American sentiments toward Russia changed during the period encompassing the New Deal and World War II (1928-1944). The nation’s feelings were even less balanced after Hitler and Stalin signed their nonaggression pact in the fall of 1939.  Still, even though the USSR was now an overt enemy of the US, communism was only occasionally a focus of American popular culture. Clearly, many Americans remained ambiguous regarding Russia’s threat to the American way of life. The following timeline takes us through this timeframe and documents the events and happenings leading up to the Second Red Scare.

The New Deal, WWII, and the Red Scare (1928-1944): A Timeline

1928: Trotksy is expelled from the Communist Party and sent into exile in Central Asia.

1928: Stalin implements the USSR’s First Five Year Plan, requiring the kulaks (wealthy peasant farmers from the hinterlands) to surrender their entire yield of crops to feed the city dwellers. When they resist this notion, the Red Army seals off the borders of the Ukraine and begins deporting the kulaks to prisons and labor camps in Siberia. This action results in 12 to 14 million deaths over the next 10 years.

1929: The American Communist Party (ACP) becomes the Communist Party of America (CPUSA).

June 1930: The first version of the House Un-American Activities Committee is assembled to combat the threat of communism in the US. Its first hearings are under the stewardship of Chairman Hamilton Fish (Ham)  of New York. He asserts: “We propose to deport all alien Communists.”

January 1931: The Fish Committee hearings conclude with 13 recommendations, among them that the Communist Party should be outlawed, and that an embargo should be placed on all items imported from Russia.

September 1931: Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille visits the Director of the Society for Cultural Relations, Comrade Petrov in Moscow.

1932: William Z. Foster, then Chairman of the Communist Party in the United States, publishes his book, Toward a Soviet America.

November 8, 1932: Stalin’s second wife, Nadezhda Alliluieva, commits suicide.

1933: Newly elected US President Franklin Roosevelt recognizes the Soviet government for the first time. That same year, around 4.2 million Ukrainian peasants die of starvation and disease, victims of Stalin’s collectivization plan. The plan prevented them from planting crops, importing food, or leaving their barren farms.

September 18, 1934: The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations.

1935: Clifford Odets’s drama, Waiting for Lefty, is staged.

1936-1938: At the height of Stalin’s Great Terror, almost 700,000 Russians are executed by the NKVD (later KGB) death squads, headed by Lavrenti Beria. Tens of thousands of the country’s highest ranking military veterans, most of them officers, are purged along with their families and friends.

August 12, 1938: The Martin Dies (D-TX) era of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) begins. The Texas congressman spearheads a wide-ranging investigation into Communist infiltration of the CIO and other branches of American Labor. Dies promises: “This Committee will not permit any ‘character assassination’ or any ‘smearing’ of innocent people.” At the same time, top lieutenant J. Parnell Thomas (R-NJ) demands a full-scale investigation into the WPA’a Federal Theater and Writers Project, which he describes as “a hotbed for Communists [and] radicals.”

January 3, 1939: The Dies Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) submits a Report to Congress that identifies the American Youth Congress as including “over a dozen” Communist front organizations.

August 24, 1939: Stalin and Hitler agree to the Soviet-German nonaggression pact, signed in Moscow by top lieutenants Molotov and von Ribbentrop. This allows Hitler to invade Poland a week later, effectively igniting the Second World War.

October 23, 1939: Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party in America, is arrested on the charge of having applied for passports in 1921 and 1927 under false names, before obtaining one under his proper name in 1934. Browder had implicated himself during testimony before the Dies Committee on September 5.

1940: The Alien Registration Act, commonly called the Smith Act, is passed. Like the Sedition Act from World War I, it makes advocating the violent overthrow of the US government a crime.

August 21, 1940: Leon Trotsky dies of wounds suffered from an ice pick wielded by Ramon Mercader. Mercader’s actions were disavowed by Moscow. Mercader was the rival heir to the mantle of Lenin. While living outside Mexico City in exile, his home was strafed by 20 men firing machine guns, but he escaped injury.

September 10, 1940: HUAC chairman Martin Dies’ book, The Trojan Horse in America, coauthored with J.B. Matthews, is published. Its main concern is the exposure of Communist front groups, although Dies also warns of the domestic Nazi threat.

June 22, 1941: Nazi forces put Operation Barbarossa in motion and invade the Soviet frontier, making Russia an instant ally of the US, Britain, and France in what Stalin called The Patriotic War.

