Ideological paranoia at home in America

West Europe's position

The West's Christian identity

A tragic split between Middle America
        and Intellectualist America

The textual material on page below is drawn directly from my work A Moral History of Western Society © 2024, Volume Two, pages 254-265.

What was happening in the European world in the latter part of the 1940s was that the military reality of a Europe divided into sectors of military occupation and control was slowly turning itself into a political reality of two distinct ideas of how a post-war world should eventually take shape.  And this in turn was becoming increasingly frustrating for all parties involved … even bitter for those having the chief responsibilities for directing the development of this postwar world – Soviet Russia in the East and America in the West. This East-West division was not primarily military in nature the way things had developed in the buildup to World War Two … although there were strong military components to this developing East-West rivalry.  It was a division that was most importantly political, economic, social and especially ideological.  But it was warlike in the attitudes by which the major players in this East-West game began to see and respond to each other.  Thus it was indeed a "Cold War." "Democracy" the central issue Interestingly, both sides in this contest saw themselves as defending some version of "democracy."  But the problem was that one side (America and its Western Allies) saw democracy as government by the people.  The other side (Soviet Russia and its People's Republics) saw democracy as government for the people.   Communism's "government for the people."  As hard as it is to believe that the paranoid and murderous Stalin was in any way interested in democracy, he truly thought that he somehow was carrying on Lenin's Communist legacy.  Lenin of course, back in the beginning of the 1920s – just after having fought a bitter battle with forces representing an ancient Czarist political universe and a small but rising middle class – knew that in attempting to construct a workers' democracy he was up against a Russia that had virtually no real experience in self-government.  Russia was going to need some guidance from socially and historically enlightened leadership before the Russian people would be able to take on the incredibly difficult challenge of self-government.  Russia needed to experience deep change … to move in a new direction, a direction that supposedly only a handful of Marxist-trained leaders had the background and perspective to understand.  Thus Russia would have to be in their hands … until such time that the State could finally wither away and leave a classless society to govern itself.  But that was going to take some real doing … something that was also going to take some time … lots of time.1 Stalinist "democracy."  Then Lenin's early death in 1924 threw newly established Soviet Russia into a dispute as to the direction their Communist – or at least Socialist – Revolution should then take them.  Trotsky wanted to use Russian developments only as a springboard to greater revolution undertaken in the rest of Europe lying to the west.  Stalin opposed him and his supporters … because Stalin was personally a strong Russian nationalist – interested really only in protecting the political achievements recently secured in Russia.  He wanted to build up Russian Socialism … not spend valuable Soviet Russian assets outside the country.  As we have already seen, this debate grew brutal. After the Second World War, with Stalin and his army in command of huge sections of Europe, his understanding of democracy was deeply immersed in that same spirit of Russian nationalism – protecting and directing social "revolution" from the Kremlin headquarters in Moscow.  Stalin was willing to support "proletarian democracy" in other countries … but only to the extent that it deepened that sense of Soviet Russian protection and control. Was there anything unusual about those instincts?  Not really.  Politicians played that same game everywhere … at least to the extent that their actual power base allowed them to do so. American "democracy" becomes its own form of nationalism.  America was an English-speaking nation … though in general it was not pushy about extending the English-speaking world.  At home, immigrants coming to America took up the English language … though simply because it made life in America easier to work with.  There was no absolute insistence on the matter from America itself. Certainly being "White" mattered … at least to the multitudes of descendants of the Africans brought earlier to America as slaves.  But beyond that, immigrants to America quickly found their way to their own White world.   For a very long time Americans were deeply involved in spreading their unique society across the North American continent … utilizing the same nationalist energies stirring across the world among the world's commoner classes.  Indians and Mexicans felt the enormous pressure of just such an American nationalist urge.  So that's how America did the nationalist "thing" pretty much up until the 20th century. It was Wilson who then made "democracy" – such as Americans understood the term – as the Absolute on which he intended to build a rising American national spirit … as America entered the larger world stage.  