“Those fine patriotic citizens, the Warner Brothers”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan K. Rode
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
White House ◽  
Wing Motion ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Right

During the height of World War II, Curtiz directed Mission to Moscow (1943), the most controversial film of his career. The wartime alliance between the U.S.S.R. and the United States motivated President Roosevelt to personally request the brothers Warner to produce this film. It was based on the best-selling “diary” of a former Soviet ambassador and F.D.R. intimate, Joseph Davies, and the Warners and Curtiz believed that they were supporting the war effort. Davies, however, exercised both script approval and the power of the White House in shaping the film into an absurdly biased tribute to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Although the finished film had minimal influence on public opinion, it fueled the creation of the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance and the postwar HUAC witch hunt.Curtiz pivoted to direct the Irving Berlin musical revue This Is the Army, which became his most financially successful Warner picture; Harry and Jack Warner donated all of the considerable profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund.He also directed Passage to Marseille, a problem-wracked failure, and Janie, an adolescent drama that was a box-office hit.

Southern Africa and the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Joseph Parrott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Of Affairs

The United States never sought to build an empire in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as did European nations from Britain to Portugal. However, economic, ideological, and cultural affinities gradually encouraged the development of relations with the southern third of the continent (the modern Anglophone nations of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, the former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola, and a number of smaller states). With official ties limited for decades, missionaries and business concerns built a small but influential American presence mostly in the growing European settler states. This state of affairs made the United State an important trading partner during the 20th century, but it also reinforced the idea of a white Christian civilizing mission as justification for the domination of black peoples. The United States served as a comparison point for the construction of legal systems of racial segregation in southern Africa, even as it became more politically involved in the region as part of its ideological competition with the Soviet Union. As Europe’s empires dissolved after World War II, official ties to white settler states such as South Africa, Angola, and Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) brought the United States into conflict with mounting demands for decolonization, self-determination, and racial equality—both international and domestic. Southern Africa illustrated the gap between a Cold War strategy predicated on Euro-American preponderance and national traditions of liberty and democracy, eliciting protests from civil and human rights groups that culminated in the successful anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. Though still a region of low priority at the beginning of the 21st century, American involvement in southern Africa evolved to emphasize the pursuit of social and economic improvement through democracy promotion, emergency relief, and health aid—albeit with mixed results. The history of U.S. relations with southern Africa therefore illustrates the transformation of trans-Atlantic racial ideologies and politics over the last 150 years, first in the construction of white supremacist governance and later in the eventual rejection of this model.

From Crisis to Opportunity

2019 ◽  
pp. 199-230
Author(s):  
Anand Toprani
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Oil Resources ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter offers a reassessment of Germany’s oil strategy during World War II. Fuel consumption during Germany’s early campaigns (1939–40) was lower than expected, but the swift victory over France left the Third Reich in a quandary. Before the war, Europe had imported two-thirds of its petroleum consumption. Germany’s prewar efforts had only aimed to make it self-sufficient—the Third Reich could not hope, however, to replace the supplies other European nations had imported from overseas. German planners concluded that unless Germany took control of the oil resources of either the Soviet Union or the Middle East, fuel shortages would soon derail the entire war effort. This looming energy crisis in Europe strengthened Hitler’s ideological and strategic conviction that Germany should risk a two-front war in 1941 by attacking the Soviet Union before the United States could intervene.

Cold War Exiles and the CIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Home Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

Military Technology Races

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vally Koubi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Distribution ◽  
Strategic Defense ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Military

Because of the nature of modern weapons, significant innovations in arms technology have the potential to induce dramatic changes in the international distribution of power. Consider, for example, the “strategic defense initiative” (SDI), a program initiated by the United States in the early 1980s. Had the program been successfully completed, it might have led to a substantial devaluation of Soviet nuclear capabilities and put the United States in a very dominant position. It should not then come as a surprise that interstate rivalry, especially among super powers, often takes the form of a race for technological superiority. Mary Acland-Hood claims that although the United States and the Soviet Union together accounted for roughly half of the world's military expenditures in the early 1980s, their share of world military research and development (R&D) expenditures was about 80 percent. As further proof of the perceived importance of R&D, note that whereas the overall U.S. defense budget increased by 38 percent (from $225.1 billion to $311.6 billion in real terms) from 1981 to 1987, military R&D spending increased by 100 percent (from $20.97 billion to $41.96 billion). Moreover, before World War II military R&D absorbed on average less than 1 percent of the military expenditure of major powers, but since then it has grown to 11–13 percent. The emphasis on military technology is bound to become more pronounced in the future as R&D becomes the main arena for interstate competition.

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?”

Afghanistan: Martial Society Without Military Rule

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amin Tarzi
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Military

Since its inception as a separate political entity in 1747, Afghanistan has been embroiled in almost perpetual warfare, but it has never been ruled directly by the military. From initial expansionist military campaigns to involvement in defensive, civil, and internal consolidation campaigns, the Afghan military until the mid-19th century remained mainly a combination of tribal forces and smaller organized units. The central government, however, could only gain tenuous monopoly over the use of violence throughout the country by the end of the 19th century. The military as well as Afghan society remained largely illiterate and generally isolated from the prevailing global political and ideological trends until the middle of the 20th century. Politicization of Afghanistan’s military began in very small numbers after World War II with Soviet-inspired communism gaining the largest foothold. Officers associated with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were instrumental in two successful coup d’états in the country. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ending the country’s sovereignty and ushering a period of conflict that continues to the second decade of the 21st century in varying degrees. In 2001, the United States led an international invasion of the country, catalyzing efforts at reorganization of the smaller professional Afghan national defense forces that have remained largely apolitical and also the country’s most effective and trusted governmental institution.

Choice in the West

1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Working Out

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.

Southern Baptists and Northern Evangelicals: Cultural Factors and the Nature of Religious Alliances

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-298
Author(s):  
Barry Hankins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Southern Baptists ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Free Church ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
To Come

At times in history, groups of people with very different ideologies have allied with one another because of a common threat. The most striking example of this was the World War II alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union. In a religious matter, Baptists and other free-church evangelicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries joined with deists like Thomas Jefferson to combat the threat to religious liberty posed by the establishment of religion. At other times, groups with similar ideas have been unable to come together because they did not share similar attitudes toward or positions within their cultures. This essay is concerned with the latter phenomenon and uses Southern Baptists and northern evangelicals as a case study. The historical relationship of these two groups illustrates something profound about the very nature of religious alliances; specifically, it illustrates how cultural factors and intuitive notions of uneasiness about theological security determine whether or not religious groups with great theological similarities can find common ground.

scholarly journals UNITED STATES DURING THE COLD WAR 1945-1990

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Novita Mujiyati ◽  
Kuswono Kuswono ◽  
Sunarjo Sunarjo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Cold War

United States and the Soviet Union is a country on the part of allies who emerged as the winner during World War II. However, after reaching the Allied victory in the situation soon changed, man has become an opponent. United States and the Soviet Union are competing to expand the influence and power. To compete the United States strive continuously strengthen itself both in the economic and military by establishing a defense pact and aid agencies in the field of economy. During the Cold War the two are not fighting directly in one of the countries of the former Soviet Union and the United States. However, if understood, teradinya the Korean War and the Vietnam War is a result of tensions between the two countries and is a direct warfare conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union. Cold War ended in conflict with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the winner of the country.

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