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The Cold War: The Progressive And Oppressive Era

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The Progressive and Oppressive Era America After World War II ended in 1945, the United States economy flourished but was quickly launched into the Cold War with Soviet Union. Despite a lack of actual combat, the Cold War led to the advancement of new technology as both countries tried to best the other. This new economically prosperous and technologically advanced era created a new American society, full of “unrivaled prosperity with crippling poverty, expanded opportunity with entrenched discrimination, and new lifestyles with stifling conformity” (American Yawp 26.1). The mass industrialization of the 1950s burdened lower class society, whose work had been made obsolete, and this upset created further divide in the country. Industrialization …show more content…

Once communist paranoia became prominent in 1950s America, people began to find new ways to disassociate with communism, so they immediately claimed communism was against Christianity. In 1954, the line “one nation, under God” was added to the Constitution and in 1956, “In God We Trust” became America’s national slogan (American Yawp 25.4). This attempted to tie America to its long background of Christian values, and it declared itself separate from the communism that was invading the country. However, communists across America felt misjudged and misunderstood. Kurt Vonnegut reflects this attitude in his novel Player Piano when the rebel leader states that he is “an enemy of the Devil, a man of God!” (Vonnegut 334). Vonnegut, along with many other communists, believed that socialism and communism are “ no more an evil word than ‘Christianity’” (A Fading Old…), but other people label it as un-Christian and evil because they don’t understand their values. Communists want a world where people are given equal opportunity and reward because people all deserve the same for their work (A Fading Old…). They recognize the constant and growing separation between classes, and they want to stop the exploitation of the poor that allows for this equality, but others feel threatened that communists want to take away what they’ve worked hard for, and they declare this immoral and evil (A Fading Old…). People should not be forced to accept anyone else’s ideology, but the mistreatment and degrading of the communist worldview is representative of the American people’s lack of understanding of communist

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The year 1950 was a time of civil unrest amongst the people of America. The Red Scare swept through the nation, and the worry of a communist or a fascist living just down the street became a very real and very common fear of many Americans. This angst then grew due to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s claims in his “Wheeling Speech”, given on February 9th 1950, in which he proclaimed that he was in possession of a list of 205 communists working for the Senate Department. This alone sent a frenzy throughout America; the thought of the corruption communists could cause within the government terrified the American citizens. In this time of uneasiness, a brave Republican Senator, Margaret Chase Smith, takes the house floor and gives a remarkable speech that addresses her concerns about the government and the country.

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McCarthy promotes that communism will only grow and destroy the democratic world if America does not stop them. For example, he writes, “Unless we face this fact [that a war is happening], we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who wait too long,” (McCarthy). He further explains how this conflict between the western Christian world and the atheistic communist world is mainly moral. McCarthy mentions that the moral consequence if the communists win is that “this religion of immoralism will more deeply wound and damage mankind than any conceivable economic or political system.” He also goes on to demonstrate how the supporters of communism has grown over the years (from about 180,000,000 people to 800,000,000 people).

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By the end of the Second World War, Earth was left with only two powerful nations that were mostly unharmed by the nearly-global conflict and were in the position to influence the other countries of the world: the United States of America and the United Soviet Socialists Republic. The two countries, each with their own diametrically opposed beliefs, capitalism in the U.S.A. and communism in the U.S.S.R., were intrinsically predisposed to view the other’s ideology as alien and to distrust it, even without fully understanding the other’s beliefs. At the dawn of the Cold War, communism in the United States, although a single belief, was perceived in multiple ways across socioeconomic and occupational divisions within America, leading to conflict

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America’s fear of communism stretched beyond the western hemisphere; the Domino Theory became popular in the 1960s as the Vietnam War was increasingly seen as a threat to democracy in Asia. The Domino Theory is the belief that a communist victory in one nation would start a “chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighboring states. ”(Domino Theory) In the Vietnam War, this theory was used as a justification for American involvement. Communism, as understood by the American people, was a threat to peace and liberty.

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The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis seeks to provide an overview of the conflict which kept the peace promised with the resolution of World War II at bay for several decades of the twentieth century. Even though the Cold War had a great impact on America and the rest of the world, many American’s today cannot even tell you what The Cold War was about, other than the fact that it was a nuclear standoff between Russia and the USA. However, Gaddis dives deep into the conflict, starting at the very beginning where he outlines that the origins of The Cold War can really be traced back to World War I. From there, Gaddis gives a play by play of the roles of FDR and Stalin to Kennedy and Khrushchev. This work is a terrific

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The American government and citizens throughout the 1950s feared the spread of the Soviet Union’s authoritarian communist regime infiltrating the government. Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin accused several people of being part of the communist regime in the United Sates. The government and citizens were afraid that people who were apart of the communist party would penetrate American schools, professions, and everyday life because the Soviet Union government wanted their citizens to be equal but control every aspect of their lives. This was known has the red scare. During this time period, author Kurt Vonnegut reflects on how an authoritarian communist government affects society through the story “Harrison Bergeron.”

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he first chapter of The Cold War: A New History begins by comparing the United States to the U.S.S.R. and talking about the similarities between the two. It also talks about Communism and how Marx deemed it necessary in order to build up the economy. Lenin tried to implement Communism in Russia. They were not quite ready for that kind of system, so Stalin tried to modernize the economy. The U.S.S.R. had more casualties in World War II, but things were not necessarily looking great in America either.

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Popularized by Marx (1875), the saying most associated with communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (Part I.), strikes fear in the heart of conservative America. Given America’s history with McCarthyism, some Americans still believe that there is subversive effort on the part of the government to turn America into a communist state. These fears once permeated nearly every corner of American politics and social philosophy, with elements of the same fear resurfacing whenever an effort is made to increase in redistribution and strengthening the American welfare state. It is arguable that, because of America’s nearly decade-long fear of communist infiltration and because the welfare state has been associated with socialism and communism, the level and degree of redistribution will continue to be checked by those fears for

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The American people feared the spread of communism and nuclear war in the aftermath of the Second World War, while President Eisenhower addressed these fears by having strong domestic and foreign policies. The fear of communism carved a deep sense of mistrust in American people. They believed anything that was said and blindly followed people who were in political power without any basis of evidence. The fear of communism created a sense of “hysteria” (Document A) within the general public and even in people in government.

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