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“Harry, We Hardly Know You”: Revisionism, Politics and Diplomacy, 1945–1954: A Review Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Geoffrey S. Smith
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

Abstract

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Type
Book Reviews and Essays
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1976

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References

1 With apologies, of course, to O'Donnell, Kenneth P. and Powers, David F. with McCarthy, Joe. “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1972)Google Scholar.

2 Schlesinger, Arthur M., “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians,” New York Times Magazine, July 29, 1962, pp. 1014Google Scholar; Kirkendall, Richard S., “Harry Truman,” in America's Eleven Greatest Presidents, ed. Borden, Morton (Chicago: Rand NcNally, 1971), pp. 255–88Google Scholar. The “rating game” is challenged in Bailey, Thomas A., Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man from George Washington to the Present (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 166)Google Scholar.

3 Phillips, Cabell, The Truman Presidency: The History of a Triumphant Succession (New York: Macmillan, 1966)Google Scholar; Goldman, Eric F., The Crucial Decade and After: America, 1945–1960 (New York: Knopf, 1960)Google Scholar; Miller, Merle, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973)Google Scholar; White, William S., The Responsibles (New York: Harper and Row, 1972)Google Scholar; Hamby, Alonzo L., Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. See also Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: John Wiley, 1960), pp. 171–78Google Scholar; Ross, Irwin, The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 (New York: New American Library, 1968)Google Scholar; and Truman, Margaret, Harry S. Truman (New York: Morrow, 1973)Google Scholar.

4 On earlier revisionism, see Cohen, Warren I., The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Osgood, Robert E., Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 309–32Google Scholar; and Doenecke, Justus D., The Literature of Isolationism: A Guide to Non-Interventionist Scholarship, 1930–1972 (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1972)Google Scholar.

5 Gardner, Lloyd C., Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941–1949 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), pp. 5583Google Scholar; Bernstein, Barton J., ed., Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970)Google Scholar; Paterson, Thomas G., ed., Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971)Google Scholar; Cochran, Bert, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1973)Google Scholar; Zinn, Howard, Postwar America, 1945–1971 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973)Google Scholar; Milieur, Jerome M., ed., The Liberal Tradition in Crisis: American Politics in the Sixties (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1974)Google Scholar.

6 Bernstein, Barton J., “America in War and Peace: The Test of Liberalism,” in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, ed. Bernstein, B. J. (New York: Pantheon, 1968), pp. 289321Google Scholar. See also Bernstein, , “The Presidency Under Truman,” Yale Political Review, 4 (Fall, 1964), 8fGoogle Scholar.

7 Theoharis, Athan, “The Truman Presidency: Trial and Error,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 55 (Autumn, 1971), 4958 at p. 58Google Scholar.

8 “Orthodox” accounts include Perkins, Dexter, The American Approach to Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (New York: Atheneum, 1972)Google Scholar; Spanier, John W., American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1971)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., “The Russian Revolution—Fifty Years After: Origins of the Cold War,” Foreign Affairs, 46 (October, 1967), 2552CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Lippmann, Walter, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1947)Google Scholar; Morgenthau, Hans J., In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York: Knopf, 1952)Google Scholar.

10 For overviews, see Bryson, Thomas A., “The Concept of Empire in American Diplomatic History,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter, 4 (December, 1973), 719Google Scholar; and Noer, Thomas J., “The Changing Concept of Containment,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter, 5 (September, 1974), 414Google Scholar. Representative titles include Horowitz, David, The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War (New York: Hill & Wang, 1965)Google Scholar; Alperovitz, Gar, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965)Google Scholar; Kolko, Gabriel, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945 (New York: Random House, 1968)Google Scholar; Kolko, Gabriel, The Roots of American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose (Boston: Beacon, 1969)Google Scholar.

11 See Tugwell, Rexford G., Off Course: From Truman to Nixon (New York: Praeger, 1971)Google Scholar; Wallace, Henry A., Towards World Peace (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1948)Google Scholar.

12 Joyce, and Kolko, Gabriel, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1954 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 2Google Scholar.

