Early Cold War 19491954

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Early Cold War (1949-1954)
2
Robert Meeropol, An Execution in the Family One
Sons Journey (New York St. Martins Press, 2003)

• I WAS SIX YEARS, ONE MONTH, AND ONE DAY OLD
  ON MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1953four days before my
  parents execution. That hot June my ten-year-old
  brother, Michael, and I were living with friends
  of my parents in Toms River, New Jersey I
  was finishing my kindergarten year at Toms River
  Elementary School I played a lot of Monopoly
  while I lived in New Jersey I have
  surprisingly sharp memories of much of what I did
  and even of some of the world-shaking events that
  swirled about me during the week of June 15
  Wed been watching a ball game on TV around
  suppertime when news flashed across the screen
  that plans for the executions were going forward.
  I could not read the words and do not recall
  Michaels reaction, but he remembers moaning,
  Thats it, good-bye, good-bye. Michaels
  reaction and the urgency behind the adults
  decision to send us outside gave me the sense
  that something especially bad was happening I
  doubt I fully comprehended that my parents had
  just been killed, but I feigned complete
  ignorance to avoid the commotion, and went to bed
  I pretended not to understand what was going
  on so adults would not fuss over me. (pp. 1-6)

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Strange Fruit

• Southern trees bear strange fruitBlood on
  the leavesBlood at the rootBlack bodies
  swinging in the southern breezeStrange fruit
  hanging from the poplar treesPastoral scene of
  the gallant southThe bulging eyes and the
  twisted mouthThe scent of magnolia sweet and
  freshThen the sudden smell of burning fleshHere
  is a fruit for the crows to pluckfor the rain to
  gatherfor the wind to suckfor the sun to
  rotfor the tree to dropHere is a strange and
  bitter crop
• Composed by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis
  Allan)Originally sung by Billie Holiday
  
• YouTube - Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit

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The Rosenberg Case

• July/August 1950 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
  arrested, charged with passing nuclear weapons
  secrets to the Soviet Union, charged for
  conspiracy to commit espionage
• March 1951 conviction and death sentence under
  Section 2 of the 1917 Espionage Act, which
  prohibits transmitting or attempting to transmit
  to a foreign government information "relating to
  the national defense"
• June 19, 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
  executed despite worldwide protests (including
  Pope Pius XIIs clemency appeal to President
  Eisenhower)the only two American civilians
  executed for espionage during the Cold War
• 1953 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix
  Frankfurter characterized the Rosenberg trial as
  the most disturbing single experience during
  my term of service on the Court and concluded
  that the Rosenbergs were tried for conspiracy
  and sentenced for treason.
• Controversy Venona transcripts support espionage
  allegations for Julius Rosenberg, but not for
  Ethel Rosenberg political climate of the time
  prevented fair trial sentence too harsh (in
  comparison to atomic spy Klaus Fuchs)

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McCarthy Era, 1950-1954

• February 1950 Republican Senator Joseph R.
  McCarthy announced a list of 205 communists
  working for the State Department (although he
  never named any names)
• At the height of his influence, polls showed that
  McCarthy had half the public behind him
  
• Army McCarthy Hearings (nationally televised)
  led to McCarthys downfall in 1954 when he
  questioned the militarys and President
  Eisenhowers anticommunism Source U.S. Senate
  Reference Home McCarthy Hearings Published
• McCarthyism denotes character assassination,
  guilt by association, and abuse of power in the
  name of anticommunism
  
• Anticommunist Legislation
• 1950 McCarran Internal Security Bill
  subversive groups had to register with
  government, their passports could get denied
  (example Paul Robesons travel ban, 1950-1958
  Source Paul Robeson Home Page) and their
  deportation or detention authorized on
  presidential order
• 1952 McCarran-Walter Act immigrants
  identified as communists could be deported even
  if they had become citizens

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Judge Irving Kaufman's Statement Upon Sentencing
the Rosenbergs

