Cold War 
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5/1/2022
1968: A Year of Dashed Hopes
by Walter G. Moss
While people seek to confront life's challenges with hope and courage and banish fear and doubt, some years, like 1968, don't make that easy.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
4/24/2022
Has the "Duck and Cover" World Returned
by Tom Engelhardt
The generation that came of age during the Cold War may have insight on the return of the nuclear threat, but "duck and cover" won't cut it.
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4/17/2022
Even With the Challenge of a Nuclear Crisis, 1962 Was a Year of Hope
by Walter G. Moss
For HNN Contributing Editor Walter Moss, 1962 was a year when it seemed the US was capable of overcoming the gravest challenges with positive results (it was a good year for him personally, too).
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SOURCE: Jewish Currents
3/24/2022
Stephen Wertheim on Danger of Escalating a Cold War with Russia
by David Klion
"This is a tragedy, and Vladimir Putin is mainly responsible for it, but the world that will emerge from this war in Ukraine will be poorer, more divided, and more heavily armed."
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SOURCE: Foreign Policy
3/28/2022
Madeleine Albright Had Warned the World about Putin
Madeleine Albright's path to being Secretary of State began with her experiences fleeing Prague twice – to escape both Nazism and Stalinism.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
3/23/2022
Surveying Cold War Historians on the Likelihood of Nuclear War
Is the relative weakness of today's Russian state compared to the Soviet Union a risk factor for escalation that was missing during the Cold War?
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SOURCE: Boston Review
3/21/2022
Who Gets to Be American?
by Jonna Perrillo
Johann Tschinkel, a Nazi scientist, was recruited by the United States after the war. His reflections on his educational experiences in Germany and those of his children in segregated American schools, offer a warning about the efforts to control the social studies curriculum today.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/22/2022
When Communism was Queer
by Samuel Huneke
American commentators have used the repression of gay life in states like Cuba to discredit socialism. The history of communist approaches to sexuality is more complex, as in the former East Germany.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
3/16/2022
A Family History of the Futility of Preparing for Nuclear War
On the lessons learned from working at the government's network of bomb shelters.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
3/10/2022
East Berlin Stories: Gay Espionage in Cold War Berlin
by Samuel Huneke
The East German Stasi recruited gay Beriners as informants both because they believed they posed a security threat and because the secret police had difficulty penetrating the secrecy of gay social networks in the city.
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SOURCE: War on the Rocks
2/28/2022
Can Intelligence (or History) Predict How Far Putin Might Go?
by Calder Walton
Despite the image of individual operatives, assembling reliable intelligence about Putin's invasion plans is a product of multiple coordinated capabilities, just like it was at the height of the cold war.
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SOURCE: Forward
2/12/2022
Was Forgetting the Holocaust a Pillar of West German Rebuilding?
Harald Jähner's book contents that the West German public's view of the nation's recent past grew darker as the years passed, but in the immediate aftermath of the war, a mood of adventurousness and liberation was widespread – at the cost of avoiding discussions of atrocity.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
2/8/2022
How Did We Get Here?
by Rajan Menon
The roots of the Ukraine crisis lie with American decisions in the 1990s to kick post-Soviet Russia while it was down, promoting neoliberal policies that led to oligarchy, and isolating the Kremlin from the post-Cold War European order instead of integrating it.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/25/2022
Will Putin Learn from Stalin's Mistakes over Korea?
by Gregory Mitrovich
Stalin's support for the North Korean invasion of the south galvanized Western opposition and ensured that the Cold War would be militarized, instead of remaining a diplomatic and economic conflict. In the long run, the Soviets lost.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
1/18/2022
Only Fools Replay Doomsday
by William Astore
The author worked at NORAD's headquarters under Cheyenne Mountain at the height of the Cold War and wonders why, having emerged the nominal victors of one round of military escalation toward armageddon, American policymakers seem willing to enter another.
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SOURCE: Defector
1/11/2022
How the Cold War Killed Cannabis as We Knew It
When Henry Kissinger sought to assert American control of Caribbean bauxite ore reserves, he set off a political dirty war that poisoned the Jamaican interior and destroyed prominent strains of cannabis in the name of marijuana interdiction.
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SOURCE: Declassified UK
12/8/2021
Did British Intelligence Try to Undermine Castro's Cuba with Homophobia?
Declassified documents show that one unknown facet of the British effort to undermine communist Cuba was to encourage the spread of homophobic rumors about Raúl Castro.
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12/12/2021
The Hidden Story of the West's Most Important Double Agent
by Tim Tate
How and why did the CIA turn on Michal Gleniewski, a Polish defector who was one of the most valuable intelligence assets of the Cold War?
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/1/2021
Has the Myth of the "Good War" Done America Harm?
Remembrance of the second world war obscures the ambivalence many Americans felt about the conflict and the frequent divergence of military strategy and propaganda from the noble ideals of freedom and democracy. Elizabeth Samet's book asks if the myth of the good war has encouraged war since.
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
11/29/2021
Can Cold War History Help Stop a Disastrous US-China Conflict?
by Li Chen and Odd Arne Westad
The emerging superpower rivalry between the US and China is not exactly like the Cold War, and simplistic historical analogies are a poor strategic guide. But Cold War history does offer examples of potential pitfalls.
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