21 July 2020
Image of US Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missile in West Germany, 1983–91
The Cold War was the period of heightened tensions between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies following World War II. Credit for the coining the term cold war is usually given to George Orwell (pen name for Eric Blair), but this is only partially correct. In the 19 October 1945 issue of The Tribune, Orwell wrote:
The atomic bomb may complete the process by robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of the bomb on a basis of military equality. Unable to conquer one another, they are likely to continue ruling the world between them, and it is difficult to see how the balance can be upset except by slow and unpredictable demographic changes.
For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham’s theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of “cold war” with its neighbours.
Orwell was the first to publicly use the phrase cold war to refer to the post-war competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, but he was not the first to use the phrase to refer to conflict between great powers that falls short of war.
The period of rising tensions leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939 was sometimes referred to as a cold war. Journalist Joseph Barnes wrote of a possible cold war between Germany and Poland in the 30 July 1939 edition of the New York Herald Tribune:
All Sections of Population Are Resolved to Fight but Defense in Long-Drawn “Cold War” of Nerves Is Not So Certain [sub-headline]
If German forces move into Danzig to annex it, they will be opposed by a Poland more united than at any time since it returned to the map of Europe twenty years ago. If they proceed instead by “cold war,” by the eroding process of alternate threats and crises leading up to negotiation on the Munich model, Polish resistance will be less certain.
And an article in the Baltimore Sun on 16 August 1939 also used cold war to refer to the tensions in pre-war Europe:
The cold war of propaganda, demonstrations, confusion of feeling and attack on nerves is stepped up to a new high as September and the Nürnberg Nazi congress approach, while the promise of relief and settlement is again quietly refurbished.
Image of woman glaring at pro-FDR picketers, 1940
The phrase even appeared in the context of U.S. domestic politics, referring to tensions between Democrats and Republicans. The following appeared as a caption to a photograph in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of 21 October 1940:
“I Beg Your Pardon.” Most pictures of pickets handing out leaflets look alike; only the signs different. This one caught the flavor of the cold war that leaflet distributors face when they preach Roosevelt to Republicans. The picture was made on New York’s Fifth avenue. The photographer didn’t get the name of the woman, but to veteran pickets her expression needed no caption.
But perhaps the use that most closely captures the qualities of the post-war Cold War to come is this the Manchester Guardian of 31 July 1941. It is a response to a speech made by British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden in which he suggested that Germany might wish to come to terms with Britain and the Soviet Union but that accepting a negotiated peace would be a mistake. The Guardian opined:
Mr. Eden did well to describe the position in which the world would find itself after the conclusion of a peace that left Hitler in power. [...] We should have to continue the incessant production of tanks and aircraft, and the needs of war would have the first claim on all our energy, all our wealth, all our plans, all our thoughts. All Europe would suffer the misery of a kind of cold war in which everything but life itself would be sacrificed to fear.
Although the cold war antagonist here is Germany, not the Soviet Union, the statement is eerily prescient.
And toward the end of the war, American journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote the following which was syndicated widely in papers through the United States and Canada:
The coalition has been kept together by one man: Hitler, and by one nation: Germany. If this man and his nation disappear, or cease to be menacing, a catastrophe threatens the coalition. The only sure way we can maintain the coalition is to continue a cold war against Germany, creating by our policies the perpetual fear of a German rebellion and hence the perpetual need of a coalition to keep her down.
Like the Guardian piece from four years before, Thompson envisioned a cold war against Germany, but one that would continue for many years after the actual war ended. Thompson’s piece is akin to the old quip that the purpose of NATO was to “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
So, Orwell did not coin the term cold war—the term was well established in foreign policy circles in the decade prior and was used to refer to politico-military competition between great powers—but he seems to have been the first to publicly recognize that one would exist between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Sources:
Barnes, Joseph. “Poland Offers a United Front.” New York Herald Tribune, 30 July 1939, 6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“The Everyday Magazine: As Election Day Draws Near.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 21 October 1940, 1D. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Mr. Eden’s Warning.” Manchester Guardian, 31 July 1941, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Orwell, George (Eric Blair). “You and the Atom Bomb.” Tribune, 19 October 1945. The Orwell Foundation.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v., cold, adj.
“The Peace Offensive.” Baltimore Sun, 16 August 1939, 10. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Thompson, Dorothy. “Method in the Germans’ Madness.” Louisville Courier-Journal, 1 January 1945, 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo credits:
Morris Engel, PM photo appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 21 October 1940.
Unknown photographer, unknown date (1983–91), Field Artillery, HQDA PB6-91, February 1991, 32. Public domain image.