September 1941: Russian War Relief supplants the American Committee for Medical Aid to Russia. The group was founded in August by a group of New York City business leaders to serve as a major source of aid to Russia. Its president is Edward C. Carter, secretary-general of the Institute of Pacific Relations.

December 1941: Former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies, publishes his memoir titled Mission to Moscow. An excerpt is published in Reader’s Digest. The book sells 50,000 copies in its first six weeks.

May 28, 1942: The Anglo-Soviet Treaty is signed.

March 28, 1943: Life Magazine publishes “Special Issue: The USSR.” Almost all of its 116 pages are devoted to the government, people, and culture of our new ally against Hitler.

May 1943: The Comintern is “dissolved” by Stalin to satisfy his Western allies. Its work continues even after the announcement is made.

November 1943: Stalin meets with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran. Concessions to Russia’s new borders are made — especially regarding Poland. Little is promised to England or America in return.

May 22, 1944: Under the leadership of President Earl Browder, the Communist Party of the USA is dissolved and renamed the Communist Political Association (CPA). The CPA slogan remains that of the CPUSA: “Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism.”

Thanks to Red Scared a book by Michael Barson and Steven Heller, for the information presented in this post.

If you’re interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Magazine’s Red Scare Issue.  Just click on the image below to read, share, and download.

Known to some as the Red Scare of 1919, the First Red Scare was a precursor to the Red-baiting and witch hunting that occurred in the years following World War II. During this period:

People truly believed that Reds were under the bed — not to mention in the water supply, creeping through the halls of government, and even spying from space.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First some background.

After the Russian Revolution, communism was dreaded by America’s business and industrial leaders. Fearing labor unrest, they treated it like the plague. According to Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture, a 2001 book by Michael Barson and Steven Heller:

These same leaders forged secret alliances with racists, jingoists, and other America-first fanatics in spreading anti-Communist propaganda throughout the nation. In turn, they succeeded in convincing a mass of Americans that their lives were threatened by Communists who were nestled among the immigrants entering the United States.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bolshevism became totally entrenched in Russian life, and in 1919 the American Communist Party was founded in Chicago. Refusing to recognize Lenin’s government, President Wilson committed arms and troops to the war against Bolshevism abroad and increased the level of anti-Communist propaganda at home.

Interestingly, though, the Red Scare begins much earlier than 1917. Let’s start our timeline with the Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in 1848.

Red Scare Timeline: 1848-1927

1848: Karl Marx and Frederic Engels write the Manifesto of the Communist Party. It declares: “A specter is haunting Europe, and that specter is Communism.”

1879: Josef Stalin is born in the Georgian village of Gori and christened Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. In 1912, Lenin gives him the name Stalin — Man of Steel.

December 26, 1893: Mao Zedong is born in the farm village of Shaosan, not far from Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province.

1903: Lenin leads the split from the 5 year old Russian Social Democrat Labor Party. He forms the Bolshevik Party.

January 9, 1905: Bloody Sunday erupts. The  Imperial Guard of the absent Czar Nicholas II, at the direction of the grand duke, opens fire on a crowd of several thousand unarmed laborers marching on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to protest mistreatment; 1500 demonstrators are wounded or killed.

1905: Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1900 and 1904, founds the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The group is known as the Wobblies.

November 7, 1917: The October Revolution (the Russian calendar was used) marks the Bolshevik seizure of power with forces that number no more than 250,000. The 15 member Politburo is formed immediately. Josef Stalin, a founding member and an experienced revolutionary activist, is given the post of People’s Commissar of Nationalities.

1917: Lenin’s State and Revolution is published.

1917: Congress passes the Espionage Act, making it illegal to mail literature “advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance” to the laws of the United States.

April 1918: Lenin forms the Revolutionary Military Council.

July 8, 1918: The Romanov royal family — the czar, the empress, and their children — are shot to death by the Bolshevists. Their bodies are buried in a remote forest, but their graves are rediscovered in 1922.

1918: Congress passes the Sedition Act, which forbids anything “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive” being either spoken or written about the US government or the Constitution.

September 1918: Eugene V. Debs is tried in Cleveland and found guilty of violating the Espionage Act. He is sentenced to 2 concurrent 10 year terms, asserting: “While there is a lower class, I am in it: while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” He served his time in an Atlanta penitentiary, even though Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer urged President Wilson to grant him clemency.

March 1919: Lenin establishes The Comintern, the Third Communist International. Its mandate is to coordinate Communist activity worldwide via decree from Moscow.

