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By: History.com Editors
Updated: April 21, 2023 | Original: June 1, 2010
The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (Communists were often referred to as “Reds” for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society. Federal employees were analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government, and the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, investigated allegations of subversive elements in the government and the Hollywood film industry. The climate of fear and repression linked to the Red Scare finally began to ease by the late 1950s.
First Red Scare: 1917-1920
The first Red Scare occurred in the wake of World War I . The Russian Revolution of 1917 saw the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin , topple the Romanov dynasty, kicking off the rise of the communist party and inspiring international fear of Bolsheviks and anarchists.
In the United States, labor strikes were on the rise, and the press sensationalized them as being caused by immigrants bent on bringing down the American way of life. The Sedition Act of 1918 targeted people who criticized the government, monitoring radicals and labor union leaders with the threat of deportation.
The fear turned to violence with the 1919 anarchist bombings, a series of bombs targeting law enforcement and government officials. Bombs went off in a wide number of cities including Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, D.C., and New York City.
The first Red Scare climaxed in 1919 and 1920, when United States Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer ordered the Palmer raids , a series of violent law-enforcement raids targeting leftist radicals and anarchists. They kicked off a period of unrest that became known as the “Red Summer.”
Cold War Concerns About Communism
Following World War II (1939-45), the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union became engaged in a series of largely political and economic clashes known as the Cold War . The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists and leftist sympathizers inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U.S. security.
Did you know? FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was quick to equate any kind of protest with communist subversion, including the civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover labeled King a communist and covertly worked to intimidate and discredit the civil rights leader.
Such ideas were not totally unfounded. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had long carried out espionage activities inside America with the aid of U.S. citizens, particularly during World War II. As apprehension about Soviet influence grew as the Cold War heated up, U.S. leaders decided to take action. On March 21, 1947, President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) issued Executive Order 9835, also known as the Loyalty Order , which mandated that all federal employees be analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government. Truman’s loyalty program was a startling development for a country that prized the concepts of personal liberty and freedom of political organization. Yet it was only one of many questionable activities that occurred during the period of anticommunist hysteria known as the Red Scare.
Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee
One of the pioneering efforts to investigate communist activities took place in the U.S. House of Representatives , where the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC ) was formed in 1938. HUAC’s investigations frequently focused on exposing Communists working inside the federal government or subversive elements working in the Hollywood film industry, and the committee gained new momentum following World War II, as the Cold War began. Under pressure from the negative publicity aimed at their studios, movie executives created Hollywood blacklists that barred suspected radicals from employment; similar lists were also established in other industries.
Another congressional investigator, U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-57) of Wisconsin , became the person most closely associated with the anticommunist crusade–and with its excesses. McCarthy used hearsay and intimidation to establish himself as a powerful and feared figure in American politics. He leveled charges of disloyalty at celebrities, intellectuals and anyone who disagreed with his political views, costing many of his victims their reputations and jobs. McCarthy’s reign of terror continued until his colleagues formally denounced his tactics in 1954 during the Army-McCarthy hearings , when army lawyer Joseph Welch famously asked McCarthy, “Have you no decency?”
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI , and its longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), aided many of the legislative investigations of communist activities. An ardent anticommunist, Hoover had been a key player in an earlier, though less pervasive, Red Scare in the years following World War I (1914-18). With the dawning of the new anticommunist crusade in the late 1940s, Hoover’s agency compiled extensive files on suspected subversives through the use of wiretaps, surveillance and the infiltration of leftist groups.
The information obtained by the FBI proved essential in high-profile legal cases, including the 1949 conviction of 12 prominent leaders of the American Communist Party on charges that they had advocated the overthrow of the government. Moreover, Hoover’s agents helped build the case against Julius Rosenberg (1918-53) and his wife, Ethel Rosenberg (1915-53), who were convicted of espionage in 1951. The Rosenbergs were executed two years later.
Hysteria and Growing Conservatism
Public concerns about communism were heightened by international events. In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb and communist forces led by Mao Zedong (1893-1976) took control of China. The following year saw the start of the Korean War (1950-53), which engaged U.S. troops in combat against the communist-supported forces of North Korea . The advances of communism around the world convinced many U.S. citizens that there was a real danger of “Reds” taking over their own country. Figures such as McCarthy and Hoover fanned the flames of fear by wildly exaggerating that possibility.
