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The struggle in projects, ideas and symbols between the strongest Communist Party in the West and an anti-Communist and pro-Western government coalition was the most peculiar founding element of the Italian democratic political system after the Second World War.
Until now, most historians have focused their attention on political parties as the only players in the competition for the making of political orientations and civic identities in Italian public opinion. Others have considered Italian political struggle in the 1940s and 1950s in terms of the polarisation between Communism and organised Catholicism, due to the undoubted importance of the Church in Italian culture and social relations.
This book enlarges the view, looking at new aspects and players of the anti-Communist ‘front’. It takes into account the role of cultural associations, newspapers and the popular press in the selection and diffusion of critical judgements and images of Communism, highlighting a dimension that explains the force of anti-Communist opinions in Italy after 1989 and the crisis of traditional parties. The author also places the case of Italian Cold War anti-Communism in an international context for the first time.
Chapter 24 Propaganda, Cold War and the Advent of the Television Age The ‘political re-education’ of Germany and her former wartime allies became but one element in the post-war struggle between east and west. Yet the notion that these hostile militaristic societies could be cleansed of their aggressive leanings did in a way reflect a new faith in the power of propaganda under another label. Denazification was propaganda to eradicate propaganda, an entire psychological programme to eliminate totalitarianism and militarism. One American propaganda film described
The New World Information Disorder 298 Chapter 26 Information-Age Conflict in the Post-Cold War Era The Gulf War was hailed as the ‘first information war’ partly because of the effective use of new technologies, especially satellites, computers and communications, in support of the war effort. The ability of the coalition to take successful ‘command and control’ of the battlefield, to achieve information and communications dominance while at the same time depriving the enemy of his eyes and ears, prompted claims that a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was
v 8 v Hiroshima/Nagasaki, civil rights and anti-war protest in Japan’s Cold War Ann Sherif Twenty years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the rest of the world had come to regard nuclear destruction as a function of the imagination, visually and rhetorically preparing for apocalypse, defining the looming threat as a permanent feature of modern life. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that global imagination co-existed uncomfortably with the living memories, the social challenges, and visible and hidden scars of the hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombings
v 12 v Images of nuclear war in US government films from the early Cold War Lars Nowak If one essential element of the Cold War was the terrifying imagination of a possible future war that would be fought with nuclear weapons, a particularly powerful means of articulating this emotionally charged fantasy was the medium of cinema, whose moving images and sounds are capable of lending preconceptions of the vividness of reality and thus evoking the spectator’s feelings in a very direct way. For this reason, a deeper look into cinematic representations of nuclear
This volume takes the metaphorical character of the Cold War seriously and charts how the bomb was used as a symbol for nuclear war at the very heart of this conflict. The contributions consider the historical relevance of the political, cultural and artistic ramifications of nuclear weapons as signifiers for a new type of conflict. Tis understanding of the metaphorical qualities of the Cold War is encapsulated in the notion of an imaginary war, or, more precisely, a war against the imagination. As an attack against the imagination, the nuclear threat forced politicians and ordinary people to accept the notion that preparations for nuclear annihilation would contribute towards peace, and that the existence of these weapons, and the anticipation of large-scale destruction that came with them, were an inescapable corollary of security, freedom and future prosperity on both sides of the Cold war divide.
This book recounts the history of the Fulbright Program in Australia, locating academic exchange in the context of US cultural diplomacy and revealing a complex relationship between governments, publicly funded research and the integrity of academic independence. The study is the first in-depth analysis of the Fulbright exchange program in a single country. Drawing on previously unexplored archives and a new oral history, the authors investigate the educational, political and diplomatic challenges experienced by Australian and American scholars who won awards and those who managed the complex bi-national program. The book begins with the scheme’s origins, moves through its Australian establishment during the early Cold War, Vietnam War dilemmas, civil rights and gender parity struggles and the impacts of mid-to-late twentieth century belt-tightening. How the program’s goal of ‘mutual understanding’ was understood and enacted across six decades lies at the heart of the book, which weaves institutional and individual experiences together with broader geopolitical issues. Bringing a complex and nuanced analysis to the Australia–US relationship, the authors offer fresh insights into the global influence of the Fulbright Program. It is a compelling account of academic exchange as cultural diplomacy. It offers a critical appraisal of Fulbright achievements and limitations in avoiding political influence, integrating gender and racial diversity, absorbing conflict and dissent, and responding to economic fluctuations and social change.
This is a comprehensive study of US policy towards China during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a critical phase of the Cold War immediately preceding the dramatic Sino-American rapprochement of the early 1970s. Based on a wide array of recently declassified government documents, it challenges the popular view that Johnson's approach to China was marked by stagnation and sterility, exploring the administration's relationship to both the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution. By documenting Johnson's contributions to the decision-making process, the book offers a new perspective on both his capacity as a foreign-policy leader and his role in the further development of the Cold War.
The Korean War in Britain explores the social and cultural impact of the Korean War (1950–53) on Britain. Coming just five years after the ravages of the Second World War, Korea was a deeply unsettling moment in post-war British history. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, Britons worried about a return to total war and the prospect of atomic warfare. As the war progressed, British people grew uneasy about the conduct of the war. From American ‘germ’ warfare allegations to anxiety over Communist use of ‘brainwashing’, the Korean War precipitated a series of short-lived panics in 1950s Britain. But by the time of its uneasy ceasefire in 1953, the war was becoming increasingly forgotten, with more attention paid to England’s cricket victory at the Ashes than to returning troops. Using Mass Observation surveys, letters, diaries and a wide range of under-explored contemporary material, this book charts the war’s changing position in British popular imagination, from initial anxiety in the summer of 1950 through to growing apathy by the end of the war and into the late-twentieth century. Built around three central concepts – citizenship, selfhood and forgetting – The Korean War in Britain connects a critical moment in Cold War history to post-war Britain, calling for a more integrated approach to Britain’s Cold War past. It explores the war a variety of viewpoints – conscript, POW, protestor and veteran – to offer the first social history of this ‘forgotten war’. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Britain’s post-1945 history.
Architectures of survival investigates the relationship between air war and urbanism in modern Britain and asks how the development of airpower and the targeting of cities influenced perceptions of urban spaces and visions of urban futures. The book brings together a diverse range of source materials to highlight the connections between practices of warfare and urbanism in the twentieth century. It covers the interwar period, the Second World War and the early Cold War to demonstrate how airpower created a permanent threat to cities. It considers how architects, town planners and government officials reframed bombing as an ongoing urban problem, rather than one contingent to a particular conflict, and details how the constant threat of air raids prompted planning for defence and planning for development to become increasingly entangled. The book highlights the relevance of war and the anticipation of war in modern urban history and argues that the designation of cities as targets has had long-lasting consequences. It addresses militarisation in modern Britain by investigating how air war became incorporated into civilian debates about the future of cities and infrastructure, and vulnerability to air raids was projected onto the mundane material culture of everyday urban life.