Domestic Impacts of the Cold War: The Red Scare and McCarthyism

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the impact of the Cold War on domestic politics in the US, focusing in particular on: (i) what the US was like in the 1950s – both in the popular imagination and in reality; (ii) the impact on US morale of Russia’s first nuclear test (29 August 1949), China’s fall to Communism (1 October 1949) and the beginning of the Korean War (25 June 1950); (iii) the formation of the House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC) and its pursuit of alleged communists within the US government; (iv) the importance of the trials of Alger Hiss (1948), Klaus Fuchs (1950) and the Rosenbergs (1951); (v) the impact of the Hollywood Hearings and the Hollywood Ten; (vi) the figure of Joe McCarthy and the concept of McCarthyism; and (vii) the impact of the Cold War on the domestic policies of other counties, including Britain and the Soviet Union.

About the lecturer

Dr Tom Tunstall Allcock is a lecturer in American history at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, with particular interests in U.S.-Latin American relations, presidential history and diplomacy, and the cultural history of the Cold War.