scholarly journals Cold-War Economics: The Use of Marshall Plan Counterpart Funds in Germany, 1948–1960

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-716
Author(s):  
Armin Grünbacher

The originally propagated view that the Marshall Plan was an altruistic endeavor through which the U.S. saved Europe from collapse and starvation has long been dismissed and replaced with a more realistic approach to international affairs. Whereas Realpolitik and the perception of the evermore menacing Cold War made it inevitable that Marshall Plan aid and its counterpart funds would become a weapon in the ideological conflict of the two political ideologies, the overwhelming body of literature looks at the Marshall Plan either from a political and diplomatic or from an economic viewpoint. Beyond general statements that the Marshall Plan was used as a weapon in the Cold War, relatively little research has been carried out into how this weapon was wielded. This is even truer for the counterpart funds, which are usually only mentioned in passing in the literature, if at all. This is despite the fact that Marshall Aid in general and the counterpart funds in particular had actually quite a significant impact in Cold-War propaganda and economic matters in Western Europe, which most likely contributed to the declining appeal of communism. This article will look at the specific action of American and, after September 1949, German authorities in the use of counterpart funds to demonstrate their significance.

Author(s):  
Toby C. Rider

This concluding chapter considers the scope of the U.S. Cold War propaganda efforts during the late 1950s. In many ways, the 1950s had set the stage for the remainder of the Cold War. The superpower sporting rivalry continued to elevate the political significance of athletic exchanges, track meets, and a range of other competitions and interactions between sportsmen and sportswomen from the East and the West. For the U.S. public, the Olympics were still the source of much debate as each festival arrived on its quadrennial orbit. Victory or defeat at the Olympics clearly remained important to the public and to the White House. Declassified documents also suggest that in the post-Eisenhower years the government was still deploying the Olympics in the service of psychological warfare.


2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (11) ◽  
pp. 621
Author(s):  
Amy Dye-Reeves

Avalon Project (Yale University)- Cold WarCold War International History ProjectCold War MuseumHarvard Project on the Soviet Social System OnlineNational Security ArchiveOrigins of the Cold WarPrelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a BlacklistThe Wilson Center Digital Archives- Cold War OriginsCold War IntelligenceCold War Politics (1945–1991)Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy: The Cold WarForeign Relations of the United StatesIdeological Foundations of the Cold War–Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and MuseumNational Security Achieve–Debriefing BooksAddress to Congress on the Yalta Conference (Franklin D. Roosevelt)Crimea (Yalta) Conference, 1945Berlin Airlift (Harry S. Truman Presidential Library)Berlin Blockade 1948-1949Berlin Blockade (June 24, 1948–May 12, 1949)The March Crisis and the Berlin AirliftGeorge C. Marshall (The Marshall Plan)Marshall Plan ExhibitPublicizing the Marshall Plan: Records of the U.S. Special Representative in Europe, 1948-1950Truman and the Marshall Plan


2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-271
Author(s):  
L. Maria Bo

Abstract This article examines Eileen Chang’s 1953 translation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea into Chinese as Cold War propaganda for the United States Information Service (USIS). It argues that this translation, meant to show the truth of democracy through its high modernist form, directly influenced the writing and translating of The Rice-Sprout Song (1955), the novel Chang wrote next for the USIS to expose the truth of famine in Communist China. I show that Chang’s translation practices connect US and Chinese literary modernisms in a showdown of literary forms and their disparate claims to the truth. Chang navigates political ideologies by eschewing linguistic equivalence to favor equivocation instead, ultimately transforming Hemingway’s modernist form via her own. It thus adds to transpacific studies and Cold War historiography by revealing the intimate relationship between political ideology and literary form, and their cross-fertilization in the process of translation.


2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvio Pons

Soviet policy toward the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1943 to 1948 exemplified Josif Stalin's complicated relationship with the West European Communist parties and Western Europe in general. For a considerable while, Stalin insisted that the PCI follow a policy of moderation. Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the PCI, heeded Stalin's orders and tried to ensure that the Italian Communists pursued a policy of national unity and avoided conflicts that might lead to civil war in Italy. But this moderate approach collapsed after the Soviet Union rejected the Marshall Plan in 1947 and thereby forced the West European Communist parties into extra-parliamentary opposition. Not until after the poor showing of the PCI in the 1948 Italian elections was the party able to regain a viable role. Stalin's conflicting advice to the PCI was indicative of his tenuous grasp of the situation in Western Europe.


