The Cold War

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

The Communist on Capitol Hill
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Although his membership in the Communist Party would not be known until he had already been out of the House of Representatives for six years, Hugh De Lacy (1910 – 1986) was easily recognized by his colleagues as quite the radical…


No doubt De Lacy’s favorite presidential candidate was the American socialist Norman Thomas – and you can read about him here

Communism vs Democracy
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Pathfinder Magazine publisher Graham Patterson put pen to paper in an effort to articulate what the Cold War was in its simplest form, and what were the differences between a communist government and a democracy.

It is important for free people to know their avowed enemy, to understand communism, to recognize the difference between their present freedom and the way of life communism would force upon them.

The Domino Theory
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

In 1951, N.Y. Governor Thomas Dewey (1902 – 1971) made a fact-finding trip to French Indochina (Vietnam), and as impressed as he was with the French command, he wrote urgently in this Collier’s article of his belief in the Domino Theory – Indochina, Thailand and Burma were the Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia:

The Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia is the cornerstone of our Pacific defenses. And Indochina is the cornerstone of the cornerstone.

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The Satellite War
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Then came June 24 [1950]. Her skirts legally clean, Russia hit upon a way to fight the U.S. without technically using a single bullet or soldier of her own. It mattered little if Korean mercenaries, not identifiable nationally with the USSR, were doing the fighting. A satellite war was just as good a way to weaken the U.S. as a direct war – if not better.

The Draft Dodgers
(People Today Magazine, 1950)

With the U.S. inducting some 50,000 men a month there must necessarily be a high number of delinquents… Few draft dodgers realize that the FBI steps in when the draft board steps out of the picture. Furthermore delinquents are liable to five years imprisonment.


To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.

Expanding The American Draft Pool
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Nine months after the American intervention into the Korean War, the Congress saw reason to expand the draft pool to an even wider degree:

Eighteen-year-olds were a little closer to the draft this week, and America was a step closer to a system of permanent universal military training…

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The Draft
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Christmas in khaki became the new theme song of thousands of the nation’s young men last week when the Army handed Selective Service a new quota… the Army wants 70,000 in November.

Red Goals For American Society
(Congressional Record, 1963)

When we read this transcript from The Congressional Record we were flabbergasted! You will find that it is a compilation that was pieced together in the late Fifties listing all the changes America’s Communist enemies wished to see take place in the United States in order to make their mission of conquest that much easier – yet as you read the list you quickly recognize that at least 85% of this tally fell into place as recently as 2020.

Enter China
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

On Friday, November 3, 1950 Mao Tse-Tung (1893 – 1976) ordered the Chinese Army to intervene in the Korean War on behalf of the the retreating North Korean Army:

…perhaps [as many as] 250,000 Chinese Communists jumped into the battle for Northwest Korea; at best, their intervention meant a winter campaign in the mountains; at worst, a world war.


From Amazon: The Korean War: The Chinese Interventionstyle=border:none

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Tensions Build in Washington
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

The Korean War was all of two weeks old when this column went to press describing the combustible atmosphere that characterized the Nation’s Capitol as events unfolded on the Korean peninsula:


A grim Senate voted the $1.2 billion foreign arms aid bill. Knots of legislators gathered on the floor or in the cloakrooms for whispered conversations. Crowds gathered around news tickers…
On everyone’s lips was the question: ‘Is this really World War III?’


Click here to read about the need for Army women during the Korean War.

U.S. Racial Diversity and the Cold War
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

With the end of the Second World War in 1945 came numerous social changes to the nation. Among them was the Civil Rights movement, which soon began to find followers in the white majority and acquire an unprecedented traction in Washington as a result of the Cold War (an article on this topic can be read here). It was these two factors, the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement, that combined in the Fifties to call for the creation of a new immigration policy. It would be naive to assume that race alone was the sole factor in drafting a more inclusive policy because, as the attached editorial spells out, the Cold War climate demanded that the U.S. make more friends among the developing countries if the Soviets were to be defeated economically and militarily.

‘No More Wars In Asia”
(United States News, 1954)

Ridgway wants no repetition of the Korean experience. If the U.S. is to fight in Asia again, he wants an army equal to the task and free to win. And, until his Army is capable of undertaking the job, he opposes even limited action by air or sea forces. The General disagrees with those who hold that a war can be won by air or sea power alone.

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‘The Communists Are After Our Minds”
(The American Magazine, 1954)

Oh how we all laughed when we used to read of these old Cold Warriors who actually believed that Communists were active in our schools in the 1990s! Gosh, it was funny! But it wasn’t funny when we discovered how close an actual Marxist came to winning the presidential nominations of the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020. It seems like the long march through the institutions has finally paid off for the Leftists. The attached article was written by J. Edgar Hoover and it was penned in order that Americans would know that this day would come if we were not vigilant.

Letters from Vietnam
(Coronet Magazine, 1967)

[Here is] a portrait of the war by those who know it best – the men at the front… In these affecting pages are the unadorned voices of men and women who fought – and, in some cases, fell – in America’s most controversial war. They bring new insights and imagery to a conflict that still haunts our hearts, consciences, and the conduct of our foreign policy.

The Third Christmas in Korea
(Quick Magazine, 1952)

As 1952 was coming to an end President Truman must have seemed delighted to pass along to the next guy all the various assorted trouble spots that existed throughout the world. President-Elect Eisenhower had promised peace during his presidential campaign – but many of the issues at hand were interrelated: French Indochina, South Africa, the Middle-east, the Iron Curtain and, of course, Korea.

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More Fighting for Christmas
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The toughest fighting was in a three-mile beachead at the chewed-up port of Hungnam. There the U.S X Corps had escaped from a Chinese trap and was piling aboard a fleet of Victory and Liberty ships.


The U.S. Navy had a strong presence off shore to cover the American withdrawal.

The Atomic Spy Ring
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

An interesting column that succinctly sums up how Stalin’s spies were able to compromise the Manhattan Project, who organized the spy ring, the intelligence that was gleaned, how they were caught and what their fate within the legal system would be.


You can read about Alger Hiss HERE…

The Cold War and Public Opinion
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

This article was written by Gallup Poll Editor William Lydgate who compared various opinion surveys that were taken shortly after the close of W.W. II with the ones that were created just one year later.


The 1945 poll revealed that the American public generally looked forward to friendly relations with the Soviet Union, shared remarkably high hopes for world peace and believed deeply that the United Nations would be responsible for the creation of a better world. However, the 1946 poll measured an enormous drop in this sunny disposition.

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