13 See, for example, Smith's, Gaddis review of The Limits of Power in The New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1972, p. 31Google Scholar, and Kimball's, Warren F. insightful review essay, “The Cold War Warmed Over,” American Historical Review, 79 (October, 1974), 1119–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The review literature is voluminous and often testy. The most helpful analyses include Holsti, Ole R., “The Study of International Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows: Theories of the Radical Right and the Radical Left,” American Political Science Review, 68 (March, 1974), 217–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maier, Charles S., “Revisionism and the Interpretation of Cold War Origins,” Perspectives in American History, 4 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 313–47Google Scholar; Pachter, Henry, “Revisionist Historians and the Cold War,” Dissent, 15 (November–December, 1968), 505–18Google Scholar; Lacquer, Walter, “Rewriting History,” Commentary, 55 (March, 1973), 5369Google Scholar; Richardson, J. L., “Cold-War Revisionism: A Critique,” World Politics, 24 (July, 1972), 579612CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Daniel M.. “The New Left and the Cold War,” Denver Quarterly, 4 (Winter, 1970), 7788Google Scholar; MacDonald, William W., “The Revisionist Cold War Historians,” Midwest Quarterly, 11 (1969), 3749Google Scholar; Graebner, Norman A., “Cold War Origins and the Continuing Debate,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 13 (March, 1969), 123–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Unger, Irwin, “The ‘New Left’ and American History: Some Recent Trends in United States Historiography,” American Historical Review, 77 (July, 1967), 1237–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, J. A., “William Appleman Williams and the ‘American Empire’,” Journal of American Studies, 7 (1973), 91104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tucker, Robert W., The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Schulzinger, Robert D., “Moderation in Pursuit of Truth is No Virtue; Extremism in Defense of Moderation is a Vice,” American Quarterly, 27 (May, 1975), 222–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also comments by Ferrell, Robert, Leopold, Richard W., and Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., in Interpreting American History: Conversations with Historians, ed. Garraty, John A., 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1970), II, 220–21, 244–45, 268–69, 276–77Google Scholar. For some effects of the debate upon the historical profession, see Cook, B. W., Harris, A. K., and Radosh, R. (eds.), Past Imperfect: Alternative Essasys in American History, 2 vols. (New York: 1973), II, 320–52Google Scholar.

15 Maddox, Robert James, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973)Google Scholar, dust-jacket blurb.

16 Brown, Robert E., Charles Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Analysis of “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Volumes under review include Williams, William Appleman, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, rev. ed. (New York: Dell, 1962)Google Scholar; Fleming, D. F., The Cold War and its Origins, 1917–1960, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1961)Google Scholar; Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy; Horowitz, Free World Colossus; Kolko, Politics of War; Clemens, Diane Shaver, Yalta (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and Gardner, Architects.

18 See, for example, William Appleman Williams's criticism of Lloyd Gardner's emphasis upon external developments in shaping postwar American foreign policy in From Colony to Empire: Essays in the History of American Foreign Relations, ed. Williams, W. A. (New York: John Wiley, 1972), p. 6Google Scholar. See also Gardner, Lloyd C., “Truman Era Foreign Policy: Recent Historical Trends,” in The Truman Period as a Research Field: A Reappraisal, 1972, ed. Kirkendall, Richard S. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974), pp. 6869Google Scholar.

19 Examples of eclectic scholarship include Campbell, Thomas M., Masquerade Peace: America's UN Policy, 1944–1945 (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Feis, Herbert, From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Norton, 1970)Google Scholar; and the books under review by Gaddis and Herring.

20 Maddox, pp. 10, 159–61; Kimball, , “Cold War Warmed Over,” 1126Google Scholar. See the stridently favorable review by Lowenheim, Francis, together with rejoinders by revisionist authors, in The New York Times Book Review, June 17, 1973, pp. 6fGoogle Scholar. Also see Maddox, , “Atomic Diplomacy: A Study in Creative Writing,” Journal of American History, 59 (March, 1973), 925–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Alperovitz's reply, 1062–67.

21 DeConde, Alexander, “What's Wrong with American Diplomatic History,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter, 1 (May, 1970), 116 at p. 4Google Scholar.

22 The quote is Harvard Sitkoff's, after Thomas Corcoran.

23 Spanier, John W., review of Gaddis, in Journal of American History, 59 (December, 1972), 768CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Gaddis, , The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 360Google Scholar.

25 Indeed, in a statement that would have labeled him a radical a decade ago, Gaddis contends that “Washington chose to withold the one instrument which might have influenced Soviet economic behavior—a postwar reconstruction loan—in hopes of extracting political concessions.” But Gaddis emphasizes that such a loan would not have been an end in itself, only a means to an end: “Establishing a new world economic order without first resolving the deep political differences which divided the United States and the Soviet Union was naive in the extreme, for, in the long run, politics turned out to be more important than economics for the leaders of both nations.” Gaddis, p. 23.

