scholarly journals The problem of American Loans and Credits for Czechoslovakia in 1945–1948

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-81
Author(s):  
A. V. Zorin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Policy ◽  
World War ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Made In

The article is devoted to one of the aspects of the US European policy after World War II: the issue of loans and credits to affected countries. Using the example of Czechoslovakia, the author tries to answer a number of important questions: did Washington have a sound financial and economic policy towards this country, what goals did it pursue, what were its results? The study is based on the US Department of State archive documents and papers of the American ambassador to Czechoslovakia L.A. Steinhardt. The US financial policy towards Czechoslovakia in the early post-war years was the subject of intense debate in the United States. The author reveals evidence of serious disagreement between economic and political divisions of the State Department about providing of financial assistance to Prague, its size and terms of lending. Particular attention is paid to Steingardt’s position and his attempts to determine American loans and credits to Prague by upholding the property interests of American citizens. These disagreements hindered the development of a single thoughtful course regarding the Czechoslovak Republic and complicated diplomatic relations with Prague; negotiations on the allocation of large loans for the economic recovery of the Czechoslovak Republic dragged on. A fundamental role in the establishment of a new US political course had Secretary of State James Byrnes’ decision, made in the fall of 1946, on the inadmissibility of providing assistance to countries that have taken anti-American positions. This approach was finally entrenched after the Communists coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, when the country entered the Soviet sphere of influence. The article concludes that the post-war US policy was not distinguished by integrity and thoughtfulness.

Lessons of World War II and Strategic Planning of the Big Three (1945–1949)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-84
Author(s):  
I. E. Magadeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War

The paper examines how military and political leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain assessed in the first post-war years and in the face of emerging bipolar world order the lessons of World War II, how the latter influenced their strategic planning and forecasts with the emergence of nuclear weapons. The author outlines the key features of this period (1945–1949), including still fresh memories of the unprecedented destruction and losses of the past war, the US ‘nuclear monopoly’, and the absence of a system for nuclear deterrence. The paper provides a systematic comparison of lessons from the past war, learnt by the Soviet, the US and British establishment, identifies similarities and differences between them. The author concludes that WWII was perceived by the political and military leaders of that time as a model of the eventual ‘great war’ in the future, which almost certainly would be ‘total’ and ‘global’ in scope and would demand both thorough preparations during the peacetime and the militarization of civil life. Indeed, the experience of WWII had greatly influenced the strategic and operational planning in the USSR, the USA and Great Britain in 1945–1949. Moscow prepared to face the potential aggression on its Western borders or in the Far East in order to avoid the mistakes of 1941. In Washington the decisionmakers acknowledged the Soviet superiority in conventional weapons and didn’t exclude the possibility that the Soviet Army could quickly establish control over the Western Europe and that the US military would have to retake it in a ‘new Operation Overlord’. The pessimistic outlook of the ‘defense of the Rhine’ was also shared in London, and the British military planned to evacuate the troops to the British Isles (‘shadow of Dunkirk’) and to focus on strategic bombing of the USSR and its allies. Even the appearance of nuclear weapons, that would dramatically alter the strategic context in the following years, played a relatively minor role in 1945–1949. The author concludes that the shadow of World War II and its lessons had a long-lasting effect on the post-war international relations.

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?”

Direct Legislation: Some Implications of Open Housing Referenda

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard D. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
Direct Legislation ◽  
Direct Government ◽  
Open Housing

Any middle-aged member of the political science guild in a retrospective mood might ponder a question: “What ever happened to direct democracy?” In our halcyon student days the textbooks discussed the direct democracy trinity—initiative, referendum, and recall—described their mechanics and variations, explained their origin in the Progressive Era, told us that the United States, Australia, and Switzerland were leading practitioners of direct democracy, cited a few eccentric referenda, gave the standard pro and con arguments, and essayed some judgments of the relative merits of direct and representative democracy. Latter day collegians may pass through the portals innocent of the existence of the institutions of direct government. Half of the American government texts never mention the subject; the others allocate a paragraph or a page for a casual mention or a barebones explanation of the mechanics.A similar trend has occurred in the literature. Before 1921, every volume of this Review had items on the referendum, five in one volume. Subsequently there have been only seven articles, all but two prior to World War II. “The Initiative and Referendum in Graustark” has ceased to be a fashionable dissertation topic, only four in the last thirty years. All but two of the published monographs antedate World War II.

