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GARY EICHTEN: 6 minutes past 12 o'clock. Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Carousel Automobiles in Golden Valley, offering world-class European automobiles from Audi, Land Rover, and Porsche. 544-9591. And we welcome you back to Midday here on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten.

TONY KAHN: That was the kind of fear that there was around there. It was the fear that at any moment, you might get into trouble because of what you believed or because of what somebody said you believed. So you really couldn't trust your best friends.

GARY EICHTEN: Tony Kahn, the writer and producer of Blacklisted, the radio drama heard this week on Midday, that told the story of Tony's father, Gordon. Gordon Kahn was one of the Hollywood screenwriters targeted by the US House Un-American Activities Committee. 50 years ago this week, HUAC began a series of hearings designed to ferret out communist subversion in Hollywood. Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy would follow with his own investigation, exposing what he claimed were communist influences in the government and the military.

Before it was all over, there were thousands of Gordon cons, targets of investigations that many claim amount to the starkest attack on First Amendment freedoms in the history of the United States. Today, on this second hour of our Midday program, we're going to take a closer look at the Red Scare of the 1940s and '50s. Joining us from New York is historian Ellen Schrecker, who teaches at Yeshiva University in New York City.

She is one of the nation's leading experts on the McCarthy era. She's written several books on the subject, including a book called the Age of McCarthyism, published in 1994. And she has a new book coming out next spring called Many Are the Crimes-- McCarthyism in America.

University of Minnesota history professor Hy Berman will also be joining us this hour to discuss the McCarthy era here in Minnesota. And we invite you to join our conversation as well, especially those of you who've been listening to this radio drama these past three days. I know that that series raised a lot of questions. Give us a call. 227-6000 Twin City area number, 227-6000. Outside the Twin Cities, 1-800-242-2828. 227-6000 or 1-800-242-2828. Professor Schrecker, thanks for joining us.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on Minnesota Public Radio. And I assume you're all very nice.

GARY EICHTEN: [LAUGHS]

Well, let's hope so. I'm wondering, just as a starting point, how did these investigations begin? What was the trigger for them?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Well, there had been investigations in accusations of communism within the Roosevelt administration. And the House Un-American Activities Committee actually was started in 1938. But it really got underway in about 1947, when it began to call up well-known communists and people who were associated with the Communist Party.

And then in the fall of 1947, 50 years ago today, it became notorious for its investigations of communism within Hollywood. This was an investigation that had been prepared with the help of the FBI. And it's very important, when we look at the McCarthy period, to realize how important the FBI was.

The FBI was the organization that really set up many of the HUAC hearings, fed them names, fed them information. And so what we have is a kind of multipronged attack on the American left that began in the immediate post-war period, in about 1947.

GARY EICHTEN: Uh-huh. Now, how do we get to Joe McCarthy? He's probably the best known-- Senator Joe McCarthy, probably the best known of all the anti-communist hunters, if you will, the communist hunter. How do we get to him from HUAC?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: From HUAC? Well, Joe McCarthy really sort of got on the bandwagon a little bit late. And what made him special and what made him give his name to this whole movement, which most of us historians would rather call Hooverism, if we have to give it a name, name it after J. Edgar Hoover, maybe. But McCarthy had been a fairly unsavory senator. He hadn't done very much.

And in the beginning of 1950, he launches an attack on the Truman administration, claiming that it was shielding communists, and that he had the names of-- well, was it 206? Was it 85? His numbers kept changing. But basically, he was talking about the fact that there were, quote unquote, "communist agents" within the government.

Now, these were claims that had been made since the late 1940s, since the 1930s, even. McCarthy was more brazen. He lied. He claimed he had these lists, and then the lists never appeared. He would name anybody. He had no shame.

It was his personality, more than his actual charges, that made him so notorious, because the charges that he was making were charges that had been made earlier by a wide range of politicians and journalists, especially within the Republican Party, who were simply trying to attack the Democratic administration of President Truman.

And McCarthy was able-- because he was echoing charges that had already been made, he was able to make use of the work of what I've called a anti-communist network, a group of essentially professional anti-communists who shared names, who gave each other information, who worked with the FBI. They worked with HUAC. They fed little tidbits to their favorite columnists.

