The devoted labor of many other authors has inevitably contributed to the substance of this study.
The one book which has been most essential to it is Robert Sherwood’s Roosevelt and Hopkins, New York, Harper, 1948. It was also published in London under the title, The White House Papers of Harry Hopkins, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948–9. This is the best single source of the war-time utterances of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. No one can understand either the history of World War II or the immediate origins of the Cold War without reading this book.
For the appeasement period the authoritative Life of Neville Chamberlain by Keith Feiling, New York, Macmillan, 1946, and London, Macmillan, 1947, is as essential. This fair and responsible account of the thoughts and activities of the chief architect of the appeasement policy is indispensable to an understanding of why it was tried and why it failed. The failure is recorded unforgettably in J. W. Wheeler-Bennett’s Munich Prologue to Tragedy, London, Macmillan; New York, Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1948. This is an epic account of the surrender of Central and East Europe to Germany and to Fascism which no one should miss. In the same category is Betrayal in Central Europe by G. E. R. Gedye, New York, Harper, 1939, and the sensitive book of Herbert L. Matthews, The Education of a Correspondent, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1946. Matthews gives insight into the Spanish Civil War not to be found elsewhere. His clear vision on other subjects is also revealed in these pages from his articles and editorials in the New York Times.
For the record of events in the interlude of the Soviet-German truce I have relied mainly on the book of captured documents, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941y edited by James Sontag and J. S. Beddie (Supt. of Documents, Washington); The Incompatible Allies, by two German diplomats, Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer, New York, Macmillan, 1953; The Nuremberg Documents, by Peter de Mendelssohn, London, Allen & Unwin, 1946; and the first-hand report of the Rumanian diplomat Grigore Gafencu, Prelude to the Russian Campaign, London, Muller, 1945.
On the war-time period the memoirs of a half-dozen of the leading actors in it are invaluable. The two-volume Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York, Macmillan, 1948, London, Hodder, 1948, have been frequently quoted. I have relied on James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, New York, Harper, 1947; London, Heinemann, 1947, in many parts of the book, and valuable information has been found in the books of a third Secretary of State, Edward R.
Stettinius, Lend Lease, Weapon of Victory, New York, Macmillan, 1944, and Roosevelt and the Russians, New York, Doubleday, 1949; London, Cape, 1950. I have drawn on various volumes of Churchill’s war memoirs and used those of President Truman extensively, The Memoirs of Harry S. Truman, New York, Doubleday, 1955; London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1956. Stimson’s memoirs fill significant gaps—Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, New York, Harper, 1947; London, Hutchinson. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe, New York, Doubleday, 1948; London, Heinemann, 1949, gives insight into the politics of the war, as well as its military history. An excellent British version of the same factors is to be found in Chester Wilmot’s The Struggle for Europe, New York, Harper, 1952; London, Collins.
Two books which survey the main events of the Cold War have contributed both facts and perspective to this study. The volume by Howard K. Smith, The State of Europe, New York, Knopf, 1949; London, Cresset, 1950, reveals the main factors in the East-West struggle in East Europe as no other writer has, though he has had worthy competition in the books about this area by Joseph K. Harsch, The Curtain Isn’t Iron, London, Putnam; Vernon Bartlett, East of the Iron Curtain, London, Putnam, 1950; John Gunther, Behind the Curtain, New York, Harper, 1949, published in London under the title Behind Europe’s Curtain, H. Hamilton, 1949; and Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European Revolution, London, Methuen, 1950. In his History of the Cold Warf Kenneth Ingram, New York, Philosophical Library, 1957; London, Darwen, 1955, has had the honor of pioneering where many others will follow, and his thoughtful conclusions will carry weight with his successors. All of them will need to study the long series of annual chronicles written for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York under the title The United States and World Affairs and published by Harper. Like all of the studies made by this organization, these volumes advance understanding of the events and subjects discussed. I have used especially those written by John C. Campbell and Richard P. Stebbins (1945–7 and 1953).
For the crises of the Cold War in East Asia I have of course made extensive use of the four-volume 1951 MacArthur Hearings. Never before has so much been revealed about great events so soon. Other books which do much to clarify the origins of the Korean War include: George M. McCune, Korea Today, Harvard Press, 1950; London, Allen & Unwin, 1950; E. Grant Meade, American Military Government in Korea, New York, Kings Crown Press, 1951; and John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York, Harper, 1951.
