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Our Cities Must Fight: Civilian Defense Mobilization and the Formation of an American Civic Garrison State, 1946-1954
Center for Studies of Social Change
October, 1995
...we as a people must make our nation and way of life secure internally from all hostile actions on the part of individuals, groups and nations. From the very beginning of organized living, of society, there have existed negative elements which would tear down and destroy the established order by force and violence. (National Security Directive 1 7 [an "internal security" document] June 1948).
...What sort of Government will step in to restore order and bring the people to safety and their senses? Jhe answer should be obvious: Dictatorship, military dictatorship under the direction, I hope, of the President or Acting President, of the United States. (Clinton Rossiter, ttConstitutional Dictatorship in the Atomic Age," 1949.)
Introduction 1
Forty-four years ago those who owned television sets and everyone who went to the movie theater were exposed to a short film that began with a representation of the North American continent coming into the view of a bomb sight's cross-hairs. The perspective closed in on United States, and centered on the mid-West. In the background ominous music conveyed a sense of looming danger. Quickly the cross-hairs of the bomb sight closed in on a suburban community-it could have be any suburban community in the United States: nice homes, manicured lawns-everyone was happy. Next, individual homes appeared in the target area and finally the cross-hairs fixed themselves squarely on the forehead of a unsuspecting young mother as she exited the front door of her home, young child in tow. The background music, having reached its ominous crescendo, was replace by an equally ominous voice-over that introduced the title of the short film and its message: "Target You!"
Target You was one of many films produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (the FCDA), that warned that any moment the tranquility of middle-class suburban life could be subjected to the radical uncertainty of surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. A panicked mob killing one another over food and shelter was portrayed as the likely consequence if the citizenry was unprepared. Like all civil defense training films-Target You described for its audience how strategic nuclear war was easily survivable. FCDA literature and training "conventionalized" nuclear weapons by arguing that the effects of these new weapons were less important than the behavior of the general public under, in the words of the FCDA, "the stress of atomic attack." According to public FCDA literature and training syllabi "the technicalities" of fighting strategic nuclear were highly manageable. The message of early civil defense training was that the weak link in modern war was the collective behavior of citizens under horrific conditions of stress. In the language of the time, national security specialists called this "the problem of panic." Civil defense plans and programs delivered the message that only through vigilance, routinized training and the self-surveillance that inhered in such training, could this potential "weak link" for fighting World War Ill be eliminated.
The mobilization of American society for Cold War institutionalized an array of politically insulated Executive agencies and numerous state/society relationships that were forged during World War II. The war-making state of the mid-i 940's was not dismantled but re-energized within two years of the end of World War II. As the United States prepared to wage Cold War against the Soviet Union and its allies, its political leadership confronted the problem of normalizing emergency planning for the possibility of modern war. This paper argues that early Cold War mobilization in the United States produced a kind of garrison state-not the Soviet totalitarian state, but an American civic garrison state that privileged "Cold War liberalism" and its consequences in the name of national security. 2 The politics of Cold War mobilization was not simply a logistical balancing act between the U.S. government's postwar grand strategy and the economic conditions that shaped that strategy over forty-five years. There was also the very real political problem of forging a domestic political consensus behind U.S. postwar policy. 3
The paradox of Cold War mobilization in the United States does not lie in the domain of strategic-economic mobilization which has been carefully and effectively described in the voluminous literature dealing with postwar American national security policy. Instead, the puzzle is how a liberal democracy-the United States-prepared its general population not only for the possibility of modern war, but also how it forged a Cold War consensus on ideological and political matters as well. To put a finer point on it, the dilemma for U.S. Cold War mobilization can be outlined in the following way: On the one hand, a liberal democratic state had to employ a home-front mobilization program in order to garner support for a postwar grand strategy of containment and deterrence by way of active international engagement, for the United States an historically unique commitment. 4 On the other hand, mobilization of the home front during the early Cold War period profoundly affected society. Continuous, low-level, economic, political, and military mobilization is an open-ended extraction process that functions most efficiently through politically insulated institutions that are relatively safe from constant political logrolling, budget cuts, and election-year grandstanding. In a democracy, such insulated institutions and line agencies often, by their very nature, operate in opposition to liberal democratic aims and objectives. 5
Building on the foundation of Harold Lasswell's under-examined concept of a civic garrison state, we can conceptualize the problem along three dimensions: First, there is the functional problematic. How did the liberal democratic United States prepare for longAerm, low-level mobilization and balance the requirements of a liberal democratic social order against the requirements for mobilization? Second, how did the state penetrate society so as to garner the necessary consensus to support a policy that was, at least theoretically, fraught with risks? Finally, what were the consequences of successfully tending to the first two problems-mobilization and penetration of society? It is within the third domain that the liberal democratic state can become a Lasswellian "self-nurturing" civic garrison state. 6
This essay is divided into three sections that analyze some of the changes wrought in the relationship between state and society by Cold War mobilization processes. All three sections develop arguments that refer to U.S. civilian defense planning in the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially the programs of the United States Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). The FCDA is an interesting case of how the central state created an agency for managing crisis and emergency planning for home-front mobilization and the possibility of modern war.
The first segment of the paper deals with the functional problematic by reconsidering the concept of the civic garrison state with reference to Harold Lasswell and Clinton Rossiter's writings and their contemporary consideration of the crisis of Cold War. Attention is then turned to the strategic conception of the home front and how national security planners advanced a doctrine that held there was a syncretic relationship between home-front mobilization and the "problem of national morale."
The second portion of the essay takes up the question of the internalization of national security by examining the causal logic that Truman Administration officials used to conflate internal and external security issues, creating conditions in which crisis planning became normalized. 7 The process of normalizing emergency planning resulted in a reconceptualized notion of the loyal citizen in the nuclear world.
Finally, the militarization of civilian life is examined in light of what was expected of Cold War citizenship and loyalty. The connection between early Cold War mobilization and the new Cold War citizen is demonstrated through an analysis of the U.S. government's early Cold War "civic education" program that informed the American people about atomic weapons and their effects.
The Civic Garrison State Reconsidered
In his well-known essay "The Garrison State," Harold Lasswell argued that war mobilization and preparedness planning fundamentally impact state formation. 8 Lasswell hypothesized that the world (in 1941) was being transformed into a world of garrison states." This was a world in which the modern nation-state is controlled by the specialists on violence" who take advantage of technological innovation and change for purposes of warmaking. It is a world in which the garrison state is continually preparing for war, where continuous war mobilization becomes a way of life encompassing the institutions of both state and society. Furthermore, "for those who do not fit within the structure of the state there is but one alternative-to obey or die. Compulsion, therefore, is to be expected as a potent instrument for internal control of the garrison state." 9 In the Lasswellian garrison state, civil society and the notion of a private sphere collapse as the central state moves inexorably to total war mobilization.
Lasswell expanded the original construct of a police garrison state, which should be considered an ideal type, to include the development of what he called a ''civic garrison state. His idea of a democratic civic garrison state is a most tantalizing and underdeveloped aspect to Lasswell's logic of the original garrison state hypothesis. Lasswell elaborated his idea of a civic garrison state in three separate works: In 1950, in National Security and Individual Freedom; in 1951, in an essay (which was an attenuated version of his 1950 thesis in National Security and Individual Freedom) entitled "Does the Garrison State Threaten Civil Rights?"; and finally, in 1962, "The Garrison State Hypothesis Today," where the original police-garrison state hypothesis is re-examined. 10
Lasswell argued that democracies, in all probability, would not create the kind of garrison state that was constructed under Stalinist communism or Nazi fascism. Focusing specifically on the postwar American experience, Lasswell's National Security and Individual Freedom is rich in references to what Lasswell called "the American garrison." According to Lasswell, the American garrison was necessary because of the Cold War emergency and the "crisis of defense." The fundamental puzzle that concerned him was how to balance the functional requirements for mobilization against the fundamental good of maintaining a liberal democratic social order.