And these people sort of structured what we today would call McCarthyism. They were responsible for the Hollywood blacklist. They were often working on the staffs of these committees, on the staff of HUAC, on the staff of McCarthy's committee, and on the staff of a much more important but little known committee called the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which was a committee of the Judiciary Committee that was investigating quote unquote, "communist penetration" within the federal government.

GARY EICHTEN: Do we have any comprehensive list or number, guesstimate, even, as to how many people were either exposed-- depending on your viewpoint, either exposed or smeared by all these investigations?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Well, that's incredibly hard to come by because during the McCarthy period, people who were smeared, people who lost their jobs, for example, like to keep it secret because, obviously, they were controversial, and they would have trouble getting another job. Also, the FBI, which was very influential in sort of fingering people quietly, kept a very low profile so that we do not have any lists of how many people were affected.

However, there have been attempts to add up lists. People assumed there were about 300 people in Hollywood. There were easily 100 college professors, maybe 200. The largest group of workers who were affected and who lost their jobs during this period were dockworkers and merchant marine seamen, which one doesn't usually think of as McCarthy victims.

But what's very important overall to realize-- of course, there were a lot of federal employees affected as well, state employees. There were loyalty programs within most governments, within most school systems. Sometimes, for example, the broadcast network CBS had a loyalty program. And all its employees had to take an oath, a loyalty oath.

The best figure that historians have come up with is about 10,000 people. Somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 people probably lost their jobs during this period.

GARY EICHTEN: Do we have any idea how many of those 10,000 people were actually a threat to the United States?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Oh, I would doubt that any of them really were a threat by the late 1940s and '50s. That doesn't necessarily mean that these people weren't in or near the Communist Party. And I think this is one of the other myths that has been circulated, really, since the McCarthy era, that especially the people who were affected didn't want to let on that they were in the Communist Party.

Communism had been demonized. Communists were portrayed in the media as sort of robots who took their orders from Stalin and were going to blow up bridges the next day the minute Stalin told them to do anything. And so what you had was many people who had been involved in a left-wing movement in the 1930s and '40s, people who were not Soviet agents, but people who had joined the Communist Party because in the 1930s and '40s, the American Communist Party was really the most active and dynamic movement on the left.

Its subsequent history, especially during the Cold War, has transformed it into a sort of demonized den of subversion. But many people, including people like Gordon Kahn and many of the Hollywood screenwriters, many union officials, many academics, teachers, social workers were involved in the party because they thought it was an effective organization that would help bring about the kinds of social reforms that they were interested in.

The Communist Party was interested in racial equality. It was pushing opposition to Hitler at a time in the late 1930s when no other group was really that active. It was involved in organizing labor unions during the late 1930s and '40s. So many people who were involved in it did not think of themselves as working for the Soviet Union, but as trying to make the United States a better place. The Cold War came along, and they got in trouble.

GARY EICHTEN: Ellen Schrecker is with us. She teaches at Yeshiva University in New York City, one of the nation's preeminent experts on the McCarthy era. And also joining us this hour to talk about the '40s and '50s, the Great Red Scare, Hy Berman, who teaches history at the University of Minnesota. Hello, Professor Berman.

HY BERMAN: Hi.

GARY EICHTEN: Was--

HY BERMAN: I got in the middle of the conversation, but I had a class and therefore couldn't be helped.

GARY EICHTEN: You bet. The whole McCarthy era, was that a big deal here in Minnesota where a lot of people targeted? Or was that--

HY BERMAN: Yes. I mean, to answer your question in one word, yes, it was a big deal. A lot of people were targeted. And it was, in fact, a major political event in the state very, very much so.

Up until the beginning of the Cold War, it was, in fact used by-- anti-communism was used by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a means, really, even of destroying the Farmer-Labor party in 1938, joining with antisemites, fascists, and other groups like that to target Elmer Benson and successfully defeating him in the election of '38.

GARY EICHTEN: The communists here in Minnesota, were they the social progressives that Professor Schrecker was talking about? Or were they more pro-Soviet--

HY BERMAN: I haven't heard what Professor Schrecker said. But I think I understand what you're saying. And the answer to your question is they were certainly involved in organizing workers and trying to create a better political climate in the state and pushing for an anti-fascist and anti-Nazi agenda.

