The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

by James Cross Giblin

  Joe interviewing Marine pilots who have just returned from air raids on Japanese installations in the Solomon Islands, 1943. Wisconsin Historical Society

  When Joe's ship crossed the equator, the commander permitted the men aboard to stage an initiation ceremony. The participants wore pajamas, and those crossing for the first time were paddled, soaked with hoses, and subjected to other indignities. Joe's tormenters had tied a bucket to his right foot, then forced him to climb down a ladder. Just before he reached the bottom, his left foot caught on a rung and he fell backward to the deck, fracturing the foot. It had to be put in a cast.

  A week later, when the cast was about to be removed, the medical corpsman assigned to the task mistakenly used a strong acid instead of the usual vinegar to soften the plaster first. Joe winced in pain as the acid passed quickly through the cast and burned his lower leg. The burn took several weeks to heal and left what the medical corpsman termed a "fairly large" scar.

  Joe thought of a way to turn these two accidents into a political plus. He let friends back in Wisconsin know about the injuries, exaggerating their seriousness. As a result, newspapers in Appleton and Milwaukee ran stories saying Judge Joseph McCarthy, serving with the Marines in the Pacific, had suffered serious injuries to a foot and leg. That fall, his Wisconsin office issued a press release stating he had been wounded in action.

  On July 3, 1943, Joe's squadron arrived in the New Hebrides island chain, and two months later, on September 1, its planes landed at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal Island. From there the squadron's pilots flew daily combat missions over islands the Japanese still held in the Solomon chain. They took out artillery sites and bombed fortifications while trying to elude antiaircraft fire from the ground and attacks by Japanese fighter pilots.

  Meanwhile, back at the base, Joe carried out his assigned duties as intelligence officer. He also arranged for hard-to-get foodstuffs and beverages to be shipped to the airfield. Beer, canned turkeys, medicinal brandy, and canned grapefruit juice were just a few of the items that were flown in. Enlisted men and officers alike were delighted to get the delicacies, and didn't ask questions about how Joe had obtained them. As one grateful airman recalled, "You'd see Joe McCarthy come up with an airplane full of goodies from the rear area ... kind of like Santa Claus coming in the Macy's parade."

  Although he was thousands of miles from Wisconsin, Joe hadn't set aside his political ambitions. He told a close friend, Master Sergeant Jerome Wander, that he was planning to run for the U.S. Senate, and said that newspaper stories and photos of him in combat would help his future campaign. He persuaded Wander, the unit's chief gunner, to teach him how to shoot the two machine guns located at the back of the squadron's bombers—the tail guns. He also learned how to take high-altitude photographs of the plane's targets with a camera positioned near the guns.

  After mastering the basics, Joe wangled his way onto a number of combat missions. Sitting in the tail gunner's seat, he got some good pictures of the plane's targets as it dive-bombed them. Then he turned to the guns, strafing Japanese antiaircraft positions and firing at fuel dumps, truck convoys, and bridges. "The judge loved to shoot guns," one of the pilots Joe flew with said later. "He was really eager in that rear seat." It was then that Joe acquired the nickname "Tail Gunner Joe."

  As a joke, the men in the squadron awarded Joe a plaque "for destroying more coconut trees than anyone else in the South Pacific." Joe laughed at the joke along with everyone else. Meanwhile, he cajoled the squadron's photographers into taking dramatic pictures of him in his flight uniform, standing by his plane, manning his camera, and aiming his guns. He stashed the photos away for use later in his Senate campaign.

  Joe McCarthy, wearing a pilot's uniform, poses in front of a military airplane, 1943. Wisconsin Historical Society

  McCarthy with two of his soldier buddies in the South Pacific, 1943. Marquette University Archives

  Next he embarked on a risky ploy that he must have known would have serious consequences if he was caught. In the spring of 1944, he proudly showed close friends in the squadron a citation he said he had just received. It bore the signature of Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, and commended Joe for his participation as a rear gunner and aerial photographer "from September 1 to December 31, 1943." The citation read in part:

  He [McCarthy] obtained excellent photographs of enemy gun positions, despite intense antiaircraft fire, thereby gaining valuable information which contributed materially to the success of subsequent strikes in the area.

