American History Proseminar: The Cold War Era (Fall 2009)

Fall 2009 Dr. Gűnter Bischof
HIST 6501-602
Th 6-8:45 pm

Office Hours: Th 5 – 6 pm (or by appointment)
Tel: 280-3223 (CenterAustria)
e-mail: gjbhi@mobiletel.com or gjbischo@uno.edu

>> Download this syllabus as .pdf

This graduate proseminar offers an in-depth introduction to some of the debates that have defined Cold War scholarship, particularly in the past decade. Historical discourse constantly re-invents itself. In few fields has this been so self-evident as in Cold War scholarship after the end of the East-West conflict in 1989. New sources from formerly Communist controlled archives have forced us to rethink many of our assumptions about the Cold War, even if overall conclusions have not entirely changed.

Cold War scholarship has become more sophisticated and complex. On the one hand new methodological approaches have redefined the entire field of diplomatic history (culture and gender); on the other hand, the Cold War is no longer seen as a simple U.S. vs. Soviet Union affair – the weak also had leverage in the Cold War. We need to understand the imperial structures of both superpowers in the Cold War and how allies and “satellites” constantly challenged the imperial centers of power. This proseminar aims at confronting students with these debates, but also to make them place the Cold War era into the larger context of twentieth century (“the American Century”) history. In order to control he huge amount of scholarship available and make for a coherent discussion, the foci will be on the Cold War in Europe and the Third World and on American domestic politics.

Students are asked to come to class well prepared and able to contribute to class discussions on the weekly readings.

Every student has to chair one class session and co-direct the discussion that week with the instructor. The weekly chair is asked to prepare a one-page summary of his questions, submit it to the class instructor first, and then distribute it on the day prior to the class


Required Class readings:

Michael J. Hogan/Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004 Pb

Vladislav Zubok. Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2007 Pb

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press 2005 Pb

Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963. Princeton 1999 Pb

Victoria De Grazia. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through the 20th-Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2006 Pb

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007 Pb

Alexander Stephan, ed. The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945. New York: Berhahn Books 2005 Pb

Elaine Tyler May. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New and rev. edition New York: Basic Books 2008 Pb

Jeremy Suri. Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2009 Pb

Charles S. Maier. Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Pb 2007 Pb


Grading System:

3 Papers: 2 document memos 10 %
2 book reviews, 1 chapter & 1 exhibit review 20 %
Final paper 30 %

Chair: 10 %

Class participation 30 %


Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is fundamental to the process of learning and evaluating academic performance. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, the following: cheating, plagiarism, tampering with academic records and examinations, falsifying identity, and being accessory to acts of academic dishonesty. Refer to the UNO Judicial Code for further information. The Code is available online at http://www.uno.edu/~stlf/policy%20Manual/judicial_code_pt2.htm.

Students with Disabilities

Students who qualify for services will receive the academic modifications for which they are legally entitled. It is the responsibility of the student to register with the Office of Disability Services (UC 260) each semester and follow their procedures for obtaining assistance.


Student Learning Objectives

After successfully completing this course, students should be able to:

• Have a basic understanding of the Cold War in the framework in the 20th century global history
• Be familiar with the major historical approaches in the field of Cold War studies
• Be intoned with the basic historiographical debates in Cold War scholarship
• nderstand and be able analyze the major themes and turning points in Cold War history
• Comprehend basic decision-making processes in American and Soviet foreign policy
• Develop a grounding in the debates on the “rise and fall of Cold War empires” in the framework of 20th century imperial discourses?

Important Cold War Links:

The National Security Archives: The George Washington University
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

The Cold War International History Project: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
http://cwihp.si.edu/

The Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/

Journal of Cold War Studies
http://fas.harvard/edu/~hpcws/journal.htm

H-Diplo & H-Diplo Reviews/Roundtable
http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/ http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/

State Department’s office of the Historian
www.history.state.gov

State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series of documentary volumes
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/



Weekly Readings and Assignments Schedule

Aug 27 Introduction: Themes, Chronology, Historiographical Schools


Sept 3 ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR

Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, pp. 1-51
Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 3-91

2-page memo due: Compare the Kennan and Novikov documents and their respective views on who is responsible for the deteriorating U.S. – Soviet relationship. Who is more persuasive?

