The Symbolism of Subversion: Notes on Some Cold War Icons

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War

‘Ours is an era of “cases”,’ Diana Trilling wrote several years ago, ‘starting with the Sacco-Vanzetti case in the 1920s, proceeding through the Hiss and Oppenheimer cases to the Rosenberg case, the Chessman case, the Eichmann case, and [the subject of Mrs Trilling's essay]…culminating…in the Profumo case.’ We could add several since then, of course, and her chronology is misleading – the Rosenbergs having followed Hiss but preceded Oppenheimer – but Mrs Trilling's point, that such cases and others provoked within their society basic ‘confrontation(s) between opposing social principles’, remains valid. The Hiss, Rosenberg and Oppenheimer episodes were American society's most controversial post-World War II security cases. Each in turn dramatized the political and cultural impact of the Cold War for large numbers of Americans. They serve as useful paradigms, when examined together, for studying the process by which complex problems of evidence are reduced to compelling images of an event. Almost from the moment the ‘facts’ emerged in each case they congealed, first into partisan accounts and then into minor mythologies, in which each case became the subject-matter for a simple morality tale. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, and the supporting caste in each drama achieved, in their own time, the status of icons in the demonologies and hagiographies of the opposing camps. Looking recently through the dreary record of trials and hearings connected with security problems during the Truman-Eisenhower era, I found certain continuities in the appraisal by intellectuals and politicians of these three otherwise singular episodes.

The United States, Italy, and the Opening to the Left, 1953–1963

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leopoldo Nuti
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

Drawing on newly declassified U.S. and Italian documentation, this article as-sesses U.S. policy toward Italy under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations and uses this test case to draw some general conclusions about the nature of U.S. -Italian relations during the Cold War. The first part of the article focuses on issues that have been neglected or misinterpreted in the existing literature on the subject, and the second part presents some of the lessons that can be learned from the study of U.S. -Italian relations in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim is to cast broader light on the current debate about the role and influence of the United States in Western Europe after World War II.

scholarly journals The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Lars-Otto Reiersen ◽  
Ramon Guardans ◽  
Leiv K. Sydnes
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Scientific Collaboration ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractAfter World War II, the Cold War generated significant barriers between the East and the West, and this affected all sorts of cooperation, including research and scientific collaboration. However, as the political situation in the Soviet Union started to change in the 1980s under the leadership of Mikael Gorbachev, the environment for international collaboration in many areas gradually improved.

Poisoned Partnership: The International Mercury Cartel and Spanish–Italian Relations, 1945–1954

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
PABLO DEL HIERRO ◽  
ESPEN STORLI
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Cold War

This article investigates the development of the Spanish–Italian mercury cartel from the end of World War II to the mid-1950s. Previous literature has singled out the cartel as one of the most robust international cartels of the twentieth century, but as this article shows, the cartel broke down toward the end of the 1940s, and although briefly reestablished in 1954, it quickly dissolved again. Building on access to original source material from archives in Spain, Italy, the United States, and United Kingdom, we investigate the underlying reasons why the cartel broke down, and how and why it was eventually reestablished. Because both the main Italian and the Spanish mercury producers were state-owned, this article pays special attention to the influence of the political relations between Spain and Italy on the development of the cartel. The study of the mercury cartel is used as a prism to investigate the point where industry strategies meet government strategies. This article thus contributes to two major strands of literature, both to the business history literature on international cartels in the post-1945 world and to the diplomatic history literature on the intricate relationship between Spain and Italy in the early phase of the Cold War.

scholarly journals Five Kurosawas and a (de)construction of the Orient

Politics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-294
Author(s):  
Miia Huttunen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Intervention ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Concrete Form ◽  
Eastern Cultures ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Realities

In 1959, UNESCO published a catalogue of Eastern films suitable for Western audiences, titled ‘Orient. A Survey of Films Produced in Countries of Arab and Asian Culture’. The aim of the catalogue was to familiarise Western audiences with Eastern cultures through cinema. The catalogue lists seven general characteristics of Eastern cinema to distinguish it from its Western counterpart and to provide ready-made interpretations of the essential characteristics of the Eastern world. Of the 139 feature films listed in the catalogue, five were directed by Kurosawa Akira – the biggest number of films by a single director. This article provides an analysis of the five Kurosawa films within the frame provided by the characterisations in the catalogue in the political framework of World War II and its aftermath. Reading the cultural differences listed in the catalogue as a means of constructing the East in Western eyes, the article suggests UNESCO’s world was defined neither in terms of the contemporaneous geopolitical polarisation of the Cold War nor the ongoing decolonisation process. Instead, the catalogue served the purpose of proposing a cultural intervention in geopolitics, providing a reimagining of political realities constructed on a cultural basis and given a concrete form through cinema.