Super Soldiers (Part 1)

2014 ◽  
pp. 119-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Lin ◽  
Max Mehlman ◽  
Keith Abney ◽  
Jai Galliott
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Psychedelic Drugs ◽  
Public Risk ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
New Type ◽  
Modern Warfare

After World War II, much debate unfolded about the ethical, legal, and social implications of military human enhancement, due in part to Adolf Hitler's war on the “genetically unfit” and the United States military's experimentation with psychedelic drugs such as LSD. Interest in that debate has waxed and waned since the 1940s. However, it would be foolish or perhaps even dangerous to believe that America and its modern allies have abandoned efforts to upgrade service members' bodies and minds to create the “super soldiers” necessary to match the increasing pace of modern warfare and dominate the strengthening militaries of China and North Korea. Slogans such as “be all that you can be and a whole lot more” still reign strong at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and, according to some military futurists, the so-called “War on Terror” has only proven that military superpowers need a new type of soldier that is independent, network-integrated, and more lethal than ever before. Patterns of public risk perception, military expenditure, and new technological developments suggest that it is now time to re-open or reinvigorate the original debate. The authors' contribution comes in two parts. In this chapter, they provide a brief background to military human enhancement before defining it carefully and exploring the relevant controversies. In the second, they more explicitly examine the relevant legal, operational, and moral challenges posed by these efforts.

scholarly journals From Both Sides of the Atlantic: Black German Adoptee Searches in William Gage’s Geborener Deutscher (Born German)

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Rosemarie Peña
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Community Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Small Children ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Insight Into

William Gage’s Geborener Deutscher, a print newsletter distributed by traditional mail from the late 1980s until 2003, and the eponymous Internet forum Gage established in 2000 on Yahoo Groups, provide search resources and community support specifically for German born adoptees. The archived newsletters and conversations offer early insight into the search and reunion activities of many who were transnationally adopted to the United States as infants and small children in the wake of the Second World War. Among Gage’s mailing list and Yahoo Group subscribers are members of the post-war cohort of Black German Americans living in Germany and in the US. Gage’s archive provides a unique opportunity to begin to explore Black German adoptee search, reunion, and community development over nearly a two-decade span.

Internment of Japanese and Japanese Latin Americans During World War II

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selfa A. Chew
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coastal Zones ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

The lives of Latin American Japanese were disrupted during World War II, when their civil and human rights were suspended. National security and continental defense were the main reasons given by the American countries consenting to their uprooting. More than 2,000 ethnic Japanese from Peru, Panama, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, and Nicaragua were transferred as “illegal aliens” to internment camps in the United States. Initially, US and Latin American agencies arrested and deported male ethnic Japanese, regardless of their citizenship status. During the second stage, women and children joined their relatives in the United States. Most forced migration originated in Peru. Brazil and Mexico established similar displacement programs, ordering the population of Japanese descent to leave the coastal zones, and in the case of Mexico the border areas. In both countries, ethnic Japanese were under strict monitoring and lost property, employment, and family and friend relationships, losses that affected their health and the opportunity to support themselves in many cases. Latin American Japanese in the United States remained in camps operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the army for the duration of the war and were among the last internees leaving the detention facilities, in 1946. At the conclusion of World War II, the Latin American countries that had agreed to the expulsion of ethnic Japanese limited greatly their return. Some 800 internees were deported to Japan from the United States by the closure of the camps. Those who remained in North America were allowed to leave the camps to work in a fresh produce farm in Seabrook, New Jersey, without residency or citizenship rights. In 1952, immigration restrictions for former Latin American internees were lifted. Latin American governments have not apologized for the uprooting of the ethnic Japanese, while the US government has recognized it as a mistake. In 1988, the United States offered a symbolic compensation to all surviving victims of the internment camps in the amount of $20,000. In contrast, in 1991, Latin American Japanese survivors were granted only $5,000.

Korean Immigration to the United States After World War II

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal Mun-hye Baik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
World War ◽  
American Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Korean Immigration