April 30, 1919: A postal clerk in New York discovers bombs in 20 packages addressed to a variety of government officials. The bombs are set to explode the next day, on May Day. The attack launches America’s First Red Scare.

August 1919: The Justice Department creates the General Intelligence Division. Its first director is J. Edgar Hoover, a graduate of George Washington University Law School.

August 1919: Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer asks Immigration to deport black activist Marcus Garvey. But he doesn’t go to prison until his arrest in January 1922 on charges of mail fraud. His sentence is commuted in 1927, and Garvey is deported back to his native Jamaica.

1919: John Reed’s books, Red Russia and Ten Days That Shook the World, are published. They’re based on his first-hand account of the 1917 Revolution. Back in the US, Reed is expelled from the Socialist Party. He and Benjamin Gitlow form the Communist Labor Party. For a few years, it competes with the Russian led Communist Party of America. Later in 1919, Reed returns to Russia. The Comintern gives him money and instructions to further the growth of the Communist movement in America. Jailed in Finland on his way back to America, Reed falls into poor health. He dies in Moscow in 1920. Lenin sees to it that he is buried within the walls of the Kremlin — the only American to ever be so honored.

January 10, 1920: The League of Nations is formed. It’s dissolved on the same day in 1946, shortly after the founding of the United Nations.

September 16, 1920: A bomb explodes on Wall Street, killing 30 and injuring many others. Anarchists are blamed.

1920: The Red Army, led by Georgi Zhukov, defeats the White Army of the Cossacks and other counter-revolutionaries. This ends Russia’s civil war.

November 1920: The first Chinese Communist Manifesto is published in Shanghai.

May 1921: The Communist Party of America (CPA) and John Reed’s Communist Labor Party (CLP)  merge into the American Communist Party (ACP) at a convention held in Woodstock, NY.

December 24, 1921: Newly elected President Warren G. Harding orders the release of Eugene V. Debs from prison. In 1920, while in prison, Debs had run as the Socialist Party candidate for president. He boldly stated: “I consider the Russian Revolution] the greatest single achievement in all history. I am still a Bolshevik. I am fighting for the same thing here they are fighting for there.”

April 3, 1922: Stalin is elected general secretary to the Central Committee, the most important post in the Party.

December 1922: The USSR is officially formed.

January 21, 1924: Lenin dies and is succeeded by Josef Stalin.

January 1925: Leon Trotsky is removed from his position as commissar for the army and navy and chairman of the military council.

October 1925: The National Negro Labor Congress is organized by the Communist Party.

August 23, 1927: Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are electrocuted. They were convicted of robbery and murder in 1921. Their trial and execution become rallying points for American progressives.

Thanks to Red Scared a book by Michael Barson and Steven Heller, for the information presented in this post.

If you’re interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Studies latest post. Click here to read.

Before we get started, I need to make one thing clear about Red Scare History. This post is not about the real Soviet Menace which threatened the world with nuclear destruction. Instead, it is about anti-Communist propaganda run rampant, scaring Americans into thinking that their world could end in a heartbeat — and with very little warning.

Americans were conditioned to fear Communists in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, years before our World War II partnership with the Russians began.

This First Red Scare was spearheaded by an American business community that was fearful of labor unrest and protective of corporate profits.

As John Steinbeck said in The Grapes of Wrath:  A RED is any son of a bitch that wants thirty cents when we’re paying twenty-five.

Industrial leaders, especially, convinced large numbers of Americans that their livelihoods were threatened by Communists.

Years before the American Communist Party was actually founded, the word “communist” was associated with being un American. This was  especially true after the 1917 Russian Revolution when Bolshevism became totally entrenched in Russian life.

The founding of the American Communist Party in Chicago in 1919 made the previously abstract fear of communism a concrete reality. Woodrow Wilson was the US president at the time. He committed arms and troops to the war against Bolshevism abroad and increased the level of anti-Communist propaganda at home as well.

Throughout the 1920s, Americans increasingly feared that Marxism/Leninism would penetrate the US and cause the death of capitalism.

During the Great Depression, communism did gain a foothold among the American working and intellectual classes who opposed the policies of President Hoover that they felt had plunged the nation into economic disaster.

Owing to the New Deal‘s social policies, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s congressional opponents spent much of their time proposing bills that would limit immigration, free speech, and free assembly for suspected Communists as well as deport foreign-born Communists.

Red scare history tells us that Congress often flirted with the idea of legally prohibiting the American Communist Party.

