The Cold War & Its Origins, 1917–1960. Vol.I, 1917–1950

No Sharing With Britain. On July 14, 1949, there was a very secret meeting of key members of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy with the President at Blair House, to discuss the desire of Britain and Canada for a larger share in the atomic energy program. Since they had aided very notably in the original Oak Ridge project, and since they supplied most of the uranium essential for its continuance, they felt that the tight American monopoly of the atom should be loosened for their benefit.

Soon afterward, members of the Joint Committee began to make public statements attacking any proposal to share atomic bomb secrets. Senator Knowland threatened “intense” opposition if any information was given to the British without Congressional approval. Legislators who believed themselves to be clutching the atomic secrets had no intention of letting them get away.

On July 19 a second meeting was held behind closed doors, “and with window-blinds drawn, in an isolated room just under the edge of the Capitol’s great dome.” The Joint Committee was meeting with top level executive officials, behind a special guard of Capitol policemen. The official reporter was excluded, and the porter with ice water was not allowed to come in. The result of the meeting was not made known until July 26, when Secretary Acheson assured Congress in effect that there would be no exchange of atomic weapon information with our Allies without the full knowledge and approval of Congress. Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper was “greatly relieved” and Senator Knowland appeared satisfied.¹

Two months later, on September 21, the Alsops outlined the plan of the strategic planners of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the defense of Western Europe. A minority held that barring a rearmed Germany the defense of Europe was impossible, but a majority believed that, without Germany, 45 to 50 divisions could be created in West Europe by 1954, through an expenditure of 8 to 12 billion dollars, plus a major effort to rearm by the European countries. The date mentioned was important, because 1954 was the year “when Soviet stockpiling of the Beria bomb may be expected to begin.”²

Russia Has the Bomb. Two days later, on September 23, 1949, President Truman issued his epochal announcement that the Russians had achieved an atomic explosion.³ His announcement stated that nearly four years ago he had pointed out that “scientific opinion appears to be practically unanimous that the essential theoretical knowledge upon which the discovery is based is already widely known. There is also substantial agreement that foreign research can come abreast of our present theoretical knowledge in time.”

The President did not add that the scientists had almost unanimously warned that our monopoly would be very short lived. Thus in December 1945 Harrison Brown had written that “three years can be considered a reasonable period for other nations to produce their first atomic bombs,” and he warned that this would probably be an upper limit.⁴

The atomic scientists had prepared three separate statements during August and September 1945, without collaboration. The University of Chicago Atomic Scientists said: “Those who advocate that the secret of the atomic bomb be kept, mislead our own people rather than other countries. There are no longer any fundamental secrets about the atomic bomb.” Declaring that “the remaining ‘secrets’ are scientific and engineering details,” they predicted flatly that “even those nations with lesser resources than those of the United States will be able to produce atomic bombs within two to five years.”

The Atomic Scientists at Los Alamos said firmly: “Being sure of ultimate success other countries will certainly be able to develop the weapon within a few years, even if our detailed technical information is not available to them.” The Atomic Scientists at Oak Ridge said, with equal finality: “No individual, group, or nation can keep new scientific discoveries secret. . . . The only remaining ‘secrets’ are technical and engineering details of processes, plants, and devices.” So it was “a practical certainty that our efforts can and will be duplicated in other countries within a few years.”⁵

Thus the vast majority of our nuclear scientists warned, in three independent statements, that there were no important secrets left and that the Soviet Union would soon have the A-bomb. However, the politicians and military men refused to believe that the Russians could do it so soon. They were sure that the Soviets did not have the engineering and industrial capacity. So they gave themselves until 1954, or at least 1952, to get Western Europe in a state of defense and when the scientists were proved right, the reaction of the politicians was equally unrealistic.

The Vice-President had an especially hard time getting order in the Senate on the morning of the 23rd until the loud voice of Senator McMahon got through with the words “atomic explosion . . . in the U.S.S.R.” When these words were heard, Majority leader Scott W. Lucas, of Illinois declared that “the future of our civilization may hinge” on successful United Nations control of atomic energy and Senator John Foster Dulles, of New York, asserted that “the Baruch plan for United Nations control is more imperative than ever.” Neither sought to explain what possible motive the Soviets could have for giving up their freedom to develop both the military and peaceful uses of atomic energy, after success had crowned their efforts to master it.⁶

The non-existent atomic secrets had evaporated, but not before they had contributed heavily to an ever spreading mania about internal security.

The Secrecy Myth Re-created. However, those who had believed in the myth of the secrets soon had an alibi which renewed their faith. In early 1950 Klaus Fuchs, an Austrian-born scientist in the British team which had contributed heavily to the making of the A-bomb, was convicted of espionage in Britain.

He had shipped to Russia the most sensitive information about atomic activities and processes, both in the United States and Britain. In September 1950 Bruno Pontecorvo, a nationalized British citizen of Italian birth, disappeared behind the iron curtain with a great deal of information gained in Canada and Britain. In June 1950 David Greenglass, an American-born mechanic, was arrested. He had been in a position to supply Soviet agents with mechanical details of bomb gadgetry through Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death.⁷

These convictions, together with that of Allan May, British scientist, earlier, in 1946, convinced the believers in secrecy, that they had been right after all, and the public shared their conclusion that the Russians never would have been able to make an A-bomb if the spies had not given them “our” secrets. From this it followed that our military position has been gravely weakened by the spies and that death sentences for them were fully deserved.