Korean immigration to the United States has been shaped by multiple factors, including militarization, colonialism, and war. While Koreans migrated to the American-occupied islands of Hawai’i in the early 20th century as sugar plantation laborers, Japanese imperial rule (1910–1945) and racially exclusive immigration policy curtailed Korean migration to the United States until the end of World War II. Since then, Korean immigration has been shaped by racialized, gendered, and sexualized conditions related to the Korean War and American military occupation. Although existing social science literature dominantly frames Korean immigration through the paradigm of migration “waves,” these periodizations are arbitrary to the degree that they centralize perceived US policy changes or “breaks” within a linear historical timeline. In contrast, emphasizing the continuing role of peninsular instability and militarized division points to the accumulative effects of the Korean War that continue to impact Korean immigration. With the beginning of the American military occupation of Korea in 1945 and warfare erupting in 1950, Koreans experienced familial separations and displacements. Following the signing of the Korean armistice in 1953, which halted armed fighting without formally ending the war, the American military remained in the southern half of the Peninsula. The presence of the US military in South Korea had immediate repercussions among civilians, as American occupation engendered sexual intimacies between Korean women and US soldiers. Eventually, a multiracial population emerged as children were born to Korean women and American soldiers. Given the racial exclusivity of American immigration policy at the time, the US government established legislative “loopholes” to facilitate the migrations of Korean spouses of US soldiers and multiracial children adopted by American families. Between 1951 and 1964 over 90 percent of the 14,027 Koreans who entered the United States were Korean “war brides” and transnational adoptees. Since 1965, Korean spouses of American servicemen have played key roles in supporting the migration of family members through visa sponsorship. Legal provisions that affected the arrivals of Korean women and children to the United States provided a precedent for US immigration reform after 1950. For instance, the 1952 and 1965 Immigration and Nationality Acts integrated core elements of these emergency orders, including privileging heterosexual relationships within immigration preferences. Simultaneously, while the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act “opened” the doors of American immigration to millions of people, South Korean military dictatorial rule and the imminent threat of rekindled warfare also influenced Korean emigration. As a result, official US immigration categories do not necessarily capture the complex conditions informing Koreans’ decisions to migrate to the United States. Finally, in light of the national surge of anti-immigrant sentiments that have crystallized since the American presidential election of Donald Trump in November 2016, immigration rights advocates have highlighted the need to address the prevalence of undocumented immigrant status among Korean Americans. While definitive statistics do not exist, emergent data suggests that at least 10 percent of the Korean American population is undocumented. Given this significant number, the undocumented status of Korean Americans is a critical site of study that warrants further research.

Muslims in America from the European Colonial Period to the Present

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
National Identity ◽  
World War I ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Muslim Majority

The history of Muslims in America dates back to the transatlantic mercantile interactions between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Upon its arrival, Islam became entrenched in American discourses on race and civilization because literate and noble African Muslims, brought to America as slaves, had problematized popular stereotypes of Muslims and black Africans. Furthermore, these enslaved Muslims had to re-evaluate and reconfigure their beliefs and practices to form new communal relations and to make sense of their lives in America. At the turn of the 20th century, as Muslim immigrants began arriving in the United States from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and South Asia, they had to establish themselves in an America in which the white race, Protestantism, and progress were conflated to define a triumphalist American national identity, one that allowed varying levels of inclusion for Muslims based on their ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds. The enormous bloodshed and destruction experienced during World War I ushered in a crisis of confidence in the ideals of the European Enlightenment, as well as in white, Protestant nationalism. It opened up avenues for alternative expressions of progress, which allowed Muslims, along with other nonwhite, non-Christian communities, to engage in political and social organization. Among these organizations were a number of black religious movements that used Islamic beliefs, rites, and symbols to define a black Muslim national identity. World War II further shifted America, away from the religious competition that had earlier defined the nation’s identity and toward a “civil religion” of American democratic values and political institutions. Although this inclusive rhetoric was received differently along racial and ethnic lines, there was an overall appeal for greater visibility for Muslims in America. After World War II, increased commercial and diplomatic relations between the United States and Muslim-majority countries put American Muslims in a position, not only to relate Islam and America in their own lives but also to mediate between the varying interests of Muslim-majority countries and the United States. Following the civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s and the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, Muslim activists, many of whom had been politicized by anticolonial movements abroad, established new Islamic institutions. Eventually, a window was opened between the US government and American Muslim activists, who found a common enemy in communism following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Since the late 1960s, the number of Muslims in the United States has grown significantly. Today, Muslims are estimated to constitute a little more than 1 percent of the US population. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the United States as the sole superpower in the world, the United States has come into military conflict with Muslim-majority countries and has been the target of attacks by militant Muslim organizations. This has led to the cultivation of the binaries of “Islam and the West” and of “good” Islam and “bad” Islam, which have contributed to the racialization of American Muslims. It has also interpolated them into a reality external to their history and lived experiences as Muslims and Americans.

Does the United States Push Revolutions to Cuba? The Case of Grenada

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Pastor
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Political Model

One of the most difficult and frustrating challenges to US foreign policy in the post-World War II period has been coping with third world revolutions, particularly those in the Caribbean Basin. Whether the revolution has been in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Grenada, relations with the US have always deteriorated, and the revolutionary governments have moved closer to the Soviet bloc and toward a Communist political model. Both the deteriorating relationship and the increasingly belligerent posture of the US have conformed to a regular pattern; so too have the interpretations of the causes and consequences of the confrontation.US government officials and a few policy analysts tend to view the hostile attitudes and policies of the revolutionary governments as the cause of the problem.

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