During the early cold war the Soviet Union’s support for international peace organizations and their diplomatic peace initiatives did much to discredit peace initiatives among Western cold warriors.  By the early 1950s, peace no longer represented a universal idea but an ideological weapon in the East-West confrontation.  It is a Basic Communist Doctrine to Fight for Peace: Cold War Battles Over the Concept of Peace explores the transnational rhetorical battles over the concept of peace in the 1950s and 1960s.

Petra Goedde is a professor of History at Temple University, whose research interests inclide in U.S. foreign relations, transnational culture and gender history. She is the author of GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (Yale 2003).