Red Scare
By: Abby Ball
Beginning of the Red Scare
As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. (Communists were often referred to as "Reds" for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society
The Rosenbergs
Americans didn't believe that Soviet Union could build an Atomic Bomb in 1949 without help, so they began to believe the Soviets hired spies. The FBI arrested Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1950. The couple denied the charges, but were sentenced to death for espionage. the two were executed in june 1953.
Project Venona
in 1946 American Cryptographers cracked the soviet spy code, enabling them to read approximately 3,000 messages between Moscow and the US during the Cold War. This project gave strong evidence to the existence of Soviet spies in the US. The government didn't even tell americans about it until 1995.
Red Scare Propaganda
Red Scare Spreads
Many local communities began their own efforts to find Communists. Universities and churches became strongly anticommunist. The Taft-Hartley Act required union leaders to take oaths that they were not Communists. the CIO expelled 11 unions that refused to remove communist leaders form their organizations. The red scare finally began to ease by the 1950s