War & Peace: In Brief - HISTORY

Get a funny animated overview of Tolstoy’s epic novel “War & Peace” and the key themes it explores in this web exclusive.

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On April 16, 1953, after the death of Russian Premier Joseph Stalin, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers what is known as his “Cross of Iron” speech before the American Society for Newspaper Editors, contrasting the philosophies of the Soviet Union and the United States.

In a radio interview on October 28, 1943, Dr. Vojta Benes, a former Czechoslovakian senator who had been living in America since escaping his homeland in 1939, is hopeful about lasting peace after the end of World War II.

On November 27, 1995, President Bill Clinton announces the end of years of ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The leaders of the three warring factions met in Dayton, Ohio, and signed an agreement known as the Dayton Peace Accords, which created two new sovereign states: Bosnia and Herzegovina.

President Eisenhower talks about his three imperatives for achieving and maintaining peace throughout the world.

In a speech delivered on February 6, 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull defends the reciprocal trade program he helped pass in 1934, stressing the urgency of continuing the plan as a peacekeeping measure.

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