Such fears were reinforced by several high-profile spy cases. In , Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, was accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union during the s; the statute of limitations for treason had run out, but a jury convicted Hiss of perjury.
The following year, Britain revealed that a high-ranking physicist named Klaus Fuchs had spied for the Soviets while working on the Manhattan Project. Finally, in a federal judge found Julius and Ethel Rosenberg guilty of passing atomic secrets to Soviet agents, and both were eventually sent to the electric chair. Still, scholars continue to debate the guilt of all three.
One of those who took advantage of the rising hysteria was a young senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. In later versions of the speech, he changed the number to 81 and then The very concreteness of this charge—and the many others McCarthy hurled over the next few years—set the Wisconsin senator apart from other red baiters and he quickly captured headlines. McCarthy cared little about the accuracy of his accusations, and he made heavy use of intimidation and innuendo.
Nevertheless, his complete disregard for the truth only made him more powerful and frightening. Few dared to challenge McCarthy directly, and many Republicans who despised him found him useful. McCarthy, like members of HUAC and many other red baiters, greatly exaggerated the domestic communist threat. Such liberals generally supported New Deal policies and an array of social reforms, but also believed that the best way to protect the nation from both Communists and anti-Communist zealots was to purge schools, unions, reform groups, and professional organizations of those with ties to the party.
Thus, while their language was more restrained than that of McCarthy and others they decried, Cold War liberals frequently supported some anti-Communist sanctions. Anti-Communism continued into the s, but after it lost much of its fevered pitch. The turning point came when Senator McCarthy began to investigate Communists in the Army, and powerful Republicans including the President decided he had finally gone too far.
Much of the credit for this goes to Joseph Welch, the feisty and folksy Boston lawyer hired by the Army. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? A few months later the Senate voted overwhelmingly to censure McCarthy and his influence evaporated. The worst of the Red Scare was over.
Read how McCarthyism ended. Contact us: info tn4me. A photograph of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, separated by a wire screen as they leave the courthouse after being found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. The couple were Americans who had been accused of passing American atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. They were both executed for their crime. They proclaimed their innocence until their death, and many people believed that they had been unfairly convicted.
But in , an associate of Rosenberg admitted that they both had stolen secret information and passed it on to the Soviets. There is still some doubt that Mrs. As this war was ending, a fear-driven movement known as the first Red Scare began to spread across the United States. In , Russia had undergone the Bolshevik Revolution.
As a result of this event, that country tried to establish a communist government and withdrew its troops from the war effort. Americans believed that Russia had let down its allies, including the United States, by pulling out of the war.
In addition, communism was, in theory, an expansionist ideology, spread through revolution. Many Americans feared that the communists in Russia, known as the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution, hoped to spread their ideology all over the world. Both the federal government and state governments reacted to that fear by attacking potential communist threats. They used acts passed during the war, such as the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, to prosecute suspected communists.
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