The present crisis of defense is likely to be with us for years. Public alarm about the danger of war will rise and fall with the headlines, but the danger will probably continue No one needs to be told that a third world war would devastate man and his works on scale without precedent. A more insidious menace is that even if we avoid a general war, continuing crisis may undermine and eventually destroy free institutions. 11
The possibility of a civic garrison state that was less dangerous than the totalitarian police state, but necessary in times of emergency for "reasons of state" was key to Lasswell's consideration of postwar American experience. He had two main concerns about an "American garrison," the need for political leaders and citizens alike to recognize that Cold War mobilization represented a "crisis of defense" for a liberal democracy; and that the crisis had the potential to produce a police-garrison state unless preemptive measures were instituted to manage the garrisoning effect of long-term emergency planning and mobilization.
Like Clinton Rossiter's argument in Constitutional Dictatorship, Lasswell followed a realist concept of the democratic state which held that state survival superseded the societal protection that is built into liberal democracy, but only in time of emergency. The idea of the "state of emergency" or, as Carl Schmitt put it when he developed his reactionary critique of German democracy during the Weimar Republic, the "Ausnhmezustand" (the state of exception) is relevant to this discussion insofar as both Lasswell and Rossiter were both concerned with the potential antinomy between long-term crisis planning and the cumbersome, highly politicized and slow nature of American democracy. Both men viewed the early Cold War from the contemporary position that it represented a crisis for the United States. Under the rubric of the Cold War emergency, crisis planning demanded that the state take measures to prepare itself and its citizens for long-term confrontation with the Soviet Union. What effect would this have on a democratic state? This was the main question that both Lasswell and Rossiter were concerned with. They both saw the unconditional requirement to face the reality of the crisis, but their solijtions were different. 12
How liberal democratic states act in time of emergency and the centralization of power that takes place during emergency rule is tied to Lasswell's idea of the civic garrison state and the positive state that Clinton Rossiter resigned himself to in 1 948 when he penned Constitutional Dictatorship. Rossiter posed the question in 1948 more directly than did Lasswell when he asked, "Can a democracy fight a successful total war and still be a democracy when the war is over?" Rossiter answered the question in the positive, but at the end of his book he foreshadowed Lasswell's 1962 reconsideration of the garrison state hypothesis by noting the following concerning the United States:
For who in this year 1948 would be so blind as to assert that the people of the United States, or of any other constitutional democracy, can afford again to be weak and divided and jealous of the power of their elected representatives? The Bomb has settled once and for all the question of whether the United States can go back to what Harold Laski had labeled (a little too contemptuously) a "negative state." You can't go home again; the positive state is here to stay, and from now on the accent will be on power, not limitations. 13
In Rossiter's view, the crisis of the Cold War demanded the centralization of power in the Executive branch (legitimized in the name of emergency planning) and the normalization of the emergency within the general public. The public had an important democratic role in electing the proper representatives especially the Executive, but once that was done the "guardians" would lead. According to Rossiter, the crisis of Cold War in the atomic age left little time for the day-to-day politics of parliamentary debate: the stakes were too high. In a worst case situation, Rossiter, ruthlessly applying the logic of his case for "constitutional dictatorship," argued clearly and consistently that:
In sum, the basic assumption of constitutional dictatorship would seem to be this: constitutional democracy is eminently worth saving, and if temporary dictatorship-that is suspension of constitutional democracy-is the only way to save it, then we should by all means submit to temporary dictatorship. The more clearly we see this truth and the more resolutely we acknowledge it, the more certain we can be that such a dictatorship will in fact be temporary and limited in purpose. 14
For Lasswell, however, the American civic garrison state offered a temporary middle ground between a decentralized, "weak" American political structure and Clinton Rossiter's solution of preparing the foundation for a "constitutional dictatorship." 15 In 1962, Lasswell reconsidered his "American garrison," with the historical perspective of 16 years of U.S. Cold War mobilization as a backdrop, by astutely observing that:
Perpetual apprehension of war keeps the accent upon the consideration of power measured as fighting potential. The common goal of maintaining national freedom from external dictation is perceived as requiring the appraisal of all social values and institutional practices with state-power considerations in view. Economic values and institutions are drawn into the preparation of weapons and thereby subordinated to power. Scientific skill and education are requisitioned for research and development. Public health is fostered by programs designed to conserve the human resources that figure in military potential. Family and ecclesiastical institutions are given encouragement so long as they interpose no ideological or behavioral obstacles to national security. Institutions of social class and caste are remodeled to the extent that national vulnerability is believed at stake. 16
Postwar American political development clearly fit the description that Harold Lasswell put forth in 1962. In postwar America, the "remodeling" of institutions on the basis of fear and perceptions of "vulnerability" ultimately affected what constituted good citizenship.
The instrumental and strategic image of the home front
As Charles Tilly's work on warmaking and its effects on state formation has shown, extraction processes and resource mobilization are integrally tied to the development of politically "protected" and insulated governmental institutions for warmaking and war mobilization. 17 Whereas much of Tilly's work deals with the need to extract financial means for warmaking, I consider the home front as resource that needed to be managed and, in a very broad sense, "extracted" so the state could garner the necessary consensus and legitimacy for its Cold War grand strategy. In the case of early Cold War mobilization in the United States, the home front was conceptualized by elites as a potential weak link in national security planning and thus had to be mobilized behind postwar national security policy. In this elite view, the home front was instrumentalized; it was seen as one facet of an overall postwar grand strategy that, by 1950, saw nuclear war with the Soviet Union as a real probability. 18
The postwar expansion of central state authority is understandable, in part, as a result of the victory of the United States in World War II. Having emerged from that global conflict relatively unscathed and a superpower, the U.S. committed itself to an activist global postwar policy. This new foreign policy rested on two foundations: first, that the United States' long-term national interests were tightly interwoven with those of Western Europe; and second, that Soviet power and influence had to be circumscribed. 19 Since the United States emerged from the war as a hegemonic nation-state for the first time in its history, it had many of the same dilemmas and obstacles that European states and powers had dealt with in past centuries. U.S. state managers had to confront the problems of how to mobilize over the long term in a continuous fashion and manage multiple crises that arose from real and perceived threats; how to create institutions to handle state and society relations in the context of long-term preparedness and mobilization programs; how to produce and disseminate the legitimating ideologies that would garner domestic support for the United States' postwar grand strategy and the policies that derived from that strategy; how to rationalize national security planning and administration so that both grand strategic commitments and the economic and military capability to support them were brought into line; and finally, how to handle the responsibility of maintaining a democratic social order under conditions of uncertainty. Except for the significant difference of maintaining a liberal democratic social order while engaging in a long4erm program of mobilization, the United States was confronted with the same kinds of problems European states had confronted as they evolved over the past three hundred years. In this view, the formulation of postwar national security planning was not dissimilar to the kinds of grand strategic planning and processes that had dominated in Europe for centuries, especially in hegemonic nations that were victorious in war. Postwar grand strategy demanded integrated plans to mobilize resources-human, political, military, and industrial-economic-such that the nation could manage an array of actual and potential strategic interactions and crises. 20 The home front, properly mobilized, could facilitate postwar American planning, for it would lend political support to U.S. policy and play a strategic role in the quickly evolving strategy of nuclear diplomacy and its dependence on deterrence theory. However, the home front was also conceived of as a possible weak link in a democratic system in which there was a long history of isolationist sentiment. 21
The problem of "national morale"
In the postwar world, the ability of the United States to exercise power on a global scale and secure world peace against the expansion of Soviet totalitarianism ultimately depended upon its capacity to project a real threat to fight and win a nuclear war. The degree to which this threat was made credible eventually depended on the character of the American people. Did they possess the resolution to master the unprecedented dangers and make the hard sacrifices that a nuclear war would require? Were they vulnerable to the machinations of a "fifth column" inside the United States? These were problems of national will and morale, which provoked numerous declarations of apprehension and anxiety, private and public, on the part of American national security planners. 22 In general, national security planners had serious doubts about the moral strength and character of the American public and they believed that the citizenry was especially susceptible to nuclear terror. These doubts were discussed explicitly in late 1946 in a secret report to President Truman:
Even a cursory examination of the characteristics of the American people and of the cultural and material fabric of their national life invites the conclusion that this nation is much more vulnerable to the psychological effects of the bomb than certain other nations. A study of the factors involved should not only assist us in determining the vulnerabilities of other nations, but, also, should lead to the development of measures to lessen the effects of these phenomena should we be attacked. 23
