The McCarthy Hearings
Senator Joseph McCarthy instilled fear into the minds of the Americans with his anti-
Communist thinking, with his ideals. Senator McCarthy, during 1950-1954, disrupted the United
States with the HUAC ( House of Un-American Activity Committee) Hearings. These hearings brought government workers, college professors, playwrights and Hollywood screen writers, actors, artists, musicians, gays, Jews and anyone with a goatee under suspicion.
Joseph McCarthy was an unknown senator from Wisconsin, who wanted to be in the spotlight. During a speech in West Virginia, Senator McCarthy accused the State Department of being full of Communists. The media immediately centered on McCarthy and his accusations. A
Senate committee was immediately appointed to look at these accusations. The United States was already in the middle of a Communist witch-hunt. It was believed that the recipe for the atomic bomb was stolen by an American communist. With the Communist take over in Russia with Stalin and in China with Mao Tse Tung, the United States was already on the road to being conservative. The Republican Party had control of the Congress. President Truman restarted the
HUAC to stop the fears of the American people .
Investigations were started to look for Communist activities in organized labor, the
Federal government, and especially Hollywood. Hollywood was hit the har...
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Show MoreThe McCarthy era is very similar to the Salem Witch trials. They are both similar, because they both dealt with hysteria. Hysteria is an uncontrollable fear or outburst of emotion. Both things had to do with people accusing each other of people being communist, and people being witches.
I am reading Bomb by Steve Sheinkin. At the beginning of the book, Oppenheimer, who is the main chemical scientist in the novel, sees the effects of the Great Depression on his pupils when they cannot buy chemistry textbooks. During Oppenheimer’s time as a professor, the Nazis discovered the splitting of the uranium atom. When Albert Einstein found out that about the discovery the Nazis did, he informs President Roosevelt about how the Nazis plan to develop atomic weapons. Harry Gold who is a Communist spy, starts to work with the KGB. And starts to steal ideas and projects from the American Uranium Committee.
Despite all of the security used by the officials in charge of the “Manhattan Project,” soviet spies managed to leak information to the Soviet Union that allowed them to create a nuclear bomb of their own. Klaus Fuchs, an important scientist to the “Manhattan Project,” managed to move throughout the project and provide crucial information to the Soviets. David Greenglass also provi...
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.
"Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of
The Alien Registration Act passed by Congress on 29th June, 1940, made it illegal for anyone in the United States to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government. The law also required all alien residents in the United States over 14 years of age to file a comprehensive statement of their personal and occupational status and a record of their political beliefs. Within four months a total of 4,741,971 aliens had been registered.
America’s development of this secret atomic bomb began back in 1939 when President Roosevelt was still alive. This project was so secretive that Roosevelt did not even want his Vice President Harry S. Truman to know a thing about it. Truman could not believe it, until he read the note from Secretary Stimson. That night he wrote a letter in his diary about the U.S. perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the world. Tr...
"The McCarthy Era of the 1950's and the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600's were major events in American history that destroyed the lives and careers of many innocent victims. These tragic events were similar in that they demonstrated how hard times lead to society's need to find a scapegoat. They also show the shame and regret that take place after the bloodbaths occur. The parallels between these two events, which took place almost 300 years apart, are remarkable."
In fear that Nazi Germany was developing an atomic bomb, on December 6 1941, scientists, engineers and the army raced to build the first man-made atomic bomb. These combined efforts provide the United States with wartime military advantage was dubbed ‘The Manhattan Project’. However, when by late 1944, concrete intelligence confirmed that Germany’s work on atomic weaponry had basically stalled in 1942, many scientists were given cause to pause and reassess their commitment to the project. Joseph Rotblat, for instance, quit the project maintaining that, ‘the fact that the German effort was stillborn undermined the rationale for continuing’. Indeed, he was the exception. Nevertheless, the scientists’ apprehensions reached a high plateau when Germany surrendered in May 1945. These events, among others, suggested that the bomb would be used, if at all, against Japan (a reversal, in a way, of the racism and genocide issues within Germany). Many scientists, thus, began to debate among themselves the moral and ethical implications of using an atomic bomb in the war and the fate of humanity in the imminent atomic age. In doing so, the scientists with a stronger sense of responsibility, resolved that, as they had created the bomb, they possessed both the legitimacy and intellect to formulate proposals regarding its use. On their political mission, the scientists fastened...