26 Ibid., p. 358.

27 Gaddis contends that even had American policy makers possessed the freedom to seek accommodation with Moscow, they would have been unsuccessful. Soviet xenophobia, security fears, bureaucratic suspicion, and Stalin's paranoia all contributed to the absence of a conciliatory attitude within the Kremlin. Stalin, furthermore, must assume greater responsibility for the Cold War than either FDR or Truman. This conclusion rests on the premise that Stalin possessed “more chances to surmount the internal restraints on his policy than were available to his democratic counterparts in the West.” Ibid., p. 361. An important essay that stresses the need to avoid moral judgments in analyzing Soviet-American friction is May, Ernest R., “The Cold War,” in The Comparative Approach to American History, ed. Woodward, C. Vann (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 328–45Google Scholar.

28 Gaddis, pp. 354–55. See also Gaddis, John Lewis, “Harry S. Truman and the Origins of Containment,” in Makers of American Diplomacy: From Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger, ed. Merli, Frank J. and Wilson, Theodore A. (New York: Scribner's, 1974), pp. 493522Google Scholar. On Truman's reading of history, an important study is May, Ernest R., “Lessons of the Past”; The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. Also see Mowry, George E., “The Uses of History by Recent Presidents,” Journal of American History, 53 (June, 1966), 518CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Quoted in Gaddis, , Origins of Cold War,, p. 205Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 224, 341–42.

31 Ibid., pp. 246, 254, 261–63.

32 Ibid., p. 357.

33 Rose, Lisle A., After Yalta: America and the Origins of the Cold War (New York: Scribner's, 1973), pp. 3133Google Scholar.

34 Hofstadter, Richard, “Manifest Destiny and the Philippines,” in America in Crisis: Fourteen Crucial Episodes in American History, ed. Aaron, Daniel (New York: Knopf, 1952), pp. 173200Google Scholar.

35 Rose, pp. 112, 177, 183.

36 Ibid., pp. 32–33, 176–78. An important recent study of atomic diplomacy, published after this essay was completed, is Sherwin, Martin J., A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Knopf, 1975)Google Scholar.

37 Rose, p. 175.

38 Ibid., p. 179.

39 Rose, has written another book, Dubious Victory: The United States and the End of World War II (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. This volume avoids moral judgments and the use of hindsight as it assays Big Five diplomacy between Yalta and Potsdam. A related book, tentatively titled The Ordeal of Peace, will deal extensively with the domestic context of postwar diplomacy.

40 Halle, Louis J., The Cold War as History (New York: Harper and Row, 1967)Google Scholar; LaFeber, Walter, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1971 (New York: John Wiley, 1972)Google Scholar.

41 Herring, , Aid to Russia, 1941–1946, p. xixGoogle Scholar. See also Herring, George C. Jr., “Lend-Lease to Russia and the Origins of the Cold War,” Journal of American History, 56 (June, 1969), 93114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Herring, , Aid to Russia, p. 288Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., p. 292; Paterson, Thomas G., Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1973), pp. 3342Google Scholar. A thoughtful critic of revisionism agrees with this point. See Maier, , “Revisionism and the Interpretation of Cold War Origins,” pp. 340–41Google Scholar.

45 Herring, , Aid to Russia, p. 293Google Scholar.

46 Paterson, pp. 263, 267. See also Paterson, Thomas G., “The Abortive American Loan to Russia and the Origins of the Cold War, 1943–1946,” Journal of American History, 56 (June, 1969), 7692CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Paterson, , Soviet-American Confrontation, p. ixGoogle Scholar.

48 Ibid., p. 262. See also Paterson, Thomas G. and Adler, Les K., “‘Red Fascism’: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 193O's–195O's,” American Historical Review, 75 (April, 1970), 1046–64Google Scholar. For the ensuing controversy, see American Historical Review, 75 (December, 1970), 2155–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 76 (April, 1971), 575–80. A similar study of the origins of anti-Soviet sentiment is West, Elliott, “The Roots of Conflict: Soviet Images in the American Press, 1941–1947,” in Essays on American Foreign Policy, ed. Morris, M. F. and Myres, S. L. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), pp. 83116Google Scholar.

