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. 

• 
• 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.  

• 
• 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.