Throughout the Cold War, U.S. planners believed there was a functional relationship between morale, the home front, and the will and ability of a nation to wage modern war. The sociologist Hans Speier, an important advisor to government officials during the Cold War, offered a strategic analysis of national morale in an essay entitled "Morale and Propaganda:"
No Modern army can wage a war without the persistent support of the whole country. Political conflicts at home, sabotage in the factories and offices or mere malaise among the citizens may incapacitate the best armies. With more truth than ever the ancient metaphor of the fighters as the arm of the state can be applied to modern war. When the body, the economic and social system, is sick, the arm cannot strike. Thus under the conditions created by these three factors-the development of technology, mass participation in war, and nationalism-the morale of the nation itself becomes of decisive military importance. 24
During World War II domestic war mobilization procedures reflected the strategic view of national morale and national will, particularly the syncretic relationship between internal domestic politics and external war-making policies. This broad strategic view is evidenced by the fact that all the combatant nations created institutions charged specifically with domestic information management and propaganda. In the case of the United States, the Office of War Information (OWI) was the key institution that engaged in numerous 'why we fight" campaigns aimed specifically at the home front for, among other things, the publicly expressed purpose of bolstering the wartime national morale. 25
Overall military strategy also fused the sociological and strategic concepts of national will and national morale to new innovative technologies that the war helped create. This was epitomized by airwar strategy, specifically, the theory of strategic bombing. Planners held that there was a connection between the home front and successful warfighting that was centrally tied to issues of national will. Consequently, strategic air warfare, as practiced particularly between the British and the Germans against one another and the United States at the end of the war in Europe and throughout its air campaign against Japan, was premised on the notion that the "will of the people" could be broken by targeting civilians and the home front as an explicit strategy of air warfare.
The strategy of "targeting" morale was a essential feature of U.S. strategic nuclear war-planning in the late 1940's into the early 1950's when the Truman Administration's Strategic Attack Plan (STRAP) assumed that the Soviet leadership could be terrorized into capitulation if war came by specifically targeting cities and civilians for nuclear attack. Since this was the U.S. plan for war against the Soviet Union it followed logically that the Soviets (when they acquired the capability) would deploy the same strategy against the United States. Thus the idea of U.S. "morale collapse" became a concern for national security planners and the subject for an array of national security related studies under the aegis of American social science research. 26
The totalistic quality of modern war thus placed a premium on a strong domestic popular consensus in support of continuous war mobilization in part to preempt "morale collapse," even though the country was at peace. As Hans Speier succinctly observed:
Today, war efforts can no longer be sustained from arsenals or loans with which to buy foreign manpower and available weapons. The physical resources of the country must be exploited and the human resources of the whole nation be mobilized in order to insure survival in large-scale war The will to fight is essentially a will to work on the part of the civilians in a nation at war. Moreover, while both combatants and noncombatants must be ready to die and suffer deprivation (regardless of any attractions and profits war may offer to some of them), the latter do not need to have a will to kill; the former do. These differences have an important bearing on any intelligent enemy effort to break the national will to resist, and require differentiated warfare. 27
Preempting "morale collapse" became a problem of domestic "civic education" as well as a problem of general military readiness. The Cold War citizen, developed within narrow wartime-like standards, was prepared for any contingency, and most importantly, amenable to the kind of total mobilization-individual, community, and national-that Hans Speier considered in 1952. However, the standards of Cold War patriotism, citizenship, and loyalty became more restricted as the Cold War worsened and loyal citizenship became integrally associated with an internal security apparatus that was empowered by federal legislation and an increasingly coercive system of Cold War jurisprudence to "root out" those judged subversive. What Harold Lasswell identified in 1950 as the "American garrison," then, straddled the immense political and theoretical space between the police-garrison state and the idealized decentralized liberal democratic state. By the early 1950's, as national security policy conflated internal and external security policy, the important distinction between a police-garrison state and a civic garrison state remained intact. The United States was not a police-garrison state nor was it a constitutional dictatorship. However, as the Cold War deepened, the expanding national security state became less benign, more intrusive, and more permanent. This rigidifying of the Lasswell's "American garrison" was a development that he predicted even as he found himself, ironically, supporting its development as a tool for mastering the Cold War emergency.
Turning Inward: The State and the Normalization of Emergency
Reconfiguration of institutions
Between 1946 and the early 1950's, the institutions of the American state did exactly as Lasswell implied: The Congress created committees to investigate and root out "subversives," the definition of which expanded as fear of war and Soviet omnipotence gripped the nation after the 1948 Berlin Crises and the 1949 atomic test by the Soviets. The Executive branch moved swiftly, after the National Security Act of 1947 was enacted in July of that year, to begin to focus quite intensively on "internal security" as evidenced by: the vigorous enforcement of the Truman loyalty program (enacted by Presidential executive order in March, 1947); 28 the creation of the National Security Resources Board (NSRB) and its civil preparedness arm, the Office of Civil Defense Planning (OCDP); the creation of the National Security Council's (NSC) internal security directive series 17 and 23 (NSC-17 and NSC-23) in which both directives linked domestic political activity with foreign policy; and the creation between 1947 and 1951 of new highly insulated executive agencies such as the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) which was charged with external "political warfare" but, ultimately, shared its information about propaganda techniques and information management with agencies concerned with domestic affairs such as the FCDA. 29 Furthermore, the wartime links forged from 1941-1945 between the state, the research university system, and the national press were institutionalized. These state and society ties were cemented as the Cold War was treated as a type of real war, necessitating a continuation of the home-front mobilization program that would not only produce the political support for postwar policies, but also redefine what it meant to be a "good" citizen during the early years of the Cold War. From the perspective of most national security specialists the idea that the Cold War should be conceived of as a type of real war-requiring the institutional capacity for continuous mobilization and readiness-was a given. Additionally, after the 1948 Berlin crises, there was a clear sense among officials in Washington and within the general public, too, that the developing Cold War portended long- term crisis requiring, for want of a better term, the "normalization" of emergency. 30
The causal logic for internalizing national security
Cold War citizenship in the United States was tied to anti-communist patriotism that stemmed in large measure from strategic concerns about the political and military vulnerability of the United States to "fifth-column" political influence or outright military attack. High on the list of concerns for postwar policy planners was the specter of, in the language of the time, "an atomic Pearl Harbor." 31 The concern about a terrorist attack using atomic weapons, structurally tied to a fifth column within the United States, was explicitly dealt with as early as December 1946. "The impact of initial surprise assaults which will involve new weapons such as the atomic bomb and which will be accompanied by widespread sabotage may cripple the mobilization of the nation for war and at the same time result in a large demand for defense resources. ' 32 The reconfiguration of the national security bureaucracy in order to rationalize planning for the crisis of Cold War meant that what constituted the responsible Cold War citizen was shaped by the process in which the notion of "national security" was nationalized in postwar public discourse. As the Cold War intensified, the concepts of patriotism, loyalty, and thus citizenship, were viewed by the general public, as well as officials in Washington, in a narrow wartime tradition. As Lasswell's 1962 retrospective analysis of the garrison state argued, mobilization for Cold War produced a causal logic for internalizing national security policies. One effect was that under headings such as "subversive" or "disloyal" alternative political perspectives and points of view were grouped together and then dismissed or prosecuted as treasonous. 33
Within the Truman Administration the perception of an internal threat was not some abstract philosophical notion debated by policy intellectuals, but was acted upon by President Truman and other members of his Administration. The National Security Council considered the issues of internal security and linked them with postwar grand strategy in the same way that internal security is linked to high military strategy during a real war. 34 Likewise, the Congress also created investigative committees to "search out" subversives and the judiciary upheld the Truman Administration's loyalty program against ACLU challenges. As early as May 1946, FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover was writing about "an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington operating with the goal of obtaining all information possible with reference to atomic energy." Hoover, in the same memorandum to George Allen of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), believed that Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Former Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCIoy, Assistant Secretary of War Howard C. Patterson, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, Dr. Edward Condon of the Bureau of Standards, and Paul Appleby and George Schwartzwalder of the Bureau of the Budget were all potential communist spies. To view this roster of elite government officials as "fifth-column" communist infiltrators exemplifies how the idea of the Cold War citizenship was shaped and reconfigured at the earliest moment of the postwar period.
