Stuff You Missed in History ClassWisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy had a lackluster career - at least, that is, until he claimed the U.S. government was riddled with conspiratorial Communists. In this episode, Sarah and guest host Ben explore the hysteria-fueled rise of Joseph McCarthy.
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I am here today with another special guest from the Howstuff Works offices. Yeah, hi, Shara, I'm Ben Bolan. I am a co host of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know and a co host of car stuff. So Ben seemed like a natural person to have during this little September series while Deblina is still out on maternity leave, and because Ben does cover two subjects, cars and conspiracies, it was sort of a toss up what I wanted you to come on the show and talk about. But I mean, conspiracies, that's really your specialty. Almost I don't know if you're gonna like anything. No, that's that's that's fine. Thanks so much. I I'm really happy to be here. And I will put my tinfoil hat on where this episode at least, because uh well, first, you know, spoiler alert. I think maybe we'll have a podcast from Scott a little later in the future well on cars and and famous figures in auto history. Yes, and we have that to look forward to. Uh So, today, let's take a look at a conspiratorial episode in US history. Today, we're going to talk about a senator called Joe McCarthy and uh, a little period called the Red Scare. You may have heard of it before. And we're just gonna sort of go over the background and the lead up to McCarthy's rise to power as you might call it in this first episode. And then because this is such a huge story, we're going to keep on going and take it into a second podcast where we cover more about McCarthy is m where we talk about the Hollywood blacklists, all of the sort of better known side of McCarthy. Um. Yeah, and this is a good story because it's got all the perils, you know, it has everything a good story usually has, except for romance. No romance as far as we know. As far as we know, Joe didn't really have that side of the story play out. But we're going to see how a conspiracy theory or a public panic can sort of get into the public consciousness and sweep the nation along, which is sort of what happened here. But to really understand how this crazy situation occurred, we do, as you say, I have to go back to the beginning, right what what were people afraid of they were afraid of communism. They were afraid of communism. I mean, that's the simplest way to put it. And American post war policy, so post World War two policy was one of containment, so trying to contain this threat of communism abroad. But by the late nineteen forties it seemed like things weren't being contained that well. The Soviets had the bomb, China had become commune list, and people were becoming concerned with that, except that they were also already concerned with communism at home. And that was a really big part of it. Yeah, because there was a genuine communist party in the United States, and it had been there since nineteen nineteen as a as a funny aside, the Red scare we're talking about today is actually the second reds second, which is so which is so strange, Um that we've had this red scare, this widespread fear of communism, not once but twice in our nation's history. Uh. There again, genuine communist party is organized in the United States. Uh. This doesn't necessarily mean, though, that every single member of this party is some sort of extremist or terror from agent right, right, a sleeper agent real life is just not that they might just have different political inclinations, but to combat this perceived threat of communism at home, the government had been investigating these groups, investigating suspicious activity for a number of years. Really, yes, and through several committees. Now we're going to talk about the House un American Activities Committee uh fairly frequently in parts of this podcast, and we'll probably just call it the h u a C. Yeah, I think that will make it easier on us, for sure. Yes, It's also important to remember that the h u a C did not come out of the blue right. It comes from instead a sort of lineage of other similar committees that preceded it and then investigated suspicious groups. Now, when we say suspicious at this point in time, this is pre nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, we're not just talking about communism. We're talking also about perhaps fascist groups. We're talking also about hate groups such as the Clue Klex Klan. And from these committees, the one directly in front of the h u a C is called the Ice Committee. It's named after the congressman who was heading this committee. The h a C becomes a permanent committee in nineteen And what's interesting about that is the sort of predecessor of the h u a C. Before it became a permanent committee, at least, it wasn't very popular with lawmakers because it was a little witch hunty, it was expensive, and folks sort of thought that once dies retired it might just go away. But uh, surprise, surprise, a representative from Mississippi named John Rankin really got into this and and work to make sure that the committee got standing status. And many lawmakers they might have not been thrilled with the idea of this unpopular committee continuing, but they felt compelled to vote for it because not voting for it could easily be perceived as doing something Unamerican. If he's out there stating that its mission is going to be to investigate communists that might be hidden in the government. Yes, absolutely, people don't want to look like they support communism. This is a situation where maybe bad policy is good politics if that makes sense. That makes sense to me. And so you have this new committee. It doesn't have a