Actually the probability was that the spies had speeded up the Soviet A-bomb by only a few months, if at all. It had taken us only a year to perfect the mechanism for detonating the bomb, research which was to a large extent in the field of internal ballistics, “in which Russia has had a more extensive experience than the United States.”⁸ Such competence, plus the Smyth Report, the knowledge that an A-bomb had been made and a driving determination to succeed—these factors were quite enough to create the Soviet A-bomb in short order. Nevertheless, the long campaign of the scientists to convince us that “scientific knowledge is universal”⁹ was undone by the spy trials. The passion for 100 per cent security and secrecy spread to more and more government departments. At great cost the FBI was obliged to investigate minutely “everybody from day labor to director of a nationally known industrial concern,” instead of concentrating on a few key and sensitive spots, where secrecy might really be promoted. Thus we moved steadily in the direction of “converting America into a Soviet-style police state with restriction on everybody’s freedom of employment, movement and communication.”¹⁰

The rapidity with which we were moving toward the police state, under the guise of defending ourselves against the Soviet police state, was illustrated by the order issued by the Department of Commerce on March 2, 1951, forbidding the mailing of all technical publications to all countries of the Soviet bloc. Under this order The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a periodical devoted to the political, social and military implications of scientific discoveries, was classified as “technical” and denied permission to mail to the iron curtain countries.

The B.A.S. protested, however, “against the superficial plausibility and fundamental foolishness of the whole business.” Such an order protected the Department of Commerce against attacks by security zealots, in and out of Congress, but could not deprive the Soviet scientists and engineers of one iota of information. Yet futility is not the worst aspect of such regulations.

They call for investigation and prosecution of breaches of imaginary security barriers and unnecessarily restrict the freedoms they set out to protect. They are self defeating, also, since they plug up the thin flow of Western ideas and ideals to the peoples living under Communist dictatorship.¹¹

A Sober Attitude in Russia. The Soviet news agency Tass issued a statement on September 25, 1949, recalling that Molotov had claimed possession of the secret of the atomic bomb on November 6, 1947, and asserting that it was now being used in large scale blasting work. The Soviet press was filled with quotations from the West to develop three themes: that the need for some sort of agreement between the Soviets and the United States was more urgent than ever; that the end of the American atomic monopoly was a “blow against warmongers and strengthens the cause of peace”; and that Soviet production of atomic energy was proof of the “strength of the Socialist system of society.” Harrison Salisbury reported that the general atmosphere of comment published by the Soviet press was “sober and serious and fully recognized the great tasks which lie ahead.”¹²

American Demands for a Fresh Look at Control. In the United States the General Advisory Committee, composed of leading scientists, was for a fresh look at the problem of international control. The committee proposed that atomic weapons be outlawed, that modified provisions for international inspection be accepted, and a measure of disarmament agreed upon which would protect West Europe against any sudden aggression. Chester I. Barnard, President of the Rockefeller Foundation and one of the authors of the original Acheson-Lilienthal plan, also went on record in favor of changes in American tactics and attitude. He held that the issue of stages was no longer so important, and that too much had been made of the veto question, especially in the beginning. The entire veto problem had “no cogent relation . . . with the central question at issue.” This view was shared also by Walter Lippmann, who urged that in taking a fresh look we should not, as in 1946, overestimate our bargaining power and thus ask for so much that we got nothing at all. Then we had exaggerated the length of our monopoly. Now we should not over estimate the greater size of our stockpile.¹³

These sensible approaches to a compromise with the Russians made no headway. Vishinsky’s renewed offer to accept periodic inspection of Russian atomic plants was rejected, because it would not involve constant and universal search in Russia for clandestine atomic works. We still insisted on perfect security or none. Besides, observed the Alsops, “Two-party talks between this country and Russia have long been an objective of Kremlin policy, and their avoidance has long been one of our objectives.”¹⁴

In January, a hint of willingness to negotiate for atomic control, on a fresh basis, was received from Moscow, but to all the compromise proposals the Pentagon made “bitter objections that no such plan could ever afford ‘full security’ to the United States,” and “from Congress have come howls of dissent.”¹⁵

Currently, David E. Lilienthal resigned as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, essentially because he had no inclination to continue as “a manufacturer of weapons of hideous destruction.”¹⁶ Lilienthal had also been subject to charges by Senator Edwin C. Johnson, of Colorado, that he was conspiring to turn this country’s atomic secrets over to England.

The H-Bomb

The H-bomb Secret Published. Then on November 1, 1949, Johnson announced on a television show that “our scientists already have created a bomb that has six times the effectiveness (of the war time bomb) and they’re not satisfied at all: they want one that has a thousand times the effect.” This statement spurred the Washington Post and the Alsops to dig out the fact that we were considering trying to make a hydrogen bomb which would be infinitely more destructive than the A-bomb. One of the chief watch-dogs of secrecy had published the biggest secret of the current crop.¹⁷

The H-bomb Ordered. President Truman did not give the order to proceed with the H-bomb until February 1, 1950, but the outcome was never in doubt. The majority of the Atomic Energy Commission, and of the scientists opposed the decision to go ahead, but the majority of military men and congressmen wanted to proceed.¹⁸ It was argued that if Russia got the H-bomb first, and was able to kill 1,000,000 people in a 100 square mile area, she could dominate the world merely by giving an ultimatum. On the other hand, the Herald Tribune cautioned editorially, on February 1, that “we must be wary of the idea that a super-weapon can give us a super-power in the world or relieve us of the hard obligations of intelligent policy and diplomacy, of consistency, integrity and foresight on the basic plane of human relationships.”

