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J. Edgar Hoover passionately feared Communism. Communism was not only a threat to the American way of life that his ancestors has worked to ensure for generations in in careers as civil servants, but it was also a threat to his deeply rooted religious beliefs. On June 2, 1919 as a bomb was thrown into the home of Attorney General, Mitchell Palmer, Hoover was thrust into a crusade against communism. After the bombing, Palmer began his infamous “Palmer Raids” which resulted in the in the arrests of more than four thousand alien communists nationwide, as well as the deportation of hundreds more. Attorney General Palmer needed a forthright man to do the job and J. Edgar Hoover, who at the time was working for the Alien Enemy Bureau, fit the part. In his role as special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, Hoover was delegated with an organizing and orchestrating the arrest and deportation of known foreign radicals without due process. In the aftermath of the unconstitutional raids, Mitchell Palmer was disgraced, but J. Edgar Hoover rose to prominence and in 1925 w...
Communism has had an extremely negative impact on Americans—many people got fired for false accusations by the government. The case of Rosenberg has to do with this topic because Ethel Rosenberg did nothing wrong against the U.S., yet she was executed without evidence to support the government’s decision. Typical humans make harmful decisions when in fear, however, those decisions ensure safety for everyone
Before the “Red Scare”, the United States was a huge world power and was thriving in every facet possible. Its people could do as they pleased for the most part, and did not have to fear persecution for their beliefs or associations. The entertainment was reaching its prime with celebrities creating the greatest films and writings the country had ever seen (Pearson). This all changed in 1947, when President Harry Truman upset the waters. Earlier in the year, Truman ordered background checks of all the civilians in service. The results that this investigation found was unnerving. Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official, was revealed as a Soviet spy. He was then convicted on espionage charges and served three years in prison. ...
During the late nineteen forties, a new anti-Communistic chase was in full holler, this being the one of the most active Cold War fronts at home. Many panic-stricken citizens feared that Communist spies were undermining the government and treacherously misdirecting foreign policy. The attorney general planned a list of ninety supposedly disloyal organizations, none of which was given the right to prove its loyalty to the United States. The Loyalty Review Board investigated more than three million employees that caused a nation wide security conscious. Later, individual states began ferreting out Communist spies in their area. Now, Americans cannot continue to enjoy traditional freedoms in the face of a ruthless international conspiracy known as the Soviet Communism. In 1949, eleven accused Communists were brought before a New York jury for abusing the Smith Act of 1940, which prohibited conspiring to teach the violent overthrow of the government. The eleven Communist leaders were convicted and sentenced to prison.
“The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political, gentlemen, it is moral,” is one of the many examples throughout McCarthy’s speech of him assuming an overconfident or superior tone. His claim to own a list of 205 names in the State Department of communist sympathizers gave support for this arrogant tone, but when asked McCarthy refused to provide anyone with the aforementioned list. McCarthy also used this tone when he said, “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation,” expressing the idea that no one but the United States’ own countrymen had the strength to defeat their homeland. McCarthy’s tone throughout the article is one of absolute certainty, and gave his audience the incentive to trust
In the beginning of McCarthy’s political career, he was already walking on thin ice. He launched a series of charges against the government. The first charge was against the communist global apparatus. McCarthy said that the organization had made a sustained attempt to penetrate the United States government and attempt to subvert its foreign policy decisions. The second charge was against the United States government itself. McCarthy said that the official defenses against foreign penetration ranged from weak to nonexistent. The third and final charge was against the government of America, ...
“Mitchell Palmer started the General Intelligence” (http://law2.umkc.edu) or the anti-radical Division of Bureau Investigation on August 1, 1919, with Edgar Hoover another Justice Department employee. The mission o...
In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. During his campaign he had promised to lead the country down the right path with the civil rights movement. This campaign promise had brought hope to many African-Americans throughout the nation. Ever since Lincoln, African-Americans have tended to side with the democrats and this election was no different. The Kennedy administration had noticed that the key to the presidency was partially the civil rights issue. While many citizens were on Kennedy’s side, he had his share of opposition. Malcolm X differed on the view of the President and observed that the civil rights movement wasn’t happening at the speed Kennedy had pledged. Malcolm X possessed other reasons for his dislike of John F. Kennedy and his brothers, especially Robert. The Kennedy government stood for racial liberalism and Malcolm X argued their true intentions for the civil rights movement weren’t in the best interest of the black population. This tension streamed both ways. John Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation felt that Malcolm X had become a threat to national security. James Baldwin has written essays that have included the repeated attacks on the white liberal and supports Malcolm in many of his theories and actions.
