The author of this primary source is J. Edgar Hoover. He was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation . He could be considered either a direct participant or a witness. His job as director of the FBI consists in fighting for the safety of Americans. Therefore, informing about the communist party and the danger they present was his duty; this makes him a participant. Nevertheless, the information about the communist’s party secret agenda was gathered from external sources, from things he heard or saw; this would make him a witness of the communist’s actions. According to the source, he gave this speech on March 26, 1947 before the House Un-American Activities Committee. During this time the cold war was starting. It is referred as …show more content…
Cold War as the rivalry that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during most of the second half of the 20th century. It resulted in mutual suspicions, heightened tensions and a several international. One factor that might have affected the author's point of view was his economic status.
Being the director of the FBI he possessed a reasonable standard of living. Therefore, he was not affected by economic struggles, which other people at the time did. Usually people facing economic difficulties supported welfare plans, which according to Hoover were communists programs and meant a threat to freedom . The information delivered by Hoover is credible given his position as director of the FBI and the information he had access to.
The purpose of this document is to inform and draw attention to the real intentions of the communists and how it represented a threat to the “American way of living”. He believed that the greatest advantage of the communist on their quest to conquer the United States was the ignorance of American people; “I fear for ignorance on the part of all our people who may take the poisonous pills of communist propaganda.” His intended audience consisted not only of the House Un-American Activities Committee, but also of the rest of the American
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people. In his declarations to HUAC, Hoover states his view that Communists planned a “bloody revolution” and the downfall of American capitalism. He makes reference to The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, book written by the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee in 1939. Hoover goes on to list the intentions of American Communists, arguing that their support for many of the objectives from the New Deal, such as old-age security, was really a cover for more revolutionary goals. He notes the appearance of the Committee for the Constitutional Rights of Communists and its efforts to defend suspected Communists against legal action. This was what a great part of the American population felt at the time. After reading the document one can get the idea of what in the minds of some American people at the time and understand how this lead to the cold war. Hoover suspected that Communists infiltrated the labor unions and the entertainment industry.
When he said “In movie circles, communists developed an effective defense a few years ago in meeting criticism. They would counter with the question "After all, what is the matter with communism?"” again he points out how Americas greatest weakness was its ignorance and consequently justifies the motive of his testimony. He goes on to raise a number of questions that might be asked about any organization or industry to determine whether it has Communist leanings. This is noteworthy because 1947, the year when he testified, was the year of Hollywood’s Ten . By reading this passage one can understand the criteria that the HUAC then used to “blacklist” certain people from
Hollywood. Throughout the text it is easily noticed a clear Bias on Hoover’s side towards the communists. His whole testimony is filled with prejudgments. According to Hoover all communists are violent and have secret agendas to take over the United States . Although there might have been people who thought like that, assuming that everyone had the same objectives and ideals is a grave generalization. His preconception significantly limits the primary source. So as to overcome this bias a historian should look for sources about communist people who proved to have different goal than the ones stated in Hoover’s testimony.
To get a clear view and understanding of the book, first must review the time period in history. The book was written in the mid 1950's during the cold war. Former General McCarthy, then U.S. Senator started a fire ball of suspicion, suppression, and incarceration. This had a very huge impact on the entrainment industry, which included everyone from playwrights to filmmakers, as well as writers and actors. If anyone in that time period was suspected of being a communist, the government could come and pull them out of their home. At the least a suspected communist would be banned, or put on a black ball list. Printed in the Times, McCarthy's First Slander, "Overnight, his speech sparked a media firestorm that played to the basest fears of Americans swept up in a frightening cold war and triggered loyalty oaths, blacklists and personal betrayals that cost an estimated 10,000 Americans their jobs and some shattered innocents their lives." (Johanna McGeary 28) This happened to a number of actors and film makers during that time period. The black ball list was a list of names of people who were believed to be communist. The people on this list came from the movie industry as well as writers. These people would no longer be able to get work ...
McCarthy was a virtually unknown politician until February 1950, where in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, he proclaimed “have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department” (History Matters). This speech coined the “Enemies from Within” propelled McCarthy to the political spotlight and gave him huge power along with the support of the American public. McCarthy, realizing he had a great political opportunity, and continued his “anti-communist” tirade accusing powerful people in hollywood and members of the armed forces as being communists or communist sympathizers. As his skeptics grew, so did his blacklist, with McCarthy accusing every single one of his critics as communists destroying their lives and careers in the process (Victims of McCarthyism). McCarthy used this tactic to discourage any opposition, with many potential critics seeing the potential implications of their skepticism, they simply redacted their statements or never spoke
In 1956 Arthur Miller was subpoenaed by HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee) and refused to identify writers that were believed to hold communist sympathies. Due to his refusal he was convicted of contempt of congress. The next year, however, the United States Supreme Court overturned this conviction. Under the leadership of McCarthy the committee had so much power that just knowing someone who was suspected of having ties to the communist party was a danger. The lives and careers of hundreds of Americans were ruined because of being blacklisted. Prison, bankruptcy, passport revocation, unemployment were threats made against people for them to testify and “name names.”
