Document Type
Honors Project
Abstract
This honors thesis examines the role of highly charged, highly covered, and civilian-centered international events in the early Cold War’s development (1945-50). It does this through the case study of American students Peter Sellers and Warren Oelsner, who spent two months in Soviet military captivity in East Germany in 1949. Their case received substantial media coverage and the US government eventually obtained their release. By looking at a combination of government documents, newspaper articles, an account written by Oelsner, and scholarship on public and elite opinion, I find that although no single event of this magnitude had a significant effect on the early Cold War, the evidence suggests that repeated over time, these events had a meaningful yet modest influence, as American elites developed increasingly less favorable views of the Soviet Union, seeing it as an existential threat and the American public increasingly viewed it as a cruel and dangerous adversary.
Recommended Citation
Jarka-Sellers, Peter Johannes, "The Effects of Highly-charged, Civilian-centered Events on American Cold War Policy and the Soviet-American Relationship Between 1945-1950" (2020). International Studies Honors Projects. 35.
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/intlstudies_honors/35
Included in
© Copyright is owned by author of this document