Although such nationalism was built on no restrictive linguistic or religious foundations, it certainly laid down a strong social spirit on "Democratic" political-ideological lines … similar to the way the Soviets did so along "Communist" political-ideological lines.  Expanding globally American-style constitutional democracy would be the very ideal that would underpin the American urge to international involvement. America's Anti-Authoritarian Democracy Actually, with the end of the Great War in 1918, America became quite isolationist … except in instances of upper-level diplomatic efforts to reduce the ability of nations to go to war. But with the attack of Japan on Pearl Harbor in 1941 – and Hitler's declaration of war against America three days later – all that changed … deeply.  Authoritarian Nazism or Fascism was now easily defined as the great evil that America must help the other "democratic" nations fight against.  Such symbols of evil gave great moral clarity to the effort patriotic Americans were willing to bring to the war. But that "democratic" alliance included Stalin.  Thus, with the help of Roosevelt, the authoritarian character of Stalin's rule was quietly overlooked in the thinking of Americans.  Stalin was simply the leader of one of our key allies, the Russians, in this war against authoritarian Germany.   But that thinking would run into deep trouble after the war … not immediately, but step by step.  Confusion thus accompanied this shift.  Clearly now, Stalin was simply just another authoritarian dictator … of the same order of Hitler and Mussolini.  How had they not seen this before? Political ideology becomes the new game Thus it was that with the development of the Cold War, the world was actually dealing with a new version of the social spirit … built on ideological rather than linguistic or religious foundations, ideologies sponsored by one or the other of the world's two new superpowers, America and Soviet Russia. How dangerous this actually was for the world was never fully appreciated by the new superpowers themselves.  Ideology knows no geographic bounds.  Thus the game could in fact find itself played out not just in this area or that … but across the entire globe.   Indeed, as the Cold War developed, it seemed that there was no event, large or small, that did not invite the superpowers to calculate for themselves the degree of win or loss such events meant for each of them. And the words "Communism," (and for the Americans, also "Socialism"), "Capitalism," "Democracy," "Iron Curtain," "Free-World," etc. took on highly emotional content … so much so that just as nations fought each other in World War One just because their enemies spoke a different language, so in the Cold War they fought each other because either "Communism" or "Free World Democracy" was to gain or lose position with every rising development.   Thus whether Vietnamese independence from France should be supported or opposed by America, ultimately depended on which of the ideologies it would choose to identify itself by.  Never mind that the Communist Vietnamese were not close associates with the Communist Chinese.  In fact the Vietnamese disliked rather deeply their Communist neighbors to the North.   And the fact that Communist China was not taking orders from Communist Russia never factored into the American thinking or understanding of Chinese developments.  To Americans, all Communists are evil … and thus must be opposed by the Democratic Free World.  On the other hand, according to Soviet thinking … all Capitalists are evil … and must be opposed by the oppressed working classes (the Socialist-Communists) of the world.  Thus the only thing that mattered to the superpowers was which label would this or that government take on for itself … or which side in this great ideological battle was to benefit from this or that development.  Everything depended on that single factor. 1Clearly Lenin did not hold the utopian or "Humanist" view of Communism's founder Karl Marx that democracy was instinctive to all people – and that the only barrier to such democracy was the authoritarian rule of a self-interested governing class … and that once that class was removed from power, the natural human instinct for democracy would automatically come into play.  Obviously, Marx ignored the strongly contradicting example of the French Revolution, a tragic event that had occurred only a mere a half-century earlier than his famous Communist Manifesto.  Lenin was not so easily blinded by such Humanism … which was rampant among intellectuals of those days (and in many cases since then). IDEOLOGICAL PARANOIA AT HOME IN AMERICA Making the situation even more difficult to deal with, there were a number of Americans who had gone deeply into some kind of working relationship with the ally Stalin during the war.  That now as the Cold War developed raised questions as to where they presently stood in this matter of finding the American nation in deep opposition to everything that Stalin represented.  Could these individuals be trusted … intellectuals mostly, found in both government service and the cultural services (the world of literature and the movie industry principally)? Thus it was that Congress's House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC … actually founded just before the war) was called on by 1947 to begin looking into the matter – cheering Middle Americans … but alarming much of the world of intellectualism.  Brought under critical inspection was the Hollywood filming industry … where writers were known to have strong Leftist sympathies.  