  Up to that point, the citation was basically correct. But then it deviated from the facts:

  Although suffering from a severe leg injury, he [McCarthy] refused to be hospitalized and continued to carry out his duties as an intelligence officer in a highly efficient manner. His courageous devotion to duty was in keeping with the highest traditions of the naval service.

  A later inquiry revealed that the citation had been triggered by a letter of recommendation dated February 19, 1944, and signed by Major Glenn A. Todd, then Joe's commanding officer. However, in an interview conducted in 1977, Todd denied having written or signed such a letter. He offered a possible alternative explanation: "Intelligence officers had so little work to do, we gave them all sorts of odd jobs. One was to write citations for awards." In other words, Todd concluded that Joe himself wrote the citation, forged the major's signature, then sent the citation up through channels to Admiral Nimitz. The admiral's signature was genuine, but he signed thousands of such citations during the war and probably did not read all of them.

  However it was obtained, Joe had his citation, and he wasn't shy about showing it to reporters, then and later. He also inflated the number of combat missions he had flown. His official flight log, signed by Major Todd, listed eleven missions, but in 1944 Joe claimed to have flown fourteen. Two years later, he said he had been a tail gunner on seventeen missions, and later still the number rose to thirty-two. By then, Joe was at the height of his influence and power, and no one challenged the larger figure. Instead, sympathetic Marine Corps officials used it as the basis for awarding him the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1952.

  In April 1944, Joe announced that he would run for the Senate that fall. He also told reporters that he had decided to leave the Democratic Party and enter the primary election as a Republican. Joe had never been that committed a Democrat despite heading clubs in the Shawano area, and he figured he would be in a better position to challenge the incumbent, Alexander Wiley, if he ran as a Republican in largely Republican Wisconsin.

  It wouldn't be easy to campaign from the South Pacific, and Joe didn't expect to wrest the nomination from the popular Wiley. He saw the primary as a chance to become better known throughout the state and build a foundation for another run for the Senate in 1946.

  Two things worked in Joe's favor as he prepared for the primary. The Wisconsin state legislature had recently repealed the law that prohibited a sitting judge from seeking any other office. And Joe had made a windfall in the stock market with which to finance his campaign. Before joining the Marines, he gave $2,200 he had scraped together to a broker who said he had a tip on several slumping railroad stocks. The tip proved to be correct. Wartime shipments boosted the railroads' earnings, their stock prices jumped, and in 1943 Joe realized a $40,000 profit on his investment.

  Joe opened his campaign on the island where he was stationed. Military regulations forbade servicemen from speaking on political issues while in uniform, but Joe found other ways to promote his candidacy. He put signs on military vehicles reading MCCARTHY FOR u.s. SENATE, and painted HEADQUARTERS: MCCARTHY FOR u.s. SENATOR on his tent. He tracked down enlisted men from Wisconsin, introduced himself, and asked them to vote for him on their absentee ballots.

  Marine Captain McCarthy examines a piece of campaign literature for his 1944 U.S. Senate race. Wisconsin Historical Society

  During a leave from the Marines in July 1944, McCarthy visits an office in Wisconsin, whe
re five workers in his Senate campaign are writing and addressing "personal" postcards in his name. Outagamie County Historical Society, Appleton, Wisconsin

  Back in Wisconsin, Joe's friends and supporters got busy with his campaign. In a few weeks, they produced 2.5 million pamphlets and fliers and mailed them to more than 80,000 families throughout the state. These publications extolled Joe's performance as a judge and a Marine captain and were filled with photos of him in uniform. One brochure summed up his qualifications this way: "He is ably qualified [to be a senator] by training and experience—much of which he obtained on the battlefields of the South Pacific."

