To lead the free world: American nationalism and the ideological origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950

This dissertation examines the role of American nationalism within U.S. public discourse about foreign affairs from the end of World War II to the outbreak of the Korean War. It aims to elucidate how and why global anti-communism came to dominate U.S. public life in the postwar era. The central thesis is that American nationalist ideology, including traditional ideas about America's special mission and destiny, provided the principal underpinning for the broad consensus that supported Cold War foreign policy.; The research is rooted in a set of sources chosen to represent key segments of the public culture. The Truman administration is represented primarily through the President's major, nationally broadcast foreign-policy speeches. Public reaction is gauged through letters to the President from ordinary citizens responding to these speeches. Four mass-circulation publications are examined systematically: Life, the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and the New York Daily News. The African-American community is represented through influential periodicals and the records of leading civil rights organizations. Organized labor is viewed through the national convention proceedings of major trade unions.; Throughout, general discussions of America's world role were read closely, with an eye to key words and phrases, such as victory, freedom, national greatness and global responsibility. The analysis explicates tensions and convergences in how different individuals and groups used these terms.; The administration and the media spoke a common language of national greatness, global responsibility and free-world leadership. These terms came to set the boundaries of legitimate public discussion. When the Truman Doctrine speech redefined global responsibility in terms of global anti-communism, the boundaries of debate constricted further. Between 1947 and 1950, Americans increasingly interpreted international events through images of global struggle between the U.S.-led "free world" and a Soviet-controlled "slave world." Anti-communism fit powerfully into the existing mixture of nationalism and globalism because this mixture already functioned as an ideology of "nationalist globalism" which helped Americans make sense of their nation's dominant place in the postwar world. The broad appeal of global anti-communism must be understood in that context.