Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I am here today with another
Speaker 1: special guest from the Howstuff Works offices. Yeah, hi, Shara,
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Bolan. I am a co host of Stuff
Speaker 1: they Don't Want You to Know and a co host
Speaker 1: of car stuff. So Ben seemed like a natural person
Speaker 1: to have during this little September series while Deblina is
Speaker 1: still out on maternity leave, and because Ben does cover
Speaker 1: two subjects, cars and conspiracies, it was sort of a
Speaker 1: toss up what I wanted you to come on the
Speaker 1: show and talk about. But I mean, conspiracies, that's really
Speaker 1: your specialty. Almost I don't know if you're gonna like anything. No,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's fine. Thanks so much. I I'm really
Speaker 1: happy to be here. And I will put my tinfoil
Speaker 1: hat on where this episode at least, because uh well, first,
Speaker 1: you know, spoiler alert. I think maybe we'll have a
Speaker 1: podcast from Scott a little later in the future well
Speaker 1: on cars and and famous figures in auto history. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we have that to look forward to. Uh So, today,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at a conspiratorial episode in US history. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a senator called Joe McCarthy
Speaker 1: and uh, a little period called the Red Scare. You
Speaker 1: may have heard of it before. And we're just gonna
Speaker 1: sort of go over the background and the lead up
Speaker 1: to McCarthy's rise to power as you might call it
Speaker 1: in this first episode. And then because this is such
Speaker 1: a huge story, we're going to keep on going and
Speaker 1: take it into a second podcast where we cover more
Speaker 1: about McCarthy is m where we talk about the Hollywood blacklists,
Speaker 1: all of the sort of better known side of McCarthy. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is a good story because it's got all
Speaker 1: the perils, you know, it has everything a good story
Speaker 1: usually has, except for romance. No romance as far as
Speaker 1: we know. As far as we know, Joe didn't really
Speaker 1: have that side of the story play out. But we're
Speaker 1: going to see how a conspiracy theory or a public
Speaker 1: panic can sort of get into the public consciousness and
Speaker 1: sweep the nation along, which is sort of what happened here.
Speaker 1: But to really understand how this crazy situation occurred, we do,
Speaker 1: as you say, I have to go back to the beginning,
Speaker 1: right what what were people afraid of they were afraid
Speaker 1: of communism. They were afraid of communism. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the simplest way to put it. And American post war policy,
Speaker 1: so post World War two policy was one of containment,
Speaker 1: so trying to contain this threat of communism abroad. But
Speaker 1: by the late nineteen forties it seemed like things weren't
Speaker 1: being contained that well. The Soviets had the bomb, China
Speaker 1: had become commune list, and people were becoming concerned with that,
Speaker 1: except that they were also already concerned with communism at home.
Speaker 1: And that was a really big part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there was a genuine communist party in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it had been there since nineteen nineteen as a
Speaker 1: as a funny aside, the Red scare we're talking about
Speaker 1: today is actually the second reds second, which is so
Speaker 1: which is so strange, Um that we've had this red scare,
Speaker 1: this widespread fear of communism, not once but twice in
Speaker 1: our nation's history. Uh. There again, genuine communist party is
Speaker 1: organized in the United States. Uh. This doesn't necessarily mean, though,
Speaker 1: that every single member of this party is some sort
Speaker 1: of extremist or terror from agent right, right, a sleeper
Speaker 1: agent real life is just not that they might just
Speaker 1: have different political inclinations, but to combat this perceived threat
Speaker 1: of communism at home, the government had been investigating these groups,
Speaker 1: investigating suspicious activity for a number of years. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: and through several committees. Now we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the House un American Activities Committee uh fairly frequently in
Speaker 1: parts of this podcast, and we'll probably just call it
Speaker 1: the h u a C. Yeah, I think that will
Speaker 1: make it easier on us, for sure. Yes, It's also
Speaker 1: important to remember that the h u a C did
Speaker 1: not come out of the blue right. It comes from
Speaker 1: instead a sort of lineage of other similar committees that
Speaker 1: preceded it and then investigated suspicious groups. Now, when we
Speaker 1: say suspicious at this point in time, this is pre
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, we're not just talking about communism.
