Total Cold War:

Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle

at Home and Abroad

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, February 2006)

Pre-publication Reviews

"Osgood's book is a carefully crafted, thoroughly researched, and illuminating analysis of U.S. psychological warfare and propaganda during the height of the Cold War. When 'public diplomacy' is stated to be critical for winning the war against terrorism, it is invaluable to have this study of the Eisenhower administration's efforts to win the hearts and minds of humankind during the turbulent decade of the 1950s."

— Melvyn P. Leffler, author of A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

"Impressively researched, packed with new information and insights, Total Cold War is a major contribution to Cold War studies and the history of the Eisenhower presidency. An outstanding first book."

— George Herring, author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975

"This is more than just another chapter in the history of psychological warfare. Osgood's well-researched volume uses topics as diverse as cultural diplomacy, the arms race, and the space race to shed new light on efforts by the Eisenhower Administration to shape opinions at home as well as abroad, in the free world as well as the communist world. The book succeeds in large part by situating its narrative in a larger context having to do with the new media resources that made this kind of warfare easier and more sophisticated, with the nature of modern war as total war, and with the growing interpenetration between the public and the private spheres, between war and peace, between the home front and the front line that became increasingly typical of both modern war and the modern corporative state."

— Michael J. Hogan, author of A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954

“Kenneth Osgood continues the scholarly tradition of raising historians' estimate of the Eisenhower presidency. Total Cold War is a highly informative, suavely argued, conscientiously researched, and articulate book, which shows how crucial the techniques of psychological warfare were to the geopolitical strategy of the United States in the 1950s. Osgood makes a superlative case for the resourcefulness of an administration that was once dismissed as too stodgy to wage an effective fight against Communism abroad.”

— Stephen J. Whitfield, author of The Culture of the Cold War

"This is far and away the most thorough, sophisticated, and meticulously researched account of U.S. propaganda efforts during the early Cold War. Kenneth Osgood's pathbreaking study demonstrates the centrality of such efforts to the overall foreign policy strategy of the Eisenhower administration. As issues of image and public diplomacy have once again gained currency in the contemporary era, this book could not be more timely."

— Robert J. McMahon, author of The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia Since World War II

"Total Cold War is totally absorbing and will alter our understanding of the ways that Americans waged the Cold War in the 1950s. With the United States now engaged in another global battle for hearts and minds, Osgood's rich and rewarding study is timely and instructive."

— Chester J. Pach, author of Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military Assistance Program, 1945-1950

“Kenneth Osgood’s path-breaking book on how the Eisenhower administration tried to shape world and domestic opinion at the height of the Cold War could not be more relevant today. Elegantly written and powerfully argued, Total Cold War reminds us that pens and microphones can be as important as guns and bombs in defending U.S. national security. The book belongs on the shelf of core texts for understanding U.S. foreign relations.”

— Timothy Natfali, author of Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism

"This is a superb book that sheds valuable light on the Eisenhower administration's efforts to sway official and public opinion in the non-Communist world. The use of psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc has been covered in several recent books, but Kenneth Osgood highlights the 'other side' of U.S. psychological operations-the operations that focused on neutral countries, on U.S. allies, and on the American public. Osgood convincingly shows, in a sophisticated narrative that weaves together many topics and themes, that the struggle to 'win hearts and minds' in Western countries and the Third World was at least as high a priority for the United States as the battle to influence sentiments in the Communist bloc. Total Cold War offers a remarkably comprehensive look at the vast array of programs and policies that cumulatively shaped the Eisenhower administration's attempts to convey a positive image of U.S. values and American society abroad. The book alters our understanding not only of U.S. foreign policy but of the whole way the 'war of words and deeds' was 'fought.'"

— Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Center at Harvard University and editor of the Journal of Cold War Studies

Published Reviews

“The Cold War often produces images of missile silos bristling with rockets armed with nuclear warheads. But there was another dimension that is much less well known: the struggle for the hearts and minds of the First, Second, and Third Worlds. President Eisenhower was an early advocate of psychological warfare and promoted several major initiatives that focused on nonlethal competition between the Soviets and the Americans. Atoms for Peace, People-to-People, and other cultural exchange programs were designed to present everyday Americans as a people living blissfully in a classless society. Osgood has produced a remarkable work that charts a new course in the heavily traveled Cold War historiography. … Osgood has synthesized an enormous number of primary and secondary sources, including recently declassified government documents, in this exceedingly important book that newly reveals Eisenhower as an activist president with a long-term influence on national security. The impact of psychological warfare has been underrepresented in much recent Cold War literature, and Osgood's study fills a gap in our understanding of this 50-year struggle. Highly recommended for all collections.”

— Ed Goedeken, Library Journal, February 15, 2006

“The words "Cold War propaganda," when applied to the United States, immediately bring to mind such enterprises as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which beamed a mixture of news and carefully-crafted disinformation into the Soviet Union and its satellite states. But behind these covert CIA operations were other psychological warfare programs -- some secret, some very much out in the open -- intended to carry out President Eisenhower's determination to wage "total cold war."

These enterprises are explored in a fascinating read, Kenneth Osgood's Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (University Press of Kansas, $45, 512 pages, illus.) Mr. Osgood began research on the book a decade ago at the University of California at Santa Barbara; he now teaches history at Florida Atlantic University.

Although brought to full voice during the Eisenhower years, the post-war propaganda campaign had its origins in the historic policy paper NSC-68, produced by the State Department's Policy Planning Staff under Paul Nitze in 1950. The paper urged an exponential increase in military spending to maintain U.S. superiority, even though Nitze considered "a total war started deliberately by the Soviets . . . a tertiary risk." Military strength would provide a "shield behind which we must deploy all of our nonmilitary resources in the campaign to roll back the power of the USSR and to frustrate the Kremlin design."

During his 1952 campaign, Ike took the program public, realizing that popular support and understanding was essential. He told a San Francisco audience that he was going to speak about psychological warfare, quickly adding, "Don't be afraid of that term just because it's a five-dollar, five-syllable word." Rather, it is "the struggle for the minds and wills of men."

Mr. Eisenhower would hark back to World War II, when in his opinion psychological warfare played a major role in the North African campaign and the invasion of Normandy. Some eight billion leaflets were dropped on target areas -- "enough to have given every man, woman and child on earth four leaflets," Ike quipped.

The death of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in May 1953 gave the new administration an opening to challenge Moscow to back away from the hard line it had pursued since 1945, and to encourage the satellite states to break away from the communist orbit. The underlying purpose, writes Mr. Osgood, was to "encourage a power struggle between the key Communist Party leaders and other major elements of power within the USSR, such as the military or internal security forces."

Of course, the so-called "dirty tricks" specialists at CIA had their own role: "Subversive rumors, contrived events, and half-truths, would be planted by the CIA, picked up by the media, and reported as fact." These programs were coordinated by a former Time-Life executive named C. D. Jackson, who hoped to force a "climax in which the communist system would break into open internal conflict."

Nonetheless, many in Washington reacted with surprise when the new (if temporary) Soviet leader Georgii Malenkov junked Stalin's "no compromises" stance, declaring that no problems divided East and West that could not be solved by negotiations.

Thus commenced a phase of the Cold War that featured competing "peace offensives," both sides struggling to seize public opinion. The United States brought forth such programs as Atoms for Peace, People-to-People, and uncountable cultural exchanges. At Ike's direction, the emphasis shifted from harsh denunciations of communism to a positive presentation of America as a peaceful nation.

Although the United States Information Agency did the brunt of the visible work, Eisenhower was shrewd enough to involve non-governmental bodies -- business, private individuals, labor -- because he felt they would be more effective, and because they would have the value of mobilizing the public behind what he was doing.

One area which Mr. Osgood avoids, in the main, is that of covert psy warfare, perhaps because that sort of material even now is difficult to access. Nonetheless, a good read.

Measuring success in foreign affairs is always an "iffy" task. Suffice to say that as the Eisenhower years began, East and West were frozen in angry confrontation. And despite the multitude of problems in following years, at least Moscow and Washington attempted to talk through their problems rather than resort to war.”

—Joseph C. Goulden, The Washington Times, April 16, 2006