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Power In Portrayal: An Exploration Of The Evolving Cold War Relationship Between Germany And America Through Film, Kaleb Wentz Dec 2022

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 …


The Hope For Peace & The Case For War In The Postwar Soviet Union, Shawn Cecconi Aug 2022

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 …


Blitzkrieg: The Evolution Of Modern Warfare And The Wehrmacht’S Impact On American Military Doctrine During The Cold War Era, Briggs Evans Aug 2021

Blitzkrieg: The Evolution Of Modern Warfare And The Wehrmacht’S Impact On American Military Doctrine During The Cold War Era, Briggs Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The evolution of United States military doctrine was heavily influenced by the Wehrmacht and their early Blitzkrieg campaigns during World War II. This thesis traces the origins of this development and shows how the context of the Cold War led to a heavy influence by the Wehrmacht on American military doctrine. By analyzing studies conducted by the United States Army Historical Division from 1946-1961, I will show how these studies left a profound impact on American Military doctrine, particularly in the context of the Cold War. I will show the development of the Active Defense Doctrine and AirLand Battle during …


Masculinity And Cold War Fairy Tales: Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, Donald Barthelme, And Ross Macdonald, Susan E. Wood Jan 2021

Masculinity And Cold War Fairy Tales: Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, Donald Barthelme, And Ross Macdonald, Susan E. Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the use of fairy-tale allusions to explore masculinity in four novels published during the Cold War period. This notable focus on men and masculinity held in common across these four novels from four different decades is interesting because it suggests that the shift in focus to women and feminist ideals in fairy-tale revisions of the 1970s and after is even more stark a shift than has yet been recognized by scholars. This dissertation finds that Eudora Welty’s novella The Robber Bridegroom (1942), Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita (1955), Donald Barthelme’s novel Snow White (1967), and Ross Macdonald’s novel …


Politics And Pragmatism: The United States And Israel Between Two Presidents, Christopher J. Parker Jan 2017

Politics And Pragmatism: The United States And Israel Between Two Presidents, Christopher J. Parker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the United States’ relationship with Israel and the wider Middle East between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The United States’ relationship with Israel has reverberated across the Middle East and studying its impact is critical for understanding past and present issues in the region. It begins with an examination of the factors that impelled President Truman to act against the advice of his Department of State and recognize Israel only minutes after it declared statehood in May 1948; arguing that, above all else, domestic political considerations lay at the heart of his decision. It then assesses the …


The Czech-Egyptian Arms Deal Of 1955 : A Turning Point In Middle Eastern Cold War History., Thomas Michael Shaughnessy Skaggs Dec 2015

The Czech-Egyptian Arms Deal Of 1955 : A Turning Point In Middle Eastern Cold War History., Thomas Michael Shaughnessy Skaggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the Czechoslovakian-Egyptian arms deal of 1955 and analyzes how it impacted Middle Eastern Cold War policy. Central to the issue is Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s approach to garnering Pan-Arab Nationalist support and his decision to approach the Soviet Bloc for weapons and economic aid. Supporting evidence came from several repositories, including the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. In addition to primary sources, a thorough examination of the existing scholarship was conducted. In conclusion, the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, more than any other event, cemented Nasser's place as champion …


Stories Of The Trenton Six: Race And The Early Cold War In America, 1948 - 1953, Harry Roger Young Nov 2015

Stories Of The Trenton Six: Race And The Early Cold War In America, 1948 - 1953, Harry Roger Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reveals the complex post war world, in the emerging Cold War era, with the intersecting disputed worlds of race and ideology through the lens of the Trenton Six case. It provides the reader with a glimpse of one city's story, but it enveloped the entire nation; as Americans attempted to make sense of their chaotic and complicated world, prior to the 1960s civil rights movement. This study explores the problem of race in the criminal justice system. Even as racial attitudes were liberalizing in the post war world, race still pervaded criminal justice proceedings in subtle and unsubtle …


The Bombs Bursting In Air: A History Of The Effects Of Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing On Washington County, Utah, 1951-1963, Paul W. Bridges Ii Jan 2014

