The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower

In The Great Fear, David Caute presents a meticulously researched and fascinating study of perhaps the greatest crisis that America has ever suffered in terms of her liberal and democratic values. Here is the first comprehensive history of the fearsome anti-Communist purges that affected almost every area of American life in the age of Truman and Eisenhower. Drawing on sources not previously explored — union personnel files, defense lawyers’ files, private correspondence and unpublished testimony — Caute describes the impact of mounting hysteria on the federal Civil Service, the State Department, the armed forces, the universities, the teaching profession, the press, the ranks of science and the entertainment industry. He demonstrates how the purge paralyzed the unions and forced hundreds of seamen, electrical workers and other working-class people out of their jobs. Caute’s study reveals precisely how the machinery of repression operated: the federal loyalty boards, the Attorney General’s list, the loyalty oaths, the legislative committees of inquiry, the Smith Act prosecutions, the FBI and its ubiquitous informers, the deportation terror, the censorship of foreign mail, the absurd restrictions on freedom of travel and the witch hunts conducted by the press. Here also is an explanation of the crucial role played by the Supreme Court during what amounted to a massive assault on the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. This is not merely another book about Senator Joseph McCarthy. Indeed, Caute explodes the myth of a one-man riot and shows, on the contrary, how the Senator from Wisconsin entered the scene only halfway through a purge launched with the connivance of the Cold War liberals. The Great Fear is a brilliant exploration and assessment of an era that must not be forgotten by the American people.