McCarthyism, Korea and the Cold War

After World War II, foreign affairs played an increasingly important role in the lives of American citizens. The United States and its allies competed with the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies for political and economic dominance around the world. Known as the Cold War, this rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union shaped almost every aspect of international politics, as well as many domestic concerns, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in the early 1990s.

In the late 1940s, people in Wisconsin were divided over issues such... more...

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

	An anti-McCarthy political flyer from the 1952 campaign
	McCarthy is discredited on nationwide television
	Judge Joe McCarthy runs for Senate in 1946
	The Progressive Magazine takes on Senator McCarthy in 1954
	McCarthy seeks support against "communist mouthpieces"
	Sen. William Proxmire Opposes the Military-Industrial Complex
	A patch from a historic meeting in space, 1975
	Hope and fear in an atomic age
	A Racine family equips their fallout shelter in 1960
	Two Korean War veterans describe their experiences
	Photographs from the career of William Proxmire
	Sen. William Proxmire's Campaign Against Genocide

Primary Sources Available Elsewhere

	Sen. Joseph McCarthy gives a talk in Chicago in 1953.
	The U.S. Senate censures Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy (1954)
	Wisconsin Blue Books
	McCarthy's 1953-54 closed-door hearings.
	Documents relating to the Cold War in Milwaukee schools
	A comprehensive overview of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's career.
	An online exhibit from the Wis. Veterans Museum
	Documents related to the trial of convicted Communist Alger Hiss
	Photographs of the USS Wisconsin in Korea

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