George F. Kennan

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George F. Kennan, 1940s

George Frost Kennan (born February 16, 1904 in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , †  March 17, 2005 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was an American historian and diplomat . His name is associated with the Marshall Plan and the containment policy during the Cold War .

He studied at Princeton University and later at the University of Berlin . Between 1926 and 1961 he worked for the United States Department of State , including in Moscow , Berlin , Prague , Lisbon and London . From 1947 to 1949 George F. Kennan worked in the US State Department as head of planning.

In 1957 he received the Pulitzer Prize , in 1976 the Pour le Mérite and in 1982 the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade .

Life

Childhood, Youth and Studies (1904–1926)

Kennan's mother died shortly after he was born. As a child, he attended St. John's Northwestern Military Academy boarding school in Delafield , Wisconsin. In 1912 Kennan spent six months with his stepmother in Kassel , the former vacation spot of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Between 1921 and 1925 he studied a. a. with Raymond Sontag and Joseph C. Green . In 1925 he passed the entrance exam for the Foreign Service. He spent the summer of 1926 in Heidelberg , Berlin and Bansin . During this time he read Goethe and Oswald Spengler in order to learn German better.

First section in the diplomatic service (1926–1928)

Kennan spent seven months at the Foreign Service School in Washington, DC, and was then transferred to Geneva and Hamburg . Kennan decided to perfect his education. He initially wanted to leave the diplomatic service and return to the university.

Training as a Russia specialist (1928–1931)

In 1928, the United States Department of State offered officials willing to be trained as professionals in Arabic , Russian , Chinese, or Japanese a three-year return to university. Like his friend Charles E. Bohlen , Kennan took this opportunity: First he was transferred to the Baltic States , which until recently had belonged to Russia's sphere of influence . There he worked as Vice Consul in Tallinn , where he took private lessons in Russian. In the winter semester of 1929/30 he enrolled at the University of Berlin. After just one year, he obtained the translator's diploma at the Department of Oriental Studies .

In 1930/31 he studied Russian history at the University of Berlin. It was there that he met the Norwegian Annelise Soerensen , whom he married in September in Kristiansand , Norway . The two had four children together and by 2005 eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Riga (1931-1933)

From autumn 1931 to autumn 1933 Kennan worked in Riga in the Russia department. There he became an expert on economic issues.

Moscow (1933–1937)

After Franklin D. Roosevelt's election victory , the USSR was recognized and ambassadors were exchanged. So Kennan worked from winter 1933/34 under Ambassador William C. Bullitt and chargé Loy W. Henderson in Moscow. Spaso House was selected as the ambassador's residence. After the murder of Sergei Kirov on December 1, 1934, the repression intensified, culminating in the Great Terror from 1936 to 1938 with its denunciations and the Moscow trials .

In January 1937, Roosevelt confidante Joseph E. Davies took up the post as US Ambassador to Moscow. His assignment was to assess the political and military strength of the Soviet Union and was also determined to avoid further disagreements with the Soviets and to explore ways of working together. With his approach, manners, and opinions, Davies, however, did not appear to Kennan and the other professional diplomats to be a serious ambassador, but a politician appointed only as a favor. Especially since in 1941 Davies published the work Mission to Moscow about his time as ambassador, in which he justified the show trials that began in 1937 and gave Stalin a positive assessment, Kennan's criticism of Davies was adopted by most historians. In fact, Davies was less naive than his subordinates thought. According to Kennan's biographer John Lewis Gaddis, Davies and Kennan were not that far apart in their verdicts on the show trials, because although Kennan warned that the confessions might have been obtained, he held the defendants' guilt from the regime's point of view for likely.

Historians have interpreted differently that Davies supported the replacement of Kennan in Moscow in 1937. While Wilson D. Miscamble emphasizes the differences between Kennan and Davies, David Mayers sees the ambassador seriously concerned for Kennan's health. In any case, Kennan himself was ready to leave Moscow.