Speaker 1: We're talking also about perhaps fascist groups. We're talking also
Speaker 1: about hate groups such as the Clue Klex Klan. And
Speaker 1: from these committees, the one directly in front of the
Speaker 1: h u a C is called the Ice Committee. It's
Speaker 1: named after the congressman who was heading this committee. The
Speaker 1: h a C becomes a permanent committee in nineteen And
Speaker 1: what's interesting about that is the sort of predecessor of
Speaker 1: the h u a C. Before it became a permanent committee,
Speaker 1: at least, it wasn't very popular with lawmakers because it
Speaker 1: was a little witch hunty, it was expensive, and folks
Speaker 1: sort of thought that once dies retired it might just
Speaker 1: go away. But uh, surprise, surprise, a representative from Mississippi
Speaker 1: named John Rankin really got into this and and work
Speaker 1: to make sure that the committee got standing status. And
Speaker 1: many lawmakers they might have not been thrilled with the
Speaker 1: idea of this unpopular committee continuing, but they felt compelled
Speaker 1: to vote for it because not voting for it could
Speaker 1: easily be perceived as doing something Unamerican. If he's out
Speaker 1: there stating that its mission is going to be to
Speaker 1: investigate communists that might be hidden in the government. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: people don't want to look like they support communism. This
Speaker 1: is a situation where maybe bad policy is good politics
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. That makes sense to me. And
Speaker 1: so you have this new committee. It doesn't have a
Speaker 1: very popular past, and they've got to make a name
Speaker 1: for themselves. And so that h v a C really
Speaker 1: kicked off its investigations by focusing on Hollywood and the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry at first, and that was good publicity because
Speaker 1: it would stir up fear that Hollywood was um just
Speaker 1: about the biggest, best, highest budget propaganda machine that you
Speaker 1: could have. I mean, if communists were there, Hollywood would
Speaker 1: be it would seem like a great place to go.
Speaker 1: And Hollywood already sort of had a love hate relationship
Speaker 1: with the federal government because it was it's very easy
Speaker 1: if you want to value vote to paint Hollywood as
Speaker 1: this just then of the bauchery and sin and un
Speaker 1: American values. So this is a natural progression. It's also
Speaker 1: a very shrewd choice. It is because you know who's
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, big stars, celebrities, people who if you order
Speaker 1: them to come talk to your House committee, it's going
Speaker 1: to make the news. And that's exactly what happened. The
Speaker 1: investigations of the motion picture industry started in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: and at first they really did focus on big stars,
Speaker 1: and some of these were friendly witnesses, so they weren't
Speaker 1: so much accusing these people of anything, but they wanted
Speaker 1: to get them out there talking. And an example of
Speaker 1: this is Gary Cooper. He was asked if the Communist
Speaker 1: Party should be outlawed in the United States, and he
Speaker 1: answered essentially, I don't know. I haven't read marks, I
Speaker 1: don't really know much about communism, but from what I
Speaker 1: have heard, I don't like it. So, you know, just
Speaker 1: a good sound bite, a good thing for the newspapers
Speaker 1: to cover, Gary Cooper. Before this House committee, it was
Speaker 1: a It was a good way to get news about
Speaker 1: what they were doing out to the public and also
Speaker 1: a way to get the public your side. At this point,
Speaker 1: it seems as though the witnesses friendly. It seems as
Speaker 1: though everybody could win. The committee looks good. The celebrity
Speaker 1: might get a chance to plug their upcoming films. We'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that later, because not everybody was getting
Speaker 1: the softball question right. But of course, these investigations by
Speaker 1: these groups did turn out some evidence of real espionage.
Speaker 1: Eventually not so much Hollywood, but um, real possible spies
Speaker 1: were uncovered. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but
Speaker 1: let's say, yeah, let's discuss this and we'll we'll be
Speaker 1: able to go into a little bit of depth about
Speaker 1: why these why why we're choosing our words so carefully
Speaker 1: when we say evidence of alleged espionage. Um, it's still
Speaker 1: a matter of for debate. Our number one person would
Speaker 1: probably be considered Aldre Hiss. Now in the an admitted
Speaker 1: ex communist named Whittwaker Chambers tells the UH tells the
Speaker 1: committee that this his fellow, who works for the State Department,
Speaker 1: or used to work for the State Department, is a Communist.