Renewed Warnings. Once again the atomic scientists did their best to warn the world against impending doom. Some warned that the radioactive clouds from a few H-bombs could conceivably destroy all life on this continent. Others pointed out that H-bombs could be lobbed into all of our great ports from submarines. Dr. Ralph E. Lapp called the hydrogen bomb a greater threat to this country than to Russia, where Moscow would be the only target worth an H-bomb, whereas we had a dozen cities with millions of people in them. On February 4 a group of physicists, headed by Professor Hans A. Bethe of Cornell University, called for a pledge that we would never use the H-bomb unless others attacked with it first. That would make it very difficult for either side to use the new super-weapon, one of which could easily wipe out any city in the world—and still be carried readily in the hold of a ship. They cautioned also that Russia would probably have the H-bomb in less than four years, and the next day the Federation of American scientists urged the President to act without delay in establishing a new commission to re-examine the whole issue of our atomic policy, in an effort to develop “some real hope of breaking the present stubborn deadlock.” As long as we attacked atomic energy as an isolated issue we would not get anywhere. We had to “consider it also as a political question to be settled between the United States and Russia, with the possibility of economic concessions on our part in exchange for inspection concessions on theirs.”¹⁹

Warning that through the H-bomb “annihilation of any life on earth” is “within the range of technical possibilities,” Dr. Albert Einstein termed the arms race between the United States and Russia “a disastrous illusion.” It had now assumed an hysterical character, in which every step appears as the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one. “In the end,” he added, “there beckons more and more clearly general annihilation.” There was no hope of peace “as long as every single action is taken with a possible future conflict in view.”²⁰

To underline Einstein’s warning eleven British atomic scientists called for a new attempt to ban warfare with atomic bombs. Any solution would have to be acceptable to all nations and all nations would have to be prepared “to sacrifice some of their national interests for a realistic hope of continued peace.”²¹

Tydings Rejects Sweating It Out. The same feeling of hopeless drift led Senator Millard E. Tydings of Maryland, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to suggest that the President call a world disarmament conference. He faced the problem squarely and urged a sustained effort to achieve disarmament down to rifles. It was not reasonable merely to sit down and throw away huge arms expenditures each year, with all the danger involved in piling up the arms. Tydings correctly epitomized the policy of Secretary Acheson, that we “must sit and sweat it out.” Rejecting this “mountainous defeatism,” Tydings urged Acheson to recognize “the grim facts of life, the grim facts of future war” and unite the nations in a world disarmament conference. Analyzing the policy of George F. Kennan as also one without hope, which closed all doors, he asked the State Department to remember that we are more vulnerable than Russia and to stop playing the deadly checker game with her, with the ultimate prospect of slaughtering more people than had been killed in all previous wars combined. He besought us to leave this highway of death and tell the world that our purpose is peace, made plain in general disarmament. He called for an end both to “the cold war and the hot war,” saying: “We cannot win the cold war by dynamic negativism or burying our heads in the sand in the illusion that the enemy will pass by. We can win it by strong, aggressive, imaginative, diplomatic action.”²²

McMahon’s Proposal. This same deep concern about the Acheson policy of depending on arms alone impelled Senator Brien McMahon, of Connecticut, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, to make a remarkable address in the Senate, on February 2. Two broad policies were open to us. One was to wage the Cold War for a generation, knowing that against “such a policy is 5,000 years of recorded history, which teaches again and again and again that armaments races lead to war—under today’s conditions hydrogen war!” The other policy involved “moving heaven and earth to stop the atomic arms race.” It was his intense conviction that there must be an immediate initiation of a moral crusade for peace.

As a practical move in this direction, he proposed that we offer to take ten billions annually for five years from our fifteen billion dollar arms expenditure to promote the development of atomic energy everywhere for peace, and for “general economic aid and help to all countries, including Russia,” the money to be spent through the United Nations. In return we would ask an effective program for international control of atomic energy and an agreement that all countries would spend two-thirds of their present expenditure upon armaments for constructive purposes.

McMahon had grasped the principle that it is much better to spend a lot in raising the standard of living of other peoples than to spend infinitely more in destroying their lives and livelihoods. This is the principle that the Russians had rejected in the Marshall Plan and that we had rejected in the abrupt end of lend lease, in the refusal to make a large post-war loan to Russia, in the killing of UNRRA before its healing mission was completed, and when Henry Wallace had proposed a new fifty billion foreign aid program two years earlier.

McMahon’s address had a strong, momentary impact on both the Senate and the country. It “evoked some of the highest praise for ‘statesmanship’ and ‘high thinking’ accorded to any Senator by his colleagues in recent times.” Yet the address had no constructive result. Walter Lippmann pointed out immediately that it was not a fresh proposal for atomic peace, but an offer of fifty billions to the world if the Soviet Union would accept “the obsolete Baruch plan.” This plan had been based on “a complete fallacy—namely, that we had a monopoly on the technical processes and means of producing nuclear fuels.” What was required now was not the ‘devaluating” of “certain technical phases” of the moribund Baruch plan, but “a deep effort of mind to think out fresh proposals based on the actual fact that there are now two atomic powers in the world.”

Obsolete Ideas Frozen? Lippmann thought a re-examination of our global diplomacy and strategy imperatively indicated. The new military situation could not be dealt with by military measures alone. We could not erect impregnable defenses everywhere. The situation would have to be met by diplomacy, for which the mind of the country was not prepared. It had been “fearfully misled and confused by the plausible fallacy of the military containment fallacy—a policy which was plausible only because of our monopoly of atomic weapons.” The situation could become irreparable and hopeless, if public opinion remained frozen in the ideas that events had made obsolete.²³

Total Diplomacy

In early 1950 there was undoubtedly a feeling among “millions of Americans that there must be a new approach to the Soviet Union in order to close the horrible vistas” ahead.²⁴ The time for a real effort to stop the Cold War seemed urgently present. On Russia’s side, too, there appeared to be a willingness to negotiate. On February 4, Harrison Salisbury sent a dispatch to the New York Times, censored of course, reporting that some Moscow diplomatic quarters believed that the Soviet Government had been prepared for a year, and still was, to meet the United States in “a two power effort to solve the major problems confronting both countries, including the question of atomic controls.”