They were involved in the basic reforms of the Farmer-Labor movement, particularly after 1936 when they became an integral part of it. And as such, the relationship to the Soviet Union for most rank-and-file communists in Minnesota was minimal, if at all existing. The communists in Minnesota saw the Soviet Union as, in fact, a kind of a beacon, a guide, a hopeful place for emulation in terms of worker achievement, achievement of a worker state.

But outside of that, there was hardly anything else in terms of any kind of espionage or stuff like that. That comes out later on in terms of demonization in terms of other kinds of activities.

GARY EICHTEN: Historians Hy Berman and Ellen Schrecker are joining us this hour as we take a look back at the 1940s, '50s, the McCarthy era, as it's come to be known, and just exactly what that meant to this country, how it played out and how it affected the people who were caught up in it. If you'd like to join our conversation, give us a call, 227-6000 Twin City area number, 227-6000. Outside the Twin Cities, 1-800-242-2828. Jim, go ahead, please.

CALLER: Well, first of all, I want to thank you very much for having this program, although, of course, I'm a little disappointed that I think your commentators will not provide a balanced view. But I really appreciate you allowing me to be on the air.

I am a little bit, I guess, fearful in that there was a letter to the editor yesterday in the Pioneer Press from Gene Mammenga and his wife, who, of course, used to be head of the Department of Education, Minnesota, where he says, quote, "He nicely congratulates Paula Schroeder on her work with the station. But then he said he had contacted her to complain about the decision to include topics and participants from right-wing think tanks." I would hope Public Radio would make a real effort to use a kind of MacNeil/Lehrer format as often as possible so we get both sides.

Now, the other side of it is simply there was a real threat in the '40s and '50s in this country. There was an extensive Soviet spy network in the United States that included not only Alger Hiss and numerous other people. Michael Straight in the 1980s confessed that he was a part of it. And he was editor of The New Republic. His parents had founded The New Republic. There were hundreds of Americans, some of them high ranking, who were Soviet spies.

Now, is this important or not? Well, it helped many experts feel-- and you can find books to back this up-- that it did help the information that was given to the Soviets about the atomic bomb, helped them develop it sooner. May have made it easier for them to encourage the North Koreans to invade South Korea.

We had 50,000 Americans who lost their lives, which is more than Gordon Kahn did. Now, Tony Kahn is very careful to never say whether or not his father was a communist. He says, I don't know if he was. He didn't have to tell. Well, many good Americans did name names, Elia Kazan, among others. If you were subpoenaed and witnessed, why wouldn't you tell about your activities as a communist if it was relevant?

Now, I don't defend J. Edgar Hoover. He wasn't a nice man. I don't defend Joe McCarthy. He wasn't a nice man. But however horrible they were as human beings, there still was a very real Soviet espionage spy system.

And in the end, I think it cost some Americans their lives. And that is not presented in this docudrama. And both your speakers so far have made it sound like that someone who would be concerned about this would really be a bigot and a nut and perhaps a fascist. I'd love to just finally say, I would ask the listeners--

HY BERMAN: Absolutely not true.

CALLER: --to read books on this. They will find there are scholars who agree with my perspective as well as your other so-called experts. So please, folks, get all the information.

GARY EICHTEN: Professor Schrecker?

HY BERMAN: May I say just one thing here? We're not talking about Soviet espionage. That's a different topic. Nor was the House Un-American Activities Committee very much interested in Soviet espionage. That was not their focus. Their focus was on attempting to undermine a movement that had, as its purpose, the advancement of some kind of social agenda and political and economic agenda that was progressive, that was trade unionist, that was anti-fascist, and that was, in fact, anti-racist.

Now, to be sure, there was a Soviet espionage network. Well, no one is denying that. But that is not the focus of the House Un-American Activities Committee. That was not the focus of the major thrust of the Red Scare.

GARY EICHTEN: Professor Schrecker?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Yeah. I'm glad that your listener brought up the question of espionage, because I think it's very important to realize that it did exist, and that we now know that people like Julius Rosenberg at least was involved. And it's not irrelevant that these people were also members of the Communist Party.

