Question

1)Throughout much of the Twentieth Century and especially during the Cold War, Americans developed a deep fear of communism. But why communism? What is it? Was America's fear of communism the result of an accurate understanding of Soviet communism?

Answer 1

Americans were afraid of the rise of Soviet communism following World War II. The news media and politicians who depicted the Soviets as bent upon world dominance reinforced the terror. People in communist nations were not permitted to own property, practice their religious beliefs or freely speak and act. Americans feared the Soviets would take over the US and take away their liberties.

The intention was not to wage a war with the Soviets, but rather to stop widening their current borders to them. American leaders believed the Soviets were determined to force upon the rest of the world their values and influence. After the Soviets built an atomic bomb with the help of U.S. stolen intelligence, several officials, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, started looking for alleged communists in the United States. That resulted in the execution in 1953 of convicted spies Julius and two former communists, Ethel Rosenberg.

Others, convicted merely of being Communists, have lost their jobs. While these searches for American communists, known as McCarthyism, had waned by the mid-1950s, the word "communist" was extended to Civil Rights demonstrators and those in America seeking social reform.

The first "red scare" in the US dates back to the beginning of the 20th century and the Russian Revolution. A socialist government with strong resistance to capitalism and global aspirations was seen as increasingly likely to spark protests and unrest in the heartland of the United States. Communism was deemed essentially antithetical to the American way of life.