Pages 37 through 50 Summary and Analysis

Lillian Hellman always found it difficult to write about her experiences in the McCarthy era. She is a person who does not hold a grudge. She looks at McCarthy, McCarran, Nixon and the others as opportunists. She doubts they believed much of what they said. They were men who invented and maligned. Hellman attributes the beginning of McCarthyism to the 1917 Russian Revolution. America felt compelled to worry about them ever since. Although an ally during World War II, afterward Russia reappeared as the menace and looked all the scarier since they were giving aggressive signals toward Western Europe. To top it off, the China revolution enhanced the Red threat.

What is vivid in Hellman's memory is that McCarthy was drunk during all of the hearings. Nixon was eager to believe that one of the witnesses, Whittaker Chambers, hid state...