On Monday, I posted my nominees for ten Cold War histories worth reading. But many people don’t have the time or patience to plow through comprehensive histories. So for TWE readers looking to save time, here is a short course on the history of the Cold War using forty of the most memorable quotations from that era.
“I can deal with Stalin. He is honest, but smart as hell.”—President Harry Truman, diary entry, July 17, 1945.
“In summary, we have here [in the Soviet Union] a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world’s greatest peoples and resources of world’s richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism.”—George Kennan, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in an official cable to the U.S. State Department (“The Long Telegram”), February 22, 1946.
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”—Winston Churchill, address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.
“I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes. ”—President Harry Truman, speech to a joint session of Congress, announcing what becomes known as the Truman Doctrine, March 12, 1947.
“The United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” —Secretary of State George C. Marshall, commencement address at Harvard University that unveils the Marshall Plan, June 5, 1947.
“The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”—“X” (George Kennan), Foreign Affairs, July 1, 1947.
“The defensive perimeter [of the United States in East Asia] runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus.”—Dean Acheson, speech to the National Press Club that leaves South Korea outside the U.S. defense perimeter, January 12, 1950.
"While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205."—Sen. Joseph McCarthy, speech at the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950.
“The whole success of the proposed program hangs ultimately on recognition by this Government, the American people, and all free peoples, that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.”—NSC-68, April 7 (or 14), 1950.
"If we let Korea down, the Soviet[s] will keep right on going and swallow up one [place] after another.”— President Harry Truman, remarks at his first meeting with his advisors after learning that North Korea had invaded South Korea, June 25, 1950.
“Mr. Stevenson has a degree alright–a PhD from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment.”—Vice President Richard Nixon, attacking the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson, during the 1952 election.
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