Summary

In Chapter 7, Albright points out that although Hitler and Stalin came from opposite ends of the political spectrum, they both despised the Jeffersonian ideals on which US democracy is based. In response to the Communist takeover of Central and Eastern Europe after WWII, the West forged the military alliance NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and other alliances, like the United Nations. The Communist threat sent shock waves through the US. Senator Joe McCarthy capitalized on this fear by holding Senate hearings to investigate whether the State Department was harboring Communists. Albright calls his vituperous bullying the “demagogue's trick, the Fascist's ploy, exemplified most outrageously by the spurious anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so” (92).

Albright describes the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the...