Washington (1937-1939)

Kennan returned to Washington in 1937. In the same year the Russia department of the Foreign Ministry, which had existed since 1924, was dissolved and integrated into the Western Europe department. Kennan saw in this a devaluation of the activities of the American experts on Russia and the work he had done in Moscow and at the same time an expression of the disinterest of the official Washington towards the huge Soviet Union. Kennan officially served as Russia Head of Unit in the State Department ; however, the report consisted of only one person in 1938/39.

Kennan felt ignored and overlooked. In his reflections on Soviet-American relations, he proposed that the Russians had been influenced in their history by "Asian hordes" and therefore considered foreigners to be enemies. The size of the country contributes to "extremism", while the Russian character shows the features of a "typical oriental despotism" and at the same time an "inferiority complex". Historian Thomas G. Paterson characterizes Kennan's conclusions as deterministic and subjective. Enmity and deep distrust of the Soviets, as well as the advice to be patient, have become the cornerstones of Kennan's thinking.

Prague (1939)

Shortly before the start of the war , Kennan was transferred to Prague . In the residence of the Ambassador, the Palais Schönborn , he had to experience how the Wehrmacht , the Czechoslovakia broke up and how powerless the international community and his country there were. In March 1939 the American embassy was officially abandoned. By order of the State Department, Kennan stayed there for six months, writing report after report.

Berlin and internment (1939–1942)

With the beginning of the Second World War, Kennan worked at the embassy in Berlin . The employees of the embassy felt the great responsibility for Jews and others who wanted or had to leave Germany as an ordeal. The representation was understaffed and did not even own a vehicle. In an emergency, Chargé d'affaires Alexander Comstock Kirk bought a car with his own money. Kennan felt the mood in the capital was less committed to the Nazi dictatorship than in the rest of Germany.

From 1940 onwards, Kennan was given the task of keeping in touch with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , a representative of the military resistance who was occasionally brave enough to come to the embassy during the day. Four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop shouted a declaration of war in the face of the Chargé d'Affaires in the Foreign Office . The embassy staff had to vacate their apartments that night and were declared prisoners by the Gestapo , each with two pieces of hand luggage .

Former Jeschkes Grand Hotel in Bad Nauheim

130 diplomats and journalists were interned in the Jeschkes Grand Hotel in Bad Nauheim , which had been closed since 1939, for five and a half months . Kennan was responsible for them; one had problems with hunger and cold. Kennan had to receive complaints about the food regularly and forward them to the German authorities. The Americans received the same rations as the German civilian population and therefore wanted to be fed like prisoners of war . In the end, the Americans were brought to Lisbon in two special trains and exchanged there for a group of Germans.

Lisbon (1942–1943)

Kennan stayed there from September 1942 to October 1943. The city was inundated by war refugees. His task: to convince the Portuguese government under Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, which was neutral during World War II , to make the Portuguese base Lajes Field in the Azores available as a stopover for the US armed forces . Large numbers of aircraft for landing in Normandy should be able to stop there. At the same time, there were secret negotiations between Great Britain and Portugal on the same subject and came to a positive result.

Kennan managed to convince President Roosevelt in a one-on-one conversation that Salazar expected a concession for the time after the use of the military bases. Kennan delivered a personal letter from the President to Salazar and obtained his cooperation. Kennan's superiors at the State Department were appalled at his arbitrary actions; he was withdrawn from Lisbon.

London (1944)

Kennan became Counselor and Policy Advisor to Ambassador John Gilbert Winant in London. The Allies had decided to create a European Consultative Commission ( Moscow Conference October 1943); the English under William Strang wanted extensive powers for this body, the American Secretary of State Cordell Hull did not want this; the generals should be in charge. Plans were made for the impending defeat of Germany: it was about surrender conditions and occupation zones . Great Britain made a proposal to which neither the Soviet nor the American representative had an alternative, and so it was accepted.

