Cold War Captives

Cold War Captives PDF Author: Susan L. Carruthers
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520944798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This provocative history of early cold war America recreates a time when World War III seemed imminent. Headlines were dominated by stories of Soviet slave laborers, brainwashed prisoners in Korea, and courageous escapees like Oksana Kasenkina who made a "leap for freedom" from the Soviet Consulate in New York. Full of fascinating and forgotten stories, Cold War Captives explores a central dimension of American culture and politics—the postwar preoccupation with captivity. "Menticide," the calculated destruction of individual autonomy, struck many Americans as a more immediate danger than nuclear annihilation. Drawing upon a rich array of declassified documents, movies, and reportage—from national security directives to films like The Manchurian Candidate—his book explores the ways in which east-west disputes over prisoners, repatriation, and defection shaped popular culture. Captivity became a way to understand everything from the anomie of suburban housewives to the "slave world" of drug addiction. Sixty years later, this era may seem distant. Yet, with interrogation techniques derived from America's communist enemies now being used in the "war on terror," the past remains powerfully present.

Cold War Captives

Cold War Captives PDF Author: Susan L. Carruthers
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520944798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This provocative history of early cold war America recreates a time when World War III seemed imminent. Headlines were dominated by stories of Soviet slave laborers, brainwashed prisoners in Korea, and courageous escapees like Oksana Kasenkina who made a "leap for freedom" from the Soviet Consulate in New York. Full of fascinating and forgotten stories, Cold War Captives explores a central dimension of American culture and politics—the postwar preoccupation with captivity. "Menticide," the calculated destruction of individual autonomy, struck many Americans as a more immediate danger than nuclear annihilation. Drawing upon a rich array of declassified documents, movies, and reportage—from national security directives to films like The Manchurian Candidate—his book explores the ways in which east-west disputes over prisoners, repatriation, and defection shaped popular culture. Captivity became a way to understand everything from the anomie of suburban housewives to the "slave world" of drug addiction. Sixty years later, this era may seem distant. Yet, with interrogation techniques derived from America's communist enemies now being used in the "war on terror," the past remains powerfully present.

Cold War Captives

Cold War Captives PDF Author: Susan Lisa Carruthers
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520257308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Susan Carruthers offers a provocative history of early Cold War America, in which she recreates a time when World War III seemed imminent. She shows how central to American opinion at the time was a fascination with captivity & escape. Captivity became a way to understand everything.

Dissenting POWs

Dissenting POWs PDF Author: Tom Wilber
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583679103
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
A fresh look at the how US troops played a part in the resistance of US troops to the American war in Vietnam Even if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming-home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between pro-war “hardliners” and anti-war “dissidents” among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the Hero-POW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers-versus-enlisted-men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their pre-captive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero-holdouts—like John McCain—moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth-buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs—ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America’s drift to endless war.

Captivity in War during the Twentieth Century

Captivity in War during the Twentieth Century PDF Author: Marcel Berni
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030650971
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book offers new international perspectives on captivity in wartime during the twentieth century. It explores how global institutions and practices with regard to captives mattered, how they evolved and most importantly, how they influenced the treatment of captives. From the beginning of the twentieth century, international organisations, neutral nations and other actors with no direct involvement in the respective wars often had to fill in to support civilian as well as military captives and to supervise their treatment. This edited volume puts these actors, rather than the captives themselves, at the centre in order to assess comparatively their contributions to wartime captivity. Taking a global approach, it shows that transnational bodies - whether non-governmental organisations, neutral states or individuals - played an essential role in dealing with captives in wartime. Chapters cover both the largest wars, such as the two World Wars, but also lesser-known conflicts, to highlight how captives were placed at the centre of transnational negotiations.

The Society of Captives

The Society of Captives PDF Author: Gresham M. Sykes
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828279
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The Society of Captives, first published in 1958, is a classic of modern criminology and one of the most important books ever written about prison. Gresham Sykes wrote the book at the height of the Cold War, motivated by the world's experience of fascism and communism to study the closest thing to a totalitarian system in American life: a maximum security prison. His analysis calls into question the extent to which prisons can succeed in their attempts to control every facet of life--or whether the strong bonds between prisoners make it impossible to run a prison without finding ways of "accommodating" the prisoners. Re-released now with a new introduction by Bruce Western and a new epilogue by the author, The Society of Captives will continue to serve as an indispensable text for coming to terms with the nature of modern power.

