246 a short history of the united states
their po litical beliefs and refused to answer. Convicted of contempt of
Congress, they were added to a blacklist, jailed, and denied employ-
ment. This blacklist was later expanded to include radio and television
performers.
In August 1948 , Richard Nixon of California, a freshman member
of the committee, launched a celebrated investigation of Whittaker
Chambers, an editor of Time magazine and a former communist, who
accused Alger Hiss, a distinguished former State Department offi cial,
of allegedly providing him with secret government documents, docu-
ments hidden away in a pumpkin shell. Hiss denied the charge. The
committee could not determine which of the two men was lying, but
Hiss was later convicted of perjury.
Abroad, the communist menace spread westward. The Soviet Union
controlled and dominated Eastern Europe and occupied the German
territory surrounding the city of Berlin. Earlier, the city had been di-
vided into four zones, each controlled by one of the four major powers:
the Soviet Union, France, England, and the United States. In a speech
in Fulton, Missouri, on March 15 , 1946 , Winston Churchill declared
that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an Iron Cur-
tain has descended across the Continent.” The Western powers contin-
ued to urge the establishment in Eastern Europe of governments
elected by the people, but Stalin had no intention of allowing the cre-
ation of new, possibly hostile, governments along the Russian border.
He went further. In an effort to drive the West completely out of
Berlin he shut off all traffic into the city on July 24 , 1948. Truman re-
sponded by airlifting supplies of food, fuel, and other necessities into
Berlin. From July 1948 to September 1949 , with the British and French
cooperating, about 2. 5 million tons of supplies were flown to the city in
an around-the- clock operation.
A Cold War, as distinct from a hot one, now existed between the
free world and the Soviet Union. Then, on September 24 , 1949 , it be-
come known that the Soviets had detonated an atom bomb, largely
constructed using secret information stolen from the United States and
Great Britain by citizens of both countries who had communist lean-
ings or had indeed joined the Communist Party. The world had sud-
denly become very dangerous, especially if the antagonists ever began
to hurl atomic bombs at each other. In response, Truman announced