The Cold War

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

American Resolve Made Manifest (U.S. News & World Report, 1965)

This article was published six weeks after 32,000 military personnel landed at Danang and the big unit war began:

A showdown with Communists in Asia is approaching fast. The U.S. offer of peace just got a short shrift from the Reds. Talk is not of peace , but a bigger war. The U.S. is determined to stand firm, no matter what. The strategy is to put more pressure on the enemy – making the cost unbearable. The hope is that the Reds will back off, but top U.S. officials are getting ready for the worst.

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The Start of the Korean War (Quick Magazine, 1950)

On June 25, 1950 ten divisions of North Korean infantry invaded South Korea. In its narrowest sense, the invasion marked the beginning of a civil war between peoples of a divided country. In a far larger sense, it represented a break in tensions between the two dominant power blocs that had emerged from the Second World War. These well-illustrated pages appeared in Quick Magazine two weeks after the hostilities commenced and serves to summarize the events in Washington and at the United Nations. Within the first twelve hours of the war President Truman committed U.S. air and naval forces to the defense of South Korea and signed a bill to widen the draft pool.


The Korean War ended in 1953. Click here to read about the military results of that war.

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‘While Brave Men Die” (American Opinion, 1967)

One terrible and overwhelming fact must be faced: Our soldiers and our pilots are being maimed and killed fighting a war that they are not being allowed to win. The Johnson Administration is not keeping faith with the men who must fight this war, with the half-million super-patriots, the half-million anti-Communists, who are fighting and dying in action against the forces of the International Communist Conspiracy.

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Military Choices (U.S. News & World Report, 1965)

Events are moving now toward a military showdown in Vietnam – with a decision to be made by combat.

The question at this time is whether the coming crisis will be resolved in South, middle or North Vietnam. As the showdown approaches, the U.S. finds itself involved in three forms of war in Southeast Asia:


• An anti-guerrilla war in southern South Vietnam.


• A base-defense war in northern South Vietnam.


• An anti-logistics war in southern North Vietnam.


The military man who penned this article weighs all these scenarios and also discusses the nuclear option.

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Why Only Half Our Soldiers Fire Their Rifles (Collier’s Magazine, 1952)

In every engagement with the enemy during the Second World War, only 12 to 25 percent of American riflemen ever fired their weapons. This was an enormous concern for the brass hats in the Pentagon and they got right to work in order to remedy the problem. Five years later, when the Korean War rolled around, they found that the situation was somewhat improved: 50% of the soldiers were now able to return fire. This article tells the story of U.S. Army General S.L.A. Marshall (1900 – 1977) and his research in addressing this issue. A good read.

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‘Korean Pearl Harbor” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.

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