Apollo's Warriors

Apollo's Warriors PDF Author: Michael E. Haas
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 9780788149832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Presenting a fascinating insider's view of U.S.A.F. special operations, this volume brings to life the critical contributions these forces have made to the exercise of air & space power. Focusing in particular on the period between the Korean War & the Indochina wars of 1950-1979, the accounts of numerous missions are profusely illustrated with photos & maps. Includes a discussion of AF operations in Europe during WWII, as well as profiles of Air Commandos who performed above & beyond the call of duty. Reflects on the need for financial & political support for restoration of the forces. Bibliography. Extensive photos & maps. Charts & tables.

A Cold War State of Mind

A Cold War State of Mind PDF Author: Matthew W. Dunne
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781625340405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
First popularized during the 1950s, the concept of "brainwashing" is often viewed as an example of Cold War paranoia, an amusing relic of a bygone era. Yet as Matthew W. Dunne shows in this study, over time brainwashing came to connote much more than a sinister form of Communist mind control, taking on broader cultural and political meanings. Moving beyond well-known debates over Korean War POWs and iconic cultural texts like The Manchurian Candidate, Dunne explores the impact of the idea of brainwashing on popular concerns about freedom, individualism, loyalty, and trust in authority. By the late 1950s the concept had been appropriated into critiques of various aspects of American life such as an insistence on conformity, the alleged "softening" of American men, and rampant consumerism fueled by corporate advertising that used "hidden" or "subliminal" forms of persuasion. Because of these associations and growing anxieties about the potential misuse of psychology, concerns about brainwashing contributed to a new emphasis on individuality and skepticism toward authority in the 1960s. The notion even played an unusual role in the 1968 presidential race, when Republican frontrunner George Romney's claim that he had been "brainwashed" about the Vietnam War by the Johnson administration effectively destroyed his campaign. In addition to analyzing the evolving meaning of brainwashing over an extended period of time, A Cold War State of Mind explores the class and gender implications of the idea, such as the assumption that working-class POWs were more susceptible to mind control and that women were more easily taken in by the manipulations of advertisers.

Setting All the Captives Free

Setting All the Captives Free PDF Author: Ian K. Steele
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773589902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1003

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Book Description
Among the many upheavals in North America caused by the French and Indian War was a commonplace practice that affected the lives of thousands of men, women, and children: being taken captive by rival forces. Most previous studies of captivity in early America are content to generalize from a small selection of sources, often centuries apart. In Setting All the Captives Free, Ian Steele presents, from a mountain of data, the differences rather than generalities as well as how these differences show the variety of circumstances that affected captives’ experiences. The product of a herculean effort to identify and analyze the captives taken on the Allegheny frontier during the era of the French and Indian War, Setting All the Captives Free is the most complete study of this topic. Steele explores genuine, doctored, and fictitious accounts in an innovative challenge to many prevailing assumptions and arguments, revealing that Indians demonstrated humanity and compassion by continuing to take numerous captives when their opponents took none, by adopting and converting captives into kin during the war, and by returning captives even though doing so was a humiliating act that betrayed their societies' values. A fascinating and comprehensive work by an acclaimed scholar, Setting All the Captives Free takes the study of the French and Indian War in America to an exciting new level.

A Spectrum of Unfreedom

A Spectrum of Unfreedom PDF Author: Leslie Peirce
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633864003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Without the labor of the captives and slaves, the Ottoman empire could not have attained and maintained its strength in early modern times. With Anatolia as the geographic focus, Leslie Peirce searches for the voices of the unfree, drawing on archives, histories written at the time, and legal texts. Unfree persons comprised two general populations: slaves and captives. Mostly household workers, slaves lived in a variety of circumstances, from squalor to luxury. Their duties varied with the status of their owner. Slave status might not last a lifetime, as Islamic law and Ottoman practice endorsed freeing one’s slave. Captives were typically seized in raids, generally to disappear, their fates unknown. Victims rarely returned home, despite efforts of their families and neighbors to recover them. The reader learns what it was about the Ottoman environment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that offered some captives the opportunity to improve the conditions of their bondage. The book describes imperial efforts to fight against the menace of captive-taking despite the widespread corruption among the state’s own officials, who had their own interest in captive labor. From the fortunes of captives and slaves the book moves to their representation in legend, historical literature, and law, where, fortunately, both captors and their prey are present.

Name, Rank, and Serial Number

Name, Rank, and Serial Number PDF Author: Charles Steuart Young
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195183487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The Korean War became a prolonged struggle over POWs, as Name, Rank, and Serial Number details. The United Nations Command compelled prisoners to defect and the communists used captive GIs in propaganda denouncing capitalism. At home, ex-POWs were used in propaganda again when the Army chastised the nation for raising effeminate sons unable to withstand captivity.