The Red Scare
Following WWII, the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union became engaged in a scene of largely political and economical clashes known as the Cold War. The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that communists and leftist sympathizers within America's borders might actually be working as Soviet spies and thus posing an alarming threat to national security.
Conclusion
Congress with the fear of a potential overthrow of the government took several actions aimed at the communists subversives. The Smith Act of 1940 was designed to set up arrests of people who advocated the overthrowing the government- even if they had no intention of doing so. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 1939 looked for former Nazis who had how somehow made it into the United States and who were communist threats. A state of paranoia broke out concerning potential communists taking over the nation and swept the entire nation in the 1950s. The effects of these occurrences even lead to students entering college and signing the anti-communist papers. Ultimately, this demonstrated the amount of fear for the Communist Party that all of America and the naiveté of the American population to respond to these fears.