Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade against Communism

by Mary Brennan

Overview

In Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace, Mary Brennan examines conservative women's anti-communist activism in the years immediately after World War II.

Brennan details the actions and experiences of prominent anti-communists Jean Kerr McCarthy, Margaret Chase Smith, Freda Utley, Doloris Thauwald Bridges, Elizabeth Churchill Brown, and Phyllis Stewart Schlafly. She describes the Cold War context in which these women functioned and the ways in which women saw communism as a very real danger to domestic security and American families. Millions of women, Brennan notes, expanded their notions of household responsibilities to include the crusade against communism. From writing letters and hosting teas to publishing books and running for political office, they campaigned against communism and, incidentally, discovered the power they had to effect change through activism.

Brennan reveals how the willingness of these deeply conservative women to leave the domestic sphere and engage publicly in politics evinces the depth of America's postwar fear of communism. She further argues that these conservative, anti-communist women pushed the boundaries of traditional gender roles and challenged assumptions about women as political players by entering political life to publicly promote their ideals.Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace offers a fascinating analysis of gender and politics at a critical point in American history. Brennan's work will instigate discussions among historians, political scientists, and scholars of women's studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870818851
Publisher:	University Press of Colorado
Publication date:	03/30/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mary Brennan is an associate professor in the Department of History at Texas State University-San Marcos and the author of Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP.

Read an Excerpt

Wives, mothers, and the Red Menace

Conservative Women and the Crusade Against Communism

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By Mary C. Brennan

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2008 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87081-885-1

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CHAPTER 1

THE COLD WAR WORLD

Even for men and women who did not actively participate in the anticommunist crusade, the Cold War changed their lives. The development of hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed to make the world a more dangerous place by creating the potential for armed conflict. In a nuclear age, that potential threatened even to include civilians in small towns and large cities in the American heartland. The outbreak of fighting in areas of Eastern Europe and especially in Asia confirmed the validity of those fears. At home, the discovery of a communist spy network frightened Americans who worried that the government might be overrun with infiltrators. The paranoia proved contagious; in their fear, citizens questioned anyone or anything that was "different," assuming the differences were a sign of communist sympathies.

On a more positive note, Cold War–driven defense spending fueled an economic prosperity that allowed many families to move into the middle class. Accompanied by increased consumer spending, the ever-growing defense budgets provided jobs and rising incomes for many Americans. This prosperity, combined with the effects of government initiatives such as the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Authority, pushed many families into middle-class status and allowed others to appear so through increased consumerism. The growth of suburbia developed alongside a new emphasis on family and conformity that resulted in part from Cold War anxieties.

The Cold War, the rise of the middle class, and the renewed emphasis on domesticity had a particularly powerful impact on women. They were supposed to find their ultimate fulfillment as wives and mothers, staying at home and tending to home and family. Everyone, from preachers to teachers to government officials, believed that was what women wanted. Many women mouthed similar sentiments, even as the reality of their lives proved the "feminine mystique" was a myth. Although men and women continued to insist that domesticity should be every woman's ideal, women took jobs, joined clubs, and volunteered with organizations that took them away from home.

The Cold War was actually much more complex than the black-and-white explanations American leaders gave their fellow citizens. Tension between Russia and the United States predated the creation of the Soviet Union in 1924. Nationalism on both sides, combined with American distrust of the autocratic and anti-Semitic Russian czars and Russian resentment of American arrogance and expansionist tendencies, created an underlying hostility between the two nations. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 added an ideological element to an already existing antagonism. While the onset of World War II forged a temporary alliance between the two countries in an effort to defeat fascism, the smoldering mistrust never completely disappeared. Even as the Soviets stood alone in their struggle in 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had difficulty convincing both Congress and the American people to extend Lend-Lease aid to their new allies. Recognizing American ambivalence toward them and determined to protect their borders from future invasions, the Soviets reacted defensively as they liberated Eastern Europe from Nazi control by maintaining armies in the countries of that region. By the end of World War II, the allies were deeply suspicious of each other.

