General Statement 1 In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States took a turn to the economic and political right. Nothing demonstrated this shift more than the Second Red Scare. Trials, denouncements, black lists, and paranoia about Communism the international struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States for world dominance. Result - the Cold War transformed anti-Communism from a right-wing to a mainstream ideology.

The Second Red Scare On May 26, 1938, Congress organized the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate American Fascists and Communists, After the war it gained strength and began to investigate left-wing Americans who might be communist sympathizers. This search led HUAC to Hollywood in 1947, where left-leaning actors, writers, and directors were allegedly spreading subversive communist messages through their movies.

The Second Red Scare One young actor who was ready to name names was future President Ronald Reagan. HUAC did not uncover any of the systematic subversion it had alleged in Hollywood. Nevertheless, since being questioned or mentioned during a hearing was, in the minds of many studio executives, an indication of guilt. Suspected leftists found themselves on a blacklist - shut them out of jobs in cinema, radio, television, and theater years.

The Cold War  The Soviet Union and the United States former allies  Why?  Different people have different views on the origins of the Cold War:  All the fault of the Soviet Union  All the fault of the United States  All of the above

Truman loyalty program In 1947, as part of this growing anti- communist hysteria, President Harry Truman ordered the Justice Department to draw up a list of possible "subversives" in government. Under the terms of this loyalty program, the federal government could dismiss an employee "if reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal.

The Trial of Alger Hiss Took place from 1948 to 1950 Harvard-educated New Dealer who had come to Washington during the Roosevelt administration. President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His accuser named Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor of Time magazine. Chambers accused Hiss of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s when Hiss had been employed at the State Department. Chambers claimed that he and Hiss had belonged to the same espionage ring and that Hiss had given him copies of secret State Department documents. A young California Congressman named Richard M. Nixon took up the case Chambers claimed that a he had hidden a microfilm of the secret documents in a pumpkin field near his farm,

The Trial of Alger Hiss The statute of limitations for an espionage charge had expired The federal government prosecuted Hiss was for perjury. The result of the first trial was a hung jury. After the second trial, a jury found Hiss guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison. Hiss struggled to prove his innocence for decades. When Hiss was 87, a Russian general in charge of Soviet intelligence archives declared that Hiss had never been a spy

McCarthyism Republican party leadership considered him a legislative lightweight. February 9, 1950, he dropped a political bombshell. McCarthy gave a speech at the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, where he claimed to have a list of 205 Communists in the State Department. No one in the press actually saw the names on the list, but McCarthy's announcement made the national news.

McCarthyism McCarthy continued to repeat his groundless charges and the number of Communists on his list fluctuated from speech to speech. Launched attacked the Truman administration. McCarthy labeled Secretary of State Dean Acheson "Red Dean." He also claimed that World War II General George Marshall had been "hoodwinked into aiding a great conspiracy." Not winning the Korean War ( ) also gave credibility to the argument that "subversives" were at work in the government

Conformity McCarthy's attacks emerged within a climate of political and social conformity. During this time, for example, one state required pro wrestlers to take a loyalty oath before stepping into the ring. In Indiana, a group of anti-communists indicted Robin Hood (and its vaguely socialistic message that the book's titular hero had a right to rob from the rich and give to the poor) forced librarians to pull the book from the shelves. Baseball's Cincinnati Reds renamed themselves the "Redlegs." "Miss Loyalty" beauty contests became the rage.

McCarthy's Supporters The ranks of McCarthy's supporters were generally defined along political, religious, and occupational lines. They typically included: Republicans Catholics Conservative Protestants Blue-collar workers

The Fall of McCarthy Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House McCarthy's campaigns against subversion in the government became an attack on his own party Spring of 1954, tables turned when McCarthy charged that the United States Army had promoted a dentist accused of being a Communist. Television broadcast allowed the general public to see the Senator as a blustering bully his investigations seen as a misguided scam.

The Fall of McCarthy Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney in The McCarthy Army heroes said “"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" This lawyers stand on national television broke the spell McCarthy had on the nation. The Senate votes in 1954 to censure him.

General Statement  The Cold War and the spread of Communism in Eastern Europe, China, and Korea in the late 1940s and early 1950s prompted the United States to increase dramatically its defense spending. As more and more companies came to rely on defense contracts, the power of the military-industrial complex grew