One domestic political consequence of the normalization of emergency planning was that the narrow functional definition of "loyal citizenship" established the principle that the good citizen would come to understand that his/her loyalty and patriotism was integrally connected to anti-communism and national security. Otherwise put, the idea of what constituted the "loyal" citizen was defined and contrasted to an expansive definition of the "subversive" citizen. On this point, listen to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in May of 1950:
The Communists possess a well-knit, closely disciplined, destructive force of approximately 55,000 members in the United States. In actual numbers their membership may not be large, nor have the Communists polled at any time a large number of votes in an election. This has been cited by the ignorant and the apologists and appeasers of Communism in our country as minimizing the danger of these subversives in our midst. The actual strength of the Communist movement in the United States is not something that can be accurately stated in just so many figures. It has to be measured largely by the general influence of the Party and its program. We no longer measure the importance of revolutionary organizations by size. In some places where there are only one or two men, more results are obtained than where they have larger organizations. But, behind this force of traitorous Communists, constantly gnawing away like termites at the very foundations of American society, stand a half million fellow travelers and sympathizers ready to do the Communist bidding. 35
Furthermore, Cold War citizenship and patriotism and the standards on which these notions rested permitted individuals to identify "potential spies," persons who were the "termites gnawing at the very foundation of American society," and make reports to the authorities in the same way that citizens reported enemy agents during real war. 36
Conflating internal security with external security was one of the effects of the rationalization of the Cold War emergency. This, in turn, affected civil society by partially militarizing it just as society was partially militarized during World War II. One example of the militarization of civilian life can be observed in the civil defense preparedness programs of the early 1950's. These programs encompassed training at the home, the church, the workplace, the school, and also larger drills within the neighborhood and city. The citizenry was told many times by the United States' FCDA that, even though their cities may one day lie in radiating ruins, "If we are prepared, we will come back fighting." 37 This strategic view of the home front centered on contemporary concepts of "national morale" and "national will" as high military strategy became linked to postwar deterrence theory. 38
Militarization of Civilian Life
The Congress, The Cabinet, Federal officials generally, and State and city officials, country-wide, must face the facts of modern warfare. Civil defense is national defense. Civil defense and good citizenship are one. A public organized to protect its communities, keep the wheels of industry turning and to preserve the liberties of a free nation is essential to the future of America. 39
The FCDA and nuclear reality
In 1951, two years after the Soviet Union tested an atomic device and one year after the Korean War began, the Federal Civil Defense Administration was created to handle the problem of nuclear fear, or in the vernacular of the time, "the problem of panic." 40 Panic or uncontrollable fear was seen by civil defense strategists as the key problem of nuclear war. For the reasons mentioned above, national morale and national will were conceptualized by national security specialists as vulnerable to nuclear fear. 41
In order to prevent panic and channel fear into constructive activities, that is, civil defense, the FCDA created a fantasy world in which the referent was the "conventional" nuclear war. As the cover of the FCDA's Survival Under Atomic Attack booklet assured everyone: "You can live through an atom bomb raid and you won't have to have a Geiger counter, protective clothing, or special training in order to do it." 42 The booklet ends with a warning for the American people that they and their ability to control their own emotions was the key to surviving a nuclear war-not the fact that these new weapons were qualitatively different from conventional weapons: "But if you lose your head and blindly attempt to run from the dangers, you may touch off a panic that will cost your life and put tremendous obstacles in the way of your Civil Defense Corps." 43 Thus specialized training-at home, in the workplace, in the school, and within the community-rested on the proposition that global nuclear war would be no worse than World War II and as consequence nuclear war was not only manageable, but something that should not be a cause for pan ic. 44
The FCDA assembled and then disseminated the fantasy of the survivable extended nuclear war. The FCDA civil defense education program reconceptualized nuclear reality through narratives and ritualized behavior and, most importantly, placed the individual within the new imaginary world. Within the reconstituted nuclear reality of the FCDA, the effects of nuclear weapons could be easily handled. The "normal" post-attack environment in which the every-day life resumes as if nuclear war was simply a problem of logistics and emotional control was a essential theme in FCDA training. Readers of Survival Under Atomic Attack were secure in the knowledge that, "you can get rid of all the radioactive dirt you've picked up if you keep scrubbing." 45 Community level civil defense education also reinforced the national campaign regarding the effects of radiation. For example, New Jersey's civil defense planners used a journal, The Siren, to publish a "question and answer" section ostensibly so the public could get "straight answers" concerning radiation and its effects. On this matter the following was promulgated in the Siren:
Q - Should I get a Geiger counter?
A -- No. In the first place radiation is a relatively minor hazard. Secondly, these instruments are expensive, and can be operated well by trained technicians only. Leave radiological monitoring to the people who have been trained for that type of work and get your instructions from them. 46
In sum, FCDA civic education depended on people believing in the imaginary nuclear world where the citizen who constantly prepares for strategic nuclear war walks away from that war unscathed and back to a normal life. FCDA education and training aimed at creating individuals who, under the most horrific conditions one can imagine, controlled their behavior as if they were hardened combat veterans.
Homo atomicus
According to FCDA training literature the economic, political, and civil social order would remain intact during and after a nuclear war and, most importantly, for those who prepared, the post-attack world would hold few surprises. Put simply, individuals practiced for strategic nuclear war as if it were a rerun of World War II. 47 This notion of the normal post-attack world reached fantastic proportions by 1960 as evidenced by an advertisement and subsequent essay sponsored by the Trenton State Bank of New jersey, where readers were assured that "It will be business as usual in the post-attack environment." Accordingly, there would be no need to panic and thus no reason to "run" on the Trenton State Bank, for the economic order would remain intact and daily banking would continue normally after a nuclear exchange. 48
In the imaginary world of the FCDA, the citizen becomes Homo atomicus-the atomic man, who looks out the window of his or her middle-class suburban home at the vaporized remains of the city. What is the response? He/she immediately attends to the family in a systematic and rational fashion-perhaps burying some members, amputating limbs of others, becoming a fire marshall, and becoming an expert in disaster hygiene. Are the citizens anxious, do they show the signs of panic and uncontrollable fear? 49 Of course not. They have been trained and readied for this very event. The family, the neighborhood, and the community are emotionally ready for the post-attack environment. They are prepared as good and patriotic citizens, in a worst case scenario, to fight and win a war against communist slavery and in a best case scenario to deter it. As the state of New Jersey's Division of Civil Defense noted in 1951:
To the extent that we can prepare our citizens against the mental as well as the physical hazards of any eventuality, we will have rendered a very great service... This whole mobilization cannot be achieved unless every man, woman, and child knows exactly what he, she or they should do in the event of an emergency. Each one of us, every individual should be physically, mentally, and above everything else spiritually prepared to meet any possible crisis... The preparation that will assure security and impress a potential enemy is a preparation which indicates that the average American citizen is aware of the facts of life, is not afraid and is prepared to do his or her part. 50
What is important to note here is not only the earnestness with which New Jersey's Division of Civil Defense implored local state planners to institute preparedness training at the community level; much more consequential was the focus on emotional and spiritual preparedness. Civil defense preparedness becomes a process of individualized control over one's emotions: it becomes a puzzle of both will and morale. The psychologizing of the home front by civil defense planners as well as political and national security elites, forged a program that was based on an individual and group system of self-surveillance and ritualized training. 51 Otherwise put, to be emotionally prepared for war was fundamental to deterring it. But in preparing the American public for war without undermining the very premises on which preparedness training was based-i.e., that modern warfare was winnable in the traditional sense and that nuclear weapons were really no different from conventional weapons-dissimulation about nuclear weapons and their effects was integral to preparedness mobilization. 52 Thus, the FCDA and other agencies of the state developed programs that were grounded on the principles of propaganda, not primarily principles of truthfulness. In this very general sense, propaganda was used over the domestic population as if real war were underway-such as during World War Il-or as it would be used over other countries for purposes of political warfare.
