[2][3] He was born in Colorado City, Texas, on November 5, 1900,[4] to Martin Dies Sr., who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1909 to 1919.

"[6]: 377 Due to the support of fellow Texan John Nance Garner, he became a member of the important House Rules Committee.

At the beginning, Dies fully supported the New Deal as it aimed to provide relief for the distressed rural areas, which he represented in Congress.

Dies was its first chairman, serving for seven years from 1938 to 1944, and declaring a crusade against right-wing and left-wing subversives in the government, and other organizations nationwide.

[9] As chairman, Dies pursued Nazis, labor unions, New Deal agencies, and communist or communist-affiliated groups, from which he gained a national reputation and even published a book about his exploits, The Trojan Horse of America (1940).

In 1938, the committee was criticized for including Shirley Temple, who was 10 years old at the time,[10] on a list of Hollywood figures who sent greetings to the leftist Communist-owned French newspaper, Ce Soir.

[11] The Roosevelt Administration mentioned the attacks when Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, stated: "They have found dangerous radicals there led by little Shirley Temple."

Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins added that Shirley Temple was born an American citizen and should not have to debate such "preposterous revelations".

In this testimony, Dr. Matthews stated: The Communist Party relies heavily on the carelessness or indifference of thousands of prominent citizens in lending their names for its propaganda purposes.

For example, the French newspaper Ce Soir, which is owned outright by the Communist Party, featured hearty greetings from Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, James Cagney, and even Shirley Temple.

[21] Parmelee was indeed an advocate for gymnosophy, a form of asceticism originated by two German nudist activists, but its relevance to American national security was never convincingly explained.

[22][23] Dies' public charges and rumor-mongering after June 1941 came at a time when the USSR was a member of the allied nations resisting the Nazi offensive in Europe and North Africa.

Dies was a signatory to the 1956 Southern Manifesto that opposed the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.