Category Archives: History

Destiny of the Republic, A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President—Part II

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Part I of this book by Candice Millard was about Garfield’s early life, his military service during the Civil War, entrance into politics, and his seemingly accidental connections to a madman named Charles Guiteau who shot him and the inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. This part will be about the medical treatment after Guiteau shot him, or more accurately the inept medical treatment of Garfield, the people who interacted with Garfield during his long decline to his end, and the remarkable transformation of Vice President Chester Arthur. Arthur was transformed from being a political hack to becoming an admirable American President.. He was influenced to become a decent President by the coaching from a previously unknown disabled woman and by his limited contact with the remarkable Garfield. I would be remiss if I did no encourage any student of history or anyone who enjoys a well written, interesting story to read this book. I give it a very high recommendation.

Alexander Graham Bell began working on an electrical induction device when he learned that President Garfield had been wounded by a gunshot from the insane Guitreau, and that there was doubt where the bullet had lodged. He hoped he could develop a metal detector that would assist in identifying the location of the lead slug embedded in Garfield. Bell would test his equipment with some success on a Civil War veteran who had carried a bullet in his body for many years. However, his equipment failed to find the bullet in Garfield in part because of an error in setting up the equipment, and in part because Bliss, the doctor in charge of Garfield’s treatment, gave him a completely incorrect assessment of the approximate location of the bullet. Bell continued to work on his equipment after failing to find the bullet in Garfield, and would eventually find the location of a slug in Private John McGill who had carried a bullet twenty years after being shot at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill. Bell made a return visit to Garfield’s bed and found a feeble signal in the general vicinity where Bliss believed the bullet to be lodged. Bell was unconvinced, but Bliss took it as proof of his ideas. Bell did not know the President was on a mattress with metal coils that probably gave the false signal that Bliss believed proved he was right. Continue reading →

No Sense of Decency, The Army McCarthy Hearings—Part II

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The first half of the review of this book discusses the early days of McCarthy’s attacks on communists in the U.S. government beginning with a speech in 1950 to a Wheeling West Virginia women’s club when he announced he was holding a list of communists or suspected communists in the State Department. This part will talk about the expansion of his attacks and the gathering of forces that eventually tore him down. I’ve suggested that anyone reading this book should also read “Blacklisted by History,” which presents strong defenses of McCarthy and his actions.

The rebuff by his colleagues did not deter McCarthy, and he continued his attacks on powerful people. He called Secretary of State Dean Acheson the “…great Red Dean.” He declared Truman was a drunkard, and that “The son of a bitch should be impeached,” after Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur. Truman commented after McCarthy’s attack on General Marshall, “The man who made that attack isn’t fit to shine General Marshall’s shoes.” Edward R. Murrow said that he hadn’t always agreed with Truman, but said “…we are obliged to applaud his choice of shoeshine boys.”

McCarthy would announce on television that presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and five of his key advisors were supporters of communism. He broadened his attack by declaring, “…those who wear the label Democrat wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal.” He later angered Eisenhower with his lengthy speech attacking the Army. Eisenhower told his brother Milton, “I am not going to get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”  Richard Nixon, who had gained fame interrogating suspected communists as a member of HUAC, said “When you go out and shoot rats you have to shoot straight…you might hit someone else who is trying to shoot rats too.” Continue reading →

Joe McCarthy

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Joe is probably the most vilified politician in U.S. history, although a good argument could be made for Richard Nixon to hold that distinction. Negative reports have even been written Joe’s military service despite the fact he resigned from being a judge to enlist in the Marines in World War II. He would later campaign for office as “Tail gunner Joe,” and would limp around complaining of the shrapnel in his leg. His detractors say that he never flew in a combat mission, and that the stiff leg was from an accident during a shipboard ceremony while traveling to the South Pacific. He was elected to the Senate in 1946 and spent several unremarkable years there. He was said to be a popular D.C. party guest, but unpopular with other senators because of his quick temper and the ease with which he became voraciously critical.

Joe became the center of public attention after he gave a speech to a Wheeling West Virginia women’s club in 1950 where he said he held in his hand a list of communists in the U.S. State Department. That speech eventually attracted attention across the country, and politicians who would be embarrassed by what he said began to vilify McCarthy.

I’ve read several books about Joe, and most of them describe him as a despicable, drunken bully. “Blackmailed by History, the Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy” by M. Stanton Evans, which I reviewed in three parts on this web site, presents the other side of the story, and it is the book I will use for most of the references in this posting.

