The memorial day statement: women's organizations in the ‘peace offensive’

This contribution examines the gendered aspect of the American response to the issue of peace in the Cold War. In 1949, the US government accused the Soviet Union of launching a ‘Peace Offensive’, designed to represent the Soviet Union as ‘peace-loving’ whilst painting the Americans as ‘warmongers.’ In recognition of the undeniable appeal of ‘peace’ as a rallying cry, the United States sought to re-define the term in such a way as to illustrate the difference between what East and West meant by their commitment to the cause of peace. American women's associations had a particularly active role in US efforts to counter the Soviet ‘Peace Offensive’. Leaders of US women's associations and policy-makers within the government were concerned that the ‘Peace Offensive’ specifically targeted women, on the basis of their special gendered interest in peace. They tried to convince women across the globe that Soviet-backed peace campaigns lacked sincerity and that women's special interest in peace was best represented by the United States.     

Soviet Bloc and Western Bugging of Opponents’ Diplomatic Premises During the Early Cold War

This article examines Soviet Bloc and Western bugging of their opponents’ diplomatic premises in the early Cold War, from 1945 to the late 1960s. It explains the process of audio surveillance, identifies significant cases of bugging and describes the countermeasures taken by Western states. The paper concludes that the Soviet Union was able to gather a considerable amount of intelligence from bugging Western embassies in Moscow during the early Cold War. In particular, bugging enabled the Soviets to break the diplomatic ciphers of the United States, Britain and West Germany.     

US Atomic Energy Intelligence Against the Soviet Target, 1945-1970

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and its allies mounted a massive atomic energy intelligence effort against the Soviet Union. Long-range, standoff technical systems provided the most data and allowed for successful tracking of many aspects of the Soviet nuclear program. Because of the closed nature of Soviet society and Soviet security and counter-intelligence measures, exploitation of open sources and traditional espionage operations, although important, were less productive. The relative lack of human intelligence made it difficult to understand important developments inside the Soviet nuclear complex and resulted in significant intelligence gaps.     

Collision in Manchuria: rescue,intelligence, and the Cold War in Asia,August–September 1945

The Japanese decision to surrender on 15 August 1945 created an extraordinary and unique situation in the Chinese province of Manchuria. Within hours of the Japanese surrender, a number of special American intelligence teams parachuted into Manchuria to gain information on the POW’s and Soviet intentions for postwar Asia. This paper will examine on what occurred when Soviet and American military personnel met in Manchuria. Both sides had very different goals and aims for the end of war. For the small American force assigned to locate and identify Allied POW’s, their mission exemplified the already strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. For nearly every instance of cordial and joyous meetings between the two sides there were equally difficult confrontations and misunderstandings. These encounters offered a preview into the coming Cold War in Asia.     

The Cold War culture of the French and communist parties

This study is a comparative essay about the ‘Cold War culture’ of the two main communist parties of Western Europe, the French and the Italian, during the tense period of 1947–53. Both parties had a common Marxist ideology and used similar elements of propaganda: anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, defence of ‘national independence’, defence of the Soviet Union, and the struggle for peace. However, while the French communist ideology was completely focused on the Soviet position, the Italians tried to maintain a limited autonomy for their parliamentary activity and their reactions to national issues. The reception and use of communist ideology and propaganda by some social categories of population, especially among the working classes, is then examined. The essay concludes with a reflexion on the notion of the ‘culture of war’ in France and Italy.     

Book review

From the very beginning of the space age, the ability to undertake non-military activities in this new regime has been an element of foreign policy. The mirror image twins international cooperation and competition between nation states has driven many of the key decisions in the major programs undertaken by the United States, especially in the evolution of its human spaceflight initiatives. For much of the Cold War era, head-to-head competition with the Soviet Union defined the human program, especially the Apollo program to land astronauts on the Moon. In the aftermath of the Cold War foreign policy objectives still inform the delineation of policy, especially the cooperative nature of large programs such as the International Space Station. This essay explores the evolution of the place assigned international space cooperation and competition in the United States.     

Soviet industrial espionage against American military technology and the US response, 1930–1945

Between 1930 and 1945, the Soviet Union played a significant role in American domestic affairs. Although its agents’ infiltration of social movements and government agencies is well known, their parallel and highly successful practice of espionage against American industrial and military technology is less familiar. Washington officials were aware of Soviet spying, but mired in the Depression and then preoccupied with war, they mounted only a limited response, reflecting a political culture that did not emphasize active counterintelligence efforts. As a result, early Cold War revelations of unmistakable Soviet espionage shocked Americans, polarizing the Soviet‐American relationship and introducing a zealous domestic security apparatus.     

‘How good are we?’ culture and the Cold War

This analysis addresses the question of how different levels of culture were used in the Cold War by political and civil institutions to influence public opinion in Western Europe, and, more specifically, in Germany. It illuminates how what are commonly defined as ‘cultural exports’ or ‘cultural propaganda’ refer to a highly heterogeneous and complex group of governmental and non-governmental agents, actions and motivations. While governmental exports focused increasingly on highbrow products such as book and art exhibits, manifestations of popular culture were only admitted if they revealed a specific educational purpose. It can be argued that high culture provided the basis for much Cold War propaganda as much as the Cold War manipulated representations of high culture. Competing against communist claims that America had no high culture, US Cold War programs invoked previous instances of high cultural exchange, particularly with Germany. In doing so, they sealed and politicized a cultural partnership that had been in existence for almost 100 years.     