Sept 10 ORIGINS: CHANING PERSPECTIVES OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

Hunt, McCormick, and Hogan essays in Explaining, pp. 137-61, 221-40
Zubok, Failed Empire, pp. 1-93
John Lewis Gaddis, “The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War,” and responses by L.C. Gardner, L.S. Kaplan, W.F. Kimball, B.R. Kuniholm, in: Diplomatic History, vol. 7, no 3 (Summer 1983): 171-204

Class Presentation of Book Reviews

Books for Review:

Choose one of these books and write a 2-3-page book review (questions to be addressed: what is this author’s overall thesis? Who is to blame for the outbreak of the Cold War? Does the author deal more with personalities involved in the growing East-West confrontation or structural factors?)

George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950. New York 1967

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York 1959 rev.ed. 1972

Lloyd C. Garrdner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy 1941-1949.
Chicago 1970

John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941-1947. New York 1972

Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and National Security State. Boston 1977

Hugh DeSantis, The Diplomacy of Silence: The American Foreign Service, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947. Chicago 1979

Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War. New York 2006.

Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950. New York 1985

Deborah Welch Larsen, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation. Princeton 1985

Fraser J. Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War. New York 1986

Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy, Cambridge, MA 1989

Harold B. Schonberger, Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945-1952, Kent, OH 1989

Randall B. Woods/Howard Jones, Dawning of the Cold War: The United States’ Quest for Order. Athens, GA 1991

Melyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford 1992

Odd Arne Westad, Cold War & Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War. New York 1993

David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb. New Haven, CT 1994

Vladislav Zubok/Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambrdige, MA 1996

Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years. New York 1996

Wilson D. Micamble, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War. Cambridge 2007

Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the “Finish Solution.” 1945-1956, Kent, OH 1997

Gűnter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945-55: The Leverage of the Weak. Basingstoke 1999


Sept 17 NUCLEAR ARMS RACE

Leffler in Explaining, pp. 123-36
Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 95-247
Full text of NSC-68 in Ernest R. May, ed., American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC-68 (Boston 1993)

2-page memo due: How do the authors of NSC-68 see the nature of the Soviet threat?


ORIGINS: THE DROPPING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Sept 24 Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy (entire)

Write book review of Hasegawa (3 pp)
Due: Oct 1


Oct 1 GENDER: A New Perspective

Costigliola and Hoganson essays in Explaining, pp. 279-322
Petra Goedde, “From Villains to Victims: Fraternization and the Feminization of Germany, 1945-1947,” Diplomatic History, 23 (Winter 1999): 1-20
May, Homeward Bound (entire)


Oct 8  N O C L A S S!

Oct 15 DISCOURSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

Guest Speaker: Dr. Ira Chernus

Ira Chernus, Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Security. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008) (entire)
Immerman and Costigliola in Explaining, pp. 103-22, 279-303


Oct 22 CRISES IN THE THIRD WORLD

Horne essay in Explaining, pp. 323-335
Perez and Cullather in Explaining, pp. 162-75, 212-40
Westad, The Global Cold War (entire)


Oct 29 THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE

Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, pp. 251-402
Zubok, Failed Empire, pp. 94-153
De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, pp. 1-225
Peter Ruggenthaler: “Stalin’s Big Bluff: The Story of the Stalin Note of 10 March 1952 as Reflected in the Documents of the Soviet Leadership,” Cold War Internationl History Project Working Paper.

Exhibit assignment (3 pp): Visit the exhibit “1989 – Year of Miracles: Austria and the End of the Cold War” (curator: Günter Bischof) at the National World War II Museum and write an exhibit review: what do you learn from this exhibit? what is its visual impact? is it balanced? do such exhibits by nature “dum down” and “popularize” the complexity of history?


Nov 12 CULTURE AND SOFT POWER

Iriye and Gienow-Hecht essays in Explaining, pp. 241-78
De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, pp. 226-480
Berghahn, ed., Americanization of Europe (entire)


Nov 19 DÉTENTE

In-class viewing of Stanley Kubrik’s film Dr. Strangelove

Holsti and Clifford essays in Explaining, pp. 51-102
Suri, Kissinger (entire)
Günter Bischof, “No Action”: The Johnson Administration’s Response to the Czech Crisis of 1968,” in Günter Bischof , Stefan Karner, Peter Ruggenthaler, eds.,
The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 [Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009 forthcoming]


Nov 26 N O C L A S S (Thanksgiving Holiday)


Dec 3 THE END OF THE COLD WAR

Rosenberg, Citino and Schulzinger in Explaining, pp. 176-211. 336-52
Zubok, Failed Empire, pp. 227-344
Maier, Among Empires (entire)


Final Paper Due (10-12 pages): Write an analytical essay on the
question “were the United States and the Soviet Union empires”? What
kind of empires were they?