Preempting Panic: ritualization and training
"The prevention and control of panics in time of attack are important tasks of civil defense. For the possibility always exists that where people panic under attack, more death and injury may occur from that cause than from the direct effects of military weapons. " 53 So begins an analysis of fear management and panic prevention in the most influential and comprehensive government-sponsored academic civil defense study. The study, entitled Project East River (PER), originally begun under the auspices of the NSRB was completed under the direction of the FCDA by a consortium of research universities known as the Associated Universities, Inc. How did the PER suggest the United States government prepare the people to control themselves before, during, and after a nuclear exchange? Through training programs modeled on the combat training programs of the armed forces. According to this analysis of mass fear and panic, the "useful channeling" of mass behavior can be achieved through training regimens patterned on military combat training. According to the logic of the PER, the average American citizen could be trained to control his/her fears in the midst of a nuclear conflagration-to witness the agonizing deaths of their loved ones and the disintegration of their social order-and still carry out their patriotic duty of staying calm as a "learned response," just as soldiers in combat control their fear in order to carry out their assigned roles.
To the extent that training is feasible, it stands as the surest single preventive measure against panic. It is the device used effectively in combat training-implanting of habitual estimates of danger situations and habitual responses in consequence of such estimates ... For civil defense, the goal is intensive training of the public to recognize the main sources of danger in foreseeable emergencies and practice effective actions to combat these dangers. As in combat training, every approach toward realism in the training situations will be a gain inasmuch as it guarantees greater transfer of the learned responses to the situation of real danger. 54
Project East River clearly likened civil defense training to combat training - in global nuclear war the citizen will act as a trained soldier acts during combat because he/she has been trained by civilian defense authorities to essentially react to a set of given circumstances no matter how horrific.
On October 25, 1951, the FCDA-sponsored one of the first of many of its operation alerts" and was able to clear the streets of New York City in 15 minutes time. As incomprehensible as it might seem today, New Yorkers, known for their cynicism even in the early 1950s, cleared the streets and then patiently waited in subway tunnels for an "all clear" signal from bureaucrats practicing for World War Ill. By 1953, children in New York City and New Jersey were wearing FCDA approved "dog tags" as they became practiced in "ducking and covering" with the FCDA's cartoon character "Bert the Turtle." 55 Additionally, adults practiced "home exercises" which trained the family to manage the emotional stress of strategic nuclear war and established the home as the first line of defense against panic. The success of "Operation Alert" in this early period of the Cold War is unambiguous evidence that the general public had learned the lessons of the FCDA training.
Conclusion
In summary, this paper argues that the American postwar experience, especially postwar political development, was shaped by the formation of a civic garrison state. This is an argument that works directly against a more traditional interpretation that regards the postwar experience as the total victory of the "functional weak state" over the pernicious social effects of early Cold War mobilization processes. The development of the postwar American civic garrison state was not, as some interpretations of this period suggest, the consequence of a "conspiracy" of war-mongering generals, investment bankers, and political elites. 56 On the contrary, the civic garrison state was the unintended consequence of a democratic state mobilizing for the containment of the Soviet Union while simultaneously trying to maintain a liberal democratic social order. One can infer from the evidence laid out here that, in fact, it was necessary for the United States to reconfigure domestic political institutions along the lines of a Lasswellian civic garrison state so that it could efficiently pursue its postwar grand strategy.
Research on European state formation has illustrated that wielding of international power has fundamental consequences for domestic political development and citizenship. For example, Charles Tilly's work has conclusively shown that one of these consequences is the development of institutions for the management of internal coercion tied directly to process of war mobilization. 57 For a liberal democratic state, such institutions must at the very least derive their political and legal legitimacy from a domestic political consensus achieved through democratic means. In the case of the early Cold War mobilization project there is little evidence that undemocratic political activity was institutionalized, but there is abundant evidence that moments of illiberalism were accepted as the price of becoming a super-power that wielded tremendous power in the international arena. It was not until the public mobilizations of the mid-to-late 1960's that a collective cognitive dissonance arose regarding the ideological, economic, political, and military requirements for the postwar grand strategy of the United States to contain Soviet power on the one hand, and the social effects of the rationalization of national security policy and the internalizing of these requirements on the other hand. Moreover, even though there is a substantially different relationship today between American citizens and their government when compared to the early 1950's, the institutional capacity of the state to recreate a civic garrison state remains intact, generally unaffected by the end of the Cold War. Just as important, the legacy of the postwar American civic garrison state continues to play out in the domestic politics of post-Cold War retrenchment and in the current debate about the role of the United States in the international political arena.
Notes
*: Department of Political Science, New School For Social Research. Back.
Note 1: An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 1995 Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association under the title,'The Politics of Home Front Mobilization: The American Civic Garrison State, Co!d War Mobilization, and Civil Defense, 1947-1953." I would like to thank the following for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper: Mike Barnett, Ira Katznelson, Yagil Levy, Gary Mucciarone, Behrooz Moazami,Allan Silver, Charles Tilly, Graham Wilson, and Lizabeth Zack. Special thanks to Kim Geiger. Back.
Note 2: In the case of the post-World War II period, recent scholarship suggests that the Cold War consensus was forged through a benign state and society relationship resulting in programs that were carefully adapted to the American economic and political system. As Aaron Friedberg has keenly argued, the United States did not create a garrison state during the Cold War, but a contract state. In this interpretation, the contract state parsed out the mobilization process to private corporations, thus forestalling the development of a garrison state. In short, the Cold War mobilization process is viewed as total victory, a victory that was possible only through a benign syncretic relationship between a decentralized capitalist state, society, and the private sector. See Aaron L. Friedberg, "Why Didn't the United States Become a Garrison State," International Security 16:4 (Spring 1992), pp.109-142. For an analysis that takesadifferent tack from Friedberg see my "Atomic Fantasies and Make-Believe War: The American State, Social Control, and Civil Defense Planning, 1946-1952," Political Power and Social Theory 9 (1995): 91-120. Back.
