The Palmer Raids: The History of the Arrests and Deportations of Anarchists and Communists in America during the First Red Scare

While the period from 1945-1955 was the longest and most extensive period of time in American history when a fear of communism gripped the country, it was not the first. World War I was the first major foreign conflict the U.S. was involved in, after being safe behind the Atlantic Ocean, and Americans were now afraid of espionage and sabotage. As a result, people of German descent came under suspicion, and this subjected innocent German-Americans to mob violence, much of it perpetrated by a...