We Still Don't Know

Abstract

Limited access to Soviet and Chinese archives, a flood of documents from Eastern Europe, and the general willingness of former Soviet-bloc officials to talk about the past have stimulated an exciting rethinking and rewriting of postwar history. We Now Know exploits this archival research and the publications based on it to reassess some of the major controversies surrounding the first fifteen years of the Cold War in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. There is relatively little new here for scholars au courant with this literature, although they will find some of Gaddis's arguments of interest. The book is aimed at a more general audience for whom the presentation of new evidence in support of older, comfortable interpretations in precise but informal language is almost certain to appeal. In consecutive chapters, Gaddis takes up the division of Europe, the onset of the Cold War, its spread to Asia, the central role of Germany in the conflict, alliance politics, the role of nuclear weapons, and the Cuban missile crisis. He does not address subsequent events, but offers tentative conclusions about the Cold War as a whole, including its dénoument, and its lessons for historians.