49 Smith, Gaddis, Dean Acheson (New York: Cooper Square, 1972), p. 416Google Scholar.

50 Paterson, , Soviet-American Confrontation, p. 264Google Scholar.

51 Hartmann, Susan M., Truman and the 80th Congress (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), p. 1Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., p. 64.

53 This theme is emphasized in Lubell, Samuel, The Future of American Politics, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 2642Google Scholar.

54 Hartmann, p. 90.

55 Ibid., p. 129.

56 Ibid., pp. 72–101, 128–31, 147, 168–69.

57 Tugwell, Rexford Guy, “Progressives and the Presidency,” The Progressive, 13 (April, 1949), 5Google Scholar; Shannon, David A., The Decline of American Communism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959), p. 179Google Scholar. See also, for similar interpretations, MacDougall, Curtis D., Gideon's Army (3 vols., New York: Marzani and Munsell, 1965)Google Scholar; and Kirkendall, Richard S., “Election of 1948,” in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., 4 vols. (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), IV, 30993145Google Scholar.

58 Schmitt, Karl M., Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1948 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1960), p. 91Google Scholar.

59 LaFeber, , America, Russia, and the Cold War, p. 73Google Scholar.

60 Yarnell, Allen, Democrats and Progressives: The 1948 Presidential Election as a Test of Postwar Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 3233Google Scholar.

61 Griffith, Robert, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), p. 46Google Scholar.

62 Yarnell, pp. 106–07. See also Hamby, Alonzo L., “Henry A. Wallace, the Liberals, and Soviet-American Relations,” Review of Politics, 30 (April, 1968), 153–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although Yarnell occupies solid ground in contending that the politics of anti-communis m figured prominently in Truman's victory, the author fails to sustain the assertion that “by hurling charges of communism at the third party,” the President “fully legitimized the issue for use in American politics” (p. 85). This argument ignores the long history of guilt-by-association in politics. See Smith, Geoffrey S., To Save a Nation: American Countersubversives, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar, for an assessment of the Roosevelt administration's utilization of this theme in the battle against isolationism. See also Cole, Wayne S., Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974)Google Scholar. Yarnell's assertion that the Truman administration gave the nation “a real taste of what was to come in later years over the issue of anti-communism” (p. 114) also lacks convincing proof. Yarnell has not demonstrated the links between Truman's anti-communism (which he defines as synonymous with the ADA's version) and the anti-communism of the McCarthyites. To do this he would have to carry his story at least into 1950, demonstrating the political impact of the fall of China, the spy cases, and the Korean War.

63 Blum, John Morton, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973)Google Scholar; Edward, L. and Schapsmeier, Frederick H., Prophet in Politics: Henry A. Wallace and the War Years, 1940–1965 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Markowitz, Norman D., The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (New York: Free Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Radosh, Ronald and Liggio, Leonard P., “Henry Wallace and the Open Door,” in Cold War Critics, ed. Paterson, T. G., pp. 76113Google Scholar.

64 Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, pp. 163–64.

65 Markowitz, pp. 3, 8–9.

66 Ibid., pp.7, 324–28.

67 Ibid., pp. 53, 195, 227–28.

68 See Luce, Henry, The American Century (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941)Google Scholar.

69 Markowitz's interpretation has much in common with Norman Pollack's assessment of Populism. See Pollack, Norman, The Populist Response to Industrial America: Midwestern Populist Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

70 Patterson, James T., Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972)Google Scholar; Berger, Henry W., “Senator Robert A. Taft Dissents from Military Escalation,” in Cold War Critics, ed. Paterson, T. G., pp. 167204Google Scholar; Berger, Henry M., “A Conservative Critique of Containment: Senator Taft on the Early Cold War Program,” in Containment and Revolution, ed. Horowitz, David (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 125–39Google Scholar.

71 Rothbard, Murray N., “The Transformation of the American Right,” Continuum, 2 (Summer, 1964), 221Google Scholar. A spirited New Left defense of Taft's views on foreign policy, together with those of Beard, Charles, Villard, Oswald Garrison, Flynn, John T., and Dennis, Lawrence is presented in Radosh, Ronald, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975)Google Scholar. See also the attempt of “new conservatives” to claim Taft as one of their own in Kirk, Russell and McClellan, James, The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft (New York: Fleet Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Taft's own views are contained in A Foreign Policy for Americans (Garden City: Doubleday, 1951)Google Scholar.

