E. L. Doctorow's novel The Book of Daniel (1971) is set in 1967 and 1968 but provides frequent flashbacks to the 1940s and 1950s and to Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (the Rosenbergs), the subject of an episodic narration by their son Daniel. A powerful novel, its dreamlike effects and erosion of time require the reader's close attention. Richard Condon's 1960 novel The Manchurian Candidate deals with a brainwashed Korean War veteran who is programmed to kill. Exciting if improbable reading, it retained the same qualities in a 1962 film version directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Laurence Harvey.

There are a number of other feature films that deal interestingly with American life in the late 1940s. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) has already been mentioned. Its dramatic account of the return of three veterans won many awards at a time when the reintegration of demobilized troops was a national concern. Other social-problem films made during these years include Crossfire (1947), starring Robert Ryan as a sadistic bully and anti-Semite, and Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), directed by Elia Kazan and starring Gregory Peck. In Gentlemen's Agreement a magazine writer poses as a Jew in order to gather material for a series of articles on anti-Semitism. The results, while low-key, are shocking. In Home of the Brave (1949), Stanley Kramer and Mark Robson tell the story of the sufferings of an African-American soldier and take American race relations one step further.

Another genre of feature films exploited the Cold War mentality. In The Red Menace (1949), anticommunist propaganda was served up in documentary style. The communists take advantage of innocent Americans by using sex and money to gain control of them. In The Iron Curtain (1948), a Russian code clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa defects, despite attempts by the Soviets upon his life, so that his child can grow up in the free Canadian air. I Married a Communist (1950) is an action melodrama that demonstrates that commies are dangerous. One of the most striking movies of this genre is My Son, John (1952), directed by Leo McCarey and starring Robert Walker. Walker is American-born, a strutting intellectual, and a spy. He works for the government but is under FBI surveillance. Ultimately he rejects his misguided philosophy but is shot by Red agents and dies on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The best of the Korean War films is probably The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), directed by Mark Robson and starring William Holden. The Holden character served in World War II but has been called back to active duty in Korea. The film stirs anger at the need to resist the invaders, celebrates the bravery of those who fought, creates empathy for those whose lives were disrupted by a second tour of duty in Korea, and underlines the tragedy of war as the Holden character dies.

There is also a variety of video materials available for classroom use. The PBS series A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Moyers offers Postwar Hopes, Cold War Fears (sixty minutes), dealing with prosperity, conformity, and the Cold War. The G.I. Bill: The Law That Changed America (sixty minutes) is also available from PBS, as is The Marshall Plan: Against the Odds (sixty minutes). Marshall is the subject of a video available from Zenger Media, P.O. Box 802, Culver City, Calif. 90232. General George C. Marshall--Soldier and Statesman runs for forty-four minutes. The same source also offers Korea: The Forgotten War (forty-six minutes). The Cold War is treated in Red Nightmare (twenty-five minutes), in which an American citizen find himself in a communist village. In this propaganda film, he is shocked awake to his civic responsibilities. To find a copy, consult the Educational Film & Video Locator.

A fine full-scale study of Truman, part of the excellent American Experience series, is available from PBS Video. It is organized in two segments, the first two and one-half hours long, the second two hours. A&E Biography, 235 E. 45th Street, New York, N.Y. 10017, has a fifty-minute biography of the president as well. A documentary account, The Cold War (fifty-one minutes), with excerpts of the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate, the exchange between Joseph Welch and Senator McCarthy, and other major events, is available from Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Coronet/MTI Films has a number of selections, including Truman: Years of Decision (twenty-four minutes), which carries the story from the A-bomb through Korea. Coronet also offers three short videos on Truman's presidency. Truman and the Cold War (sixteen minutes) emphasizes the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Truman and the Korean War is also sixteen minutes. Truman and the Uses of Power (eighteen minutes) focuses on domestic issues. Coronet also offers a Korean War series. There are three 15-minute videos: Aggression, Escalation, and Negotiation. From Fusion Video one may obtain Korea: MacArthur's War (sixty minutes).