The demand for an effort to stop the drift toward the incineration of our urban civilization was so strong that American policy makers had to take some position toward it. They had had four months to weigh the collapse of their strategy of global containment, based on our atomic monopoly, and on February 9, 1950, the decision was announced that nothing had happened to make negotiation necessary.

No Negotiation from Weakness. Secretary of State Acheson took cognizance of the strong demand for negotiations at his press conference. He explained that the Soviet regime “is incompatible with the present achievement of a world situation which is based on peace and the maintenance of national independence and freedom.” However, it could adjust itself to facts when facts exist, as in Berlin and Greece. Only when confronted with powerful facts were agreements with the Soviet Union of much use. It was therefore our basic policy “to create strength instead of the weakness which exists in many quarters.” This road “is a very long one and a very difficult one. It takes purpose, continuity of purpose, perseverance, sacrifice and it takes, more than almost anything else, very steady nerves.”

Wherever there was a situation of weakness in Asia or Europe it was “an irresistible invitation for the Soviet Government to fish in those troubled waters.” There was no use asking them not to fish. “You can’t argue with a river, it is going to flow.” You could only try “to extend the area of possible agreement with the Soviet Union by creating situations so strong that they can be recognized and out of them agreement can grow.” We must therefore not reproach ourselves and never waver in the pursuit of the goal of peace.

In other words, Mr. Acheson’s mind had frozen in the classic mould of power politics. He would not negotiate with the Russians about anything anywhere until he could do so from strength, instead of current weakness. The making of bombs and super-bombs would go on until we had proved our nerves to be the steadiest.

Renewed Demands for Negotiation. In the form of a letter to Mr. T., Walter Lippmann replied to this line of reasoning in one of the greatest articles of his long career. Recalling that we had been the first to make an atomic bomb, the first to use it and the first to announce that we would make the hydrogen bomb, he declared:

“There is no way the American people can divest themselves of the duty to search for a decent and an honorable alternative to a war of extermination. They cannot sit down, fold their hands across their stomachs, saying that their search has ended, that they have reached the limits of their wisdom, and that there is nothing more they can do except to make more and bigger bombs.

“The day we did that would mark the death of the American spirit. Though our cities escaped destruction and our bodies remained alive, we should have renounced our hopes, resigned our role, surrendered in the battle. Whether we won or lost the race of armaments, we should have lost the struggle for men’s souls, and the right to their trust and their faith, and we should have lost our own self respect.

“To such depths of inertia and spiritual decay and intellectual defeatism we have not sunk, and no one can push us into those depths, while we are alive and kicking. This nation has a destiny which is not yet fulfilled. Our people will not shrink from the labor of thought and the searching of their own souls which their awful responsibility demands.”

Even if we had no way of compelling the Russians to act in good faith we still had to keep faith with ourselves, Lippmann concluded. Two days later he observed that important agreements between any sovereign states did not endure unless they registered “an existing situation of fact.”²⁵

On February 17 Winston Churchill closing his campaign to be returned to power by the British voters, called again for a conference of the heads of state to try to control the atomic arms race and end the cold war. Two years before he had told the House of Commons that the best chance of avoiding war lay in bringing “matters to a head with the Soviet Government and by formal diplomatic processes, with all their privacy and gravity, to arrive at a lasting settlement. There is certainly enough for the interests of all if such a settlement could be reached.”²⁶

On February 18 Harold E. Stassen proposed a mid-century conference of U.S. and Soviet leaders, in an effort to avert a third world war, and Senator Tom Connally, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, expressed the hope that a meeting of the foreign ministers might soon be possible.²⁷

In Britain the Archbishop of York pleaded for immediate negotiations, saying: “There is no time for delay. While the United States and Russia are making these bombs, dark clouds of fear will spread over mankind; presently the terror of things to come will become intolerable and the bombs will be used.”²⁸ This cycle of demands for negotiations was completed by Senator McMahon who asked on March 1 for an immediate meeting of the Atlantic Council, to be followed by a session of the United Nations Assembly in Moscow. He rejected as vain the current policy of “containment” of Russia.²⁹

These pleas produced no result. Both the President and the Secretary of State in their press conferences gave the impression that they had slammed the door on negotiations. The door remained closed to Britain and Canada, also, in the matter of partnership in the atomic development. The talks broke down and were adjourned on February 27. The British went ahead to make their own atomic bomb.³⁰

Our Objectives in the Cold War. On March 9, 1950, the State Department released a speech by Secretary Acheson in which he called for “total diplomacy” in United States foreign policy, especially in regard to the Soviet Union. The only way to deal with the Soviets was to “create situations of strength.” On March 16 Acheson made a major address at Berkeley, California, in which he declared that if the two systems are to coexist the points of greatest difference must “sooner or later be reconciled.” These were:

“(1) Agreement on peace settlements for Germany, Austria, and Japan that would not make them satellites of the Soviet Union; (2) Withdrawal of Soviet military and police forces from the Eastern European satellite countries and the holding of elections therein in which the ‘true will’ of the people could be expressed; (3) Abandonment of the Soviet policy of obstruction in the United Nations; (4) Agreement and ‘realistic and effective’ arrangements for control of atomic weapons. . . .; (5) Desisting from the use of communist apparatus to undermine and overthrow established governments; (6) Co-operation in assuring the ‘proper treatment’ of diplomatic representatives; and (7) Stopping the distortion of motives of others through false propaganda that speaks of a ‘capitalist encirclement’ and of the United States craftily and systematically plotting another world war.”³¹

This address had received long and careful preparation in the State Department for many weeks. All of the top State Department political officials contributed to it.³² Acheson’s seven points may therefore be taken to comprise the long term objectives of the State Department in the Cold War.

