Western Propaganda Reaches Full Gear, 1950– 1953

Home , April 1950

chapter 3 Western Propaganda Reaches Full Gear, 1950–1953

1 Cold War Enters Every Home

In the early 1950s the Cold War had turned into a full-scale conflict. The US Government now started hammering home the message about the evils of communism, while at the same time giving advice about how to act during a nuclear attack, by using literature, music, art and the media, especially tele- vision. Now every American was expected to enlist in the Cold War, and neu- trality was seen as suspect.1 Following this conviction, several famous artists working for the Hollywood film industry, including John Wayne, James Stew- art, John Ford and Walt Disney, set an example of Cold War participation to all Americans by contributing to the anti-communist onslaught on screen.2 They were not exactly alone; all larger film companies started to launch propaganda movies, which bound the entire industry to the state and thus to the Cold War.3 Hollywood’s declaration of full-scale war against international communism was not entirely a spontaneous act, but a result of the tremendous pressure film producers came under in the late 1940s by organisations like the House of Un-American Activities Committee (huac) and the Federal Bureau of Investi- gation (fbi). By excluding all elements that might be regarded as suspiciously leftist, the two organisations, together with the cia, successfully drafted the film industry to the Cold War cause. Hollywood’s output of explicitly anti- communist productions was at its highest before and after the Korean War when dozens of films were launched not only about the war itself but about the fear of the spreading of the evils of communism in a more global con- text.4 While the hard-hitting propaganda films played their part in combating communism, the inspiration the blockbuster films selling the American dream

1 Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD and London 1991), p. 10. 2 Tony Shaw & Denise Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War. The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence, KS 2010), p. 21. 3 The way the conflict was explained to the audience through various themes and stories re- sulted in the creation of entirely new movie genres, such as the nuclear catastrophe films, es- pionage stories and Cold War-inspired epics of history and fantasy. Nicholas J. Cull, “Reading, Viewing and Tuning in to the Cold War” in M.P. Leffler & O.A. Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 2: Crises and Détente (Cambridge 2010), pp. 445–455. 4 Hollywood turned out approximately 70 anti-communist movies between 1948 and 1953, roughly 5 per cent of the total film output for those years. Shaw & Youngblood 2010, pp 20–21.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004416420_005 124 CHAPTER 3 gave people around the world was decisive in the Cold War cause. These films, produced by the hundreds in the 1950s, did not screen the country as a new, exiting, classless consumer society by coincidence, but because their producers wanted to present the broader ‘soft power’ themes accepted by the State Department and the cia.5 In addition to the conscription of numerous Hollywood actors and directors to the Cold War cause, and the exposure of the suspicious ones, the growing hysteria around communism led to the large-scale McCarthyist witch hunts also in Wash- ington, which seem rather bizarre to today’s reader. A more important develop- ment was that apocalyptic anti-communism, popular in a country built on indi- vidualism and private enterprise, made it easier for American presidents to raise the vast sums required for US policy “from a citizenry notorious for its disinclina- tion of to pay taxes”, as Eric Hobsbawm has noted.6 Naturally, all this gave extra momentum to the government machinery for propaganda and cultural activities both home and abroad. Amidst all of its military rhetoric, the National Security Council Report 68, the global blueprint for US strategy, also concluded in April 1950 that “we have no choice but to demonstrate our freedom by its constructive application, and to attempt to change the world situation by means short of war in such a way as to frustrate the Kremlin design and hasten the decay of the Soviet system.”7 The rejection of the renewal of American isolationism not only led to a massive build-up of the US military and its weaponry, but also meant that the psychological offensive would receive more emphasis in government policy. As a result, the Truman Administration was granted with extra funds totalling nearly $80 million for an expanded propaganda effort by Congress approval. Truman’s propaganda offensive ‘The Campaign of Truth’, also launched in April 1950, signalled a renewed determination to undermine communism across the globe.8 As a consequence, propaganda finally became a more ac- ceptable activity among State Department officials who had still been suspicious of its potential intrusion upon the sensitive worlds of foreign policy and diplomacy which they inhabited.9 In order to secure additional funding for

5 According to, for example, Shaw, in order to appreciate Cold War cinema fully, one must look beyond fear and hatred and instead examine films that accentuated the positive over the negative and that indirectly celebrated their side’s way of life. Shaw & Youngblood 2010, p. 124. 6 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London 1994), p. 235. 7 National Security Council Paper 68 (NSC-68), April 7, 1950, FRUS, 1950, Volume 1; National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy (Washington 1977), pp. 235–291. 8 Hixson 1997, pp. 14–15. 9 Gary Rawnsley, “The Campaign of Truth – A Populist Propaganda” in Rawnsley 1999 (Rawns- ley 1999b), p. 31.