The Truman Doctrine had its basis in a proposal by State Department official George F. Kennan (b. 1904). The proposal stated that the most effective way to combat communism was to contain it, confronting the Soviet Union whenever and wherever it sought to expand its ideological influence. Thus the “Cold War” began in earnest, and with it, a National Security Act, passed in 1947. The act reorganized the War Department into the Department of Defense and also created the Central Intelligence Agency—perhaps the most controversial federal agency ever established. The CIA had as its mission covert intelligence gathering, which meant that the CIA sometimes functioned with neither executive nor legislative knowledge, let alone approval. In the name of fighting communism, the National Security Act had created the closest thing to a secret police (long a mainstay of oppressive eastern European regimes) this nation ever had.
Airlift to Berlin
Truman’s policy of containment prompted the United States and its western allies to take a strong stand in Germany after the Soviet Union began detaining troop trains bound for West Berlin in March 1948. (Although Berlin was deep inside the Soviet sector of occupied Germany, the city, too, was divided into zones of Allied occupation.) In response, on June 7, the western allies announced their intention to create the separate, permanent capitalist state of West Germany. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, protesting that because of its location in Soviet-controlled territory, West Berlin could not serve as the capital of West Germany.
Would the West back down? Would this be the start of World War III?
President Truman did not take armed action against the Soviets. Instead, he ordered an airlift, a spectacular chain of round-the-clock supply flights into West Berlin—272,000 flights over 321 days, carrying tons of supplies. The airlift was a political as well as logistical triumph, which caused the Soviet Union to lift the blockade. The event was also a vindication of the policy of containment, and in April 1949, it led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO—a key defensive alliance of the western nations against the communist East.
Witch Hunts
While national leaders and the military were scrambling to “contain” communism abroad, certain Americans looked homeward. Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957) was a thoroughly mediocre senator from Wisconsin whose popularity was flagging. McCarthy made a provocative speech to the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950. He held up a piece of paper, which he said was a list of 205 known communists in the State Department.
The audience was electrified. The speech was reported nationally, and the nation likewise was stunned. McCarthy suddenly became famous and, over the next four years, spearheaded a legislative crusade to root out communists in government and other positions of power. Crusade is a word McCarthy and his followers would have been comfortable with. Others called what happened a witch hunt. (And no one ever bothered actually to examine that piece of paper the senator waved in Wheeling.) McCarthy pointed fingers, raised suspicions, leveled charges. Due process of law, the rules of evidence, and the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty mattered not at all to “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy. He gained chairmanship of the powerful Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Operations and, from this post, launched investigations of the Voice of America broadcasting service and the U.S. Army Signal Corps. That McCarthy pointed a finger was quite enough to ruin a reputation and destroy a career—even if no actual evidence of subversion or disloyalty was presented. Those called to testify before the committee were asked to “name names,” expose other individuals with communist affiliations. If the witnesses refused, they were found to be in contempt of Congress and subject to imprisonment. If a witness exercised his constitutional right not to testify against himself—a right guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment-McCarthy (and much of the public, it seemed) presumed him guilty.
McCarthy was aided in his witch hunt by a slick young lawyer named Roy Cohn, who was instrumental in one of the most highly publicized phases of the witch hunt, an investigation of communist influence in the Hollywood film industry. A parade of executives, producers, directors, and movie stars appeared before the Senate committee. Some witnesses “named names.” Some refused. Those who failed to “cooperate” with the committee and those who stood accused were blacklisted—which meant that no studio would hire them.
The McCarthy witch hunts were certainly not born of fantasy. Many influential Americans did have ties to communist organizations—though most of these associations had come and gone with the 1930s, when intellectuals and liberals flocked to socialist and communist groups in order to oppose fascism, which was then menacing the world. The Cold War also spawned a veritable legion of spies, including those who communicated U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, thereby enabling the U.S.S.R. to develop an atomic bomb in 1949 and a hydrogen bomb in 1954.
McCarthy, however, made no real effort to separate fact from fantasy, and even after the Republican party captured the White House in 1952, he continued his strident attacks. In 1954, McCarthy accused the entire U.S. Army of being riddled with communists. This blow was sufficient to provoke President Eisenhower—a career army man—to encourage Congress to form a committee to investigate McCarthy’s attempts to coerce army brass into granting preferential treatment for a former aide, Private G. David Schine.
From April to June 1954, the “Army-McCarthy Hearings” were carried on an infant medium called television. The nation was riveted—and, not incidentally, sales of television sets soared. Joseph McCarthy was exposed for the reckless, self-serving demagogue that he was. Censured by action of the Senate later that year, he was overtaken by the alcoholism that had always dogged him. McCarthy died in 1957, at the age of 49.
Police Action in Korea
The Cold War was not just a contest of rattling sabers and strong language. As eastern Europe had fallen behind an Iron Curtain, so China, the world’s most populous nation, became a communist nation in 1949. China was long the subject of a struggle between communist forces (led primarily by Mao Tse-tung) and capitalist-nationalist forces (whose strongest leader was U.S. World War II ally Chiang Kai-shek). Elsewhere in Asia, communist factions were positioning themselves to take power. After World War II, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel between a Soviet occupation zone in the north and a U.S. zone in the south. In November 1947, the United Nations resolved to create a unified independent Korea, but the communists barred free elections in the north. Only in the U.S. southern zone were elections held, and on August 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea was born. In North Korea, the communists created the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in September.