Footage of Joseph McCarthy is available. See especially Point of Order (ninety-seven minutes), a sixteen-millimeter film dealing with the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. It is listed in the Film and Video Locator (1987) of the National Information Center for Educational Media. From International Historic Films, one may obtain McCarthy: Death of a Witch Hunter (1971; forty-five minutes). A thirty-minute video, Unknown Secrets: Art and the Rosenberg Era, is available from Green Mountain Post Films of Turners Falls, Massachusetts. It uses art to examine the U.S. response to the McCarthy era generally and to the Rosenbergs in particular.
Document Set 268-1

The Greek Crisis and The Truman Doctrine: Origins of Containment

1. Dean Acheson Explains the Truman Doctrine, 1947
2. Harry S Truman Outlines a Program for Greece and Turkey, 1947
3. The Soviet Reaction to the Truman Doctrine, 1947
4. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr. Justifies a Bipartisan Foreign Policy, 1947
5. Mr. "X" on the Sources of Soviet Conduct, 1947
6. George F. Kennan Recalls an Early Response to the Truman Doctrine, 1947
7. Joseph Stalin Eats Greek Crow, 1947The text devotes extensive attention to the origins of the Cold War and the development of the containment policy. This chapter is intended to focus student attention on a pivotal problem in the postwar clash, the Greek crisis of 1946-1947, and the response of the Truman administration. The documents underscore the text's emphasis on the Greek problem as the occasion for a declaration of containment. Analysis of the evidence will also enable students and instructors to probe the causes of the Cold War and to link postwar foreign policy to more recent foreign-policy challenges faced by the United States, such as the war in Vietnam.Instructors might introduce the topic with a lecture on early Cold War developments, including a general outline of the historiographic debate over Soviet and American responsibility for the breakdown of relations. Students might be asked to compile lists of Soviet and American positions on critical issues debated between 1945 and 1947; these charts could, in turn, supply evidence for classroom discussion of the Cold War's origins.Similarly, the documents provide ample evidence of disagreement over the Greek revolution, which might be examined for an explanation of the Truman policy. Using the text background and evidence found in the documents, students could be asked to support or refute the administration's policy. The Greek crisis also illustrates the American response to nationalism and revolution, which may be linked with the future direction of American policies in the underdeveloped world.Directly related to the crisis of 1947 was the administration's effort to develop a sophisticated intellectual rationale for a policy of containment. These documents contain a critical assessment of the Truman Doctrine. Comparison of the 1947 essay by Mr. "X" and George Kennan's memoirs might serve as the basis for a critical exercise in the use of evidence. Students should be alerted to the interpretive confusion surrounding the 1947 pronouncement, as revealed in its author's later attempt to qualify and reappraise his original policy statement. This topic offers an excellent opportunity to discuss the pitfalls and possibilities encountered when working with retrospective accounts. It also opens the door to discussion of Kennan as a mature scholar and his place in the policy debates of the 1960s. It could easily become the basis for consideration of the realist/revisionist/postrevisionist debate among historians and policy analysts over the Cold War policies followed by the United States since World War II.These documents provide an important case study in postwar diplomatic history. Close analysis may clarify the roots and meaning of the Cold War for students only dimly aware of its origins. More significantly, it will enable students to link the problems of postwar adjustment to the critical foreign-policy challenges of their grandparents' generation.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 268-1


Terry H. Anderson. The United States, Great Britain and the Cold War, 1944-1947 (1981).

Lynn Ethridge Davis. The Cold War Begins: Soviet-American Conflict over Eastern Europe (1974).

Robert Frazier. Anglo-American Relations with Greece: The Coming of the Cold War, 1942-1947 (1991).

Richard M. Freeland. The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (1972).

John L. Gaddis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972).

Lloyd Gardner. Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949 (1970).

Walter LaFeber. America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1980 (7th ed., 1993).

Melvyn Leffler. A Preponderance of Power (1992).

Wilson D. Miscamble. George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950 (1992).

Lawrence Wittner. American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949 (1982).

Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (1996).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 268-1


Aftermath of World War II: Prologue to the Cold War (film--25 min.). McGraw-Hill Textfilms, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020.

Harry S Truman--Suddenly, Mr. President (film, videotape--20 min.). Aims Media, Inc., 626 Justin Avenue, Glendale, Calif. 91201.