very popular past, and they've got to make a name for themselves. And so that h v a C really kicked off its investigations by focusing on Hollywood and the entertainment industry at first, and that was good publicity because it would stir up fear that Hollywood was um just about the biggest, best, highest budget propaganda machine that you could have. I mean, if communists were there, Hollywood would be it would seem like a great place to go. And Hollywood already sort of had a love hate relationship with the federal government because it was it's very easy if you want to value vote to paint Hollywood as this just then of the bauchery and sin and un American values. So this is a natural progression. It's also a very shrewd choice. It is because you know who's in Hollywood, big stars, celebrities, people who if you order them to come talk to your House committee, it's going to make the news. And that's exactly what happened. The investigations of the motion picture industry started in ninety seven, and at first they really did focus on big stars, and some of these were friendly witnesses, so they weren't so much accusing these people of anything, but they wanted to get them out there talking. And an example of this is Gary Cooper. He was asked if the Communist Party should be outlawed in the United States, and he answered essentially, I don't know. I haven't read marks, I don't really know much about communism, but from what I have heard, I don't like it. So, you know, just a good sound bite, a good thing for the newspapers to cover, Gary Cooper. Before this House committee, it was a It was a good way to get news about what they were doing out to the public and also a way to get the public your side. At this point, it seems as though the witnesses friendly. It seems as though everybody could win. The committee looks good. The celebrity might get a chance to plug their upcoming films. We'll talk more about that later, because not everybody was getting the softball question right. But of course, these investigations by these groups did turn out some evidence of real espionage. Eventually not so much Hollywood, but um, real possible spies were uncovered. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but let's say, yeah, let's discuss this and we'll we'll be able to go into a little bit of depth about why these why why we're choosing our words so carefully when we say evidence of alleged espionage. Um, it's still a matter of for debate. Our number one person would probably be considered Aldre Hiss. Now in the an admitted ex communist named Whittwaker Chambers tells the UH tells the committee that this his fellow, who works for the State Department, or used to work for the State Department, is a Communist. And what's more, he says he's a Communist spy. Now currently his at this time is not the kind of guy you would think of as a spy. He's, first off, he's from an established American family, he worked for the State Department. He's president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Piece, hardly a shifty character. He's got a lot of friends who even come forward and say, no way, there's no way that this could be true. Yeah. Absolutely, And that's a good point. Now, of course, his is not the only person that Chambers accuses. He also names people like Ward Pigman, Julian Wadley, other other people that may or may not be spies. And here's the thing with his His is actually convicted in nineteen fifty, but he's not convicted of spine no, because during his hearings in front of the h U I c he comes a us is very polished, very level headed, especially compared to Chambers, who doesn't come across that way. Even though there's still some pretty suspicious evidence that comes out in these hearings, namely the best named papers ever, the pumpkin papers, which were apparently stored by Chambers in a hollowed out pumpkin in his pumpkin patch. Um. Even though some of that seems pretty questionable for his innocence, the hearing is considered inconclusive. It's when he decides to sue Chambers for libel that he finally is convicted of something. Yes, and he is convicted of perjury. In again, this is not a conviction that the committee gives him, but this, this mark, this conviction of perjury, certainly affects the way people think about his case. And uh, you made such a good point earlier, Sarah about star power, about how using celebrities will sort of legitimize the h U A c Uh. Somebody else caught onto this very quickly, and that person was Richard Nixon. He was involved. Yes, Richard Nixon was one of the driving forces in his case. And you can make a fairly strong argument that this made him prominent enough on the national sphere. I mean, it certainly contributed to him later running for the president. Yeah, it certainly elevates his recognition nationally. So today though we were saying that this is an alleged case of spying, um, today historians still discuss whether or not his was actually a Soviet spy, and if he was, how much did he do And the reason behind that is because papers do you continue to be declassified, some suggesting pretty strongly that he may have really done a spy. And then he also has, uh Asley has a group of his story who say that, for one reason or another, he was not a spy, that he was just being caught up in the moral panic that we're going to see coming out here. Um. But the thing is, as these documents were declassified, most notably the Venona papers, they contain stuff from the KGB that we had not heard of, we being the American public. And uh, you know, I'm not being a KGB spymaster myself. And like I said, one thing either either way definitively other than there is still a surprisingly vigorous debate over which of the people Chambers accused of spine were actually spies. But you know, we can, we can debate over that all we want that. Of course, at