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The First Red Scare
After the end of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Red Scare took hold in the United States -
A Nation In Fear
A nationwide fear of communists, socialists, anarchists, and other dissidents suddenly grabbed the American psyche in 1919 following a series of anarchist bombings. The nation was in fear, and innocent people were jailed for expressing their views. -
The End of the First Red Scare
Then in the early 1920s, the fear seemed to dissipate just as quickly as it had begun, and the Red Scare was over. -
The Second Red Scare
The start of the second Red Scare occurred after World War II (1939) and was popularly known as "McCarthyism" after its most famous supporter, Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
Smith Act
In 1940, the U.S. Congress legislated the Alien Registration Act (aka the Smith Act) making it a crime to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association. -
Influencing the American Public
The events of the late 1940s—the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the Iron Curtain around Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapon—surprised the American public, influencing popular opinion about U.S. national security, that, in turn, connected to fear of the Soviet Union hydrogen-bombing the United States, and fear of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). -
CPUSA
In 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the CPUSA’s official position became pro-war, opposing labor strikes in the weapons industry and supporting the U.S. war effort against the Axis Powers. With the slogan "Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism", the chairman, Earl Browder, advertised the CPUSA’s integration to the political mainstream. -
Soviets Spies
At the House Un-American Activities Committee, former CPUSA members and NKVD spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, testified that Soviet spies and communist sympathizers had penetrated the U.S. government before, during and after World War II. -
Federal Employees Loyalty Program
In March 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating the “Federal Employees Loyalty Program” establishing political-loyalty review boards who determined the “Americanism” of Federal Government employees, and recommended termination of those who had confessed to spying for the Soviet Union, as well as some suspected of being "Un-American". -
The End of the Red Scare
In the process revealing the extraordinary breadth of the Soviet spy network in infiltrating the federal government; the process also launched the successful political career of Richard Nixon, and Robert F. Kennedy as well as that of Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy, a freshman Senator who died soon thereafter, realized little political gain from the process.
