ipl-logo

Joseph Mccarthyism In The 1950's

888 Words4 Pages

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?" Many Americans had to answer this question to government officials during the 1950s. A widespread paranoia of communist spies in the United States led to this panic in the 1950s. McCarthyism refers to a wrong accusation based on a belief that is easy to follow during the time. The term, “McCarthyism” comes from Joseph McCarthy, an American politician who was a U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until he would later be censured. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became a very easily recognizable face during the beginning of the Cold War, when Communist espionage paranoia was common. He said that in the State Department, there were 205 Communists working for the …show more content…

This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. In July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s side. Americans believed this was a war against communism as a whole, not just North Korea. After some early fighting across the 38th parallel, the death toll soared with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, Americans tried to find a way to peacefully end this conflict. The alternative, they feared, would be a war on a much larger scale with Communist Russia and China. In July 1953, the Korean War was over. In all, 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war. The Korean peninsula is still divided today, the border is known as the D.M.Z. or Demilitarized zone. Americans involved themselves in these foreign affairs against communism because of the paranoid attitude of McCarthyism. McCarthyism both reached its peak and began its decline during the “McCarthy hearings”: 36 days of televised investigative hearings led by McCarthy in 1954. After first calling hearings to investigate possible espionage at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, the junior senator turned his communist-chasing committee’s attention to an altogether different matter, the question of whether the Army had promoted a dentist who

Open Document