On January 31st, 1950. President Harry S. Truman announces his decision for the development of the hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb was theorized to be way more powerful then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II. Five months earlier, America lost their powerful nuclear supremacy to the Soviet Union, due to the country successfully detonating an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Several weeks later, Britain and the U.S. intelligence came to the conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top ranking scientists in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. With the collection of these events, Truman approved the massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb”.
The era following WWII and the era we are currently in portray times in United State's history that united our country in some ways, but in other ways were times of constrained freedom and illustrated the limitations of our country. McCarthyism, the period in the early to mid 1950's, was a time that arose from once good relations with the Soviet Union to a time where there was fear of communism within our country. Terrorism, a term that has been around, but now brings new meaning. The U.S had attacks in the 90's in Oklahoma, the Olympics, and the previous attacks on the World Trade Center, but none amounted to September 11, 2001 with the amount of casualties, the desperate measures of the attackers and the cracks in our security system.
For more than two thousand years anti-Semitism has plagued the Jews, however, the term has only been around for about thirty years (Strack 594). Due to the hateful accusations and of those who did not understand their religion, Jews, as a scorned people, gradually became more exclusive and intolerant of other religions. Because of Judaism’s strict adherence to their own beliefs and unwillingness to consider any alternatives, Muslims and Christians have scorned and persecuted Jews.
I have a hard time thinking that anyone could believe the Nazi’s were a moral people. The Nazi people are unparalleled in the level of criminal unjust committed against a group of persons. Nazi’s however did believe they were moral and were justified in their actions. The idea of Nazism was a way of life and one must think, feel, and act as in the best interest of Nazi beliefs. The moral code of the Nazi people was one that followed the idea that Nazi’s were superior, competent, and pure. The moral code included the idea that those under persecution of the Nazi’s were inferior, less morally sound, and must use their tribulations to correct themselves to become a more loyal citizen of the community. One could classify their actions as racism and Social Darwinism. The Nazi people believed in filth and in accordance with the history of what happened in concentration camps, cleansing. Harold Ofstad is quoted of saying, “…The Nazi faith must permeate one’s entire being, penetrate the very core of one’s soul…” The moral code of the Nazi’s can be fairly labeled as a mistake of disastrous proportions, a group of people brainwashed from the strong sense of duty to a dictator’s beliefs, and a stain in history that will never be forgotten. Nazi’s believed that they were superior, they were morally sound in any action they may choose to take, they were justified to correct and or exterminate anyone being that was different from themselves, and that the Nazi belief and code of ethics was a way of life to carry one for eternity and to pass on for future generations. The moral code was one of imperfection, and many flaws that entitled the Nazi people to kill millions of Jews. The thought that the Nazi people were morally sound, or competent for that matter, is one that I hope every sane being can tell is false.
With combined years of experience and study of atomic power the scientists not only had inside knowledge about the long-term damage that atomic bombs can cause, but they also knew the repercussions that could follow. The scientists feared that “Once they were introduced as an instrument of war it would be difficult to resist for long the temptation of putting them to such use.” (Szilard). By using this type of persuasion by rationale, the scientists aimed to stop America from unleashing a super
Throughout history , it has been shown that, history has a tendency to repeat itself. In 1692, men and women were accused of witchcraft whether they were guilty or not. The place that this was occurring was, Salem, Massachusetts, a city full of puritans who came from Europe. Witchcraft was the among the worst crime any individual could do. This often times led to people being hung or exiled from the church. Many people were hung, even though they were innocent. Many years later during the WWII era, there was a lot of speculation about communists and their impact in America This era was known as the McCarthyism era, because, Sen. McCarthy was the leading America into a anti -communist state. In one case in particular was of a U.S AIr Force Lieutenant, Milo Radulovich, who was released from the Air Force due to the fact that his father, read a newspaper which was from Serbia, because he has a Serbian background, the Air Force believed his was pro-communism, since the newspaper favored communism. The Air Force also believed Milo was pro-communism because, his sister peacefully protested outside of a hotel which didn’t allow a communist member to stay at . Milo was born and raised in Michigan, he also dedicatedly served his country, he had no form of favor in communism. but was automatically placed under the notion that he supported communism and was fighting for them because his dad read a newspaper from a different country and his sister protested for equal rights. Neither Milo or his family did anything bad. Assumption thinking leads to stereotypes.