Probably the strangest accusation against Joe is that he had something to do with the Hollywood Blacklist. It is true that many Hollywood personalities suffered as the result of investigations following the “Red Scare.”The House Un-American Activities (HUAC) chaired by Democrat Martin Dies beginning in 1938 was looking for Nazi and Communist influences in government. Richard Nixon was on the committee in the later 1940s when several Hollywood personalities were “blacklisted.” Many references to “McCarthyism” will mention the McCarthy and the HUAC-imposed blacklists in the same passage, even though Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with actions of that House committee. As what I consider a fascinating aside, Congressman Samuel Dickstein had vied with Dies to be the chairman of HUAC, but was relegated to be the vice-chairman. Dickstein is the only U.S. Congressman proven by Venona and NKVD archives to be a paid Soviet agent. The Soviets apparently had little if any respect for Dickstein, since they gave him the code name “Crook.”

A charge in the eventual indictments of McCarthy was that he lied about the number of people on the list he was holding when he gave the Wheeling speech. McCarthy would say he mentioned 57 as the number, but his detractors claimed he said 205. Eva Ingersoll, a political activist from Wheeling would testify in front of Congress that Joe had said there were 205 people being investigated and 57 were “card-carrying Communists.” An editorial in the Wheeling Intelligencer the day after the speech mentions “over fifty” suspects of Communist affiliation. The headline of a Denver Post article reads, “57 Reds Help Shaping U.S. Policy:  McCarthy.” Historical references about Joe continue to contend that he lied about the numbers regardless of the information confirming McCarthy’s statements. (There is no recording or written documentation of the speech.) I find it fascinating that the number Joe McCarthy had used in a speech is what the focus of investigation became. That was apparently more important than the accusation there were several people suspected of being communists shaping U.S. foreign policy. The Venona Project was declassified in the mid-1990s and would confirm there were hundreds of communist sympathizers and spies in the U.S. government and military.

The movie Goodbye and Good Luck is about the Edward R. Murrow news reports that damaged McCarty’s image. One scene was a young woman suspected of being a communist who is being interrogated by McCarthy in a hearing. She mentions that there are three people including her who have a similar name in the phone book, and the media jumped on the story saying that McCarthy had accused the wrong person. History has shown that the woman, whose job was to decode classified messages, was a communist. The most famous episode shown by the movie was lawyer Joseph Welch asking McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency” after McCarthy mentioned a young lawyer who had been on Welch’s staff and had belonged to a “far left” organization. Welch himself had revealed the affiliation to the New York Times six weeks before the hearings, and perhaps that is how McCarthy learned of it. However the theatrical rants by Welch accusing McCarthy of having no shame in “ruining a young-man’s life” in front of the cameras with tears rolling down his face is what the movie shows and what most people remember when McCarthy is mentioned.

I’ve done a two part review of the book “No Sense of Decency by Robert that presents the negative side of Joe McCarthy and the book is both well-documented and presented. Reading that book and the Evan’s book “Blackmailed by History” reminds me of the comment that “history is interpretive.” I believe that Joe McCarthy was a political opportunist, that he bullied people, and that he made a huge political error when he accused General George Marshall of making decisions to give advantage to the Soviets and Chinese Communists. The decisions are easy to criticize, but there are few people who distrust the loyalty of Marshall.

Joe McCarthy’s accusations resulted in few if any communists being uncovered during his life. However, several of the people he accused were confirmed to have communist affiliations or were confirmed to be Soviet spies by the Venona project and/or by the archives opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The biggest mistake Joe made was that he severely underestimated the magnitude of Soviet espionage penetration of the U.S. government and military in the years during and after World War II. It isn’t difficult to see the negative impact from the failures of U.S. policy that resulted. The Soviets were able to steal all the Manhattan Project plans needed to make and detonate an atomic bomb. The U.S. military did halt their advance into Germany to allow the Soviets to take Berlin. The Soviets did dominate Eastern Europe after the war. The Chinese Communists did take over China and expelled the Nationalists to Formosa. There was a long and costly Cold War. Too bad Joe didn’t do a better job of warning us.

No Sense of Decency, The Army McCarthy Hearings—Part I

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I recommend this book because it presents a picture of history that is important. However, I would caution that I believe some of the information and accusations about Senator Joseph McCarthy follow “the standard media line.” The introduction to the book includes the quote from Joseph Welch in interrogating Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?” This is referred to as a response to “…an attack by Senator Joseph McCarthy” on June 9, 1954. Stay with me through this review, which discusses many historically important events, and I’ll present the opinion that this quotation, from which the title of the book is taken, makes me less eager to recommend the book.

The Prologue to the book describes that Joe McCarthy, “…ruthlessly, and many would said (sic) recklessly—exploiting the tensions of the cold war between the United States and public anxiety about Communist subversion at home.” I disagree with much of the condemnation of Joe McCarthy for reasons I will discuss in a blog posting on the subject, but the focus on the influence of television on American politics in this book is intriguing. As the author observes, “As it turned out, history would show that the decisive factor…was …a very recent entrant in the American political wars: television.”

