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March 1951, Marshall and the president’s other military
advisors agreed that MacArthur had to be relieved of
command. Frustrations with the war and unhappiness
that MacArthur had been relieved of command were
other causes of conservative displeasure toward Marshall.
ment, February 1950, to claim he had a list of State Department employees (the numbers fluctuated—at times
205, or 57, or 81) steering foreign policy in a pro-Soviet
direction. In 1949 Mao Zedong’s Communist forces had
won China’s civil war. The Soviets had developed an
atom bomb, ending the U.S. nuclear monopoly. In January 1950 former State Department official Alger Hiss
was convicted of perjury for denying involvement with
the Soviet espionage apparatus. These events jolted confidence in President Harry S. Truman’s efforts to “contain” Soviet expansionism and made his Democratic
Party vulnerable to charges of being “soft” on Communism. Many Republicans, after seeing Democrats win the
presidency five times in a row, eagerly embraced a political issue that offered hope of victory at last. Thus, events
and partisanship bolstered McCarthy’s ambitions and
ushered in a half-decade of shouted charges and countercharges of disloyalty and softness on communism.
Marshall resigned as secretary of defense on September 12, 1951; it was his last public office. On December 10, 1953, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for
what he asserted were the American people’s efforts
through the Marshall Plan. He died on October 16, 1959,
and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marshall, George C. The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, 5
vols. to date. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1981–.
Marshall, George C. George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue, 3d ed. Lexington, Va.: George
C. Marshall Foundation, 1996.
Pogue, Forrest C. George C. Marshall, 4 vols. New York: Viking,
1963–1987.
Stoler, Mark A. George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the
American Century. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Talent as well as timing served McCarthy. He played
the media skillfully, particularly the press, sometimes
holding one press conference to announce another (at
which charges would be made), thus capturing headlines
in both morning and evening papers. He kept changing
charges, numbers, targets, making it hard for journalists—
and victims—to keep up. His agility and brazenness in
political roughhousing allowed him to keep ahead of his
critics.
Larry I. Bland
See also: Containment and Détente; Korea, Impact of; Marshall Plan; McCarthyism; Nitze, Paul; Truman, Harry S.;
“Who Lost China” Debate.
It should be noted, however, that a framework of
laws, political force fields, anti-Red rhetoric and theatrical anti-Communist methods predated McCarthy’s rise.
He was first to discover neither the presence nor political value of the Red Menace. From 1938 to 1942, in the
era of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the onset of World War
II, the federal government’s legislative and executive
branches had set up programs to exclude Communists
(and fascists) from federal jobs. The House of Representatives launched the Committee on Un-American
Activities in 1938. The 1940 Smith Act outlawed seeking or advocating overthrow of government by force or
violence. In 1942 a loyalty program was instituted to
weed Communists and other “subversives” out of government jobs. The Cold War heightened pressures to
rein in Communist influences. President Truman instituted a tougher loyalty program in 1947. In 1948 his Justice Department prosecuted leaders of the Communist
Party under the Smith Act. Congress passed the Internal Security Act in 1950.
McCARTHYISM
A term coined in 1950, McCarthyism described the escapades of Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of
Wisconsin (1908–1957). It was later applied to the
broader excesses that characterized anti-Communism in
America during the Cold War (1946–1991). McCarthy
won notoriety by charging that federal government employees, especially in the State Department, served the
interests of the Soviet Union. To critics McCarthyism
suggested wild, often baseless and shifting charges of
Communist Party membership or sympathy for Communist objectives or the USSR, made against one’s political opponents. To McCarthy and his admirers, it
meant “Americanism with its sleeves rolled up.” The
more negative connotation eventually prevailed, but only
after McCarthy held the spotlight and defined the nation’s political debate for five years.
Although McCarthy’s claims gave Republicans partisan leverage, Democrats sensed—wrongly—that they
could be easily exploded, and with them the Communist
issue. A Senate subcommittee probed McCarthy’s meandering charges in the spring of 1950. Its Democratic
majority found them baseless (the Republican members
In his heyday, McCarthy’s charges helped explain to
many Americans the adverse turn the Cold War took at
mid-century and the nation’s seeming inability to enjoy
the fruits of victory won in 1945. He picked a ripe moA
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Senator Joseph McCarthy (left) with his attorney Roy Cohn, at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in 1951. © BETTMANN/CORBIS
labeled the inquiry incomplete). However, the onset of
the Korean War (1950–1953) and other jolts like the arrests of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of nuclear
spying for the Soviets kept McCarthy afloat. Indeed, Korea weakened the Democrats and made his charges plausible. The public was clearly worried about Communist
influences, and because McCarthy, if nothing else, made
clear that he was too, they gave him the benefit of the
doubt.
Publication in the 1990s of the fruits of Venona, the
top-secret project that decoded Soviet intelligence reports from the United States to Moscow, suggested that
the threat from hidden Communist agents was not just
speculative. But McCarthy had no access to such information (so tightly held that not even Truman was told).
