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"This page intentionally left blank" A COLD WAR STATE OF MIND A VOLUME IN THE SERIES Culture, Politics, and the Cold War edited by Christian G. Appy OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES James T. Fisher, Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927–1961 Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation Christian G. Appy, ed., Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945–1966 H. Bruce Franklin, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy Lee Bernstein, The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham, eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War Jonathan Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War James Peck, Washington’s China: The National Security World, the Cold War, and the Origins of Globalism Edwin A. Martini, Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975–2000 Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold War Maureen Ryan, The Other Side of Grief: The Home Front and the Aftermath in American Narratives of the Vietnam War David Hunt, Vietnam’s Southern Revolution: From Peasant Insurrection to Total War Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing Jeremy Kuzmarov, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs Robert Surbrug Jr., Beyond Vietnam: The Politics of Protest in Massachusetts, 1974–1990 Larry Grubbs, Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s Robert A. Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age Andrew J. Falk, Upstaging the Cold War: American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940–1960 Jerry Lembcke, Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal Anna G. Creadick, Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America Kathleen Donohue, ed., Liberty and Justice for All? Rethinking Politics in Cold War America Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century Roger Peace, A Call to Conscience: The Anti–Contra War Campaign Edwin A. Martini, Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty Patrick Hagopian, American Immunity: War Crimes and the Limits of International Law A COLD WAR STATE OF MIND H H H BRAINWASHING AND POSTWAR AMERICAN SOCIETY Matthew W. Dunne University of Massachusetts Press Amherst & Boston Copyright © 2013 by University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-62534-041-2 (paper); 040-5 (hardcover) Designed by Jack Harrison Set in Trump Mediaeval Printed and bound by IBT/Hamilton, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dunne, Matthew W., 1980– A Cold War state of mind : brainwashing and postwar American society / Matthew W. Dunne. pages cm. — (Culture, politics, and the Cold War) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62534-041-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-62534-040-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Popular culture—United States—History—20th century. 2. Politics and culture—United States—History—20th century. 3. Cold War—Influence. 4. Cold War—Social aspects—United States. 5. Brainwashing—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Civilization—1945– 7. Political culture—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. E169.12.D859 2013 973.91—dc23 2013031732 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover: Illustration by Larry Kritcher, in Sidney Herschel Small, “The Brainwashed Pilot,” Saturday Evening Post, 227, no. 38 (19 March 1955), 31. (Illustration © SEPS. Licensed by Curtis Licensing. All Rights Reserved.) publication of this book is supported by a grant from F IGURE FOUNDATION “This page intentionally left blank” FOR Lily Mae, Julia Rose, and Evie Marie Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I. “There Is No ‘Behind the Lines’ Any Longer” 1. The Origins of Brainwashing 13 2. The Many Faces of the Communist Enemy 52 3. Korean War POWs and a Reevaluation of the National Character 81 4. Motherhood and Male Autonomy during the Cold War 116 Part II. “A Disquieting Invasion of Our Mental Domain” 5. Hidden Persuaders on the Home Front 149 6. The Limits of Individuality in Postwar America 181 7. The Legacy of Brain Warfare 211 Notes 237 Index 271 Acknowledgments The journey to finishing this book has proven to be an all-consuming one for the better part of four years, and in my time working on the project I have become indebted to many people. All of this help has been hum- bling, and ultimately this book and my experience writing it would have been lesser without it. I am deeply grateful to Howard Chudacoff at Brown University for his tireless support and invaluable comments on early ver- sions of the manuscript. Feedback and encouragement from Robert O. Self and Elliott Gorn assisted in broadening my research and my approach to the topic of brainwashing. Their intellectual generosity helped me get this project off the ground and left an immeasurable imprint on the final version. I also benefited from many formal and informal discussions with members of my graduate cohort at Brown, who consistently challenged and inspired me during my years in Providence. Research support for this project was initially provided by Brown Uni- versity and the Eisenhower Foundation. This support funded my archival research at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, whose staff helped guide me through their massive collection and assisted me in pinpointing mate- rial that made a significant contribution to my study of postwar America. Generous faculty funding at Stonehill College also greatly contributed to this project and provided me with opportunities to expand the research I conducted in the later years. While I was at Stonehill my colleague Shane Maddock generously read my manuscript and provided critical feedback and advice that influenced much of my thinking on the 1960s and the Vietnam era. In April 2012 I presented research related to this book at the spring conference of the New England Historical Association, where I received valuable comments on the physical fitness craze of the early postwar period from the audi- ence and the session chair, Jennifer Tebbe-Grossman. A special thanks as xi xii Acknowledgments well to the external reviewers for the University of Massachusetts Press, whose expertise and insight helped make this a much more nuanced final product. For the past twenty-four months Chris Appy and Clark Dougan at the University of Massachusetts Press have helped guide me through every step of the publication process. They saw potential in this project in its fledgling stage and showed great faith and patience as I worked to bring it to maturity. I can’t thank them enough. I am also deeply indebted to my copyeditor, Lawrence Kenney, and to Carol Betsch, Jack Harrison, and their colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Press for their atten- tion to detail and tireless support. Finally, I want to thank my family for their love and support. I have been fascinated with the past since I was a child, when conversations with my grandfather inspired me to see history as exciting and important. He had an innate talent for making a child see the wonder in the world. I like to think he would appreciate this book. I also want to thank my parents, who have been loving and supportive throughout this process and have spent countless hours talking about and reading this manuscript. Their sugges- tions and thoughts were always insightful, and they have been a constant source of encouragement. Above all, I want to thank my wonderful wife and partner, Teri. I have been consumed by brainwashing and by this proj- ect for the duration of our married life. Each and every day you inspired me to move forward and were patient and supportive when I was bogged down by this book. Between the time I embarked on it and its publication, we also started a family, which has been thoroughly life changing and entirely life affirming. You and our three little ladies are my inspiration. A COLD WAR STATE OF MIND Introduction When the director Jonathan Demme remade The Manchurian Candidate in 2004 he updated several aspects of John Frankenheimer’s classic psycho- logical thriller from the 1960s for a contemporary audience. Among the more noteworthy changes, Demme shifted the setting from the Cold War to the war on terror, completely abandoned the McCarthy-esque charac- ter Senator Johnny Iselin, and transformed the Communist enemy from the original into America’s own corporate allies. As one critic observed, “What was a thriller set in the deepest, darkest paranoid waters of the Cold War has become a sort of post–Gulf War Halliburton-dunit.”1 But nota- bly the original film’s central plot device was left essentially unaltered, and the protagonist in both films, Raymond Shaw, was brainwashed and controlled by external forces. The science behind this process had become more sophisticated in the new film, exchanging Communist hypnosis for microchips, but when Demme’s Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) tried to persuade Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) that a conspiracy was afoot, the dialogue echoed the same themes of psychological invasion and manipu- lation as the original: “Somebody got into our heads with big steel-toe boots or cable cutters and a chainsaw, and they went to town. Neurons got exposed and circuits got rewired. Our brain cells got obliterated.” The film’s markedly different politics, gender dynamics, and visions of Ameri- can democracy speak to the profound changes the United States underwent in the four decades since the original had first played in theaters.

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