Note 3: This notion is important because such a postwar consensus was not a given. In the immediate postwar period one problem that planners had to deal with was how to convince a war-weary public to support an ongoing mobilization against the communist threat. A study done during World War II by the OWI's Bureau of Intelligence in 1943 found that: "Most Americans appear to be persuaded that isolationism is an outmoded formula. But they are far from happy about the alternative of international cooperation. Torn between fear and hope, they show little consistency in their approach to post-war issues, and the opinions they express are often held with little conviction. They appear reluctant to approach the problems of the peace concretely and realistically." Declaring that "Ignorance and fear must be attacked simultaneously," the report concludes that "If the Government desires to prepare people for increased international collaboration, it faces the necessity of clarifying their views about the problems of the peace, quieting their fears and appealing to their hopes." Office of War Information (OWl), Bureau of Intelligence, "Special Intelligence Report: Attitudes Toward Peace Planning," March 6, 1943 (booklet), pp.1, 22; Kim Geiger and Andrew Grossman, "The Politics of Home-Front Mobilization, 1946-1952," Center for Studies of Social Change," Working Paper No.184 (April 1994). Back.
Note 4: This process entailed the "selling" of a set of Cold War legitimating ideologies; the attendant development of a domestic consensus based on these ideologies and the ability to plan were dealt with successfully overall by the United States within the first decade after the end of the World War II. However, problems of consensus development, strategic planning, and political legitimacy are highly contentious issues in a democratic state and thus a premium is placed on institutional capacity and political insulation and, most importantly, broad-based acceptance and legitimacy from the general public for any new grand strategic policy. For analyses that focus on different aspects of these issues see Robert W. Rieber and Robert j. Kelly, "Substance And Shadow: Images of the Enemy," in Robert W. Rieber, ed., The Psychology Of War And Peace: The Image of the Enemy (New York: Plenum Press, 1991), pp.3-39; Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp.286-296; john Mueller, "The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy," in Richard Rosencrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases Of Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp.48-62; Ernest R. May, "The U.S. Government, a Legacy of the Cold War," in Michael j. Hogan, ed., The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.217-228. Back.
Note 5: See for example Charles Tilly, "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985) eds., pp.169-9l. Back.
Note 6: I want to thank Yagil Levy for suggesting this conceptual apparatus of the mobilizing, penetrating, and self-nurturing Cold War state. Back.
Note 7: I want to thank Allan Silver who graciously shared a number of his ideas concerning the normalization of emergency and its effects on democracy, citizenship, and military strategy in the postwar era. See Allan Silver, "Democratic Citizenship And High Military Strategy: The Inheritance, Decay, And Reshaping Of Political Culture," Research on Democracy and Society 2 (1994): 317-49. Back.
Note 8: Harold D. Lasswell, "The Garrison State," The American lournal of Sociology 56 (1941 ):455-468; Lasswell, National Security and Individual Freedom (New York: MacGraw-Hill, 1950), pp.23-49. Also see Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: Free Press, 1965); Lasswell, The Political Writing of Harold D. Lasswell, (Glencoe: Free Press, 1951). Back.
Note 9: Lasswell, "The Garrison State," p.448. Back.
Note 10: Harold D. Lasswell, "Does the Garrison State Threaten Civil Rights?" The Annals of Political and Social Science 275 (May 1951): 111-116; Lasswell, "The Garrison State Hypothesis Today," in Changing Patterns of Military Politics, ed. Samuel Huntington, (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1962), pp.51-70. See also Arthur E. Naftalalin, "Political Freedom and Military Necessity," in The Garrison State: Its Human Problems (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1953), pp.28-42; Denis W. Brogan, Democratic Government In An Atomic World: A Lecture Delivered under the Auspices of the Walter J. Shepard Foundation. April 24. 1956 (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1956). Back.
Note 11: Harold D. Lasswell, National Security and Individual Freedom, p. 23. Back.
Note 12: See Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (New York: Harcourt, Brace & world, 1948. Neither Lasswell nor Rossiter ever developed any systematic way of understanding how "emergency" is defined, and more importantly exactly who defines it. On Carl Schmitt's critique of liberal democracy, which Clinton Rossiter explicitly refers to in his work, and which informs Lasswell's thinking even if by way of his contemporary Clinton Rossiter (Lasswell refers to Schmitt only in a footnote in his early piece. 1935, World Politics and insecurity), see Joseph W. Bendersky, Carl Schmitt: Theorist For The Reich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, CarT Schmitt, Political Romanticism, trans. Guy Oakes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), esp., pp. ix-xxxv; Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985). For a recent critical analysis of Carl Schmitt's view of parliamentary democracy and his interpretation of the ausnahmezustand, see Bill Scheuerman, "is parliamentarism in crisis? A response to Carl Schmitt," Theory and Society 24:1 (February 1995): 135-158. Back.
Note 13: Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, pp.3, 314. Back.
Note 14: Rossiter made the same theoretical move that Carl Schmitt made in his Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy: namely, that extra-constitutional means should be taken to save the constitution. See Rossiter, "Constitutional Dictatorship in the Atomic Age," Review of Politics 11 (October 1949): 395-418, quotation on p.406. See also Rossiter, "What of Congress in Atomic War," Western Political Ouarterly 3 (December 1950): 602-605. The elite view of democratic politics in the United States is a characteristic trait of post-war liberalism, which I argue becomes the more confining and at times repressive CoIdWar liberalism. An excellent example of "guardianship" democracy can be found in David B. Truman's The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951). On the responsibility of atomic-age citizenship, see especially Brogan, Democratic Government in an Atomic World, p.31. Back.
Note 15: Lasswell clearly saw the problematic nature of whether democratic states could transform themselves during war into civic garrison states and then after the emergency become something else. For example, in his 1951 essay he was quite aware of the problem that the civic garrison state, like its totalitarian counterpart, could dangerously intrude on civil society: "Invasions of individual freedom may be pushed for administrative reasons, and tolerated for security reasons, with the result that liberty is crushed in the process." However, unlike Rossiter and his sotution of constitutional dictatorship, one gets the sense that Lasswell was more concerned about these transitions in modern democratic states than was Rossiter. Back.
Note 16: "Garrison-State Hypothesis Today," p.60. Back.
Note 17: See especially Charles Tilly, "Reflections On The History Of European State-Making," in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp.3-83; Samuel E. Finer, "State and Nation-Building In Europe: The Role Of The Military," in ibid., pp.84-16; Charles Tilly, 'War and the International System, 1900-1992," paper presented at the Hannah Arendt Memorial Symposium on Peace and War, New School For Social Research, March 26, 1992; Tilly, Coercion. Capital. and European States. AD 990-1990 (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990). See also, Michael Howard, "War and the Nation-State," Daedalus 108 (Fall 1979)101-110. Back.
Note 18: For an interesting analysis of how a general mobilization of the home front was important for the United States-a hegemonic liberal-democratic state- and the effects of the mobilization process, see Michael Mann's discussion of "spectator sport militarism." States. War & Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp.183-187. Back.
Note 19: The activist policy was not without its critics in the United States Congress. These critics-"Taft Republicans-argued for a less internationally engaged postwar United States and in favor of a "business nationalist" policy that would depend on nuclear diplomacy and unilateral action to defend American national interests. Nevertheless, internationalist-oriented advisors and planners were successful in producing a postwar policy that supported their perspective. For a careful analysis that pays close attention to how the domestic politics of American postwar national security policy played out, see Lynn Rachele Eden, "The Diplomacy of Force: Interests, The State, And The Making Of American Policy In 1948" (Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 1985); Eden, "World War land American Politics" (Center for Studies of Social Change Working Paper Series, No.68, August 1985); Eden, "The End of Cold War History?" International Security 18:1 (Summer 1993): 174-207. Back.
Note 20: See Aristide R. Zol berg, "Strategic interactions and the formation of modern states: France and England," in The State in Global Perspective, ed. Ah Kazancigil (London: Gower/Unesco, 1986), pp. 73-106; and Zolberg, "Uneasy Empire: The Impact Of Hegemony On American Political Development" (unpublished paper, January 1989). The influence of key academics on American national security elites and planners during the immediate postwar period suggests traditional grand strategy, with its emphasis on geopolitical realpolitik, was absorbed by American policy planners. See Nicholas John Spykman, American Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942), esp. pp.447-72; and Frederick A. Dunn, et al., The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946). Back.
