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How Did Mccarthyism Help Republicans In The 1952 Presidential Election

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Helicopters In Korea 1953

The American Presidential Election of 1952

Infantry troops board helicopters for Korea via the 6th Transportation Helicopter Company, the first Army cargo helicopter unit in the combat zone. The 6th was called up in November 1952 and arrived in Korea with their H-19C helicopters in January, 1953. The armistice was signed, several months later, on July 27. For Joseph R. McCarthy and the conservative Republicans the ceasefire meant that there were be no victory over Communism in Korea. View the original source document: WHI 12139

After World War II, foreign affairs began to play a more important role than ever in the lives of American citizens. The United States and its allies competed with the;Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; and its allies for political and economic control of the world. Known as the Cold War, this rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union shaped almost every aspect of international politics, as well as many domestic concerns. The Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s.

In the late 1940s, people in Wisconsin were divided over issues such as the United Nations, support for European recovery, and the growing power of the Soviet Union. But when post-war Europe divided into Communist and Capitalist camps and China’s communist revolution succeeded in 1949, public opinion shifted to support democracy and capitalism against communist expansion. That tension reached a climax in Korea.

Mccarthyism & The Media During The 1952 Elections

ERICA GATZ

Senator Joseph McCarthy made accusations of treason and Communist activity in the United States throughout his career. One of his most famous moments came in 1950, in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he claimed to have a list of 205 individuals in the State Department that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party. Although he refused to produce any names and was never able to provide any evidence, McCarthy created general fear in America. McCarthyism, or the Red Scare as it came to be called, dominated American politics in the 1950s, damaged many peoples careers and distracted the voting population from other pressing issues.


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The Origins Of Mccarthyism

McCarthyism began well before Senator Joseph McCarthy arrived on the scene, and its origins are complicated. Much of it was rooted in fear and anxiety within the Republican Partys reactionary fringe. The United States had experienced a similar phenomenon from 1917-1920 in reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which represented the emergence of communism as a political movement. Civil liberties were strictly curtailed by the Espionage and Sedition Acts, especially free speech.

Even more troubling was the revelation that the Soviets had spied on the Wests atomic research. In 1946 the U.S. and Great Britain cracked one of the Soviet codes and learned that a scientist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and was currently working in Great Britains atomic research facilities was a spy. Klaus Fuchs was a German communist who had fled his homeland to escape the Nazis. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he sincerely believed that the Soviets had a right to the atomic secrets being kept from them by their allies. Fuchs was arguably the most important spy in the Cold War. He passed on secrets that enabled the Soviet Union to end the U.S. monopoly on atomic weapons only 4 years after Hiroshima, and gave them critical information about American atomic capabilities that helped Joseph Stalin conclude the U.S. was not prepared for a nuclear war at the end of the 1940s, or even in the early 1950s.

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The 1952 Campaign And Televisions New Role

Vote for Peace. Vote for Prosperity. Vote for Ike. 1956.

Eisenhower proved to be an adept and strong campaigner, using the tried and true campaign train to visit 45 states where his smile and confident manner elicited great support. I Like Ike proved a winning campaign slogan.; His greatest failing, however, may have been his refusal to criticize the demagogic activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had even accused Eisenhowers colleague General George C. Marshall of being part of a Communist conspiracy.; About this failure to stand up for his former comrade in arms, President Truman remarked, I had never thought the man who is now the Republican candidate would stoop so low. Stevenson was also critical of McCarthys tactics, charging they undermined democracy. But when Eisenhower promised to end the war in Korea late in the fall, and to travel there if he won, it greatly strengthened his campaign.; No matter how many pithy, Twitter -like comments Stevenson was able to offer reporters, he was unable to match that offer by an experienced man of war.


Keith Temple New Orleans Times

1950s timeline

In 1953, New York Judge Edward J. Dimock offered thirteen members of the Communist Party a trip to the Soviet Union, but the convicted men and women chose, instead, to serve prison sentences varying from one to three years. As New Orleans Times-Picayune cartoonist Keith Temple makes clear, eight were born in what became Iron Curtain countries. His sarcastic jab suggests that he was disgusted, but not surprised, that Communists from Soviet Bloc countries refused to move to the Soviet Union.

Keith Temple . Can You Beat It? 1953. Published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 5, 1953. India ink and crayon drawing. Gift of Keith Temple, 1953. , Library of Congress LC-DIG-acd-2a11139 © 2014 NOLA Media Group, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Used with permission of The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com.

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Fame Notoriety And Personal Life

HerblockMcCarthyismWashington Post.


From 1950 onward, McCarthy continued to exploit the fear of Communism and to press his accusations that the government was failing to deal with Communism within its ranks. McCarthy also began investigations into homosexuals working in the foreign policy bureaucracy, who were considered prime candidates for blackmail by the Soviets. These accusations received wide publicity, increased his approval rating, and gained him a powerful national following.