The Russian reaction in a Pravda editorial the next day was that “All of Acheson’s speeches prove one thing—the absence of any concrete proposals for strengthening the peace. Total diplomacy does not differ materially from atomic diplomacy—diplomacy based on naked force with the use of pressure, intimidation and threats.” A writer in the Soviet Literary Gazette termed the speech “an insolent ultimatum.”³³

In form, the Acheson speech was not an ultimatum. It was phrased as things the Soviets could do voluntarily to establish peace. In essence the seven points could well mean the total loss of the Cold War by the Russians, even to the loss of their control of East Europe, where the Cold War started. The seven points appeared to lay down authoritatively the objectives of our total diplomacy, objectives to be sought as positions of strength were created. Also if the Russians accepted them “they would virtually cease to be Communists.”³⁴

“Invincible Pessimism.” Lacking in a positive program which would appeal to the American people, the State Department itself became the victim of one of the most vicious political campaigns in anyone’s memory, the McCarthy crusade to convict it of communism. The initiative was lost to McCarthy, but there “persisted a strong undercurrent of discontent with the policy which had frankly lost faith in negotiation and seemed content to leave the psychological initiative to the Russians. Many Americans, and even more foreigners, obviously failed to share the Administration’s invincible pessimism regarding the outlook of the Politburo.”³⁵

McCarthyism

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Junior Senator from Wisconsin, wanted to be re-elected. Asking his friends for an issue, he was advised by Father Edmund A. Walsh, of Georgetown University, that any senator who consistently attacked communism would have a great appeal for the voters.³⁶

McCarthy fixed upon the State Department as the focus of his attacks, for two reasons: (1) it enabled him to attack the men in the Department who, despairing of saving Chiang Kai-shek’s regime had sought some other way of keeping some of our influence in China; (2) the Alger Hiss case gave a background which could be played upon. Hiss was convicted of peijury for denying that he had supplied State Department documents to a confessed ex-communist courier, Whittaker Chambers, in 1938.

This is a case which still sits uneasily on the American conscience. Hiss had been a fairly high official in the State Department, of strong New Deal views, and was currently President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Secretary Acheson had also declared that he did “not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss,” who had been his friend over a long period.

McCarthy began his crusade in a speech delivered on February 9 at Wheeling, West Virginia, saying: “I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals (in the State Department) who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist party, but who nevertheless are helping to shape our foreign policy.” For several weeks he juggled figures skilfully. One time he claimed there were 205 suspects in the State Department, then 81. He long avoided naming names, finally accusing Dr. Philip C. Jessup, Ambassador-at-Large, as being a “voice” for Owen Lattimore, a writer on Far Eastern affairs who had early recognized the futility of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Jessup was at once endorsed by General George C. Marshall and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Jessup denounced McCarthy’s charges as “not only false, but utterly irresponsible.” He noted that he had recently been attacked by two sources, Izvestia and Senator McCarthy, and that “any one who believes in the concept of guilt by association might draw some startling conclusions from this fact.”³⁷

Russia’s “Top Secret Agent.” Finally, on March 21, McCarthy named a man in closed session of the Investigating Committee on whom, he said, his whole case would stand or fall. He alleged that this man “has a desk in the State Department and has access to the files.” He was also a one time boss of the Hiss “espionage ring.”

On March 26 it came out that Owen Lattimore was the man charged with being Russia’s “top secret agent” in the United States. Lattimore quickly returned from Afghanistan, where he was on a United Nations mission, and made a full defense of his life and record, which included 11 books and some 100 articles, all open to public scrutiny.

The charge that Lattimore was the architect of our Far Eastern policy was based partly upon a well balanced memorandum which he had submitted to the State Department on October 18, 1949, in connection with a Round Table on Far Eastern policy. The central theme of the memorandum was that “the aim of the United States policy should be to enable the countries of the Far East to do without Russia to the maximum extent. This is a much more modest aim than insistence on an organization of hostility to Russia; but it is an attainable aim, and the other is not.”

Lattimore also believed that “the kind of policy that failed in support of so great a figure as Chiang Kai-shek cannot possibly succeed if it is applied to a scattering of ‘little Chiang Kai-sheks’ in China or elsewhere in Asia.” Applying this principle to South Korea, the Lattimore memorandum said: “South Korea is more of a liability than an asset to the interests and policy of the United States. It is doubtful how long the present regime in South Korea can be kept alive, and the mere effort to keep it alive is a bad advertisement, which continually draws attention to a band of little-and-inferior Chiang Kai-sheks who are the scorn of the Communists and have lost the respect of democratic and would-be democratic groups and movements throughout Asia.”³⁸

On April 4 Lattimore denounced McCarthy to a standing-room-only audience in the Senate caucus room as a “base and contemptible” liar, in a remarkable statement nearly two hours long, and received an ovation from the crowd at the end of his statement. The FBI had also cleared him.³⁹