I think what we have to realize is that much of the Soviet espionage took place during World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, that many of the people who were involved in this espionage thought that they were helping the war effort. They really did. They believed that the Soviet Union was the main bulwark against Nazi Germany, that until 1944, after all, only the Russian army was fighting Hitler. And these people felt that whatever they could do to help the Soviet Union was really helping a broader cause.

At the same time, of course, they were breaking the law. They were spies. And clearly, we have to accept that. That doesn't mean, however, that by 1946, '47, '48, by the 1950s, that these people were still spying.

Most of them left any sensitive positions within the government. There was a very early purge of people on the left within the government, beginning right after the war so that we're not talking about a threat.

But what made McCarthyism spread, what gave McCarthyism so much force was the plausibility. And this was something that HUAC fostered, that J. Edgar Hoover fostered, this notion that anybody who was close to the Communist Party was a potential Soviet agent, made it possible to rationalize an attack on all these left-wing progressive movements that were fairly close to the Communist Party.

And I think that this is what made McCarthyism so widespread and, to a certain extent, made it understandable why so many ordinary people went along with it, why the Hollywood studios fired their left-wing screenwriters or why school districts fired schoolteachers, why the University of Minnesota fired people. It was because there was a plausibility to this scenario that somebody in the Communist Party was disloyal.

GARY EICHTEN: Wasn't there--

ELLEN SCHRECKER: That wasn't the case. But nonetheless, there were enough incidents that made it seem plausible.

GARY EICHTEN: Professor Berman, Professor Schrecker, do you see the people involved in these investigations as bad people? Given the context of the times, I mean, the Soviets had overrun Eastern Europe. We were looking at a war in Korea.

Somebody had given the Soviets the secrets to the atomic bomb. It did seem like we were under a real threat. And wasn't their response, at least in part, justified by what they were facing?

HY BERMAN: Well, I don't think that you could answer that question one way or another, because if the House Un-American Activities Committee uncovered a single threat, I'm not aware of it. But the point that you're making is that, were the times dangerous times? Yes. But were the targets, the targets that were, in fact, the ones that would, in fact, be a threat to American security? The answer to that is no.

To what extent was a factory worker who worked in a defense factory and happened at one time to be a member of one of the front organizations a threat to American society? Yet that was the person who was being brought before HUAC and other agencies and hounded, fired, not given, not allowed to work.

What relationship does the fact that an actor who played the role of Al Jolson in the movies and was, in fact, a trade unionist in Hollywood and a member of the Communist Party not allowed to further his career and be acting? To what extent was that a defense of our security arrangement? I can't see that at all.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: One thing that's important to realize is that there are a number of scenarios that went into making up this witch hunt. For example, there were attacks on a number of unions that had a lot of communists in their leadership in the organization. And many of the opponents of these communist union leaders used questions of national security as a kind of fig leaf, as a rationalization for getting rid of their own internal enemies within the labor movement.

We can see this, for example, in something little known but very widespread program called the Port Security Program, which was implemented at the time of the Korean War to, quote unquote, "protect American shipping." And it imposed a massive loyalty program on everybody who handled shipping on the West Coast-- seamen, longshoremen, et cetera.

But what was interesting was that it was designed really to destroy a group of left-wing unions because people who were forced out of their jobs for security reasons had absolutely no problem booking passage on the ships that they had just been forced to leave their jobs on. So a lot of other agendas other than national security impinged here during the McCarthy era. And it's important to see it as a multistranded phenomenon.

GARY EICHTEN: Peter, your question, please?

CALLER: Yeah, I listened to the docudrama the other night. And my overall sense was that there was no one in the entire United States who was going to do anything to help these people who were being blacklisted. And I was wondering if there were any groups that actually did go to bat or fight for these people as their First Amendment rights were being violated. And I'll hang up and listen.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: That was one of the things I'd always been looking for is, who helped these people out? And basically, they helped themselves. They formed networks. They got each other jobs if they could. But the main organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union, stayed out of the picture. The American Civil Liberties Union was itself a kind of, I don't want to say, perpetrator or collaborator with McCarthyism.

