Dalton Got His Gun
History surveys of the 1940s and 1950s have often lionized the victims the anti-Communist witchhunts. They more rarely mention, however, those prominent victims of this Second Red Scare who were victimizers during the less publicized "Brown Scare of World War II. Dalton Trumbo, who went to jail for several months during the Cold War for refusing to"name names," especially excelled as a Brown Scare witchhunter.
Trumbo first achieved fame in 1939 as the author of the antiwar novel, Johnny Got His Gun.
Once Hitler invaded Russia, however, the pro-Communist Trumbo threw aside his antiwar views, as well as concern for the protection of civil liberties. According to his biography on the Internet Movie Data Base,
Trumbo voluntarily invited FBI agents to his house in 1944 and showed them letters he had received from what he perceived were pro-fascist peaceniks who had requested copies of"Johnny Got His Gun", which was now out-of-print due to Trumbo's own orders to his publisher. He turned those letters over to the FBI (thus, effectively"naming names") and later kept in contact with the Bureau (that would later haunt blacklisted leftists), urging that the F.B.I. deal with them. His actions conformed to the CPUSA policy of denouncing anyone who opposed the war. Trumbo instructed his publisher
to recall all copies of"Johnny Got His Gun" and to cease publication of the book....