Civil Defense—the New Debate

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 40-41
Author(s):  
Paul H. Nitze

George Kennan, in an interview published by the New York Times Magazine, affirmed the proposition that it is better to be “Red than dead.” Since the end of World War II the United States has been engaged in a successful effort to demonstrate that the choice thus implied is wrong. We have demonstrated, at least to date, that it is not necessary to be either “Red or dead“; it has been possible both to remain free and to avoid a nuclear war. The essential task is to continue so to do.In the last half of the 1950's, at the time of Sputnik, serious doubts arose as to whether a time would shortly arise when that issue—“Red or dead“—could become serious. It had not been a serious choice during the period when we had a nuclear monopoly, or even when we had an overwhelming and stable nuclear deterrent. But with the Soviet development of ICBMs, the technological practicality of which was first demonstrated by Sputnik, it became possible, perhaps probable, that the “better Red than dead” issue would arise in all seriousness in a few years.

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Giles Scott-Smith

The United Nations Information Office (UNIO), dating from 1942, holds the distinction of being both the first international agency of the embryonic UN network and the first to hold the United Nations label. Run from 1942 to 1945 from two offices in New York and London, these two were merged at the end of World War II to form the UN Information Organisation, and subsequently transformed into the Department of Public Information run from UN headquarters in New York. This article adds to the history of the UN by exploring the origins and development of the UNIO during 1940–41, when it was a British-led propaganda operation to gather US support for the allied war effort. It also examines the UNIO from the viewpoint of the power transition from Britain to the United States that took place during the war, and how this reflected a transition of internationalisms: from the British view of world order through benevolent imperialism to the American view of a progressive campaign for global development and human rights.


1975 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-142
Author(s):  
Robert G. Craig ◽  
Harry P. Mapp

“There is more than enough evidence to show that the states and localities, far from being weak sisters, have actually been carrying the brunt of domestic governmental progress in the United States ever since the end of World War II … Moreover, they have been largely responsible for undertaking the truly revolutionary change in the role of government in the United States that has occurred over the past decade.”–Daniel J. Elazar, The Public Interest


Author(s):  
Graham Cross

Franklin D. Roosevelt was US president in extraordinarily challenging times. The impact of both the Great Depression and World War II make discussion of his approach to foreign relations by historians highly contested and controversial. He was one of the most experienced people to hold office, having served in the Wilson administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, completed two terms as Governor of New York, and held a raft of political offices. At heart, he was an internationalist who believed in an engaged and active role for the United States in world. During his first two terms as president, Roosevelt had to temper his international engagement in response to public opinion and politicians wanting to focus on domestic problems and wary of the risks of involvement in conflict. As the world crisis deepened in the 1930s, his engagement revived. He adopted a gradualist approach to educating the American people in the dangers facing their country and led them to eventual participation in war and a greater role in world affairs. There were clearly mistakes in his diplomacy along the way and his leadership often appeared flawed, with an ambiguous legacy founded on political expediency, expanded executive power, vague idealism, and a chronic lack of clarity to prepare Americans for postwar challenges. Nevertheless, his policies to prepare the United States for the coming war saw his country emerge from years of depression to become an economic superpower. Likewise, his mobilization of his country’s enormous resources, support of key allies, and the holding together of a “Grand Alliance” in World War II not only brought victory but saw the United States become a dominant force in the world. Ultimately, Roosevelt’s idealistic vision, tempered with a sound appreciation of national power, would transform the global position of the United States and inaugurate what Henry Luce described as “the American Century.”


1962 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Halperin ◽  
Irvin Oder

This study traces the development during World War II of official American attitudes toward Palestine. Utilizing recently released official papers of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park, New York, and documentation in the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, our goal is to describe early American efforts to accommodate policy to the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. While relevant documents are still unavailable, the diplomatic and domestic politics chronicled here may provide better perspective than has hitherto been possible.


2019 ◽  
pp. 346-353
Author(s):  
David Sorkin

This chapter looks at how the Great Migration from eastern Europe made the United States a center of world Jewry. The Nazis' murder of most of European Jewry magnified that status. While the migrants and their children were citizens, their rights were restricted. Thus, in the period after World War II, American Jewry's civil defense organizations engaged in a concerted emancipation campaign. Jews collaborated with African Americans, Catholics, and other minorities to end inequality. That campaign succeeded: from the 1940s to the 1960s, state and federal civil rights laws, and court rulings prohibiting discrimination, dismantled the structure of inequality. Those events constituted American Jews' second emancipation: it positioned the immigrant's children and grandchildren to realize the promise of American equality.


PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
pp. 398-404
Author(s):  
Jordynn Jack

During World War II, women were heavily recruited for scientific and technical jobs across the united states. Many assumed roles previously allotted to men, serving as welders, riveters, sheet metal workers, crane operators, ship fitters, and chauffeurs, to name just a few. Between 1941 and 1944, over 6.5 million women joined the workforce; over 10 million were already working outside the home in 1941 (Pidgeon vi). The Brooklyn Naval Yard, featured in Manhattan Beach as the workplace of Anna, Nell, and their friends, also saw an increase in women workers, albeit a somewhat modest one. By 1944, according to The New York Times, women represented 4,000 of the 65,000 workers at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, not counting office workers (“Women Help Build Carrier”). While women represented just 6% of the industrial labor force at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, women represented 11.5% of all shipyard workers in 1944, according to the United States Department of Labor (Hirshfield 481).


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