Cold War
Electronic Information Resources

Free Journal Articles?

Primarily Primary Resources

Mixed, But Interesting, Internet Information Sources on the Cold War

Web Subject Catalogs

Digital National Security Archive

WHAT TO EXPECT This is, essentially, a subscription service although some documents are available for free through the George Washington University National Security Archive homepage itself. The subscription database gives you more powerful search options and access to over 60,000 declassified primary source documents acquired through FOIA covering events in United States' foreign policy from 1945 forward, including major foreign policy events of the Cold War period. New material is added in "collections". Right now the Archive contains more than 30 complete collections, Afghanistan, Berlin Crisis 1958-1962, Cuban Missile Crisis, El Salvador, Iran-Contra Affair, Intelligence Community, Iran Revolution, Iraqgate, Military Uses of Space, Nicaragua, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Philippines, Presidential Directives from Truman to Clinton, Soviet Estimate and South Africa.

SEARCHING TIPS

On the free homepage, you can keyword search very simply through their searchbox or click on DOCUMENTS to browse what is available.

Here are some tips on using the subscription database:

• Start out reading the description of the collection in which you expect your topic to occur. This will give you an idea of what is available and, therefore, some useful keywords.
• In the search grid, be sure to select that collection.
• You can use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT and parentheses on any line of the search grid that is not a pulldown menu!
• You can truncate root words using the asterisk, as in cuba* There are other types of truncation available as well. See SEARCH HELP for the details on those.
• Start out on the Keyword line of the search grid. If you retrieve too many items, do the same search on the Subject line.
• For example, if I wanted to see what was available on the Kennedy-Khrushchev meetings in Vienna in 1961, related to the Berlin Crisis, I might enter this on the Keyword line:

kennedy and khrushchev and vienna and berlin crisis

CWIHP: Cold War International History Project is the premier site for Cold War websurfers. The Project, housed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., was begun in 1991 to facilitate the release of government historical materials on all sides of the Cold War. The Virtual Archive component is, in essence, a large, searchable database of documents, working papers and articles from the CWIHP Bulletin. The opening page highlights what is new to the collection. Start your search by clicking on ADVANCED search under the tiny search box in the upper right corner. You can search by keywords or phrases in the appropriately marked boxes. Be sure to select CWIHP Virtual Archive in the SOURCE box and Cold War International History Project in the SEARCH A PROGRAM BY CONTENT TYPE box.

At Cold War's End is a collection of CIA declassified documents dealing with the period from 1989-1991. Everything is in pdf format. The rationale behind the collection and its organization are well-described in the Forward.

Parallel History Project of NATO and the Warsaw Pact
The PHP web site began in 1999 to collect declassified documents from east and central Europe and to encourage declassification of additional documents in these countries. Materials come from both NATO and former Warsaw Pact country archives. In addition to providing fascimile reproductions on the web, many documents also appear translated into English. In addition to these primary source documents, the site has news on workshops and other events related to the history of this period and to the declassification of other documents. It also has articles by and bibliographies of authors related to the PHP. The site is a cooperative venture and maintained by the Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research in Zurich. To see who is involved in each country, look at the PHP Network. You can search or browse the site. You can sign up for an electronic newsletter as well to keep up!

CIA Electronic Reading Room, includes a large database of OCR scanned records released to the public since November 1996 under the Freedom of Information Act. It is searchable by keyword and date.

C.I.A. Center for the Study of Intelligence is publishing declassified CIA records, by topic, in books which it is making available here on the web. There is no search engine. You must simply select from the list of available pubilcation titles and then scan the tables of contents for relevant material. Here are a few title, to intrigue you, but there are many more:

• On the Front Lines of the Cold War: Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946 to 1961
• The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974
• At Cold War's End: US Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989-1999
• CIA and the Vietnam policymakers: three episodes, 1962-1968
• US Intelligence and the Polish Crisis 1980 - 1981

The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s is brought to you by Alan Filreis, a specialist in modern and contemporary American poetry and the literary politics of the American 1930s and 1950s, a faculty member of the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania. It is a cornucopia of primary source documents from the period covering a wide range of political, cultural, and literary topics.

Foreign Relations of the United States is a series of books going back to 1861 that contain primary source documents on major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The material is taken from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy. Over 20 volumes are available online (and they are adding all the time). Right now, they cover parts of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years, which is a large part of the Cold War.

Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy: the Cold War is a very long unannotated list of hotlinks to documents on the web in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER! It's really too long to browse, but, if you have interest in a particular year, you can browse that year's documents. This is put together by Vincent Ferraro, a professor of international politics at Mt. Holyoke College.

Berlin Airlift is a digital version of a study collection held at the Truman Presidential Library. It contains selected documents ranging from press releases to Truman's personal diary entries as they relate to the Berlin Airlift.

For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan is an online exhibit from the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. It includes an potpourri of material related to the Plan from a timeline to political cartoons and scanned photos from primary sources.

Castro Speech Database contains the fulltext of English translations of speeches, interviews, and press conferences by Fidel Castro, a major Cold War player! The database is based upon the records of the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). It is a project of Lanic (Latin American Network Information Center) at University of Texas.

Hear President Kennedy on the Cuban Missile Crisis from History & Politics Out Loud, a searchable archive of politically significant radio broadcasts, a project of Michigan State University and partially funded by the NEH. The History Channel's webpage also has a speech archive that contains, generally excerpts only, Real Audio clips of many Cold War events. You can hear the Nixon-Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate" the Radio Budapest announcement of the Soviet invasion.

CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis is a .pdf version of a 1992 book they published which contains over 100 declassified documents on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and, even though most of the documents have been "edited" for various reasons, this is still a great resource.

Revelations from the Russian Archives is an online exhibition of 25 fulltext documents in the Library of Congress from papers from the Central Communist Committee, the presidential archive and the KGB archive. Dates range from 1917-1991.

Harvard Project on Cold War Studies (HPCWS) was established in 1997 at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian Studies to take advantage of the flood of new documentation from the former Communist bloc. HPCWS is building on the achievements of the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. by promoting scholarly and student research and sponsoring scholarly publications, including Working Papers, a book series, and a new Journal of Cold War Studies.

CNN.com/Cold War is a companion to the CNN TV/video series. It's big and it's slick and it has won a number of awards. Lots of spy stuff here! You might want to check out the Hoover Institution's book on the series, CNN's Cold War Documentary : Issues and Controversy!

The Chairman Smiles: Posters from the Former Soviet Union, Cuba, and China includes images of famous and not-so-famous political propaganda posters as well as information on the collections, artists and designs of the posters. It comes to you from the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Keep in mind that these are all copyrighted by the Institute. You must get permission to use them on your own website!

Ten Years After: The Fall of Communism in East/Central Europe is a special report from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on the events of 1989. It includes audio clips from the RFE/RL archives.

A Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall is, in essence, an exhibition on the web providing photographs, facts/figures, chronology, recommended readings.

The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation is a top secret report which strongly criticizes the CIA's handling of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The report was released in 1998 after a lot of effort on the part of The National Security Archive at George Washington University, which is bringing you this report on the WWW.

German Propaganda Archive contains translated materials from the Nazis and the GDR from the 1930s up until the end of the Berlin Wall. This is a project of Randall Bytwerk, a Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA).

Timelines of History allows you to choose a year or a country and get a very brief description of major events. Every item listed has a reference. The references are given in abbreviated form, so be sure to check the list of references.