The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare: Cold War Organizations Sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe/ Free Europe Committee

The National Committee for a Free Europe – which at one point changed its name to Free Europe Committee – was a US government sponsored organization between 1949 and 1971. Its mission was to wage “organized political warfare” against Soviet Expansionism, with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as the two most well known divisions. The NCFE and its anti-communist campaign remains one of the last aspects of U.S. Cold War policy that has not been thoroughly researched, and Cold War scholarship will not be complete until this history is made available. The essays in this book discuss the Bulgarian, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Baltic States national committees, which were formed to lead the propaganda battle against the growth of world-wide communism, and which represented the U.S.-based exile leadership of those satellite nations. The primary sources of this research were the archival records of the two radio divisions, acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University in 2000.