The war against Germany and the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union temporarily altered these stereotypes. Official government posters and commercial advertising portrayed the Big Three Allies — the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union — marching toward victory. But after the war, the USSR was demonized once again.

By 1948, anti-Communist militancy was sweeping the country.

Communism was blamed for all of America’s ills. Fear of spies, threats of a Communist takeover, and paranoia about nuclear war were offered in large doses in print and on film.

Here is a sampling of early Second Red Scare events:

• May 18, 1948: Congressmen Richard M. Nixon’s and Karl Mundt’s bill to “protect the United States against un-American and subversive activities” — the Mundt-Nixon Bill — is passed in the House by a vote of 319 to 58. The bill, also known as the Internal Security Act, makes it a crime to attempt to establish a totalitarian dictatorship by any means. In effect, this makes the existence of the Communist Party itself a violation of the law.
• June 1948: Washington Witch Hunt by Bert Andrews, which decries the recent abuses of civil liberties by Red hunters, is published by Random House.
• July 20, 1948: After a thirteen-month investigation, a New York grand jury returns indictments against twelve members of the National Board of the Communist Party, who are charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
• July 28, 1948: Elizabeth Bentley, dubbed “the Red Spy Queen ” by the press, testifies before a Senate subcommittee and, three days later to HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee ), that she had been the courier to a Washington-based Soviet spy ring during the war. She also implicates the man she replaced in that capacity, Whittaker Chambers .
• December 15, 1948: Former State Department official Alger Hiss is indicted on two counts of perjury for denying his role in passing classified documents to the Russians, but his first trial ends on July 8, 1949, with a hung jury.

Red-Baiting reached its zenith in the United States in the mid- to late 1950s, persisting to some degree until the end of the “Evil Empire” in 1989. Its demise was made most visible in January 1990 when Moscow’s first McDonald’s opened its doors with a Big Mac priced at 3.75 rubles.

For More information on Red Scare History see Red Scared by Michael Barson and Steven Heller.

If you’re interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Magazine’s Red Scare Issue.  Click the image below to read, share, and download.

Cold War Studies has come up with a list of 10 Red Scare films for holiday gift giving. To purchase from Amazon, just click on each movie title. To view trailers for most of the movies go the Cold War Studies You Tube Channel.

In no particular order, the Red Scare films are:

THE RED MENACE

The Red Menace has been called an overheated expose of Communist Party treachery. Narrated by Los Angeles city councilman, Lloyd G. Douglas, the plot follows an American Vet named Bill Jones as he deals with the unresponsiveness of a government agency called Veteran’s Aid. The agency is responsible for making the G.I. Bill’s promise of a low interest home loan a reality. Bill can’t get them to help him though, and he becomes very disillusioned.  His negative feelings make him a prime target for a Communist cell that is always looking for new recruits and also offering their own version of the American dream.

Nobody actually speaks in this film. Instead, they spout phrases like “My flag has three colors, not one that’s the color of blood!”  Almost every line consists of either pro or anti-communist cliches and rhetoric.

The basic premise is understandable in light of the times, but it will not be taken seriously today.

CONSPIRATOR

In Conspirator, Elizabeth Taylor is shocked to learn that her husband — a British officer played by Robert Taylor — is a murderous Communist agent.

GUILTY OF TREASON

Guilty of Treason is the story of Cardinal Mindzenty of Hungary whom the Reds framed as an anti-Semite and imprisoned in 1949. Mindzenty, played by Charles Bickford, was released from prison in 1956.

[NOTE: The trailer for this film is not available.]

THE IRON PETTICOAT

In The Iron Petticoat, Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn take a page from Ninotchka . Hope plays a wise-cracking American while Hepburn is a frosty Soviet official.

SILK STOCKINGS

Like Ninotchka? Here’s another take – off for you. Silk Stockings is a musical remake of the 1939 film. Cyd Charisse plays Greta Garbo’s role as the no – nonsense party official sent to retrieve three colleagues who have been seduced by the charms of Paris. Fred Astaire plays the American who tries to win her indoctrinated heart. Cole Porter’s music provides the magic.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

In The Manchurian Candidate, one of my all time favorites, Laurence Harvey plays a former Korean War POW who has been brainwashed. Years later he is used to assassinate a presidential nominee. Frank Sinatra is memorable as Harvey’s commanding officer who overcomes his own brainwashing to figure out and defuse the plot. The Communist ringleader of the scheme turns out to be Harvey’s mother, portrayed chillingly by Angela Lansbury. From the Richard Condon novel.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Starring Sean Connery, From Russia With Love is the second film in the James Bond series. In this film, Agent 007 faces off against a multitude of villains. Bond is sent to Istanbul to steal a state – of – the – art Russian decoding machine. To accomplish this, he seduces a gorgeous clerk from the Soviet embassy who helps him out in the end.

