Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism on the Northern Plains

Amazon.com Price: $29.95 (as of 02/05/2019 23:50 PST- Details)

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Description

Most communists, as any plains state patriot would have told you in the 1950s, lived in Los Angeles or New York City, not Minot, North Dakota. The Cold War as it played out across the Great Plains was once not the Cold War of the American cities and coasts. Nor was once it tempered much by midwestern isolationism, as common wisdom has it. In this book, David W. Mills offers an enlightening look at what among the heartland was once up to at the same time as The us was once united in its war on Reds. Cold War in a Cold Land adopts a regional perspective to develop a new understanding of a critical chapter in the nation’s history.

Marx himself had no hope that landholding farmers would get up as communist revolutionaries. So it must come as no surprise that in places like South Dakota, where 70 percent of the population owned land and worked for themselves, people didn’t take the specter of internal subversion very seriously. Mills plumbs the historical record to show how residents of the plains states—at the same time as deeply patriotic and supportive of the nation’s foreign policy—responded less than enthusiastically to national anticommunist programs. Only South Dakota, for instance, adopted a loyalty oath, and it was once fervently opposed right through the state. Only Montana, prodded by one state legislator, formed an investigation committee—one that never investigated anyone and was once quickly disbanded. Plains state people were, then again, “highly churched” and enthusiastically embraced federal attempts to use religion as a bulwark against atheistic communist ideology. Even more enthusiastic was once the Great Plains response to the military buildup that accompanied Cold War politics, as the construction of airbases and missile fields brought untold economic benefits to the region.

A much-needed, nuanced account of how average citizens in middle The us experienced Cold War politics and policies, Cold War in a Cold Land is a significant addition to the history of both the Cold War and the Great Plains.

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