• Citizens of this country who betray their
  fellow-countrymen can be under none of the
  delusions about the benignity of Soviet power
  that they might have been prior to World War II.
  The nature of Russian terrorism is now
  self-evident. Idealism as a rational dissolves
  ... I consider your crime worse than murder ...
  In committing the act of murder, the criminal
  kills only his victim But in your case, I
  believe your conduct in putting into the hands of
  the Russians the A-bomb years before our best
  scientists predicted Russia would perfect the
  bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the
  Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant
  casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but
  that millions more of innocent people may pay the
  price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal
  you undoubtedly have altered the course of
  history to the disadvantage of our country The
  evidence indicated quite clearly that Julius
  Rosenberg was the prime mover in this conspiracy.
  However, let no mistake be made about the role
  which his wife, Ethel Rosenberg, played in this
  conspiracy She was a full-fledged partner in
  this crime. Indeed the defendants Julius and
  Ethel Rosenberg placed their devotion to their
  cause above their own personal safety and were
  conscious that they were sacrificing their own
  children, should their misdeeds be detected--all
  of which did not deter them from pursuing their
  course. Love for their cause dominated their
  lives--it was even greater than their love for
  their children.
• Sources Judge Kaufman's Sentencing
  Statement in the Rosenberg Case
  
• Government Views of The
  Rosenberg Spy Case
  

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• Julius Rosenberg
• This death sentence is not surprising. It
  had to be. There had to be a Rosenberg Case
  because there had to be an intensification of the
  hysteria in America to make the Korean War
  acceptable to the American people. There had to
  be hysteria and a fear sent through America in
  order to get increased war budgets. And there had
  to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to
  tell them that you are no longer gonna give five
  years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for
  Contempt of Court, but were gonna kill ya!
• Source Robert and Michael Meeropol, We Are
  Your Sons (Boston Houghton Mifflin Company,
  1975), p. 326.

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The Korean War, 1950-53

• January 1950 Secretary of State Dean Achesons
  National Press Club speech declared South Korea
  outside U.S. defense perimeter
  
• June 25, 1950 North Korean surprise attack on
  South Korea
  
• June 25-27, 1950 Trumans surprise--2 UN
  resolutions to send U.S. armed forces to Korea,
  but no U.S. declaration of war from Congress
  
• October 7, 1950 UN forces crossed 38th parallel
  into North Korea (based on U.S.-written UN
  resolution)
  
• October 8, 1950 Mao Zedong mobilized Chinese
  troops
  
• October 19, 1950 260,000 Chinese troops moved
  into Korea
  
• November 30, 1950 Truman mentioned potential use
  of atomic bomb in press conference Mao was
  reportedly not impressed
  
• January 4, 1951 Communist forces captured Seoul
• March 1951 fighting stabilized roughly at prewar
  boundary
  
• April 11, 1951 Truman dismissed General
  MacArthur MacArthur called for the impeachment
  of Truman and Acheson
  
• July 27, 1953 cease-fire agreement ended the
  Korean War
  
• Casualties 54,260 US soldiers died
• 600,000 Chinese soldiers died
  in combat
  
• 2 million Korean soldiers and
  civilians died
  
• Map CNN - Cold War

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The Korean War Debate

• Causes
• Gaddis Stalin started Korean War by authorizing
  North Korean invasion
  
• LaFeber both superpowers trapped in a bloody
  civil war between left-wing and right-wing
  Koreans (that had claimed 100,000 lives between
  1946 and 1950)
• Significance
• Gaddis U.S. refrained from using atomic weapons
  both super-powers covered up direct military
  engagement of Soviet and American fighter planes
  over Korean peninsula
• LaFeber U.S. invaded North Korea replacing
  containment with liberation Cold War turned
  global (shift from Europe to Asia)
  
• Consequences
• Gaddis shock of North Korean attack almost as
  great as Pearl Harbor, its consequences for
  Washingtons strategy at least as profound
  
• LaFeber NSC-68, U.S. defense spending tripled,
  Germany rearmed, US military commitment to
  Vietnam and Taiwan, McCarthyism, increase in
  presidential power, change in UN mobilization
  (Uniting for Peace)
• Sources John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War A New
  History (New York Penguin Press, 2005) Walter
  LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War,
  1945-2006 (New York McGraw-Hill, 2006).

