MEMOIRS 1925-1950

Ambassador Kennan is undoubtedly one of this nation's most knowledgeable thinkers and practitioners of the art of foreign affairs and has played an immensely important role in dealing with the fundamentals of America's relating to an unwelcomed leadership that she inherited from the breakup of the prewar world. He is best known to the present generation of students as the author of a number of important books on 20th century Russian history, a highly successful ambassadorship to Yugoslavia, and his advocacy of a policy of moderation and restraint in Vietnam. What is here unfolded are the experiences of the professionally formative years: his participation in the program that created a small nucleus of Soviet experts in the Foreign Service; a Moscow stint during the mid-1930's; internment in Germany after war was declared; and later posts in postwar Japan, the Soviet Union, Germany, as well as the role played in creating the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO. Although Kennan's true value will be better revealed by other historians of the period, the worth of this man's early and middle years can be sensed by a reading of this first part of his reminiscences.