The logic of anti-Zionism: Soviet elites in the aftermath of the Six-Day War

Despite the opening of Soviet archives, and the surge in scholarly interest in anti-Zionism, scholars have not used declassified archive documents to shed new light on Soviet anti-Zionism in the wake of the Six-Day War. Based on such documents, Gjerde’s article challenges a view of post-1967 Soviet anti-Zionism that has been prevalent since it emerged during the Cold War: that it represented a ‘disguised’ form of antisemitism that Soviet leaders used as a political tool. To the contrary, Gjerde argues, the archive documents suggest Soviet anti-Zionism was more than a propaganda invention. Within higher Soviet echelons, a particular logic existed that fostered a view of ‘Zionism’ as an immense, conspiratorial threat to the Soviet Union. In one sense, this logic grew out of a more general tendency to view nonconformity as conspiracy: the Soviets had established extremely narrow boundaries for what constituted acceptable Jewish identity; and, when some Soviet Jews began to voice nationalist sentiments after the Six-Day War, Soviet leaders saw this expression of nonconformity as essentially a hostile act, warranting severe counter-measures. This is not to say Soviet anti-Zionism was not antisemitic but rather that to explain it merely as a propaganda tool is to ignore much of the complexity of its emergence.     

From Malin Head to ‘Okean 75’: shadowing and intelligence collection operations by Royal Navy surface ships 1975–1985*

This article analyses a hitherto neglected aspect of the Cold War at Sea: the shadowing of Soviet warships by the Royal Navy surface vessels. Making use of previously untapped government sources, this article assesses the significance of these intelligence gathering operations, as well as their role in deterring the Soviet Navy through non-nuclear means. The article reviews three types of intelligence gathering operation by British warships: the regular and routine shadowing operations off Malin Head, the short-notice shadowing of Soviet warships transiting the sea areas near the United Kingdom, and finally the co-ordinated shadowing of the enormous ‘Okean 75’ Soviet naval exercise in 1975.     

‘Venona’: the British dimension

‘Venona’ remains the greatest secret of the Cold War yet to be declassified, and offers the pieces of a jigsaw that, when assembled and interpreted, reveals the identities of dozens of Soviet agents who participated in GRU and NKVD networks across the globe between 1940 and 1948. Among them, operating in London, were Professor J.B.S Haldane, codenamed ‘Intelligentsia’, and Lord Swaythling's son, the Honourable Ivor Montagu, appropriately codenamed ‘Nobility’. Contained in the sometimes partially decrypted texts are clues to hundreds of other, as yet unexposed, spies, active in Australia, Mexico, Sweden, the United States, Britain, and numerous other countries. Betrayed by William Wiesband and Kim Philby, the ‘Venona’ project failed to find the traitor known as ‘Baron’ inside the wartime GCHQ, but was responsible for the arrest of Klaus Fuchs, confirming the guilt of Alger Hiss, Donald Maclean and the Rosenbergs, supporting the allegations of Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, and sparking off molehunts on three continents. ‘Venona’ sheds important new light on the assassination of Trotsky, Soviet penetration of the Manhattan project at Los Alamos and Berkeley, and reveals high-level espionage in the White House, OSS, the State Department and virtually every government department in Washington DC.     

The Practice and Theory of US Statebuilding

Abstract

The United States has employed three models of statebuilding over the last century, each animated by a different political theory. Statebuilding 1.0, developed and used from the late 1890s through the end of the Cold War, emphasized building loyal and politically stable subordinate states. Privileging American geopolitical and economic interests over those of local populations, the model was premised on the theory of realpolitik. Statebuilding 2.0 arose under and, in many ways, came to characterize attempts by the United States to construct a New World Order after 1990. The key shift was from seeking loyalty to building legitimate states. Under this model, the United States attempted to build broad-based popular support for nascent states by creating democratic institutions and spearheading economic reforms. In this ‘end of history’ moment, liberalism reigned triumphant in statebuilding practice and theory. Statebuilding 3.0 is now being ‘field-tested’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. This new model seeks to build legitimacy for new states by providing security and essential public services to their populations. It rests on social contract theory, and its core tenet that legitimacy follows from providing effectively for the basic needs of citizens. Successive sections summarize the practice of statebuilding under each model and discuss its implicit political theory. A critique of each model then flows naturally into the practice and logic of the next. The conclusion outlines why a statebuilding 3.1 is necessary, and what such a strategy might entail.     

