Quotation by Gabriel Kolko:

The significance of RANKIN was in its mere existence, for it reflected a political sophistication no less intense than that of the English, and it indicated the political importance that the Americans attached to the possession of German soil rather than the Balkans. If the United States refused to go along with the British plans for a Balkan strategy after OVERLORD it was not because it was unconcerned about the alleged danger of Bolshevism, but only because it differed about how and where to meet it. By the end of 1944, and certainly by the early part of 1945, to the United States and Britain, every Soviet military advance took on, to varying degrees, the aspect of a political threat. RANKIN was only one index of that political sensitivity, and the final battles of the war and the movement of troops were ultimately to become another.

Gabriel Kolko     (more by this author)

1932 -

Gabriel Kolko (born August 17, 1932) is an American historian and author.

Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Kent State University (B.A. 1954) and the University of Wisconsin (M.S. 1955), married Joyce Manning in 1955, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1962. Following graduation he taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at SUNY-Buffalo. He joined the York University History Department in 1970 and is now an emeritus professor of history there.

Author Information from Wikipedia

Country: United States

Type: Prose
Context: Book
Context Details: Vintage Books, 1968, page 30.