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HOME   -   HISTORY DICTIONARY   -   RED SCARE

 
   


The Red Scare 1917 - ...
RED SCARE
1917 - ...

 

From Fear to Hysteria and Back to Fear

The term Red Scare stands for the general fear of Communism and all things connected.

Historians sometimes apply the term Red Scare to a specific time period during which fear, alarm, and dread of Communism were flying especially high, at times bordering on paranoia.

The Red Scare began to spread in the West after the Communists came to power during the  Russian Revolution of 1917.

After World War II, the  Cold War renewed strong feelings of anti-communism.



Illustration Above

October 31, 1947 - Drawing published in the Washington Post. Library of Congress.



The Red Scare 1917 - 1920


The first wave of Red Scare was the result of the Communist takeover in Russia in 1917 and the apparent inclination of the revolutionaries to resort to violence if considered necessary. Gruesome case in point was the slaughtering of
Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918.

April 1919 - A series of letter bombs were posted to several prominent Americans, such as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Rumors of a nationwide conspiracy prospered.

Thousands of people were put under arrest, some were deported.



The Red Scare 1945 - 1955


The first years of the
Cold War.


1945
World War II left Europe with a border to the Communist Eastern Bloc.

1947
The U.S. Congress revived the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC.) See illustration above.

1948
Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department official, was accused of being a Soviet spy.

1949
Maoists came to power in China and the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb.

1950
The
Korean War broke out. US-supported forces fought Communist forces.


At home, in February 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R) claimed that 205 Communist spies had infiltrated the State Department. McCarthy was exploiting people's fear and couldn't prove a thing, but with his contribution, also called McCarthyism, the Red Scare gained momentum.

 

Joseph R. McCarthy 1954
JOSEPH RAYMOND MCCARTHY BRAIN-FARTING 1950 - 1954
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration



One of the few who managed to keep her knickers on was
 Margaret Chase Smith. Also Republican, just as McCarthy, the lady showed courage, an ability to think clearly, and she shared how she felt about "unproved charges."

Smith delivered her  Declaration of Conscience on the Senate Floor on June 1, 1950, a speech to which President Truman later referred as

"one of the finest things that has happened here in Washington
in all my years in the Senate and the White House."


However, the damage was done and in the entertainment industry, for example, lists of potential Communist-friendly individuals circulated like a Playboy magazine in a teenage boys' locker room.

Careers were ruined by the hundreds.

 

1951
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg actually were Communist spies. The two were collecting information on how to build a nuclear weapon, forwarded it to the government of the Soviet Union, got caught in 1951, and executed in 1953 in Sing Sing prison, NY.

 

 

 

See also the American Timeline.

 

 

 

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Video Clip: He may be a Communist...


Propaganda clip, Armed Forces Information Film.


 

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