Cold War

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Cold War

Struggle between the Western democracies and the Eastern Communist nations was probably inevitable from the first shot fired in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Guided by one of the essential tenets of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist doctrine—"Capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction"—Eastern nations believed in the eventual worldwide triumph of Communism and were motivated to help speed the day. The nations of the West, on the other hand, long regarded Communism (and those governments espousing it) as a threat striking at the very heart of the capitalist economies that formed the basis of many Western democracies. The differences between these two ideological standpoints produced a state of disharmony that broke into open, if limited, warfare twice (in Korea and Vietnam), but remained for the most part a muted conflict—a "cold" war.

Historians disagree about the exact point at which the Cold War began. Some date it from Winston Churchill's 1946 speech, given in Fulton, Missouri, in which he declared that an "iron curtain" had come down in Europe, dividing the Soviet-occupied countries from those allied with the West. Others argue that the "long twilight struggle," as President Kennedy described it, began in 1947 with the Truman Doctrine—a declaration that the United States would act decisively to prevent the further spread of Communism in Europe. There are even those scholars who believe that the Cold War began when the ink dried on the documents containing the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945.

If there is a lack of consensus regarding the cold war's beginning, virtual unanimity exists about its end. In 1991, the Soviet Communist Party was dissolved, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reverted to what it had once been—a collection of separate slavic nations, the largest being Russia. Although China, the world's most populous country, remained a Communist state, as did North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam, it is generally believed that when Soviet Communism died, so did the Cold War.

During the approximately 45 year struggle, the opposing nations battled on many levels: economic, political, scientific, diplomatic—and through popular culture. Indeed, there is not an aspect of American popular culture that was unaffected by the Cold War. The principal media involved included film, both commercial and governmental, television, fiction, and to a lesser extent, theater.

While the government eventually found more subtle ways to communicate anti-Communist messages to the American public, in the early years of the Cold War the U.S. government contributed directly to popular culture by producing a number of "documentaries." These documentaries, produced mostly during the 1950s, alerted citizens to the dangers of Communism. Some, like The Bell (1950), took a positive, pro-American outlook, using the Liberty Bell as a symbol behind which people from all walks of American life could rally. Most of these films—such as Communist Blueprint for Conquest (1955), The Communist Weapon of Allure (1956), and Communist Target: Youth (1962), which included an introduction by then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy—were strongly negative in tone and made Communism the object of their censure. The most memorable of these propaganda films, however, was not made in the traditional documentary mode, but rather like an episode of The Twilight Zone, a television program that would not appear for another four years. In Red Nightmare (1955), narrator Jack Webb (of Dragnet fame) presents a typical small-town American family, then shows what their lives would be like if the Communists took over America. Religion is forbidden, education becomes indoctrination, and love of family is made subordinate to party loyalty. When the head of the household (played by Jack Kelly) protests, he is sentenced to be shot. Just as the firing squad is taking aim, he wakes up, back in his beloved America, free from his horrible "red nightmare." As the movie ends, the narrator reminds us that it could happen in America, if citizens ever relaxed their vigilance. Distributed free of charge to civic groups, Scout troops, churches, and schools, the films were even broadcast by local television stations.

The government also distributed films on a related subject: civil defense. Although the United States had never experienced aerial attack, serious discussions of the possibility started early in the Cold War, especially in 1949 when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. In response to the perceived military threat, America's leaders greatly increased military budgets, and designed a civil defense program to reassure average citizens that nuclear war could be survived. While most government experts privately shared the view that no man-made structure could withstand a nuclear blast, and that an all-out nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union would produce American casualties numbering in the tens of millions, they also agreed that if the public knew the actual dangers, a panic, or worse, an outbreak of "Better Red than dead" defeatism would threaten the country. Thus, to preserve public morale, the underlying theme of the civil defense program became the illusion of safety. The program conveyed its messages of optimism through pamphlets, posters, and films with titles like Survival under Atomic Attack, Operation Cue, The Atom Strikes, and You Can Beat the A-Bomb. At least one civil defense film was intended primarily for schools. Entitled Duck and Cover, it featured an animated character named Bert the Turtle. Bert taught children that, in case of atomic attack, all they had to do to protect themselves was crouch down and cover their heads. The patent absurdity of this "defense" against a nuclear blast would be illustrated decades later, in the 1982 satirical documentary The Atomic Cafe, and in a 1997 episode of the "adult" television cartoon show South Park.