But essentially, what it had done was adopt the position that everybody had civil liberties except communists. And since most of the people who were being attacked during the McCarthy period were probably communists, the Civil Liberties Union didn't give them much support.

GARY EICHTEN: Bob, your question, please?

CALLER: Yes. I found the radio series very poignant. And parts of it was the irony of the time of despair and despicable behavior of Joe McCarthy. And J. Edgar Hoover was actually, for Gordon Kahn, a time of hope that came out of it, that he was able to finally get the last words on defining what an American was.

But I have a question for your guest. And the question would be, do you feel this could happen again? And what type of political climate would occur for this to happen again? And I'm going to hang up to listen.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

CALLER: Thank you.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Sure. I think it can happen again, but not in the same way. I don't think HUAC is ever going to return. I don't see another Joe McCarthy somewhere on the horizon. But what I do think is the danger that has not been exorcized is that of demonizing other Americans, demonizing some unpopular group.

During the McCarthy period, it was communists who were presented as in an exaggerated, unrealistic manner, who then-- it was possible, once somebody was demonized, to deprive them of rights. We're seeing a similar thing happen today with immigrants, aren't we? And I think those are the kinds of dangers that we have to be alert to.

GARY EICHTEN: Professor Berman, what's your reading?

HY BERMAN: I think I agree with Ellen's response to this. The danger is, in fact, in the creating of demons and making others seem less than human and therefore more vulnerable for attack. As far as having a replication of the McCarthy period of HUAC and all that, I doubt that that would happen again that way.

GARY EICHTEN: What about if we had a series, say, of Oklahoma City bombings? There was a lot of concern about right-wing groups in this country after the first bombing. And let's assume for a moment we had two or three bombs go off. Don't you think that there would be so much concern over security, internal security that the government might start sweeping those people up and grilling them?

HY BERMAN: Well, so far as I know, as far as I remember, there were no such things, no bombs set off by communists or supposed communists in 1940, '50, or '60. And therefore, that is incomparable. Now, what you're talking about is setting off bombs, Oklahoma City.

These now are overt acts of violence. These are illegal actions that, in fact, would require that our civil society come hard down on the perpetrators. I wouldn't consider that an act of replication of McCarthyism.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: But I do know what you're getting at. The attachment of the American people to political freedom is really rather thin. And during times of crisis, it can be hyped.

One of the things that I discovered during my research was that Franklin Roosevelt, whom I had always revered as one of the last great presidents, had absolutely couldn't have cared less about civil liberties, couldn't have cared less about fairness and free speech, didn't make any difference to him. And I think that this is something we have to really be concerned about, that in the name of national security, we have, in the past, very often overrode individual rights. And I certainly think it could happen again.

GARY EICHTEN: Bob, your question, please?

CALLER: Yes. One of the important cases is the case of Owen Lattimore, a scholar, a Chinese scholar or a scholar of China. And Judge Luther Youngdahl had an important role in checking McCarthy's attack on him and very likely on other scholars. Scholars were often the target of McCarthy's purges. Would you comment on that, please? Youngdahl, in his role as federal judge in Washington, came out with an important case.

GARY EICHTEN: Right.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Right. There are some heroes of the McCarthy period. And certainly, Youngdahl was one of them. Lattimore was a professor of Chinese history at Johns Hopkins. He had been an important unofficial advisor of the government. He was one of the leading experts. If there had been a talk show like this on China, he would have been one of the people called in.

And part of what got McCarthy started, this scenario that McCarthy was pitching about, quote unquote, "communists" in the government had to do with the supposed loss of China. The communists had won the Chinese Revolution in 1949. And the American right simply refused to believe that somehow that hadn't happened because of subversion within the American government.

This was one of the most important themes of McCarthy and his allies, that communists within the State Department had somehow sold China to Mao Zedong, as if China had been the United States' possession to give away anyhow. And McCarthy, in his search for scapegoats, digs up Owen Lattimore and accuses him of being the top Soviet agent in the United States.

