Red Scare Flashcards
What did the Alien Registration Act do?
June 1940
Made it illegal for anyone in the US to advocate, abet or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government.
Required all alien residents in the US over the age of 14 to file a comprehensive statement of their personal and occupational status and a record of their political beliefs.
Within four months a total of 4,741,971 aliens had been registered.
What was the main objective of the Alien Registration Act?
To undermine the American Communist Party and other left-wing political groups.
How did McCarthy contribute to the red scare?
Claimed to have a list of 205 people in the State Department who were known to be members of the Communist party (later reduced to 57).
This list was published in 1946 by the Secretary of State.
These had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 Federal employees.
Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual deviants.
If screened, McCarthy probably would have been on the list due to his alcoholism.
How did McCarthy’s campaign help the Republican Party?
At first, McCarthy mainly targeted Democrats associated with the New Deal policies of the 1930s.
Truman and members of his Democratic administration such as George Marshall and Dean Acheson were accused of being soft on communism.
Truman was portrayed as a dangerous liberal.
Who supported McCarthy?
The uneducated, Catholics, and Polish people.
Why did McCarthy begin to lose support?
Warned that if he attacked the CIA and the army it would be too far.
He did this anyway, seen as unpatriotic and high profile people such as President Eisenhower began to stand against him.
Encouraged HUAC to be more intrusive.
What gave McCarthy credibility?
Friends with William Randolph Hurst.
Trial of Alger Hiss.
Death of the Rosenbergs.
What was the trial of Alger Hiss?
Hiss was President of the Carnegie Institute.
Accused by the editor of Time magazine for being a communist whilst being employed by the state department in 1936.
Hiss sued Time magazine in 1950 but evidence was uncovered which proved that he had handed over copies of secret documents to the Soviets in 1938.
Found guilty of perjury for lying in court and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.
What was the impact of the trial of Alger Hiss?
Created widespread accusations of communism in high places in the USA.
Who were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?
American citizens executed for conspiracy to commit espionage relating to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
How did McCarthyism affect people?
Many government employees with only limited connections with or sympathies for communism lost their jobs.
Some actors and directors were blacklisted by the studios and ruined their careers.
However, the worst that happened was a loss of jobs.
How did the Red Scare affect the civil rights movement?
Harmed the civil rights movement, as many 1930s activists on behalf of improved rights for black Americans had been associated with or were members of the Communist Party.
What was the Gouzenko Affair 1945?
Cypher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada.
Hear that he and his family were to be sent home to the Soviet Union so he defected to Canada.
Exposed Stalin’s efforts to steal nuclear secrets and the technique of sleeper agents.
How did the Iron Curtain speech create fear of communism?
Warned against the expansionist policies of the Soviet Union.
Heightened tensions as it exacerbated the divide between capitalism and communism.
How did the Truman Doctrine create fear about communism?
US should give support to countries threatened by communists.
Seen as an open declaration of war by communists, causing tensions.
