The Origins of the Cold War in United States History Textbooks

Abstract

impact of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union on American politics and society during the post-World War II era can hardly be overstated. As Gary B. Nash and his coauthors point out in their textbook, American People, The Cold War was the greatest single force affecting American society during the decade and a half after World War II.' Scholars must therefore use the Cold War as the starting point for explanations of American diplomatic, political, social, economic, and cultural history in the post-1945 era. importance of the Cold War in shaping American politics and society is perhaps obvious to those who lived through it. For the baby boom generation, the dramas that the Cold War produced around the globe, from Greece to Berlin to Korea to Cuba to Vietnam, were vivid events that made a lasting impact, at least on members' impressions of, or attitudes toward, world and national affairs. How and why the Cold War began was an issue of immediate political relevance as well as a question for historical analysis. But for students who are just coming of age, it will become increasingly difficult to understand the sources of all the excitement, fear, and tension. end of the Cold War is likely to obscure the roots of the passions it aroused. As the Cold War fades into distant collective memory, the reasons why Americans attached life-and-death significance to the struggle with the Soviet Union will become less apparent. trend is under way; John Lewis Gaddis has recently observed that our students are already beginning to raise [the question of] what the Cold War was all about in the first place.2 Those students, even more than their predecessors, will need to be educated about the Cold War and its implications for the development of modern American society.