  Joe told reporters he didn't expect to get back to the United States before the August 15 primary, but he was actually making arrangements to do just that. He had served with his squadron on two combat tours, from September 15, 1943, through March 1944, and was due a leave. In early July he obtained a transfer to the Marine Air Fleet in San Diego, and there he was given a standard fifteen-day leave. He flew immediately to Wisconsin, arriving in Milwaukee on July 20.

  Dressed in his captain's uniform, Joe granted numerous interviews and proudly displayed the citation he had received from Admiral Nimitz. He appeared at several rallies and gave brief talks to the Milwaukee and Appleton chapters of the League of Women Voters. He also found time to visit the room in his campaign headquarters where young women volunteers were busy writing and signing Joe's name to "personal" notes to voters, urging them to cast their ballots for him.

  Four newspapers endorsed Joe, three of them in communities where he had lived and worked. The Appleton Post-Crescent wrote: "McCarthy, about 35 years of age, had the wholesome judgment to hang his robe as circuit judge in the closet, ignore the adequate income to which the law entitled him, and shove off with the tough young fellows in the Marines. If a combination of the McCarthy qualities cannot make a statesman, what can?"

  Despite such endorsements and Joe's last-minute campaigning, Senator Wiley won renomination in the primary. But Joe was satisfied with the results. He had never expected to win, and was pleased that he had done as well as he had. He got almost 80,000 votes statewide, had come in first in the three counties within his judicial district, and had lost only narrowly in seven others. More important, he had reached beyond his base in the Appleton area and had become a known political figure throughout Wisconsin.

  In August, his leave over, Joe reported to the El Centro Marine Corps Air Station in California, where he had trained, and was soon transferred to the El Toro Marine training base. He knew he would be eligible for another overseas tour of duty early in the new year and decided to try to head off the assignment. He would be up for reelection as a judge in April 1945, and he wanted to get ready for the campaign. On October 19, he applied for a four-month leave, claiming he had urgent duties to tend to at home.

  The Marines turned down Joe's request but gave him the option of resigning his commission. He accepted the offer on December 11 and was home in Wisconsin by late January. When asked about his swift return, he didn't say he'd resigned. Instead, he told questioners he was on furlough until February, and then would go on inactive duty. Within a few days, and still wearing his uniform, he was once again presiding over his courtroom in Appleton.

  No one opposed Joe for the judgeship, so he had to mount only a minimum campaign for reelection. As soon as the election was over, he began to make plans for his next Senate race, in 1946. This time, he would face stiff opposition in the form of the incumbent, Robert M. La Follette, Jr. And this time he was determined to win.

  6. One Fight Ends, Another Begins

  THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1945 were a time of great changes throughout the world. In Europe, the Soviet army had broken the back of the invading German army at Stalingrad in 1943. Now the Russians, having driven the Germans out of the Soviet Union, were advancing swiftly through eastern European nations and pressing into eastern Germany.

  Meanwhile, the armies of the western Allies, under the leadership of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had landed on the beaches of northern France in June 1944. They liberated Paris from German occupation in August of that year, and by the beginning of 1945 had fought their way into western Germany and were about to cross the Rhine River.

  In February, when Joe was on his way back to Wisconsin, the leaders of the major Allied powers—Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin—met in the southern Russian resort of Yalta. There they decided on the shape of postwar Europe. Germany and its capital city, Berlin, would both be divided, and the nations of Eastern Europe that the Russian army had occupied—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the rest—would be considered a Soviet sphere of influence. Later, Republican politicians, including Joe, would charge that President Roosevelt had "sold out" Eastern Europe to the Russians at the Yalta Conference.

  Roosevelt and Churchill wanted Stalin to invade Manchuria and other Japanese holdings in China in order to hasten the end of the war in the Pacific. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan within three months of the end of the war in Europe but exacted a high price for doing so: control of several Japanese-held islands, and an occupation zone in north Korea.

