Communism During The Cold War

During World War II, the United States and the Soviets put their political differences aside in their need to defeat their common foe, Germany. However, even during the war against Germany, and later Japan, the political and post-war tensions between the United States and the Soviets were ever underlying and continued to grow. As both sides of the Axis allies continued to gain ground, during their victories in Europe, the questions and positioning for future world domination of political ideals continued to mount up. Shortly after Germany surrendered, the issues began to come to light at the Potsdam Conference that was attended by the current British, American, and Soviet leaders. After the use of the atomic bombs and Japan’s surrender,

Communism played a major role shaping the 20th century, both for the East and the United States. Its impact can be seen in the US from 1919 to the 1990s and even today. The spread of Communist ideals in the East meant the beginning of the socialist state and mass industrialization. Its effect on the US was much different. The United States people, heavily diversified of all races, religions, and financial statuses, became extremely jingoistic as a result of competition with the USSR. This nationalism became unhealthy as citizens began determining what was “un-American.” The Communist Party USA was not successful in their primary objective of spreading communism to the US. What they did achieve however was hugely important. They showed that citizens of the United States could be scared out of their own freedom. That fear would lead them to give up “liberty and justice for all”. Still a highly misunderstood idea, it is important for citizens of the United States to understand what communism is and what impact the CPUSA and other communist organizations had on the country.

Our federal government involvement with communism during the mid-1950s is what made the Communist threat such a big concern or obsession for the general public. Between the 1940s and 1950s, almost every government agency was on a crusade against Communists. Although the name for this phenomenon was taken from Senator McCarthy, McCarthy wasn’t the one that held the most influence in the development of McCarthyism. It was the executive branch of the government. This branch brought up concerns about national security and built the foundation for the anti-Communist campaign to operate on. The main reason for this was to gain support for the Cold War and obtain bipartisan backing for foreign policy. Truman and his administration were worried that

The Cold War period represented a breaking point for real and potential threats against the US hegemony in Latin America. The US and the Soviet Union had a power struggle for almost all the last half of the twentieth century, and even if the political and military tension was between those two blocks, the poor relationship’s collateral damage reached the rest of countries in the American continent with the anti-communism US foreign policy.

The American policy of “containment,” and the general fear of Communist spreading in unbalanced areas of the world.

The show also didn’t show the political tension of the decade. One of the if not the biggest political tension of this time was McCarthyism. This was what really sent off the red scare. In 1950 Senator McCarthy gave a speech where he said he knew 205 communist who worked for the Department of State. He reported 81 cases the day of his speech and skipped many numbers and repeated the same flimsy evidence. The Senate called for a full investigation and many peoples lives was ruined due to all the false accusations. All of this lasted until 1954 when McCarthy attacked the military with his claims and the military questioned McCarthy's methods and credibility. Then poll after poll the citizens turned on McCarthy, then McCarthy’s colleagues censured

After WW2, United States became the greatest power in the world; many American politicians thought that Unites states should play the role as a leader to “lead the rest of the world to a future of international cooperation, expanding democracy, and ever-increasing living standards (Give me Liberty P952).” They wanted to express the idea of equality, civil rights, and the freedom to the world, and hoped to build an easier world for democracy and capitalism. However, Soviet Union, which was the only power that could rival the United States, claimed that communism could make the world more organized and ordered. Both countries hoped to expend their influences around the world, and their confliction generally turned to be a cold war, in other words, a battle between Capitalism and Communism. The cold war coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States and had a strong influence on Africa-Americans’ action of pursuing racial equality. Although some left-wing activists in the united states pushed the blacks and some whites into fear of speaking for the Africa-Americans, cold war still provided the blacks a good opportunity and a great starting reason to fight for their civil rights and also enabled the U.S government realized the importance of racial equality for their promotion of democracy because of domestic and international pressure.

Communist rule was confined to the Soviet Union until the end of World War II.

Here are some ideas and potential ID’s for our final (granted, the first one is not eloquently worded): 1. WWII being a people’s war 2. The Cold War (Capitalism vs Communism) and lastly 3. Pearl Harbor (???). Although, all these topics seem overwhelming, but I think they are three of the main ideas of this chapter. Such as the WWII being a people’s war, I believe the first half of the chapter covers that as well as Pearl Harbor (which I am not entirely sure if it provides enough information). Then, the reading we did this week, I think focuses on the fight between the two ideologies, Capitalism vs Communism, in my opinion Zinn gave us ample of examples

There are many types of governments such as Communism and Democracy, but only one of them leads to great success. During the Cold War, countries were fighting for communism and democracy and it was a world problem, but also a threat for the democratic countries for communism to spread. Furthermore, Communism and Democracy can differ in many ways. Both of them have negative and positive outcomes for the country itself and to the people. However, Democracy is the right type of government that leads the country into a greater success, rather than Communism.

The Cold War was a non-violent military arms and technological race that happened in the latter half of the 20th century. Two main factions arose; Communism and Capitalism. Prior to the turn of the 21st Century Communism and Capitalism could never see eye- to-eye. Each offered a different form of utopia. Communism primarily concerned with having a classless society, while Capitalism offered class transcendence otherwise referred to as class mobility. The pursuit of happiness as it is written in the constitution. This seems to fall in line with previous philosophical works such as Aristotle. The telos, or end goal for all humans is eudaimonia happiness. Yet, one must read through the lines to understand what the pursuit of eudaimonia is in

On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was officially dissolved. While the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a sign that the Cold War was soon to be over, the breakup of the Soviet Union truly symbolised its end. After a bitter era of global fighting between capitalism and communism, each led by the United States and the USSR respectively, it appeared that, for better or for worse, capitalism had prevailed. Today, it looks like this indeed was the case. The People’s Republic of China is the only communist state out of five in the global top 50 in nominal GDP, and although the fact that it is all the way in second might lend modern communism credibility, it would be inaccurate to label it a true communist state from an economic perspective. With communism now largely absent from the vast majority of the world’s regimes, it would appear that it has disappeared as a viable form of government for the time being. With this, communism and its most noteworthy pioneer, Karl Marx, have had their relevance questioned. Having lost the battle for dominance as a global political system, is there still a purpose in learning and analysing Marxism? The answer is yes. While it is undeniable that it has had a troubled history, there are still many lessons to take away from it. Owing especially to his ideas on social and economic equality, the Marxist perspective can still provide insight even into a firmly capitalist society.

When I recall the specific time period, habitually referred as “Cold war era” and a communist regime arena where I spent my childhood, I retrieve traces of the impressions about Americans that I formed at that time. As stated by numerous propaganda, America used to be defined as almost the devil-incarnate who wishes war, also men who often depicted with beaver hats and embosom atomic bombs in order to destroy other countries where communist regime was nested. That was the impressions of my entire childhood about America.

The end of the Cold War brought many transitions economically, politically, and militarily. Many thought the Cold War would drag on permanently, but it ended very rapidly with the fall of the Berlin Wall, a unified East and West Germany, and the end of the Soviet Union.

Everyone would like to live in a perfect society, and in Germany, Karl Marx set out to do just that by creating the government system known as Communism. Though, this system has failed in many countries all over the world because of many significant flaws in the very foundation of the system. Some of the most feared probabilities in society that Communism was created to eliminate still prevailed and were at the heart of the system’s downfall. If the system was infallible, why were so many of its principles created out of the fear of rebellion? The living conditions of the people were unbearable and would lead to nothing but rebellion. The whole system was full of corruption and had no moral standards. Communism has failed in many countries