Louis F. Budenz, another ex-communist, was then brought in to testify that Lattimore had been a member of a communist cell, though he offered no concrete evidence to support his charge. In reply, Lattimore made another smashing attack upon his accusers, in which he attempted “to establish beyond question . . . the right of American scholars and authors to think, talk and write freely and honestly, without the paralyzing fear of the kind of attack to which I have been subjected.” His loyalty was also supported by Brigadier General E. R. Thorpe, former Chief of Counter Intelligence for General Mac Arthur, who testified that in three investigations of Lattimore he found nothing but “hearsay evidence, most of it obviously vindictive in character.”⁴⁰

Lattimore’s Offense. Lattimore had put his finger accurately upon the heart of the attack upon him. He was a foremost advocate of a policy of trying to work with the great social forces running in Asia, instead of trying to throttle them by supporting feudalistic rulers. Since those who were disgruntled with our Far Eastern policy believed that these same rulers could have been kept in power, if only we had given them a little more aid at this point or that, Lattimore’s writings were anathema to them. They believed he had been influential and they set out to destroy him, as well as to strike at the State Department and the Administration.

Lattimore had never been a member of the State Department, except as a consultant on one or two occasions, and three Secretaries of State—Hull, Byrnes and Marshall—all issued statements saying that he had had no influence upon our policy, but he had had a wide public hearing and his accusers believed that he had influenced policy, indirectly at least.

He was also a man of courage and vision. Questioned by the Senate Committee about his views on our policy he replied that the basic conflict in the world is due to the post World War II weakening of Britain and France as great powers, and that we could not correct the balance by placing emphasis on “holding points,” such as Formosa, Korea and Indo China. Instead, we should be pouring “real resources” into India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, to support and assist those nations before they, too, become “holding points” in turn.⁴¹

There might be some virtue in holding exposed points, but surely it is long range statesmanship to look to the main bastions in time.

Effective Smoke. For nearly two months McCarthy managed to stay in the headlines much of the time, by twisting and turning, always making some new accusation. His charges obviously petered out, to anyone who followed the testimony, but nevertheless he convinced a great many people that there must be some communism in the State Department. Surely where there was so much smoke there must be at least a little fire.

In the senatorial elections of 1950 such able and respected senators as Tydings, of Maryland, and Thomas, of Utah, were defeated, partly by the miasma of suspicion left over and partly by the appearance of McCarthy in the flesh, making his lurid attacks in person, aided by the shameless faking of composite photographs and bandying of “communist” allegations.

The effect on the public service was equally damaging. Government officials were so terrorized that a member of the State Department hardly dared tell anyone the time of day. In the Department man after man who had had any responsible connection with China was hounded until in self defense the Department retired him to some innocuous position. Thus the reward of honest, fearless service came to be oblivion. The effect on other officials was obvious. Why put things into your reports from abroad that the McCarthyites would seize upon? It was soon noted that returned Foreign Service officers talked more freely orally about conditions abroad than they had in their official reports.

The drive against men who had done their duty was reinforced by the great power of Senator McCarran of Nevada over Senate appropriations and Senate inquisitions. In July 1951 John Paton Davies, who had been an adviser to General Stilwell in China in 1942–3 had to undergo another security investigation, just as he was ready to depart on an assignment to Germany. Believing that Chiang’s regime was too rotten to save, he had supported Stilwell in a “long squalid struggle in Chungking” to give some American aid to the Chinese Communists, in order to have some influence with China’s future rulers and in the hope of keeping them out of Russian control. In other words, he was working for Titoism before Tito, as Joseph Alsop testified in a poignant, first person column of July 26, 1951.

Alsop had fought Davies on the spot as an adviser to T. V. Soong and General Chennault. He had been on the winning side then. Now Alsop believed that if Davies’ policy had been followed “he would have been proven right.” Now Davies had “to make a burnt offering with a sweet savor in the peculiar nostrils of Senator McCarthy and Senator McCarran.” As he reviewed the past it struck Alsop that “we would be much wiser to start loyalty investigations of the politicians who are now working all-out to destroy the last vestiges of decency and fair play in our public life.”⁴²

The demoralizing effect upon the Department of having to fight for its life day by day in the Spring of 1950 was also felt abroad. The other Western peoples simply could not understand how such a disastrous circus could go on—and on. Of course it was a delight to the Communist world.

Counterattack. Finally the incredible performance was temporarily slowed down by a number of outraged protests. On May 13, Senator Dennis Chavez, himself a Roman Catholic, made a sustained assault on the informer Budenz, declaring that Budenz was using the Church “as a shield and a cloak to purvey un-American, un-Christian dubious testimony.” Noting that Budenz was a bigamist, and worse, that he had been arrested 21 times and “admits engaging in conspiracies to commit murder and espionage,” Chavez declared he would not believe him, “no matter how many Bibles he swore on.” He protested against “providing a platform from which every unreliable and discredited individual can proclaim to the world that the United States is rotten with subversives,” from which everyone is “made aware of the public flogging awaiting individuals accused of the reckless crime of thinking.” We were establishing a situation “where there can be only two opinions—the Communist and the anti-Communist.” We were elevating the Communists “to the tremendous prestige of being the single opposition.”⁴³

The Washington Post’s Indictment. Then a week later, on May 22, 1950, the Washington Post published one of the most powerful editorials of its distinguished career under the long ownership of Eugene Meyer. It filled a full page and began: “For weeks the Capital has been seized and convulsed by a terror.” There had been a rising distrust, a “roaring bitterness, the ranging of Americans against Americans, the assault on freedom of inquiry, the intolerance of opposition.”