On the long war in Indo-China the book by Ellen J. Hammer is, I think, definitive. In The Struggle for Indo-China, Stanford University Press; Oxford University Press, 1954, she has told the story with such thoroughness and vividness that all who write about it must be deeply indebted to her.
I have drawn inspiration and information from the books of James P. Warburg, Frederick L. Schuman, Edward C. Crankshaw and Isaac Deutscher, all of whom have been able to accept the rise of the Soviet Union as an historic fact and deal with it accordingly. In this category belongs also William Henry Chamberlin’s fine history of The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921, New York and London, Macmillan, 1935, and R. H. Lockart’s Memoirs of a British Agent y New York and London, Putnam, 1932. Outstanding in the early history of the Soviet Union is George Stewart’s The White Armies of Russia, New York, Macmillan, 1933. This is the kind of book which must be used by all future historians, along with William H. McNeill’s The Greek Dilemma, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1946; London, Gollancz, which covers the Greek Civil War of 1944–5.
I have been critical, but I hope also accurate and fair, in discussing the proposals for dealing with the Cold War advanced in three books. In If Russia Strikes, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1949, George Fielding Eliot, a noted military critic, described what would happen to the Soviet Union in a war at the top of our atomic monopoly. In his Russia and America, Dangers and Prospects, New York, Harper, 1956, Henry L. Roberts accepted a general war more reluctantly, as a means of averting communist world hegemony, and sought many other ways of avoiding it. In Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, New York, Harper, 1957, Henry A. Kissinger argued ably for such a use of nuclear weapons as would win the Cold War without destroying civilization. The reader is invited to go to these books for full and lucid exposition of the policies advocated.
These notes leave unmentioned the work of many able authors whose work I have tried to recognize consistently in the footnotes.
To a large degree this book is also a mirror of the thinking of our ablest newsmen. The invaluable reporting and penetrating comments of James Reston, Arthur Krock and Dana Adams Schmidt of the New York Times are constant threads in this narrative. This is true of Cyrus L. Sulzberger, who has been quoted most frequently of all the Times writers, along with Anne O’Hare McCormick, Drew Middleton, Harold J. Callender, Thomas H.
Hamilton, Harry Schwartz, Harrison Salisbury, M. S. Handler, Sydney Gruson, John McCormac, Sam Pope Brewer, Tillman Durdin and other Times writers. Who can measure the great weight of ability, experience, accurate reporting and reflective thinking which these men give to the columns of the New York Times? Certainly any contemporary history which did not reflect the contributions of these men would be woefully lacking. It should be added also that the Times helps greatly in the maintenance of our essential freedoms by giving these men the right to say what they think under their own names.
I have made frequent use of the competent news articles in the New York Herald Tribune. The reader will find many of its editorials to have been penetrating and long sighted. I have also relied often on the excellent national coverage of the two Nashville newspapers, the Banner and the Tennessean. The latter has been quoted with a frequency approaching that of the New York Times.
The able and constructive reports and commentaries of Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith and half a dozen other newsmen on the staff of the Columbia Broadcasting System have constantly informed and influenced my thinking, at the same time that they were doing something to lift American radio out of the sad mediocrity and hucksterism into which it has fallen.
Of the syndicated columnists, Walter Lippmann is preeminent in these pages, on so many of which his wisdom appears. Joseph Alsop has added much life and significance to this record, along with Drew Pearson, Doris Fleeson, Thomas L. Stokes and Samuel Grafton. Others who would be missed if their keen thinking did not appear in what follows include Marquis Childs of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Roscoe Drummond of the New York Herald Tribune, Chalmers Roberts of the Washington Post, Max Lemer of the New York Post, Max Freedman, Alistair Cooke and Victor Zorza of the Manchester Guardian, and Henry Brandon of the London Sunday Times.
No record of my intellectual indebtedness could be complete without my thanks to I. F. Stone’s Weekly for demonstrating what the courage and industry of one man can do to make the issues of his time clear and unambiguous. Charles A. Wells has also performed the same function for me, ably and well, in his Between the Lines.
Once again I am aware that others might well have been mentioned among the celebrities who have illuminated my work, and I am deeply conscious of the values which a great many articles in periodicals have added to it. I trust that the contributions of these writers will be evident to the reader. He will note, I am happy to say, that the footnotes in this book are where they should be.