The Bombs Bursting In Air: A History Of The Effects Of Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing On Washington County, Utah, 1951-1963, Paul W. Bridges Ii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the effects of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site from 1951-1962 on Washington County, Utah, specifically focusing on the effects of these detonations on the local population, the local flora and fauna, and the ensuing impact of political and economic forces. While some Americans readily concede that these tests were necessary for the survival of the United States in the face of Soviet nuclear aggression, other Americans (notably, those who were most closely affected) do not share such a patriotic view of the government’s conduct in performing such extensive and damaging experiments. Therefore, …


Don't Ask, Do Tell: Queering The Cold War South, Nathan Glen Tipton Jun 2013

Don't Ask, Do Tell: Queering The Cold War South, Nathan Glen Tipton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the American Cold War period, a relatively small set of narratives were generated, disseminated, and rigidly enforced. These narratives included national unity, heteronormativity, and conformity. Yet in spite of insistent conformist pressures (and intimidating threats of blacklisting for failing to conform), Cold War-era Southern writers nevertheless flouted these national narratives by insistently foregrounding their own narratives, defending their own cultural and literary traditions, and generating a panoply of wonderfully--if surreptitiously--queer presences. In so doing, these writers at once successfully evinced surface obedience to Cold War sociocultural and political normative dictates while also offering subversive critiques of these same norms. …


The Battle Of Little Rock, Shawn Fisher Apr 2013

The Battle Of Little Rock, Shawn Fisher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to ensure that nine black students could attend the school unmolested by a riotous mob. The Little Rock crisis is usually studied as a landmark event in the civil rights movement, but it can be further examined as key event in the Cold War, which illuminates several interesting aspects of the crisis. First, it reveals the background of the segregated Arkansas National Guard and the …


Reason And Madness Or: How Hegel Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, Jeffrey Hardy Leedham Jr. Apr 2013

Reason And Madness Or: How Hegel Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, Jeffrey Hardy Leedham Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The struggle for recognition, this, so Hegel tells us, is the driving force behind history, and once this desired recognition is achieved then humanity will have finally fulfilled the end of history. In the twentieth century there were two famous proclamations that this goal had been achieved. In what follows, however, I argue that the end of history is not attained through some final state that provides recognition to its citizens universally, as Hegel and his interpreters imagine, but rather it is the condition created by states competing to provide that recognition. By looking at the way in which the …


Playing The Game: Violence And The Revolt Against Normative Masculinity In John Updike's Rabbit Run, Norman Mailer's An American Dream, And Phil Andros's $Tud, Ann Marie Schott Jan 2011

Playing The Game: Violence And The Revolt Against Normative Masculinity In John Updike's Rabbit Run, Norman Mailer's An American Dream, And Phil Andros's $Tud, Ann Marie Schott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine two high-brow examples of Cold War literature by white male authors, Norman Mailer's An American Dream (1965) and John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), and examine them through the lens of the lesser-known gay pulp $tud (1966) by Phil Andros. Although $tud's gay hustler protagonist Phil seems to be a progressive, even transgressive example of an alternate masculinity, he is actually heavily invested in the binary strictures of normative masculinity and therefore works to uphold or reinforce normativity. $tud, therefore, is not about deviance from a masculine norm but rather a meditation on the ways that American …


The French Chef And The Cold War: Julia Child And The Mask Of Contained Domesticity, Hillary Ann Hamblen Jan 2011

The French Chef And The Cold War: Julia Child And The Mask Of Contained Domesticity, Hillary Ann Hamblen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Most scholarly studies and even general personal reflections about Julia Child portray her as a figure that changed the face of cooking, cookbooks, and cooking television for audiences of the late twentieth and twenty first centuries. While this is true, many of these studies and reflections do not acknowledge Child's ability to change mainstream ideas by conforming to some of them. While Child radicalized perceptions toward food and those who cook, she also represented a domestic woman and a wife. While Child's politics were indeed liberal, for the most part, her lifestyle was actually quite moderate. This project is an …


The Sputnik Crisis And America's Response, Ian Kennedy Jan 2005

The Sputnik Crisis And America's Response, Ian Kennedy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, and the Space Age had arrived. While not an American achievement, Sputnik stands as a significant juncture in United States history. This thesis explores the resulting American political crisis, its development in the final three months of 1957, and the impact Sputnik had on American life. The thesis also examines the social and political context of the Sputnik crisis and will challenge some long-standing analysis of how America's reaction to the Soviet satellite developed. To accomplish this task, it was necessary to consult both primary and …