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Chapter Two introduces Oberammergau’s increasingly complex political culture by describing the Corpus Christi procession in which youths carry banners, costumed girls display a Marian statue, and priests surround the Host under a baldachin. Political Catholics dominated elections before 1914, although a Liberal challenger paved the way for Catholics to join non-denominational parties. Defeat in World War I brought Oberammergau both a Soviet-style council that competed briefly with traditional political structures and armed revolutionaries in Bavaria’s capital whom local paramilitary forces helped to defeat. Villagers became passionately anti-Communist, often laced with anti-Semitism because of the Munich uprising’s Jewish leaders. In the 1920s, political Catholicism (BVP) declined as the electorate fragmented, although voters participated extensively in local politics, including Passion Play management. The Nazis performed surprisingly well in the 1930 election, which took place during the Passion season; newcomers, including temporary workers, helped them succeed in Oberammergau.

This chapter discusses the meeting of Cowgill, Vivian, Curry, Milne, Steptoe, O'Brian, and Philby on August 18 in the counter-intelligence department of SIS to discuss the development of anti-Communist work in the time ahead and the co-operation of Section V in that area. The general view was that at that time, the main job of Section V was the destruction of the German military and political intelligence services and that it was, therefore, unable to divert much in the way of resources for anti-Communist work. It was, however, recognized that given the growing interest of the Foreign Office in investigating the Communist movement, Section V should do something toward this end. It was suggested that officers of Section V attached to the military staffs in Italy and France might be used for this purpose.

This chapter discusses Colonel Vivian's memo dated September 1944. According to Vivian, this memorandum provided a general picture of the XK [anti-Communist] situation in SIS, both at home and abroad, and set out the reasons that prompted him to seek advice on the best methods of organizing work in that area overseas. Vivian felt that the problem was extremely broad and complex, and that it therefore seemed to him to be both impractical and undesirable to discuss it in a formal meeting. It could, however, be readily divided into convenient component parts, which could be sufficiently clearly defined and which are independent enough of one another that, in each instance, one would need to have only a very few officers involved in the discussion and formulation of advice.

This chapter discusses the message from EDWARD dated 29 November, 1944. The message discussed the circular signed by Menzies approximately two weeks earlier, which instructed SIS representatives to make attempts to penetrate Soviet organizations but said that all proposals to this end needed to be agreed upon in advance with the directorate. In a previous circular, Menzies stated that in implementing his directive, work against Communism was to be undertaken in close co-operation with Section V. The message emphasized that the latter's work would be under the direction of Philby (who would have the symbol VN), who would report to Vivian (DD/SP). The circular also stated that XK (anti-Communist) work abroad was not under the exclusive auspices of Section V officers and could also be undertaken by officers of any other section if they were suited to it.

This chapter analyzes the effect of the anti-Communist campaign on the screen. There were two strains of anti-Communist films. The first followed the insights of Ayn Rand and is represented most notably by the film version of her novel, The Fountainhead (1943). On the other hand, J. Edgar Hoover's brand of anti-Communism talked about the role of American institutions—the government, the church, and the traditional, patriarchal nuclear family—as safeguards against Communist subversion. “Hooverism” therefore shaped the anti-Communist films far more than “Randism.” Hoover's mark was especially prevalent in anti-Communist “B” films, such as Robert G. Springsteen's The Red Menace (1949), Gordon Douglas's I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951), Leo McCarey's My Son John (1952), and Edward Ludwig's Big Jim McLain (1952); but it was also evident in such artistic achievements as Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954).

George Orwell was the quintessential English radical. He wrote two of the best and most famous political books of the twentieth century: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But he was also an essayist and journalist of real distinction. His concerns were with the moral values underlying democratic socialism, rather than political theory or party politics. He became increasingly convinced that totalitarian societies, and their ideologies as well as their political practice, represented an existential threat to Western civilisation. He was thus not only a committed opponent of fascism and Nazism but a fierce critic of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He was essentially a democratic socialist, with a romantic belief in the innate decency of the common people, as exemplified in his portrayal of ‘the proles’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell had a profound impact upon English political culture and, seventy years after his premature death, remains a major influence.