Hollywood films also reflected, and helped to create, the culture of the Cold War. Studios eagerly produced anti-Communist films in the 1950s—partly as a reflection of the temper of the times, but also because filmmakers themselves had come under investigation by Washington's Red-raiders. During World War II, several Hollywood studios had made pro-Soviet films, such as Mission to Moscow (1943) and Song of Russia (1944), and these films had been made with both the permission and encouragement of the U.S. government, which wanted to maintain good relations with its Soviet ally. By the 1950s however, the House Un-American Activities Committee (known as the HUAC) came to regard the studios with suspicion. Mindful of the influence that motion pictures can have upon the citizenry, and fearful that the persuasive powers of film might be used to advance the cause of Communism, the HUAC and Senator Joseph McCarthy put the film industry in the thick of the anti-Communist investigations. The atmosphere produced in the industry by these investigations may explain the production of such blatantly anti-Red films as I Married a Communist (1950), I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), My Son John (1952), Big Jim McLain (1952), and Invasion U.S.A. (1952).

But by the 1960s, Hollywood's way of dealing with the "Red Menace" changed. Because the heat from Washington had largely abated, and because the propaganda films had not been profitable ventures, Hollywood's depictions of the Cold War began to diversify. Some of the 1960s films dealt with nuclear brinkmanship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Fail-Safe (1964), based on a popular novel, posits a technical glitch that accidentally sends a flight of American nuclear bombers on its way to a pre-assigned target: Moscow. The computer has sent its "war" message to the bombers, and they cannot be recalled. The basic premise of Fail-Safe was brilliantly but viciously satirized by Stanley Kubrick in his 1964 film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It is a thoroughly "black" comedy, as any film that attempts to find humor in nuclear war must be. Another "cold war" film released the same year was Seven Days in May, which involves a plot by the U.S. military to take over the government after the President negotiates an unpopular arms-reduction treaty with the Soviets.

A separate course for cold war cinema was charted in 1962, with the release of the first James Bond movie, Dr. No. The success of the film, along with the even larger grosses earned by its successors From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964)—with many others to follow—created a "spy craze" in American popular culture that lasted into the next decade. The "Bond" influence was seen in other films, both serious (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ; The Quiller Memorandum ; The Ipcress File) and satirical (Our Man Flint ; The Silencers ; Murderer's Row), as well as television programs (I Spy ;Secret Agent ; The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and even men's toiletries ("007" brand cologne; "Hai Karate" aftershave).

As U.S.-Soviet relations improved, the Cold War gradually thawed during the 1970s. The temperature dropped again in 1980, however, with the election of conservative Ronald Reagan to the White House. In his first term, at least, Reagan was frequently given to tough talk about the Communists. In one speech, he referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." On another occasion, just prior to a radio address, Reagan obliged a request for a sound check by saying, "This is the President speaking. I have just outlawed Russia. Bombing begins in five minutes."

In accordance with the Reagan Administration's bellicose attitude toward the Communist world, a new wave of anti-Communist cinema came in the 1980s. Red Dawn (1984) portrayed a Soviet occupation of the United States and focused on the activities of a band of American teenagers waging guerrilla warfare against the invaders. Rocky IV (1985) pitted Sylvester Stallone's gutsy pugilist against the seemingly unbeatable Drago, the best fighting machine that the Soviet state could produce. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) sent another popular Stallone character to rescue American POWs still held in Vietnam (and also to kill Communists by the score). The 1984 film Missing in Action (along with two sequels) returned Chuck Norris to Vietnam on a series of missions similar to Rambo's. Invasion U.S.A. (1985) featured Norris against a small army of Soviet infiltrators sent to disrupt American society. Rambo III (1988) saw Stallone's character battling the evil Russians in Afghanistan. Top Gun (1986) starred Tom Cruise and extolled the skill and bravery of the Navy's fighter pilots (who even got to shoot down a few Russians in a skirmish near the film's end).

Throughout the Cold War, other forms of entertainment also showed an awareness of some of the issues involved in the East-West struggle. Theater was not one of the hotbeds of social activism during the Cold War, at least until the Vietnam War became a burning issue. But one notable exception to this observation is Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible. Nominally concerned with the Salem witch trials of 1692, the play is based on events and characters from the actual trials, but few watching the performance at the time could have any doubt that the play was a commentary on the anti-Communist hysteria gripping the nation. Miller has since been very clear that he intended The Crucible as a condemnation of the McCarthy "witch hunts" in which so many reputations, careers, and even lives were destroyed, often without any evidence to support the accusations made.

