Thom Aschi: 'The Army-McCarthy Hearings Documentary'

Source:Thom Aschi- U.S. Senate Oversight Committee Arm/McCarthy Hearing in 1953.

Source:The Daily Post

“Joseph McCarthy Congressional Hearings” 

From Thom Aschi 

The West with the help of Russia wins World War II and agrees to give Europe the resources that it needs to rebuild themselves after Nazism and what Italian Fascists did to the continent. The West, America and Europe was now somewhat at peace. But in America and Europe you had this huge liberal democracy in America and all of these mid-size developing social democracies in Europe, against this gigantic, totalitarian, Communist State in the Soviet Union in Russia. And the two dominant visions of the world being the Liberal Democratic America, versus Communist Russia.

And because of the emergence of the Cold War, Americans especially those who perhaps very well-educated about communism became afraid if it. And were worried about communism taking over America and Communists running America. And that is where Senator Joe McCarthy and his allies and colleagues in Congress starting in the House in 1947 with the Un-American Activities Committee and then in the Senate with Army-McCarthy hearings, emerge to look like they were stamping out Communists in the U.S. Government.

Senator Joe McCarthy becomes a political star very early on, especially as a junior Senator. He becomes Chairman of the Government Oversight Committee in the Senate in 1953 after Republicans win back Congress again, after only being in the Senate for five years. But his political skills at least early on and his power as a speaker gave him a following to move up quickly and a platform to investigate supposed Communists in the U.S. Government. And to look like the strongest anti-Communist around and to advance his political career.