Digital Commons Network^™

Uniform Intelligence: The United States Military Liaison Mission And The Cold War 1947-1990, Frank Christopher Ofner

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers, ending the war in Europe. As such, the Western Allies of Britain, France, and the United States came into direct contact with the Soviet forces in Germany, which they divided into four zones of occupation. With the potential of an armed conflict over Germany, the Western Allies and the Soviets agreed to use military liaison missions to help foster communication in Germany. The British and French maintained their units: British Commanders in Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS) and La Mission Militaire Francaise de Liaison (FMLM …

Secrets, Soviets, And Sverdlovsk: Critiques Of The Biological Weapons Convention And Biosecurity In The 1970s And 1980s, Morgan Kelley

Student Research Submissions

The Biological Weapons Convention, initially ratified in 1975, banned the production and stockpiling of biological weapons; however, it has faced considerable modern criticism for being unenforceable and not strong enough to ensure states' compliance. These modern critiques are based on the knowledge that the Soviet Union was in violation of the Convention, which was not confirmed until 1989. By analyzing the reactions to the Biological Weapons Convention by scholars and scientists, American intelligence officials, and American news media, it becomes clear that concerns about the Convention did exist prior to 1989, even when for many it was not certain that …

Jazz And Music Diplomacy In The Cold War, Mitch Rogers

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, everyone jammed. While High Soviet officials worked their hardest to jam the incoming Voice of America and Music U.S.A. radio broadcasts, Soviet musicians and youth jammed underground to the hot swing .and blue harmonies of American jazz. Jazz, with its rebellious syncopations, rogue tunings, and egalitarian arrangements, connected with the Soviet people. Amicable cultural exchange between the two superpowers began only in 1958, and even then it only took place in small, mitigated steps. Knowing the Soviet proclivity for American music, American statesmen saw the opportunity to replace the stodgy, pedantic propaganda …

From Compromise To Confrontation: The American Secretary Of State James F. Byrnes And His Attempts To Mitigate Disagreements With The Soviet Union As The Cold War Began, John Karl

Comparative Civilizations Review

James F. Byrnes as United States Secretary of State pursued a policy based on compromise with the Soviet Union during the first year following the end of the Second World War. He was determined to use his political skill for engineering compromise in order to bring about an agreement with the Soviet Union which would lead to an era of peace. While the crucial question facing American policymakers in the wake of World War II was the creation of a new world order, a most important part of this question was the future of American-Soviet relations, the two nations that …

Günter Bischof And Peter Ruggenthaler, Österreich Und Der Kalte Krieg: Ein Balanceakt Zwischen Ost Und West (Graz/Wien: Leykam, 2022), Matthew P. Berg

2024 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Cold War Fears And Algerian Independence: American Public Opinion On An Independent Algeria, 1954-1962, Shayla Taylor

2024 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The Algerian War of Independence was a struggle by the Algerians for autonomy from their long-time colonizer and ally of the United States, France. While the independence movement is said to have started during the First World War, the war did not break out until late in 1954.1 The conflict came not even a decade after World War II, in the thick of the Cold War in which the Soviet Union and the United States competed on an international stage, and in an era in which many groups of people within Western powers held mixed feelings about decolonization. Maintaining order …

The Berlin Airlift And Its Humanitarian And The Pr Aspect, Madalyn Stead

2024 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The Berlin Airlift, or die Berliner Luftbrücke, was one of the most dramatic events of the Cold War. While the Cold War lasted forty-five years, from 1947 to 1991, the Berlin Airlift took place at the very beginning, from 1948-1949. It was a great humanitarian effort, and is respected as one of the United States’ “finest hours,” as author Andrei Cherney titled it. It was presented as such through media, the news, and even pop culture. Curating it to look good was a carefully done job, but that should not always take away from the people who are involved in …

Power For A Purpose, Robert L. Beisner

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The dawn of modern American strategy appeared during the early cold war a half century ago. Strategy is the use of power for a purpose. Washington's purposes after 1945 were to establish and then maintain an international order in which American values and institutions could prosper. American policymakers thought the same policies established to do this would also benefit the world at large. Their conscious fashioning of strategy to achieve purpose was virtually unprecedented in American history. The results, almost all successes, included the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the Truman Doctrine and Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the …