Moscow (1944–1945)

Kennan worked under Ambassador W. Averell Harriman as envoy in Moscow; he was responsible for the entire civil department. He suffered from the fact that American diplomats were treated as dangerous enemies despite the common war in Europe. On weekends, for example, Kennan drove into the country in a completely overcrowded suburban train to draw old churches and to get an idea of ​​the life of the civilian population for himself.

He experienced the visit of the Polish government- in- exile to London under Stanisław Mikołajczyk . His assessment of the Soviet position towards Poland was that they would not allow the country to go their own way in the post-war period and that they would definitely want to make a vassal out of the country.

Kennan also advised Harry Hopkins not to support the Soviet Union in this way. In 1944 the Dumbarton Oaks Conference was held to establish the United Nations . Kennan criticized the American position as legalism and the false belief that a status quo can be maintained. In the winter of 1944/45 the diplomats experienced the thunder of cannons and fireworks every few days when a victory was to be celebrated somewhere on the long Russian front. Kennan experienced how the newly installed provisional governments were dominated by the Soviet Union all over the Balkans.

In 1946, Kennan wrote his famous “ long telegram ”. It answered the Treasury Department's question as to why the Soviet Union refused to support the newly established World Bank . He replied in 5,300 words in five paragraphs and outlined how he saw the basic lines of Soviet behavior since the end of the war. Kennan wrote that there was no modus vivendi with the USSR. Official Washington discussed this statement because it was now clear to many others that Josef Stalin could not be relied on as a loyal ally. Kennan later published his telegram under the pseudonym "X" in Foreign Affairs magazine and achieved a clear broad impact.

Washington (1946–1950)

Kennan was transferred to the newly established National Military Academy . He planned and directed the foreign policy courses and also gave lectures for the Foreign Ministry across the country. He has received invitations to the universities of Yale and Princeton.

On March 12, 1947, the so-called Truman Doctrine was promulgated, which meant that the USA  should provide support to the “free” peoples of the world - here Greece and Turkey . Kennan helped prepare the State Department's paper, but later protested the speech that was presented to the President because it seemed too bombastic to him. Before the war academy, Kennan explained what he thought would be useful: Aid for Greece was within the economic and technical possibilities of the USA; a favorable development for the country was also to be expected. Should the US fail to act, the enemy would be able to achieve exceptionally easy success.

On April 28, 1947, General Marshall returned from Europe in anger; he wanted to prevent Europe from going "to the dogs". Kennan became the head of the Policy Planning Staff ( Policy Planning Staff appointed PPS). On June 5, 1947, the Foreign Minister presented his plan for the reconstruction of Europe ( European Recovery Program , ERP or Marshall Plan ) in a speech at Harvard University . In between there were a few weeks in which Kennan had the task of sketching a plan for what could be done for Europe. Marshall admonished him with the words: "Avoid the trivial!"

In a few days Kennan looked for a team of employees (including Joseph Merrick Jones , Charles H. Bonesteel III , Jacques Reinstein ) and presented the following model on May 23, 1947: 1) The European countries should agree on where the focus should be , The US wanted to support them, 2) the European coal mining would be promoted, 3) the program should be designed in such a way that the American taxpayers knew that this would be the last aid measure for Europe for a long time, 4) a later one Repayment was requested in almost all cases.

Kennan's role in the Truman Doctrine

In early January 1947, Kennan gave a lecture to the Society for Foreign Policy (English Council on Foreign Relations ). Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor-in-chief of Foreign Affairs magazine , asked him about the manuscript, but Kennan had acquitted. There was, however, another record intended for Minister of the Navy Forrestal. The latter gave his approval, and the Federal Foreign Office also routinely approved publication. At the end of June the article appeared without naming an author ( Mr. X. ). When Arthur Krock speculated in the New York Times about the true author of the " X-Article ", word got around in the capital that it was Kennan, the chief of the planning staff. For press and public, the notion of "containment" was (Engl. Containment ), but not the "retaliation with all military means" (English. Counterstrike with all military Means ), the core of the recently published Truman Doctrine. Kennan felt as if he had accidentally triggered an avalanche, and George C. Marshall was horrified too .

