page_title: History of the Communist Party USA
section_title: 1939–1947: World War II and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Communist Party USA / History / 1939–1947: World War II and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Soviet Agitprop, USA. The Washington Commonwealth Federation newspaper after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (The Washington Commonwealth Federation was an alleged Communist front organisation)
context_page_description: The history of the Communist Party USA is deeply rooted in the history of the American labor movement and the Communist Party USA indeed played critical roles in the earliest struggles to organize American workers into unions as well as the later civil rights and anti-war movements. However, many Communists were forced to work covertly due to the high level of political repression in the United States against Communists, who were targeted for legal retaliation and in some areas state-sponsored terrorism and lynchings.
  Communists' scientific understanding of the nature of class struggle enables them to be the most effective organizers, a benefit he called the "Communist plus". When Communists were expelled from the AFL–CIO in 1948, organized labor's influence on economic and political development stagnated and later plummeted. The Communist Party greatly suffered under the ensuing period of McCarthyism in which the United States government openly carried out mass repression against Communists and simultaneously ran a nationalist propaganda campaign fueling the Cold War against the Soviet Union which would dominate American foreign policy for the rest of the century.
context_section_description: The Communist Party was adamantly opposed to fascism during the Popular Front period. Although membership in the party rose to about 75,000 by 1938, many members left the party after the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939. While general secretary Browder at first attacked Germany for its September 1, 1939 invasion of western Poland, on September 11 the Communist Party received a blunt directive from Moscow denouncing the Polish government. Between September 14–16, party leaders bickered about the direction to take.
  On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.
  The British, French and German Communist parties, all originally war supporters, abandoned their anti-fascist crusades, demanded peace and denounced Allied governments. The Communist Party turned the focus of its public activities from anti-fascism to advocating peace, not only opposing military preparations, but also condemning those opposed to Hitler. The party attacked British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French leader Édouard Daladier, but it did not at first attack President Roosevelt, reasoning that this could devastate American Communism, blaming instead Roosevelt's advisors.
  In October and November, after the Soviets invaded Finland and forced mutual assistance pacts from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Communist Party considered Russian security sufficient justification to support the actions. Secret short wave radio broadcasts in October from Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov ordered Browder to change the party's support for Roosevelt. On October 23, the party began attacking Roosevelt.
  The Communist Party dropped its boycott of Nazi goods, spread the slogans "The Yanks Are Not Coming" and "Hands Off", set up a "perpetual peace vigil" across the street from the White House and announced that Roosevelt was the head of the "war party of the American bourgeoisie". By April 1940, the party Daily Worker's line seemed not so much antiwar as simply pro-German. A pamphlet stated the Jews had just as much to fear from Britain and France as they did Germany. In August 1940, after NKVD agent Ramón Mercader killed Trotsky with an ice axe, Browder perpetuated Moscow's fiction that the killer, who had been dating one of Trotsky's secretaries, was a disillusioned follower. In allegiance to the Soviet Union, the party changed this policy again after Hitler broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact by attacking the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
  Throughout the rest of World War II, the Communist Party continued a policy of militant, if sometimes bureaucratic, trade unionism while opposing strike actions at all costs. The leadership of the Communist Party was among the most vocal pro-war voices in the United States, advocating unity against fascism, supporting the prosecution of leaders of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) under the newly enacted Smith Act and opposing A. Philip Randolph's efforts to organize a march on Washington to dramatize black workers' demands for equal treatment on the job. Prominent party members and supporters, such as Dalton Trumbo and Pete Seeger, recalled anti-war material they had previously released.
  Earl Browder expected the wartime coalition between the Soviet Union and the West to bring about a prolonged period of social harmony after the war. In order better to integrate the Communist movement into American life, the party was officially dissolved in 1944 and replaced by a Communist Political Association. This coincided with the Italian Communist Party's (CPI) Salerno turn accommodation with other anti-fascist parties in 1944. However, that harmony proved elusive and the international Communist movement swung to the left after the war ended. Browder found himself isolated when the Duclos letter from the leader of the French Communist Party (FCP), attacking Browderism (an accommodation with American political conditions), received wide circu
caption: The Washington Commonwealth Federation newspaper after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (original scan)
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