picked up by UPI in a story syndicated throughout the country.16
Trying to convey the gravity of what was happening, he contended in another July 1961 speech that the “ideological struggle with Russia” was the “number one problem in the world.” In the same talk where he shared that thought, he raised the intensity, striking the notion of “war.” Offering his view of how America should react to the hazards of Communism, Reagan criticized those who “subscribe to a theory that we are at peace, and we must make no overt move which might endanger that peace.” He declared that “the inescapable truth” is that America is “at war,” and “we are losing that war simply because we don’t, or won’t realize that we are in it.”17
Some deemed this rhetoric too bellicose, but Reagan felt that such candor was necessary. We may not, after all, think we’re at war, Reagan repeatedly told his GE Theatre soldiers, but the Communists certainly feel they’re at war with us. He assailed Communism’s aggressive and expansionary nature, and its expectation of inevitable conflict with the capitalist West:
Karl Marx established the cardinal principle that communism and capitalism cannot coexist in the world together. Our way of life, our system, must be totally destroyed; then the world Communist state will be erected on the ruins. In interpreting Marx, Lenin said, “It is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist for a long period side by side with imperialistic states. Ultimately, one or the other must conquer.”
Last November, the Communist parties of 81 countries held a convention in Moscow; and on December 6, reaffirmed this principle of war to the death. In a 20,000-word manifesto, they called on Communists in countries where there were non-Communist governments to be traitors and work for the destruction of their own governments by subversion and treason.18
These were not the passive words of a cheerful Hollywood dinner speaker who came to chat about the Oscars. Moreover, much of this Reagan sentiment was candidly reiterated, reexplained, and redefended again and again. He harped on his points, and people that knew him, knew that this battle was at the heart of what he represented. Reagan was determined to make America see the very real threat that he believed Communism posed to the nation’s way of life. America could not afford to be lulled into complacency by the fact that no one was dying in this war. This was a war that he wanted to win.
1962 TO 1965
Firmly established in his talks in 1961, this “war” rhetoric became a regular drumbeat by Reagan throughout 1962. He took that specific message from the heartland to the Badlands, from the plains to the mesas, writing and refining speeches that were designed to convince Americans of Communism’s manifold dangers. In Bartlesville, Oklahoma in February, he reminded a crowd that, “We are in a war, whether we admit it or not.”19 In two other stops in the final week of February, including at a press conference before a speech in Dallas, he made remarks such as “the free world is at war” with Communism and “the war isn’t over.”20 “The weapons in this war frequently are strange to us,” said the Crusader, “such as subversion, propaganda, and deliberate infiltration of many institutions of our free society.” Here, Reagan no doubt had Hollywood in mind. He went on: “The enemy has not resorted to the traditional instruments of war, partly because he has been doing so well without them.” He admonished, as he would in the 1980s: “Communism is a single, world-wide force dedicated to the destruction of our free-enterprise system and the creation of a World Socialist State. Communism is not a political party, it is a quasi-military conspiracy against our government.”21
A common Reagan speech in the early 1960s, which he gave innumerable times, was one he titled, “A Foot in the Door,” which warned of Communists trying to surreptitiously subvert institutions like the motion-picture industry. In one version of the speech, he again used the Lenin-Marx quote on “one or the other must conquer.” Also in this speech is a quote attributed to Lenin about Latin America falling into Communist hands like “overripe fruit,” which Reagan cited for decades to come, including during his presidency, though it was likely not a direct Lenin quote, even if accurate in spirit.22
While much of this anti-Communist campaigning took place as Reagan was a Democrat, as the 1960s progressed he found himself growing more and more disillusioned with the direction of the party. In his estimation, the party had abandoned traditional ethics and values in favor of big government solutions to problems. He felt that liberal Democrats had created a permanent welfare state that (in his view) FDR would not have supported; such a system was fostering a “dependency class.” Rather than scaling back that system, Reagan saw that the party was committed to a huge expansion of government under LBJ and his Great Society. Reagan feared a “creeping socialism” under a party that he suspected was increasingly naive to the dangers of Communism, and in 1962, he switched to the Republican Party.
The GOP was happy to have him. Then, on October 27, 1964, he was asked to speak on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), the Republican presidential nominee. In this speech, which would come to be known as the “Time for Choosing” speech, Reagan declared, “We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said that if we lose that war, and in so doing, lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”23 He vowed to do something; the will was there; the specific policies and plans would need to wait for a while.
This speech for Goldwater became an instant landmark and a focal point for Reagan’s political support. Republicans everywhere immediately urged him to run for office, something that took him by surprise but invigorated him nonetheless. “I had never given a thought to public office,” he later claimed, recalling the reaction to the speech. “I was happy to be in show business. They kept after [us] till Nancy and I were having trouble sleeping. I thought they were crazy.”24
This shift in horizons could not have come at a better time. By 1964, the GE tours had ended, but Reagan continued to search out more forums for warning the world about Marxism. To that end, he opted for what he knew best—a camera and the spoken word—producing two documentaries. One was a two-part 1963 film titled “The Truth About Communism,” which he hosted and narrated, focusing on the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Comintern, the massacre in Poland’s Katyn Forest, Moscow’s desire for world revolution, the words of Marx in the Communist Manifesto, and much more.25 The second documentary, released in 1965 and conarrated with friend and actor Robert Taylor, was called “Let the World Go Forth.”26 Both were intended to “wake up” the world to the threat emanating from Moscow. Not only did these documentaries embody Reagan’s anti- Communist ideology, but they also represented the marriage of his two passions: film and politics.
But by the mid-1960s, it was becoming increasingly clear that while one passion was coming to a close, the other was just beginning to take off. Reagan’s speech for Barry Goldwater thrusted his views into the national arena in a once unthinkable manner, and now it was time for him to stop commenting on politics and start doing them.
Hollywood had given Reagan the notoriety and platform to make these robust, hard-hitting statements, statements that would come to define him both politically and personally. While his showbusiness background would be the object of ridicule during his eventual presidential campaigns, it was this background that provided him with the experience he needed to begin his political career. Indeed, the irony was that despite the claim that his Hollywood background deemed him unworthy of Oval Office stature, it was this very thing that gave him the name recognition, confidence, and even some of the leadership experience that he needed to be president. Lew Uhler, who as a member of the Counter-Intelligence Corps reported on Communist infiltration in the Los Angeles area in the 1950s, and later worked for Reagan in Sacramento, shrewdly observed that only an individual who came through the crucible of combating Hollywood Communists on a daily basis—and in the manner in which Reagan clashed with and defeated them—could in turn appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of Communists generally.27 That experience would be indispensable when Reagan got to Washington and formally commenced his Cold War crusade.
Reagan had fought the nation’s chief enemy on the home front for over twenty years, but now recognized that it was finally time to take his views to a new stage, a stage where he could impact Communism with more