The world public now assumed that the USA wanted to push back the USSR. So the one misunderstanding was that the US could use military forces for containment; the other was that the USA would feel vitally threatened worldwide by the USSR. On the contrary, Kennan was interested in the internal situation of the USSR: he believed that if the USA were only patient enough, the time would come when the troops of the Red Army from Poland , the Czech Republic, etc. a. would withdraw and at the same time the USA from Western Europe.

Recommendations for Postwar Japan

Kennan also saw a great need for action in Japan . As in Germany, there was a large industrial center and the only potential armaments arsenal in the Far East . There, too, the United States were responsible as a consequence of the demand for unconditional surrender (English unconditional surrender ); nearly 90,000 members of the US military were deployed there; over a hundred thousand Japanese worked for them; occupation costs devoured a third of the state budget; 700,000 people were under review (a procedure similar to denazification in Germany).

Kennan was of the opinion that the possibilities of a control of the development by Washington were very small, since the US military commander ( Supreme Commander Allied Powers , SCAP), General of the Army Douglas MacArthur ruled there de facto alone. The situation in the summer of 1947: completion of demilitarization; Start of reparations ; MacArthur advocated the conclusion of a peace treaty. Kennan fought against leaving the country to its own devices in this state. On October 14, 1947, Kennan submitted a proposal and the minister decided that Kennan should travel to Japan, which happened in February / March 1948. Kennan advocated rebuilding some Japanese strength that would protect it from a possible Russian invasion, as well as rebuilding its industry.

The situation: MacArthur and Marshall were personally enemies; the East Asia division of the ministry doubted any chance of the mission's success; MacArthur was feared in the Defense Department and Kennan had his own representative, General Cortlandt van Rensselaer Schuyler . Negotiations with MacArthur went well, however, and Kennan made his recommendations to the minister: encourage ownership of the Japanese government; economic reconstruction; Phasing out the purges ; Lowering the cost of the crew; quick decisions on property issues. By late 1948, most of the proposals had been approved by the President and translated into orders to SCAP.

Foundation of NATO

Kennan witnessed the founding of NATO during his time in Washington . At the beginning of 1948 the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom and France deliberated on the political and military structures in Europe, and the British foreign minister Ernest Bevin informed the USA on January 13th that they wanted to act together with the Benelux countries . France was under double pressures: it was hit by strikes co-organized by communists ; At the same time, people in Paris saw with concern that the USA wanted to rebuild German industry as part of the Marshall Plan. On January 22nd, Bevin called for the establishment of a Western European Union ; The Brussels Union was founded on March 16 , and President Truman assured it of his support.

On June 11, the United States Senate passed the so-called Vandenberg Resolution , which said that if the United States pledged to defend it, every European country had to pledge to defend the United States. Kennan feared that this would lead to a multilateral alliance treaty, in which he saw no point. On November 23, he presented a memorandum in which he warned that military issues should not be given too much weight and that no countries outside the North Atlantic (i.e. Italy , Greece or Turkey) should join the emerging alliance. However, since the Department of Defense wanted to set up bases in all three countries, Kennan's position was not adopted.

Later career

Kennan was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton from 1950 until his death , interrupted only by his time as ambassador to Moscow and Belgrade . In 1952 he was appointed American ambassador to the Soviet Union, but in October of the same year he was declared persona non grata and dismissed. He had compared the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany. On the one hand, he used to characterize the Soviet elite in an extremely undiplomatic way ("liars"), on the other hand, he warned that the US elites should not allow themselves to be driven by a competitive mentality and paint bogwarts on the wall. The danger of the Soviet Union attacking Western Europe is such an irrational fear. The arms race logic is not mandatory. However, his call for a more creative policy draft remained imprecise.