In the five years following V-J Day, misunderstandings between the Soviet and U.S. governments hardened into belligerent defensiveness. Beginning from a position of suspicion, government leaders on each side saw the other's actions as threatening and dangerous. Officials in the Kremlin and the U.S. State Department refused to recognize their own part in the growing conflict. Soviet leaders ignored the call for free elections and crushed any opposition to their authority. When the Americans, British, and French began cooperating with one another in Germany, the Soviets suspected a Western plot to isolate them. Their response, closing off ground access to Berlin, only heightened the Western nations' concern that the Soviets planned to take over Europe. Each side assumed the other was out to destroy it and saw every action as a threat.

Meanwhile, Americans developed the containment policy. At heart, this policy divided the world into two, and only two, spheres: the free world (those on America's side) and the communist world (those on the Soviets' side). Nations had to be on one side or the other. Containment thus left little room for negotiation or compromise; you agreed with the good guys, or you were assumed to be one of the bad guys. One result of U.S. officials' acceptance of that bipolar vision of the world was their blindness to the existence of those who fell into gray areas; in other words, those who did not fit neatly into one category or another. For example, Yugoslavian president Josip Tito, technically a member of the communist bloc, stood up to Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and wanted to form a relationship with the United States; Chinese leader Mao Zedong practiced a variation of communism that troubled Stalin almost as much as it did the Americans; and various nations of the developing world, such as India, did not want to be drawn into the great power struggle. From the opposite perspective, Americans reacted incredulously to French president Charles de Gaulle's refusal blindly to accept U.S. dictates. In ignoring nations that did not fit the containment mold exactly, Americans missed opportunities to develop a realistic vision of the international situation. The Cold War world was much more complicated than the containment view allowed.

Despite its complex reality, American political leaders described the Cold War to the U.S. public in very simplistic terms. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who first expressed concern over the Bolsheviks in 1919, epitomized the standard anticommunist refrain. Bolshevik doctrines, he explained, "threaten the happiness of the community, the safety of every individual, and the continuance of every home and fireside." Ultimately, this system would "destroy the peace of the country and thrust it into a condition of anarchy and lawlessness and immorality that passes imagination." The passage of time did nothing to change Hoover's views of the Bolsheviks-turned-Soviets. In fact, his continued study of the ideology and its practitioners deepened his hatred and distrust of the enemy. Fearing the Truman administration underestimated the seriousness of the threat from the Reds, Hoover testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Once again, he emphasized the sinister nature of communism. "It stands," he proclaimed, "for the destruction of our American form of government ... American democracy ... [and] free enterprise." Communism's goal, according to Hoover, was the "creation of a 'Soviet of the United States' and ultimate world revolution."

Like many Americans, Hoover viewed the threat of communism in ideological terms. Rather than speak of tanks and totalitarian countries, Hoover tended toward religious language. "The real danger in communism," he explained, "lies in the fact that it is atheistic and seeks to replace the Supreme Being." Without God as the center, he stated, there would be no moral guidelines, and society would fall into chaos. Not only would Americans lose their everyday freedoms, but their families would be destroyed as well. "Children," Hoover explained, "would be placed in nurseries and special indoctrination schools." Women, relieved of child-care responsibilities, would go to work in factories and mines with the men. This scenario contrasted sharply with the American ideal of a stay-at-home mom who served as the bulwark of the family. Obviously, Hoover believed the American system was superior.

For others, such as President Harry Truman, ideology took a back seat to questions of an international balance of power. Already bothered by the Soviets' refusal to allow free elections in Eastern Europe, Truman decided to take a firmer stand when asked to help anticommunist forces in Greece in their battle against the Red menace. Truman realized he needed to convince Congress and the American public to spend sufficient funds to halt communism in Greece and the surrounding area. He feared Congress and voters would be reluctant both to commit such a large sum and to re-engage in a worldwide struggle. After consulting with his advisers and congressional leaders, Truman decided he needed to frighten the public into agreement. The Truman Doctrine, as it became known, warned that if the United States did not aid Greece and Turkey "in this fateful hour," the consequences would "be far reaching to the West as well as the East." With this speech, Truman implemented the containment policy and established a pattern anticommunists, particularly those in government, would continue to follow for decades. Combining frightening rhetoric about the potential threat to U.S. shores with a sense of American duty, government anticommunists legitimized the reality of the communist danger.