The author correctly points out several world events that led the American public to support McCarthy’s allegations of the Soviet threat and influence that led to weakening of U.S. positions during and after World War II. J. Robert Oppenheimer admitted association with Communist organizations while the debate about development of the hydrogen bomb was being debated. Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg were convicted and sentenced to death for providing the Soviets information that led to their successful detonation of an atomic bomb that was designed from information stolen from the Manhattan project. (Roy Cohn, who would be the primary assistant to McCarthy, was a key player in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.) Continue reading →

Blacklisted by History, the Untold Story of Joe McCarthy—Part II

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Part one of the review about the book “Blacklisted by History” by M. Stanton Evans gives the background for Joe McCarthy’s original accusations about the infiltration of communist agents in the U.S. Government in general and the State Department in particular and the early attempts to discredit him and his accusations. This part will focus on the friction between those concerned about Soviet spying, including Joe, and reactions of other politicians, including the Presidents.

I’ve read several books that make it clear that Franklin Delano Roosevelt never wanted to hear negative things about the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. He had paved the way to provide diplomatic immunity to the Soviets. He didn’t want to hear that action had opened a broad pathway for the Soviets to establish a massive espionage network in the United States that sent its tentacles into just about every aspect of government and the military. Roosevelt made a rude remark to Adolph Berle when Berle tried to brief FDR about a Soviet espionage ring revealed by Whitaker Chambers. The author summarizes in biting terms the Roosevelt administration’s mood “…during the ‘gallant allay’ daze of wartime, when FDR, Harry Hopkins, and their minions were lauding Stalin, letting Earl Browder out of prison, and strewing roses along the path that led comrades to the federal payroll.”

Truman, I had always thought, took a much less conciliatory tone toward Stalin and the Soviets. I also had read that the generals who had control of who would be briefed about the magnitude of Soviet espionage as learned by the Venona project decided that Truman would not be given that information. The FBI is often blamed for the failure to identify and prevent Soviet penetration, and that blame often includes the allegation that that agency withheld information from Truman. However, the author observes that “…all of this is moonshine and will be so perceived by anyone who bothers to check the official records. As has been seen, the FBI was neither fooled by nor indifferent to Soviet penetration efforts in the 1940s…Nor did the Bureau withhold its knowledge of such matters from the Truman White house.” The author offers the opinion, “That he (Truman) was a visceral anti-Communist is not in doubt. However, he did seem to know little about the way the Soviets and their U.S. agents functioned, or their presence in the government he headed, and didn’t show much interest in learning.” Continue reading →

The Forsaken, an American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia—Part III

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Part one of the review of this book describes how thousands of Americans immigrated to Russia during the Great Depression to find jobs in the “Worker’s Paradise.” They were treated well in the early days, but the Soviets began to arrest and imprison them along with all other nationalities, including Russians, when the Terror began. Part two of the review describes the Gulags and the brutal treatment of millions of people. Few survived. The United States government seldom did anything to help any Americans who were desperate to escape. The official policy was to never do anything that would cause embarrassment to “Uncle Joe,” which is what Roosevelt called Stalin.

Roosevelt was forced to deny Stalin’s request to return one defector who was stirring up negative publicity about what was happening in the Soviet Union. The defector, Victor Kravchenko had attracted international attention. Both  Ambassador Joseph Davies and Harry Hopkins advised Roosevelt to return Kravchenko. Hopkins argued that no one would know what happened to Kravchenko if he were returned, but Roosevelt sensed a political disaster in the making and refused the extradition. Kravchenko published “I Choose Freedom,” describing Stalin’s crimes, and was tried for libel in France after an onslaught of furious attacks from Soviet critics. Kravchenko won a token one franc award, but there continued to be a “…willingness to deny the truth of what was ongoing in the Soviet Union.” Kravcheenko repeatedly claimed Soviet agents were trying to kill him and was eventually found dead of what was declared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Manhattan apartment.

Stalin wasn’t finished with the Terror at the end of WWII. He obtained an agreement from both Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta that all Soviet prisoners of war would be repatriated to the Soviet Union “…without exception and by force if necessary…” Stalin publicly warned that “…in Hitler’s camps there are no Russian prisoners of war, only Russian traitors and we shall do away with them when the war is over.” The prisoners being prepared for return were given leaflets “…showing a beautiful Russian woman stretching out her arms and saying, ‘Come home, dearest son, your motherland calls you’.” The returned POWs were immediately stripped, given striped prison pajamas, and shipped to the Gulag. Some Russian being prepared to be shipped from Fort Dix New Jersey expected what would happen on their return and rioted to resist. Rifle fire, tear gas, and clubs had to be used to quell the riot. Some chose suicide over return to the Soviet Union. Continue reading →