Then the following year (1948), as the Cold War intensified, HUAC brought charges of Communist sympathies (even spying for Stalin) against a number of Roosevelt's wartime advisors (the "Ware Group"), ultimately including Alger Hiss … accused by Time magazine writer-editor Whittaker Chambers, who admitted that he himself had once been a Communist and a Soviet spy.  He offered personal proof of Hiss's similar allegiance.  However … the American intellectual community strongly defended Hiss as being falsely accused by lowbrow "anti-Communist" rabble rousers – and in particular by Congressman Richard Nixon, who was leading the Hiss investigation.2 Thus America was dividing socially.  And it would only get worse in the years ahead. 2The rising American intellectualist Left would never forgive Nixon … and do everything possible to bring him down when he actually became U.S. President. The sentiment is growing that Communism is threatening to do in the American nation "from within." Special targets of American concern are certain Hollywood personalities with "Leftist" philosophies and even members of the U.S. State Department Republican members of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) - 1948 HUAC hearings of those accused of having ... or having had ... Communist associations A startling accusation was that Hollywood was full of Reds Hollywood stars (Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in the lead) descend on the Capitol to lodge their note of protest against HUAC's proceedings - 1947 The accusation that the U.S. State Department purposely "lost" China to the Communists Patrick Hurley in China with Communist leaders Zhou Enlai (left) and Mao Zedong (center) - 1945 National Archives NA-208-PU-207W-2 Hurley was commissioned to get the Communist leaders together with the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek to form a Chinese post-war coalition government.  But this effort failed as Hurley threw his support to Chiang.  The foreign service officers working with him refused to go along with this.  He later accused the State Department of being pro-Communist and having 'lost' China to Communism. The idea of the State Department having "lost China to Communism" was coupled with an accusation that the State Department had also "sold out East Europe" to Stalin U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss taking the oath before the HUAC Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of passing information to the Soviets Richard Nixon (left), who headed up the HUAC investigation of Alger Hiss (right) as a Soviet agent planted high within the American foreign policy-making machine WEST EUROPE'S POSITION Although most of West Europe would place its strategic military defenses in the hands of NATO, it would never become quite as "anti-Communist" as America.  Suspicious of Stalin, yes.  But fervently anti-Communist, no … something that Americans would always have a hard time understanding. Indeed, in both France and Italy, Communist Parties operated freely … and widely, being the largest and best organized of those country's parliamentary parties – even occupying typically a third of the seats of their multi-party parliaments.  And first-cousin Socialist parties (typically "Social Democrats" … but in Britain the "Labor Party") operated widely across West Europe … not infrequently the actual parties in power there.  And that idea would not change substantially over the years. Nonetheless, in the matter of nation defense, American-supported (and led) NATO was a very useful institution for West Europeans.  Simply, it allowed European members to focus postwar development on rebuilding their destroyed economic and social infrastructure rather than spending huge amounts of money on national defense … which at this point they felt that there was no way they could succeed anyway in going it alone on their own national basis against the Stalinist power buildup in the East.  Their national defense was now an international matter (thus NATO) … no longer just a national matter. Indeed, in West Europe, nationalist impulses were quieted down deeply … partly out of exhaustion and partly out of the understanding at this point that their European world worked best when they all cooperated, rather than opposed each other.  And the Germans were more than just supportive of the idea … because they had a huge national guilt to get past – and a fear of what would happen if they got caught up in some kind of German "thing" again. West European internationalism:  The ECSC Thus it was that in 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman put forward the idea (the Schuman Plan) of uniting the strategic national industries of coal and steel production (absolutely vital for military purposes) … by removing all trade restrictions – and even placing such operations under some kind of international authority.  Thus it was that the following year (1951), Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the Treaty of Paris, setting up the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), these vital industries now operating under the command of a High Authority, directed by both a Common Assembly and Special Council of member nations, and monitored by a Court of Justice. A very strong European unity movement was now up and running … and would merely expand over the years ahead. Konrad Adenauer - German Chancellor: 1949-1963 Jean Monnet  Robert Schuman The signing of the Treaty of Paris (April 18, 1951) by representatives of France, Italy, West Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium The British continue down their own path Churchill is back in power as British Prime Minister (1951-1955) 25-year old Elizabeth's coronation day in London - 1953 THE WEST'S CHRISTIAN IDENTITY Christianity's decline in Europe Where did all of this leave the deeper Christian identity that – for centuries – had been so crucial to the idea of Western society?  