Red Scare Summary

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WCfzPAfYDAsUcTwGyQ09VjQwkimmDarKnl2N4teOH54/edit

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       Period 4

The Red Scare was a belief as well as a period in time that occurred from the late 1940’s to the mid 1950’s. In this time period, people apart of the Red Scare were ones who were afraid that Communism would continue to spread throughout the world. Just before the Red Scare, Communism had just begun to spread from country to country after WWII. This includes the countries behind the iron curtain, as well as China. Soon after this, people became worried this spread would soon increase and every country in the world would be Communist, which of course the Americans did not want. Behind all of this, there was one person leading this action to stop the Communism growth, Joseph McCarthy.

Joseph McCarthy started off as a Republican Senator in the state of Wisconsin. He grew bigger as he made assumptions and would claim random people of the US, as well as the USFG, to be Communists and Soviet spies. By using his beliefs and manipulative tactics, he was quickly able to persuade people into this paranoid way of thinking, and at the end of the day, made citizens more afraid than they should have been. Not only this, but the people whom he made accusations to, would then have to testify and all that did was make people more afraid that there were even more Communists and spies whom did not come forward to their doings. Many people say now, McCarthy did nothing but ultimately ruin people’s lives and only persuaded the nation into such thinkings to gain power.

This period in time truly began, as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US became more intense. More and more people part of the USFG were being analyzed to make sure they were being 100% loyal to the country. From then, McCarthy began taking over and the issue went from being a slight US issue, to a huge issue. Not only this, but McCarthy was said to have taken over the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which is a committee of the House of Representatives who investigate the Communists of the US and testify hearings before Congress.

As for how the ending of the Red Scare, it all slowly started dying now, and was not an abrupt process. Towards the mid 1950’s, it began to hit people that McCarthy’s ways were not doing much for the nation. So around that time things just slowed down and eventually, it was not a big issue anymore to the US citizens.