The Politics of Removing Children: The International Tracing Service's German Foster Homes Investigation of 1948

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dan Stone
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Foster Homes ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Missing Children ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

Abstract After the Second World War, the International Tracing Service's Child Search Branch (CSB) responded to inquiries for missing children and, until 1950 when funding was stopped, searched for children ‘in the field’. As the Cold War set in, the US military authorities restricted the opportunities for such children, mostly Eastern European, to be removed from their German foster parents and returned to their countries of origin. In the spring of 1948, when tensions between the CSB fieldworkers and the military authorities were at their height, ITS appointed an experienced fieldworker, Charlotte Babinski, to investigate cases of children in German foster homes with a view to streamlining policy regarding child removal. Despite her findings, as monetary and geopolitical pressures increased, the CSB had to accept that many children of Eastern European origin would remain in Germany. Children were thus a battleground in the early Cold War, in which politics triumphed over ethics.

Armed Forces as a Geopolitics Instrument from a Historical and Contemporary Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (34) ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
Mateusz Ziętarski
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World ◽  
Contemporary Context

Geography can restrain states, or create possibilities to the political activity that states carry out. Following Carl von Clausewitz, one can point to the relation between politics and war. The famous Prussian general claimed that war is an extension of politics made by means of the armed forces. Questions should therefore be posed how geography restrains or stregthens the activity of the armed forces, and how geopolitics determines the functioning of the military. The following article shows the abovementioned imperative in the historical as well as contemporary context. The aim of the study is to place the armed forces in the geopolitical framework and to show the cause-and-effect relationship between the operations of the armed forces and geopolitics. The research is carried out on the time axis: the time analysis is divided into the period of the Second World War, the Cold War and the post-Cold War period.

scholarly journals NON-ALIGNMENT MOVEMENT: IT’S RELEVANCE IN PRESENT CONTEXT

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 272-279
Author(s):  
Balwinder Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Third World ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Present Context ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

After the end of Second World War, the two power bloc was raising in world politics and the revelry between the blocs was on top. The Cold War politics emerged as a bitter experience of international relations. Both blocs were mollifying the other countries of the world. It had to become stronger because of many newly independent countries. For the sake their independence many countries choose the third path to avoiding war and keeping their independence, they framed NAM (Non-alignment Movement). Most of these countries was belong to Asia and Africa and also newly independent. The US (United States) and European countries criticized NAM and revoked it as a group of opportunist countries. The NAM emerged as an international platform as a third alternative of two power blocs. The NAM was the international phenomenon of developing and third world countries. Non-alignment grew out of the cold war bitter relationship between US and USSR. Some developing and third world newly independent countries refused to post Second World War world politics through the eyes of their erstwhile colonial rulers. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was one of the paramount leaders of NAM since its inception. After the demise of British rule in India, India also refused to join any bloc in Cold War time. Nehru did not want to enter in two bloc politics due to India’s national interests. He thought that Indian independence could diminish if India going toward any blocs and adopted Non-alignment as an instrument of foreign policy. He also made effort to discuss other world leader to formulate NAM as platform of collective voice of newly independence countries. The paper also aims to explain India’s contribution to the Non-alignment Movement. The first formal conference of NAM was in Bandung in 1961. Nehru and others NAM leaders uttered against new imperialism in Asia and Africa in Bandung Summit by the western countries. Some countries raise questions about the importance and relevance of NAM and produce it as a callous movement after the end of the Cold War. However the broader membership of NAM proved its relevance and importance. Most of the world countries adopted NAM membership due to its popularity and momentous agenda. While the Cold War strategic environment underestimates Non-alignment movement and the two power blocs tried to demoralize Non-alignment movement, however the Non-alignment movement was accomplishing their work with a greater momentum. Non-alignment, both as a foreign policy perspective of most newly independence states of Asia, Africa and Latin America and as well as an international movement was a critical factor of contemporary international relations. The Non-alignment movement was the collective voice of developing and third world countries since the first official meeting of its leaders in Belgrade in 1961. The policy of the Non-alignment has been being the issue of debate in international politics since its origin. In 1970’s, its importance and relevance had questioned, with the emergence of détente in international relations. The US and European countries did not consider the NAM movement at that time. Both power blocs were also questioned the role of NAM in cold war era. The western countries always tagged NAM as a collaboration of opportunist countries. It was such a big thing that NAM survived in fracas of cold war. The study tried to remove skepticism on Non-alignment and NAM in post-Cold War arena. It is also suggesting a new way for making the movement effective and relevant in present context.

scholarly journals Greater Self-Assertion and Nationalism in Japan

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 8-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuhiko Togo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Defence Policy ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

Out of the deep spiritual vacuum from defeat in the Second World War, two fundamental rifts emerged in Japan. First, on the foreign policy front, the realism embraced by the conservative government was opposed by strong idealistic pacifism advocated by opposition parties and media, and this rift continued until the end of the Cold War. Second, with regard to the war in Asia, the Japanese gradually learned of atrocities committed, for which Japan owed an apology. However, views prevailing at the time to totally reject the past caused discomfort aming many Japanese, and the issue of lost identity was left unanswered during the Cold War. When the Cold War ended, Japan began to move towords a more responsible and self-assertive security and defence policy. A series of initiatives toward clearer apology and reconciliation were confronted by a strengthened nationalism, and the issue of lost identity remained unresolved at the end of the 1990s. Koizumi has done well to implement a more responsible, proactive, realistic and self-assertive security and defence policy; moreover relations with the US have been considerably strengthened. But in East Asia, the issue of lost identity has reappeared and foreign policy towards Russia, Korea and China has resulted in a hardning of Japan's position in the region. Japan needs to have the courage to overcome this unresolved issue, while other countries' greater understanding of Japan's move toward a re-established identity will facilitate this process. Genuine dialogue is needed on all fronts.