10
National Security Council Paper No. 68
(NSC-68),1950

• the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to
  hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith,
  antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its
  absolute authority over the rest of the world.
  Conflict has, therefore become endemic and is
  waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by
  violent and non-violent methods in accordance
  with the dictates of expediency. With the
  development of increasingly terrifying weapons of
  mass destruction, every individual faces the
  ever-present possibility of annihilation should
  the conflict enter the phase of total war
• The issues that face us are momentous,
  involving the fulfillment or destruction not only
  of this Republic but of civilization itself. They
  are issues which will not await our
  deliberations. As for the policy of
  containment, it is one which seeks by all means
  short of war to (1) block further expansion of
  Soviet power, (2) expose the falsities of Soviet
  pretentions, (3) induce a retraction of the
  Kremlins control and influence and (4) in
  general, so foster the seeds of destruction
  within the Soviet system that the Kremlin is
  brought at least to the point of modifying its
  behavior to conform to generally accepted
  international standards.
• Source "A Report to the National Security
  Council - NSC 68"
  

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WHY WAS NSC-68 SO APOCALYPTIC?

• NSC-68 classified top secret until 1975
• Context Soviet atomic bomb (1949)
• Communist victory in China
  (1949)
  
• McCarthyism (1950-55)
• Berlin Blockade (1948-49)
• Korean War (1950-53)
• Result US defense spending jumped from 13
  billion in 1950 to 50 billion in 1953 (hydrogen
  bomb, 1952)
  
• Kennan opposed NSC-68 as shift in goals from
  creating strength in the West (defensive
  containment strategy) to destroying strength in
  Russia (offensive liberation strategy)
• Even Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson opposed
  fear of bankruptcy
  
• Secretary of State Dean Acheson and his aides
  later agreed, Korea came along and saved us.
  quoted from LaFebers America, Russia, and the
  Cold War

12
Cultural Cold War

• National security agencies asked Hollywood to
  produce anti-communist movies such as The Red
  Menace (1949) and I Married a Communist
  (1950)
• State Department libraries overseas banned
  authors and artists such as Norman Mailer,
  Arthur Miller, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr,
  Lewis Mumford, Charles Beard, Henry Wallace,
  W.E.B. DuBois, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway,
  George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Leonard
  Bernstein, Frank Lloyd Wright
• Congress for Cultural Freedom Left-wing
  anti-communist intellectuals (such as Sidney
  Hook, Arthur Schlesinger, Arthur Koestler)
  secretly subsidized by CIA
• CIA funded the Museum of Modern Art and promoted
  the abstract expressionist New York school of
  painters, led by Jackson Pollock
  
• below Jackson Pollocks Lavender Mist, 1950

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RECOMMENDED READINGS

• Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 2
  vols. (1981-1990)
  
• John Mueller, Retreat From Doomsday The
  Obsolescence of Major War (1989)
  
• David Oshinksy, A Conspiracy so Immense The
  World of Joe McCarthy (1983)
  
• Chester J. Pach, Jr., Arming the Free World The
  Origins of the United States Military Assistance
  Program, 1945-1950 (1991)
  
• Michael Parrish, Cold War Justice The Supreme
  Court and the Rosenbergs, American Historical
  Review (1977) 805-842
  
• Richard Pells, Not Like Us (1997)
• Ronald Radosh, The Rosenberg File (1997)
• Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes McCarthyism
  in America (1998)
  
• William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War (2002)