The Social Origins of the Second Red Scare in the United States, 1938–56

In the United States, the Second Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s (popularly but imprecisely known as McCarthyism) did not result in mass imprisonment or execution, but it destroyed careers and families, left untold thousands isolated and struggling to find employment, and created an atmosphere of distrust and fear that constrained political discourse and social life.  Storrs’s paper examines the primary engine of the Second Red Scare, the federal employee loyalty program, created in the 1940s.  Although the “Great Fear” metastasized far beyond the realm of the civil service, its momentum derived from claims that Communist spies in powerful government positions were manipulating U.S. policy to Soviet advantage.  Ostensibly designed to prevent government employment of Communists, the program also drove out noncommunist leftists, liberals, homosexuals, and others deemed “subversive” under the program’s nebulous and shifting standards. Unlike the sensational hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthy’s Senate committee, the federal employee loyalty program operated behind closed doors, so the damage it wrought has largely been hidden.  During the program’s heyday (1947–56), tens of thousands of civil servants underwent protracted investigations, which they tried to keep secret because the stigma had material consequences even for those who were cleared. The effects were felt far beyond the estimated 2,700 dismissals.