Atomic fears and communist threats: The United States in the grip of the Second Red Scare

The Red Scare was fueled by a series of global concerns that were facing the United States. began in the late 1940s.

The most pressing of these was the news that the Soviet Union had developed their own nuclear weapons.

This revelation created a new level of fear in the United States, as it became clear that the Soviets had the ability to destroy America. 

The second concern was the establishment of a communist government in China under Mao Zedong, which had seemed unlikely just a decade earlier. 

As such, Americans were now convinced that communists were trying to take over the world, and it was feared that communists inside the USA would overthrow the government.

Those in positions of power were determined to do what they could to stop them.

So, they turned to the legal system to create laws that could be used to identify and punish those who were seeking to establish communism in America.

Back in 1940, the U.S. government had actually passed the Smith Act, which made it a criminal offense to advocate the violent overthrow of the government.

It was this law that would become extensively relied upon during the Red Scare.

Further, in March 1947, President Truman announced a new Loyalty Order (known as Executive Order 9835), which required all government employees to be screened for communist activity.

If they were found to be communists, they would be fired from their positions.

To enforce these laws, those who wanted to protect America turned to a group that had been set up before WWII even began.

It was a congressional committee known as the 'House Un-American Activities Committee' (HUAC) and was created in 1938.

This committee was originally formed to investigate disloyalty and subversive activities by both fascists and communists.

However, its focus on communism became more prominent in the post-WWII years, which coincided with the onset of the Cold War.

The House Un-American Activities Committee had the important power to hold hearings in which people were called to publicly testify about their communist beliefs.

Those who refused to cooperate with the committee, or respond to summons to the hearings, were often blacklisted from working anywhere in America.

By 1947, the HUAC had begun targeting the film industry, where a large number of writers, actors, and directors were called to testify in Congress.

Once there, they were accused of harboring communist beliefs or refusing to cooperate with the committee.

It was hoped that they would provide evidence against many Hollywood directors and producers who had shown Communism positively in their movies.

In that year, a particular group of screenwriters and directors, known as the Hollywood Ten, were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the HUAC.

As a result, they were sentenced to prison, and they were blacklisted, which meant that they were no longer permitted to work in the United States.

In response, a number of other actors and directors chose to move to other countries to save their careers rather than face public questioning.

Following the apparent confirmation of the presence of communist sympathizers in Hollywood, the Second Red Scare gathered much more steam in the late 1940s and lasted until the mid-1950s.

One of the most famous cases during the early years of the Red Scare was the trial of Alger Hiss, who was a former State Department.

He was official accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and his eventual conviction in 1950 heightened fears of communist infiltration within the U.S. government.

Then, in 1950, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, was also convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

This was the strongest evidence yet that communists had successfully penetrated sensitive areas of national security.

This led to the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 that required any and all communist organizations in America to register with the U.S. government.

It also authorized the creation of detention camps for those found guilty of subversive activities.

At this point in time, Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, became the most vocal crusader against communism.

He made a sensational declaration that he had compiled a list of names of Communists that he knew were working in the State Department.

The exact number of people on the list was never known for sure, but it triggered a fresh burst of fear within American society that their own government had been infiltrated.

It was under McCarthy's encouragement that it was decided that new public hearings should be held to root out the threat.

What would become known as the McCarthy hearings occurred between 1950 and 1954.

During them, McCarthy used fear and intimidation to force people to confess their communist beliefs.

He also accused many innocent people of being communists. Public opinion polls during the height of McCarthyism revealed that a significant portion of Americans—over 50% at times—supported the investigations into communist activities.

Perhaps the most famous trial at this time was against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: a married American couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

Their trial took place from 1951 to 1953, at the end of which, they were found guilty and sentenced to death.

They were the only civilians to be executed for espionage during the Cold War era. 

However, their trial was a highly controversial one, and many people believe that they were innocent.

In particular, Ethel's guilt is still quite contested, even today, but recent declassified evidence suggests Julius was indeed involved in espionage.

The newest information was revealed by the Venona Project, which was declassified in 1995, and it showed that some individuals accused during the Red Scare, including Julius Rosenberg, had indeed passed sensitive information to the Soviet Union.

Although, the scope of the espionage was far smaller than McCarthy had claimed.

Nevertheless, the execution of the Rosenbergs helped to fuel the paranoia of the time, and it showed how far the government was willing to go in order to root out communism.

By the end of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, things had began to turn against McCarthy.

Since the interrogations were a broadcast to the public in a series of televised Senate hearings, it quickly exposed Senator McCarthy’s abusive tactics.

Ultimately, the common people began to question McCarthy’s integrity, turning public opinion against him, and cooled the fear generated during the Second Red Scare.

In fact, a journalist named Edward R. Murrow criticized McCarthy’s methods during a famous broadcast on his show See It Now in 1954.

Soon after, President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself, although initially supportive of anti-communist measures, quickly distanced himself from McCarthy's methods and criticized him in private.

Finally, in December 1954, Senator McCarthy was formally censured by the U.S. Senate for his conduct during the anti-communist investigations, which effectively ending his influence on American politics.

At its conclusion, it is estimated that around 3 million federal employees were investigated for possible communist sympathies under the Loyalty Review Program, with approximately 300 individuals being dismissed as security risks.

While anti-communist sentiment persisted after the fall of McCarthy, it was not as widespread or intense.

The FBI was responsible for investigating possible communist activity, and it was often involved in the persecution of innocent people. 

To undertake its task, FBI agents used a range of surveillance techniques, including wiretapping and infiltration, to gather information on suspected communists.

They also used these techniques to try to silence those who spoke out against the government. 

Specifically, the FBI kept files on hundreds of thousands of Americans, which were used to blacklist them from jobs and other opportunities.

Surprisingly, this practice continued until the 1970s, when it was finally stopped due to the more controversial surveillance activities and civil rights abuses exposed by the Church Committee in 1975.

The head of the FBI itself, J. Edgar Hoover, was a particularly controversial figure.

He was personally accused of using the agency to persecute innocent people, and many believe that he used his power to silence political opponents. 

As a result of the public criticism the FBI's activities faced as a result of the Red Scare, the agency's reputation was tarnished for a long time.

The last elements of the Red Scare came to an end in the late 1960s, as America began to focus on other issues.

It had been a time of great fear and paranoia in America. Many innocent people had been afraid to express their opinions in public for over a decade for fear of being accused of being a communist.

This ultimately led to a climate of self-censorship and conformity. What is not often realized is that the entire process of the Red Scare had a significant impact on the U.S. economy.

The government spent billions of dollars on anti-communist programs, and this led to an increase in taxes.

In real world terms, it was all spent for very little tangible benefit.