The Post recognized that there was a danger, the “cancerous evil of totalitarianism,” controlling a great world power and confronting us for the first time with a secret conspiratorial force in our midst. Yet to fight this evil it would be “burning down the house of the American way of life in order to get the rats in it” if we now reversed our law and put the burden of proof on the accused.

It was as “foolish to reckon the witch-hunters the true foes of communism as to reckon lynch mobs the true foes of the sex maniac.” Moreover, the witch hunters were weakening our front line soldiers in the cold war. George F. Kennan had stated somberly that the atmosphere in Washington would not have to deteriorate much further “to produce a situation in which very few of our more quiet and sensitive and gifted people will be able to continue in government.” Witch hunting, the Post continued, “would drive out of Government the very brains which alone can give us victory in the cold war.” This kind of onslaught on character would give us “a Government of spineless mediocrities,” like the fearful men abroad who did not dare to tell their totalitarian leaders the truth. “Witch hunting tears our unity apart and lowers the discussion of real problems to the level of the gutter.”

Characterizing “McCarthy’s Goebbels-Vishinsky technique” as “the lie followed by the ever-bigger lie”, the Post explained that witch hunting repelled our allies and defeated itself. “The mad-dog quality of McCarthyism” had become so apparent that it had probably spent its force, but “it would be reckless to ignore the circumstances that permitted this escapade and this aberration to paralyze American diplomacy and to thrust fears and doubts in the minds of our people.”

Urging a national commission to survey the major aspects of national security, the Post reasoned that “our liberty minded institutions can meet the threat without throwing our liberties away.”

Senator Margaret Smith’s Recoil. On June 1, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, of Maine, made a simple, deeply effective speech in the Senate to “a hushed chamber.” She spoke as a Republican who regretted that the Senate had recently been too often “debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination, sheltered by the shield of Congressional immunity.”

She thought it was “high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching.” Whether it be “a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.” Those who shouted the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations also ignored such basic principles of Americanism as the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest and to think independently.

The exercise of these rights “should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood, nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know some one who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.” The American people were “sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds, lest they be smeared as ‘Communists’ or ‘Fascists’ by their opponents,” and of “seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.”

The nation sorely needed a Republican victory, but she did not “want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny—fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.”

A Republican “Declaration of Conscience.” With these thoughts in mind, she had drafted “a declaration of conscience” which was signed also by Senators Irving M. Ives, of New York; Robert C. Hendrickson, of New Jersey; Charles Tobey, of New Hampshire; George D. Aiken, of Vermont; Wayne L. Morse, of Oregon; and Edward J. Thye of Minnesota. Senator H. Alexander Smith, of New Jersey, immediately associated himself with the declaration, making with Senator Margaret Smith an honor roll of eight Republican Senators who sought to save American freedom from being crushed in the name of anti-communism.

The declaration of conscience condemned the Democratic administration for its lack of effective leadership, and many other things. Then noting that certain elements of the Republican party sought to ride in to victory on the “exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance,” the statement closed as follows: “It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”⁴⁴

Steady Nerves

These impressive protests against McCarthyism put it in abeyance for the time being, though it was too virulent to be more than arrested. The warlike attitude maintained by official Washington also continued to give it the atmosphere in which to grow.

On April 19, 1950, it was announced that several thousand industrial plants now had explicit go-ahead agreements for production of war materials the instant war should be declared. The number would be doubled by September 1st. On the 23rd Secretary Acheson made an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors warning that Russian Communism was a threat to the existence of our nation and our civilization which could be met only by the total application of faith, unity, strength and resourcefulness. Only a strong United States stood “between the Kremlin and dominion over the entire world.”

Peaceful Coexistence. On the same day in Moscow, the eightieth anniversary of Lenin’s birth, almost every newspaper published Lenin’s words of thirty years ago: “Let American capitalists not touch us; we will not touch them.” This quotation was coupled with the reiteration in nearly every Soviet organ of the Leninist-Stalinist premise, as Pravda phrased it, of “the possibility and necessity for the peaceful coexistence of the Soviet Union and countries of capitalism.” The Moscow journals stressed that the people of the Soviet Union did not want war and did not need it. It was only the ideologists and politicians of Anglo-American imperialism trying to justify the aggressive policy of their rulers who talked about the fatal inevitability of war.⁴⁵

Disband the UN—Hoover. A few days later, on April 28, Herbert Hoover made an address to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in which he proposed the expulsion of the communist nations from the United Nations and the formation of “a new united front of those who disavow Communism.” Hoover’s speech was greeted by what the Herald Tribune called a “thunderous, almost impassioned ovation.”

Pondering over the event, Walter Lippmann thought it solved the puzzle presented by the conduct of the old guard Republicans—how “to reconcile their warlike and crusading fervor against communism and Soviet Russia with their growing opposition to ERP, military aid, Point 4 and all the other measures of that sort.” The old guard Republicans in the Senate talked as if they were about to advocate a declaration of war, but they showed an increasing disposition to vote as isolationists. Hoover’s speech provided the key to the paradox. They wished to retire into isolation “during a great roar of anti-communist noises.”⁴⁶

Consumer Goods for Moscow. Contemporaneously, UN Secretary General Trygve Lie visited Moscow and did not detect any atmosphere of overwhelming preparation for war. On May 17 he issued a statement describing his fifth visit to Moscow, in which he said: “I am very much impressed by the state of repair of the streets and houses and by the new buildings. I have never seen so many new automobiles, street cars and buses. In many respects it is like a new capital. The people I have seen and the children look healthier than at any time before. I am surprised that so much progress has been achieved as regards an abundance of clothing and shoes for women and children.”⁴⁷

Russians Human. A few days later, George F. Kennan, counsellor of the State Department and one of the authors of the Truman Doctrine, warned that the current witch hunting had blinded Americans to everything but black and white and had a tendency to stamp all Russians as our enemies. Actually, the Russian people were deeply saturated with liberal and moral concepts. They still believed profoundly in “decency, honesty, kindliness, and loyalty in the relations between individuals.” It was a grim commentary on the national state of mind that Kennan found it necessary to remind us that the Russian people are human beings after all.⁴⁸

The next day Secretary Acheson returned from a Foreign Ministers Conference of the Western powers, reporting that their armed forces would be merged under an American general, and that a North Atlantic planning board for ocean shipping would be created to draw up plans for war mobilization.

