Cold War Crucible

The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World

Hajimu Masuda, Masuda Hajimu

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780674598478
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674967045
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The end of World War II did not mean the arrival of peace. The major powers faced social upheaval at home, while anticolonial wars erupted around the world. American–Soviet relations grew chilly, but the meaning of the rivalry remained disputable. Cold War Crucible reveals the Korean War as the catalyst for a new postwar order. The conflict led people to believe in the Cold War as a dangerous reality, a belief that would define the fears of two generations.

In the international arena, North Korea's aggression was widely interpreted as the beginning of World War III. At the domestic level, the conflict generated a wartime logic that created dividing lines between "us" and "them," precipitating waves of social purges to stifle dissent. The United States allowed McCarthyism to take root; Britain launched anti-labor initiatives; Japan conducted its Red Purge; and China cracked down on counterrevolutionaries. These attempts to restore domestic tranquility were not a product of the Cold War, Masuda Hajimu shows, but driving forces in creating a mindset for it. Alarmed by the idea of enemies from within and faced with the notion of a bipolar conflict that could quickly go from chilly to nuclear, ordinary people and policymakers created a fantasy of a Cold War world in which global and domestic order was paramount.

In discovering how policymaking and popular opinion combined to establish and propagate the new postwar reality, Cold War Crucible offers a history that reorients our understanding of what the Cold War really was.

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

AARL	Auburn Avenue Research Library, Atlanta, GA
AFSF	Administrative File of Stafford Warren
AH	Academia Historica (Guoshiguan), Taipei, Taiwan
AHP	Ashida Hitoshi Papers
BFFP	Bonner F. Fellers Paper
BLNRR	British Library Newspaper Reading Room, Colindale, UK
BL-UCB	Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
BMA	Beijing Municipal Archives, Beijing, PRC
CAWP	Charles A. Willoughby Papers
CCP	Chinese Communist Party
CKSD	Chiang Kai-shek Diaries
CLEAR-UHWO	Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawaii at West Oahu, Kapolei, HI
CL-NUS	Central Library, National University of Singapore, Singapore
CMCP	Clark M. Clifford Papers
CNPR	Chinese Nationalist Party Records
COH-CU	Center for Oral History, Columbia University, New York City, NY
CPP	Conservative Party Papers
CPV	Chinese People’s Volunteers
CSU	Columbus State University, Columbus, GA
CUFA	Committee on Un-Filipino Activities
CUHK	Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
CWIHP	Cold War International History Project
DAP	Dean Acheson Papers
DHL-OU	Duke Humfrey’s Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
DMP	Douglas MacArthur Papers
DSOD	“Daily Summary of Opinion Developments”
EAP	Eben Ayers Papers
ERP	Escott Reid Papers
FMA	Foreign Ministry Archives, Beijing, PRC
FRUS	Foreign Relations of the United States
FSP	Fred Stover Papers
GHQ	U.S. General Headquarters in Tokyo
GJP	George Johnston Papers
GMD	Nationalist Party (Guomindang)
GMEP	George M. Elsey Papers
HAWP	Henry A. Wallace Papers
HILA-SU	Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
HMP	Helen MacMartin Papers
HMPPP	Helen MacMartin Progressive Party Papers
HSTL	Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO
HSTP	Harry S. Truman Papers
HUAC	House Un-American Activities Committee
ISEAS	Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
JEWP	James E. Webb Papers
JSSP	John S. Service Papers
LAC	Library Archives Canada, Ottawa, Canada
LARC-SFSU	Labor Archives & Research Center, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
LAUSDBER	Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education Records
LC	Library of Congress, Washington, DC
LGY	Lengzhan guojishi yanjiu (Cold War International History Studies)
LPP	Lester Pearson Papers
LSC-UCLA	Library Special Collections, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
MENC	McCarthy Era Newspaper Clippings
MJCP	Matthew J. Connelly Papers
MJPHMR-NDL	Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room
MMA	MacArthur Memorial Archives, Norfolk, VA
MRC-UW	Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
NAI	National Archives of India, Delhi, India
NARA	National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
NHS	Nevada Historical Society, Reno, NV
NLA	National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia
NLC	National Library of China (Zhongguo guojia tushuguan), Beijing, PRC
NMML	Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, India
NMP	Nakamura Mitsuo Papers
NNUL	Northeastern Normal University Library, Changchun, PRC
NPA	Nationalist Party Archives (Dangshiguan), Taipei, Taiwan
NRR-NDL	Newspaper Reading Room, National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan.
NTL	National Taiwan Library (Guoli Taiwan tushuguan), Taipei, Taiwan
NTUL	National Taiwan University Library, Taipei, Taiwan
OHR-OPL	Oakland History Room, Oakland Public Library, Oakland, CA
OISS-HU	Ohara Institute for Social Studies (Ohara shakaimondai kenkyusho), Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan
OKL-CU	Olin & Kroch Libraries, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
OPOS	Office of Public Opinion Studies
PHNP	Paul H. Nitze Papers
PMP	Pat McCarran Papers
PPP	Progressive Party Papers
RATP	Robert A. Taft Papers
RFP	Raymond Feely Papers
SCUA-SU	Special Collections & University Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
SCUA-UI	Special Collections & University Archives, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
SC-UV	Special Collections, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
SIF	Security Investigation File
SKP	Stetson Kennedy Papers
SLA-GSU	Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
SMA	Shanghai Municipal Archives, Shanghai, PRC
SMML-PU	Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
TK-US	The Keep, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
TNA	The National Archives, Kew, UK
UA-UCLA	University Archives, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
UHM	University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
USNWR	U.S. News and World Report
VBP	Valery Burati Papers
VHS	Vermont Historical Society, Barre, VT
WAHP	William Averell Harriman Papers
WCML	Working-Class Movement Library, Salford, UK
WHJP	Walter Henry Judd Papers
WKP	William Knowland Papers
WPRL-WSU	Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

INTRODUCTION

1. “Our Weekly Letter,” no. 17, 2 June 1950, Working-Class Movement Library, Salford, UK; and “Peace versus Peace,” The Economist, 27 May 1950, 1153–1154.

2. The field of Cold War history has changed dramatically in the past two decades. It has developed into an area of study not only in the fields of diplomatic history and political science as it used to be, but social and cultural history, as well as anthropology, cultural studies, literature and film, design and art, and rhetoric and communications studies. In the first place, I have benefited from reading earlier scholarship in the field, such as the work of Walter LaFeber, John Lewis Gaddis, and Melvyn Leffler, who addressed the subject through elucidating the roles of states and policymakers—the traditional strength of diplomatic history. Even though my book raises fundamental questions about their approaches, it is their work that laid its foundation. See, for example, Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2006, 10th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008); John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Melvyn Leffler, Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).

In addition, I have learned a grea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: What Was the Cold War?
• I. The Repercussions
• II. The Social
• III. The Simultaneity
• Epilogue: The Cold War as Social Politics
• Notes
• Archives Consulted
• Acknowledgments
• Index