Skip to Main Content

Cold War: Presidents

A topic guide covering aspects of the Cold War.

Presidential Guides

Streaming Media

Perspectives

The General vs. the President

From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked by a reporter about the possible use of atomic weapons in response to China's entry into the war, Truman replied testily, "The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has." This suggested that General Douglas MacArthur, the willful, fearless, and highly decorated commander of the American and U.N. forces, had his finger on the nuclear trigger. A correction quickly followed, but the damage was do≠ two visions for America's path forward were clearly in opposition, and one man would have to make way.      Truman was one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Heir to a struggling economy, a ruined Europe, and increasing tension with the Soviet Union, on no issue was the path ahead clear and easy. General MacArthur, by contrast, was incredibly popular, as untouchable as any officer has ever been in America. The lessons he drew from World War II were absolute: appeasement leads to disaster and a showdown with the communists was inevitable--the sooner the better. In the nuclear era, when the Soviets, too, had the bomb, the specter of a catastrophic third World War lurked menacingly close on the horizon.      The contest of wills between these two titanic characters unfolds against the turbulent backdrop of a faraway war and terrors conjured at home by Joseph McCarthy. From the drama of Stalin's blockade of West Berlin to the daring landing of MacArthur's forces at Inchon to the shocking entrance of China into the war, The General and the President vividly evokes the making of a new American era.

Tear Down This Wall

On June 12, 1987,Ronald Reagan addressed a crowd of 20,000 people in West Berlin in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. The words he delivered that afternoon would become among the most famous in presidential history. "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate," Reagan said. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!"In this riveting and fast-paced book, Romesh Ratnesar provides an account of how Reagan arrived at his defining moment and what followed from it. The book is based on interviews with numerous former Reagan administration officials and American and German eyewitnesses to the speech, as well as recently declassified State Department documents and East German records of the president's trip. Ratnesar provides new details about the origins of Reagan's speech and the debate within the administration about how to issue the fateful challenge to Gorbachev.Tear Down This Wallre-creates the charged atmosphere surrounding Reagan's visit to Berlin and explores the speech's role in bringing about the fall of the Berlin Wall less than two years later.At the heart of the story is the relationship between two giants of the late twentieth century: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Departing from the view that Reagan "won" the Cold War, Ratnesar demonstrates that both Reagan and Gorbachev played indispensable roles in bringing about the end of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. It was the trust that Reagan and Gorbachev built in each other that allowed them finally to overcome the suspicions that had held their predecessors back. Calling on Gorbachev to tear down the Wall, in Reagan's mind, might actually encourage him to do it. Reagan's speech in Berlin was more than a good sound bite. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we can now see the speech as the event that marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War.Elegant and dramatic,Tear Down This Wallis the definitive account of one of the most memorable speeches in recent history and a reminder of the power of a president's words to change the world.

John F. Kennedy

Half a century after his assassination, John F. Kennedy continues to evoke widespread fascination, looming large in America's historical memory. Popular portrayals often show Kennedy as a mythic, heroic figure, but these depictions can obscure the details of the president's actual achievements and challenges. Despite the short length of his time in office, during his presidency, Kennedy dealt with many of the issues that would come to define the 1960s, including the burgeoning Cold War and the growing Civil Rights movement. In John F. Kennedy: The Spirit of Cold War Liberalism, Jason K. Duncan explains Kennedy's significance as a political figure of the 20th century in U.S. and world history. Duncan contextualizes Kennedy's political career through his personal life and addresses the legacy the president left behind. In a concise narrative supplemented by primary documents, including presidential speeches and critical reviews from the left and right, Duncan builds a biography that elucidates the impact of this iconic president and the history of the 1960s.

Diplomacy at the Brink

A groundbreaking new study of Anglo-American relations during the Cold War, Diplomacy at the Brink argues for a reevaluation of Dwight D. Eisenhower's foreign policy toward allies and enemies alike. Contrary to his reputation as a level-headed moderate, the Eisenhower who emerges in David M. Watry's exhaustively researched book is a conservative ideologue, a leader whose aggressively anti-Communist and anticolonialist foreign policies represented a major shift away from the containment policy of the Truman presidency. Watry contends that Eisenhower worked closely with John Foster Dulles to engage in aggressive brinksmanship that diametrically opposed Winston Churchill's diplomacy of "peaceful coexistence." At a time when British economic interests favored cooperation with China, Eisenhower planned nuclear war against it; when Anthony Eden considered Gamal Abdel Nasser a Soviet agent and invaded Egypt, Eisenhower supported Arab nationalism and used economic and political blackmail to force Britain to withdraw. Such stances fractured the "special relationship" between America and Great Britain and played a vital role in the dissolution of the British Empire. Watry's thorough examination of the important clash of U.S.-U.K. foreign policy demonstrates that America's new anti-colonial policies and the unilateral use of American power against perceived Communist threats put Eisenhower and Dulles on a collision course with Churchill and Eden that rocked the world.

The Second Cold War

Towards the end of the Cold War, the last great struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union marked the end of détente, and escalated into the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aaron Donaghy examines the complex history of America's largest peacetime military buildup, which was in turn challenged by the largest peacetime peace movement. Focusing on the critical period between 1977 and 1985, Donaghy shows how domestic politics shaped dramatic foreign policy reversals by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. He explains why the Cold War intensified so quickly and how - contrary to all expectations - US-Soviet relations were repaired. Drawing on recently declassified archival material, The Second Cold War traces how each administration evolved in response to crises and events at home and abroad. This compelling and controversial account challenges the accepted notion of how the end of the Cold War began.

Richard Nixon

From a prize-winning biographer comes the defining portrait of a man who led America in a time of turmoil and left us a darker age. We live today, John A. Farrell shows, in a world Richard Nixon made.   At the end of WWII, navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returned from the Pacific and set his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. The story of that transformation is the stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial biography of the president who came to embody postwar American resentment and division.      Within four years of his first victory, Nixon was a U.S. senat∨ in six, the vice president of the United States of America. "Few came so far, so fast, and so alone," Farrell writes. Nixon's sins as a candidate were legion; and in one unlawful secret plot, as Farrell reveals here, Nixon acted to prolong the Vietnam War for his own political purposes. Finally elected president in 1969, Nixon packed his staff with bright young men who devised forward-thinking reforms addressing health care, welfare, civil rights, and protection of the environment. It was a fine legacy, but Nixon cared little for it. He aspired to make his mark on the world stage instead, and his 1972 opening to China was the first great crack in the Cold War.      Nixon had another legacy, too: an America divided and polarized. He was elected to end the war in Vietnam, but his bombing of Cambodia and Laos enraged the antiwar movement. It was Nixon who launched the McCarthy era, who played white against black with a "southern strategy," and spurred the Silent Majority to despise and distrust the country's elites. Ever insecure and increasingly paranoid, he persuaded Americans to gnaw, as he did, on grievances--and to look at one another as enemies. Finally, in August 1974, after two years of the mesmerizing intrigue and scandal of Watergate, Nixon became the only president to resign in disgrace.      Richard Nixon is a gripping and unsparing portrayal of our darkest president. Meticulously researched, brilliantly crafted, and offering fresh revelations, it will be hailed as a master work.