1 May 1950 was a bad day for the children of Mosinee, Wisconsin. Awakening to the discovery that their town had been taken over by communists acting in league with the Soviet Union, high school students rose from their beds to learn that they were required to report to school. Once there, the teens were coerced into forming a Young Communists League and forced to listen to a lecture by former general secretary of the US Communist Party Ben Gitlow, who warned them that family bonds were secondary to the needs of the Party. The students then watched in horror as the high school's football coach was arrested by communist police and dragged off the athletic field. The school band then struck up a sprightly tune and set off on a march to ‘Red Square’ (the newly rechristened town square). Five hundred people, both adults and children, followed the band while brandishing signs proclaiming allegiance to Stalin and denouncing religion. Those who did not act as they were expected to were sharply rebuked. ‘Little boy, bow to the red flag!’, Chief Commissar Joseph Kornfeder, a Czech immigrant and graduate of Lenin University, barked at a puzzled child. Perhaps the cruellest blow to the children of Mosinee, however, was their discovery that candy would henceforth be available only to Communist Youth members, and they would have to learn to subsist on the same bland diet of potato soup and black bread as the adults.