8.2 The Second Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the Korean War

Why this section pairs liberties with a limited war

Independent OpenExamPrep teaching does not split “McCarthyism” from Korea as if one were only domestic culture and the other only a map of East Asia. Americans experienced 1947–1954 as a single emergency: a communist great power with an atomic bomb, a communist China, a hot war on the Korean peninsula, and a hunt for spies, fellow travelers, and unreliable speech at home. This exam’s civil-liberties theme lives in loyalty oaths, HUAC, the Hollywood Ten, Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, the McCarran Internal Security Act, and Joseph McCarthy. Its wars-and-diplomacy theme lives in Inchon, Chinese intervention, stalemate, armistice, and Truman versus MacArthur. The First Red Scare of 1919–20 (Palmer Raids) is Chapter 5. Do not recycle A. Mitchell Palmer into 1950.

Loyalty boards, HUAC, and the Hollywood Ten

Truman tried to outflank Republican charges that Democrats were “soft” by policing his own executive branch. Executive Order 9835 (21 March 1947) created a Federal Employee Loyalty Program. Boards investigated associations, petitions, and alleged “sympathetic association” with listed groups. Dismissal did not require a courtroom conviction. The Lavender Scare—the purge of gay and lesbian federal workers as supposed security risks—ran beside the Red hunt and was tightened under Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450 (1953). Civil liberties on this stretch are not only about CPUSA membership cards.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a standing House committee with 1938 roots, made itself a postwar spectacle in October 1947 by investigating communist influence in Hollywood. The Hollywood Ten—screenwriters and directors including Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner Jr., and John Howard Lawson—refused to answer whether they were or had been Communists, relying on the First Amendment rather than the Fifth. They were cited for contempt of Congress, served prison terms after 1948–50 litigation, and were blacklisted from studio employment. A parallel Hollywood blacklist punished many who never saw a courtroom. Do not call HUAC “McCarthy’s committee.” McCarthy was a senator; HUAC was the House.

Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and McCarran

Whittaker Chambers, an ex-communist Time editor, told HUAC in 1948 that Alger Hiss—a former State Department official who had been at Yalta—had been a Communist and had passed documents. Hiss sued; Chambers produced the Pumpkin Papers (microfilm hidden in a hollowed pumpkin on his Maryland farm). The statute of limitations blocked an espionage charge. A first jury hung; a second convicted Hiss of two counts of perjury on 21 January 1950. Richard Nixon, a HUAC member, built a national name on the case. The exam point is legal form: perjury, not a jury’s “guilty of spying” verdict.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950, tried in 1951, and executed at Sing Sing on 19 June 1953 for conspiracy to commit wartime atomic espionage. David Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, was a key government witness. The case remains historically contested in degree of Ethel’s involvement; Julius’s role in passing atomic-related information is far more firmly documented. For this exam, lock the date of execution, the atomic-spy charge, and the fact that they were civilian defendants in a peacetime political atmosphere still defined by Korea.

The McCarran Internal Security Act (1950) required Communist and “Communist-front” organizations to register with a Subversive Activities Control Board and authorized emergency detention of suspected subversives. Truman vetoed it as a dangerous imitation of police-state methods. Congress overrode the veto. Do not confuse McCarran 1950 with the McCarran–Walter Immigration Act (1952), a separate nationality-and-quota statute also passed over a Truman veto.

The Smith Act (1940) criminalized advocating the violent overthrow of the government. In Dennis v. United States (1951) the Supreme Court upheld convictions of CPUSA leaders. Yates v. United States (1957) later narrowed the statute toward incitement of concrete action rather than abstract doctrine—an early legal ebb after McCarthy’s fall.

McCarthy: Wheeling to censure

Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican senator from Wisconsin, spoke in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February 1950 and claimed to hold a list of Communists in the State Department. The number shifted in later versions (205, then 57, then other figures); the method did not: accusation, headlines, and moving targets. The Senate’s Tydings Committee called the charges a fraud; McCarthy called the investigators soft. He rode the Hiss conviction, the China shock, and then Korea. He was not the author of HUAC, the loyalty program, or the Rosenberg prosecution. McCarthyism in textbook usage means the style—guilt by association, lists, and career destruction—more than one man’s subcommittee.

Televised Army–McCarthy hearings (April–June 1954) broke the spell. Army counsel Joseph N. Welch, on 9 June 1954, asked whether McCarthy had no sense of decency after an attack on a young lawyer in Welch’s firm. The Senate condemned McCarthy on 2 December 1954 (often taught as “censure”) for conduct unbecoming a senator. He remained in office but lost the press oxygen that had made him a national tribunal.

Korean War, 1950–53

On 25 June 1950 the North Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th parallel, the 1945 occupation line that had hardened into two Korean states: communist North Korea under Kim Il-sung and South Korea under Syngman Rhee. Truman committed U.S. air and naval forces on 27 June and ground forces soon after, without a congressional declaration of war. He called it a police action. The UN Security Council authorized assistance because the Soviet Union was boycotting the Council over the China seat (still held by the Nationalists). That boycott is the procedural fact that made a UN flag possible.

By August, UN and South Korean forces held a shrinking Pusan Perimeter. On 15 September 1950 General Douglas MacArthur landed at Inchon (Operation Chromite), far behind North Korean lines. Seoul was retaken; North Korean supply lines collapsed. UN forces then crossed the 38th parallel, took Pyongyang, and drove toward the Yalu River on the Chinese border. MacArthur and many in Washington discounted Chinese warnings.

Chinese People’s Volunteers entered in October–November 1950. Massive attacks in late November hurled UN forces south. Seoul changed hands yet again. By mid-1951 the front stabilized near the 38th parallel. The war became a bloody stalemate of hills, artillery, and truce talks at Kaesong then Panmunjom while Americans at home asked why a “police action” produced more than 36,000 U.S. dead.

Truman versus MacArthur

MacArthur wanted to expand the war: blockade China, use Chiang’s Taiwan forces, bomb Chinese bases, and keep nuclear options on the table. Truman, Acheson, and the Joint Chiefs wanted a limited war that would restore South Korea without a general war with China—and possibly the Soviet Union—while NATO Europe remained the strategic prize. MacArthur’s public letters and statements, including a message to the House Republican leader, made the disagreement a constitutional crisis. On 11 April 1951 Truman relieved him. MacArthur told Congress that old soldiers never die; the exam cares less about the phrase than about civilian control of the military. Matthew B. Ridgway stabilized the army in Korea. The armistice of 27 July 1953, signed after Eisenhower’s election and after Stalin’s death, restored a divided Korea. No peace treaty followed.

NSC-68’s expensive buildup became politically possible because Korea seemed to prove Nitze’s two-camp world. Containment, militarized, now had a body count.

Exam traps for this section

• HUAC is the House; McCarthy is the Senate. Do not give McCarthy the Hollywood Ten gavel.
• Hiss: perjury, January 1950. Rosenbergs: execution, 19 June 1953. Do not swap charges or decades.
• McCarran Internal Security Act (1950) is not McCarran–Walter immigration (1952).
• Inchon is 15 September 1950, after Pusan, before the Chinese intervention.
• The Korean dividing line is the 38th parallel, not Vietnam’s 17th.
• Truman fired MacArthur for insubordination / civilian control / limited war, not because Inchon had failed.
• First Red Scare = Palmer, 1919–20; Second = HUAC, loyalty, McCarthy, 1947–54.