A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954

by Michael J. Hogan

Overview

A Cross of Iron provides the fullest account yet of the national security state that emerged in the first decade of the Cold War. Michael J. Hogan traces the process of state-making through struggles to unify the armed forces, harness science to military purposes, mobilize military manpower, control the defense budget, and distribute the cost of defense across the economy. President Harry S. Truman and his successor were in the middle of a fundamental contest over the nation's political identity and postwar purpose, and their efforts determined the size and shape of the national security state that finally emerged.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521640442
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/28/1998
Pages:	540
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.50(d)

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements; 1. The National Security discourse: ideology, political culture and state making; 2. Magna Charta: the National Security Act and the specter of the Garrison state; 3. The high price of peace: guns-and-butter politics in the early Cold War; 4. The time tax: American political culture and the UMT debate; 5. 'Chaos and conflict and carnage confounded': budget battles and defense reorganization; 6. Preparing for permanent war: economy, science and secrecy in the National Security state; 7. Turning point: NSC-68, the Korean war and the National Security response; 8. Semiwar: the Korean war and rearmament; 9. The Iron Cross: solvency, security and the Eisenhower transition; 10. Other voices: the public sphere and the National Security mentality; 11. Conclusion; Selected bibliography; Index.

What People are Saying About This

Walter LaFeber

Michael Hogan has not only given us -- again -- an indispensable, superbly done book for our understanding of the Cold War, but a fascinating, original model that provides great insight into the American people's politics and society, as well as into the foreign policy they pieced together to become a superpower. -- Cornell University

Editorial Reviews

"Michael Hogan has not only given us—again—an indispensable, superbly done book for our understanding of the Cold War, but a fascinating, original model that provides great insight into the American people's politics and society, as well as into the foreign policy they pieced together to become a superpower." Walter LaFeber, Cornell University

"comumprehensive and compelling account of the crucial months in the Truman Administration when a free-wheeling democracy narrowly avoided becoming a 'garrison state.' Or did it? Michael Hogan is a fair and enlightening guide through the politics and pressures of one of the most important but least-recalled periods of American history." Tom Wicker

"Even-handed, smoothly written, and based on extensive research in recently published documents, this mature account of America's Cold War build-up, the domestic propaganda that accompanied it, and the dissent—on the Right as well as Left—it provoked is sure to command the attention of Truman's admirers and detractors alike." Walter A. McDougall, University of Pennsylvania

"...the author succeeds brilliantly in demonstrating the impact of political culture on the formation of a new American state fundamentally different from that which existed before." Foreign Affairs

"In what is easily the most comprehensive and conceptually innovative study of the institutionalization of the cold war, Hogan makes it painfully clear that we are still living with the massive consequences of the postwar choices that he so expertly describes." Boston Book Review

"...readers will find Cross of Iron at the center of any discussion of the national security state for years to come." Journal of Military History

"Hogan has made use of a wide variety od unpublished and published primary sources to explore important and previously neglected topics, such as the debate over universal military training, and he has combined these with existing secondary studies of better-known controversies to produce a truly outstanding piece of original research, synthesis, and interpretation. Indeed, I find the result even more impressive than his award-winning study of the Marshall Plan." American Historical Review

"...a book that is impressively researched, brilliant, and powerful." Richard S. Kirkendall, Pacific Historical Review

"Hogan does a good and impartial job of detailing the often contentious debates. He adds to our understanding of events by extending his analysis beyond the corridors of power and examining the arguements used in letters to the editors of local papers and in local political demonstrations..." Ronald J. Granieri, The Historian

From the Publisher

...[T]he author succeeds brilliantly in demonstrating the impact of political culture on the formation of a new American State fundamentally different from that which existed before.

Foreign Affairs

In an important contribution to modern U.S. government and policy studies, Hogan (History/Ohio State University) traces the development of America's national security apparatus in the first decade of the Cold War. For much of its history, the U.S. took to heart the advice of George Washington to avoid entangling alliances and involvement in foreign affairs. Accordingly, as it matured, America pursued a policy of non-intervention in foreign wars (except in Latin America), and enjoyed an anti-statist and anti-militarist domestic culture. While America was becoming an active international power in the years prior to WWII, isolationism still characterized American policy on the eve of that war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor transformed the domestic policy consensus: isolationism was no longer viewed as a practical policy, and America had to bear the burden of its own defense. Hogan argues that, in the first decade following the conclusion of WWII, advocates of the new ideology of military security came into conflict with proponents of the older values. He contends that the emerging national security state was largely the Presidential creation of Harry Truman, who attempted to reconcile the two camps, and of Dwight Eisenhower, who feared the development of a garrison state but recognized the need to end the isolationist policy of the past. The tension between the two ideologies could play out within the same individual, as was the case with Truman and some others. Often, the tension carved out divisions along party and institutional lines (the national security ideology was associated more with the Democratic party and the executive branch, and the older culture more with theRepublican party and the Congress). What resulted, Hogan concludes, was a compromise: while the political, military, and intelligence organs of the national security state proliferated, the nation's democratic values and principles of civilian control prevented the nation from becoming a total garrison state. An absorbing, provocative study.

Kirkus Reviews