"The Truman Doctrine is the only road to lasting peace. Twice within 30 years the stubbornly-observed practice of 'minding our business' has brought war."
Illustrated with a chart that shows how much the U.S. Navy had shrunk after W.W. II and then expanded anew when faced with the war in Korea, this short article pertains to the various steps Congress was taking to meet the Soviet challenges abroad:
"A $2.3 billion ship-building and repair program, just approved by President Truman, will add a 57,800-ton carrier and 172 other new vessels to the fleet. And 291 more are to be demothballed-including 6 carriers, 12 cruisers, 194 destroyers.
[Stalin was incapable of responding to such growth, so he simply ordered the production of additional A-Bombs]
The Soviet Union was the first atheist government...
With the end of the Second World War in 1945 came numerous social changes to the nation. Among them was the Civil Rights movement, which soon began to find followers in the white majority and acquire an unprecedented traction in Washington as a result of the Cold War (an article on this topic can be read here). It was these two factors, the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement, that combined in the Fifties to call for the creation of a new immigration policy. It would be naive to assume that race alone was the sole factor in drafting a more inclusive policy because, as the attached editorial spells out, the Cold War climate demanded that the U.S. make more friends among the developing countries if the Soviets were to be defeated economically and militarily.
- one of the questions that had to be examined during the Stalin era... This article goes into greater length to confirm what U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan (1904 – 2005) observed in his famous 1947 article "Sources of Soviet Conduct" (FOREIGN AFFAIRS, July 1947) - that the Russian people were physically and spiritually exhausted. After the terrible strain and sacrifice of the Second World War they were gleefully anticipating some much needed rest; they didn't get it and they weren't very happy about it.
"The standard of living in Russia has never been very high, but even despite his natural stoicism, the average citizen feels he has a good reason to be disgruntled with his life... Like any other totalitarian state, the Soviet state has done its best to paint a larger than life-size picture of its citizens. It likes to describe them as steel-hard heroes with an inflexible will, living for nothing but the great ideal of a Communist future, laughing at difficulties, gaily grasping with hard ship - a continent of Douglas Fairbankses. This is just a bit too good to be true, and the last one to be taken in by it is the average Russian." This Cold War article about the American Communist Party (CPUSA), penned in 1950 by F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover (1895 – 1972) was published for two reasons:
• To alert the readers that such subversive groups exist and that they are operated by their fellow Americans who take orders from Joseph Stalin -
• and that the F.B.I. is on the job and has thoroughly infiltrated their ranks and watches them very closely.
The column is a good read for all of you out there who enjoy the "cloak and dagger" type of plot lines; I was surprised to learn that this group had so many secrets to hide - seeing that their problems in the arena of public relations at that time were so overwhelming, one has to wonder how they were actually able to tend to their assignments in espionage, sabotage, propaganda and all other assorted shenanigans Moscow expected of them.
Click here to read about the man who spied on the the American Communist Party.
Click here if you would like to read what the CPUSA was up to during the Great Depression.
In time, J. Edgar Hoover's prestige began to fade...
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