Truman (videotape--4.5 hrs.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.
Document Set 268-2

The Great Fear Unleashed: The Cold War Comes Home

1. President Truman's Loyalty Order, 1947
2. J. Edgar Hoover Notes the Communist Interest in Hollywood, 1947
3. Edward Dmytryk Recalls the Hollywood Ten in Washington, 1947
4. Lillian Hellman Defies HUAC, 1952
5. Joseph R. McCarthy's Wheeling Speech, 1950
6. McCarthy Attacks George C. Marshall, 1951This chapter enables instructors to acquaint students with the linkage between domestic politics and foreign policy through analysis of the Cold War as a stimulus to anticommunist hysteria at home. The text provides extensive background for exploration of several issues raised by the documents selected. Examined together with Document Set 268-1, these materials offer an excellent opportunity to test revisionist scholarship on the Truman administration's central role in creating the climate of fear that prevailed in the immediate postwar years.With this goal in mind, instructors might begin with discussion of the origins of postwar anticommunism. Since most students will have some familiarity with McCarthyism, instructors may wish to trace the roots of the intolerance that pervaded the political atmosphere by the 1950s. The FBI, HUAC, and Truman documents contain evidence that should encourage debate over not only the origins of anticommunism but its deeper sources of support.These documents can stimulate discussion of the political and social atmosphere of the postwar era. Focusing on the definition of liberalism in the Cold War period, this analysis could explore the illiberal side of Truman era liberalism. Given modern controversy over the meaning of liberalism, this exercise also provides a good opportunity to establish past-present linkage through examination of liberal values as they evolved in the politically charged Cold War environment.The HUAC materials are included to encourage discussion of the depth to which the fear of communism penetrated popular thought as the Cold War escalated. Instructors might assign students to research the public reaction to HUAC's activities, including the plight of the Hollywood Ten, as it surfaced in popular magazines and the press. Such an investigation could enrich student understanding of the national mood as the events of the late 1940s unfolded. Moreover, examination of both the Dmytryk account and Lillian Hellman's defiant memoir should stimulate discussion of McCarthyism's impact on human lives and careers, not to mention social consciousness in the media. Both provide an opening for consideration of the Cold War's influence on constitutional rights and civil liberties, which students may need to discuss in connection with the blacklist.Fortunately these issues and events are easily accessible on film. No lecture can capture Joseph R. McCarthy or HUAC as well as the Edward R. Murrow See It Now attack or the excellent documentary Hollywood on Trial. Equally instructive would be a screening of one or more Cold War feature films. While these motion pictures are artistically flawed, they illustrate the smothering impact of anticommunist pressures on Hollywood. These films should produce active discussion of the government, the media, limits on free expression, all of which reflected the temper of a troubled time.This chapter can contribute to students' appreciation of anticommunism and its social impact. Moreover, the tie between domestic and foreign policies should be evident as students try to account for the great fear during the postwar era.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 268-2


David Caute. The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (1978).

Larry Ceplair and Stephen Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 (1980).

Richard M. Fried. Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (1990).

Daniel J. Leab. "Hollywood and the Cold War," in Robert Brent Toplin, Jr., ed., Hollywood as Mirror: Changing Views of "Outsiders" and "Enemies" in American Movies (1993).

------. "How Red Was My Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War Film, and I Married a Communist," Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984): 59-88.

Victor S. Navasky. Naming Names (1980).

Thomas C. Reeves. The Life and Times of Joseph R. McCarthy (1982).

Ellen Schrecker. Many Are the Crimes (1998).

Athan Theoharis. Seeds of Repression: Harry S Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (1971).

------ and John Stuart Cox. The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (1988).

Stephen Whitfield. The Culture of the Cold War (1991).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 268-2


An American Ism: Joe McCarthy (videotape--90 min.). Reference and Loan Library, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 125 South Webster Street, Madison, Wis. 53702.

Hollywood on Trial (film--100 min.). Corinth Films, 410 E. 62nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10021.

Love in the Cold War from The American Experience Series (videotape--60 min.). PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, Va. 22314-1698.