  Almost exactly two months later, on April 12, President Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was succeeded by his vice-president, Harry'S. Truman. Roosevelt had been president for an unprecedented twelve years and had seen the United States through the worst of the Great Depression and most of World War II. Much of the nation was plunged into deep grief, but Joe, savoring his reelection as a circuit judge, made no public comment on Roosevelt's passing.

  On April 25, the Allied and Soviet armies met at the Elbe River in eastern Germany. The remnants of the Nazi regime were surrounded on all sides. The Germans fought back fiercely, but by April 28 the Allied and Soviet armies were on the outskirts of Berlin. Adolf Hitler, realizing the war was lost, committed suicide on April 30 before the Russians could take him prisoner. Just over a week later, on May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The war in Europe, which had gone on for almost six years, was over.

  Now the Allies' entire attention could be concentrated on the war in the Pacific—the war that Joe McCarthy had opted out of. In February, U.S. forces had landed on the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima. A month later, on March 16, the main fighting on Iwo Jima ended, and a U.S. Navy military government was established on the island. The cost: 4,000 American dead and 15,000 wounded.

  On April 1, a large U.S. force launched a massive invasion of Okinawa, an island even closer to Japan. The Japanese responded with a desperate kamikaze (suicide) attack on the landing ships by more than 350 planes, but the Americans pressed forward. The Japanese continued their resistance for almost three months, but finally surrendered the island on June 22. The final toll: 12,500 Americans dead, and an estimated 100,000 Japanese dead.

  A month later, on July 17, the Allied leaders, Truman, Churchill, and Stalin, met for the first and only time, in Potsdam, Germany, just outside the devastated capital, Berlin. They clashed almost immediately over the postwar situation in Eastern Europe. Stalin insisted on recognition of the pro-Soviet regimes the Russians were busily installing in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the other nations their armies had liberated from German occupation. Churchill and Truman argued that free elections should be held in those countries. Truman later called it the "bitterest debate of the conference."

  The leaders were closer to agreement when it came to the ongoing war with Japan. Stalin, keeping the promise he had made at Yalta, said his armies would invade Japanese-held Manchuria on August 8. Then President Truman revealed to Stalin a secret he had already disclosed to Churchill: The United States had developed a powerful new weapon that would bring the Japanese to their knees. He had already gotten Churchill's approval to use it; now he wanted to get Stalin's. The weapon was the atomic bomb, which had been tested successfully for the first time in the New Mexico desert on July 16. Truman had received news of the test while on his way to Potsdam.<
br />
  Stalin didn't seem particularly surprised by Truman's news—he probably had learned of the bomb's existence from Soviet spies—and told the president he hoped the United States would "make good use of it." On July 26, the Allied leaders issued the Potsdam Declaration, which included an ultimatum, a demand that Japan surrender unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction." The ultimatum did not mention the new bomb.

  The Japanese prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki, responded to the Declaration on July 28. At a press conference, he said it was no more than a rehash of earlier Allied declarations, and that the Japanese government intended to ignore it.

  Now President Truman and his advisors had to make perhaps the most fateful decision of his presidency: when and where to drop the atomic bomb. On August 6, an American B-29 bomber dropped the bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," on the port city of Hiroshima. A huge mushroom cloud rose into the sky, fires raged, and an estimated 80,000 of the city's 255,000 civilians died. In a White House press release later that day, President Truman referred to the Potsdam ultimatum that the Japanese had rejected and warned: "If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

  There was no reaction from the Japanese government to the president's new threat, but events moved swiftly in the next few days. On August 8, as scheduled, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and Soviet troops launched an invasion of Manchuria. Then the next day, having received no response from Japan, President Truman gave the order to drop a second atomic bomb on another Japanese port city, Nagasaki. The resulting explosion had a blast yield equivalent to twenty-one kilotons of TNT. It is estimated that about 70,000 of the city's 240,000 residents were killed instantly.