Nationalism certainly had succeeded in becoming itself something of a religion … that masses of people were willing to live and die for.  Where did such nationalism leave a Westerner's Christian identity … and all the moral-spiritual aspects that went with it?  Or ... then if nationalism was being replaced by a quite pragmatic sense of multi-nationalism, the same question still remains.  What was it exactly that Westerners were to understand as their ultimate call in life?  What was it that now constituted their foundational cosmology (view or understanding of all of life)? Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Westerners still identified themselves as "Christian."  But what that actually meant in their daily lives varied widely across the Christian world. For the Germans, who had linked their Christian identities with Hitler's program … the post-war period was one of deep shame.  But conservative Catholics in Italy also had little to be proud of. Indeed it was very hard for all Europeans – Christians as well as Jews – to link the idea of the full sovereignty of God with the horrors of the Holocaust and the widespread destruction that took place across Europe.  Why hadn't God intervened?  Why did he allow this to happen?  Was, in fact, God really that crucial to the way things went here on earth? Likewise, the gradual, then increasingly rapid, economic climb of Western Europe back to some kind of prosperity seemed to be more a matter of human planning than anything God was involved with. True, self-identified Christian Democrats (or some version of such a political party) were deeply involved widely across Europe in these new political dynamics – alongside the agnostic or atheistic Social Democrats.  But their leadership did not seem to serve to bring the common people back to some kind of strongly Christian personal and social life.  Even Easter and Christmas celebrations seemed to be a declining matter of interest to an increasing number of Europeans.  Clearly, by the 1950s, Christianity appeared to be on a serious decline ... in both Catholic and Protestant Europe – but especially in the latter. Of course in Eastern Europe … this was not even a factor … where the Communist Party had put itself in the role as some kind of political priesthood serving Marx's religious Secularism.  True, underneath it all were many dedicated Christians … waiting for an opportunity to get things back to their pre-Soviet days.  And in time they would have just that opportunity.  But now was not the time. Christianity running strong in America However in America, the "Christian" situation there seemed to be going in a direction opposite the one going on in Europe.  Christianity seemed to be ever stronger than it was during the pre-war period.   Perhaps this was because the war's impact on American society was very different than the impact it had on European society.  No towns or cities were bombed.  No huge elements of the population were carted off to slave camps.  Indeed, the war itself had prospered America greatly, putting industrial America not only back on its feet … but way ahead of the rest of the world in its magnificence.  Indeed, by 1950, America alone seemed to be producing around 50% of the world's industrial capacity. Certainly human hands had built up this grand industrial society.  Yes, capitalists and government officials had played important roles in all this development.   But in the American heart, it was easy to see God's favor in all of this.  In putting on those uniforms and – at great personal risk – taking on those fascist powers Japan, Germany, and Italy, they had trusted God greatly to protect them … or at least guide them in this dangerous enterprise.  And it was easy to see in the victory that came to them in this war the very hand of God as provider and protector. Thus indeed, "Middle Americans" were outstandingly loyal in their Christian devotion – tending to be very regular Sunday Church goers … and quite observant of what were understood as Christian social rules and responsibilities. Truman The fact that American leadership was strongly Christian – in quite different ways – was of major importance in this Christian character of Middle America.  President Truman on several occasions called for a National Day of Prayer … asking the nation to call on God to help the nation know what to do in the face of the many challenges confronting it.  True, he was not a very active church-going Baptist while in the White House … but explained this as simply having no time to get away from the job (he was indeed truly a workaholic!).  But his faith was sincere and not just public performance … for like Lincoln, Washington and others before him, he understood the importance of looking to God for his lead in matters.   