Skip to main content Skip to navigation

American Foreign Policy

  • Why did wartime allies engage in hostile diplomacy and military build-up after World War II?

  • Was any one Great Power at fault?

  • Did the Long Telegram or NSC-68 have a greater impact on US Foreign Policy
  • Did Truman's approach differ from Eisenhower's?
  • What were the issues that brought confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the 1950s?

Major Problems in American History, Volume II: Since 1865

Chapter Ten "The Cold War and the Nuclear Age" pp.297-329.

Sources

1. National Archives. Harry Truman and the Atomic Bomb
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g5/
2. George Kennan’s Long Telegram (1946)
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/Kennan
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/foner2/contents/ch23/documents01.asp
3. The Truman Doctrine (1947)
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/TrumanDoctrine
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/harrystrumantrumandoctrine.html
4. Marshall Plan (1948)
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/MarshallPlan
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/foner2/contents/ch23/documents05.asp
5. NATO (1949)
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NATO
6. National Security Council Paper No. 68 [NSC-68] (1950)
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/foner2/contents/ch23/documents09.asp

Reading

Anslover, Nicole, Harry S. Truman [electronic resource] : the coming of the Cold War

Bilsland, James, The president, the state and the Cold War [electronic resource] : comparing the foreign policies of Truman and Reagan

Cardwell, Curt, NSC 68 and the Political Economy of the Early Cold War

Cochran, Bert, Harry Truman and the crisis presidency

Cull, Nicholas John, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency : American propaganda and public diplomacy, 1945-1989

Divine, Robert A. Eisenhower and the Cold War

Donovan, Robert J., Conflict and crisis : the Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948

Donovan, Robert J., Tumultuous years : the presidency of Harry S. Truman 1949-1953

Fordham, Benjamin O. Building the Cold War consensus [electronic resource] : the political economy of U.S. national security policy, 1949-51

Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of containment [electronic resource] : a critical appraisal of American national security policy during the Cold War

Gaddis, John Lewis, The United States and the origins of the cold war, 1941-1947

Hamby, Alonzo, Man of the people : a life of Harry S. Truman

Hoben, Michael J., A cross of iron : Harry S. Truman and the origins of the national security state, 1945-1954

Hybel, Alex, US foreign policy decision-making from Truman to Kennedy : responses to international challenges

Inboden, William Religion and American foreign policy, 1945-1960 : the soul of containment

Leffler, Mervyn P., Origins of the Cold War : an international history

Leffler, Melvyn P. The Cambridge history of the Cold War

Lucas, Scott and Bevan Sewell, ed. Challenging US foreign policy [electronic resource] : America and the world in the long twentieth century

Miscamble, Wilson, From Roosevelt to Truman : Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War

Margolies, Daniel S., A companion to Harry S. Truman

Melanson, Richard A. Reevaluating Eisenhower : American foreign policy in the 1950s

Messer, Robert, The end of an alliance : James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the origins of the cold war

Offner, Arnold, Another such victory : President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953

Paterson, Thomas G. ed. Cold war critics : alternatives to American foreign policy in the Truman years

Schwartz, Lowell H., Political warfare against the Kremlin [electronic resource] : US and British propaganda policy at the beginning of the Cold War

Stueck, William Whitney, The road to confrontation : American policy toward China and Korea, 1947-1950

Robinson, Edgar, Powers of the President in foreign affairs, 1945-1965; Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson

Rovere, Richard Halworth, General MacArthur and President Truman : the struggle for control of American foreign policy

Walton, Richard J., Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War

Winhand, Pascaline, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the united states of Europe