From May 1961 to July 1963 he worked as ambassador to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade at the request of President John F. Kennedy . The reception was extremely warm, and Kennan was known as a top diplomat and historian. On the other hand, the time was marked by the American invasion of the Bay of Pigs . The Yugoslav President Tito founded the movement of the non-aligned states in 1961 , trying to differentiate himself from the Soviet Union . In the USA he was still considered a communist . This came u. a. during the Captive Nations Week , during which one protested in America against the oppression of the Eastern European peoples by the Moscow regime and thus also against Tito. Incidents occurred in New York during a state visit by Tito . The refusal of financial aid by Congress also angered Tito. Kennan went to Washington in the summer of 1962 but was unable to achieve anything on the matter. He then asked for his replacement.

East expansion of NATO

Kennan was one of the first strong warnings against an eastward expansion of NATO. On February 5, 1997, in a guest article for the New York Times , he wrote that the Clinton administration's decision to expand NATO to the borders of Russia would be the most disastrous mistake in American politics of the post-Cold War era (“ expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era ”). “This decision can lead one to expect that the nationalist, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in the mind of Russia will be ignited; that they have a detrimental influence on the development of democracy in Russia, that they restore the atmosphere of the Cold War in relations between East and West and force Russian foreign policy in directions that we will definitely displease ”(“ Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking ").

Work as a historian

Kennan emerged not only as a diplomat, but also as a historian. After he left the State Department for the first time in 1950, he worked at Princeton University and as a lecturer for the Charles R. Walgreen Foundation at the University of Chicago . His work on the history of American diplomacy, published in 1952, was received positively by experts. In 1956 he was appointed professor at Princeton. He initially taught history there until 1961. He also took on visiting professorships at Oxford , Harvard and Yale . From 1963 until his retirement in 1974 he continued his historiographical work in Princeton.

His work Russia Leaves the War was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as was the first volume of his memoirs . His study of Bismarck's foreign policy ( The Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations 1875–1890 ) was controversial among experts and in journalism.

In 1976 he founded the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies .

Quotes

“We must be very careful when we speak of exercising 'leadership' in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction… In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague - and for the Far East - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. "

“We have to be very careful when talking about our 'leadership' in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have a solution to the problems that concern most of these Asian people. We own about 50% of the world's wealth, but only make up 6.3% of its population. This difference is particularly great in the relationship between us and the peoples of Asia. In such a situation, we cannot avoid attracting envy and resentment. Our real task in the foreseeable future is to find a form of relationship that will allow us to maintain these differences in prosperity without seriously compromising our national security. In order to achieve this, we will have to forego all sentimentality and daydreaming; and we will have to concentrate our attention everywhere on our own national projects. We must not pretend that today we can afford the luxury of altruism and world happiness ... [...] We should stop talking about vague - and for the Far East - unrealistic goals such as human rights, raising living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when our actions must be guided by sober thinking about power. The less we are then hindered by idealistic slogans, the better. "

- George Kennan : Chief Planner at the US State Department, 1948

Fonts

  • American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (1951), German American Foreign Policy, Europa-Verlag, Zurich / Stuttgart / Vienna 1952.
  • Russia Leaves the War, Princeton University Press (1956; received the Bancroft Prize )
  • Russia, the Atom, and the West (1958), Ger. Russia, the West and the atomic weapon , Ullstein-TB. 1958.
  • Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (1961)
  • Memoirs, 1925–1950 (1967), German Memoirs of a Diplomat, Munich (German TV) 1971, ISBN 3-423-10096-6 .
  • From Prague after Munich: Diplomatic Papers, 1938–1940 (1968)
  • The Marquis de Custine and his "Russia in 1839" . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1971, ISBN 0-691-05187-9 .
  • Memoirs, 1950–1963 (1972), German Memoirs 1950–1963 . Goverts, Frankfurt 1973, ISBN 3-7740-0440-4 .
  • The Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890 (1979), German Bismarck's European system in the process of dissolution . Propylaea, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-549-07622-3 .
  • The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age (1982)
  • The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War (1984), German Die fateful Alliance , Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-462-02036-6 .
  • Sketches from a Life (1989), German impressions of a life , Düsseldorf 1990, ISBN 3-430-15291-7 .
  • Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy (1993)
  • At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982–1995 (1996)
  • An American Family: The Kennans - The First Three Generations (2000)