Many think this is the best of the James Bond series!!

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is based on spy master John Le Carre’s best selling novel. Richard Burton plays a burned out agent who’s asked to carry out one more impossible mission for queen and country.

THE IPCRESS FILE

The Ipcress File, based on Len Deighton’s best seller, is in the same vein as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Michael Caine plays Harry Palmer, a crook converted into a secret agent.

REDS

Reds has been mentioned in several previous posts on Cold War Studies. It is a quintessential Hollywood spectacle, portraying events leading to the First Red Scare. Warren Beatty plays John Reed, a radical American journalist. Set during the days surrounding the October Revolution of 1917, The film has a stellar cast, including Diane Keaton as Reed’s lover.

If you’re interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Magazine’s Red Scare Issue.  Just click on the image below to read, share, and download.

When it came time for Look magazine to provide its readership with a handy method of identifying Communists, it turned to Renaissance man Leo Cherne (1912-1999).

Here is what Leo had to say: (From Look Magazine, March 4, 1947)

The real Communist is not a liberal or a progressive. He believes in Russia first and a Soviet America. He accepts the doctrines of dictatorship as practiced in Russia. And he is prepared to use a dictator’s tactics of lies and violence to realize his ambitions.

Because the whole Communist apparatus is geared to secrecy, it is not always easy to determine just who is a Communist. But whether he is a Party card-holder or a fellow traveler, the American Communist is not like other Americans. To the Communist, everything — his country, his job, his family — take second place to his Party duty. Even his sex life is synchronized with the obligations of The Cause.

Mr. Cherne then offers several lists “to help the patriotic and paranoid American ID Commies and Pinkos:”

HOW TO IDENTIFY AN AMERICAN COMMUNIST

There is no simple definition of an American Communist. However, certain general classifications can be set up. And if either a person or an organization falls within  most of these classifications, that person or organization can be said to be following the Communists’ lead.

These identifying characteristics include:

1. The belief that the war waged by Great Britain and her allies during the period from August 1939 to June 1941 (the period of the war before Russia was invaded), was an “imperialistic” war and a game of power politics.
2. The support of foreign policy, which agrees always with that followed by Soviet Russia, and which changes as the USSR policy changes.
3. The argument that any foreign or domestic policy, which does not fit the Communist plan, is advanced for ulterior motives and is not in the best interests of either the people or of world peace.
4. The practice of criticizing only American, British, and Chinese policies, and never criticizing Soviet policies.
5. Continually receiving favorable publicity in such Communist publications as the Daily Worker and the New Masses.
6. Continually appearing as sponsor or co-worker of such known Communist-front groups as the Committee to Win the Peace, the Civil Rights Congress, the National Negro Congress, and the groups which can be described as Communist inspired because they fall within the classification set forth here.
7. Continually charging critics with being “Fascists,” no matter whether the criticism comes from liberals, conservatives, reactionaries, or those who really are Fascists.
8. Arguing for a class society by pitting one group against another; and putting special privileges ahead of community needs as, for example, claiming that labor had privileges but had no responsibilities in dealing with management.
9. Declaring that capitalism and democracy are “decadent” because some injustices exist under those systems.

Of course, actual membership is 100 per cent proof, but this kind of proof is difficult to obtain.

These are the five basic layers that the Communists rely on for their strength:

1. The Party member – who openly or secretly holds a membership card.
2. The fellow-traveler – who is not a Party member but who is carefully trained to follow the Communist policy.
3. The sympathizer – who may disagree with some polices, but who is in general agreement with Communist objectives.
4. The opportunist – who is unconcerned with Party goals or tactics but who believes, as John L. Lewis did in his CIO days, that the party can be used to his own advantage.
5. The muddled liberal – who despite deep disagreement with the Communist Party’s ultimate goals, co-operates with Party members in front organizations.