McCarthy’s methods also brought on the disapproval and opposition of many. Barely a month after McCarthy’s Wheeling speech, the term “McCarthyism” was coined by Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block. Block and others used the word as a synonym for demagoguery, baseless defamation, and mudslinging. Later, it would be embraced by McCarthy and some of his supporters. “McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled,” McCarthy said in a 1952 speech, and later that year, he published a book titled McCarthyism: The Fight For America.

1952 Wisconsin U.S. Senate election

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Republicanhold

Cold War American Foreign Policy Analysis

At the end of World War Two, the American public, political scientists, government officials, and Winston Churchill share the opinion that long-term hostilities between America and Soviet Russia were inevitable. In February of 1946, special advisor George Kennan confirms an existing political threat from Soviet Russia his Long Telegram. Since Kennans transmission, American foreign policy objectives became equated to American containment of communism. Determining which President achieves the most and least effective leadership requires establishing a metric. At the risk of generalizing, the criteria for effective American Presidential leadership during the Cold War is: establishing and executing effective foreign policy; protecting American

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Mccarthy And Eisenhower 1954

District of Columbia. During the first months of his administration, President Dwight Eisenhower handled Joseph R. McCarthy by publicly ignoring him. However, after the abuse that General Zwicker received from Senator McCarthy’s committee in January, 1954, Eisenhower felt compelled to comment. At a press conference on March 3, 1954, he was mildly critical of McCarthy’s lack of fair play, but he emphatically stated that dealing with employees of t View the original source document: WHI 49052

Communism required tight restrictions on personal freedom and government ownership of business. It threatened the American ideals of individual liberty and free enterprise. Communist expansion in Eastern Europe and Korea fueled Americans’ anxiety that their way of life was under attack and launched the career of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy. After several uneventful years in the Senate, McCarthy made headlines when he announced in a 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that he knew 205 communists were currently working in the State Department. Since American men and women were preparing to sacrifice their lives in combat against a communist enemy in Korea, McCarthy’s speech garnered great publicity. Capitalizing on people’s fears of communism, McCarthy launched a public campaign to eliminate the supposed communist infiltration of government and foreign policy. His pronouncements catapulted him to national prominence and provided a strong platform for his re-election.

Mccarthyism In The 1950’s

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With the dropping of the Atomic bomb that ended WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, the United states was in distress. The start of the 1950s brought about many changes to American society, from the Red Scare and threat of the possible spread of communism in America, to changes in political movements, civil rights movements, and another possible war. The political climate in the 1950s was a period when people made judgement without proof based on peoples occupations, it instilled a fear that anyone could be a communist and pushed McCarthy to find and dispose of them. Factors that influenced this political crisis and fear go back years to 1917 when communism was recognized as a political force. It was known as the last red scare.

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Twists And Turns: An Alternate 1952 And Beyond

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McCarthyism, Nukes, and integration, thats whats at stake.*Audible sigh*At least its better than 1932You say that every year-Conversation between Earl Warren andMargaret Chase Smith November 3, 1952 1952 DownballotDamn, we lost seats again, Stevensons gonna pass more status quo bills.If a certain moderate Republican hadnt failed in his campaign, wed have better coattailsHow the hell is this my fault?!? Youre a Taft supporter!Yeah, but even then he was too isolationist for AmericaGet your redneck buddies rallied up, theyll unite behind those Assholes Brewster and McCarthy.Theyre not assholes, theyre trying to protect us!By destroying democracy? Good idea.Maybe its good that you failed.Thanks red-baiter-Conversation between Richard Nixon and Harold Stassen, November 4, 19521954 MidtermsYou can barely dent our system of economic success and prosperity-Eugene McCarthy


Red Scare And The Red Scare

Post World War II the United States was suffering from what is called Red Scare. The Red scare was a propaganda tactic to make the American public fear the communist countries. This propaganda was fueled further by the Korean War and the Cold War. This was fueled by a congressman by the name of Joe McCarthy. President Harry Truman also added on to this propaganda as well.

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The Rise Of Joe Mccarthy

On February 9, 1950, at the Republican Womens Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joe McCarthy gave his Lincoln Day speech. Much of it was cut and pasted from speeches and testimony delivered in Washington and already public record. But then McCarthy produced something new. His exact words will never be known, but according to radio and newspaper men who followed his rough draft as he spoke, McCarthy took out a piece of paper, waved it around, and shouted, I have here in my hand a list of 205a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. Communists in the State Department represented a potential threat to national security. But McCarthy had no such list. His source was a four-year-old letter, already published in the Congressional Record, from then Secretary of State James Byrnes to a U.S. Congressman. In the letter, Byrnes explained that a screening of 3,000 federal employees transferred into the State Department from wartime agencies had resulted in recommendations against the permanent employment of 285. Of these 285, the employment of 79 had already been terminated. By subtracting 79 from 285, Senator McCarthy had his so-called 205 State Department communists.