Note 21: 0n this view that an "undisciplined" domestic polity could fundamentally threaten national security, see National Security Council Document-23, "Domestic Activities and Foreign Relations," Papers of Harry S. Truman (PHST), Presidential Secretary Files (PSF), Box 204, NSC Meetings File, p.1, point 3. Back.
Note 22: See James Forrestal's comments concerning postwar planning and its integral link to a strong, mobilized, domestic political and industrial base. This view was at odds with the public's view of postwar demobilization. James Vincent Forrestal Papers JVFP), Seely-Mudd Library, Princeton University, Miscellaneous Files, Box 44, 1947 Folder, "Statement by James Vincent Forrestal before the Presidents Air Policy Commission," December 3, 1947, see especially p. 5. See also Edward F. Willit, "Dialectical Materialism and Russian Objectives" and "Communist Versus Christian Concepts of Man,"JVFP, Miscellaneous Files, Box 18, Psychological Background of Soviet Foreign Policy Papers; Grossman, "Atomic Fantasies and Make-Believe War: The American State, Social Control, and Civil Defense Planning, 1946-1952;" Guy Oakes and Andrew Grossman, "Managing Nuclear Terror: The Genesis of American Civil Defense Strategy," International lournal of Politics. Culture. and Society 5 (Spring 1992):361-403; Guy Oakes, The lmaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp.33-71. The organicist concept of a "national will" that nation-states have collective personalities is analyzed in some detail by historian Daniel Pick, War Machine: The Rationalization of Slaughter in the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp.75-87, esp. p.85. Back.
Note 23: Enclosure "A." The Evaluation of the Atomic Bomb as a Military Weapon, June 30, 1947, PHST, PSF, Box 202, NSC-Atomic Crossroads folder, p.37. Back.
Note 24: See Hans Speier, "Morale and Propaganda," in Propaganda In War and Crisis, ed. Daniel Lerner (New York: Arno Press, 1972), pp.3-25, quotation, p.6, emphasis in the original. Also see Speier, "The Future of Psychological Warfare," Public Opinion Quarterly 12 (Spring 1948). Back.
Note 25: See Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information 1942-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); Winkler, Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II (Chicago: Harlan Davidson, 1986). Back.
Note 26: See Conrad C. Crane, Bombs. Cities. and Civilians: American AirDower Strategy in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993). See also "The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy," United States Strategic Bombing Survey (October 31,1945), pp.11-13 and esp. p.127; "The Overall Report European War," United States Strategic Bombing Survey (September 30, 1945), pp.32-36; Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Specifically on morale as a bombing target in the postwar years see Barry H. Steiner, Bernard Brodie and the Foundations of American Nuclear Strategy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), pp.46-75. On social science research that centered on the theory of "morale collapse" as well as other aspects to the general "mental hygiene" of the home front, see Report on Social Science Research in Cold War Operations April 11, 1952, PHST, Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), Box 1, Social Science Research folder 2 of 2. For an analysis of how "psychiatric warfare" was at contemplated for external use see the highly sanitized but chilling "Project Essex" in PHST, PSB, Box 37, 730 Project Essex folder. Back.
Note 27: Hans Speier, "Psychological Warfare Reconsidered," in Social Order And The Risks Of War (New York: George W. Stuart, 1952), pp.443-497, emphasis in the original. As a result of both the strategic military and domestic political experience of World War II, key advisors and planners to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Ferdinand Eberstadt, James Forrestal, John Oh ly, and John Steel man saw the principal lesson of the war effort as having institutions and legislation in place for war mobilization in time of emergency or crisis. Ohly, Eberstadt, and Steelman were all recruited into the government during World War II to help in the mobilization and war-fighting efforts. Eberstadt was a close friend of James Forrestal and an extremely successful Wall Street investment banker and lawyer who pioneered the development of mutual funds. Eberstadt was at Princeton University with Forrestal and worked with him at the Wall Street firm of Dillon Reade during the 1920s. He held positions in the War Production Board and acted as an advisor on national security organizational planning throughout the Cold War until his death in 1969. For a meticulous examination of the Forrestal/Eberstadt relationship and in particular their view that an enlightened corporatism was the best model for postwar national security mobilization, see Jeffery M. Dowart, Eberstadt and Forrestal: A National Security Partnership. 1909-1949 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991). John Steelman was Assistant to the President from 1946-53. He headed the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion and later the National Security Resources Board. A close friend of Forrestal and a "behind the scenes" organizational specialist, Ohly was perhaps the most important individual involved in organizing postwar mobilization planning in the War and Defense Departments. One thing that all four of these very influential advisors had in common was the view that the United States had to remain fully engaged in international affairs and that postwar national security policy ultimately depended on an integrated domestic mobilization readiness plan. In the early postwar years, this viewpoint was at odds with the popularly held wish for swift demobilization. See also Martin van Creveld, "The Origins and the Development of Mobilization Warfare," in Strategic Dimensions Of Economic Behavior, ed. Gordon H. McCormick and Richard E. Bissell (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp.26-43. Back.
Note 28: The "McCarren Rider" of July 1946 (regarding Public Law 490 79th Congress) was the first step to Presidential Executive Order 9835 which set in motion the Truman Administration's Federal Employee Loyalty Program. For an interesting contemporary (1949) critical analysis of the loyalty program and its history, see Marver H. Bernstein, "The Loyalty of Federal Employees," Western Political Quarterly 2 June 1949): 254-264. Back.
Note 29: No official government-sanctioned formal ties between the FCDA and the PSB were established, even though FCDA administrator Millard CaIdwell requested such an arrangement. Instead, the PSB often noted that its own external charge forbid a formal relationship. Nevertheless, memoranda indicate that personnel from the two agencies often met, sometimes at lunch, sometimes in interagency committees, on various matters. The end result for FCDA"PSB relations was as if formal interagency relations had been set up: Important information on morale, propaganda, and panic was shared. On the informal links between the FCDA and PSB, see PHST, PSB, Box 337, "Staff meetings 1952-January 1953;" PHST, PSB, Box 34, "Project East River" Folder. Also see "Report on Dechant's Second Michigan Study" on FCDA links with universities. Back.
Note 30: For two different treatments of the Berlin crises in 1948 see Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993); Williamson and Rearden, The Origins of U.S. Nuclear Strategy. 1945-1953 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), pp.77-100. Back.
Note 31: 0n vulnerability and perception see Grossman, "Atomic Fantasies and Make-Believe War;" Robert H. Johnson, Improbable Dangers: U.S. Conceotions of Threat in the Cold War and After (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), pp.11-ill; Ansley J. Coale, The Problem of Reducing Vulnerability to Atomic Attack (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947); John A. Thompson, "The Exaggeration of American Vulnerability: The Anatomy of a Tradition," Diplomatic History 16 (Winter 1992):23-43. On the concern about an atomic Pearl Harbor see "Defense Lack Seen As Pearl Harbor," The New York Times, October 10, 1949, p.9; Thomas J. Kerr, Civil Defense in the U.S.: Bandaid for a Holocaust? (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983), p. 24; U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy JCAE), Hearings. Civil Defense Against Atomic Attack 81st Congress, 2nd Sess., 1950, pp.140-5O. Back.
Note 32: James V. Forrestal and Robert Patterson to President Harry S. Truman. PHST, PSF, Box 117, General File-Civil Defense Folder "Determination of the Agencies Responsible for Civil Defense and Anti-Sabotage Activities" December 2, 1946. Back.