American intelligence was aware of the Soviet position and justification of expansionism. Further, the Soviets had made it clear that socialism and capitalism could never be harmonious which lead to U.S. to garner public support for the Cold War. Document 4, House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) testimony by J Edgar Hoover features allegations of Soviet threats to the the U.S. and provides a clear illustration of how the United States government set about shaping public opinion of the dangers of Communist Party by 1947.Within Document 4, highly respected crime fighter, FBI director J.Edgar Hoover articulates reasons why and the details of how and why communism should be found and rooted out of government. Hoover's testimony and statement to the HUAC became the platform from which cooperation, investigation and prosecution of communism had it’s earliest formal roots. More importantly, however, Hoover's testimony lead to America's heightened awakening to the threat of communism as well pushing an institutionalization of an anti-communism network. Details of prosecutions in the 1949 Smith Act trial are found in Document 10 and these details illustrate the extent to which Hoover’s testimony and statement paved the way for such far reaching prosecutions. Government prosecutors made great strides in connecting illegal acts of communism to the subversion of United States laws and Violation of the Smith Act throughout this
On June 19, 1953, there came an end to what would become known as “the trial of the century”. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted for being Soviet spies and leaking crucial information about the creation of atomic weapons to the Soviet Union. They were sentenced to death and executed by use of the electric chair, leaving behind two orphaned children. However, they have never admitted to committing this crime and their involvement in the leaking of the so-called Manhattan Project was never thoroughly proved. Their execution came to be known as one of the main events characteristic of the Cold War environment in the United States of the 1950s, which was influenced by the phenomenon of McCarthyism. This essay will examine the Rosenberg Case up close. It will first look at the course of their trial. Then it will take a step back and describe the Cold War environment in which the trial took place, which was being dominated by anti-communist sentiment, the Red Scare and Joseph McCarthy. In combining these two sections, this essay will seek to explain how the Rosenberg Case neglected American values of freedom and tolerance, and how this neatly fitted the environment of the Cold War.
FOR ALMOST fifty years, the words "McCarthy" and "McCarthyism" have stood for a shameful period in American political history. During this period, thousands of people lost their jobs and hundreds were sent to prison. The U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Communist Party (CP) members, as Russian spies. All of these people were victims of McCarthyism, the witch-hunt during the 1940s and 1950s against Communists and other leftists, trade unionists and civil rights activists, intellectuals and artists. Named for the witch-hunt's most zealous prosecutor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic Communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anticommunist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anticommunist crusade...used all the power of the state to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.[1]
The rise of the Red Scare, McCarthy, and McCarthyism as a whole, was due to a combination of the secrecy of the Communist Party, the misinformation about the party spread by McCarthyism’s proponents, and the extremely aggressive tactics McCarthy himself adopted. Red Scare as a whole gained prominence because Communism was a secretive new movement that Americans knew little about, its associations with Stalinism, and the actual Russian spies in the country. The movement known as McCarthyism started as a response to the Red Scare soon after World War II and was an attempt by various government officials to find Communists in America and then get those Communists removed from the country by any means necessary. The government’s problem was that their overzealousness often led to subversion of the law and American Constitution, mistaken accusations, and false convictions of people who were not Communists. McCarthy himself contributed by fundamentally changing the tactics of the movement to be much more vigorous and allowing other people who shared his extremist beliefs to take positions within the movement.
Beginning in the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy released a monumental rampage across the United States. For fear of governmental infiltration by Communists, an outbreak of accusations swept the nation as a result of the Wisconsin senator, and helped create what is known as the second Red Scare (“McCarthyism”)
Ever since the beginning of the Cold War, Americans have held the word "Communism" to have many negative connotations. Our country has been focused on preventing the spread of that evil form of government. Wars were fought in foreign lands; American lives were lost protecting the world from Communism. Many Americans would be horrified, then, to find that the righteous system of Capitalism actually incorporates many Communist ideas. In fact, many of Karl Marx's radical ideas have reached the most fundamental establishments in the United States government; the government that did everything in its power to prevent the seeds of Communism from taking root in other countries.
In 1928, Herbert Hoover became the third republican president after World War 1. At the beginning of his administration, the economy was looking good. The unemployment rate was only 3%, which means a fully employment in economic. However no one could imagine that in the following two decades America will experience the worst and longest lasting economic recessions that almost swallowed this nation. During that time, the introduction of credit increased consumer spending, which allowed people not to consider future consequences. People started spending more money than they could afford, which leaded to the rising of debt. On the other hand, more and more Americans, especially middle class and upper class, invested in the stock market for quick
One of the most serious fears of the beginning of that period – was fear of communism, which was gradually spending in other countries of the world. American citizens were not ready to support the spread of the Soviet-Style Communism in their country. Directly or indirectly this fear resulted in negative attitude towards foreigners and increased the levels of xenophobia and nativism. “A wave of American labor strikes in 1919 convinced conservative Americans that the democratic system was in a fight to the death with anarchism and communism, beginning the Red Scare.” (Price 1999). U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer initiated struggle against radicals and communism supporters without consideration of their legal rights. There was a wave of mass arrests, deporting of foreigners, beating and assaults. An important role was played by the Sacco-Vanzetti murder case, when two Italians, one was atheist and the second was socialist, were accused of being the murders of the factory paymaster