by Miles H. Hodges – The Covenant Nation

The post-war fear of a rising Communism

At the end of World War Two in 1945, Old Europe was devastated … with Stalin’s Soviet Russia in military occupation of the eastern half of Europe – and most unwilling to go home. Russia had been constantly assaulted from the West ... by Napoleon and his French troops in 1812, by the Germans and Austrians in 1914, and most recently by Hitler’s Nazi troops in 1941.  The Stalin’s Russians fully intended, at all costs, to hold on to all this East European buffer territory that their troops occupied in order to protecting themselves from another such assault from the West.  Indeed, Stalin also intended to extend that Russian realm of protection if possible all the way to the Atlantic across Western Europe ... through the militancy of the large Communist parties in the West, huge labor-based organizations (coupled with numerous “progressive” intellectuals) that were quite willing to place themselves under Stalin’s command.

At the same time, the Americans, who had just gone through this horrible war in Europe (and in the Pacific) were most insistent about going home at war’s end … though President Truman did everything possible to keep enough American power employed in the western half of Europe to keep it from falling into Stalin’s Soviet Russian expansionist hands.  America was the sole country to possess an atomic bomb … and Truman's well-demonstrated readiness to use that bomb if seriously challenged was a very effective deterrent to Soviet ambitions in the West.  But Marshall Aid moneys in helping rebuild West Europe's economies … and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 all seemed to stalemate the East-West conflict.

But that fear extended inward as well

But by 1950 things seemed to be unsticking … stirring a deeper alarm back in America about the way the Cold War was developing. Several things that hit the American political scene at about the same time shook America deeply.

First was the claim of the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that a number of highly-placed (and also highly educated) civil servants had been offering their services as spies to Stalin. This revelation was shocking to loyal Vets.  But to make matters worse, the American intellectual community tended to side with the accused against HUAC’s “horribly misguided” efforts to destroy these fine gentlemen (holding some of America’s highest academic and professional credentials).  Particularly galling to them was the persistence of Congressman Richard Nixon in his efforts to uncover such spying in high places ... putting Nixon forever on the intellectuals’ list of public enemies they were resolved to bring down at their earliest opportunity (it was too dangerous at the [1]moment to attempt this countering move).

Then there was the matter of the sudden and most unexpected attack of Communist North Korea on “democratic” South Korea (the latter having actually had UN-authorized elections to pick their leadership) in mid-1950. Truman was quick to move American troops in occupation in Japan to South Korea ... and then call other Americans to service to drive the troops not only of a Communist North Korea out of the South ... but also to fight off masses of troops of a newly Communist China that had joined the battle against American efforts to free Korea of this horrible scourge.  This stiff opposition in Korea easily identified itself to Americans as a grand Communist example of the intent of Russia, its ally North Korea, and now also Communist China to destroy the world’s democracies.  America was now fully awake and fully involved in a most vicious Cold War fought against expansionist Communism.

To make matters even tougher for Americans, the recent revelation that Soviet Russia was now also in possession of nuclear weapons (Americans thus no longer had a monopoly in the ownership of this most terrifying weapon) was shocking to the core. And most shocking was the revelation that some members of America’s own scientific community had actually helped in developing Soviet atomic capabilities.[2]  This of course made them wonder how extensive this kind of treason extended through the ranks of America’s most respected intellectual community.  Bit by bit political paranoia was setting in deeply within Vet America.

Tragically, a politically slimy US Senator McCarthy exploited this paranoia fully to further his own flagging political importance ... to the point that during the first half of the 1950s he seemed to have a very nervous America under his flamboyant political grip.  He played his political hand by pushing the assumption that he alone knew the deep extent of the Communist intrusion into the higher ranks of American society ... and he alone would bring such traitors to exposure and ultimate destruction.  Very unfortunately, the Vets were willing to believe him ... and support him, even if only from a cautious distance.

Senator Joe McCarthy affirming the vast invasion of Communism into American society

Actually, McCarthy had no such information, and made up what he could by way of details when challenged, although all the way up until 1954 no one was really willing to challenge him seriously ... for he was able to make it appear that any such challenger was actually acting as a hated Communist agent.  Even President Eisenhower refused to go after him.

The political-social-cultural effect of such Cold-War hysteria

Sadly, all of this political dynamic would come to have deeply damaging effect on America socially and culturally.  Most obviously at this point it would cultivate a deep distrust and disrespect between intellectual America and Vet America ... one that would never be healed.  During the 1950s the bitter standoff would favor the Vets.  But with the coming of the 1960s, intellectual America would be able to reassert its leading role in American society ... and actually begin the undercutting of Vet America ... or “Middle America” as I like to term that particular political culture.  And it would always be done in the name of “progress” (or as Obama would eventually term it, simply “Change).  The goal was to free up America from such American “fascism” as Vet America exemplified.

For instance, the play The Crucible, written by a very bitter playwright Arthur Miller[3] was a not-too-subtle attack on Vet or Middle America. ... who dredged up an historical incident occurring in early colonial America (back in the 1690s) when “Christian” or Puritan America went on a crusade to rid the Massachusetts colony of numerous individuals accused of practicing witchcraft.  It was a swing against the perceived cruelty of the anti-Communist hysteria of Miller’s own days ... disguising its deep social commentary by focusing on the similar hysteria of this most-unfortunate event in early America. 

Not surprisingly the play did not do well in the 1950s.  But when the 1960s rolled around, the play was brought back out for performance ... and was so well received by a fast-changing America that the play itself soon became required reading in nearly all American high school literature classes.  It was a sign of how deeply political fortunes were changing as the 1950s moved into the 1960s.

Miles Hodges is a writer, historian and political analyst who explores the question of why societies behave as they do ... especially in this matter of their rise and fall.