9. MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA TRIUMPHANT

HOWEVER ... THE COLD WAR HITS HOME

Leading this inquiry into the Communist involvement in America was the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), conducting Congressional investigations not only into the labor movement and the world of socialist intellectuals but also into the movie industry – which had produced a number of films now considered to have strongly Leftist messages.  This would come to include even the U.S. government itself, when accusations came out in 1948 that high-level officials in the Roosevelt Administration had been spying for the Soviets.

Tough labor leader, John L. Lewis, 
receiving the stare of a rich lady

HUAC hearings of those accused of having ... or having had ... 
Communist associations

This matter turned itself into extensive social paranoia on the part of Middle America, met on the other hand by the scorn and disgust against Middle America on the part of Intellectual America.  When actors began to be blacklisted and refused roles in Hollywood's world (ultimately some 300 individuals were blacklisted, including even famous actors), Hollywood protested that this kind of authoritarianism was what America itself was supposed to be combating – not embracing.

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

Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan 
testifying before HUAC – 1947

Then when senior U.S. Treasury official Harry Dexter White (who was a key figure at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference setting up the new United Nations) and Alger Hiss (a top State Department advisor at the Yalta meeting designing the post-war world) were accused of being spies for Soviet Russia, America lined itself up into two opposing camps.  Intellectuals were convinced that this was only a form of witch-hunting on the part of unenlightened individuals from the American Middle Class – simply resentful of these individuals because of their highly talented backgrounds (the highly educated White, for instance, was a product of Columbia, Stanford and Harvard University educations – and Hiss was a Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School Graduate).

U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss taking the oath before the HUAC

Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of passing information
to the Soviets

Particular resentment by intellectuals was aimed toward the freshman Congressman and HUAC member Richard Nixon, who refused to relent in his investigation of Hiss... which eventually led to the conviction and imprisonment of this polished diplomat – to the dismay of Hiss's fellow intellectuals.^[1] 

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

Also, when suspicions turned towards some of America's scientific community – whom Americans had assumed possessed the highest integrity of all people – the nation was shocked.  Intelligence work had cracked the Soviet code and discovered that nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs was a Soviet spy.  He in turn named David Greenglass and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as spying for the Soviets while helping to develop America's nuclear weapons.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after their conviction

There were others as well, accused and ultimately convicted of spying in the early 1950s, though only Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed – despite the huge international call for clemency (they claimed innocence to the end).^[2] 

McCarthy cultivates a Red Scare.  At this point a loud, accusatory voice in the U.S. Senate became even louder, as Senator Joseph McCarthy in early 1950 began whipping up American fury at this "treachery in high places."  McCarthy accused (without any specific details) the American diplomatic corps broadly, then the American civilian government in general, and then finally, by 1954, even the US military, of being loaded with Communists who were secretly subverting America.  With this, the Red Scare was whipped up so as to turn in every direction. 

   

American intellectuals fight back.  The Red Scare hit especially hard America's intellectuals – who were known to have "fancy ideas" about the need for social reform – ideas which seemed overly critical, even unpatriotic, even treasonous, to fiercely patriotic middle-class Vets.  The Vets therefore were (with McCarthy's help) easily led to believe that this class of intellectuals formed a conspiratorial group seeking to overthrow the nation and everything it stood for.  Needless to say, the intellectuals did all that they could do to fight back – though it had to be done cautiously, very cautiously.

An example of this was when in 1952 playwright Arthur Miller's close friend Elia Kazan, in a hearing before the HUAC, specifically identified eight members of his Group Theater as Communists.  Miller was so offended by this betrayal that he responded the next year by writing a play, The Crucible. Miller felt that he dared not answer the Communist witch-hunt going on around him at the time directly (that would have been dangerous), but instead, wrote about a similar betrayal when citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, turned on each other during the infamous witch trials of 1692-1693.

Elia Kazan – Broadway and Hollywood director
His testimony before the House Un-American Activities 
Committee in 1952 lost him the friendship of a number of
the intellectual community, including importantly his 
close friend Arthur Miller

In a not-too-subtle way, this challenged deeply not only the mindset of 1950s Middle America, but also even more deeply the very Puritan-Christian cultural foundations that Miller (and numerous intellectuals) were certain was behind this Middle-American paranoia.

Actually, the play would not do well when it first came out.  But in the 1960s, when America found itself moving into a whole new cultural realm, the play would finally find a very enthusiastic audience.^[3]

Go on to the next section:

Eisenhower's America