The Cold War

Find old cold war articles here. We have free newspaper articles from the 1950s cold war check them out today!

The Korean War’s Effect on Wall Street (Quick Magazine, 1950)

The outbreak of the war in Korea sent stocks tumbling in all important world markets. In N.Y., three months of profits were wiped out. At week’s end some stocks rose, but jittery brokers kept an eye on the war news and – an ear turned toward Washington, where announcements of increased U.S. participation in the fighting touched off further waves of selling>

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The Pentagon Prepared for W.W. III (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Shortly after the Soviet Union successfully tested their first atomic bomb, the brass hats who work in the Pentagon saw fit to take the first step in preparing to fight an atomic war: they gave the order to create a subterranean headquarters to house a military command and control center for the U.S. and her allies.

The finished chamber, according to local observers, will be 3,100 feet long, contain four suites for the top brass (the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others), and provide operational quarters for some 1,200 technicians in peacetime, or 5,000 if atomic bombing threatens the Washington command.


Commonly known as Site R, it is located not terribly far from the presidential retreat, Camp David, and in the subsequent years since this article first appeared, the complex has grown considerably larger than when it was first envisioned. Today, Site R maintains more than thirty-eight military communications systems and it has been said that it was one of undisclosed locations that hosted Vice President Dick Cheney (b. 1941) shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks.


A related article can be read here…

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Cold War Politics and People of Color (Pageant Magazine, 1959)

This well-illustrated article appeared in a middle class American magazine in 1959 and it reported on the rising international sentiments that signaled to the dominate Western powers that the old diplomacy of the wealthier white nations had to change. It will help to explain why the United States re-fashioned their immigration laws in 1965.


The Department of State hated it when Radio Moscow would depict Americans as simply a bunch of lynch-happy bigots…

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N.AT.O. Established (Dept. of the Army, 1956)

Attached is a printable page from an R.O.T.C. primer concerning American Military History outlined the events of 1948 that created the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.).

This pact, called the North Atlantic Treaty, united Great Britain, the United States, and ten western European nations in a common security system. Approved by the Senate in April 1949, the treaty provided for mutual assistance, including the use of armed force in the event of a Soviet attack upon one or more of the signatory powers.

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‘How We Can Win in Asia” (Quick Magazine, 1952)

In the attached editorial, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (1898 – 1980) weighs in on how the United States could forge stronger Cold War alliances in Asia and the Middle East:

We have thought that we could stop the spread of communism by guns and by dollars. We have spent billions upon billions and yet the Red tide of communism seems to spread… We should show Asia how her revolution can follow the pattern of 1776. What will win in Asia are not guns and dollars but but ideas of freedom and justice. To win in Asia, America must identify herself with those ideas.


To understand some of the diplomatic challenges Douglas was referring to, click here


More on this topic can be read here…

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Russia’s Fifth Column in America (American Opinion, 1964)

Over the last thirty years the United States, as well as Central and South America, has been invaded repeatedly by ununiformed soldiers of the Soviet Government – agents of the International Communist Conspiracy. Our government has been furnished repeatedly with conclusive evidence of this invasion and yet has done nothing to exclude and deport the invaders… To make matters worse, ‘Liberal’ administrations since the time of Franklin Roosevelt have urged that what few immigration restrictions we have to prevent their entrance be removed… Roosevelt was not interested in the fact that many of those entering were Communists; after all, he told me that some of his best friends were Communists.

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The Coeds of the Cold War (Quick Magazine, 1953)

The original Generation X was that group of babies born in the late Twenties/early Thirties: they were the younger brothers and sisters of the W.W. II generation. There seemed to have been some talk in the early Fifties that this group of Americans were becoming sardonic and cynical – raised on the W.W. II home front, only to find that when they came of age they were also expected to sacrifice their numbers in a foreign war:

How can you help being pessimistic when you hear that the boy you sat next to in high school English was killed last week in Korea?


– opined one of the nine college women interviewed on the attached pages. These Cold War women were asked what was on their minds as they prepared for jobs, marriage and family.

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The Damaged Prestige of the FBI (Quick Magazine, 1952)

When this article appeared on the newsstands, J. Edgar Hoover had been FBI chief for nearly thirty years. In all that time he had enjoyed being photographed among celebrities and adored patting himself on the back by writing numerous magazine articles about the FBI. But by the time the early Fifties came along Hoover and his Federal agency were no longer the teflon icon that they used to be; the failings of the FBI were adding up and Hoover did not seemed accountable.

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