HOW NOT TO BE A SUCKER FOR A LEFT HOOK

Most Americans want to help a good cause, but don’t want to help Communists hiding behind a good-cause label. Here are tips:

1. Check credentials: Before you join or help a group, find out if it opposed Britain’s “imperialistic” war and favored isolationism before Russia was invaded in 1941; if it supported the “people’s” war after Russia was invaded; if it now favors the veto as used by Russia in the UN.
2. Signing petitions: Are you getting your name on a Communist list?
3. Contributing money: Check carefully; you may be paying a Communist.
4. On the escalator: Is your support of one group involving you in causes you didn’t know about? Check all affiliations.
5. Resolutions: Does the group you support suddenly endorse other groups you know nothing about?
6. Politics: Is your “nonpartisan” group endorsing candidates? Who are they?
7. Speakers: Who are the outsiders invited to address your meetings?
8. Fly-by-night issues: Does your group support policies also supported by the Communist Party, and then forget those policies as soon as the Party line changes?
9. Double standard: Is it sensitive about American policy in China and British policy in Palestine, but quiet about Russian policy in Iran, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria?
10. Literature: Does literature handed out at meetings endorse Party causes?
11. Social life: Are you urged to buy tickets to other groups’ events? You may be contributing to other causes.
12. Demonstrations and conferences: Does the local group which was set up to study the cost of living, for example, send delegates to conferences which pass resolutions on atomic energy control?
13. Membership: Watch who joins and who resigns. Harold Ickes recently resigned from the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts and Sciences; Marion Hargrove quit the Duncan-Paris Post of the American Legion and the National Committee to Win the Peace.

Want your own copy of Cherne’s original article? Just do an online search for “what is a communist Look Magazine.”

If you’re interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Magazine’s Red Scare Issue. Click on the image below to read, share, and download.

FAIL-SAFE is a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet. The movie is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. It tells the story of a fictional Cold War nuclear crisis at the height of the Red Scare. The film features an all star cast, including Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, and early appearances by Fritz Weaver, Dom DeLuise and Larry Hagman.

When I was a kid I had a babysitter named Rosie whom I adored. She did “big girl” things like volunteer for the Civil Air Patrol, and she let me tag along. So every Thursday evening at quarter ’til six, we walked up the block to the Methodist Church and climbed the winding stairs to their top floor. We got out the official notebook, put the binoculars around our necks and looked and listened for enemy aircraft. Our directions were to record information on every plane we heard and saw: the time; the type — passenger or other; the direction of the flight, and the number of engines.

I relived these memories recently when I saw FAIL-SAFE on TV.  The film, shot in black and white with no music, was released in 1964. Thus, the action takes place in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis during the Red Scare, portraying a world on the edge of nuclear war.

For those of you too young to remember, there were people in the US in those days who wanted to push the button first and get it over with. They truly believed that the Soviets would be caught napping, and that Soviet technology and weapons systems were faulty. They believed that we could survive whatever the ‘Commies’ threw back at us.

William, a political science professor played by Walter Matthau, brings this point home by making  “death into a game.”

As a crisis unfolds, those around him ask questions centering on acceptable losses and the consequences of nuclear war — noting the fact that there will be no or few survivors. William, in turn, talks about the ‘thrill’ of pushing the button that will start all out nuclear conflict.

William’s position provokes a heated discussion and elicits concerns from military leaders and other experts in the room with him:

• What is the purpose of war?

• Should we stop war or just limit it? Is there even such a thing as a limited war? Can there be a limited response?

• What happens when the war machine acts more quickly than the capability of men to control it?

And a question that is quite timely in today’s post 9/11 world:  Are there any circumstances under which we should shoot down our own plane?

Dramatic tension in the film revolves around a box called The Fail-Safe Box.

Has Soviet aircraft crossed over into American territory or has there been a mistake?

The President of the United States is forced to consider: what are we going to do? What do the Russians think? What are they going to do?

Remember that “back in the day” there were no shades of gray. Every war — even a thermonuclear war — was expected to have a clear winner and loser. Moreover,  MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction, a military doctrine in play during this period,  allowed each superpower to destroy the other many times over. The Cold War had become a conflict more dangerous and unmanageable than anything faced before.

Americans had once enjoyed superior nuclear force, an unchallenged economy, strong alliances, and a trusted imperial President to direct this incredible power against the Soviets. Now many perceived that Russian forces were close to achieving nuclear equality.

Today’s viewer may find FAIL-SAFE to be overly dramatic. But it provides insight into some of the most pressing issues raised by the Red Scare and the half century Cold War conflict. Some of them remain relevant today.

If you’re interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Magazine’s Red Scare Issue.  Click on the image below to read, share, and download.