After World War II, America began to face an old fear: communism. The 1950s red scare was actually the second wave, originally the fear of communism came about in the 1920s. This was due to the widespread fear of anarchism caused by the Russian revolution events that were happening at the time. Both red scares became apparent after both world wars, this was mainly due to the events unraveling in Russia at the time. The second red scare became a huge sensation when Russia began to announce their dominance in the European region. By 1948, Russian had began the Berlin blockade, causing the tension with the U.S to escalate. By the time 1950 Russia was fully committed into backing communist driven North Korea during the Korean War. By the time Truman decided to back South Korea to fight against communist backed North Korea, the fear of communism had fully gripped the U.S by storm.

Even with the victory of the Korean War, the U.S still couldn’t breathe, for there was a new fear upon the horizon: nuclear warfare. By 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death, for their convicted crime of espionage. Julius worked for a. government agency that was responsible for creating the atom, and the government thought the only way that Russia could have built nuclear weapons, was by stealing classified documents from the U.S. Ethel was said to be recruiting people to join the communism party and concluding with known communists. The once most powerful global military power, the U.S, was now being challenged by communist Russia, for global superpower.