Glossary

Berlin

The Berlin crisis of 1948 was the first test of Truman's containment policy. An American airlift successfully forced Stalin to lift his blockade of West Berlin.

Dixiecrats

Angered by Truman's support of civil rights, some southern Democrats formed the States' Rights Democratic party, also known as the Dixiecrats, and nominated J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president in 1948. Their effort to defeat Truman failed.

Douglas MacArthur

After the Chinese entered the Korean War in November 1951, only General MacArthur continued to talk about an absolute victory. When MacArthur publicly criticized the president's limited war policy, Truman replaced him as commander of UN forces, causing a firestorm of protest.

Dr. Frederic Wertham

The style of politics that Americans developed during the Cold War focused in part on the theme of adolescent moral decline, a theme reinforced by FBI reports and congressional investigations. Wertham's work emphasized in particular the pernicious influence of comic books, which he believed fostered fascism, racism, and homosexuality.

George Kennan

Kennan, the government's foremost authority on Russian history, formulated the rationale for the containment policy. Kennan distrusted the Soviet government and believed it would pursue expansion in an effort to shore up its repressive dictatorship at home.

HUAC

The House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation of alleged Communist influence in Hollywood convinced Hollywood producers to make strongly anti-Communist films between 1947 and 1954. These movies seemed to confirm HUAC's position that Communists were everywhere and reaffirmed the paranoid style of American politics.

Iron Curtain speech

Winston Churchill delivered this speech at Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946. It may be viewed as the Anglo-American recognition that the Cold War was underway.

Joseph McCarthy

More than any other person, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy capitalized on the anti-Communist issue to propel his political career. Unable to prove his charges of Communist infiltration of the American government, he was discredited during the televised Army- McCarthy hearings in 1954.

Walter Lippmann

In a series of newspaper articles later published as The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy, conservative political commentator Walter Lippmann criticized and challenged the containment policy.

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