A new release from the "Landmark Law Cases and American Society" series at the University Press of Kansas:
Discrediting the Red Scare: The Cold War Trials of James Kutcher, "The Legless Veteran," by
Robert Justin Goldstein (Oakland University). A description from the Press:
During the Allies’ invasion of Italy in the thick of World War II,
American soldier James Kutcher was hit by a German mortar shell and lost
both of his legs. Back home, rehabilitated and given a job at the
Veterans’ Administration, he was soon to learn that his battles were far
from over. In 1948, in the throes of the post-war Red Scare, the
hysteria over perceived Communist threats that marked the Cold War, the
government moved to fire Kutcher because of his membership in a small,
left-wing group that had once espoused revolutionary sentiments.
Kutcher’s eight-year legal odyssey to clear his name and assert his
First Amendment rights, described in full for the first time in this
book, is at once a cautionary tale in a new period of patriotic
one-upmanship, and a story of tenacious patriotism in its own right.
The
son of Russian immigrants, James Kutcher came of age during the Great
Depression. Robbed of his hope of attending college or finding work of
any kind, he joined the Socialist Workers Party, left-wing and strongly
anti-Soviet, in his hometown of Newark. When his membership in the SWP
came back to haunt him at the height of the Red Scare, Kutcher took up
the fight against efforts to punish people for their thoughts, ideas,
speech, and associations. As a man who had fought for his country and
paid a great price, had never done anything that could be construed as
treasonous, held a low level clerical position utterly unconnected with
national security, and was the sole support of his elderly parents,
Kutcher cut an especially sympathetic figure in the drama of Cold War
witch-hunts. In a series of confrontations, in what were highly
publicized as the “case of the legless veteran,” the federal government
tried to oust Kutcher from his menial Veterans’ Administration job, take
away his World War II disability benefits, and to oust him and his
family from their federally subsidized housing. Discrediting the Red Scare
tells the story of his long legal struggle in the face of government
persecution—that redoubled after every setback until the bitter end.
A few blurbs:
“The case of James Kutcher, the “legless veteran,” is all but forgotten today, but it deserves to be a reminder of the mass hysteria that overtook the country during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. Robert Goldstein’s prodigious research and careful analysis do not hide the anger that he and we should feel about this case. It is a brilliant indictment of a country that forgot what the Bill of Rights meant, as well as the story of an “ordinary man” who showed extraordinary courage.” —Melvin I. Urofsky
“The celebrated—Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—as well as ordinary librarians, teachers, and bus drivers—all suffered through the anti-communist hysteria of the Truman-McCarthy-Eisenhower years. Robert Goldstein’s well-researched and lively monograph helps to rescue two of the unsung heroes of this tragic era who stood up against the government witch-hunters: James Kutcher, the legless World War II veteran and outspoken Trotskyite, who triumphed over the loyalty machinery of the Veterans Administration, and his redoubtable lawyer, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., who made that victory possible. ” —Michael E. Parrish
More information is available
here.
