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This second edition brings the collection up to date, including the newest research from the Communist side of the Cold War and the most recent debates on culture, race and intelligence.
Origins of the Cold War 1941-1949 covers the formative years of the momentous struggle which developed between two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. It not only involved these titans but also the rest of the globe; many proxy wars were fought much to the detriment of the developing world. In a clear, concise manner, this book explains how the Cold War originated and developed between 1941 and 1949. The fourth edition is revised, updated and expanded to include new material on topics such as the culture wars and Stalin’s view of Marxism. The introduction looks at the various approaches which have been adopted to analyse the Cold War and the challenges to arrive at a theory which can explain it. The book explores questions such as: - Who was responsible for the Cold War? - Was it inevitable or could it have been avoided? - Was Stalin genuinely interested in a post-war agreement? Illustrated with maps and figures and containing a chronology and who’s who of key individuals, Origins of the Cold War 1941-1949 incorporates the most recent scholarship, theories and information to provide students with an invaluable introduction to a fascinating period that shaped today's world.
Vividly written and based on up-to-date scholarship, this title provides an interpretive overview of the international history of the Cold War.
Debating the Origins of the Cold War examines the coming of the Cold War through Americans' and Russians' contrasting perspectives and actions. In two engaging essays, the authors demonstrate that a huge gap existed between the democratic, capitalist, and global vision of the post-World War II peace that most Americans believed in and the dictatorial, xenophobic, and regional approach that characterized Soviet policies. The authors argue that repeated failures to find mutually acceptable solutions to concrete problems led to the rapid development of the Cold War, and they conclude that, given the respective concerns and perspectives of the time, both superpowers were largely justified in their courses of action. Supplemented by primary sources, including documents detailing Soviet espionage in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s and correspondence between Premier Josef Stalin and Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov during postwar meetings, this is the first book to give equal attention to the U.S. and Soviet policies and perspectives.
Although the Cold War is over, the writing of its history has only just begun. This book presents an analysis of the origins of the Cold War in the decade after the Second World War, discussing the development of the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers and the reactions of the Western European states to the growing Soviet-American rivalry. Drawing on recently opened archives from the former Soviet Union as well as on existing research largely unavailable in English, distinguished authorities from each of the countries discussed provide new insight into the Cold War and into the Europe that has been molded by it. The book begins with an overview of United States Cold War policy after the war and a pioneering post-communist examination of Russian involvement. The next chapters focus on the other two members of the wartime alliance, Britain and France, for which the Cold War was interwoven with concerns such as the maintenance of empire and the continued fear of Germany. The book then examines the vanquished countries of World War II, Italy and Germany, who--particularly in the case of divided Germany--were struggling to recover their international status and come to terms with their past. The last part of the book considers how the small states--Benelux and Scandinavia--forged new groupings in the search for security, even though conflicts of national interest still persisted between them. The authors not only show the impact of superpower policies on each country but also reveal the many ways in which West European states were active participants in Cold War politics, trying to draw the Americans into Europe and shaping the blocs that emerged. The book sheds light on the European Community (in many ways a response to uneasiness about Germany) and on NATO, whose purpose was once described as keeping "the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."
The definitive history of the Cold War and its impact around the world We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. In The Cold War, Westad offers a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battle transformed every corner of our globe. From Soweto to Hollywood, Hanoi, and Hamburg, young men and women felt they were fighting for the future of the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where nearly every community had to choose sides. And these choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world. Today, many regions are plagued with environmental threats, social divides, and ethnic conflicts that stem from this era. Its ideologies influence China, Russia, and the United States; Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by the faith in purely military solutions that emerged from the Cold War. Stunning in its breadth and revelatory in its perspective, this book expands our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, and offers an engaging new history of how today's world was created.
A study of nuclear warfare’s key role in triggering the post-World War II confrontation between the US and the USSR After a devastating world war, culminating in the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear that the United States and the Soviet Union had to establish a cooperative order if the planet was to escape an atomic World War III. In this provocative study, Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko show how the atomic bomb pushed the United States and the Soviet Union not toward cooperation but toward deep bipolar confrontation. Joseph Stalin, sure that the Americans meant to deploy their new weapon against Russia and defeat socialism, would stop at nothing to build his own bomb. Harry Truman, initially willing to consider cooperation, discovered that its pursuit would mean political suicide, especially when news of Soviet atomic spies reached the public. Both superpowers, moreover, discerned a new reality of the atomic age: now, cooperation must be total. The dangers posed by the bomb meant that intermediate measures of international cooperation would protect no one. Yet no two nations in history were less prepared to pursue total cooperation than were the United States and the Soviet Union. The logic of the bomb pointed them toward immediate Cold War. “Sprightly and well-argued…. The complicated history of how the bomb influenced the start of the war has never been explored so well."—Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers University “An outstanding new interpretation of the origins of the Cold War that gives equal weight to American and Soviet perspectives on the conflict that shaped the contemporary world.”—Geoffrey Roberts, author of Stalin’s Wars
This volume examines the origins and early years of the Cold War in the first comprehensive historical reexamination of the period. A team of leading scholars shows how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and sociopolitical environments of the two world wars and interwar period.
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted from the end of World War II until the end of the 1980s. Over the course of five decades, they never came to blows directly. Rather, these two world superpowers competed in other arenas that would touch almost every corner of the globe. Inside you will read about... ✓ What Was the Cold War? ✓ The Origins of the Cold War ✓ World War II and the Beginning of the Cold War ✓ The Cold War in the 1950s ✓ The Cold War in the 1960s ✓ The Cold War in the 1970s ✓ The Cold War in the 1980s and the End of the Cold War Both interfered in the affairs of other countries to win allies for their opposing ideologies. In the process, governments were destabilized, ideas silenced, revolutions broke out, and culture was controlled. This overview of the Cold War provides the story of how these two countries came to oppose one another, and the impact it had on them and others around the world.
This textbook provides a dynamic and concise overview of the Cold War. Offering balanced coverage of the whole era, it takes a firmly global approach, showing how at various times the focus of East-West rivalry shifted to new and surprising venues, from Laos to Katanga, from Nicaragua to Angola. Throughout, Jenkins emphasises intelligence, technology and religion, as well as highlighting themes that are relevant to the present day. A rich array of popular culture examples is used to demonstrate how the crisis was understood and perceived by mainstream audiences across the world, and the book includes three ‘snapshot’ chapters, which offer an overview of the state of play at pivotal moments in the conflict – 1946, 1968 and 1980 – in order to illuminate the inter-relationship between apparently discrete situations. This is an essential introduction for students studying Cold War, twentieth century or Global history.
