Class Presentation Summary: How Communists Menace Vital Materials, 10/31/23

The map we decided to focus on for our presentation is “How Communists Menace Vital Materials” created by an American cartographer from the Research Institute of America in 1956. This map was created during the height of the Cold War which was a proxy war between the USA and the USSR. The two superpowers never directly found each other but operated as large power heads controlling other countries. The Cold War was caused by ideological differences between the viewpoints of capitalism and democracy vs. communism, opposing views on how to handle Germany, and the race for nuclear weapons. This map is a hypothetical plan of how the USSR would both infiltrate foreign countries and how they would benefit economically from each country’s natural materials. It was presented to Congress to invoke fear and anger so the United States would take preventative actions against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. On the map, there are six arrows called “red thrusts” stemming out of the USSR, conveying where the Soviets planned to take natural resources from. Beneath the map, there are strategies for how they would manipulate/infiltrate each country into falling under their control. The map depicts how the Red Scare is an issue for the entire world, not just the United States. This map is extremely rhetorical, as its main function was to “tell” Congress to go into action by sparking fear, proving how compelling maps can be. Despite this map being a piece of American propaganda against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, its ability to still be relevant today demonstrates its historical importance.