Damnable Obsession. On May 31st Acheson addressed an informal joint meeting of Congress in the Library of Congress concerning his trip to Europe. He reported that not one of the Atlantic Council’s twelve Foreign Ministers believed there was any immediate threat of war, but that they all agreed a dangerous situation was developing, because Russia was devoting so much of its resources to military purposes.⁴⁹

Under the caption “The Damnable Obsession” Walter Lippmann wrote the next day that no close observer in Washington could fail to feel that for a variety of reasons—objective, psychological, personal and partisan—“the Administration’s foreign policy has during the past year created the impression, here and abroad, that it places virtually complete dependence on military and material power.” This had created a world wide loss of confidence in our wisdom, and even in our motives, the depth of which we had not begun to understand. It was our official theory that we must not let the Russians think we wished to negotiate until the Atlantic community was stronger. Yet we could not make it stronger unless we could convince the European peoples that we were organizing for peace. Actually, we had allowed ourselves to “become identified with the idea that war is inevitable.”⁵⁰

Soviet “Aggression.” On June 10 President Truman’s address in St. Louis was headlined “Denouncing Aggression of Soviet Russia.” The President denounced the Soviet leaders for devoting a massive share of their resources to the acquisition of further military strength, far beyond any defense needs, instead of using their resources to improve the well being of their people. We must, however, not become hysterical and “we must remain cool, determined and steady.”⁵¹

Three days later Secretary Acheson speaking in Texas charged that Russia was using its armed might and communist plotting in other countries as a “poised bludgeon to intimidate the weak.” The United States would continue to follow a realistic policy of peaceful negotiation. There was no immediate danger, and we must not have a preventive war, but appeasement of Soviet ambitions would “encourage Soviet aggression.”⁵²

“The Dinning Emphasis on Arms.” On June 20 Thomas L. Stokes wrote from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where the annual conference of the Governors of the forty-eight states was meeting, that it was “refreshing to get away from the angry, tortured, bewildered spirit of Washington these days.” After talking at the conference with people from all parts of the country he got the impression “that the attitude of our people is not truly expressed in the crisis atmosphere about our national capital—the noisy, dinning emphasis on arms, arms, arms and the vengefulness of the witch hunt.”⁵³

On the same day that Stokes drew this encouragement from the grass roots, Secretary Acheson addressed a two-hour closed session of the Governors’ conference in which he told them that the United States faces a “tough and grim” but by no means hopeless fight against communist expansion in Europe. A great military effort was required, both at home and abroad. One Governor reported afterwards that Acheson’s summation of the situation in Europe “scared hell out of us,” and another observed that his statement “swept the room.”⁵⁴

The Secretary had successfully communicated the spirit of Washington to the governors, with its “dinning emphasis on arms” and the peril of Russia.

“The Hair-raising Calculated Risk” On June 22, 1951, Stewart Alsop stated as concisely as he could the choice which the American Government had made after the announcement of the Soviet atomic explosion on September 23, 1949.

A preventive atomic war upon the Soviet Union had been rejected, because it would cement the Soviet peoples around that regime, alienate the rest of the world, and lead to the destruction of our allies, in addition to being alien to our political system.

The alternative adopted had been embodied in “the now famous state paper NSC 68” which called for such a rapid build-up of armed strength by this country and its allies “that a sort of nervous balance of power can be maintained.” Peace was not hoped for, but “a terribly precarious yet lasting truce . . . a hair-raising calculated risk,” to be alleviated “in the very long run” by a change in the Soviet regime.

This seems to be an accurate description of the policy which the United States pursued in the nine months between the Soviet A-bomb and the Korean war. There was to be no negotiation, no effort to start afresh in seeking armaments control, no belief that any agreement could be made with the Soviet Union until we had become the stronger. There was nothing to do but keep steady nerves and arm.

The premises upon which this policy was based also seem to have been fairly stated by Alsop in the same article. They were: (1) a powerful nation, “aggressive and expansionist by its very nature, unalterably and intensely hostile to the United States;” (2) this potential enemy soon able “to wound this country most savagely, perhaps mortally;” (3) the United States able to do the same to the Soviet Union; and (4) the conquest and virtual destruction by the Soviets of the ancient civilization of the whole Eurasian continent, if war comes.⁵⁵

Everything, of course, depended upon the acceptance of the first assumption. This is the way that another strong group of people has always looked to its rivals since time began. It is the premise upon which every balance of power arms race has been built. Never before, either, had a razor edge point of armed preparedness on both sides kept the peace. A true balance of forces had never been maintained hitherto more than a very short time.

This was the situation on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean Army startled the world by plunging over the 38th parallel into South Korea. For the second time in ten years war had erupted behind us in Asia while we were intent on the defense of Western Europe in front of us.

END OF VOLUME ONE

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