USA History : October 2015

McCarthy's Life

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. He became chair of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations.
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Synopsis

Joseph McCarthy was born November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1946 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 1950 he publicly charged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. Reelected in 1952, he became chair of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations, and for the next two years he investigated various government departments and questioned innumerable witnesses.

Early Years

Joseph McCarthy was born on November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. After high school, McCarthy attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he was elected president of his law school class. A few years after earning his law degree in 1935, McCarthy ran for the judgeship in Wisconsin’s Tenth Judicial Circuit, a race he worked at relentlessly and won, becoming Wisconsin’s youngest circuit judge ever elected.

McCarthy took a leave of absence in July 1942 and entered WWII as a first lieutenant in the Marines. He was still on active duty when he embarked upon his next political campaign: for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate. He was defeated but soon began planning for the 1946 Senate race.

U.S. Senate

In 1946, McCarthy won his race and entered the U.S. Senate as the youngest member of the Senate. As a senator, McCarthy leaned toward conservatism and generally flew under the radar, working on such issues as housing legislation and sugar rationing. All that would change in 1950, when it became suspected that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government in the wake of high-profile espionage trials.

Taking the lead on the issue, McCarthy claimed that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, and soon after he claimed to have the names of 57 State Department communists. As he released his charges, he called for a wide-reaching investigation that would lead to what was termed the “red scare.”

Red Scare

McCarthy was reelected in 1952 and became chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Government Operations, where he occupied the spotlight for two years with his anti-communist investigations and questioning of suspected officials. McCarthy’s charges led to testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, but he was unable to substantiate any of his claims against a single member of any government department.

Despite this setback, McCarthy’s popularity nevertheless continued to rise, as his claims had struck a nerve with an American public tired of the Korean War and concerned with communist activity in China and Eastern Europe. Undaunted by his testimonial shortcomings, McCarthy ratcheted up the rhetoric, going on a colorful anticommunist “crusade” through which he cast himself as an unrelenting patriot and protector of the American ideal. On the other side of the argument, his detractors claimed McCarthy was on a witch hunt and used his power to trample civil liberties. His aggressive tactics, in the end leading to the persecution of countless innocent people, came to be known as McCarthyism.

His charges affected more and more powerful people, including President Eisenhower, until 1954 when a nationally televised, 36-day hearing illustrated clearly to the nation that he was overstepping his authority and any ideas of common sense. (The hearings also famously prompted special counsel for the Army Joseph Nye Welch to ask McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”)

Later Years

In the aftermath, McCarthy was eventually stripped of his chairmanship and condemned on the Senate floor (Dec. 2, 1954) for conduct “contrary to Senate traditions.” That turned out to be the final nail in the coffin of the McCarthyism era, and Joseph McCarthy himself fell from the public eye.

Just a few years later, on May 2, 1957, McCarthy died of acute hepatitis at the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, with his wife, the former Jean Kerr, at his side.

Mafer

McCarthyism

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism."[1] The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression against communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.

During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned,[2] laws that were later declared unconstitutional,[3] dismissals for reasons later declared illegal[4] or actionable,[5] or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.

The most notable examples of McCarthyism include the speeches, investigations, and hearings of Senator McCarthy himself; the Hollywood blacklist, associated with hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); and the various anti-communist activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Director J. Edgar Hoover. McCarthyism was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.

Mafer

De-Stalinization

De-Stalinization (Russian: десталинизация, Destalinizatsiya) refers to a process of political reform in the Soviet Union that took place after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953. The reforms consisted of changing or removing key institutions that helped Stalin hold power: the cult of personality that surrounded him, the Stalinist political system, and the Gulag labour-camp system, all of which had been created and dominated by him as General Secretary, among other titles, from 1922 to 1952. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953, consisting of Georgi Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Ministry of the Interior; and Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). These men had all been loyal Stalinists, but they also knew that the excesses of Stalinism threatened everyone, even the very top loyalists, with arbitrary execution. They thus embarked on a process of disassembling one-man rule and rehabilitating some of the persons who had met undeserved fates.

Contemporary historians regard the beginning of de-Stalinization as a significant turning point in the history of the Soviet Union. It began during the Khrushchev Thaw. However, it subsided during the Brezhnev period and remained so until mid 1980s, when it accelerated once again due to policies of perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev.

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Nikita Jrushchov

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev[a] (April 15 [O.S. April 3] 1894 – September 11, 1971) was a Russian politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.

Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the present-day border between Russia and Ukraine. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalin's purges, and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War (Eastern Front of World War II), Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers.

Mafer