McCarthyism, The Berlin Airlift and The Korean War.

McCarthyism

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s America was overwhelmed with concerns about the threat of communism growing in Eastern Europe and China. Capitalizing on those concerns, a young Senator named Joseph McCarthy made a public accusation that more than two hundred "card-carrying" communists had infiltrated the United States government.

While the House Un-American Activities Committee had been formed in 1938 as an anti-Communist organ, McCarthy’s accusations heightened the political tensions of the times. Known as McCarthyism, the paranoid hunt for infiltrators was notoriously difficult on writers and entertainers, many of whom were labeled communist sympathizers and were unable to continue working. Some had their passports taken away, while others were jailed for refusing to give the names of other communists. The trials, which were well publicized, could often destroy a career with a single unsubstantiated accusation. Among those well-known artists accused of communist sympathies or called before the committee were Dashiell Hammett, Waldo Salt, Lillian Hellman, Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, Arthur Miller, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Chaplin. In all, three hundred and twenty artists were blacklisted, and for many of them this meant the end of exceptional and promising careers.

During this time there were few in the press willing to stand up against McCarthy and the anti-Communist machine. Among those few were comedian Mort Sahl, and journalist Edward R. Murrow, whose strong criticisms of McCarthy are often cited as playing an important role in his eventual removal from power. By 1954, the fervor had died down and many actors and writers were able to return to work. Though relatively short, these proceedings remain one of the most shameful moments in modern U.S. history.

The Berlin Airlift

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The Berlin Airlift

The blockade of Berlin was the first serious crisis of the Cold War. By 1948, the Western allies began moving towards consolidating their occupation zones in Western Germany into a single independent German state. As part of that process, the U.S., France and Britain took steps to reform the currency in the parts of Germany they occupied, in order to promote economic recovery. The new currency, over which the Soviets would have no control, was also to become legal tender in the Western sectors of Berlin.

The USSR, which had been invaded twice by Germany, was alarmed at the prospect of a strong Germany. The Soviet leadership responded to the Western allies' currency reforms by installing their own new currency in East Berlin just 24 hours before the West mark was to go into circulation. They also imposed a blockade on West Berlin, cutting off all land and rail routes into the Western sectors. Lucius Clay, the military governor of the American zone of occupied Germany wrote: "When the order of the Soviet Military Administration to close all rail traffic from the western zones went into effect at 6:00AM on the morning of June 24, 1948, the three western sectors of Berlin, with a civilian population of about 2,500,000 people, became dependent on reserve stocks and airlift replacements. It was one of the most ruthless efforts in modern times to use mass starvation for political coercion... "

Initially the Soviet authorities thought the plan was working. "Our control and restrictive measures have dealt a strong blow at the prestige of the Americans and British in Germany. " The Soviet authorities reported. But the Western Allies responded immediately by mounting a tremendous airlift. Under the leadership of General Curtis LeMay, ten-ton capacity C-54s began supplying the city on July 1. By the fall the airlift, code-named "Operation Vittles "and often referred to as "LeMay's feed and coal company ," was bringing in an average of 5,000 tons of supplies a day.

Not only did the blockade turn out to be totally ineffective, it ended up backfiring on the Soviets in other ways. It provoked genuine fears of war in the West. And instead of preventing the establishment of an independent West Germany, it accelerated the Allies plans to set up the state. It also hastened the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an American-Western European military alliance. In May 1949, Stalin had little choice but to lift the blockade.

The Korean War

The Korean War provided the first confrontation between two nuclear powers. And as the war progressed the conflict demonstrated how difficult it would be for either side to use atomic bombs decisively in battle.

The war broke out on June 25, 1950 when North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel, invading South Korea. North Korean leader Kim Il-sung launched the attack once he had received a promise of support from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. In January 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson haddelivered a speech in which he said South Korea and Taiwan were not part of the American "defensive perimeter," which seemed to indicate the U.S. would keep out of a Korean conflict. And it's clear that Stalin only agreed to support the invasion after being convinced the U.S. would not get involved.

However, Acheson's comments were misleading. The United States reacted to the news of the invasion by immediately taking steps to convene the United Nations Security Council. On June 27th the Security Council asked UN members to provide military assistance to help South Korea repel the invasion. U.S. forces went in on June 30th, by which time the North Koreans had taken the South Korean capital of Seoul. On September 15th, a UN force landed at Inchon and by September 29th, the UN troops had returned Seoul to the South Korean President. But by the end of the year the Chinese had intervened on behalf of the North Koreans halting the UN advance.

While the U.S. Strategic Air Command was well prepared to launch an all-out attack against the Soviet Union, it was less clear how it could use atomic weapons in a limited conflict like Korea. On August 1, 1950, the "decision was made to send the 9th Bomb Wing to Guam as an atomic task force immediately." Ten B-29s, loaded with unarmed atomic bombs, set out for the Pacific. On August 5, one of the planes crashed during take off from Fairfield-Suisun Air Force base near San Francisco, killing a dozen people and scattering the mildly radioactive uranium of the bomb's tamper around the airfield. The other planes reached Guam where they went on standby duty.

At a press conference on November 30, President Truman confirmed that he had been actively considering using atomic bombs in Korea since the beginning of the war. The comments provoked worldwide reaction and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee rushed to Washington to express his concern. Truman reluctantly reassured him that the U.S. had "no intention" of using atomic weapons in Korea except to prevent a "major military disaster."

So while President Truman tried to use his atomic superiority to the United States' advantage in North Korea he was never able to. Ultimately, it was not even clear that atomic bombing in a war against peasant armies would produce decisive results. If the Americans used the bomb and the Chinese forces kept on coming, it would demonstrate the bomb's ineffectiveness and reduce its deterrent effect in other arenas.

The war ended up being a see-saw affair that saw the UN forces retreat from North Korea to the Pusan perimeter in southeastern Korean and then forge forward again across the 38th parallel only to be driven south once more by the Chinese forces. In July 1951 after 13 months of fighting the two sides began armistice talks, which dragged on for more than two years. After Stalin's death in March 1953, the new leadership in Moscow moved more rapidly towards reaching an agreement. The cease-fire was ultimately signed on July 27, 1953.

The human cost of the war was catastrophic. In the first month of their operation alone, the Strategic Air Command groups dropped 4,000 tons of bombs. Besides high explosives, the bombers used napalm. In retirement, Curtis LeMay described the devastation saying, "we eventually burned down every town in North Korea... and some in South Korea too. We even burned down [the South Korean city of] Pusan -- an accident, but we burned it down anyway." Estimates of the casualties vary widely, but there is reason to believe that besides the three and a half million military dead, wounded and missing on both sides, more than two million civilians died in North Korea. In the end the border dividing the two countries remained exactly where it had been before the North Korean invasion.