Cold War

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• 10/18/2020
  

  "The Silent Guns of Two Octobers" Reviewing a New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

  by Sheldon M. Stern

  Longtime JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern offers a review of a new book on the diplomatic resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/5/2020
  

  The Day Nuclear War Almost Broke Out

  "There should, it seems, be a useful lesson to be learned from that frantic afternoon. But what, in God’s name, is it?"

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• SOURCE: Muckrock
  9/16/2020
  

  Dive Into John F. Kennedy’s Daily CIA Updates

  Muckrock invites interested historians and history enthusiasts to participate in a project to make declassified Presidential intelligence briefings more widely accessible. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/20/2020
  

  Donald Kendall, Who Built Pepsico into a Soda and Snack-Food Giant, Dies at 99

  The late president of Pepsi-Cola was a leader in bringing American products to the Soviet bloc and Communist China during the cold war and was influential in pushing Richard Nixon to support the CIA's coup against democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende in Chile.

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• 9/20/2020
  

  Dwight Eisenhower Built up American Intelligence at a Crucial Moment

  by Steve Vogel

  Dwight Eisenhower oversaw an aggressive building of American intelligence capability toward the USSR, moving espionage to a more prominent role in Cold War foreign policy. This included ordering the CIA to tunnel into East Berlin to tap Soviet phone lines. 

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• SOURCE: National Security Archive
  9/11/2020
  

  "GUILTY": Justice for the Jesuits in El Salvador

  Applying the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction for human rights abuses, a Spanish Court found former El Salvador Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano guilty in the assassination of six Jesuit priests and two Salvadoran women in 1989. The National Security Archive supplied hundreds of declassified documents as evidence. 

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• SOURCE: National History Center
  9/10/2020
  

  TODAY: Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography

  The National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars host a virtual discussion today featuring Thomas Schwartz, author of "Henry Kissinger: A Political Biography." 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  9/8/2020
  

  Fourth World: From the End of History to American Carnage

  by Tom Engelhardt

  A critic of American empire examines the unforeseen path from the triumphal "end of history" moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of Donald Trump. How did the nation squander the opportunity? 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/25/2020
  

  New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded

  Although the Soviet Union succeeded in testing a hydrogen bomb more than three times more powerful than the largest U.S.-tested weapon, most military leaders in the cold war sought to make the weapons smaller for strategic reasons. Recently declassified Soviet video shows the test. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/2/2020
  

  We Are Still Living the Legacy of World War II

  by Tom Hanks

  The actor Tom Hanks reflects on the false narrative of closure of World War II. The forces unleashed by war and the struggle to reshape the world resonate today. 

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• 8/23/2020
  

  In Removing Confederate Symbols, US Military Follows German Military’s Example

  by Fred Zilian

  With unification, a fundamental break with the values of the East German Communist Party was necessary. Former East German soldiers would now belong to an army of a democracy, rooted in the concept of the “citizen in uniform."

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  8/13/2020
  

  The Inevitability of Defending Henry Kissinger

  by Jim Sleeper

  A new book on the Cold War statesman offers a dangerous justification for the unaccountability of powerful figures. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/27/2020
  

  Joseph McCarthy and the Force of Political Falsehoods

  McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

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• 8/9/2020
  

  Did the Atomic Bomb End the Pacific War? – Part II

  by Paul Ham

  Japan's surrender was hastened by imminent invasion by the Soviet Red Army, a crippling US naval blockade and conventional bombing, and a diplomatic promise to protect the Japanese Emperor from execution, argues Paul Ham. Granting undue credit to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki excuses atrocity. 

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Did the Atomic Bomb End the Pacific War? – Part I

  by Paul Ham

  Many people, including historians, believe that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan's unconditional surrender, saved a million American lives, and was the least morally repellent way to end World War II. Paul Ham contends that none of this is true. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  7/21/2020
  

  Trump Has Brought America’s Dirty Wars Home

  by Stuart Schrader

  The history of the Office of Public Safety, created to support counterinsurgency around the globe during the Cold War, demonstrates that Trump’s ardor for authoritarian force has long-standing, homegrown roots.

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• SOURCE: Global Policy
  7/16/2020
  

  “A Tragic Illusion” - Did the Atom Bomb Make the United Nations Obsolete Three Weeks After its Birth?

  by Tad Daley

  President Harry Truman's knowledge of the imminent success of the Manhattan Project led him to fear that the United Nations' charter was inadequate to the task of preventing war; the Cold War meant that a better form of internationalism was never achieved. 

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• SOURCE: British Academy
  7/16/2020
  

  July 22: British Academy 10 Minute Talk: Art Historian, Professor, Writer, Spy – The Extraordinary Story of Anthony Blunt

  Listen to a brief talk on the scandal that engulfed the British Academy when one of its members was revealed to be a Soviet spy. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/23/2020
  

  New Film Tells Tale of North Korean Orphans Sent to Europe

  The documentary film “Kim Il Sung’s Children” will be released June 25, the 70th anniversary of the Korean War’s start.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  6/8/2020
  

  Using the Military to Quash Protests Can Erode Democracy – As Latin America Well Knows

  by Kristina Mani

  Even strong democracies have unraveled when the military was brought in to quell protest. Uruguay in the 1960s, Venezuela in the 1980s and Chile just last year provide insights.