« Home

Home » Politics » Young & Kent: International Relations since 1945 » Student resources » Annotated further reading guide » Part I: The Origins and Development of the Cold War, 1945 - 1953

Young & Kent: International Relations since 1945

Part I: The Origins and Development of the Cold War, 1945 - 1953

There is a vast literature on the origins of the Cold War. Students who wish to read a general account of the origins of the Cold War from an orthodox or traditional post-revisionist perspective should sample one of the following texts:
J. L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941–1947 (Columbia University Press, New York, 1972).
Randall B. Woods and H. Jones, Dawning of the Cold War: The United States Quest for Order (University of Georgia Press, Athens; London, 1991).
A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-53, Stanford, (Stanford University Press, 2002) is a recent account

Those wishing to evaluate revisionist or non-orthodox post-revisionist works should look at:
M. P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power. National Security, the Truman Administration and the Origins of the Cold War (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992).
T. McCormick, America’s Half Century: US Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2nd edn., 1995).
T. G. Paterson, On Every Front: the Making and Unmaking of the Cold War (W. W. Norton, New York, 1992).

For an interesting comparison of the two sides’ approaches:
R. Levering et al, Debating the Origins of the Cold War: American and Russian Perspectives, (Lanham,MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)

On the issue of whether the Cold War was primarily about power or about ideology and culture:
H. Jones and R. B. Woods et al, ‘The Origins of the Cold War: A Symposium’ Diplomatic History (1993) and the commentaries by E. Rosenburg, A. Stephanson, and B. Berstein Michael Hunt, Ideology and Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987).
J. L. Gaddis, ‘The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War’ and ‘Responses to John Lewis Gaddis, “The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War” ’ Diplomatic History, 2 (1983).

For more theoretical works which incorporate some assessment of the empirical evidence:
Odd Arne Westad (ed.), Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (Frank Cass, London, 2000).
Allen Hunter (ed.), Rethinking the Cold War (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1998).
Anders Stephanson, ‘Fourteen Notes on the Very Concept of the Cold War’ http://h-net2.msu.edu/~diplo/stephanson.html

Cold War writing in the West has often been confined to a set of assumptions such as an expansionist Soviet Union, the idea of containment, the influence of communism as a crusading ideology, and has assessed the Cold War in terms of who was most to blame. In terms of these standard parameters two books deserve particular mention for challenging them:
Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945–1956 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999).
Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc 1947–1956 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2000).

On the tensions in the Grand Alliance that developed in 1945 and early 1946:
R. L. Messer, The End of an Alliance (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1982).
J. Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War 1944–1949 (Leicester University Press, Leicester; New York, 1993).
J. L. Gormly, The Collapse of the Grand Alliance 1945–1948 (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1987).

On Cold War economic policy:
R. A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War 1945–1950 (Columbia University Press, New York, 1985).
M. J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987).

On post-war atomic issues:
G. Herken, The Winning Weapon: the Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945–1950 (Knopf, New York, 1980).
D. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994).
F. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983).
C. Craig and Y. Smirnov, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006)

On NATO and militarization:
J. Kent and J. W. Young, ‘Britain the Third Force and the Origin of NATO: in Search of a New Perspective’, in B. Heuser and R O’Neill (eds.), Securing Peace in Europe (Macmillan, London, 1992).
J. Kent and J. W. Young, ‘The Western Union Concept and British Defence Planning 1947–48’ in Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence Strategy and the Cold War (Routledge, London, 1992).
T. P. Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance (Aldwych Press, London, 1981).
E. R. May (ed.), American Cold War Strategy; Interpreting NSC-68 (Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, Boston, 1993).

On the crises in the Middle East and the Mediterranean:
J. Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War 1944–1949 (Leicester University Press, Leicester; New York, 1993).
E. Mark, ‘The War Scare of 1946 and its Consequences’, Diplomatic History 3 (1997).
L. L’Estrange Fawcett, Ian and the Cold War: the Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York, 1992).
B. Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1980).

On the Soviet actions in Eastern Europe:
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the World 1917–1991 (Arnold, London, 1998).
V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996).
V. Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War (Columbia University Press, New York, 1979).
V. Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity the Stalin Years (Oxford University Press, New York, 1996).
N. Naimark and L. Gibianskii (eds.), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe 1944–1949 (Westview, Oxford, 1997).

On Western Europe:
John W. Young, France, the Cold War and the Western Alliance 1944–1949 (Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1990).
Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (Routledge, New York, 2nd edn., 1992).
Alan Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–1951 (Methuen, London, 1984).

On the German question:
C. Eisenber, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944–1949 (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1996).
S. Mawby, Containing Germany: Britain and the Arming of the Federal Republic (St Martin’s Press, New York, 1997).
J. McAllister, No Exit: America and the German Problem: 1943-1954, (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2002).

On Palestine and the Middle East:
Mark A. Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1994).
Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Clarendon, Oxford, 1984).

On the Iranian crisis:
J. A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: the Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989).
M. J. Gasiorowski, ‘The 1953 Coup d’Etat in Iran’, Journal of Middle East Studies (1987).

For the CIA:
R. Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2nd edn., 1999).
V. Marchetti and J. D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (Jonathan Cape, London, 1974).
J. Ranelagh, The Agency: the Rise and Decline of the CIA (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1986).

For Soviet intelligence and subversion see:
C. M. Andrew and O. Gordievsky, KGB: the Inside Story (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1990).
C. M. Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive The KGB in Europe and the West (Allen Lane, London, 1999).
J. T. Richelson, Sword and Shield: Soviet Intelligence and Security Service Operations (Ballinger, Cambridge, 1986).

On China and Korea and the nature of East Asian problems not defined in terms of a Soviet–American global confrontation:
O. A. Westad, ‘Losses, Chances and Myths: the United States and the Creation of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1946–1950’ Diplomatic History, 2 (1997).
Chen Jian, ‘The Myth of America’s Lost Chance in China’, Diplomatic History, 2 (1997).
Shen Zhihua, ‘Sino-Soviet Relations and the Origins of the Korean War: Stalin’s Strategic Goals in the Far East’ Journal of Cold War Studies, 2 (2000).
W. W. Stueck, The Korean War: an International History (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995).
Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War (Colombia University Press, New York, 1994).
S. N. Goncharov, J. W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners. Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1993).