For an updated page of quotes:
Traces of Evil
historians and quotes
for the Cold War
HISTORIANS
Kenneth Waltz: What is a good state? Marxists say it is in fair distribution of wealth. USA and allies say multi-party democracy and sovereignty of people
John Marsden- different social structures, and each of them proving that their system was better
George Mitchell- The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe
John-Lewis Gaddis-post-revisionist The Cold War: A new history. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- soviet social, Gulag Archipelago
George F. Kennan- orthodox, diplomacy
Richard Pipes- American orthodox
E.H. Carr- The twenty years crisis pro-soviet historian
Eric Hobsbawm- Marxist
Robert Divine- The Cuban Missile Crisis. Eisenhower and the Cold War
David Holloway- Stalin and the Bomb orthodox
William Taubman- Nikita Khrushchev
John Halliday and Bruce Cumings- Korea: The Unknown War
Chen Jian- Chinese Historian Mao’s China and the Cold War
William Williams- Tragedy of American Diplomacy- US was blamed for the Cold War
Timothy Garton Ash- the last part of the Cold War, Europe 1975-present
Howard Zinn- social historian- A People’s History of the United States
Harry Elmer Barnes- history is based on official historians like Churchill, Cold War was artificial (no ideology, just giving labour jobs etc.), Soviets did not start Cold War, origins of Cold War- Truman and Churchill
Peter G. Boyle: American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism.
Norman Friedman: The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War.
Terry Anderson: The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947- orthodox view
Diane Shaver Clemens: Yalta- orthodox
Bruce Cumings: The Origins of the Korean War- pro-NK, against US intervention
Sergei Gorcharov, John Lewis, Xue Litai: Uncertain partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War.
Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia.
Michael Beschloss: Kennedy v. Khrushchev
Lawrence Freedman: Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam.
Alexandr Fursenko, Timothy Naftali: One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964.
Jarolim Navratil: The Prague Spring 68
David Reynolds: The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives.
Frank E. Vandiver: Shadows of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson’s Wars.
Robin Edmonds: The Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years.
QUOTES Defence Secretary Henry Stimson 1945: “US could never again be an island to itself”
Churchill after Yalta to Roosevelt: “The Soviet Union has become a danger to the free world.”
After Fulton Speech Stalin in Pravda 13 March 1946: “Mr. Churchill has called for a war on the USSR.” Khrushchev in 1971: “…The Cold War set in. Churchill had given his famous speech in Fulton urging the imperialistic forces of the world to fight the Soviet Union. Our relations with England, France and the USA were ruined.”
George Marshall June 1947: “Europe is a breeding ground of hate.”
Malenkov after Marshall Plan: “The ruling gang of American imperialists has taken the path of open expansion, of enslaving weakened capitalists countries.”
1946 secretary of state Byrnes: “Soviets understand only language How many divisions have you? I am tired of babying the Soviets.”
Molotov: “We have troops only where provided by treaties.”
Churchil: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent.”
Russian historians after introducing new currency in Bizonia: “The Soviet side was ready to supply food to all Berlin. Yet every day 380 American planes flew into Berlin. It was simply a propaganda move intended to make the Cold War worse.”
Churchill: “An Iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind”
US State Department June 1947: “US must develop a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world…”
Brzezinsky stated that “world was now divided into two fronts, one imperialistic, the other socialist and democratic…”
Truman after invasion of South Korea: “I recall some earlier instances: Manchuria, Ethiopia, Austria. I remember how each time the democracies failed to act it had encouraged the aggressor to go ahead… If this was allowed to go unchallenged it would mean a third world war.”
Bradley Omar- Korea: “The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy”
John Halliday and Bruce Cumings- Korea: The Unknown War: “Each side proclaims that it won, yet each actually seems to feel that it lost.”
Kim Il-Sung: “In the Korean War, the US imperialists suffered an ignominious military defeat for the first time in the history of the US; this meant the beginning of a downward path for US imperialism.”
Churchill about Korea: “Korea does not really matter. I’d never heard of the bloody place until I was seventy-four. Its importance lies in the fact that it has led to the re-arming of America.”
Stalin before his deaths: “the imperialistic powers will wring your necks like chickens.”
Khrushchev 1955 in Yugoslavia: “There are different roads to communism.”
Khrushchev 1956 in London: “You do not like Communism. We do not like capitalism. There is only one way out- peaceful co-existence.”
JF Kennedy “There are many people in the world who really don't understand-or say they don't-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!”
Robert McNamara in movie Fog of War (2003) -“Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies.”
Curtis Lemay- Cuban Missile Crisis: “That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it.”
Richard Grayson: “Britain was the Coldest Cold War Warrior”
