, targets, legitimizers, defenders of targets, and observers. FBI files on individuals and organizations are revealing both about the targets and the inquisitors; some frequently requested files are available online, and others can be obtained, with patience, through a Freedom of Information Act Request.
Washington, DC—area branches of the National Archives hold records of surviving case files from the federal employee loyalty program Record Group The rich papers of anticommunist investigator J.
Matthews are at Duke University. The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University. Also at Princeton are the papers of Paul Tillett Jr. Because so many groups and individuals participated in the second Red Scare in one role or another, manuscript and oral-history collections in archives all over the country hold relevant material. The Hollywood Ten documentary. Point of Order documentary with footage of Army-McCarthy hearings.
Edward R. History New York: Berg, , — Curt Gentry , J. New York: Oxford University Press, See also Kim E. The U. Supreme Court upheld a Minneapolis sedition law in Dies was not alone; in , Governor John Bricker of Ohio, who was the Republican nominee for vice president, claimed that Communists ran the whole New Deal. Storrs, Second Red Scare , 79—81, quotation , Storrs, Second Red Scare program statistics, Storrs, Second Red Scare , , — Storrs, Second Red Scare. Ralph S. Brown Jr. Storrs, Second Red Scare , — Peters v.
Hobby , U. Young , U. McElroy U. Seaton , U. In the early s, by contrast, the U. Supreme Court had helped legitimize the Red Scare. Dennis v. United States , U. Richardson U. Watkins v. See Michal R. Norton, Dee, ; and Haynes and Klehr, In Denial. For example, John Sbardellati , J. Lichtman and Ronald D. See also Don E. Carleton , Red Scare! Ellen W.
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