He truly believed that if the world would simply live by Jesus's Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 7, 8 and 9) peace would prevail across the world. But this only brought on public contempt of more sophisticated souls who saw in his Biblical comments only foolish ignorance … especially in his hope that living according to Biblical principles would bring the world a better peace. But American Christianity itself was not a single phenomenon.  Most sadly, a terrible split would occur between Truman and his long-time Baptist pastor Edward Pruden … when Truman appointed General Mark Clark as his personal representative to the Vatican.  While this pleased America's twenty-five million Catholics immensely, it upset greatly many Protestant conservatives who were deeply suspicious of any Catholic pro-Vatican "popery." The Graham crusades Helping keep the Christian spirit alive in Middle America was the very young traveling evangelist Billy Graham.  He had started out with an amazing revival – or crusade as he called it – in 1949 in Los Angeles which over an eight-week period had drawn over 350 thousand people.  The next year he covered the country with his crusades, from Boston, to Columbia (South Carolina), to Portland, to Atlanta, to other points in between.  By the next year, the Graham name was well-known across the country, and his crusades were so fully attended that often masses of people had to be turned away when the stadiums had become completely filled. Vereide's prayer breakfast movement.  Another person to have a huge impact in developing the Christian character of America … especially among its corporate and political leaders was the Norwegian-born Methodist minister Abraham Vereide.  Actually he got his start during a visit to San Francisco – caught up in a very violent longshoremen's strike in 1934.  There he found himself leading dispirited businessmen together (capitalists were in great political-social disfavor at the time!) in extensive prayer – for the local community, the nation and the world.  Upon his return to Seattle he decided to turn such an event into a regular occurrence, "prayer breakfasts" … designed to keep up the spirits of wearied business executives.  These proved to be so successful that soon local politicians found themselves joining these breakfasts. Then the war itself served to greatly increase the sense of need of these kinds of prayer movements, and Vereide's prayer breakfasts spread widely across America, from city to city … eventually becoming a regular part of the nation's religious and political scene. Graham and Vereide working together.  In early 1952 Graham found himself in Washington, conducting another one of his crusades … in which about a third of the senators and a good number of congressmen – and another half-million people were in attendance (along with millions more listening on the radio).  While there, he found himself also working closely with Vereide in helping various political leaders focus on key issues needing a strong Christian touch. This then inspired Congress to come up with the idea of a National Day of Prayer as an official act … to which Truman – who generally did not like public displays of religiosity – ultimately gave his approval.  And thus began the annual National Day of Prayer – eventually scheduled for the first Thursday in May. And that same year Vereide was able to get Congress to support the idea of a National Prayer Breakfast, to be held the following February (1953) in the nation's capital.  And so successful was that event that it has been held annually ever since. Eisenhower At this point (the beginning of 1953) Eisenhower was on the scene as the American president.  And he was very supportive of these Christian-based events and the key role that they were designed to play in the shaping of the American nation.  Indeed, it would be during his presidency that the words "under God" would be added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and "In God We Trust" would be confirmed as the nation's motto in 1956.   Christian Evangelist Billy Graham One of Graham's many Christian crusades He could even bring out multitudes in London – April 5, 1954 Vereide (left) and Eisenhower at the 1953 National Prayer Breakfast Eisenhower leading the 1956 National Prayer Breakfast A TRAGIC SPLIT BETWEEN MIDDLE AMERICA AND INTELLECTUALIST AMERICA 1984 Meanwhile the Cold War paranoia was merely building in America during this time.  Not helping matters much was the popularity of a book, entitled simply 1984, written by British author George Orwell. The book portrayed a coming world (the year 1984 … some mere 35 years in the future) in which the move towards increasing authoritarianism would ultimately produce full totalitarianism under "Big Brother." This was a monstrous individual who had at that point completely taken over the thoughts and actions of what was now basically a global slave society, one caught in perpetual war with itself. Certainly there were already plenty of examples of how that worked.  But to think that this was an inevitable development for everyone frightened enormously the readers (heavily American). McCarthyism In fact, that same fear was doing some of the work in driving forward in that very direction even America itself.  Cashing in on this fear was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, who was looking to increase his importance … when in 1950 he took up the cause of uncovering a supposedly wide realm of pro-Communist Americans plotting to overturn their own nation.   Quickly his behavior drew forward great public interest … which he played to the fullest.  