who was joseph mccarthy britannica

claimed to have documentation to prove these charges. When he was almost twenty he enrolled in high school, graduating in only a single year.

It began with a probe into the Army Signal Corps station at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey , where radar systems and guided missile controls were being developed. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin stood out among those who held that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations amounted to “20 years of treason.” In February 1950 McCarthy claimed that he had a list (whose number varied) of State Department employees who were loyal only to the Soviet Union.

Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. McCarthy offered no evidence to support his charges and revealed only a single name, that of Owen Lattimore, who was not in the State Department and would never be convicted of a single offense.

McCarthy continued to serve as a senator but had lost his power. During World War II, McCarthy served with the U.S. Marines. who were fearful of the growth of Communism and the menace of the Soviet Union as well as angry at the U.S. government's apparent inability to prevent the spread of Communism.

He used the fear of internal subversion by an external enemy, and by giving it the concrete form of conspiracy and a spy network he provided Americans with a simple target for their hostility. Ljubljana, Yugoslavia

infiltrated the state department. . Advances made by the Soviet Union following World War II, coupled with the victory in 1949 of the Chinese Communist Party in establishing the People’s Republic of China and the apparent inability of the United States to prevent the spread of communism, were among the factors causing fear of communist infiltration in the United States. In 1953 Joseph McCarthy accused the U.S. Army of harbouring communist subversives. McCarthy’s subsequent search for communists in the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and elsewhere made him an incredibly polarizing figure. Eisenhower had promised to end the Korean War, hold the line on government spending, balance the budget, abolish inflation, and reform the Republican Party.

Real cases of disloyalty and espionage also contributed, notably the theft of atomic secrets, for which Soviet agent Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were convicted in 1951 and executed two years later. In addition to the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc formed in the latter half of the 1940s, communists had seized control of China in 1949, and communism threatened to overtake the Korean peninsula as well. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. 16 Oct. 2020 . After translating an article, all tools except font up/font down will be disabled. Despite Eisenhower’s overwhelming victory, Republicans gained control of the House by just eight votes and managed only a tie in the Senate. 2001. . In 1944, while still in the Marines, his friends in Wisconsin put him on the ballot for the U.S. Senate. The fifth of nine children, Joseph seems to have grown up shy and awkward, often rejected by his peers but favored by a protective mother. The term "McCarthyism" became a synonym for reckless smear tactics intended to destroy the victim's political standing and public character. After an unsuccessful bid as Democratic candidate for district attorney, he shifted his field and became the Republican candidate for a circuit court judgeship. Although McCarthy later changed the number of State Department communists to 57 and again to 81, he succeeded in spreading fear among the public that Soviet operatives had infiltrated the home front to the highest reaches of government. He died three years later, on May 2, 1957, a broken man whose end had really come at the Army hearing, when the nation recoiled from him and his power to inspire terror was halted.

The furor sparked blacklisting in Hollywood and ruined the reputations and careers of many entertainers, politicians, and scholars. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mccarthy-joseph-0, "McCarthy, Joseph In the 1950s, the Cold War was heating up. McCarthyism, name given to the period of time in American history that saw U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin produce a series of investigations and hearings during the 1950s in an effort to expose supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government. □. Sherrow, Victoria. (October 16, 2020). An important book is Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (1970).

After McCarthy’s reelection in 1952, he obtained the chairmanship of the Committee on Government Operations of the Senate and of its permanent subcommittee on investigations.

Speaking on February 9, 1950, before the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, the senator described in apocalyptic terms the “final, all-out battle” between communist atheists and capitalist Christians. McCarthy finally turned his aim on the army in the Fort Monmouth hearings. Not content with this victory, the United States attempted to unify Korea by force, advancing almost to the borders of China and the Soviet Union. The Army-McCarthy televised hearings ran from April 22 to June 17, 1954, and turned the tables on McCarthy and his committee counsel, Roy Cohn (1927–1986). His Republican colleagues were torn between fear of his prowess and willingness to use his attacks on President Harry Truman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and former Secretary of State George Marshall. . As a number of his past adventures, including some questionable tax returns, began catching up with him, he needed an issue that would obscure all this. Other aspects of the Red Scare included the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Hollywood blacklist. The term has since become a byname for defamation of character or reputation by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations, especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges. As a result, defense expenditures rose to $53.6 billion in 1953, four times the pre-Korean level, and would decline only modestly after the armistice. He was commissioned a lieutenant and assigned to an intelligence unit. Meanwhile, other government agencies did, with less fanfare, identify and prosecute cases of communist infiltration. The term "McCarthyism" became a synonym for reckless smear tactics intended to destroy the victim's political standing and public character. Encyclopedia.com. . Joseph McCarthy rose to fame as a product of the second great Red scare , a period of extreme fear of communism in the United States. The best biography is Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (1959).

. Encyclopedia.com. . The United States sustained some 142,000 casualties in this limited war, most of them occurring after China’s entry. Many others promoted the scare in various ways, leading to few convictions but much loss of employment by government employees, teachers, scholars, and people in the mass media. "McCarthy, Joseph Raymond

McCarthyism, name given to the period of the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy produced a series of investigations and hearings in an effort to expose supposed communist infiltration of the U.S. government. Along with government workers, artists and actors were often accused of communist sympathies. In 1955 the Soviets agreed to end the four-power occupation of Austria, and in that July Eisenhower met in Geneva with the new Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, for talks that were friendly though inconclusive. By this point, McCarthy and his crusade had aggravated senators and the president.

. "Joseph Raymond McCarthy New York: Free Press. ." Thank you for subscribing! It refers to U.S. The stalemated Korean War, a renewal of inflation, and the continuing Red Scare persuaded Truman not to stand for reelection in 1952 and also gravely handicapped Gov. Herman, Arthur. In 1955, the Senate, on a vote of 67 to 22, moved to censure McCarthy. U.S. At first Eisenhower did little to check the Red Scare, but in 1954 Senator McCarthy unwisely began to investigate the administration and the U.S. Army. Kinsler, Joseph. In the 1950 elections McCarthy secured the defeat of several Democratic senators who had dared question and oppose him. ” In February 1950 McCarthy claimed that he had a list (whose number varied) of State Department employees who were loyal only to the Soviet Union. A Wisconsin attorney, McCarthy served for three years as a circuit judge (1940–42) before enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. ." McCarthy spent the hearings bullying and badgering witnesses, interrupting, making vicious personal attacks, and making long, ranting speeches. In December the ." The lengthy Hiss investigation and trials thus stoked existing fears across America that the United States was the U.S.S.R.’s next target and that the threat was hiding on the home front in plain sight.

He was referring to Alger Hiss, a top-level State Department official who had recently been convicted of perjury after a sensational investigation into his subversive pro-Soviet activities. A year later he ran for senator against Robert M. La Follette (1895–1953) and won.

American journalists seized on this allegation. ." In 1944, while still in the Marines, he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. He won, and this victory foreshadowed his later methods: his campaign literature had falsified his opponent's age (adding 7 years to it) and his own (moving his birth date back).

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