Now, Lattimore was one of those genuine innocent liberals. He was not a communist. He was critical of the nationalist government in China, but many people were. And he was scapegoated by McCarthy and, later on, grilled by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the so-called McCarran Committee, in a marathon hearing in which the committee had access to his old correspondents and asked him these very picky questions about who he had had lunch with in 1938, in Shanghai, lots and lots of questions.

And then at the end of its inquiry, it demanded that the Truman administration prosecute Lattimore for perjury. And the administration tried to get out of this. But McCarran was such a powerful senator. He was the head of the Judiciary Committee and passed on all judicial appointments that he was able to force the Department of Justice to indict Lattimore for perjury.

And Judge Youngdahl simply threw these charges out. He said, they were ridiculous. Lattimore was charged with lying because he hadn't supported the government. How did it go? He had said that he was a supporter-- some of the positions he took were the same positions that the communists, the Soviet Union took.

Well, some of those positions were the positions of the American government. I mean, it was a really way out prosecution. And Youngdahl essentially laughed it out of court.

GARY EICHTEN: Hy Berman, any other Minnesotans play key roles here?

HY BERMAN: Well, Governor Youngdahl, Judge Youngdahl, of course, is a key person here. I think we can't overlook the role of Hubert Humphrey, which, of course, is a very ambiguous role that he played throughout this whole period. He was engaged, really, in a real conflict with communists within the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from '46 to '48 until they were pushed out.

He was in fact, one of the leaders of what I call the liberal anti-communist group and worked in Congress and put forward certain ideas that he thought would mitigate it, but actually made it worse. So Hubert Humphrey is an example of a person involved in it, too, in a political way, rather than in a way in-- one of the [INAUDIBLE] or things like that. But outside of Humphrey and Youngdahl, national players, though, we didn't have very many national players in this game.

GARY EICHTEN: Uh-huh. Bill, your question, please?

CALLER: Thank you. My questions are for the historian Ellen Schriger.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Yes.

GARY EICHTEN: Schrecker. Yes.

CALLER: In March 1933, Franklin Roosevelt recognized Russia for the first time. It was the first time America recognized Russia. And I'd like to know why would-- he was knowledgeable. But why would Franklin Roosevelt recognize such a ruthless dictator as Stalin?

And also, I have a question. America sent all kinds of help to Stalin during World War II-- food, ammunition, et cetera, et cetera. And could this help to Stalin during World War II made the Communist Party stronger in America, more influential in America? Thank you very much.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: OK. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union because, whether we liked it or not, the Soviet Union-- Stalin was the ruler of Russia. And in fact, many businesses were urging the government to recognize Russia because this was the depths of the Depression. And businesses hoped maybe they could begin to have a little trade with the Soviet Union. So it was a question of recognizing reality. It wasn't a question of saying, this is a good government.

GARY EICHTEN: Could we just paper over the purges and all the people who were being massacred by Stalin? Did we just ignore that or didn't know about it? Or what was our situation?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: It was a combination of things. And in any event, there probably wasn't very much that the United States could have done about it. This is not to say in any way that what Stalin did was right. I mean, Stalin was horrible.

And to get to the point about World War II, again, it's a question of priorities. Stalin was certainly a dreadful dictator who killed billions of people. He was fighting against Hitler. I think, in many respects, one has to realize it's a question of the lesser of two evils.

GARY EICHTEN: John, your question, please?

CALLER: Yeah. The whole series brought back quite a few memories to me. I came out of high school and went into college in the late, late '40s and '50s. And we really worried about who we associated with for fear that we wouldn't be able to get a job.

Now, my question is this. This House Un-American and so on and so forth, the whole issue had to have some origins. And I'm wondering if your experts can clarify the linkages back to Spain and the fascist revolution there.

I recall that some of the things that Americans were accused of were being in something called the Lincoln Brigade. And somehow that was very bad. So I wonder if they could clarify some of those connections that go back before World War II.

HY BERMAN: Well, the House Un-American Activities Committee was a special committee of the Congress that was established. I think it was '37 with Congressman Martin Dies as the chair. And it initially had as its objective, it seems to me, to demonize the anti-fascist and the progressive forces within the Democratic Party. And the role of Spain is a very critical one here as well.

