Description: In The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945-1953, David F. Krugler examines the controversial Voice of America (VOA), the U.S. government's international shortwave radio agency used not only to send America's message abroad but also to monitor Soviet activities and turn back the Communist threat.

As post-World War II tensions with the Soviet Union grew into the Cold War, the U.S. government, under the leadership of President Harry S. Truman, carried out various programs aimed at halting the expansion of communism. The Voice of America, with its legislative mandate to tell the world about the American people and to explain the nation's foreign policies, quickly cast itself as the ideological arm of the new policy of containment, seeking not only to keep the world informed about U.S. policies but also to refute Soviet international propaganda.

Given the nation's fear and general hatred of communism in the postwar years, it seemed unlikely that the VOA would be hindered by domestic disruption or criticism. Yet in the years from 1945 to 1953 the VOA experienced constant problems, including congressional investigations, slashed budgets, canceled transmitter construction projects, and chronic neglect by its operating agency, the State Department, and other national security bodies.

Krugler explains that the VOA's troubles, the "domestic propaganda battles", were the result of the rivalries that shaped American politics during these years. Most disruptive were the Republican drive to roll back the New Deal; the ongoing contest between conservative congressmen and the Truman administration to define the proper prerogatives of the executive branch in foreign affairs;the use of foreign policies or issues to serve partisan, even personal, aims; and intra-executive branch disputes over the VOA's proper purposes.

The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945-1953 makes an original contribution to the subject of propaganda during the Cold War.

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