Miller did face some hostility from the Right over this play, as he had for some of his earlier dramas. Political tensions in the United States affected many Left-wing writers in the 1950s. Once a writer had been branded "subversive" by the HUAC, Senator McCarthy, or some other "authority," many bookstores would not put his or her books on the shelves. Blacklisting limited the works of writers like Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, Jr., Howard Fast, and Dashiell Hammett to a few bookstores dedicated to the writings of the Left.

This did not mean that the Cold War could not be portrayed in novels. Many books were written about the era while it happened, and they were often very successful—as long as they had the "right" viewpoint. The Ugly American (1958) by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick critiqued American diplomacy in Asia, and is believed to have given John F. Kennedy the idea for what would become the Peace Corps. Richard Condon's novel The Manchurian Candidate (1958) posited that U.S. soldiers captured during the Korean War could be so thoroughly "brainwashed" by the Chinese as to become human robots upon their return home, awaiting only the right signal to carry out the nefarious missions for which they had been programmed. This novel of political paranoia was later made into a successful film by director John Frankenheimer.

As with film, cold war fiction changed as America entered the 1960s. The early part of the decade featured a number of novels about nuclear brinkmanship. Fail-Safe (1962) and Seven Days in May (1962) were both written in this period and were soon made into films. Other novels dealing with the possibilities of nuclear war included Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon (1959) and William Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959). The novels The 480 by Eugene Burdick (1964), Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1959), Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel (1965), and The Man by Irving Wallace (1964) explored similar kinds of domestic cold war political tensions found at the heart of Seven Days in May.

Although these kinds of political novels continued to appear in the second half of the 1960s, they were far outnumbered by the same genre that had come to dominate the movie screens by that time: the spy story. Although Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, died in 1964, the literary trend he started continued long after his passing. Several of Fleming's countrymen wrote spy fiction that was popular in the United States, including John Le Carré, who wrote the bestseller, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963). Another British writer, Elleston Trevor, used the pen name Adam Hall to write a series of suspenseful cold war novels featuring a secret agent known only as Quiller, including The Ninth Directive (1966) and The Striker Portfolio (1969). Many American authors also used the Cold War as a background for tales of suspense and adventure, including Donald Hamilton, who wrote a series of paperback novels featuring "the American James Bond," a U.S. government assassin named Matt Helm. Some of the many titles in this well-written series include The Ambushers (1963) and The Menacers (1968). Former CIA man David Atlee Phillips wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym Philip Atlee, all of them featuring secret agent Joe Gall, who saved the nation from the Reds in such titles as The Green Wound Contract (1963) and The Trembling Earth Contract (1969). Even Mickey Spillane, best known for his "tough guy" private eye novels featuring Mike Hammer, began to write spy novels with Day of the Guns (1964), which introduced secret agent Tiger Mann.

Television also played its role in the Cold War, through both entertainment programming and news specials. In the 1950s, a number of suspense shows with anti-Communist themes debuted, including Foreign Intrigue, Passport to Danger, I Led Three Lives, The Man Called X, Soldiers of Fortune, and Behind Closed Doors, but few of these shows captured audience interest. In the 1960s, television also participated in the "spy craze." In addition to "serious" espionage shows, 1960s television offered spoofs of the genre, including Get Smart (with Don Adams as an inept secret agent) and The Wild, Wild West (a Bondian satire set in the Old West).

While local television stations made good use of government-produced short films, both those with anti-Communist themes and those concerned with civil defense, national television stations produced their own documentaries about the dangers posed by world Communism. Call to Freedom focused on the history of Austria, to show how that country was able to free itself from partial Soviet occupation following World War II. Nightmare in Red was a history of the Soviet Union that suggested that Czarist rule was better than the oppression, tyranny, and drudgery of life in the modern Soviet state. Television also showed the cartoon series The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, with its "villains" the bumbling spies Boris Badinov and Natasha Fatale.

Television provided the American public with one of the clearest views into the HUAC's investigations. Many of Senator Joseph McCarthy's committee's hearings were televised live. At first, the coverage proved to be excellent publicity for McCarthy and his Red-baiting activities. But eventually McCarthy's bullying, demagoguery, and carelessness with facts caught up with him. When attorney Joseph Welch asked McCarthy, live on camera, "Have you no decency, sir? Have you no decency at all?" millions of Americans found themselves pondering the same question about the Senator from Wisconsin—and television made it possible.

—Justin Gustainis