There was, of course, in the United States, a large contingent of Americans who believed that the Spanish war was, in fact, the first war against fascism. And many volunteers did, in fact, sign up to go to Spain. To be sure, these volunteers formed themselves into the Lincoln Brigade and were part of the Lincoln Battalion part of the international brigade.

And yes, there were communists involved in that. And there was, in fact, an effort on the part of the Soviet Union to play a role in this as well. But within the United States, this generated a tremendous amount of opposition, particularly on the part of the Catholic Church, which played a profound role in generating public policy here. And to be sure, the Spanish Civil War and the role of the Lincoln Battalion played a role in the early stages of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: But I would like to point out that what really got the House Un-American Activities Committee going was not so much the Lincoln Brigade veterans, although they were certainly victimized during the late '30s, '40s, and '50s. But the very militant labor movement of the late 1930s seemed to have turned a lot of conservative politicians, businessmen against the New Deal administration, which they believed was supporting labor.

And so much of the early attacks on the American left were really attacks on the labor movement. And the way that it was attacked was as by noting the communists who were active in that movement-- and there certainly were communists who were active in the movement-- and then claiming that all of the labor movement, especially the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, was communist led. And so we have to really-- that's a kind of thread that runs throughout the entire Red Scare is this attack on the most militant labor elements of the labor movement.

GARY EICHTEN: Al, your question?

CALLER: Thank you very much. Fascinating show. I went to school about a quarter century ago. And I was a very attentive student, including of Professor Berman's. So I still bow my head in shame every time I hear words like the Hollywood Ten or blacklist or the McCarthy period.

But in recent years, I've been having trouble understanding why I should be so ashamed. Could your two guests explain to me the difference between the Hollywood blacklist and the Amendment 2 boycotts in Colorado a few years ago? And then secondly--

GARY EICHTEN: Bring us up to date. What were the Amendments 2 boycotts?

CALLER: Well, that was when Colorado passed the antigay ordinance. And gay groups, in fact, I would guess virtually all liberal groups advocated boycotting all businesses in Colorado because they disagreed with that political position, virtually identical to the blacklisting. And the second question. I'd like to remind Professor Schrecker that in addition to fighting against Hitler, Stalin was his ally.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: For a little while, yes. And as I said, I mean, we're not here justifying Stalin at all. But I think we have to realize that the American government was, throughout the 1930s and '40s, involved in a fight against Hitler. And when the Soviet Union was invaded by Hitler, it made a lot of sense to give its support.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, what about using what amounts to mass political movements to pressure people to do what you want them to do? How does that differ from these blacklists?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Well, the--

HY BERMAN: Oh, very simple. It's completely different. One is open and above board, and it's part of the political process that we recognize as our democratic rights. And the other is sleazy, underground, underhanded, and secret and covert.

GARY EICHTEN: I mean, is there any difference?

HY BERMAN: Completely different.

GARY EICHTEN: Just open and secret, that's the only difference?

HY BERMAN: Well, and also the objectives. One is to achieve, through the political process, whatever objective one has in mind. The other is, through intimidation and power to achieve that which, in fact, may not win the battle in the public arena.

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Well, also, I think what the blacklist did was punish individuals beyond the rule of law. This was an extrajudicial punishment. It was designed to destroy a political movement by hurting the individuals who belonged to it so that what that was a case of political repression, really, which isn't quite the same thing as Professor Berman has pointed out, as a sort of open political action.

GARY EICHTEN: Uh-huh. Paul, your question, please?

CALLER: Hi. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I was talking about-- historical perspective made me wonder that no one has brought up the fact that J. Edgar Hoover cut his teeth in the Red Scare just following World War I. And I was wondering to what extent the labor leaders in the Iron Range were deported and lost their citizenship during that period.

GARY EICHTEN: Professor Berman, you want to take that one?

HY BERMAN: Yeah. Well, in terms of the question of how many were deported during the First Red Scare up at the Iron Range, there were not too many. But the point, however, is that the First Red Scare had a profound impact on preventing unionization of the iron ore mines, preventing it and postponing it from 1917, 1919 to 1937, '38. It was used for that purpose more than it was for deporting of radicals in the early period of the 1920s.

GARY EICHTEN: Uh-huh. Cal, your question?

