The 1930s were dominated by economic collapse, stagnation, and mass unemployment. This crisis enabled the Democrats to recapture the White House and embark upon a period of reform unsurpassed until the 1960s. Roosevelt's New Deal laid the foundations of a welfare system that was further consolidated during and after the Second World War. American involvement in World War II helped to secure victory in Europe and in Asia. American participation in the war led to economic recovery but also brought with it enormous demographic and social changes. Some of these changes continued after the war had ended, but further political reform was to be limited due to the impact of the Cold War and the effects of America's new role as the world's leading superpower in the atomic age. The Historical Dictionary of the Roosevelt-Truman Era examines significant individuals, organizations, and events in American political, economic, social, and cultural history between 1933 and 1953. This was a period of enormous significance in the United States due to the impact of the Great Depression, World War II, and the onset of the Cold War. The presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman witnessed the origins of the modern American welfare system and the rise of the United States as a world power, as well as its involvement in the confrontation with communism that dominated the latter half of the 20th century.

Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency

Historical dictionary of the Roosevelt-Truman era

This study proposes an archaeology as a means of exploring the practices by which digitally encoded resources are generated, circulated, and received. The discussion grapples with the ambiguous relationship between digitizations and their exemplars in the well-known database, Early English Books Online (EEBO), and suggests ways in which digitizations might be analyzed as witnesses of current perceptions about the past and used accordingly in scholarly research. The article therefore offers a critical reading of EEBO and its digitizations as part of a broader effort to investigate the role of digitally encoded resources in the transmission of ideas and the production of cultural heritage.

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Archaeology of a digitization

In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower charged an ad hoc advisory group with assessing the current U.S. Cold War effort and offering recommendations for an “unified and dynamic” way forward. This work investigates the case of Eisenhower’s Presidential Committee on International Information Activities and its role in the United States’ approach to the Cold War. Problematizing that which is often taken for granted, this empirical, interpretive study uncovers the discursive conditions of possibility for and the discursive activities taking place within Jackson Committee decision making processes. Employing a constructivist discursive framework, this project builds on an understanding of policy making as a process of argumentation in which actors intersubjectively define problems and delimit policy and strategy options. Revealing discursive conditions of possibility enables a deeper understanding of the substance, tensions and discursive maneuvers informing subsequent U.S. strategy and policy choices during the Cold War and may offer insights into understanding and addressing geopolitical challenges in the 21st century. The thick analytic narrative illuminates the “witcraft” involved in conceptualizing the unique threat posed by the Soviet Union whose practices challenged existing categories, and in extending wartime discourses to the post-war geopolitical environment. It examines discursive practices informing the nascent concepts of national strategy, psychological warfare, and political warfare, including arguments for constituent elements and relationships between them. In so doing, this dissertation conceptualizes national strategy as practices underpinning a prioritized drive for competitive advantage over adversaries. Additionally, political warfare represents practices intended to create and present alternatives to foreign actors that are in the U.S. interest through the integration and coordination of diplomatic, economic, military, and informational activities. Based on its conceptualization of a long-term adversarial competition with the Soviet Union, the committee recommended solutions for a sustainable national strategy of political warfare prioritizing the free world and liberal world order. Its recommendations sought to recast strategic panic into strategic patience. Recommending Political Warfare—The Role of Eisenhower’s Presidential Committee on International Information Activities in the United States’ Approach to the Cold War

Recommending Political Warfare--The Role of Eisenhower's Presidential Committee on International Information Activities in the United States' Approach to the Cold War

This international history of the origins and nature of 'cold war' offers the first systematic examination of the complex relationship between the United States and Italy, and of American debates about warfare in the years between World War II and the Korean War. Kaeten Mistry reveals how the defeat of the Marxist left in the 1948 Italian election was perceived as a victory for the United States amidst a 'war short of war', as defined by influential planner George Kennan, becoming an allegory for cold war in American minds. The book analyses how political warfare sought to employ covert operations, overt tactics and propaganda in a co-ordinated offensive against international communism. Charting the critical contribution of a broad network of local, religious, civic, labour, and business groups, Mistry reveals how the notion of a specific American success paved the way for a problematic future for US-Italian relations and American political warfare.

The United States, Italy and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare, 1945–1950

This thesis critically examines the Central Intelligence Agency‘s hand in the decision-making process through a detailed and careful analysis of its daily, weekly and ad hoc intelligence reports. The research is significant because, in the early years of the Cold War, particularly during the Berlin blockade and the Korean War, Washington was unsure whether Soviet provocations were local or global. Based on the premise that the CIA had a mixture of successes and failures, this study will demonstrate that, with relative consistency, intelligence analysts provided relatively perceptive assessments of Soviet capabilities and intentions. In part, because of CIA assessments, US policymakers were better able to conclude that the Kremlin was unable and unwilling to risk a direct military confrontation with the United States during these two crises. Furthermore, much of the literature on the Central Intelligence Agency‘s early years scarcely addresses, beyond general terms, what analysts were telling policymakers during these two Cold War crises. Too often, it has been argued that the CIA‘s voice remained removed, uninvolved and had little to no influence in the decision-making process. For this reason, this thesis—through a detailed, critical analysis of the Agency‘s intelligence reports—will offer a fresh perspective and help to fill an important gap in this critical aspect of history.

Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency

Citations

Historical dictionary of the Roosevelt-Truman era

Archaeology of a digitization

Recommending Political Warfare--The Role of Eisenhower's Presidential Committee on International Information Activities in the United States' Approach to the Cold War

The United States, Italy and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare, 1945–1950

A guiding hand? : the CIA and foreign policymaking in the early cold war

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