On November 4, 1956, Soviet forces brutally suppressed the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest. Although Nikita Khrushchev had attempted to "repair" the Soviet Union's image by denouncing Stalin's crimes, the Soviet invasion of Hungary damaged the Soviet Union's legitimacy in the international community. This thesis examines the popular and religious press' coverage of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. By publishing anticommunist editorials and letters to the editor, the popular press furthered the phenomenon known as Cold War Consensus. Historians have looked at Cold War Consensus as a conscious political project created by a number of individuals and institutions. This thesis emphasizes the role of the popular and religious press as agents in the solidification of the Cold War Consensus. Most notable was the popular and religious press' use of the victimization narrative. By portraying the Hungarian freedom fighters as victims of the Soviet system, the popular and religious press condemned the Soviet Union's actions while extolling "American values" such as democracy, freedom, and charity. The popular and religious press' treatment of Soviet brutality also built a sensationalized image of Hungarian refugees. The emphasis on Soviet savagery and narrative centered on incoming Hungarian refugees as heroes strengthened anticommunist rhetoric that was typical during the 1950s. / History

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald Mrozek / Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon used the ideology of military containment of Communism to justify U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. Until 1968, opponents of this intervention attacked the ideology of containment or its application to Vietnam. In 1968, opponents of the war switched tactics and began to focus instead on the President’s credibility. These arguments quickly became the dominant critique of the war through its end and were ultimately successful in ending it. The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution were central to the change of opposition strategy in 1968. For Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin incident had provided the political impetus to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which the administration used as an insurance policy against Congressional dissent. For Congressional dissenters in 1968, inconsistencies in Johnson’s version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident allowed them to undermine the Resolution as a weapon against Congress. For the American people, revelations about the administration’s dishonesty during the incident simply added to grave doubts that Americans already had about Johnson’s credibility; the American people lost confidence in Johnson, ending his Presidency. The dramatic success of this new strategy—attacking the administration’s credibility—encouraged other opponents to follow suit, permanently altering the framework of debate over the war. This change in opposition strategy in 1968 had a number of important consequences. First, this change in rhetoric ultimately ended the war. To sustain his credibility against relentless attack, President Nixon repeatedly withdrew troops to prove to the American people he was ending the war. Nixon ran out of troops to withdraw and had to accept an unfavorable peace. Second, after the war, this framework for debate of military interventions established—between advocates using the ideology of containment and opponents attacking the administration’s credibility—would reemerge nearly every time an administration contemplated military intervention through the end of the Cold War. Finally, because opponents of military intervention stopped challenging containment in 1968, the American public continued to accept the precepts of containment and the Cold War consensus survived until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

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