HISTORY Vault: The Korean War: Fire & Ice
As the Red Scare intensified, its political climate turned increasingly conservative. Elected officials from both major parties sought to portray themselves as staunch anticommunists, and few people dared to criticize the questionable tactics used to persecute suspected radicals. Membership in leftist groups dropped as it became clear that such associations could lead to serious consequences, and dissenting voices from the left side of the political spectrum fell silent on a range of important issues. In judicial affairs, for example, support for free speech and other civil liberties eroded significantly. This trend was symbolized by the 1951 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dennis v. United States, which said that the free-speech rights of accused Communists could be restricted because their actions presented a clear and present danger to the government.
Red Scare Impact
Americans also felt the effects of the Red Scare on a personal level, and thousands of alleged communist sympathizers saw their lives disrupted. They were hounded by law enforcement, alienated from friends and family and fired from their jobs. While a small number of the accused may have been aspiring revolutionaries, most others were the victims of false allegations or had done nothing more than exercise their democratic right to join a political party.
Though the climate of fear and repression began to ease in the late 1950s, the Red Scare has continued to influence political debate in the decades since. It is often cited as an example of how unfounded fears can compromise civil liberties.
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McCarthyism and the Red Scare
In the end, President Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back against Senator Joseph McCarthy—and he did
In the early 1950s, American leaders repeatedly told the public that they should be fearful of subversive Communist influence in their lives. Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination. This paranoia about the internal Communist threat—what we call the Red Scare—reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing Republican, launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of the State Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even the US Army. During Eisenhower’s first two years in office, McCarthy’s shrieking denunciations and fear-mongering created a climate of fear and suspicion across the country. No one dared tangle with McCarthy for fear of being labeled disloyal.
Any man who has been named by a either a senator or a committee or a congressman as dangerous to the welfare of this nation, his name should be submitted to the various intelligence units, and they should conduct a complete check upon him. It’s not too much to ask. Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1953
It has long been a subject of debate among historians: Why didn’t Eisenhower do more to confront McCarthy? Journalists, intellectuals, and even many of Eisenhower’s friends and close advisers agonized over what they saw as Ike’s timid approach to McCarthyism. Despite his popularity and his enormous political capital, they believed, Ike refused to engage directly with McCarthy. By avoiding the Red-hunting senator, some have argued, Eisenhower allowed McCarthyism to continue unchecked.
By contrast, later scholars working from the documentary record perceived a design in Eisenhower’s strategy with McCarthy. Ike adopted an “indirect approach.” Instead of going right at McCarthy, Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to undercut and stymie the senator and his attacks. The political scientist Fred Greenstein, for example, argued that Eisenhower’s handling of McCarthy provides evidence of a “hidden hand” approach to government. In this interpretation, Ike rode above the fray of politics while secretly pulling levers and using White House influence to obstruct McCarthy and his allies.
President read my text with great irritation, slammed it back at me and said he would not refer to McCarthy personally—‘I will not get in the gutter with that guy.’ C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower speechwriter, 1953
Looking at all the evidence, the clearest conclusion is that Eisenhower did not want to confront Joe McCarthy at all. And during 1953, he tried to avoid the whole issue, hoping the Senate would silence the explosive senator. McCarthy was a Republican, after all, and many fellow senators supported him. Ike needed to keep his party unified to pass bills in other areas; battling McCarthy would only stir up a civil war inside the GOP.
Furthermore, Eisenhower did not want to appear “soft” on the problem of internal subversion. There had, after all, been real spies who penetrated into the State Department, notably Alger Hiss.
And Communist agents had stolen classified secrets from the wartime Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were condemned to die in the electric chair as punishment for their theft of atomic secrets, Eisenhower did not for a moment consider granting them clemency. On June 19, 1953, they were both put to death.
Eisenhower in 1953 improvised in dealing with McCarthy, at first trying to ignore him, then trying to outdo him in the Red-hunting business. Then he tried to seduce him with promises of new legislation to destroy Communism in America. None of these tactics worked. ‘The Age of Eisenhower ,’ chapter 6
But at the start of 1954, the picture changed. Joe McCarthy turned his investigatory resources on the US Army and on members of the administration itself. Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back. The first move the White House made was to try to discredit the men around McCarthy, notably the lawyer Roy Cohn, who was leading the investigation, and Cohn’s assistant David Schine, who had recently been drafted into the Army.