Note 33: There is a large and growing historical literature on loyalty and political repression in the pre-Mccarthy period. See, for example, the work of Richard J. Walton, Henry Wallace. Harry Truman, and the Cold War (New York: Viking, 1976); and Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the Peoule's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism. 1941-1948 (New York, Free Press, 1973); Athan Theoharis on the FBI, including Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); and Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Houston Plan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978. Also see Sigmund Diamond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community. 1945-1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Robin W. Winks, Clock & Grown: Scholars in the Secret War. 1939-1961 (New York: William Morrow Inc., 1987); Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son's Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989); and Edward Pessen, Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War (Chicago: l.R. Dee, 1993); Christopher John Gerard, "A Program of Cooperation": The FBI, The Internal Security Subcommittee and the Communist Issue, 1950-1956," Ph.D. diss., (Marquette University, 1993). Back.
Note 34: See memorandum, May 29, 1946, from FBI director j. Edgar Hoover to RFC chairman George E. Allan, PHST, PSF, Box 167, Subject File A-Bomb. The public also believed the Cold War was a real war. See for example, the Gallup Poll conducted in August, 1950, where 57% of those surveyed felt World War Ill was underway. In an earlier Gallup Poll conducted in January, 1950, 70% believed the Soviet Union was "out to take over the world." By November 1950 (five months after the start of the Korean War), 81% polled thought the Soviets were seeking world conquest. See Gallup Poll Of Public Opinion 1935-1971, vol.2 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp.949, 993. Back.
Note 35: See J. Edgar Hoover address to Dinner of Grand L9dge of New York, May 2, 1950, in PHST, Papers of Stephen J. Spingarn, Box 36, Internal Security, Loyalty Commission and Civil Rights folder, pp.3-4. Back.
Note 36: An interesting example of this can be illustrated by one of the many "personal and confidential" memoranda that J. Edgar Hoover regularly sent to the President and his aides regarding subversive activities. In December 1947 Hoover a sent a memo to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal about a set of books and maps purchased at a bookstore in New York City. The bookstore owner had been in touch with the local office of the Coast and Geodetic Survey office in hope of getting some maps on "Hawaii, the Pacific, the Philippine Islands and Alaska." A person at the Geodetic survey office took it upon himself to consider this suspicious and reported it to the local FBI office. What resulted is the memo Hoover sent to Forrestal in which the owner of the bookstore is described as a communist because of his activities in 1940. See Hoover to Forrestal, December 19, 1947, PHST, Papers of John H. Oh ly, Box 73, Secretary of Defense Folder 3 of 3. Back.
Note 37: This quotation appeared in an FCDA poster that appeared in public spaces around the country in 1952. See advertising mats relating to Alert America campaign in PHST, Papers of Spencer Quick, Box 5, Civil Defense Campaign General-Folder 1. Back.
Note 38: I take the term "high military strategy" from Allan Silver. See Silver, "Democratic Citizenship And High Military Strategy." On the issue of national morale and elite concerns see Qakes and Grossman, "Managing Nuclear Terror," pp.368-382; Geiger and Grossman, "Preparing For Cold War," pp.5-7. On U.S. war plans and the functional relationship between credibility and deterrence theory see Steven Ross, American War Plans 1945-1950 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988); David Alan Rosenberg, "U.S. Nuclear War Planning, 1945-1960," in Strategic Nuclear Targeting, ed. Desmond Ball and jeffery Richelson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp.35-56; Samuel R. Williamson, Jr. and Steven L. Rearden, The Origins Of U.S. Nuclear Strategy. 1945-1953 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993). Back.
Note 40: The civil defense program was developed and put into operation initially through the OCDP located in the NSRB and then, in 1951, through a separate line agency, the FCDA. See Civil Defense Act of 1950, Public Law 920, 81st Congress, 2nd Session. See Congressional Record, 81st Congress, 2nd session, pp.16825, 16841-43. For a complete text of the original Federal Civil Defense Act and the various amendments that were attached over the years, see Federal Civil Defense Administration, "The National Plan For Civil Defense Against Enemy Attack" (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1956), pp.77-103. Back.
Note 41: See Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 128-236; Qakes and Grossman, "Managing Nuclear Terror," pp.368-393.. Back.
Note 42: Survival Under Atomic Attack p.1. Back.
Note 44: On training of the civilian populace, see for example, "Panic Prevention and Control," Appendix IXB of Project East River, Part IX, pp.55-65; on the FCDA's conception of nuclear reality, see National Security Resources Board, NSRB Doc. 130, Survival Under Atomic Attack (Washington D.C.: 1950). Back.
Note 45: Survival Under Atomic Attack p.26. Back.
Note 46: The Siren 5 (October 1951): 12. Back.
Note 47: A remarkable example of this can be seen in the October 1951 issue of the popular magazine Collier's. See "Preview of the War We Do Not Want," Collier's, October27, 1951. Back.
Note 48: The Siren (Winter 1960), pp.1-3. Back.
Note 49: United States Federal Civil Defense Administration (U.S. FCDA), The Warden's Handbook H-7-1 (Washington D.C.: GPO 1952); U.S. FCDA, Home Protection Exercises (Washington D.C.: GPO 1953) see especially "Emergency Action To Save Lives," for an example of how one was expected to become a wartime medic practicing on loved ones in the midst of a nuclear attack. See also U.S. FCDA, The Dentist in Civil Defense TM-11-9 (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1953); U.S. FCDA, Organization and Queration of Civil Defense Casualty Services TM-11-3 (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1952); U.S. FCDA, The Nurse in Civil Defense TM-11-7 (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1952). Back.
Note 50: State of New Jersey Department of Defense Division of Civil Defense, Proceeding of the Institute On Mental Hygiene Aspects of Civil Defense, June 21, 1951, pp.12-13. Back.
Note 51: With regard to the government conceived civilian defense training as ritualized behavior modification and self-surveillance, see National Archives (NA), National Security Resources Board (NSRB), Records Group 304 (RG-304), Box 19, Project East River Folder "Information and Training For Civil Defense," Proect East River, Part IX; United States Federal Civil Defense Administration, Home Protection Exercises: A Family Action Program (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1953); William L. Lawrence, pamphlet, "We are not helpless: how we can defend ourselves against the atomic weapons," (New York: New York Times, 1950). For a sociological analyses of the effects of these programs see Oakes, The Imaginary War pp.105-117. Back.
Note 52: 0n thinking about nuclear weapons as if they were conventional weapons see Hans Morgenthau, "The Fallacy of Thinking Conventionally About Nuclear Weapons," in David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf, eds., Arms Control and Technological Innovation (New York: Wiley, 1976), pp.256-64; Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Qakes and Grossman, "Managing Nuclear Terror," pp.376-82. Back.
Note 53: See NA, NSRB, RG 304, Box 19, Project East River Folder "Information and Training For Civil Defense," Proiect East River, Part IX. For analysis of panic see specifically, "Panic Prevention and Control," Appendix IXB of Proiect East River Part IX, pp.55-65, quotation, p.55. Back.
Note 54: "Panic Prevention and Control," Appendix IXB of Project East River, Part IX, pp.58-59. The exhaustive PER examination of civil defense was initially part of the larger collection of national security studies known as the "Cape Cod series" begun in 1948 at MIT. These secret national security research projects, which are striking evidence of the institutionalization of the relationship between the government and the major research universities, each dealt with some aspect of national mobilization for waging the Cold War: the development of high technology weapons, various nuclear war-fighting scenarios, propaganda programs, psychological warfare measures, and a civilian defense program. For more on the Cape Cod series, see Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp.60-71. Back.
Note 55: See JoAnne Brown, "A is for Atom, B is for Bomb: Civil Defense in American Public Education, 1948-1963," Journal of American History 75 June 1988): 68-90. Back.
Note 56: Two often-cited works in this vein are G. William Dom hoff, Who Rules America? (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentiss Hall, 1967), 115-138; and C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). Back.
Note 57: Tilly, Coercion. Capital. and European States, AD 990-1990.. Back.
