Invasion USA (1952): It Can Happen Here

Americans have long celebrated their opposition to tyranny, dating back to the American Revolution and clarion call of “no taxation without representation.” Many citizens take pride in the second amendment to the Constitution, believing that individual possession of firearms will prevent foreign invasion and the imposition of dictatorship in the United States. More sophisticated considerations of how fascism might come to America, such as It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, emphasize that American fascism would most likely manifest itself in the guise of right-wing populism. Nevertheless, American popular culture perpetuates the fantasy of foreign invasion and heroic citizen resistance. While such scenarios are often reminiscent of partisan European fighters (many of whom were communists) during the Second World War, there is a tendency in the culture to review such resistance as uniquely American. This is another example of American exceptionalism, grounded in a perception that the belief in freedom is a national and not a human value.

Red Dawn, released in 1984 when President Reagan was reinvigorating the Cold War, describes the adolescent fantasy of a high school football team, the Wolverines, who defeat communist forces from Cuba and the Soviet Union who prove to be no match for quarterback Patrick Swayze and his teammates/warriors. Although made on a much lower budget, film director Alfred E. Green’s Invasion USA (1952) perhaps best places the idea of American Cold War exceptionalism in historical and global context. Invasion USA projects the scenario of a full-scale Soviet assault upon the United States. Made during the Korean War and heyday of McCarthyism in Washington, Invasion USA depicts an expansionist Soviet empire intent on world domination, abetted by fifth columnists and Americans too soft to make the sacrifices necessary for the preservation of liberty.

The film begins in a New York City bar where news anchor Vince Potter (Gerald Mohr), factory owner George Sylvester (Robert Brice), Congressman Arthur V. Harroway (Wade Crosby), Arizona rancher Ed Mulfory (Erik Blythe), and attractive socialite Carla Sanford (Peggie Castle) are mesmerized by the enigmatic Mr. Ohman (Dan O’Herlihy), who suggests that the patrons should curb their carping about selfish concerns and recognize that the American way of life is being threatened. Mr. Ohman mysteriously disappears, and the group at the bar is awakened from a trance-like state by a news bulletin reporting that American forces in Alaska are under attack. The source of this assault remains unnamed in the film, but the Cold War historical context, the invasion route through Alaska, the unintended comical Slavic accents, the proclamations from the “People’s Army,” and the use of MiG-15 fighter planes make clear that the invading enemy comes from the Soviet Union.

The story of the invasion is modeled upon the news bulletin technique pioneered by Orson Welles in his radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. The startled bar patrons watch the enemy launch an invasion of the Pacific Northwest supported by the employment of tactical nuclear weapons against American military installations. The President announces that the United States will retaliate with atomic bombs and take the war into the enemy’s home territory. Nevertheless, the invasion appears to be gaining momentum, and the denizens of the bar recognize that they need to do their patriotic duty.

Potter and Sanford form a romantic connection, noting that even in a national emergency, people continue to eat, drink, and “make love.” The newscaster will stay in New York City, reporting the truth to the American people about the barbaric invasion. Sanford abandons her trivial social concerns to volunteer at a blood bank. Meanwhile, the industrialist, rancher, and Congressman leave the bar to assume their responsibilities in the struggle against the enemy.

Sylvester returns to his tractor factory in the San Francisco area. While at the bar, he complained about government intervention in the operation of his plant, voicing discontent with suggestions that he direct some of his production lines into national defense. But his return is too late, for the enemy has occupied the factory. A fifth- columnist laborer helped the invading forces gain control over the means of production, casting doubt upon the political loyalty of labor. Sylvester confronts his former employee and is shot in the back by a member of the “People’s Army.”

Meanwhile, Mulfory arrives in Arizona to retrieve his family. As they flee their home, the enemy bombs Hoover Dam, setting off a flood which consumes the Mulfory family. The Arizona rancher never got the opportunity to apologize for his barroom complaints that government regulation of agriculture was unnecessary to harness this essential industry in pursuit of American goals in the Cold War. Congressman Harroway recognizes that he and many members of Congress were not vigilant in safeguarding the nation against enemy threats both foreign and domestic, an acknowledgment that Senator Joseph McCarthy and his cohorts were, indeed, on the right track. Harroway gives a stirring speech on American liberty before he is gunned down by enemy troops who have gained control over the nation’s capital.

The resistance continues in New York City, where newscaster Potter reports that city taxi drivers are filling their cabs with explosives and crashing into enemy troop vehicles. Suicide bombers in the Middle East are religious fanatics, but when Americans employ similar tactics they are perceived as heroic patriots. It should be noted, however, that much of the violence in a place such as Baghdad is not aimed directly at occupation troops but rather at terrorizing the population and discrediting the government. Meanwhile, Potter is killed by enemy soldiers when the popular reporter refuses to provide propaganda broadcasts for the invaders. The leering “People’s Army” soldiers then attempt to rape Sanford, and the film reverts to World War I and II propaganda that the Hun and Japanese were motivated by their lust for white women. And like a white woman in D. W. Griffith’s Birth of Nation (1914) when approached by a black Union rapist, Sanford leaps to her death rather than allow herself to be violated by the swarthy enemy soldiers.

As Sanford plunges to her death, however, we are returned to the bar where all the patrons are awakened from an apparent hypnosis performed by the departed Mr. Ohman. It was all just a dream. It is not too late for Americans. Everyone departs the bar to assume his or her place in the international struggle against communism and the Soviet Union.

Invasion USA is an interesting piece of Cold War propaganda which contains some disturbing parallels with contemporary American politics and foreign policy. While we condemn the resistance in Iraq as terrorists, we cling to the cinematic illusion that Americans would respond to invasion in a similar fashion. But rather than terrorists, the model is the partisans of occupied Europe during the Second World War. In our belief in American innocence and exceptionalism, we attribute only positive values to our intentions, while those of the Iraqi resistance must be assigned to evil doers. The sectarian divide in Iraq between the Sunni and Shiah is a complex situation that does not correspond into simplistic notions of good and evil. It is a naive world view which continues to play a prominent role in American culture.

The political ideology endorsed by Invasion USA also calls for an expanded state role in the regulation of political discourse, food production, labor relations, military preparedness, and control of dissent. Thus, in a time of war and national crisis, the film argues that the government and military should be given greater powers, while those who express reservations about government policy are providing aid and comfort to the enemy. The America envisioned by Invasion USA contains disturbing connections with the post 9/11 policies of President George W. Bush. In an expanded national security state, characterized by a large bureaucracy such as the Office of Homeland Security, the government may monitor the private conversations and telephone calls of citizens who question the status quo and violate the civil liberties of those who are accused of committing crimes against the state. In the name of liberty, freedoms are curtailed. In such a political climate, even supporting an innocuous non-binding Congressional resolution on Iraq is considered a controversial action. We have succeeded in creating the very type of centralized state denounced in anti-Soviet Cold War rhetoric.

Commenting upon the national cultural response to the Cold War, Michael Barson and Steven Heller write in Red Scare!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture (2001), “People truly believed that Reds were under the bed—not to mention in the water supply, creeping through the halls of government, and even spying from space. The power of anti-communist propaganda was so effective (and, perhaps, so seductive) that Americans shamefully relinquished basic rights and liberties so that government could persecute its opponents. Talk about un-American!” (8). Rather than simply laughing at the low budget special effects of such films as Invasion USA, it might be prudent to remember the excesses of Cold War culture and politics as we contemplate American foreign policy and the national security state in the so-called war on terror.