scholarly journals Was the Alternative to the Cold War Possible? (To 75 anniversary of Great Victory and the creation of the UN). Article two

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (6) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Alexey Gromyko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Subjective Factor ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The article continues the research of the “big three” strategic thinking, especially the USSR and the USA, during the Second World War, their contribution to the post-war settlement with the United Nations as a key element. Their approaches to new mechanisms of global governance were developing on parallel and overlapping courses. On the chronology of the Cold War, the author proposes to define its start as an extended period from 1945 until the end of the decade. This methodology avoids absolutization of intentions, separate events and statements. Instead it imbeds them in the process of political-military structures’ construction, designed for regional and global confrontation. The attention is paid to the role of the subjective factor in transition of the “big three” from cooperation to the Cold War. The meaning of the Iranian crisis is demonstrated as an additional source of the Cold War’s premises. The author reveals the milieu of conflicting views in the US political establishment on the legacy of the “Roosevelt course” including the nuclear factor. The conclusion is drawn that in the years of the Second World War great powers pursued long-term policy towards the post-war settlement putting aside political conjuncture.

‘Ghastly marionettes’ and the political metaphysics of cognitive liberalism: Anti-behaviourism, language, and the origins of totalitarianism

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-174
Author(s):  
Danielle Judith Zola Carr
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Language Play ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
War Discourse ◽  
Second World

While behaviourist psychology had proven its worth to the US military during the Second World War, the 1950s saw behaviourism increasingly associated with a Cold War discourse of ‘totalitarianism’. This article considers the argument made in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism on totalitarianism as a form of behaviourist control. By connecting Arendt’s Cold War anti-behaviourism both to its discursive antecedents in a Progressive-era critique of industrial labour, and to contemporaneous attacks on behaviourism, this paper aims to answer two interlocking questions: Why was behaviourism overtaken by cognitivism as the dominant theoretical orientation of psychologists in the 1960s, and what role did the concept of language play in this shift?

Cold War Psychology in Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Kiss
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Psychological Practice ◽  
Marxist Ideology ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
Second World

The Cold War took place between 1948 and 1991 and centered on the antagonism between the two great superpowers, the US and the USSR, each with its allies and areas of influence. If the US had a significant influence in the West, the USSR dominated the countries of Eastern Europe. The USSR violently imposed communist totalitarian regimes after the end of the Second World War in the countries behind the Iron Curtain: the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. The psychological traditions consolidated up to that time were in many of these countries eradicated, meaning the restructuring or abolition of higher education, the abolition of scientific societies and journals. Many psychologists with connections to the Western academic world were purged and persecuted. There was the will to build a new socialist psychology, based strictly on Marxist ideology and Pavlovian physiology. Theories or approaches that did not reflect official ideology were forbidden and labeled as bourgeois pseudoscience. Authorities severely punished psychological practice based on such theories. There were similarities between what happened in these countries, especially in the first decade of the imposition of communism. However, after the death of Joseph Stalin, things developed somewhat differently in each country. Although in some places ideological policies in science had a progressive tendency toward liberalization, in other places there was significant negative interferences throughout the communist period. Due to this diversity, it is somewhat challenging to frame the development of psychology in Eastern Europe during the Cold War from a unitary perspective.

Creative Intelligence and the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bregje F. Van Eekelen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Creativity Studies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

This article investigates the Cold War entanglements of the concept of “creativity” with the US military. The field of creativity studies came about after World War II, and the military was a vital site for the production of knowledge about creative thinking. Creativity emerged on the geopolitical radar, in terms of the acquisition of creative thinking skills, attempts to “think the unthinkable” (atomic futures), and the detection of creative citizens. Creative, divergent thinking garnered a renewed urgency with the Sputnik shock, which showcased that conformist practices in knowledge production would not put an American on the moon. Between 1945 and 1965, the concept of creativity—as something to be defined, measured, and stimulated—was framed as a matter of national security and an object of geopolitical concern. This ensuing traffic in knowledge between Cold War academic and military contexts has been constitutive of present-day understandings of creative, undisciplined thought.

“Grasping the Assassin’s Mace”

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-100
Author(s):  
Rush Doshi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Control Strategy ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Military Power ◽  
American Power ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Chapter 4 considers the military component of China’s grand strategy to blunt American power in Asia. It shows that the “traumatic trifecta” at the end of the Cold War prompted China to depart from a “sea control” strategy increasingly focused on holding distant maritime territory to a “sea denial strategy” focused on preventing the US military from traversing, controlling, or intervening in the waters near China. That shift was challenging, so Beijing declared it would “catch up in some areas and not others” and vowed to build “whatever the enemy fears” to accomplish it—ultimately delaying investments in costly and vulnerable vessels like aircraft carriers and instead investing in cheaper, asymmetric denial weapons. The chapter discusses Beijing’s construction of the world’s largest mine arsenal, the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, and the world’s largest submarine fleet—demonstrating a motivation in all these investments to undermine US military power.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

An unfinished battle: George C. Marshall and intelligence in the early Cold War

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452110179
Author(s):  
Raphaël Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Truman Administration ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Covert Action ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article deals with the influence of Gen. George C. Marshall on the foundation of the US intelligence community after the Second World War. It argues that his uneven achievements demonstrate how the ceaseless wrangling within the Truman administration undermined the crafting of a coherent intelligence policy. Despite his bureaucratic skills and prominent positions, Marshall struggled to achieve his ends on matters like signals intelligence, covert action, or relations between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet he crafted an enduring vision of how intelligence should supplement US national security policy that remained potent throughout the Cold War and beyond.

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