Transcript Red Scare! - socialstudies30

Red Scare!
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In September 1945, a
cipher clerk named Igor
Gouzenko from the
Soviet Embassy in
Ottawa defected
He carried with him files
that described, in detail,
the extent of Soviet
spying in North America
Igor Gouzenko
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The Gouzenko affair caused tremendous
consternation in the United States and Canada
His defection led to a significant number of
charges against Canadians and Americans for
spying on their own country
Many felt that the Soviet spying extended even
deeper, into the heart of government
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In 1949 the Soviets
exploded their first
nuclear bomb and it
became clear that they
were only able to
advance that quickly
due to spying activities
The American FBI
launched a hunt for
‘Atomic spies’
The First Soviet A-bomb test
Ted Hall,
youngest
scientist on the
Manhattan
project, and a
source of key
Soviet
information
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In many ways the hunt for the Atomic Spies was
a witch hunt that saw several people convicted
based on slanted or questionable evidence
The desire to see someone punished led to the
execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, they
were convicted of aiding an enemy of the United
States (the USSR)
The real Atomic spy turned out to be Klaus
Fuchs a physicist who worked on the Manhattan
project, he lived to tell the tale
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An American Senator
(Joe McCarthy) was so
convinced that Soviet
spies were everywhere
that he began a hunt
for suspected spies
and collaborators
1947
PartComic
of the Book
scare
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He created the
Committee on UnAmerican activities, this
committee called
hundreds of people and
branded many of them as
Communist sympathizers
Many people were
unfairly tarnished with
the taint of being a Soviet
spy, some committed
suicide, many had their
lives ruined, not one spy
was ever found
Charles
Chaplin, Actor
J. Robert
Oppenheimer,
Physicist
Lee Grant,
actress
Paul Robeson
Spy Games
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Throughout the Cold War there was significant
action between the superpowers spy agencies
the CIA & KGB
In many cases their actions played a role in
keeping the tensions between the two countries
high
The British suffered a tremendous blow when it
was revealed that three of the top officials in
MI-5 were actually Soviet spies