72 Berger, , “Taft Dissents,” 171Google Scholar.

73 Patterson, p. 446. See also Patterson, James T., “Alternatives to Globalism: Robert A. Taft and American Foreign Policy, 1939–1945,” Historian, 36 (August, 1974), 670–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Patterson, , Mr. Republican, p. 313Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 443.

76 Ibid., p. 446.

77 Ibid., pp. 447–49.

78 Ibid., p. 449.

80 Ibid., pp. 448–49.

81 See Bell, Daniel, ed., The New American Right (New York: Criterion Books, 1955)Google Scholar, and its revised edition, Bell, , ed., The Radical Right: The New American Right Expanded and Updated (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964)Google Scholar. See also Hofstadter, Richard, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Knopf, 1965)Google Scholar. A criticism of “consensus” historians is offered in Morton, Marian J., The Terrors of Ideological Politics: Liberal Historians in a Conservative Mood (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1972)Google Scholar. Another book assessing liberal historiography in the 1950s is Sternsher, Bernard, Consensus, Conflict, and American Historians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

82 Rogin, Michael Paul, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (Cambridge: M.I.T. University Press, 1967), p. 217Google Scholar.

83 Ibid., pp. 216–60. Other recent critiques of pluralism include Lawson, R. Alan, The Failute of Independent Liberalism, 1931–1941 (New York: Putnam, 1971)Google Scholar; Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar; and Lowi, Theodore J., The Politics of Disorder (New York: Basic Books, 1971)Google Scholar.

84 Theoharis, Athan, The Yalta Myths: An Issue in U.S. Politics, 1945–1955 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1970), p. 219Google Scholar. In addition to the books under review, Theoharis's, publications include “The Threat to Civil Liberties,” in Cold War Critics, ed. Paterson, T. G., pp. 266–98Google Scholar: “The Rhetoric of Politics: Foreign Policy, Internal Security, and Domestic Politics in the Truman Era, 1945–1950,” and “The Escalation of the Loyalty Program,” in Politics and Policies, ed. Bernstein, B. J., pp. 146268Google Scholar; and “The Politics of Scholarship,” in The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism, ed. Griffith, Robert and Theoharis, Athan (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), pp. 262–81Google Scholar.

85 Hamby, Alonzo L., “The Clash of Perspectives and the Need for a New Synthesis,” in Truman Period: Reappraisal, ed. Kirkendall, R., p. 132Google Scholar.

86 Gaddis, John Lewis, “Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?Foreign Affairs, 51 (January, 1974), 386402 at p. 386CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The significance of Korea in politics is stressed in Caridi, Ronald J., The Korean War and American Politics: The Republican Party as a Case Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 The phrase is Murray Kempton's. See “Truman and the Beast,” New York Review of Books, March 11, 1971, p. 6Google Scholar.

88 Ibid., p. 8.

89 Freeland, Richard M., The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and Internal Security, 1946–1948 (New York: Knopf, 1972), pp. 3, 5Google Scholar.

90 Theoharis, Athan, review of Freeland, Richard M., The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism, in Journal of American History, 59 (June, 1972), 218–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Freeland, pp. 225–26.

92 Divine, Robert A., “The Cold War and the Election of 1948,” Journal of American History, 59 (June, 1972), 90110 at p. 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Latham, Earl, The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 394–99, 422–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other important assessments of McCarthyism, include Wrong, Dennis, “Theories of McCarthyism: A Survey,” Dissent, 1 (Autumn, 1954), 385–97Google Scholar; Shannon, David A., “Was McCarthy a Political Heir of LaFollette?Wisconsin Magazine of History, 45 (Autumn, 1961), 39Google Scholar; Polsby, Nelson W., “Towards an Explanation of McCarthyism,” Political Studies, 8 (October, 1960), 250–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chapman, Philip C., “The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism vs. Political Philosophy,” Political Science Quarterly, 75 (March, 1960), 1734CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Harper, Alan D., The Politics of Loyalty: The White House and the Communist Issue, 1946–1952 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Corp., 1969), p. 232Google Scholar.

95 Griffith, , Politics of Fear, p. ixGoogle Scholar. See also two essays by Griffith, , “The Political Context of McCarthyism,” Review of Politics, 33 (January, 1971), 2435CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Politics of Anti-Communism: A Review Article,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 54 (Summer, 1971), 299308Google Scholar.

