ABSTRACT
There were three fundamental developments that served to make the post-Second World War red scare different from those that had come before. First was the American development of an atomic bomb—a weapon of unparalleled destruction that, from the beginning, was understood to have the capacity to destroy entire civilizations and perhaps human life altogether. Second was the Soviet recruitment and use of American spies to get access to American military secrets, especially the knowledge of atomic weaponry. Third was the national response to the breathtakingly rapid expansion of communism all over the globe. By 1949, in the eyes of the United States, the situation in China had become hopeless and US aid to the Nationalists was wound down as Truman and his advisers came to see a Communist victory as inevitable. Historian Ellen Schrecker has described an important aspect of the red scare that she has dubbed the "Anti-Communist Network.".