Folk music performance and collecting entered the waning year of the 1930s with somewhat renewed vigor but with reduced federal government support. Of increasing importance, a group of professional musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Burl Ives, and Josh White, emerged to capture a popular interest in folk music, particularly in New York City. Alan Lomax’s CBS programs brought a variety of folk performers into homes and schools throughout the country, and the music’s connection to the Communist Party and organized labor continued as the country edged closer to war. At the same time anti-communism was on the rise.

This chapter focuses on novels and autobiographies of the Jewish American Communism movement. Among these are the renowned Cold War, anti-Communist confessional autobiographies of Louis Budenz, Elizabeth Bentley, and Whittaker Chambers.

This chapter describes Tomas Venclova's Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast. Aleksander Wat was much more than a prominent Polish poet of Jewish origin; he was a paradigmatic twentieth-century intellectual who claimed an illustrious cultural lineage that included King David, Rashi, and Isaac Luria. A ‘born futurist’, he was also a communist fellow traveller in inter-war Poland, one who later became a Soviet prisoner, and on his return to Poland was an open anti-communist. Both his background and experiences placed him at the centre of major artistic currents and historical trends. Thus, in his writings one can find a reflection of virtually everything important that occurred in Europe between 1914 and his death in 1967 and even after.

This epilogue concludes the narrative by examining the effects of World War II on the Tri-State mining district. The National War Labor Board ultimately facilitated the unionization of most district miners in the CIO. As federal support waned at war’s end, however, the district rapidly collapsed. Although now unionized, Tri-State miners opted for the conservative, anti-Communist unionism of the American Federation of Labor. But no union could stop the closure of the mines by the late 1950s. Rather than go into mining, young working-class men. such as the district’s favorite son, Mickey Mantle, now chose other occupations. The epilogue also surveys the books core arguments and reiterates its historiographical significance.

This chapter examines Poland's relationship with its Soviet invaders. It suggests that the theory of “the two enemies” was never put to practice and explains that the general situation was that everyone had to be anti-German out of national duty, but only those who had been granted prior permission by the Underground authorities could be anti-communist. It also discusses the depiction of the Home Army as “heroic” and Wladyslaw Gomulka's 1962 speech about the creation of the Polish Workers' Party.

This chapter provides chronological biographical information on Josef Mackiewicz, an anti-communist Polish writer. It explains a few quotations and provides excerpts from some of his most notable works. It discusses Mackiewicz's life and career including his birth on April 1, 1902 in Saint Petersburg, his views on the Russian Empire, his participation in Tenth Cavalry Regiment of the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Division in the war against the Bolsheviks and the publication of his first work titled “From the Depths of the Bialowieza Forest” in September 1922.

This chapter focuses on political passing, in which the specter of passing was utilized in Hollywood films produced in the context of the Cold War. Films about political passing called into question who was who and the nature of identity. The notion that somebody could pass politically mirrored fears about racial passing, complicated by postwar obsessions with Communism. The chapter examines how anti-Communist films such as My Son John and Woman on Pier 13 tackle the “enemy within” and portray Communists as caricatures, either gangster-like or hyperintellectual, thus making visible what was supposed to be an invisible threat. It also considers the way anti-Communism in Hollywood exploited anxieties that were linked to postwar ideas about identity.

This chapter focuses on the September Thirtieth Movement. In the early morning before dawn on October 1, 1965, a group of mostly middle-ranking military officers calling themselves the September Thirtieth Movement kidnapped and killed six senior anti-Communist generals. They later announced that a Revolutionary Council composed of left-wing, right-wing, and neutral political forces had seized power. General Suharto and the Indonesian army under him claimed that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had organized the movement with the encouragement of and support from Beijing in order to spark a national uprising. Ten days after the movement, the Indonesian army accused the Chinese government of smuggling arms to the PKI for the revolt. This claim of Beijing's alleged behind-the-scenes role in the September Thirtieth Movement fanned anti-China and anti-Chinese sentiments in Indonesia. In the months following the September Thirtieth Movement, Sino-Indonesian relations deteriorated sharply and mass demonstrations broke out across Indonesia at People's Republic of China embassies, consulates, and news agencies. The chapter then claims that the Suharto regime manufactured these claims to justify its anti-Communist purges.

