Cold War History

Tisch Library's guide to Federal publications to help you find specific publications and find more.

Declassified documents from the Truman to Reagan administrations, including records of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity

This series presents the official declassifed historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.
Print: Tisch Books Stacks JX 233 .A3.
Please NOTE: Supplemental documents were issued on microfiche. Guides will appear with those updated volumes in the Stacks and the microfiche will be in Microforms and Current Periodicals in MRF181.

The Digital National Security Archive provides access to over 35,000 UNOFFICIAL declassified documents of national security information outside the United States Government at George Wasington University; more documents and updates. Click on the blue i for sample collections.

From the Digital National Security Archive.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 presents an integrated, comprehensive record of U.S. decisionmaking during the most dangerous U.S.-Soviet confrontation in the nuclear era. Some 3,400 unique records relevant to the crisis, totalling approximately 17,500 pages, are reproduced in the microfiche. Much of the documentation focuses on U.S. decisionmaking during what Robert Kennedy called the "Thirteen Days" of the missile crisis—from McGeorge Bundy's October 16, 1962 briefing of President Kennedy on the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba to Nikita Khrushchev's October 28 decision to withdraw the weapons. The numerous intelligence reports, diplomatic cables, political analyses, military situation reports, and meeting minutes included in the set portray both the deliberative process and the execution of critical decisions made by the Kennedy administration during the crisis.

From the Digital National Security Archive.
The Cuban missile crisis has been called a time when the world stared down "the gun barrel of nuclear war. " More than forty-five years after the events that brought the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union into near-catastrophic conflict, the crisis remains the most important episode in the complex and contentious history of the Cold War. In an age when weapons of mass destruction continue to generate fear and warfare, the history of the missile crisis, when such weapons were armed and aimed, remains among the most compelling international events for study by scholars and students.

From the Digital National Security Archive.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the most harrowing episode of the nuclear age -- the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 -- the National Security Archive and ProQuest are pleased to present an extraordinarily rich new update consisting of the very latest declassified documentation on the missiles of October (and November).

held at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 2013.

It is a multi-media Flash presentation showcasing photos, audio, and video materials from:

* the Declassification Center and the Historical Collections at the National Archives and Records Administration
* the Information Review and Release Divisions of the Central Intelligence Agency's Office of Information Services

This online collection contains over 500 documents and over 12,000 pages of materials. It is only a small part of the greater collection located at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. The documents included are in PDF format.

On Tuesday, January 14, 2014, the National Archives National Declassification Center (NDC), in partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Historical Review Program, hosted a free symposium to tell the story of the people of Berlin and their struggle for freedom.

The symposium will highlight newly published and released declassified documents that reveal East and West Berliners' struggle for life and death in the shadow of the wall. The documents detail many aspects of their lives, focusing on the resolve of the human spirit for freedom and equality. [Available at the National Archives in Washington, D. C.]

a NATO photo essay by James R. Florent (1961)
James R. Florent (translated from the French by Dr. Amanda Weimer, Jennifer Halpern and Brewer Thompson)
(Editor’s note: The original of this article was commmissioned by NATO in July 1961 but was never formally published. NATO offered this to us for publication in response to our call for new material. Working from the draft manuscript and and written notes of the author, we have tried to keep the author’s original voice intact, especially in his use of idiom. The photos accompanying the text were chosen by the editors and were taken from the authors original set of 716 photos to illustrate the text captions found at the end of the manuscript.

An online exhibition by the U.S. Diplomacy Center and the U.S. Department of State.

Print: various titles from 1956 to 1990.
From the United States. Dept. of State. Office of the Historian.
Tisch Book Stacks JX 1417 .A33
This State Department series of individual policy statements has been superseded by Dispatch

1990-1999
Key speeches and testimony by senior State Department officials as well as current U.S. treaty actions 1990 to 1999. Continued by postings on the State Department Web site. Search for articles in Academic OneFile

1939-1989
This periodical was regarded as the official record of United States foreign policy. The contents of DSB include major addresses and news conferences of the president and the Secretary of State; Secretary and other senior State Department officials; features and articles on international relations; selected press releases issued by the White House, the State Department, .. Search for articles in PAIS

Digitized reports, documents and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and executive branch/agency publications. The title says 1994, but it is in progress, be sure to check the upper right hand corner to find out the latest date. For dates not covered in this collection see ProQuest Congressional.

The Government Printing Office's catalog, includes links to online publications and Library of Congress and SuDocs call numbers. We may or may not have them in our collection.

Print: Ref J 80 .A28. The Cumulated Indexes to the Public papers of the Presidents of the United States, … Ref J 82
Online at the American Presidency Project and from the University of Michigan Digital Library

Portal to all the Presidential libraries and museums.

Print: 35 vols. Tisch Book Stacks E 813 .D56 1995

Selected documents online.

Print: 24 vols. Tisch Book Stacks E 835 .D63 2005

Selected documents online.

Print: 25 vols. Tisch Book Stacks E 841 .D575 2005

Online archives

RealAudio of Dramatic Moments

From the LBJ Library and Museum

The Nixon Library makes available almost 50 million pages of documents, over 300,000 photographs, thousands of motion pictures and videos, and the Nixon White House Tapes. The Library is working toward making more of this massive collection available to the researcher via the Internet. You may read on-line digitized documents, view on-line photographs, search the Library's many finding aids, and listen to the President's voice.

Ford Library holdings include more than 25 million pages of documents, about 450,000 photographs, and thousands of audiotapes, videotapes, and films (see our online guide for descriptions and finding aids). The Library continues to digitize to make more of this massive collection available to researchers via the Internet. The links below point to digitized documents and audiovisual materials on our site and also some that appear elsewhere on the web.