The Road To Armageddon: American Culture And Politics During The Late Cold War, 1970-1991, David Lee Denham Iii

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Bible prophecy has long engaged the American mind. By the late Cold War, Biblical prophecy increasingly shaped the political beliefs of millions of Americans within the evangelical community. The group most impacted were dispensationalist Christians who interpreted the Atomic Age through the lens of end-time prophecies. Dating as far back as the seventeenth-century, American colonists living on the frontier of the British empire in North America embraced millennialism and, at times, interpreted current events through the lens of Bible prophecy while anticipating the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Battle of Armageddon. Through the centuries, Bible prophecy became a …

Review Of Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Review of Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Front Lines, by Dina Fainberg.

Attempted Book Bans: The Censorship Of Queer Themes In The 1950s, María J. Quintana-Rodriguez

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This article aims to explore queer book banning during the 1950s in response to Cold War national defense tactics. The decade witnessed the formation of the first public LGBTQ+ rights organizations in the United States as well as a rise in queer literature and publications. This publicization of queerness in society was seen as a rejection of traditional societal norms and threatened the Cold War-imposed gender ideology. In addition, the fear of Communist expansion led to the conflation of homosexuals and Communists, categorizing queerness and queer-related themes as immoral and as an interference in the United States' fight for democracy. …

Book Review: Switzerland And Sub-Saharan Africa In The Cold War, 1967-1979: Neutrality Meets Decolonisation, Thomas Quinn Marabello

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979: Neutrality Meets Decolonisation was written as part of the series “New Perspectives on the Cold War,” which looks at different issues, events and regions impacted by the Cold War. While Switzerland was not a major power, nor did it have colonies in Africa or elsewhere, it had economic interests in the continent and a foreign policy that guided its decision making and values, centered around its historical tradition of neutrality. This well researched work of historiography gives readers new insights into Switzerland’s relations, especially with Portuguese colonies during and after decolonization. …

The Success Of Project Mercury Through The Persona Of The Mercury Seven, Cameron D. Reagan

Lux et Fides: A Journal for Undergraduate Christian Scholars

There has been no shortage of literature written on the Mercury Space Program, focusing on many different aspects ranging from the personnel, technology, politics, and achievements of the program. The prevailing discussion of the space program focuses on the astronauts themselves as they gained celebrity status long before they had done anything to merit it. The vast body of scholarship on the topic takes the popularity of the Mercury Seven astronauts as matter-of-fact rather than viewing it as manufactured by NASA in order to bolster support for a largely unproven space program. By emphasizing the “everyman” aspect of the astronauts, …

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

Bigger Is Better? Re-Evaluating Nato Enlargement In The Post-Cold War Period, Matthew Mccracken

Senior Honors Theses

Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has grown substantially from its pre-1990 boundary between the two Germanys to encompass 15 new members with its border pressing eastward toward the former Soviet states and up to Russia proper. At the same time, East-West relations have sunk from a high point in the 1990s to a new low unseen since the Cold War culminating in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Top-ranking officials on both sides of the Atlantic cautioned successive U.S. administrations against heedlessly seeking to admit new members into NATO for fear that it …

American Policy And Actions Surrounding The Baghdad Pact, 1955-1959, Caitlin Curtis

Masters Theses

The Middle East would come closest to collective security with the West in 1955 when Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Great Britain agreed to create the Baghdad Pact, and although the United States never officially joined, American policymakers provided resources and strategic conditions in order to take a very active role in the pact’s development. The Baghdad Pact is not a well-known organization, but this work argues that it was not a complete failure due to the positive civil advancements that took place. It is evident that, while limited, the U.S. role in the Baghdad Pact still provided member nations …

Children And The Cold War: Race & Hypocrisy Amid Fear Of Nuclear War, Richard D. Mctaggart Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

During the Cold War, American propaganda centered the wellbeing of the child in its messaging warning of atomic attack at the hands of the Soviet Union. However, despite American claims that all children were valued by the United States, this was proven untrue by its unequal treatment of Black children.