Nongovernmental anticommunists echoed the concern. In 1948, James F. O'Neil, national commander of the American Legion, used vivid imagery to explain to his fellow Legionnaires that the "rape of Czechoslovakia" posed a threat even to Americans safe within their meeting halls. What happened in far-off places, he wrote, foreshadowed what could occur in the good old United States if Legionnaires did not open their eyes to the foreign agents in their midst. Containment, it seemed, was not just a policy for diplomats.

President Truman, struggling to stay ahead of the public's concern, turned the problem over to his National Security Council (NSC). The NSC issued its report in April 1950, but NSC-68 did little to calm the growing fears. In fact, the report set a very somber tone. The situation Americans faced was "momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself." According to the NSC, the Soviet Union desired "to bring the free world under its dominion by methods of the cold war." The report exposed the "risks" if the free world — that is, America — did not begin to build an adequate defense system. Using words and phrases meant to instill a sense of urgency, the report cautioned that a delay in decision making could prove fatal. Americans must accept "that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake."

By the early 1950s, the Cold War battlefront had shifted from Europe to Asia. The success of Mao Zedong and his communist forces in pushing American-supported Jiang Jieshi into exile, combined with the creation of the People's Republic of China, shocked Americans. Suddenly, it appeared to many Americans as though communism was winning the struggle to control the globe. The situation worsened in June 1950 when communist North Korea invaded U.S. ally South Korea. The Cold War had turned hot. Despite nominal United Nations support, Americans paid for the war in Korea in both blood and dollars, as American GIs provided the bodies and U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for the conflict. Expecting an easy victory, Americans watched incredulously as the conflict settled into a stalemate. Only a limited victory seemed possible, and no one was sure exactly what it would entail. They did know, however, that it was not the same as winning the war. America, which had defeated both Japan and Germany in 1945, suddenly seemed incapable of defeating a small developing nation. Frustration over the situation exposed what for most Americans proved the bitter reality of the containment policy — it worked to maintain the status quo instead of vanquishing the enemy — and caused some Americans to push for increased defense spending; they could only rationalize that the Korean stalemate had resulted from a failure to prosecute the war to the fullest.

Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy and numerous other political leaders continued to pursue this theme in the coming years. In his career-making speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1950, McCarthy chillingly reported that the number of people living under communist rule had increased by 400 percent since 1945. He stated that this increase indicated "the swiftness of the tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war." Richard Nixon, senator and future vice president, cautioned Americans who wanted to stay out of the struggle that this was no longer an option: "If Europe [were] allowed to go Communist, it [would] mean that within five or ten years we will be faced with a war which we are likely to lose." FBI director Hoover also urged Americans not to relax their guard. Facing "formidable weapons," Americans could not afford the "luxury of waiting for communism to run its course like other oppressive dictatorships." Instead, according to New Hampshire senator Styles Bridges, Americans had to assume a leadership role. The U.S. government should concentrate less on the people already lost to communism and more on the "millions of Asiatics waiting to be arrayed against Communism. They are waiting only on American leadership." Without a willingness to press on with the struggle as well as continual vigilance, these leaders warned, Americans risked losing their way of life.

Other Americans disagreed with this way of thinking. Although they also found the Soviet system repugnant and feared its intentions, these Americans worried that the obsession with defeating communism everywhere might prove equally dangerous for Americans. Some, like President Dwight Eisenhower, warned that the ever-growing defense expenditures were weakening the budget and could permanently damage the economy. In his Farewell Address, Ike encouraged Americans to refrain from thinking that "some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution" to destroying their "ruthless" enemy. Others, such as author, critic, and philosopher Lewis Mumford, thought the increasingly belligerent language ruined any chance to seek peaceful solutions to crises. They were concerned that the government would only consider military options to resolve conflicts. Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956 Adlai Stevenson expressed concern that the actions of some of the more zealous anticommunists undermined "the bright image of America" held by peoples around the world.

