The Cold War was an extremely nervous period in history for the United States. It was said that a nuclear showdown with the former communist Soviet Union was inevitable. The United States has faced many crisis at the hands of the communism. One crisis that comes to mind is the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the Soviet Union transferred nuclear warheads to Cuba, and Cuba therefore directed the warheads towards the US. Another crisis is currently present, the nuclear showdown with another communist nation, North Korea. Many wonder how the ideology of communism came about. To understand how, one must get to the roots of communism, which is actually Marxism. Marxism is a set of theories developed by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century in response to the Western Industrial Revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism.
To begin, Karl Marx was born in 1818 in the west German city of Treves. Treves belonged to Prussia and was the second most powerful of the many independent German states. The Marx's were a Jewish family; both father and mother had come from families of rabbis. Karl Marx was often teased as a youth because of his Jewish background, and consequently had very few Jewish friends. In addition, he was never taught much about Judaism or Jewish life and was rather proud of his ignorance. Karl Marx wrote a fair amount about the Jews of Europe, regarding Judaism as a "stupid superstition," and the Jews as a community were caught in the vise of capitalism from which only the revolution can free them (Pipes 11). Karl Marx's father was educated in the anti-religious atmosphere of the late 18th century Enlightenment. Furthermore, his father gave up on Judaism and the Jewish community, and became a lawyer. .
Karl Marx's father had himself and his whole family baptized as Lutherans not because he admired Luther or believed in Jesus, but to save his career in what was officially Lutheran Prussia.