Joseph R. Mccarthy And Communism

Joseph R. McCarthy was a United States Republican senator from Wisconsin during the years 1947-1957. McCarthy is most known for his anti-communist trials and investigations that would come to be known as McCarthyism. The term McCarthyism was coined during the year of 1950-1954 when the struggles and threats of the Cold War had begun to become a concern for the United States making the containment of communism their main goal a time also known as the Second Red Scare. During this time is when McCarthy started to make claims that there were communist and even Soviet spies within the United States federal government, with little substantial evidence or no evidence at all. He would hold investigations as well as hearings against several members

This was after he had dropped out school, but he would later return to school at age nineteen to complete high school and then continued into college in 1930 entering Milwaukee's Marquette University to study engineering which he switched to law and graduated in 1935. In 1939, McCarthy ran for the judgeship in Wisconsin’s Tenth Judicial Circuit which he won and became Wisconsin’s youngest circuit judge elected. He took a leave of absence in 1942 to enlist as a marine in WWII but did not bother to resign from his judgeship while he was away. Ironically he also took a leave from the military to campaign for the Republican senate seat nomination in 1944, in which claimed he was known in the Pacific as "Tail-Gunner Joe" for his combat exploits. McCarthy lost the nomination and not long after also resigned from the military. McCarthy ran for the senate again in 1946 in which he used the slogan "Congress needs a Tail Gunner" and even though he was running against the favored incumbent, Robert M. La Follette Jr. who Patrick Maney called “McCarthy’s first victim”, McCarthy prevailed the winner and became the youngest member of the Senate. During his first term of being a Republican Senator he managed to keep a low profile and worked mostly on house legislation, it wasn’t till the 1950s that McCarthy became a household

During this speech is when he introduced his ideas that there was “a large numbers of "card-carrying" Communists in the US State Department”, he then declared, “Ladies and gentlemen, while I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as active members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working on and shaping policy in the State Department.”. Even though everyone, including President Truman was doubtful of these accusations, they appointed a committee headed by Democratic Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland. After investigating into McCarthy’s accusations on July 14, 1950 the committee reported its findings that “McCarthy’s accusations represented perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of this republic.". Despite this report, McCarthy would not deny that his accusation had no real evidence nor were they true. He also had begun to gain support from his fellow Republicans as well as the American people. This would pay dividends in the following elections for President and Senate seats. McCarthy and other Republicans participated in what