Awards

The Kennan Commentary Prize (formerly the German-American Commentary Prize), a journalist prize as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowships , has been named after him since 2005 .

literature

  • John Lukacs: George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944-1946: the Kennan-Lukacs Correspondence . University of Missouri Press, Columbia MO 1997.
  • Achim Kai-Uwe Lange: George Frost Kennan and the Cold War , Lit, Münster 2001, also dissertation Uni Marburg 2000, ISBN 3-8258-5436-1 .
  • John Lukacs : George Kennan: A Study of Character . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2007, ISBN 0-300-12221-7 .
  • John Lewis Gaddis : George F. Kennan. American Life. Penguin Press, New York City 2011, ISBN 978-1-59420-312-1 . ( Review in Tagesspiegel ). Pulitzer Prize for Best Biography 2012 .
  • Frank Costigliola: Kennan Diaries . Norton & Company, New York City 2014, ISBN 978-0-393-07327-0 .
  • Christopher Simpson: Blowback. America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York 1988 (now also as a kindle e-book). German Edition: The American Boomerang. Nazi war criminals paid by the USA . Carl Ueberreuter, Vienna 1988.
  • Theo Sommer : crosshead Mr. X . George F. Kennan, the inventor of containment policy in the Cold War, turns 100 . In: Die Zeit , No. 8/2004
  • George F. Kennan died . In: NZZ , March 19, 2005 (obituary)

Web links

Commons : George F. Kennan  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files
Wikiquote: George F. Kennan  - Quotes
Wikisource: George F. Kennan  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reference on the Pour le Mérite website , accessed on February 7, 2013
  2. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy . Oxford UP, New York 1995, p. 119.
  3. ↑ David Mayers: George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy . Oxford UP, New York 1988, p. 43 f.
  4. ^ David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy . Oxford UP, New York 1995, pp. 118 f.
  5. ^ A b David Mayers: The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy . Oxford UP, New York 1995, p. 121.
  6. ^ John Lewis Gaddis: George F. Kennan: An American Life . Penguin, 2011 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ↑ Wilson D. Miscamble: George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950 . Princeton UP, Princeton 1992, p. 17.
  8. ^ John Lewis Gaddis: George F. Kennan: An American Life . Penguin, 2011 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  9. ^ Thomas G. Paterson: Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan. New York 1988, p. 122.
  10. ↑ Minutes of the meeting in Lancaster House, London , chaired by the Soviet Ambassador Fedor Tarasovitch Gusev (European Advisory Commission on the division of the zones of occupation in Germany)
  11. ^ The Sources of Soviet Conduct ( Wikisource )
  12. ↑ George F. Kennan: Russia, the West and the nuclear weapon . Frankfurt am Main 1958, pp. 31 and 80
  13. ↑ Tim Weiner, Barbara Crossette: Article. In: The New York Times , March 18, 2005; on the occasion of Kennan's death.
  14. ^ Member History: George F. Kennan. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 21, 2018 .
  15. ^ Members: George F. Kennan. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 7, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker : Laudation. George F. Kennan, Diplomat and Historian - The Real Work on Peace ; George F. Kennan: Acceptance speech. Why not peace? (PDF)
  17. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed June 17, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Kennan, George F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kennan, George Frost (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Milwaukee , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 2005
Place of death Princeton , New Jersey