This chapter studies how the 1965 regime change in Indonesia gave rise to a new round of Red-versus-Blue competition. As Suharto's authoritarian rule replaced the Sukarno-PKI alliance, the cross–Taiwan Strait politics between the two Chinas became intertwined with the anti-Communist campaign and mass violence in Indonesia. The suspension of Sino-Indonesian relations reflected the paralysis of PRC diplomacy and greatly contributed to the growing sociopolitical mobilization during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution. The popular misperception in Indonesia that the PRC had sponsored a Communist coup was bolstered by the violent clashes between the PRC's Indonesian diplomatic mission and right-wing youth; the Red Guards' retaliatory attacks on the Indonesian diplomatic compound in China; the inflammatory broadcasts of Radio Peking; and the fiery tirades in the People's Daily against Suharto. Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist government in Taiwan capitalized on the golden opportunity provided by the anti-Communist fervor in Indonesia, which had been fueled by the fall of Sukarno, the demise of the Indonesian Communists, and the country's turn toward the capitalist West. Ultimately, the political turmoil in Indonesia between 1965 and 1967 gave rise to a period of insecurity for most of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.

The fourth chapter examines anti-Communist films made by Hollywood in Cantonese and Malay in Singapore and Malaya in the Cold War context of the ‘Campaign of Truth’. In the early 1950s, the United States Information Agency, an arm of the State Department, secretly commissioned and funded New York Sound Masters Inc. to produce and shoot several anti-Communist films in Singapore and Malaya. In 1953, cinemas across Malaya and Singapore screened SingaporeStory and KampongSentosa, two Cold War products of the ‘Campaign of Truth’. In addition to analysing the ideology of these films, this chapter combines declassified archive material from the US and Singaporean National Archives with primary materials from UK, US, Singaporean, and Malayan periodicals from the Cold War era, in order to explore how these two films use Malay and Cantonese to narrate a Hollywood version of the Singaporean story. As these two films have been largely passed over in scholarship and the films and archives have not been regularly accessible, records of these films are absent from histories of film and television in the US, Singapore, and Malaya. This chapter aims to remedy this absence.

This chapter examines the 1947 HUAC hearings on Communist infiltration in Hollywood. Through these public hearings, HUAC, the Motion Picture Alliance, and the FBI achieved a transformation in the types of films Hollywood produced. For example, HUAC—particularly committee member Richard Nixon—intimidated the studios into pledging to produce anti-Communist propaganda films. Moreover, the emerging Hollywood blacklist served not just to purge radical individuals from employment but also their suspect ideas from the screen. Indeed, although HUAC's move away from investigating film content initially angered J. Edgar Hoover, his FBI and its allies in the Motion Picture Alliance soon came to appreciate the blacklist as the most effective means of altering film content.

This concluding chapter discusses the effect of the FBI-led campaign against the film industry. The casualties of Hollywood's red scare were not limited solely to the screen credits. The purging of left-wing artists brought an end to a brief, though vibrant, period of filmmaking in which liberal reform and social criticism from the left appeared in America's screens. Moreover, the anti-Communist drive represented an attempt to reshape American culture through the development of a Cold War consensus that would displace the cultural sway of the Popular Front. Not only was this cultural struggle inherently political, but in the case of Hollywood, this culture war was transformed into a matter of domestic security by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Indeed, Hollywood served as one of the first ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War.

By virtue of having graduated from Oberlin College, Mollie Church automatically received a membership invitation to the American Association of University Women. She joined the local chapter when she settled in Washington but let her membership lapse. Decades later, in 1946, with the encouragement of her closest white friend and ally, Janet “Nettie” McKelvey Swift, she tried to rejoin and so desegregate the local affiliate. It took years for the case she and Nettie were making for equality and integration to make its way through the court system as well as into the AAUW’s national constitution. Terrell’s congressional testimony in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was viewed by AAUW women as too radical. She also faced charges of being a communist sympathizer from liberal AAUW women who were also strongly anti-communist. Red Scare antagonism toward the Soviet Union increased after World War II. Terrell’s work with Paul Robeson and the Council on African Affairs, as well as with the Communist-sponsored Civil Rights Congress (CRC), drew the suspicion of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).