Joseph Mccarthyism Dbq

Joseph McCarthy was a junior senator from Wisconsin who gave a speech in West Virginia in February 1950 in which he made the threat of communism clear to the people, “Today, only six years later, there are 800 million people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia - an increase of over 400 percent. On our side the figure has shrunk to around 500 million. In other words, in less than six years the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in our favor to 8 to 5 against us” (Document G). The Soviet Union, whose form of government is communism, are extraordinarily dangerous. With the rate they are spreading world domination would not be far. With the 800 million the Soviet Russia has under their hand they can take on big powers such as the US. The
There are squares on countries such as Finland, Bulgaria, Romania, Finland and a piece of eastern Germany, these squares represent countries in soviet political economic and strategic bloc. The countries filled with white represent countries under strong soviet political pressure. Some of those countries are Turkey, Western Germany, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Spain, Italy and numerous more (Document J). This cartoon shows that communism has an enormous pressure on a plethora of countries and that the United States of America did not underestimate the threat Joseph Stalin created with
Kennan wrote an 8,000-word telegram to the state Department about the threat of the roots of Soviet policy and the difficulties that will occur in the future with the Soviet Union. Kennan stated his concern by writing, "At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity...[T]hey have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it" (George E Kennan, The Long Telegram, 1946 Document D). Kennan saw the truth about the Soviet Union which was that they are a dangerous power and if they do not get it their way they will use force to get it. Someone with enormous power and little patience is an exceedingly hard opponent to beat. Kennan described this struggle this way in his telegram by writing, "if Soviet power is to be secure... Problem of how to cope with this force [is] undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face" (George E Kennan, The Long Telegram, 1946 Document D). The US saved the world from a global communist revolution. The Soviet Union is dangerous and the United States handled the situation with the correct