96 Kempton, , “Truman and Beast,” p. 12Google Scholar.

97 Griffith and Theoharis, eds., The Specter. The complex relationship between the liberals and McCarthyism is dealt with from three different perspectives in Kristol, Irving, “‘Civil Liberties,’ 1952—A Study in Confusion,” Commentary, 13 (March, 1952), 228–36Google Scholar; Steinke, John and Weinstein, James, “McCarthy and the Liberals,” Studies on the Left, 2 (1962), 4350Google Scholar; and Reeves, Thomas C., Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism (New York: Knopf, 1969)Google Scholar. See also McAuliffe, Mary Sperling, “The Red Scare and the Crisis in American Liberalism, 1947–1954,” unpublished dissertation, University of Maryland, 1972Google Scholar; Adler, Leslie K., “The Red Image: American Attitudes Toward Communism in the Cold War Era” (dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1970)Google Scholar; Irons, Peter H., “America's Cold War Crusade: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy, 1942–1948” (dissertation, Boston University, 1972)Google Scholar.

98 Griffith and Theoharis, eds., p. xii. Other readers on McCarthyism include Reeves, Thomas C., ed., McCarthyism (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Matusow, Allen J., ed., Joseph R. McCarthy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970)Google Scholar; and Latham, Earl, ed., The Meaning of McCarthyism, 2nd ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1973)Google Scholar.

99 Griffith and Theoharis (eds.), p. xiii.

100 Murray, Robert K., review of Parenti, Michael, The Anti-Communist Impulse, in American Historical Review, 76 (June, 1971), 844CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 See Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949)Google Scholar.

102 Hamby, , Beyond New Deal, pp. 400–01, 507Google Scholar.

103 Ibid., pp. 507, 509–10.

104 An indispensable analysis of the development of domestic political constraints during the prewar era is Patterson, James T., Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1967)Google Scholar. The effects of World War II are discussed in Polenberg, Richard, War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972)Google Scholar: Polenberg, Richard, ed., American at War: The Home Front, 1941–1945 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968)Google Scholar; and McCoy, Donald R., “Republican Opposition During Wartime, 1941–1945,” Mid-America, 49 (July 1967), 174–89Google Scholar. A first-rate bibliographical survey is Heath, Jim F., “Domestic America During World War II: Research Opportunities for Historians,” Journal of American History, 58 (September, 1971), 384414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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106 Ibid., pp. 510–11.

107 See McCoy, Donald R. and Ruetten, Richard T., Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1973)Google Scholar; Dalfiume, Richard M., Desegregation of the Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939–1953 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969)Google Scholar. More critical interpretations are offered in Berman, William C., The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970)Google Scholar: Bernstein, Barton J., “The Ambiguous Legacy: The Truman Administration and Civil Rights,” in Politics and Policies, ed. Bernstein, B. J., pp. 269314Google Scholar; and Sitkoff, Harvard, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in American Politics,” Journal of Southern History, 37 (November, 1971), 597616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 The Journals of David E. Lilienthal: The TV A Years, 1939–1945 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 690Google Scholar. On Truman's relationship with the liberal community, see also Hamby, Alonzo L., “The Liberals, Truman, and FDR as Symbol and Myth,” Journal of American History, 56 (March, 1970), 859–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 Hamby, , Beyond New Deal, p. 508Google Scholar.

110 Ibid., p. 509. Agreeing with Hamby, J. Joseph Huthmacher contends that the “liberals' ‘holding action’ during the Truman years proved successful, but in addition… the frontiers of social responsibility were enlarged.” See Huthmacher's, superb biography, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (New York: Atheneum, 1968), pp. 342–43Google Scholar.

111 Krueger, Thomas A., “The Social Origins of Recent American Foreign Policy,” Journal of Social History, 7 (Fall, 1973), 93101 at p. 93Google Scholar.

112 See, for example, Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972)Google Scholar; Barnet, Richard J., Roots of War (New York: Atheneum, 1972)Google Scholar; Barnet, Richard J., Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (New York: World, 1968), pp. 346Google Scholar; Domhoff, G. William, The Higher Circle: The Governing Class in America (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973)Google Scholar.

113 Huthmacher, J. Joseph, ed., The Truman Years: The Reconstruction of Postwar America (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden, 1972), p. 11Google Scholar. An important source for the postwar era is Bernstein, Barton J. and Matusow, Allen J., eds., The Truman Administration: A Documentary History (New York: Harper and Row, 1966)Google Scholar.

114 Harrington, Michael, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962)Google Scholar.

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