Point of Order (videotape--107 min.). Zenger Media, 10200 Jefferson Boulevard, P.O. Box 802, Culver City, Calif. 90232-0802.

Postwar Hopes, Cold War Fears from A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Moyers Series (videotape--55 min.). Public Broadcasting System, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, D.C. 20024.

Seeing Red (videotape--100 min.). New Day Films, 22D Hollywood Avenue, Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J. 07423.
Document Set 268-3

Korea: The Forgotten War

1. President Harry S Truman Recalls the Origins of the Korean Conflict, 1950
2. General Douglas MacArthur Outlines His Objectives in Korea, 1951
3. Truman Relieves MacArthur, 1951
4. General Omar N. Bradley Warns Against Global War, 1951
5. A Grieving Parent Charges the Administration with Appeasement, 1951
6. Dean Acheson Justifies Personal Sacrifice in Limited Warfare, 1951
7. Differing Views of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1951For instructors wishing to emphasize forward and backward linkage, these documents provide unlimited possibilities. By examining the origins of the Korean conflict, students can examine the ways in which President Truman's reading of history played a role in his decision to intervene in Korea. Instructors might ask students to compile lists of similarities and differences between the world situation at the time of Munich in 1938 and Korea in 1950. By comparing the prewar crisis and the Cold War environment, students will come to understand the ways in which postwar leaders viewed international politics through the prism of World War II.It is also possible to generate substantial discussion of the distinctions between limited war and total war. Begin by exploring student awareness of the Korean conflict, an exercise likely to reveal limited understanding of the causes and consequences of that war. Using the idea of Korea as the "forgotten war," instructors might then ask students why less attention has been devoted to this conflict than to either World War II or Vietnam. The unpopularity of Truman and the Korean War itself will soon surface as an issue. This discussion may easily be channeled into a deeper examination of the frustrations attendant on fighting a limited war. Beyond this lies a good opportunity to launch a comparative analysis of the Vietnam War and the Korean precedent. Students may be challenged to account for the relative unpopularity of these two major military actions.Equally provocative will be the topic of civil-military relationships within the American constitutional framework. Instructors might ask students to account for Truman's decision regarding MacArthur by evaluating the advice received by the president, as well as his analysis of the tradition of civilian control of policy making and command. This subject offers an excellent opportunity to employ role-playing or classroom debate to encourage full exploration of the conflicting positions. Student teams could develop legal briefs supporting the president's and MacArthur's positions. The sharpness of the original controversy will lend itself to a lively classroom debate and to a useful evaluation of the issues at stake.As students evaluate the arguments of the protagonists, they should also probe the documents for evidence of the social and political forces that underlay the public discourse in 1951. They should be asked to interrogate the "witnesses" and search for the motives behind the stances they took. In short, these documents can encourage students to engage in the detective work that is the historian's stock in trade.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 268-3


Clay Blair. The Forgotten War (1988).

Russell D. Buhite. Soviet-American Relations in Asia, 1945-1954 (1982).

Ronald J. Caridi. The Korean War and American Politics (1969).

Bruce Cumings. The Origins of the Korean War (1981).

John Holliday and Bruce Cumings. Korea: The Unknown War (1980).

D. Clayton James. Refighting the Last War: Command and Crisis in Korea, 1950-1953 (1992).

Burton I. Kaufman. The Korean War (1986).

James I. Matray. The Reluctant Crusade (1985).

Michael Schaller. Douglas MacArthur (1989).

William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (1995).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 268-3


The Korean War: The Untold Story (videotape--34 min.). Pyramid Films, P.O. Box 1048, Santa Monica, Calif. 90406.

Korea: The Forgotten War (videotape--92 min.). University of Illinois Film Center, 1325 Oak Street, Champaign, Ill. 61820.

Men in Crisis: MacArthur vs. Truman (film--27 min.). University of Illinois Film Center, 1325 S. Oak Street, Champaign, Ill. 61820.

Korean War, Video Series, Episode 1, 2 (videotapes--15 min. each). Reference and Loan Library, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 125 South Webster Street, Madison, Wis. 53702.

The Korean War Series (five videotapes--120 min. each). Viewfinders, Inc., P.O. Box 1665, Evanston, Ill. 60204-1665.