Results for Cold War

A Tense October

October 18, 2013
Heather Cox Richardson

United States Department of Defense graphic in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted for thirteen tense days in October 1962. During those days, the USSR faced off against the U.S. over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy vowed not to permit missiles so close to America; Premier Krushchev vowed to put them in Cuba
anyway. The two week standoff was the closest the Cold War ever came to erupting into a hot war.

And with nuclear weapons widespread, it would have been a hot war, indeed.

The J.F.K. Library has put together a website that enables a viewer to experience each day of that crisis.



A Tense October A Tense October Reviewed by Joseph Landis on October 18, 2013 Rating: 5

Henry Steele Commager on America during the Cold War

August 29, 2013
Randall Stephens

The November 24, 1954 episode of Longines Chronoscope featured Henry Steele Commager (video embedded here).  That was not unusual for
the news and views program, which regularly featured heads of state, intellectuals, novelists, and other notables.  But the subject of the discussion is particularly interesting all these years later.  Maybe that's especially poignant because Commager was one of America's foremost historians at that time. Here he weighs in on American identity, the pressures of conformity, the post-war economic boom, and freedom of expression.  

This was filmed in the wake of the Korean War, the hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll, and not long after the historic Brown vs. Topeka Supreme Court decision.  Red Scare paranoia remained strong. The coming month of December would see the US Senate reprimand Joseph McCarthy, by a vote of 67–22, for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."

Here are some of the questions posed to Commager by hosts Larry LeSueur (CBS News correspondent) and August Heckscher (chief editorial writer for the New York Herald-Tribune):

LeSueur: So, professor Commager, we'd like to ask you: Do you think that this country when it was smaller and less powerful, but when we had less responsibilities, do you think we were happier then than we are now?

LeSueur: Professor Commager, do you feel that our freedoms such as speech are more circumscribed now than they have been in the past?

LeSueur: Surely professor Commager there's less conformity now than in the days of the Puritans?

Heckscher: Would you say that . . . we exaggerate our standard of living in comparison to the standard of living of foreign countries, for example?

LeSueur: Do you think our country is more or less unified in some areas, on foreign policy for example, now than it has been in the past during some of our crises?

How are historians reflecting on the pressing issues of our day?  What will the opinions of contemporary historians look like more than 50 years from now?
Henry Steele Commager on America during the Cold War Henry Steele Commager on America during the Cold War Reviewed by Joseph Landis on August 29, 2013 Rating: 5

History Classroom Roundup

August 22, 2013

Alastair Jamieson, "Germany's Angela Merkel teaches history class on Berlin Wall anniversary," NBC World News, August 13, 2013

German Chancellor Angela Merkel drew on her Communist-era experiences to teach a history class at a school on Tuesday - the 52nd anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Merkel, who is campaigning ahead of next month’s general election, gave a 45-minute lesson as a "substitute teacher" for a 12th-grade class in east Berlin.>>>

Sacha Cordner, "Lawmaker Considering Legislation To Cut Down 'Islam-Bias' In Fla. School Textbooks," WFSU-Tallahassee, August 5, 2013

A Florida lawmaker is considering legislation that would give the public input on the content found in Florida school textbooks. His overall aim is to cut down on what he calls the “Islam-bias” in state schools.

Melbourne Republican Representative Ritch Workman says Prentice Hall’s “World History” book not only puts an inaccurate spin on Islam, it also dedicates a whole chapter to the religion.>>>

E. C. Gogolak, "Using Baseball History to Teach Children Big Lessons," NYT blog, August 7, 2013

On a recent morning in the Longwood neighborhood of the South Bronx, residents on Fox Street were starting their day. Reggaeton played from a second-story window. A man whistled a nursery rhyme while briskly pushing a toddler in a stroller. A woman stood on the corner with rollers in her hair, smoking a cigarette. And in a room at the end of a hallway on the first floor of 830 Fox Street, about two dozen children, ages 6 to 12, sat before a big-screen TV mounted on the front wall.>>>

Ryan Arciero, "1912 eighth grade exam: Can you score highly on a revealing history test?" Examiner, August 12, 2013

A 1912 eighth grade exam is having quite a few students and adults alike this week wonder whether they can score highly on a test that many Americans’ ancestors may have had to take when in the single-school classroom. Thanks to a history museum’s donation of a test that’s over 100 years old, Web Pro News shares this Monday, Aug. 12, that some may be surprised at how much this exam truly reveals.>>>

Matthew Albright, "Delaware school district considers class about Bible," USA Today, July 24, 2013

WILMINGTON, Del. -- A school board in Delaware will vote Thursday on a proposal to offer a high school class examining the Bible's role in society and history, tying the state into a national debate over the limits of religion in schools.