The Concept of Deterrence and Deterrence Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
World War ◽  
Empirical Theory ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Considerable Complexity

Deterrence is an old practice, readily defined and described, widely employed but unevenly effective and of questionable reliability. Elevated to prominence after World War II and the arrival of nuclear weapons, deterrence became the central recourse for sustaining international and internal security and stability among and within states in an era of serious conflict. With regard to the presence of nuclear weapons in particular but also to deal with non-nuclear violent conflict, deterrence has been employed to prevent (or at least limit) the destruction of states, societies, and ultimately humanity. The greatest success has been that no nuclear weapons have been used for destructive purposes since the end of World War II in 1945. Deterrence has been widely used below the nuclear level but with very uneven results. Deterrence has been intensively studied and tested as to its use in terms of strategy in international relations, the maintenance of stability in international relations, the conduct of violence and warfare in both international and domestic contexts, and in political affairs. Since deterrence is the use of threats to block or reduce the inflicting of serious harm, the existence of capacities for inflicting harm are readily maintained and periodically applied, so available deterrence capabilities provide a degree of continuing concern and a regular desire to at least do away with nuclear weapons and threats. A brief period in the ending of the Cold War saw a serious effort to reduce the reliance on deterrence, particularly nuclear deterrence, in international politics but it was soon replaced by serious movement in the opposite direction. Yet efforts to reduce the need for and use of deterrence continue. Extensive efforts have been applied in the development of theories of deterrence, particularly to generate empirical theory in order to better understand and apply deterrence but without arriving at widely accepted results. This is the result of the considerable complexity of the subject, the activity involved, and the behavior of the practitioners. The conduct of deterrence is now broader and deeper than before. It is under greater pressure due to technological, political, and cultural developments, and operates in a much more elaborate overall environment including space, cyberspace, and oceanic environs. Thus the goal of developing effective empirical theory on deterrence remains, at various levels, still incompletely attained. The same is true of mastering deterrence in practice. Nevertheless, deterrence remains important and fascinating.

Congress and the Cold War

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert David Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Future Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

Congress has received insufficient attention from scholars of Cold War foreign policy for a number of reasons, including historiographical patterns and the scattered nature of congressional sources. This gap in the literature has skewed our understanding of the Cold War because it has failed to take into account the numerous ways in which the legislature affected U.S. foreign policy after World War II. This article looks at Cold War congressional policy within a broad historical perspective, and it analyzes how the flurry of congressional activity in the years following the Vietnam War was part of a larger trend of congressional activism in foreign policy. After reviewing the existing literature on the subject of Congress and the Cold War, the article points out various directions for future research.

Liturgical Development between Ecclesiastical Normativity and Societal Perception

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
Florian Wegscheider
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The historical kiss of peace between Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Krzyżowa/Kreisau in 1989 serves as an example for how existential experiences can profoundly impact and even alter liturgy. However, liturgy can also be an obstacle for the further reflection and processing of such experiences, if they are not taken up in the liturgical setting. The political situation of a divided Europe as well as the Cold War following World War II indicate a unique situation in recent history that concernes believers all over the world. The question that results from taking this immediate past seriously is what kind of experiences liturgy can and should address (and in what form) and if there might be experiences or forms of handling such experiences that threaten the power of the ritual.

The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The paradigm of the “liberal consensus” has critically shaped scholarly understanding of the United States during the two decades after World War II. Both influential and controversial, it remains the subject of lively debate among scholars seeking to explain the political and social transformations of that era. Some historians contest the existence of consensus in post-1945 America, while others employ the term—sometimes unreflectively—as a shorthand descriptor of the contemporary mood. In contrast, this book argues that a revised, nuanced, and dynamic definition of consensus liberalism provides a compelling way to appreciate how the vitality of the postwar economy and the external challenges of the early Cold War shaped the United States in profound ways, both politically and socially.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

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