The Army compiled a damaging dossier of dirt on Cohn, showing that he used threats and intimidation to demand that Schine be given plum assignments and easy duty. The White House leaked this dossier to the press and Congress. McCarthy and Cohn now stood accused of abuse of power.
Ike went one step further. In order to close down McCarthy’s reckless use of subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify before his committee, Eisenhower invoked executive privilege.
In May 1954, Ike simply said that administration officials and all executive branch employees would ignore any call from McCarthy to testify. Eisenhower explained his action, declaring that “it is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the executive branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters,” without those conversations being subject to Congressional scrutiny.
It was a bold and daring move, and it worked. McCarthy, his credibility in tatters and now starved of witnesses, hit a brick wall—and his fellow senators turned against him. In early December 1954, the Senate passed a motion of condemnation, in a vote of 67 to 22. McCarthy was ruined—and within three years he was dead from alcohol abuse. The era of McCarthyism was over. Ike had helped bring it to a bitter end.
Return to THE AGE OF EISENHOWER landing page
Spies on the radio.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, dramatic radio programs told tales of government agents on a quest to find Communist infiltrators who, in the words of one, "would undermine our America."
David Harding, Counterspy began in 1942 as the story of an American operative fighting the Nazis, and the long-running program easily adapted to a Cold War narrative in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In this episode from December 1950, Harding reads a message from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover calling on law enforcement officers, patriotic organizations, and individuals to report on anything that might indicate espionage, sabotage, or subversive activities.
I Was a Communist for the FBI , based on a film of the same name, ran for just over a year, from April 1952 until October 1953. In this episode, from April 1953, Matt Cvetic describes his undercover assignment: "For nine years I was living on the brink of a volcano, a volcano called Communism, a volcano which is centered in Soviet Russia but which is erupting all over the world."
Comics and pulps
Comic books and pulp fiction magazines also brought the threat of Communism to life. The Catholic Catechetical Guild of Minneapolis published these two comics for distribution in 1947 and 1960.
McCarthy begins to question Ike
In this November 24, 1953, address over radio and television, McCarthy turned an attack on former President Truman to questions directed at Eisenhower. “Even for McCarthy," says Will Hitchcock in The Age of Eisenhower , this was a loopy, unhinged performance.”
Death of a senator
The new york times reports on mccarthy's death.
McCarthy died of liver failure on May 2, 1957. The following day the New York Times front page story said, “After the Senate voted in December 1954 to condemn his tactics, his political power waned. He was seldom in his Senate seat and his advice, seldom offered, was little heeded.”
Red Scare and McCarthyism Consequences Essay
Introduction, short-term consequences, long-term consequences, reference list.
The 1920s to late 1950s in the United States saw the emergence of so-called ‘Red Scare’ and McCarthyism. These socio-political phenomena were caused by the birth of Communism and the Soviet Union, as well as by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The word commonly used to describe the atmosphere in society at the time is ‘hysteria’ or ‘paranoia’.
As the rivalry with the Soviet Union escalated, emotions ran high, and initial suspicions gradually paved the way for subsequent arrests and trials on charges of spying and providing the Reds (communists) with inside information. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was involved in the investigations of alleged plots and subversions in the government and cinematography 1 . The atmosphere of fear persisted until the late 1950s. Short-term consequences of Red Scare and McCarthyism phenomena involved the atmosphere of repression and hysteria, while the long-term consequences included a certain degree of impact on economic development.
In 1950, Senator McCarthy publicly claimed that the communists successfully infiltrated the U.S. government structure 2 . According to Storrs, the tendency to suspect communist infiltration appeared during the first Red Scare in the 1920s 3 . As the Great Depression revealed certain weaknesses of capitalism, the Communist Party grew in numbers. Moreover, the New Deal program, introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt, extended the federal government’s control of the economy.
The anti-communist structures started emerging at the same time. In 1938, the Special House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities was created. Alongside with McCarthy’s investigating committees, these structures collaborated with the Federal Investigation Bureau in their efforts to track subversive activities and identify communist spies 4 . Suspicions reached the presidential level when Harry Truman’s administration faced accusations of being linked to Soviet espionage activities.