Facts: The petitioners, the leaders of the Communist Political Association (CPA), reorganized the Association into the Communist Party through changing its policies of peaceful cooperation with the United States and its economic and political structure to into the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the Communist Party. The Communist Party set itself apart from other political parties by disregarding the normal process of change set forth by the constitution. From the literature, statements, and activities of the petitioners, the Communist Party leaders, it is clear that their goal was to achieve a successful overthrow of the government of the United States through the use of force and violence.
One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...
He quickly moves from the panic of 1929 to the ‘30’s and how many of the popular governmental sentiments during the election were no longer so. Hoover quickly moved from a position of public acceptance and admiration to that of a scapegoat. That the Depression was his fault is not entirely true, though. Hoover did not have much of the information needed to foretell the economic situation. In the laissez-faire form of government he prescribed, there was no place for a department that would document these things for the use of the president’s office.
“The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political, gentlemen, it is moral,” is one of the many examples throughout McCarthy’s speech of him assuming an overconfident or superior tone. His claim to own a list of 205 names in the State Department of communist sympathizers gave support for this arrogant tone, but when asked McCarthy refused to provide anyone with the aforementioned list. McCarthy also used this tone when he said, “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation,” expressing the idea that no one but the United States’ own countrymen had the strength to defeat their homeland. McCarthy’s tone throughout the article is one of absolute certainty, and gave his audience the incentive to trust
...en’s novel shows the soldiers’ innermost thoughts and concerns and internal conflicts which appear to outweigh the communist cause. The Things They Carried demonstrates the soldiers’ opposition to the war. However, the U. S. remained focused on preventing a communist takeover. The United States enormous political power affected history
In 1956, Arthur Miller was denied to have a passport to Brussels, and he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. This Committee wanted to defend and make the constitution better. The Congress asks Arthur Miller for the names of the people that he had been with in the Communist meetings, but he refused to tell the names. They wanted those names to put them on the blacklist.
In the beginning of McCarthy’s political career, he was already walking on thin ice. He launched a series of charges against the government. The first charge was against the communist global apparatus. McCarthy said that the organization had made a sustained attempt to penetrate the United States government and attempt to subvert its foreign policy decisions. The second charge was against the United States government itself. McCarthy said that the official defenses against foreign penetration ranged from weak to nonexistent. The third and final charge was against the government of America, ...
Hoover’s nation was coming out of a war and was facing an economy plummeting into an unknown Great Depression. Hoover proclaimed a need for reform of the criminal justice system, the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment, cooperation of government and businesses, the development of education, organization of the public health services, and maintaining the integrity of the He called for restoration with action, and promised solutions to the economic crisis, unemployment, world policy. He however, does remind the people, “We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed.”
In “Spies: the Rise and fall of the KGB in America”, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev base their information off of a collection of documents that belonged to the KGB. The archives provide the most complete report of Soviet espionage in America ever written. Along with a general look into espionage strategies and the motives of Americans who spied for Stalin, this book settles specific controversies. “Spies: the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America” reveals numerous American spies who were never even under suspicion and also identifies the last unaccounted for nuclear spies who were American. This source focused greatly on Soviet infiltration of the U.S. government, and Haynes, Harvey, and Vassiliev convey why and how penetration contributed to the success and failure of the KGB throughout the Cold War.
The attitude of the citizens of the United States was a tremendous influence on the development of McCarthyism. The people living in the post World War II United States felt fear and anger because communism was related with Germany, Italy, and Russia who had all at one point been enemies of the United States during the war. If the enemies were communists then, communists were enemies and any communists or even communist sympathizers were a threat to the American way of life. "From the Bolshevik Revolution on, radicals were seen as foreign agents or as those ...
If someone was called on for being a member of the communist party they were in big trouble. There was nothing they could say nor do to get out of the mess they were in. It didn’t Matter if they were a part of the Communist party or hated the communists, in general, all they could do was Give the names of their friends and family members or just people that they knew of that were also a part of the Communist Party.
While giving a speech at a town by the name of “Wheeling”, McCarthy directly attacked the “secretary of state” and gave out a list of people who were widely known by many to “work in the state department” but who were in secrecy involved in Communistic activities . The list that McCarthy gave out was not unknown, for it had first been “published by the secretary of state in 1946”. McCarthy was the chairman for the Senate’s committee on “Government Operations” along with that he also worked with the “Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations” that was also within the Senate . With the power that McCarthy possessed he was able to call forth suspected individuals that were presumed to be communist, if the individual refused to cooperate he/she was then sentenced to sometime in jail or worse off they would be fired from their job without hope of finding a new one . McCarthy was not only out to get people, he was out to get books that seemed to doubt the American system and it’s ways . Around “30,000 different books were removed from library shelves” due to McCarthy’s extremist views and fear of Communist takeover (Heale, 1998) (Latham, 1973) (Schrecker, 1994) (Steinberg,