Joseph McCarthy, a US Senator from Wisconsin during the years from 1947-1957, has had an immense and infamous influence on the post-war years in the United States. "McCarthyism", as it came to be known, went after thousands of individuals on claims of communism, and created strong anti-red sentiment as it did opposition.McCarthyism's downfall came primarily due to the Army-McCarthy hearings and the spread of television in American homes. The Army-McCarthy hearings centered around the Army's accusation that Roy Cohn (pictured here) had given preferential treatment to David Schine, a friend of Cohn and McCarthy.
Cohn had served as the prosecutor in the Rosenberg trials, and had produced the testimony from Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, that the Rosenbergs had been receiving classified documents. Cohn then moved on to working with McCarthy as his chief counsel. Interestingly, this was done in part to avoid accusations that McCarthy's investigations were anti-semitic in motivation. Coincidentally, Cohn served as Donald Trump's attorney for 13 years.
In order to counter the Army's accusations, McCarthy accused the Army of harboring a Communist infiltration in Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. Like many others of McCarthy's investigations, it came up largely fruitless in reality. Usually, McCarthy would act as the chariman for these inquiries. However, in this case, since he was being accused by the Army, South Dakota senator Karl Mundt reluctantly accepted the chairmanship of the subcommittee.
The hearings were televised by ABC and DuMont, and this ultimately led to McCarthy's downfall. The public, seeing the reckless nature of McCarthy's accusations sided with the Army, and McCarthy lost much of his popularity. An estimated 80 million people watched the hearings on television of the 36 days during which they were aired. McCarthy's approval ratings sank from 50% to just 34% over a matter of 6 months.
The committee concluded that McCarthy had done nothing wrong, but that Cohn had given preferential treatment to Schine on some occasions. It also warned of "questionable behaviour" on the army's part. In reality, it is unknown what exactly was the nature of the relationship between Cohn, Schine, and McCarthy, but it is clear that some cooperation took place between the three.
Sources:
http://www.today.com/popculture/50-years-ago-tv-helped-end-mccarthyism-wbna5165583
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html?_r=0
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/army-mccarthy-hearings
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1769.html
Interesting! McCarthy did have a big impact in the lives of American people, he put fear of communism in the face of all. I feel McCarthy did do something wrong in persecuting people on being communist with little to no evidence. This post was put quite well because you explained what McCarthyism clearly is and states the impacts and the like you said "question behavior" in how this theory become such a big thing. Why do you think people believe in him so fast? Why were people not accusing McCarthy in being communist since he was using communist way to spread accusations of communist on people?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your blog because we did not focus as much of the downfall of McCarthy and why he lost his popularity. I had no idea that the army had accused him in the first place of the preferential treatment before he brought up the communist in the army. Doing some other research, I learned that the reason that the army came after McCarthy is because he charged lax security at a top-secret army facility. I also looked up how the army presented their case through their lawyer Joseph Welch. Welch responded to McCarthy's accusations that he had ties to a communist organization with arguably the most famous line of the case, "Have you no decency?" After being called reckless and cruel, McCarthy seemingly lost his support overnight. After the case, McCarthy was ignored by the press and his Senate colleagues, and he eventually died 3 years later.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Have_you_no_sense_of_decency.htm
This was a really interesting post and I learned a lot from it! I just knew that the downfall of McCarthyism came from the Army-McCarthyism hearings, but did not know that McCarthy was accused first and this was his comeback. You mentioned that Cohn served as McCarthy's chief counsel partly to avoid his accusations. Cohn and McCarthy's ambiguous relationship reveals the air of uncertainty in friends and foes alike during the height of McCarthyism. It is cool to see multiple themes in this one topic: anti-communism, technological advancement, vulnerability of public opinion, etc. I think that if it were not for the TV airing this hearing nationwide, this case would not have received so much attention, turned the tables for McCarthyism, and ended up as just another one of his suspicious accusations.
ReplyDelete