Supporters say the elective class would not be a religious Bible study class discussing matters of faith, but would focus instead on the text's influence on history and society. Students would read the Bible and an accompanying textbook.>>>
History Classroom Roundup History Classroom Roundup Reviewed by Joseph Landis on August 22, 2013 Rating: 5

The Role of Money and Timing in Culture: The CIA and Abstract Expressionism

April 30, 2013
Heather Cox Richardson

I have heard talk of the exportation of modern American art during the Cold War as a means of proselytizing, but I’d never considered the mechanics of that propaganda. It seemed to me a wing of art theory, and while that’s a subject that always entertains me, it’s something for which I have very little brain space during the school year.
From Life magazine, August 8, 1949.

A recent article by Frances Stonor Saunders in The Independent explains exactly how the CIA promoted American abstract expressionism worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s. Their goal was to highlight the openness and experimentation possible in America’s capitalist system, contrasting it with the rigid conformity of state-censored socialist realism (some of which, to my Philistinic eye, seems worth looking at even if Soviet state officials thought so, too.) At first, the CIA tried to promote work by Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko at home. Quickly, though, abstract expressionism ran into the conformism of the 1950s. Even President Truman announced: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.”

So CIA operatives set up the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which salted art magazines praising abstract expressionism and sponsored exhibitions that toured European cities. They worked closely with Nelson Rockefeller, president of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (which his mother had founded), to showcase “free enterprise painting.” When museums eager to show the new art could not afford the cost of exhibitions, the CIA tapped American millionaires as ostensible sponsors, then provided the necessary money from government coffers. After World War II, abstract expressionism became the symbol of modern America.

This story opens many fascinating avenues for historical exploration. It also touches on a subject dear to my heart and the hearts of intellectual historians everywhere: the relationship between art and money. Today we recognize abstract expressionism as one of the great cultural developments in history. And yet, the CIA stepped in to underwrite it after one congressman called it “trash.” Would Motherwell and Pollock—both of whose works I find mesmerizing—have become Motherwelland Pollock without a propaganda campaign on their behalf? Would they have had to quit experimenting and start painting advertisements instead? What might have taken over the cultural future in that case?

How much is cultural significance dependent on being in the right place at the right time? Everyone knows that Renaissance masters had patrons, but how much have things changed? Patti Smith’s Just Kids suggests that Robert Mapplethorpe’s fame was underwritten by his wealthy mentor and partner. The Timoney Group has mapped forty years of Bruce Springsteen’s tours and made the case that his access to huge audiences in New Jersey and New York determined his meteoric rise. Would Mapplethorpe have become Mapplethorpe if he had not attracted a rich patron? Would Bruce Springsteen have been The Boss if he had grown up in Nebraska?

It seems to me that the question of cultural significance and money remains a crucial one for study.
The Role of Money and Timing in Culture: The CIA and Abstract Expressionism The Role of Money and Timing in Culture: The CIA and Abstract Expressionism Reviewed by Joseph Landis on April 30, 2013 Rating: 5

The Seduction of Two Innocents: Comic Book Readers and Policy Makers

March 03, 2013
Heather Cox Richardson

In 1938 Superman sped into this galaxy from the planet Krypton to save humanity.  He and his superhero friends oversaw the chaos of the late 1940s, as America first fought World War II and then struggled to adjust to demobilization. Superman and his friends then swept through the skies as the U.S. armed for the Cold War. While Superman matured, the late 1940s and early 1950s brought chilling fear to Americans that the nation was slipping, losing ground to the Russians, falling apart.

So many children—and adults—were reading comics that critics carped that comics themselves were part of America’s moral decline. In 1953, 6.5 comics were sold for every one person in the country. More than 90% of children admitted to reading them.

In 1954 the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published The Seduction of the Innocent, detailing how comic books dragged impressionable youths into crime, violence, and homosexuality. The book used anecdotes to prove that Batman, for example, promoted a gay lifestyle. The Seduction of the Innocent was such a sensation that Wertham became the go-to man for information about the danger of comics, and the industry itself, which scorned Wertham, felt obliged to bow to pressure from his acolytes. To preempt government censorship, the Comics Magazine Association of America developed the Comics Code Authority, which banned violence, sex, and disrespect for authority in comic books. Under the Comics Code, good must always triumph over evil, and any treatment of sexuality had to emphasize the sanctity of marriage.

Wertham died in 1981, and his archives opened to researchers in 2010. Carol Tilley, a scholar of library science at the University of Illinois, dug immediately into Wertham’s files on The Seduction of the Innocent. She found that Wertham had comprehensively fudged his data.

Wertham used no citations, and excised from his notes the full portraits of the children he claimed were victimized by comics. His 13-year-old “Dorothy” refused to go regularly to school because she admired Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and crime comics. In fact, Dorothy had other attributes that undoubtedly affected her school attendance: she was a sexually active runaway with a reading disability who belonged to a gang. Another 13-year-old—a boy this time—admired Batman for what he and Robin might be doing in their spare time; in fact, the boy had been sexually assaulted and preferred Superman and war comics to Batman. The list goes on and on.

The seduction of the innocent, indeed.
The Seduction of Two Innocents: Comic Book Readers and Policy Makers The Seduction of Two Innocents: Comic Book Readers and Policy Makers Reviewed by Joseph Landis on March 03, 2013 Rating: 5
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