The End Of Solidarity: America’S Postwar Turn Right And The Decline Of The Cio And New Deal Liberalism, David Patrick Bruno

Theses and Dissertations

Postwar America saw one of the greatest economic expansions in American history. The wealth generated was distributed across all aspects of American society, resulting in less wealth inequality than any other time in America. Organized labor was at the pinnacle of its power, offering working class Americans the upward mobility that is promised in the American dream. Since the 1940s, the US has regressed in these areas. Wealth inequality has rapidly increased and organized labor’s power has fallen, contributing to wage stagnation and less upward mobility. There is an abundance of reasons for these changes, and not one instance caused …

Geology, Uranium, And Apartheid: South Africa’S Nuclear Program And The International Politics Of The Cold War, Andy Rightmire

Honors Theses

This paper examines the history of mining and uranium and its importance in South Africa’s nuclear history. It begins with the development of minable mineral deposits in South Africa through geologic processes and ends with the South African signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The paper explores the intermittent period between creating the Atomic Energy Board and developing South Africa’s energy program through assistance from the United States and France. As the apartheid government brought sanctions to South Africa, the government began considering nuclear weapons through a different lens to project power. South Africa slid towards isolation under sanctions from …

Zerschlagen: German Unification And Divided Identity, Harrison Quinn

Honors Theses

The Unification of East and West Germany ended one of the Cold War’s longest divides, but only on paper. After decades under a unified German state, former East Germans face lower standards of living, economic opportunities, and access to national utilities compared to their Western counterparts. This inequality stems from the bifurcated German identity, which remains largely unaddressed amid German state ambitions for a central role in international institutions. The failure to properly acknowledge East German identity and the suppression thereof demonstrates the failure of Unification to unite the German nation. Political ambitions outweighed a true reconciliation of German nationhood, …

From “This Revolution Is Neither Communist Nor Capitalist!” To “Long Live The Socialist Revolution:” The Deterioration Of U.S.-Cuban Relations From 1958-1961, Julia Lyne

Honors Projects

This thesis studies the deterioration of U.S.-Cuban relations from 1958-1961. Mainly drawing from primary sources from the National Archives, it seeks to answer and understand how and why relations deteriorated so rapidly. It pushes against the common belief that U.S.-Cuban relations were doomed from the start, instead highlighting in Chapter One Fidel Castro’s rise to power (and Fulgencio Batista’s fall from power) and revealing that the U.S. government was not entirely against Castro’s seizure of power. Chapter Two explores Castro’s first year in power and the (futile) attempts made by both governments to keep relations alive. Finally, it closes with …

A Departmental Dilemma: The Genesis Of Canadian Military Export Policy, 1945-1960, Paul Esau

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Recent sales of Canadian military equipment to Saudi Arabia have highlighted a contradiction between Canadian policy on paper and in practice. This dissertation seeks to explain these contradictions by exploring the evolution of Canadian conventional military export policy in the key years between 1946 and 1960. It loosely divides this 15-year span into three periods, which correspond to the genesis of Canadian military export policy (1946-1949), its expansion and formalization (1950-1955), and its first existential challenge (1956-1960). With a particular focus on the Department of External Affairs, this work explores the political considerations and bureaucratic debates which shaped government decision-making …

Explaining Suharto's Rise And Fall: International And Domestic Variables, Julia Batanghari

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For three decades (1968-1998), Indonesia was led by President Suharto, whose authoritarian military regime is remembered for its corruption and brutality. This paper offers an analysis of Suharto’s rule through the lens of two events: his 1965 purge of local ‘communists’ and the riots of May 1998. Drawing comparisons between the two, I delve into systemic causes by considering the influence of domestic and international variables. Exploring links between intergroup accommodation and democracy reveals that Suharto’s lack of ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious inclusivity paved the way not only for the anti-Chinese sentiment which pervaded Indonesian society during his presidency, but …

