Though they were both Republicans and briefly campaigned together in 1952, President Dwight D. Eisenhower “loathed [Senator Joseph] McCarthy as much as any human being could possibly loathe another,” according to the president’s brother. Yet Eisenhower refused to criticize McCarthy to the press, telling aides he would “not get into the gutter with that guy.” Instead, Eisenhower opted for a clandestine campaign to stamp out the senator’s influence.
Far from appeasing McCarthy, as his critics asserted at the time, Eisenhower played a major role in effecting his fellow Republican’s downfall.
Not long after World War II, anti-Communist paranoia swept through the United States, prompted by such events as the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb, the Communist takeover of China, the outbreak of the Korean War and the trial of the Rosenbergs.
In February 1950, at the height of the so-called Red Scare, McCarthy rose to prominence by falsely claiming to have a list of 205 known Communists working at the U.S. State Department. (When pressed for details, he later changed the number to 57.) The Wisconsin senator’s anti-Communist crusade only intensified from there, as he railed against allegedly subversive activity within various government entities.