Meanwhile, the development of more overt conflict between the United States and the USSR invigorated existing anticommunist and antiradical factions across the country. Building on the anti-immigrant and anti-labor sentiments of the late nineteenth century, this early anticommunist movement came into its own during the Red Scare following World War I. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, aided by his young and dedicated assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, succeeded in deporting a number of communists (most notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman) before overplaying their hands in a series of highly publicized, ethically questionable, and ultimately unproductive raids on supposed communist cells. Palmer's loss of prestige did not lead to cancellation of the Investigative Bureau (later the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]) he had created to look into subversive groups. The new head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, took his responsibilities seriously and began compiling lists of individuals and organizations he found "subversive."

Hoover was not alone. In fact, during the 1920s and 1930s, concern about the threat from the Left arose in different areas. Corporate leaders and some members of the middle class increasingly associated communism and socialism with the efforts of various labor groups to organize and protect laborers. The Catholic Church proclaimed its opposition to the communist regime in Russia, citing both Lenin's atheism and the treatment of priests and nuns under radical regimes. Disillusioned former leftists, such as J. B. Matthews, and virulent anti-Semites, such as Elizabeth Dilling, worked to build libraries of information and published books in their attempts to warn the American public of the continued threat communism posed. The creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938 provided a perfect springboard from which to launch a crusade against the Red menace. Although initially formed to investigate German Americans' connections to the Nazi regime, the committee — under the influence of Matthews, who served as chief investigator, and Texan Martin Dies — soon turned its attention to communism.

On the eve of World War II, an ill-defined, disorganized, and multifaceted anticommunist sentiment existed among Americans. Most Americans could not have defined the philosophy of communism, but they sensed that it was bad. They knew communists did not allow people to practice religion or own private property. Some feared the Soviet Union's power to spread anti-capitalist sentiment throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Many others conflated concerns about foreign communism with a dislike of the political policies of the Roosevelt administration. These people were not certain where the line ended separating true communism from the make-work programs of the New Deal. In their view, encouraging the poor to expect help from the government, which would take money from the rich in the form of taxes, sounded radical enough to be communism. Still, the vagueness of their apprehensions meant most Americans willingly suppressed their anxieties about the Soviets during the period of the Grand Alliance.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Wives, mothers, and the Red Menace by Mary C. Brennan. Copyright © 2008 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
1 The Cold War World,
2 Who Were These Women?,
3 "Women Beware": The Feminine View of Foreign Communism,
4 Women Arise: The Red Threat on the Domestic Scene,
5 "Manly Men and the Little Woman": Gender and Anticommunism,
Conclusion,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

Editorial Reviews

"...the aim of this colume is entirely on target. It shows, again, why women and gender matter. This text provides an easily accessible overview of how new scholarship on women, gender, and sexuality has transformed the old story of the twentieth-century Cold War and the domestic Red Scare."
—Kirsten Delegard, Western Historical Quarterly


"This book is clearly written, admirably concise, and well situated in the secondary literature on gender and conservatism and the foreign and domestic Cold War. . . Brennan's study offers another valuable reminder that niether Joe McCarthy nor June Cleaver can stand as convenient shorthard for our historical narratives of the Cold War era."
—Journal of American History


"Mary C. Brennan’s book will please instructors of history and political science courses who are searching for conservative voices to add to the cannon of scholarship on U.S. women's activism. . . This book will help libraries (and instructors syllabi) strike a better balance between the history of liberal feminism and conservative female activism in the United States."
—Erika Kuhlman, H-Net Reviews

"...[Brennan] does address the specificities of racial and class differences with regard to the anticommunist movement, and she provides a useful overview of the Cold War for a general audience. Summing up: recommended."
—M.L. Brunner, CHOICE Magazine

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