Speaker 1: And what's more, he says he's a Communist spy. Now
Speaker 1: currently his at this time is not the kind of
Speaker 1: guy you would think of as a spy. He's, first off,
Speaker 1: he's from an established American family, he worked for the
Speaker 1: State Department. He's president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Piece,
Speaker 1: hardly a shifty character. He's got a lot of friends
Speaker 1: who even come forward and say, no way, there's no
Speaker 1: way that this could be true. Yeah. Absolutely, And that's
Speaker 1: a good point. Now, of course, his is not the
Speaker 1: only person that Chambers accuses. He also names people like
Speaker 1: Ward Pigman, Julian Wadley, other other people that may or
Speaker 1: may not be spies. And here's the thing with his
Speaker 1: His is actually convicted in nineteen fifty, but he's not
Speaker 1: convicted of spine no, because during his hearings in front
Speaker 1: of the h U I c he comes a us
Speaker 1: is very polished, very level headed, especially compared to Chambers,
Speaker 1: who doesn't come across that way. Even though there's still
Speaker 1: some pretty suspicious evidence that comes out in these hearings,
Speaker 1: namely the best named papers ever, the pumpkin papers, which
Speaker 1: were apparently stored by Chambers in a hollowed out pumpkin
Speaker 1: in his pumpkin patch. Um. Even though some of that
Speaker 1: seems pretty questionable for his innocence, the hearing is considered inconclusive.
Speaker 1: It's when he decides to sue Chambers for libel that
Speaker 1: he finally is convicted of something. Yes, and he is
Speaker 1: convicted of perjury. In again, this is not a conviction
Speaker 1: that the committee gives him, but this, this mark, this
Speaker 1: conviction of perjury, certainly affects the way people think about
Speaker 1: his case. And uh, you made such a good point earlier,
Speaker 1: Sarah about star power, about how using celebrities will sort
Speaker 1: of legitimize the h U A c Uh. Somebody else
Speaker 1: caught onto this very quickly, and that person was Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: He was involved. Yes, Richard Nixon was one of the
Speaker 1: driving forces in his case. And you can make a
Speaker 1: fairly strong argument that this made him prominent enough on
Speaker 1: the national sphere. I mean, it certainly contributed to him
Speaker 1: later running for the president. Yeah, it certainly elevates his
Speaker 1: recognition nationally. So today though we were saying that this
Speaker 1: is an alleged case of spying, um, today historians still
Speaker 1: discuss whether or not his was actually a Soviet spy,
Speaker 1: and if he was, how much did he do And
Speaker 1: the reason behind that is because papers do you continue
Speaker 1: to be declassified, some suggesting pretty strongly that he may
Speaker 1: have really done a spy. And then he also has,
Speaker 1: uh Asley has a group of his story who say that,
Speaker 1: for one reason or another, he was not a spy,
Speaker 1: that he was just being caught up in the moral
Speaker 1: panic that we're going to see coming out here. Um.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, as these documents were declassified, most
Speaker 1: notably the Venona papers, they contain stuff from the KGB
Speaker 1: that we had not heard of, we being the American public.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I'm not being a KGB spymaster myself.
Speaker 1: And like I said, one thing either either way definitively
Speaker 1: other than there is still a surprisingly vigorous debate over
Speaker 1: which of the people Chambers accused of spine were actually spies.
Speaker 1: But you know, we can, we can debate over that
Speaker 1: all we want that. Of course, at the time, it
Speaker 1: seems like this is a fairly successful case against a
Speaker 1: possible spy. The next big case came in March one,
Speaker 1: and that when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to trial
Speaker 1: for quote, conspiracy to commit espionage and um, this is
Speaker 1: another case that is debated endlessly how much involvement they had,
Speaker 1: how much involvement, especially Ethel Rosenberg had. They were found
Speaker 1: guilty though they were sentenced to death electrocuted at Sing
Speaker 1: Sing prison on June nineteenth, nineteen fifty one. So we're
Speaker 1: going through all let's just to give you guys a
Speaker 1: good picture of what the world is like at this time.
Speaker 1: So we have Gary Cooper testifying, we have people being
Speaker 1: uh sentenced to death for for conspiracy to commit espionage, um,
Speaker 1: and a lot of folks very scared about the state
Speaker 1: of communism in the world. And as Whittaker's Chambers says,
Speaker 1: and this is something it's important remember as we go forward,
Speaker 1: there really were some communists subversives. This was not a
Speaker 1: complete lea fabricated panic. It's important to remember that there's
Speaker 1: a grain and I emphasize the grain of truth to uh,
Speaker 1: to the the story. And I think now it's time
Speaker 1: to introduce our protagonists or are is he a protagonist
Speaker 1: anti hero? Not sure? Uh? One Senator Joseph McCarthy. And
Speaker 1: around this time, around this time that we've been discussing,
Speaker 1: McCarthy is becoming America's number one communist hunter. And he
Speaker 1: was not involved in the trials that we've discussed. And uh,
Speaker 1: he did eventually model his cases on h to a
Speaker 1: C cases, but he was not a chair of the
Speaker 1: h to a c. UH. He really focused his work
Speaker 1: more on the armed forces, more in the state department. Um,
Speaker 1: not so much the celebrities and these really high profile spies.