Author(s):  
Toby C. Rider

This chapter traces the reemergence of the U.S. psychological warfare apparatus—particularly propaganda—during the Cold War. Though widely deployed during the Second World War, these methods were initially held back in its aftermath. Nevertheless, the machinery for psychological warfare was designed, built, and refined under the presidency of Harry S. Truman and eagerly molded by his successor, Dwight Eisenhower. That both administrations decided to pour time and energy into propaganda also reveals much about the history of the twentieth century. This chapter maps out the United States' use of propaganda and psychological warfare in the years leading up to and during the Cold War. In addition, it also examines the U.S. government's use of private businesses, groups, and organizations to support U.S. foreign policy objectives.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-97
Author(s):  
Umut Bekcan ◽  
Pınar Uz Hançarlı

In this study, three claims/arguments regarding the emergence and function of the Eurovision Song Contest were put forward and tried to be grounded. First, the contest emerged as a tool for Western Europe to influence Eastern Europe culturally in the Cold War but it didn’t become an ideological conflict area of East-West. Second, the contest functioned as a stage of expressing the political problems/situations that countries experience within themselves or with each other in the Cold War era and aftermath. Third, although Turkey took place in the Western Europe side in the Cold War, this contest made Turkey feel non-European while having a different identity. In this context, the subject is discussed from the historical perspective with the assumption that the subject of history is unique. The study focused primarily on the concept of the Cold War and the contest. Then, it was explained with the examples which political problems/situations different from the Cold War ideological conflict environment were brought up on the contest platform. Finally, it was emphasized that the contest contributed to “us vs them” dichotomy in Turkey against Europe, contrary to Eurovision’s aim to form/create a common European culture.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Raphael B. Folsom

The writings of the U.S. scholar Philip Wayne Powell have had an enduring influence on the historiography of colonial Mexico and the Spanish borderlands. But his writings have never been examined as a unified corpus, and so the deeply reactionary political ideology that lay behind them has never been well understood. By analyzing Powell’s political convictions, this article shows how contemporary scholarship on the conquest of northern Mexico can emerge from Powell’s long shadow. Los escritos del estudioso estadounidense Philip Wayne Powell han ejercido una influencia perdurable sobre la historiografía del México colonial y las zonas fronterizas españolas. Sin embargo, dichos escritos nunca han sido examinados como un corpus unificado, de manera que la ideología política profundamente reaccionaria detrás de ellos nunca ha sido bien comprendida. Al analizar las convicciones políticas de Powell, el presente artículo muestra cómo puede surgir un conocimiento contemporáneo sobre la conquista del norte de México a partir de la larga sombra de Powell.


2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Martin Alm

This article studies U.S. views of the historical relationship between the U.S. and Europe as conceived during the 20th century. This is examined through U.S. World history text books dating from 1921 to 2001. The textbooks view relations within a general teleological narrative of progress through democracy and technology. Generally, the textbooks stress the significan ce of the English heritage to American society. From the American Revolution onwards, however, the U.S. stands as an example to Europe. Beginning with the two world wars, it also intervenes directly in Europe in order to save democracy. In the Cold War, the U.S. finally acknowledges the lea ding role it has been assigned in the world. Through its democratic ideals, the U.S. historically has a spe cial relationship with Great Britain and, by the 20th century, Western Europe in general. An American identity is established both in conjunction with Western Europe, by emphasizing their common democratic tradition, and in opposition to it, by stressing how the Americans have developed this tradition better than the Europeans, creating a more egalitarian and libertarian society. There is a need for Europe to become more like the U.S., and a Europe that does not follow the American lead is viewed with suspicion.


Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Eric Burton

AbstractFrom the late 1950s, Africans seeking higher education went to a rapidly increasing number of destinations, both within Africa and overseas. Based on multi-sited archival research and memoirs, this article shows how Africans forged and used new routes to gain access to higher education denied to them in their territories of origin, and in this way also shaped scholarship policies across the globe. Focusing on British-ruled territories in East Africa, the article establishes the importance of African intermediaries and independent countries as hubs of mobility. The agency of students and intermediaries, as well as official responses, are examined in three interconnected cases: the clandestine ‘Nile route’ from East Africa to Egypt and eastern Europe; the ‘airlifts’ from East Africa to North America; and the ‘exodus’ of African students from the Eastern bloc to western Europe. Although all of these routes were short-lived, they transformed official scholarship provisions, and significantly shaped the postcolonial period in the countries of origin.


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