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Hysteria During The Cold War Essay

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During the Cold War the American People were fearful of communism taking over America. They feared it would spread and take over which led to more fears like the loss of jobs, falling behind the soviet union, destructive war/nuclear attack, and another depression.
America greatly feared communism taking over. President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles addressed this fear on a broadcast to America. Dulles talked about the increasing danger of communism capturing any country or state no matter the size, will take away from the power that America holds and create more danger because he believed that when one country falls into communism so will the rest of America. During this time people were very frightened that communism …show more content…

President Dwight Eisenhower gave a press conference in March 1954 talking about the hysteria that was happening and how it was affecting America. He talks about the fears that were being caused because of this hysteria, and how these fears had an impact on the human mind. People soon started accusing each other of being communist, it started to get brought up in schools around America, and because of the hysteria that was happening many people were more frightened and did everything they could to not look guilty because everyone was watching. The hysteria also led to McCarthyism spreading and people started a campaign against alleged communists. This campaign people made unfair accusations about people in America who they believed were secretly communists. The Loyalty Review Board was a new program used to check the loyalty of people who worked for the government or who were applying for government jobs. This was put in place to make sure that there were no secret communists already in the government or trying to apply for government …show more content…

Military intervention was soon put in place so that Communism wouldn’t spread. The government found small countries that were at risk to be taken over by communism and gave them financial aid. Another big fear was falling behind. America was afraid to fall behind because that would mean they would look weak and powerless compared to the Soviet Union and could be more easily taken over. They feared an atomic bomb could easily drop on them at any moment, so they tried to develop a bigger, more destructive bomb so that they were ready when the time came to attack. Since they were creating a bigger bomb they had to put more money from their budget into defense and space to help them create their bomb. Falling behind was also scary because they could have a bomb dropped on them at any time and still not be prepared. In A Message to Congress from President Eisenhower, talks about how he feels the schools should teach better science and technology to help prevent America from falling behind. They started to implement more technology and science in school systems so that the future generation would be prepared since technology was rapidly getting more

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