Thus, the major short-term consequence of Red Scare consisted of its increasingly powerful tendency to spread to all levels of society. After the accusations directed towards Truman’s administration, Red Scare paranoia started spreading to not only local governments and employers but also the media, universities, labor unions, etc. Consequently, various accusations on all these levels resulted in ludicrous situations, interfering with the proper development of the professional areas.
Despite the irony, the idea of protecting democracy by stifling essential democratic values, such as the multitude of opinions, should be considered a short-term consequence as well 5 . The second Red Scare was far more elaborate than the first, as it led to executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of communist espionage, to multiple cases of imprisonment, deportation, or the most common punishment – long-term unemployment. Storrs stresses the fact that one of the critical consequences of Red Scare was the lively debate that goes on to this day about the proper balance between security and liberty.
Long-term consequences of Red Scare and McCarthyism pertain to the economic development of the country. Storrs indicates that measures undertaken by McCarthy prevented the American welfare state from developing properly 6 . The author stresses that the impact that McCarthyism had on the U.S. economy is largely underestimated.
A great number of officials were removed from office in the wake of McCarthyism hysteria. More often than not, the eliminated officials were working on certain policies designed to strengthen the democratic system, redistribution, and regulation. Thus, Red Scare had a negative impact on the economic potential of the New Deal, as it removed the people capable of managing the unregulated capitalist system, as well as its anti-democratic aspects 7 .
In their book describing the impact of Red Scare and McCarthyism on the economic development of Texas, Carleton and Faulk claim that even though Red Scare was gradually dissipating by the 1960s, the influence of this phenomenon was visible over the next several decades 8 . Workers, students, and various professionals were obliged to sign loyalty oaths until the late 1960s.
The police structures developed for the purposes of revealing Red espionage continued working in the 1970s. By spying on Texas population, they infringed on the privacy rights of those who could not even remotely resemble Soviet spies. Moreover, the effects of Red Scare were very prominent in public schools, where the ultra-right were the driving force. A great number of teachers were scared into resigning, and the censure of publications and curriculum continued even in the 1970s 9 .
Even though Red Scare phenomenon occurred as a reaction to the rising power of the Soviet Union, the impact it had on the U.S. socio-economic dimension was prominent and long-lasting. McCarthyism, which emerged from the social hysteria and paranoia, albeit based on several proven cases of communist espionage, was a radical response to the problem.
The short-term consequences involved the virulent nature of Red Scare, touching upon nearly every aspect of life in the U.S. The long-term consequences involved certain socio-political and economic obstacles that ensured that democracy and economy face very serious difficulties. Skoll and Korstanje claim that due to Red Scare, a culture of fear started developing in the U.S., with its modern equivalent and a direct consequence – a fear of terrorism, which prompts certain politicians to deliver speeches very similar to those pronounced over fifty years ago by Senator McCarthy 10 .
Carleton, DE & Faulk, JH, 2014, Red Scare: right-wing hysteria, fifties fanaticism, and their legacy in Texas , University of Texas Press, Austin.
Red Scare n.d. Web.
Skoll, GR & Korstanje, ME, 2013. Constructing an American fear culture from red scares to terrorism. International Journal of Human Rights and Constitutional Studies , 1 (4), pp.341-364.
Storrs, LRY 2013, The second red scare and the unmaking of the new deal left , Princeton University Press. Princeton.
Storrs, LRY 2015, McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare . Web.
1 Red Scare n.d., para. 2.
2 Storrs LRY 2015, ‘McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare’, para. 1.
3 Ibid., para. 2.
4 Ibid., para. 2.
5 Ibid., para. 2.
6 Storrs, LRY, 2013. The second red scare and the unmaking of the new deal left . Princeton University Press, p. 2.
7 Ibid., p. 2.
8 Carleton, DE & Faulk, JH, 2014. Red Scare: Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas . University of Texas Press, p. 305.
9 Ibid., p. 305.
10 Skoll, GR & Korstanje, ME, 2013. Constructing an American fear culture from red scares to terrorism. International Journal of Human Rights and Constitutional Studies , 1 (4), p. 341.
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Bibliography
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The Red Scare And The Salem Witch
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