Red Scare timeline

Key Events

• 1945
  • July 16th – The Manhattan Project carries out the Trinity Test
  • August 6th and 9th: The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively
• 1946 – the War of Words
• 1947
  • Stalin’s Salami Tactics well underway – Eastern Europe becoming communist
  • February: Britain asks US to intervene to defeat communist forces in Greece
  • March: President Truman announced the end of isolationism and the need for containment (Truman Doctrine)
  • March 26th: J. Edgar Hoover testified before HUAC and argued that ‘for every party member there were 10 others ready, willing and able to do the party’s work.’
  • March: Truman gave an order that allowed government employees to be removed from their posts if there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that they were disloyal to the United States. The Federal Loyalty Boards were set up to investigate and between 1947 and 1951 3 million government workers were investigated and up to 3,000 were either fired or forced to resign because they were considered a security risk – although no evidence of actual spying was found.
  • June: Marshall Plan announced – suggests economic aid for reconstruction in Europe and USSR
  • October: HUAC begin questioning 41 writers, producers and directors about communism in Hollywood. 10 Refused to answer and were jailed for 1 year for contempt and were blacklisted
• 1948 – Marshall Aid approved; Berlin Blockade
  • March 10th – Defenestration of Jan Masaryk – a prominent pro-US official in the Czech government sees Congress reluctantly approve the Marshall Plan and $17 billion to 16 countries in 4 years
  • June 24th: Berlin blockade; airlift follows
  • Alger Hiss, a former member of the State Department who had been an important adviser to President Roosevelt in 1930s and during the Second World War, was named as a member of the Communist party during an HUAC hearing by Whittaker Chambers.
• 1949
  • April 4th: Setting up of NATO – ‘imperialism by invitation?’
  • May 12th: Blockade ends
  • May 23rd: FRG or West Germany established;
  • August: Hiss trial begins
  • August 29th: Soviets test their first Atomic Bomb;
  • October 1st: Revolution in China – 800 million become communist;
  • There were other communist risings in Malaya, Indonesia, Burma and the Phillipines
  • October 7th: German Democratic Republic or East Germany established.
  • The film the ‘Red Menace’ is distributed to American cinemas. The plot: An ex-GI named Bill Jones (Robert Rockwell) becomes involved with the Communist Party USA. While in training, Jones falls in love with one of his instructors. At first true followers of communism, they realize their mistake when they witness party leaders murder a member who questions the party’s principles. When they try to leave the party, the two are marked for murder and hunted by the party’s assassins.
• 1950
  • January: Second trial of Alger Hiss: convicted of perjury and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
  • February: Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Britain for passing on information to the Soviets on how to develop an atomic bomb. Fuchs confessed and was sentenced to 14 years in prison by the British court. He also named other spies, including David Greenglass. Greenglass was arrested in the USA and named his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. who were later convicted (1951) and executed for treason (1953).
  • February: Joseph McCarthy made a speech claiming to have a list of 205 members of the Communist Party who worked in the US State Department. He then made several more speeches where the numbers varied until the number on the list was reduced to 57. Despite this, many senators demanded an investigation.
  • February: The Tydings Committee was set up to investigate McCarthy’s accusations but found that they were untrue. McCarthy’s response was to call Senator Tydings ‘un-American’ and a communist sympathiser. Tydings was not re-elected at the the November Congressional elections
  • February: Sino-Soviet Treaty signed
  • June 25th: Kim Il Sung, leader of North Korea, leads invasion of the South:
    start of the Korean War
  • August: Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act – made all communist organisations register with the government. It meant that it was now a criminal offence to fail to tell a current or future employer if you had been a member of the CPUSA
  • November: American mid-term elections
• 1951
  • March: Rosenberg trial – Ethel and Julius deny all charges and though the evidence against them was weak, they were both found guilty and sentenced to death.
  • Summer: McCarthy accused former war general George Marshall of ‘helping the ‘Communist drive for world domination’ through the Marshall Plan and through is failure to prevent a communist victory in China. McCarthy implied that Marshall had been a traitor to his country. His friend and fellow general, Dwight D. Eisenhower,failed to speak up for him because he was afraid it would cost him votes in the 1952 election. Marshall retired from politics.
• 1952 – election year
  • McCarran Act was strengthened: Communists were not allowed US passports; to work in certain jobs; and in an emergency situation anyone suspected of ‘subversion’ could be put in a detention camp without facing trial
  • November: US tests first Hydrogen bomb
  • November: Eisenhower (Rep.) elected president. Republicans had run their election campaign on the line that Democrats had been and were ‘soft on Communism’. Democrats who had opposed/denounced McCarthy found themselves losing their seats in the congressional elections.
• 1953
  • January: Eisenhower inaugurated as President
  • January: Eisenhower made Senator McCarthy Chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate and as such he led various investigations into government departments
  • June 19th: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg executed.
  • July 27th: Armistice in Korea
  • August: Soviets test first Hydrogen bomb
  • Opinion polls in the US showed that the majority of the US public supported McCarthy’s actions
  • Autumn: McCarthy led a new senate sub-committee on communist influence in the US Army.
• 1954
  • The Army-McCarthy hearings were televised and for the first time the American public could see McCarthy at work. The army fought back, found evidence of McCarthy abusing his privileges and anti-McCarthy material began to appear in the press.
  • March 9th: Ed Murrow on the See it Now show used footage of McCarthy’s speeches and actions to criticise him. McCarthy continued to work but no one was writing about it. He died from alcoholism in 1957.