Give Me Liberty Summary

The “Cold War” as a term refers to the hostilities, tension, and competition that defined the relationship between Western powers and the Soviet Union. With a particular interest in the relations between the American government and that of the Soviets, the war presented a single cause of conflict that saw both nations view the other as a possible threat in the post-Second World War period. Notably, the countries did not prepare for the Cold War as they did for the Great War in which existing alliances created active defense systems, and it certainly did not emerge after years of planning as in the case of the Nazis who sparked World War II. On the contrary, the Cold War was subject to the Allied defeat of the Germany-led Axis powers and the …show more content…
Once more on Churchill’s Iron Curtain, people on both sides risked and sometimes lost their lives fighting the enemy and sometimes betraying their faction. Eric Foner provides a definition of “espionage” within the laws of the United States in his book Give Me Liberty! According to the author, as per the terms of The Espionage Act of 1917, federal law defined espionage as the act of “making false statements” or “spying and interfering” with the military successes of the nation. Accordingly, in the Cold War, the leaking of any information that went against the army advancements of the United States was an act of espionage. For precision, this paper will use the given definition to analyze the concept of spying at the individual and organizational levels including the agencies that the Soviets and Americans created for the purpose of intelligence work and protecting information. Similarly, the different tactics, such as the use of submarines to gain information, made up a vital part of spying activities in both countries while they each developed new technology and tools to aid their respective agents. By the end of the Cold War, spying was the ideal method of information gathering, and that did not stop once peace