Power In Portrayal: An Exploration Of The Evolving Cold War Relationship Between Germany And America Through Film, Kaleb Wentz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The end of the Second World War brought many questions to the United States. One of the greatest among these was what to do with defeated Germany. Many clamored for the dissolution of the former Nazi State and the shameful humbling of its people while others recognized the value of a revitalized Germany as an ally against the looming threat of an emboldened and empowered postwar Soviet Union. Though retribution held sway immediately following the war, the Cold War consensus of an alliance with West Germany and a reimagining of the German people as victims rather than perpetrators won out …

British Neo-Colonialism In Malaya And Singapore, And U.S. Empire In The Pacific, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay places the Vietnam War upon the larger canvas of Southeast and East Asian history by studying the long shadow that Britain’s Empire cast over U.S. entanglements across the region. It shows how British officials in Malaya and Singapore directly contributed to the expansion of US involvement in post-1945 Southeast Asia, as well as the overall pro-US trajectory of the region well before the Americanization of the Vietnam conflict.

Émigrés As Aneks: Polish Intellectuals Between East And West, 1968–1989, Lukasz Chelminski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work focuses on Aneks (1973-1989), a publication that a small group of post-1968 émigrés, mostly Polish Jews, created in exile. Conceptualized as an “annex” to intellectual life in Poland, the publication was founded to help Polish intellectuals look beyond the country to better understand national problems. At the core of the enterprise were the Smolar brothers, who were in a unique position to offer such help: soon after their forced emigration due to rising antisemitism in communist Poland, Aleksander began to study with the great French liberal, Raymond Aron, and Eugeniusz began a career at the Polish section of …

Scientific Collaboration And The Cold War: 1945-1970, Autumn Wyland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is an examination of scientific collaboration between 1945 and 1970, covering the end of World War II and through the early stages of the Cold War. Prior to the Second World War, scientific collaboration was frequent and necessary to development and research. World War II created a new atmosphere of secrecy, preventing scientists from collaborating as they once had. This paper examines what that collaboration looked like, how it was derailed and why, how some scientists sought to return to collaboration, sometimes at personal expense, and finally what those effects looked like throughout the Nuclear Age and Space …

The Hope For Peace & The Case For War In The Postwar Soviet Union, Shawn Cecconi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The postwar Soviet Union remained militarized and failed to reform itself because of its ideological concerns against the West and its new satellite states, all at the cost of the Soviet people. This analysis will compare the Soviet government’s external focus and the Soviet people’s domestic problems in the aftermath of the Second World War. The country’s ideological, military, and imperial concerns abroad emphasized militarization over domestic revitalization. The Soviet people widely expected significant action from their government to remedy economic and political issues. The Soviet government nevertheless committed itself in focusing on outside concerns regardless of the harsh reality …

Cold War Economic Ideology And Us Aid To Taiwan, 1950-1965, Wayne Robert Hugar

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This project examines the puzzle of the ideological contradiction for why the United States justified giving large amounts of economic aid intended to develop capitalism and private sector free enterprise for the authoritarian Republic of China (ROC) government’s socialist style public sector economy on the island of Taiwan during the cold war period 1950-1965. The $1.4 billion in US foreign economic aid to the Chinese Nationalist led ROC government in Taiwan during this 15-year period was a seemingly disproportionate amount compared to its small size and type of authoritarian regime compared to other aid recipients. This project appraises the extent …

A Cold War On The Dark Knight: Batman And American Culture 1939-1975, Angelica Cantrell

Honors Theses

In 1930, Batman fought the prevailing fears of urban America. With the addition of Robin in 1940, the comics changed to appeal to children and continued to follow the cultural trends of America during World War II and into the Cold War. Fear and paranoia during the Cold War influenced American culture and domestic policy. Anticommunism was ingrained in American social structure and initiated efforts at social containment in the 1950s. American culture shifted to emphasize morality and domesticity, and many Americans actively sought to protect traditional Christian values in their society.

Among the rising concerns, Americans became increasingly worried …