He claimed to have a huge list of such traitors … though the names were never actually revealed – except that he destroyed the political career of at least one fellow senator with very false accusations.  He would even go forward to make the bold claim that the U.S. military command structure itself was filled with individuals "soft on Communism."  Tragically, so fearful of this man and his threats was American officialdom, that little was done to stop him … not for several years anyway.  McCarthy consulting with two of his aides More spying in high places Not helping the situation any was the discovery of what would come eventually to be termed the "Cambridge Five" … the discovery that a number of British Cambridge University students had sold their souls to Communism in the 1930s … and had been recruited by Soviet agents to spy on their own government in which they served as intelligence agents.  The uncovering of this plot began in 1951 when Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess were discovered sending intelligence information to the Soviets (there would be others, such as Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt and then John Cairncross discovered in future years). Around the same time (1950-1951) – compliments of the Venona Project which had cracked the Soviet code and thus was able to expose spying going on in the West – a German working in the American nuclear program, Klaus Fuchs, was caught … and then confessed.  But in doing so, he also implicated Harry Gold – which then led to the discovery of the role of David Greenglass in the spying … and then ultimately Greenglass's sister Ethel Rosenberg and her husband Julius.  These, and then others as well, were found to have been passing on to the Soviets all sorts of nuclear secrets … although only Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – despite their claims of being innocent3 – were executed for their crimes – despite a huge international cry for clemency. Ultimately, all of this merely confirmed the suspicions of Middle American Vets about how easily intellectuals were seduced and brought into service by Communism's supposed high Idealism.  This then deepened even further a social-cultural divide between those two key American groups ... the Middle-American Vets and much of America's intellectual community. 3With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it was finally revealed that the Rosenbergs (or at least Julius Rosenberg) had indeed been Soviet spies. Part of the Cambridge Five: Maclean, Burgess, Philby Klaus Fuchs Ethel and Julius Rosenberg The Intellectualist counterstroke:  The Crucible  The intellectuals, of course, fought back – but very carefully, for they were still in a minority position politically as well as socially. A major intellectualist counterstroke was issued by the playwright Arthur Miller, extremely upset that a close friend of his, Elia Kazan, had given HUAC the names of eight members of his Theater Group who were fellow Communists.  To Miller, this all smacked of a witch hunt … and wrote about just such a horrible event that had taken place in Puritan America 2½ centuries earlier (the late 1600s) in Salem, Massachusetts … bringing this long-forgotten event back into remembrance with his 1953 play, The Crucible. Interestingly, the play did not do particularly well in the 1950s.  But it would be brought back into action in the 1960s … and become a major weapon of Liberal America against a still very traditionalist Middle America – ultimately passed on as required reading to rising American generations (the Boomers, Gen-Xers, Millennials, and now the Gen-Z) in order to reshape their perception (very negatively) of "Puritanical" Middle America itself.  Thus ultimately, intellectualist America would win big in its battle with Middle America.  Elia Kazan Arthur Miller McCarthy finally brought down Tragically, it would take until mid-1954 that the assault on Intellectualist America by McCarthy could be brought to a halt.  By that time, McCarthy was losing face, when CBS news host Edward R. Murrow concluded a series of his, See It Now, with a warning to America of the dangers to American freedom posed by the type of behavior that McCarthy exemplified. Then in June, during the well-televised Army-McCarthy hearings, army lawyer Joseph Welch actually went on the counter-attack, accusing a stunned McCarthy of doctoring his evidence and just in general acting the part of a charlatan.  This then emboldened fellow senators to make their move, conducting a hearing that summer concerning McCarthy's senatorial behavior … and voting a rare act of censure that December.  McCarthy would nonetheless continue to serve – in political isolation – then die an alcoholic's death in 1957. The bringing down of McCarthy would ease greatly the Red Scare inflicting America … at least that part concerning Communism in America itself.  But it would nonetheless still leave a bitterness between the frightened Middle Americans that had been supportive of McCarthy's Red Scare … and the angry intellectuals who had been the target of that most unfortunate political period.  This would be a bitterness that would not really disappear. Murrow about to begin his program "See It Now" Joseph Welch (left) about to launch a counter-attack against McCarthy (right) Welch to McCarthy:  "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" Go on to the next section:  The Cold War Spreads   Miles H. Hodges