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Cold War Capital: The United States, the Western Allies, and the Fight for Berlin, 1945-1994

Givens, Seth
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0645-0286
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1515507541865131

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, History (Arts and Sciences).
This dissertation focuses on U.S. Army forces in Berlin from 1945 to 1994 and on broader issues of U.S. and NATO policy and strategy for the Cold War. It seeks to answer two primary questions: Why did U.S. officials risk war over a location everyone agreed was militarily untenable, and how did they construct strategies to defend it? Much of the Berlin literature looks at the city only during the two crises there, the Soviet blockade in 1948 and 1949 and Moscow's periodic ultimatum between 1958 and 1962 that the Americans, British, and French leave the city. These works maintain that leaders conceived of Berlin's worth as only a beacon of democracy in the war against communism, or a trip wire in the event that the Soviet Union invaded Western Europe. This dissertation looks beyond the crises, and contends that a long view of the city reveals U.S. officials saw Berlin as more than a liability. By combining military, diplomatic, political, and international history to analyze the evolution of U.S. diplomacy, NATO strategy and policy, and joint military planning, it suggests that U.S. officials, realizing they could not retreat, devised ways to defend Berlin and, when possible, use it as a means to achieve strategic and political ends in the larger Cold War, with both enemy and friend alike. This research is broadly concerned with national security, civil-military relations, and alliance politics. It focuses on the intersection of the military and political worlds, and tries to answer how governments analyze risk and form strategy, and then how militaries secure political and military objectives. Ultimately, it is a study of deterrence in modern war, an examination of how leaders can obtain objectives without harming friendships or instigating war.
Ingo Trauschweizer (Advisor)
Steven Miner (Committee Member)
Chester Pach (Committee Member)
James Mosher (Committee Member)
450 p.
American History; Armed Forces; European History; History
Cold War; US Army; NATO; Soviet Union; Berlin; Germany; national security; strategy; policy; deterrence; transatlantic alliance; civil and military relations

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Givens, S. (2018). Cold War Capital: The United States, the Western Allies, and the Fight for Berlin, 1945-1994 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1515507541865131

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Givens, Seth. Cold War Capital: The United States, the Western Allies, and the Fight for Berlin, 1945-1994. 2018. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1515507541865131.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Givens, Seth. "Cold War Capital: The United States, the Western Allies, and the Fight for Berlin, 1945-1994." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1515507541865131

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1515507541865131
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This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.