Clarence Batchelor New York Daily News

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During the 1952 presidential election, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy repeatedly accused Democratic Party candidate Adlai Stevenson of collusion with Soviet communists. Stevenson had given a deposition in favor of Alger Hiss during his Soviet espionage trial in 1948, so McCarthy and others used this as evidence of communist sympathies. Clarence Batchelor drew for the New York Daily News for thirty-eight years. He and his paper grew increasingly disenchanted with liberalism and by 1952 sympathized with McCarthyâs rhetoric.

Clarence Batchelor . Columbia: âWhat Worries Me Is, I Find No Anger Here Toward Hiss to Match His Anger toward McCarthy 1952. Published in the New York Daily News, 1952. India ink, lithographic crayon, charcoal and blue pencil drawing. Gift of Clarence Batchelor, 1953. , Library of Congress LC-DIG-acd-2a05674 © New York Daily News


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From Our April 2017 Issue

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David A. Nicholss Ike and McCarthy is a well-researched and sturdily written account of what may be the most important such conflict in modern history: the two years, 1953 and 1954, when Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Republican president elected since Herbert Hoover, found himself under assault from the demagogic senator who perfected the politics of ideological slander. Joseph McCarthy had begun his rampage against subversives in the federal government, some real but most of them imagined, during the Truman years, amid the high anxieties of the Cold War. Hostilities had broken out in Korea, and threatened to draw in Red China or escalate into a doomsday showdown with the Soviets, newly armed with the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, billions were being doled out in foreign aid to left-wing governments in Western Europe, and homegrown spies like Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg had been uncovered and exposed.

Then as now, the press could achieve only so much, and for a reason that hasnt changed. McCarthy was a political problem, not a journalistic onea problem that could be solved in the end only by politics, by Eisenhower himself, who fooled almost everyone in deftly outmaneuvering McCarthy. Nichols is not the first to make this argument. But his timing is good. Americans have as much to learn today from Eisenhower as his many liberal critics did in 1954.


The Election Campaign Heats Up

Republican Dwight Eisenhower campaigned against the Truman administrations handling of the Korean War, corruption in that administration and communist subversion. General Marshall had been Eisenhower’s mentor and it was believed that Eisenhower disliked McCarthy due to his attack on Marshall. However, Eisenhower was careful on the campaign trail and avoided challenging McCarthy in public. Eisenhower’s aides told journalists that Eisenhower would show his support for Marshall during a campaign speech in Wisconsin. Eisenhower deleted his defense of Marshall when he gave that speech and was criticized by President Truman for failing to defend his former mentor.

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The Cold War: The Korean And Vietnam War

The Cold War was an event that directly impacted and influenced many aspects of American society during most of the second half of the 20th century. It mainly intensified due to the antagonistic values of the feuding America and Soviet Union who were each representative of opposing principles. Because they were the two remaining superpowers to emerge from the conflict of WWII the contention between democracy and capitalism soon became a global conflict. The Cold War was unlike any other in the sense that it was as much of a propagandists war as one that included direct military engagement. Although the Korean and Vietnam Wars were important examples of military intervention by the Americans in the name of containing communism these wars did

How Did Mccarthyism Impact Politics

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In Congress, Nixon was able to secure a Senate seat by implying that the opposing candidate was a Communist sympathizer because she voted against the HUAC. Nixon accused Alger Hiss, a convicted former spy for the Soviets, and pressed the HUAC to go further into the investigations until Alger Hiss was proven guilty. This investigation gave Nixon a national reputation and he was labeled as a young star. The views of Nixon made him acceptable to east and west in the early 1950s. However, Nixon was a man that would go to extreme lengths and tricks if it achieved political success.

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Dwight D Eisenhower: Campaigns And Elections

The Campaign and Election of 1952:

During an extraordinary military career, Dwight D. Eisenhower had done some things that few, if any, Americans had ever experienced. But he had not done something that was extremely commonhe had never voted. Yet in 1948, many Americans hoped that the general would cast his first ballotfor himself as President. Even Harry S. Truman tried to interest Eisenhower in a run for the presidency. As the election year of 1948 approached, Truman, who became President when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, seemed to have little chance of winning a full term of his own. In a private meeting, Truman proposed that he and Eisenhower run together on the Democratic ticket, with Eisenhower as the presidential candidate and Truman in second position. Eisenhower rejected this astonishing offer and probably thought that he would never again have to consider the possibility of a run for the White House. He also spurned requests from prominent Republicans that he seek the GOP nomination for President.

Campaign Difficulties

“There was a time when I thought he would make a good President… That was my mistake.”

President Harry Truman, 1952

The Campaign and Election of 1956

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