Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

A postscript to the oral history transcripts included in Part I of this paper, Part II examines the “politically powerful discourses” from within academia that were read and witnessed by the participants of the Berlin Nuclear Crisis Project. Martin Hillenbrand, McGeorge Bundy, and the biographer of Paul Nitze, David Callahan, were guests of the project in l989. Since transcripts of those meetings were not available, the author choose to quote passages from notes taken during the interviews at the Kennedy School and from their biographies, memoirs, and other written works. What is similar in the three men’s lives is how war, international crisis, politics, and powerful men shaped their outlook on everything they experienced. Hillenbrand, Bundy, and Nitze were part of the decision-making process that began and ended the Cold War. They all shared an image of Russia as the enemy.