ABSTRACT
From August to October 1945, a subcommittee of the House Foreign AffairsCommittee made a tour of Europe and the Near East.1 Leaked to the press in June 1946, their trip report called for an end to “any semblance of appeasement.” It blasted not only scandalous Soviet activities (telling tales of “pillage, rape, and torture”) in Czechoslovakia and Poland, but also the “ineffective American effort to counter them.”2 Though only two members of the subcommittee, Karl E. Mundt (R-SD) and Francis P. Bolton (R-OH), completed the tour, the other two members of the subcommittee, Thomas S. Gordon (D-IL) and Joseph P. Ryter (D-CT), signed this crucial part of the report.3