CALLER: I was going to say, Gary, thank you. That Tony Kahn program was magnificent. My question was, why do your two historians there believe that by the 1960s, possibly, there seemed to be a lessening of the strength of the anti-communist activity?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: They ran out of targets. Everybody who was vulnerable had pretty much been hit. And another thing was that other issues began to come to the fore. In particular, I think the mass mobilization of African Americans in the South and the civil rights movement essentially made it possible for people to be politically active again in movements for social justice and made the whole question of McCarthyism, communism, anti-communism really irrelevant.

GARY EICHTEN: Professor Berman, what's your reading?

HY BERMAN: Well, I think I agree with Ellen on that. And the other thing, of course, we shouldn't overlook the fact that the civil liberties kind of tradition in American law and constitutional law was, again, reestablished by the Warren Court. And that is a significant part of it as well, that, in fact, the judiciary did not act as a kind of giving in on all of the illegal actions that were taken before. This was a major shift as well.

Of course, the shift took place because of the reasons that Ellen points out in terms of the changes that were taking place in American society at the time. But we shouldn't underestimate the role of the Warren Court.

GARY EICHTEN: Lenny, your question?

CALLER: Well, I just wanted to make a comment that, when I was a boy, I asked my grandfather who was-- I'm in South Dakota, and my grandfather was a farmer in South Dakota. Had he been in Minnesota, he had been a member of the DFL.

And I asked him what he thought of communism. And he said, communists was just a name. He said that when he was a boy, the word that they used when they wanted to brand somebody was "Bolshevik." And so Bolshevism was something that you hung a label on somebody.

And I guess the thing that I really get a kick out of and I was thinking as I was listening to your show, the show prior to yours was talking about campaign finance reform. And back before, during the communist scare, in order for the wealthy people to control the working class, they used-- didn't have to spend their money. All they had to do was brand people as communists.

And now today, all they have to do is buy the politicians. And it's the same thing. It's all about keeping the wealthy, wealthy and the working people down. So I'll hang up and listen.

GARY EICHTEN: In summary here, is that all what those investigations were about, in your opinion?

ELLEN SCHRECKER: I think that's part of it. One of the things that I've discovered is that when we talk about McCarthyism, we're really talking about McCarthyisms, that there were many different brands, and that they had many different scenarios. Many of the people who participated really were doing so because they thought they were behaving in the national interest. They thought that this was the patriotic thing to do.

Most people had no idea what a communist was. There were surveys during the 1950s in which people would be asked what they think a communist was. And they'd say, gee, somebody who talks sort of different, or gee, I don't think they believe in God, so they must be a communist. There were a lot of misperceptions out there.

And I think, to a certain extent, people with a scenario anti-labor business groups, certain kinds of reactionaries, a whole wide range, including a bunch of nuts, were able to manipulate this set of ideas for their own purposes. So you don't have just one communism. You have many.

I mean, not one McCarthyism, but many McCarthyisms, which served a whole lot of functions, including, very importantly, the function of partisan politics. Republican politicians used it, especially after 1946, to attack a Democratic administration.

GARY EICHTEN: We'll have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us, both of you. Really appreciate it. Good discussion. Ellen Schrecker--

ELLEN SCHRECKER: Well, thank you.

GARY EICHTEN: --who teaches at Yeshiva University in New York City, she is coming out with a new book called Many Are the Crimes-- McCarthyism in America. And of course, joining us from the University of Minnesota, Hy Berman, who has taught history for a long, long time at the University, one of the preeminent experts on Minnesota history.

That does it for our Midday program today. Now, those of you who've been listening to that radio drama series, we have a phone number and a internet address if you want some more information. Got your pen ready? OK.

Phone number, for more information on Blacklisted, the radio drama series 303/823-8000-- 303/823-8000. If you'd like more information about the HUAC hearings, McCarthyism, and the rest on the internet, here's the address. It's https://www.crocker C-R-O-C-K-E-R .com, another backslash, then a squiggle. That's one of those wavy lines, blklist.

Thanks for tuning in today. Sara Meyer is the producer of our Midday program. Mike McCall-Pengra, our associate producer. I'm Gary Eichten. Join us on Monday.