Putting culture into the Cold War: the Cultural Relations Department (CRD) and British Covert Information Warfare

In 1943 the British Foreign Office created an obscure outfit called the Cultural Relations Department (CRD), to manage the growing organization of intellectual, cultural, social and artistic contacts designed to promote Allied goodwill. It became clear early on that the Soviet Union was already well-organized in this field, with many seemingly independent international organizations claiming to represent ‘world opinion’ yet operating as fronts for Moscow's foreign policy objectives. In the three years before 1948, when the more widely-known Information Research Department began its operations, CRD was the cutting edge of Britain's informational Cold War, focused very much upon the twin issues of culture and organized youth. This essay will examine this little-explored organization by focusing upon these twin issues and its neglected records in FO 924 in the Public Record Office, London.     

Lost Imperium: the European Liberation Front (1949-54)

In 1947, just two years after the fall of Nazi Germany, an American expatriate living in Ireland named Francis Parker Yockey wrote Imperium, a massive tome that advanced a new strategy for post-war European fascism. Yockey insisted that fascists abandon their narrow nationalist viewpoint and, instead, fight for a new European-wide fascist empire, which he dubbed the 'Imperium'. In 1948 Yockey and his closest collaborators left Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and founded the European Liberation Front (ELF), a British-based groupuscule that lasted until 1954. Rejecting the possibility of building a mass fascist movement in post-war Europe, the ELF defined its primary task as ideological: namely, the advancement of the 'Imperium' idea inside the ranks of Europe's 'fascist elite'. The ELF soon ran into stiff opposition from Mosley over Yockey's controversial identification of the United States, and not the Soviet Union, as Europe's 'main enemy'. The ELF also met with fierce resistance from Hitler worshippers inside the British right like Arnold Leese, who rejected the ELF's emphasis on 'culture' over 'race'. Despite the ELF's relatively brief existence as a groupuscule, its introduction of a new kind of 'Eurofascist' thinking has recently led to its rediscovery by contemporary European New Rightists now searching for a new political strategy following both the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's sole 'superpower'.     

Inventing America,again

ABSTRACT

In US intellectual and academic life, the 1940s and 1950s stand out as a period abounding with attempts to assay the characteristic and distinctive forms of ‘American culture’ and ‘American society,’ from Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma and the oft-noted ‘Tocqueville revival’ to works by Harold Laski, Max Lerner, David Riesman, C. L. R. James, the ‘consensus historians,’ and the early writers in the field of American Studies. Viewed as the culmination of a half-century span (roughly 1900–1950) of cultural nation-building, this rush of ‘American’ definitions at mid-century was shot through with politics – but in complex ways that are not adequately captured by the familiar recourse to Cold War anticommunism as the presumed ideological bedrock of the time. By treating this cultural nationalism as the outcome of an uneven and combined intellectual-historical process, we see how elusive (and illusory) the enterprise of designating ‘American’ traits actually was.     

Calling the tune? the CIA,the British left and the Cold War, 1945–1960

During the early Cold War period the United States Government covertly engaged in a variety of attempts to influence the politics of the British left. American ‘labor diplomats’ strove to fortify anti-communist elements in the trade unions; left-wing literary intellectuals were the target of the CIA's campaign in the ‘Cultural Cold War’; Labour Party politicians became involved in CIA-sponsored ventures designed to promote greater European and Atlantic unity. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that the US ‘called the tune’ of the British left. Such a verdict overlooks internal problems in the American campaign and underestimates the complexity — and ingenuity — of the British response.     

‘Close and continuous liaison’: British anti-communist propaganda and cooperation with the United States, 1950–51

In January 1948 the British government launched a new anti-Communist propaganda policy, and established a new Foreign Office Information Research Department (IRD) to coordinate that policy. This article examines the extent to which anti-Communist propaganda was coordinated with Britain's principal Cold War ally the United States, following the launch of America's own anti-Communist propaganda offensive, the ‘Campaign of Truth’ in 1950. It traces the policy and organizational machinery for cooperation which was established in 1950 and examines the implementation of the policy for ‘close and continuous liaison’ in London, Washington and in the field.     

Détente in deep water: the CIA mission to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine and US-USSR relations, 1968–1975

Despite détente, the superpowers continued their Cold War practice of spying on one another throughout the 1970s. Yet intelligence is largely ‘missing’ from the historiography of détente. Why? Based on newly declassified data, ‘Détente in Deep Water’ reveals the geopolitical calculations behind the ‘Glomar response’ and how that legalese operated to limit disclosure of intelligence operations starting with AZORIAN/MATADOR, the CIA-led project to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine using the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a ship ostensibly owned (under a cover story) by industrialist Howard Hughes. Glomar’s diplomatic backstory sheds new light on the historical relationship between intelligence collection and foreign policy.     

Space Situational Awareness in Europe: The Fractures and the Federative Aspects of European Space Efforts

ABSTRACT

One part of the massive US intelligence effort to learn about Soviet missile and space programs during the Cold War was acquiring and analyzing Soviet space debris that had returned to Earth. Equally important was retrieving US fragments that had landed in foreign nations to prevent the Soviets from recovering and exploiting them. At times bitter jurisdictional battles among the interested government agencies plagued the undertaking. Additionally the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 limited the ability to obtain foreign debris in some circumstances. Despite these problems, however, the available record shows that in many cases the United States acquired and tested important Soviet fragments and also was able to retrieve its own.