Civil Defense loyalty oath

Card containing the text of a loyalty oath to be signed by a Civil Defense volunteer. During the McCarthy era, such oaths were commonly required of persons in many types of occupations and volunteer positions. In the 1950s, many Americans were concerned about the rise of communism and especially the Soviet Union. The dropping of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945 began an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, as each nation sought to develop more destructive weapons than the other. In the so-called Cold War, the two nations struggled for political, ideological, and economic superiority. Concerns over potential nuclear war during the 1950s and 1960s led to a government campaign to teach defense strategies such as "duck and cover" and to encourage citizens to create fallout shelters to protect them from nuclear attacks