ABSTRACT During the Cold War the United States developed an espionage style that reflected its love affair with technology (technophilia) whereas the Soviet Union and the East Bloc continued a tradition of using humans to collect intelligence. This essay places the origins and development of these espionage styles during the Cold War in historical and social context, and assesses their strengths and weaknesses by drawing on examples from particular cases. While the United States won the Cold War, the East Bloc (...) won the spy wars because of a more effective espionage style. I conclude with some reflections on the uses of history for future policy, and suggest areas for further study. (shrink)

Why did the Rockefeller Foundation think that it had to redeem its pledge of 1930 after the drastic political changes had occurred in Germany? It is my impression that the foundation was forced reluctantly to do so. There had, of course, been a resolution passed by the trustees in 1930 to vote the funds. This did constitute an obligation for the foundation which its trustees and officers were reluctant to disavow. It would probably have preferred that Planck could not meet (...) the conditions set forth by the foundation. If this had occurred, it could have avoided the onus of failure to meet an obligation undertaken in 1930 and could then have also avoided providing support, even if only indirectly, for National Socialist Germany. When faced with the alternatives of withdrawal or payment of the grant, most of the officers preferred to delay action. Max Mason, on the other hand, had promised Planck that the grant would be made, despite the delay.Increasingly, after 1933, the Rockefeller Foundation spent more time dealing with requests for refugee scientists than with the support of scientific work in Germany. The dismissal of foundation-supported assistants on “racial” grounds had angered some members of the foundation.When the Rockefeller Foundation was chartered in New York in 1913 it declared that its objective was “the well-being of mankind throughout the world”. That remained its aim, but a fanatical nationalism made it impossible for the foundation to pursue an internationalist policy in a country with a regime entirely antithetical to that ideal. (shrink)

Virtually no one outside Germany, however, thought that Schramm's story was right. This was because of the war. It was inconceivable to most people that the German beasts would have permitted the extensive experiments underlying his claims to be routinely carried out during the last years of a war they were so badly losing. It was all too easy to image that the work had direct Nazi support and that his experiments were incorrectly analyzed. Wasting time to disprove Schramm was (...) not to most biochemists' liking. (shrink)