COLD WAR

COLD WAR

The cold war was a pivotal era in the twentieth century. The term cold war itself, popularized in a 1946 speech by prime minister Winston Churchill of Britain, describes the ideological struggle between democracy and COMMUNISM that began shortly after the end of WORLD WAR II and lasted until 1991. For the foreign policy of the United States, the cold war defined the last half of the twentieth century. It was a war of ideas, of threats, and of actual fighting in the countries of Korea and Vietnam, pitting western nations against the Soviet Union and China and their Communist allies. The 1940s and 1950s saw the cold war bloom into a period of unparalleled suspicion, hostility, and persecution. Anti-Communist hysteria ran through each branch of government as the pursuit of U.S. Communists and their sympathizers consumed the energies of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH, lawmakers, and the courts. Rarely in the nation’s history have constitutional rights been so widely and systematically sacrificed.

The cold war began in the aftermath of
World War II. Although only recently allied
against Germany, the United States and the
Soviet Union saw their relationship quickly disintegrate.
The division of Europe, with the
Soviet bloc countries sealed off behind what
Churchill called the “iron curtain,” had been the
first blow. A fear that Communism would undermine the security of the United States
took hold of the nation’s leaders and citizens
alike. Measures had to be taken to safeguard the
country from infiltration, it was popularly
believed, and the government began a vigorous
campaign against Communist activity. On
March 21, 1947, President HARRY S. TRUMAN
took a significant early step toward protecting
the country from Communism by issuing an
order establishing so-called loyalty boards
within each department of the executive branch
(Exec. Order No. 9835, 3 C.F.R. 627). These
boards were designed to hear cases brought
against employees “disloyal to the Government”
and, on the evidence presented, remove disloyal
employees from federal service.
The loyalty boards deviated from the traditional
standard of presumed innocence. Instead,
the boards made their determinations based on
whether “reasonable grounds exist for belief”
that an accused employee was disloyal. Thus,
instead of having to prove BEYOND A REASONABLE
DOUBT that the accused person was guilty
of disloyalty, it was sufficient to bring enough
evidence against the accused person to damn
that person in the eyes of the board. This abridgment
of DUE PROCESS, which ended jobs and
ruined reputations, grew harsher under the
administration of President DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER.
By amending the order in 1951, Eisenhower
made it even harder for an accused
employee to prove his or her innocence (Exec.
Order No. 10,241, 16 Fed. Reg. 3690). Now, the
BURDEN OF PROOF was reduced to a showing of
“reasonable doubt as to the loyalty of [the] person,”
a standard amenable to trumped-up
charges.
The intensity of domestic fears grew in 1949,
following the announcement by President Truman
that the Soviets had developed the atomic
bomb. Only a year later, the KOREAN WAR broke
out. These events ushered in a period of bomb
shelters; air raid drills in schools; civilian anti-
Communist organizations; and suspicion of
anyone whose ideas, behavior, personal life, or
appearance suggested belief in or sympathy for
Communism. Terms like Pinko, Red, and Communist
sympathizer found their way into the
national vocabulary.
During the late 1940s, the House Un-
American Activities Committee (HUAC), created
to investigate subversives, provoked
widespread concern that government officials
had given secrets to the Soviets. Over the next decade, in a climate of general suspicion that it
helped foster, it also investigated union leaders,
academics, and, most dramatically, Hollywood.
The right to FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION meant
little to congressional investigators. HUAC subpoenaed
private citizens and confronted them
with a no-win choice: cooperate in naming
Communists or face CONTEMPT charges. Crucial
to the success of these hearings was the cooperation
of the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
(FBI), which provided the committee with
both public support and information.
At the same time, Senator JOSEPH R.
MCCARTHY conducted his own hearings
through the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy’s
charges about alleged Communist operatives in
the STATE DEPARTMENT and the Army captivated
the nation. Like HUAC activities, his
witch-hunt shattered reputations and lives, but
it backfired when he attacked the U.S. Army.
Censured by the U.S. Senate in 1954, he ultimately
gave history a word that symbolizes the
zealous disregard for fairness in accusation:
McCarthyism.
Starting in 1948, the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
prosecuted members of the American Communist
party under the SMITH ACT of 1940 (18
U.S.C.A. § 2385), a broadly written law that prohibited
advocating the violent overthrow of the
government. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld 12
convictions in Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S.
494, 71 S. Ct. 857, 95 L. Ed. 1137 (1951), and this
ruling cleared the way for 141 subsequent
indictments. Over the next several years, 29 convicted
party members were sent to jail. In time,
Congress provided prosecutors with new
ammunition through the MCCARRAN INTERNAL
SECURITY ACT of 1950 (50 U.S.C.A. § 781 et
seq.) and the Communist Control Act of 1954
(50 U.S.C.A. § 841).
Anti-Communist hysteria decreased somewhat
following the embarrassment of McCarthy.
However, the cold war continued. HUAC operated
throughout the 1960s, as did the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations; both
continued to locate the nation’s troubles in the
work of alleged subversives. And from the late
1950s to the 1960s, the FBI, under the direction
of J. EDGAR HOOVER, secretly fought Communists
and other targets through its Counterintelligence
Program (COINTELPRO).
Although the domestic waging of the cold
war had diminished by the early 1970s, the
international struggle continued. Over the next
two decades the cold war drew the United States
into military involvement in Asia, Africa, and
Central America. After Vietnam, the United
States fought communism by supporting anticommunist
factions in Angola, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Afghanistan. During
the 1980s, the United States shifted to an economic
strategy, hoping to bankrupt the Soviet
Union through an arms race of unprecedented
scale. The cold war effectively ended with the
breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
FURTHER READINGS
Craven, John Pina. 2001. The Silent War. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Hakim, Joy. 1995. All the People: A History of Us. New York:
Oxford Univ. Press.
laFeber, Walter. 2004. America, Russia, and the Cold War,
1945–2002. Updated 9th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Levering, Ralph B. 1982. The Cold War: 1945–1972. Wheeling,
Ill.: Harlan Davidson.
Mendelsohn, Jack. 1999.“History and Evaluation of the Role
of Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War.” Case Western
Reserve Journal of International Law 31 (mid-summer).
Neusner, Jacob and Noam M. 1995. The Price of Excellence:
Universities in Conflict during the Cold War Era. New
York: Continuum.
Rosenn, Max. 1995. “Presumed Guilty.” University of Pittsburgh
Law Review (spring).
Tatum, Dale C. 2002. Who Influenced Whom?: Lessons from
the Cold War. Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America.
Wenger, Andreas, and Doron Zimmermann. 2003. International
Relations: From the Cold War to the Globalized
World. Boulder, Colo.: L. Rienner.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Communism “House Un-American Activities Committee”
(In Focus); Hiss, Alger; Nixon, Richard Milhous; Rosenbergs
Trial.