He never found a real Communist on his own. However, the initial promise of his efforts prompted some Republicans to tolerate his antics on the chance that he
might unearth another Hiss. He never did. Then, when
it appeared that his campaigning led to the 1950 reelec-
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tion defeats of several critics, his seeming political muscle discouraged his colleagues from challenging him. He
spent the next two years tormenting Democratic leaders
such as Truman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and
Secretary of Defense General George C. Marshall with
various charges.
DECLINE OF MCCARTHYISM
The 1952 election victory of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Republicans brought a shift in McCarthy’s
status. Though senior colleagues thought they had sidetracked him by making him chair of the minor Government Operations Committee, he outwitted them. He
used its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to
range far afield, probing charges of Communist activities
in numerous government agencies. He continued to monopolize headlines.
It seemed not to faze him that his own party now
controlled the government, and his continued blunderbuss charges began to weary fellow-Republicans. When
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MILITARY BASES
he accused the army of harboring Communists, blocking
his inquiries, and holding a young committee aide
hostage by drafting him into military service, these and
the army’s countercharges led to a set of sensational hearings aired on television from April to June 1954. The
Army-McCarthy hearings were not conclusive, but the
bullying impression McCarthy made on viewers reduced
his popularity.
Reeves, Thomas C. The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day, 1982.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.
Richard M. Fried
See also: Americanism vs. Godless Communism; Civil Liberties, 1946–Present; Communism and Anticommunism;
Marshall, George C.; Rosenberg, Hiss, Oppenheimer
Cases; Truman, Harry S.
That partial fall from grace and the apparent damage he was doing to his own party gave fellow senators
enough nerve to discipline him. Led by Senator Ralph
E. Flanders (Republican of Vermont), the Senate grudgingly came to judgment, voting in December 1954 to
condemn McCarthy—not for violating civil liberties or
defaming people, but for trampling the Senate’s gentlemanly customs and courtesies. He lost no formal power
through this censure resolution, but his power had always
depended on appearances, and this slap on the wrist was
enough to deflate it. Colleagues and newsmen now
avoided him. Prone to abuse of alcohol, he suffered a
physical decline linked to his political fall and died on
May 2, 1957.
MILITARY BASES
Although military bases have opened and closed regularly throughout American history, a systematic process
for base closing dates only to the late 1980s. A number
of closings occurred in the period following the Vietnam War and the subsequent reduction in military expenditure, but this process had come to an end after a
failed effort to close Loring Air Force Base in Maine in
1976. New legislation required Environmental Impact
Statements, making base closing dramatically more
difficult.
All American leaders, including McCarthy’s foes,
stressed their anti-Communism. But gradually after
1954, the Cold War atmosphere lightened. The Supreme
Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren began to curb the
reach of investigative bodies and the loyalty-security machinery. Hollywood blacklisting (in which McCarthy
took no part) and other repressive actions against Communists or others on the Left took longer to recede. By
the 1960s, when dissent bloomed in every corner, efforts
to inhibit it routinely were labeled McCarthyism. It reveals McCarthy’s Humpty-Dumpty-like fall that his
name became a term of almost universal vilification. And
it was a measure of his political talents that his name
came to cover a broad set of political trends that he rode
but did not invent.
A systematic process for closing bases, now known
as BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) began with
the passage of legislation in 1988. The “realignment” portion of this approach refers to the potential for shifting
missions and staffing levels at existing bases. BRAC,
therefore, although normally thought of as a base-closing
process, can in fact lead to recommendations for increased
activity at selected “realigned” facilities.
Legislation establishing the base-closing process was
initiated by then-junior member of the Republican minority in the House of Representatives, Dick Armey, and
preceded the end of the Cold War (1946–1991). It established a procedure, which continues to be followed in
its general outlines, of an independent commission receiving and reviewing recommendations from the secretary of defense. This commission procedure has been used
four times, in 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. A fifth round,
in 2005, is now scheduled. The BRAC system is now the
only way to close bases located within the United States.
The secretary of defense retains independent authority to
close overseas facilities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fried, Richard M. Nightmare in Red: Perspectives on the McCarthy Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Griffith, Robert. The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the
Senate. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970.
Haynes, John Earl, and Klehr, Harvey. Venona: Decoding Soviet
Espionage in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1999.
Herman, Arthur. Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and
Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator. New York: Free
Press, 2000.
Latham, Earl. The Communist Controversy in Washington from
the New Deal to McCarthy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe
McCarthy. New York: Free Press, 1983.
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In some rounds the BRAC Commission has had authorization to add bases to the list supplied by the secretary of defense, but in other rounds its discretion to
change the list has been limited to removing bases. (The
law establishing the 2005 round does provide authority
to add, but under extremely restrictive conditions.)
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