Culture | Post-war politics

Hijacked by history

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WHAT happens when the leaders of a powerful nation arrive at the end of a long and bloody war and try to give shape to the world beyond it? This question ultimately lies at the heart of two new historical studies, one by Geoffrey Roberts, an associate professor at University College Cork, and the other by Wilson Miscamble, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Both look backward and forward from the bloody fulcrum of 1945 to see how wartime experiences shaped the cold-war world.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Hijacked by history”

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