The Growth of American Power Through Cold and Hot Wars 331Americans suspected of so-called subversive activities [again, similar to con-
temporary efforts as shown in the Julian Assange and Edward Snowden
affairs]. Initially, Roosevelt supported such efforts, but the public and media
did express their disapproval, and Attorney General Francis Biddle, in these
cases, put a stop to such activities.
As the war continued, however, the government increasingly took such
steps. The Justice Department and FBI still compiled lists of organizations and
individuals it considered disloyal. Such repression took place on the state level
as well. When Communists in Pennsylvania decided to run in elections in
1940, they gathered tens of thousands of signatures, but local papers published
the names of those endorsing the party, basically inviting their “pro-American”
neighbors to attack them. In some cities, teachers and public employees who
signed such nominating petitions lost their jobs. One Communist journalist
was even jailed in Pittsburgh for libel because of his work exposing pro-Nazi
groups operating in the United States. The authorities and courts even went
after religious groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refused to salute
the flag and were opposed to the killing of other humans. In addition to over-
looking mob violence against the Witnesses, many government law enforce-
ment agencies arrested and indicted them for sedition when they passed out
literature. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union, a group that monitored
and took legal action against government repression, reported that “nothing
in the record of attacks against communists, strikers, or Negroes” matched the
attacks on the Witnesses in 1940-41. Between 1941 and 1944, there was a
slight lull in such government measures because of the wartime alliance of
American and Russia and the support for the war of American Communists
and labor, as well as some Supreme Court decisions affirming civil liberties
[such as the Korematsu case]. However, the repression did continue and would
escalate seriously after the war ended.
In fact, the state developed expanded and new means of maintaining
“internal security” during the war. Wars have always led to an erosion of
American civil liberties–from the alien and sedition acts during the so-called
Quasi-War in the 1790s to the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in the
Civil War to the “Palmer Raids” after World War I–so the increase in state
power during the war was not unprecedented or even surprising. It did, how-
ever, give way to a vast increase in state power after the war, and in itself
was a disturbing rejection of certain constitutional principles. The attack on