Cold War Historiography

Historiography of the Cold War

After World War I, democracies collapsed all over the world and led to a revolution of political leaders in authoritarian states. The world, with the outbreak of World War II, saw numerous totalitarian leaders take control and oppress citizens of their rights, while contending for world domination. Ultimately, it created a difference in ideologies, between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated world politics for the next four decades in an event known as the Cold War. The cold war era was a struggle of ideologies and indifferences, between the United States and the Soviet Union, that led to politics being redefined, gender differences and inequalities, and morality issues

However, with the events in history, it enabled historians to redevelop the linear line into a spectrum that could better represent political philosophies. In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s book, Vital Center, written during the Cold War era, he suggested because of the similarities of communism and fascism, it created a circular political model that put liberal democracy in the center. He argued that fascism and communism had more similarities than anything in between and therefore resulted in a circle with communism and fascism meeting at the bottom. In which he recreated the political spectrum and changed how people viewed

Gaddis has a new post-revolutionist view of the cold war. This is demonstrated through his focus on the leadership of each country, and how each leader evolved with society. It started with the leaders that emerged after World War II in Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin. Stalin took a hard stance on post-war Eastern Europe and Truman followed with the, Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. However, with the 1950s, it brought about new leadership in the United States and the Soviet Union. Through the 1950s, leadership under Eisenhower was stern and followed the policy of brinkmanship, as the nuclear leaders of the world, and Khrushchev as the leader of the Soviet Union. The 1950s were dominated by Korean War and stopping the spread of communism to other countries, while showing the nuclear dominance by the United States. The 1960s resulted in a decade of almost complete disaster and embarrassment for the United States. The failure of the Bay of pigs invasion proved disastrous but Kennedy’s ability to reach an agreement showed his negotiation skills, but more importantly that neither country was willing to start a nuclear war with one another. The 1970s was dominated by working out negotiations and working on establishing a better relationship between democracies and