Speaker 1: But we've got to give you some background on McCarthy too,
Speaker 1: because he really does kind of come out of nowhere almost. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's strange because the he didn't have the best reputation
Speaker 1: as a senator before he became involved with these searches
Speaker 1: for communist abversives. No, no, not at all. I mean
Speaker 1: that's why he got involved in the first place. So
Speaker 1: McCarthy had run for Senate as a Wisconsin Republican in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, and he had done some work before
Speaker 1: then he had worked as a lawyer as a judge.
Speaker 1: He had served in World War Two, even though he
Speaker 1: exaggerated his war record a bit in order to win
Speaker 1: his election. He claimed he was a tailgunner. He had
Speaker 1: a totally normal war record, nothing to be concerned about, um,
Speaker 1: but pumped it up a little bit. Um. So he
Speaker 1: won his Senate seat, and then he didn't have a
Speaker 1: great reputation among his senator peers from the start. R
Speaker 1: there I read one article by Richard Cavendish and History
Speaker 1: Today who said that his colleagues considered him unscrupulous, which
Speaker 1: I think is a pretty That word might come to
Speaker 1: my later in the second episode. Um he so he
Speaker 1: wasn't too popular with them, and he only ended up
Speaker 1: getting one committee appointment. Didn't seem like a real up
Speaker 1: and coming kind of senator, right, He wasn't exactly uh
Speaker 1: someone they thought would be the president later now or
Speaker 1: even uh even get a second term attorney to be fair. Uh.
Speaker 1: This begins to change shortly after the his convention. Joseph
Speaker 1: McCarthy gives one of the most important speeches of his career.
Speaker 1: And in this speech, he's talking to a Republican women's
Speaker 1: group and wheeling West Virginia, and this is February. In
Speaker 1: this speech, which which we have a transcript of here,
Speaker 1: he begins by commemorating Abraham Lincoln and railing against the
Speaker 1: growing communist threat to the United States. Now remember this
Speaker 1: is this is happy as his case is closed and
Speaker 1: as the Rosenbergs are still uh in the process of
Speaker 1: getting sentenced to death. So this fear is here. And
Speaker 1: then in front of this crowd, he claims to have
Speaker 1: proof of depending on who you ask, he claims to
Speaker 1: have proof of either two hundred and five individuals employed
Speaker 1: at the State Department or fifty seven individuals who are
Speaker 1: either communists or sympathetic to communism. Now this speech is
Speaker 1: crazy because he literally is waiving this piece of paper
Speaker 1: at these people as he's saying he has this list.
Speaker 1: He's exposing, if you will, a conspiracy theory that there's
Speaker 1: not only just one or two communists, subversives or Soviet
Speaker 1: agents in the government, but that the State Department especially
Speaker 1: is riddled. The list a whole list worth. Now here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Later, um, this you could look at. This
Speaker 1: is one of the beginnings of the MacArthur year. Later,
Speaker 1: the number that he quotes changes when he rehashes this speech.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not exactly fifty seven, sometimes it's not exactly
Speaker 1: two hundred and five. And there's one other thing about
Speaker 1: this list. It doesn't actually exist. There was no list.
Speaker 1: There was a piece of paper. But that's that. Nobody
Speaker 1: even knows what was on that piece of paper. So
Speaker 1: that is our dramatic cliffhanger for today. We will pick
Speaker 1: up next time and discuss what we can about this
Speaker 1: mystery list and um, how McCarthy's career released skyrockets after this,
Speaker 1: because clearly it is a fantastic piece of stagecraft to
Speaker 1: get up talk about what everybody is most scared up
Speaker 1: and have a real list in your hand and wave
Speaker 1: it around. Who knows who could be on it. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about all of that next time,
Speaker 1: and uh, in the meantime, if you want to email
Speaker 1: us about maybe the first red Scare, other things that
Speaker 1: you'd like to talk about, slide, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: you can email us. We are at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at Miston History,
Speaker 1: and we are on Facebook. And I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of an article for this, and one that seems
Speaker 1: pretty obvious for this first part is how communism works, right,
Speaker 1: so everybody could go check that one out, get a primer,
Speaker 1: figure out what people were so concerned about in the
Speaker 1: first place, and tune in next time when Ben and
Speaker 1: I pick up the story of McCarthyism. You can find
Speaker 1: that by searching the homepage or how Communism Works at www.
Speaker 1: Dot how stuff Works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works
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