the time, it seems like this is a fairly successful case against a possible spy. The next big case came in March one, and that when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to trial for quote, conspiracy to commit espionage and um, this is another case that is debated endlessly how much involvement they had, how much involvement, especially Ethel Rosenberg had. They were found guilty though they were sentenced to death electrocuted at Sing Sing prison on June nineteenth, nineteen fifty one. So we're going through all let's just to give you guys a good picture of what the world is like at this time. So we have Gary Cooper testifying, we have people being uh sentenced to death for for conspiracy to commit espionage, um, and a lot of folks very scared about the state of communism in the world. And as Whittaker's Chambers says, and this is something it's important remember as we go forward, there really were some communists subversives. This was not a complete lea fabricated panic. It's important to remember that there's a grain and I emphasize the grain of truth to uh, to the the story. And I think now it's time to introduce our protagonists or are is he a protagonist anti hero? Not sure? Uh? One Senator Joseph McCarthy. And around this time, around this time that we've been discussing, McCarthy is becoming America's number one communist hunter. And he was not involved in the trials that we've discussed. And uh, he did eventually model his cases on h to a C cases, but he was not a chair of the h to a c. UH. He really focused his work more on the armed forces, more in the state department. Um, not so much the celebrities and these really high profile spies. But we've got to give you some background on McCarthy too, because he really does kind of come out of nowhere almost. Yeah. It's strange because the he didn't have the best reputation as a senator before he became involved with these searches for communist abversives. No, no, not at all. I mean that's why he got involved in the first place. So McCarthy had run for Senate as a Wisconsin Republican in nineteen forty six, and he had done some work before then he had worked as a lawyer as a judge. He had served in World War Two, even though he exaggerated his war record a bit in order to win his election. He claimed he was a tailgunner. He had a totally normal war record, nothing to be concerned about, um, but pumped it up a little bit. Um. So he won his Senate seat, and then he didn't have a great reputation among his senator peers from the start. R there I read one article by Richard Cavendish and History Today who said that his colleagues considered him unscrupulous, which I think is a pretty That word might come to my later in the second episode. Um he so he wasn't too popular with them, and he only ended up getting one committee appointment. Didn't seem like a real up and coming kind of senator, right, He wasn't exactly uh someone they thought would be the president later now or even uh even get a second term attorney to be fair. Uh. This begins to change shortly after the his convention. Joseph McCarthy gives one of the most important speeches of his career. And in this speech, he's talking to a Republican women's group and wheeling West Virginia, and this is February. In this speech, which which we have a transcript of here, he begins by commemorating Abraham Lincoln and railing against the growing communist threat to the United States. Now remember this is this is happy as his case is closed and as the Rosenbergs are still uh in the process of getting sentenced to death. So this fear is here. And then in front of this crowd, he claims to have proof of depending on who you ask, he claims to have proof of either two hundred and five individuals employed at the State Department or fifty seven individuals who are either communists or sympathetic to communism. Now this speech is crazy because he literally is waiving this piece of paper at these people as he's saying he has this list. He's exposing, if you will, a conspiracy theory that there's not only just one or two communists, subversives or Soviet agents in the government, but that the State Department especially is riddled. The list a whole list worth. Now here's the thing. Later, um, this you could look at. This is one of the beginnings of the MacArthur year. Later, the number that he quotes changes when he rehashes this speech. Sometimes it's not exactly fifty seven, sometimes it's not exactly two hundred and five. And there's one other thing about this list. It doesn't actually exist. There was no list. There was a piece of paper. But that's that. Nobody even knows what was on that piece of paper. So that is our dramatic cliffhanger for today. We will pick up next time and discuss what we can about this mystery list and um, how McCarthy's career released skyrockets after this, because clearly it is a fantastic piece of stagecraft to get up talk about what everybody is most scared up and have a real list in your hand and wave it around. Who knows who could be on it. So we're gonna be talking about all of that next time, and uh, in the meantime, if you want to email us about maybe the first red Scare, other things that you'd like to talk about, slide, whatever it may be, you can email us. We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at Miston History, and we are on Facebook. And I was trying to think of an article for this, and one that seems pretty obvious for this first part is how communism works, right, so everybody could go check that one out, get a primer, figure out what people were so concerned about in the first place, and tune in next time when Ben and I pick up the story of McCarthyism. You can find that by searching the homepage or how Communism Works at www. Dot how stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com, this day, do
