A COLD WAR

CW 310 — Ice Cream and Ideology (Free Preview)

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:43:00 -0000

Cuba, 1959/1960, and Fidel Castro is desperately trying to walk the middle path.... no communism, no capitalism, just "humanism" - liberty with bread, bread without terror. Meanwhile one of his most senior commanders, Huber Matos, publicly resigns in protest at communist influence and ends up in solitary for 16 of the next 20 years. And then the Soviet Union's most durable political survivor - the man who outlasted Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and personally controlled USSR ice cream quality standards - turns up in Havana.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 310 — Ice Cream and Ideology

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:42:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 309 — The Man Who Owned Everything (Free Preview)

Wed, 27 May 2026 04:26:00 -0000

This week we dig into the fallout from Castro's agrarian reform law — the land grabs, the diplomatic notes flying between Havana and Washington, and the moment a Texas cattle baron handed Eisenhower the blueprint for 60+ years of US Cuba policy. We also cover Castro's brilliant political theatre: a fake resignation on live TV that ended with a million people in the streets demanding he come back, and a new president who lasted about ten minutes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 309 — The Man Who Owned Everything

Wed, 27 May 2026 04:25:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 308 — The Land They Were Never Meant To Own (Free Preview)

Thu, 07 May 2026 04:37:00 -0000

On this episode we dig into the centrepiece of Cuba's revolution — the Agrarian Reform Act of 1959. We break down exactly what the law said, why even the Cuban Communist Party thought Castro was moving too fast, and how ordinary Cubans from all walks of life started pooling their own money to make it happen. And we set up the moment one wealthy, well-connected American walked into Eisenhower's office and arguably shaped US-Cuba policy for the next 75 years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 308 — The Land They Were Never Meant To Own

Thu, 07 May 2026 04:36:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 307 — Fidel Does America

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:55:00 -0000

Fidel is the newly installed as Prime Minister of Cuba — and immediately does on a charm offensive to the United States, where he wows crowds, spars with Richard Nixon, and somehow convinces a CIA analyst he's basically anti-communist. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Eisenhower is conveniently playing golf... and quietly ordering the CIA to start planning Castro's removal.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 307 — Fidel Does America (Free Preview)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:54:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prime Minister Castro - Cold War #306 (free preview)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:30:00 -0000

This week we're deep in the early days of Castro's Cuba — watching a revolutionary figure out he's now got to actually run a country. We cover Castro's sweeping reforms: dissolving Congress, banning political parties, freezing corrupt officials' assets, and the messy reality of ruling from outside the government before finally taking the job of Prime Minister. Along the way, Cameron and Ray dig into why Latin America has never managed to unite against US interference — and why, in 2026, that failure is playing out in real time as Cuba goes dark.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prime Minister Castro - Cold War #306

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:29:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 305 — Revolutionary Justice (or: Shut the Fuck Up, You Dropped Atomic Bombs) (Free Preview)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:28:00 -0000

This week we dig into the messy aftermath of Castro's victory — the revolutionary tribunals, the firing squads, and the international blowback that followed. We also get into Fidel's complicated personal life, including his stunning mistress Naty Revuelta, his secret illegitimate daughter Alina, and the gatekeeper Celia Sanchez who kept everyone at arm's length. Plus, Britain tells Castro to get stuffed when he asks for an apology, and Castro fires back at American media hypocrisy with some genuinely ballsy rhetoric.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 305 — Revolutionary Justice (or: Shut the Fuck Up, You Dropped Atomic Bombs)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:26:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 304 — The Dove Has Landed (Free Preview)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:38:00 -0000

It's January 1959, and Fidel Castro has just pulled off the impossible — a ragtag band of bearded rebels from the Sierra Maestra mountains has toppled the Batista dictatorship, and all of Cuba is euphoric. In Episode 304 of A Cold War, Cameron and Ray follow Castro's triumphant five-day journey from Santiago to Havana, tracking the 32-year-old revolutionary as he rolls into the capital on top of a tank, delivers a famously humble speech at Camp Columbia with a white dove settling on his shoulder, and is introduced to 50 million Americans via a very enthusiastic Ed Sullivan. But the honeymoon can't last forever. Behind the jubilation lies a country that needs to be governed, and Castro — equal parts rock star, military commander, and political improviser — is only sleeping two or three hours a night while trying to hold together a fractious coalition of communists, right-wingers, student radicals, and old rebels, none of whom entirely agree on what comes next. The rival Directorio Revolucionario seizes tanks and weapons demanding their share of glory, the new president Manuel Urrutia is already a problem in the making, and Che Guevara is quietly recovering from asthma at a beach house, wrestling with his own role in the new order. Celia Sánchez controls access to Castro like a one-woman firewall, while Castro himself roams Havana in a Jeep, micromanaging everything and holding shadow meetings with Communist Party secretary Blas Roca, knowing he needs their discipline and organisation but unable to admit it publicly. Cameron and Ray draw brilliant parallels between Castro's messianic arrival and Elvis Presley's Vegas comeback — both men defying expectations, both arriving in a blaze of spectacle after years in the wilderness — and ask the big question: can a revolutionary actually become a ruler?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 304 — The Dove Has Landed

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:36:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 303 — Fangio, Fatigues, and the Fall of Batista (Free Preview)

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:00:00 -0000

It’s April 1958, and Cuba is a powder keg with a sputtering fuse. Fulgencio Batista is bleeding support from every direction — the church, the business elite, even his American backers — while Fidel Castro’s rebel movement is growing stronger in the Sierra Maestra mountains. But before the final reckoning, the revolution nearly tears itself apart. Against Castro’s better judgment, the urban resistance pushes ahead with a general strike on April 9th — a catastrophic miscalculation. Batista’s forces, tipped off and fully prepared, crush it almost before it begins, leaving fifty dead in the streets and Castro furious, writing to his aide Celia Sánchez that he is “a shit who can decide nothing at all.” Then Batista doubles down, launching Operation End Fidel — a massive two-month military offensive with 10,000 soldiers, artillery, aviation, and armour sent into the mountains to destroy the rebellion once and for all. It fails completely. Entire battalions walk out of the Sierra without their weapons, handed over meekly to the Red Cross. Meanwhile, in one of the revolution’s strangest PR coups, Castro’s men kidnap Formula One legend Juan Manuel Fangio — “El Maestro” — on the eve of the Cuban Grand Prix, hold him politely in a safe house with a television, and release him after 26 hours, making Batista’s police look utterly helpless on the world stage. By December, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos are sweeping westward, capturing Santa Clara in a pivotal battle. On New Year’s Eve 1958, Batista dedicates a towering marble statue of Christ overlooking Havana Harbour — and then, at midnight, quietly grabs his passport, loads crates of cash (some $400 million) onto a plane, and flees to the Dominican Republic and the welcoming arms of fellow dictator Trujillo. By New Year’s morning, the Cuban media is reporting it all, church bells are ringing across the island, and Castro is already on the radio making clear that whatever new junta Batista’s generals try to install, the revolution will accept nothing less than total victory — on his terms, and his alone.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 303 — Fangio, Fatigues, and the Fall of Batista

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:00:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mountain Shadow Government - Cold War 302 (Cuban Revolution #27)

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:13:00 -0000

In this episode, Cameron and Ray dive into the pivotal year of 1958, charting Fidel Castro’s transition from a guerrilla insurgent to the head of a sophisticated shadow government. As the Rebel Army swelled from a handful of survivors to a force of thousands, Castro moved beyond mere military resistance to establish a "veritable military agrarian state" within the Sierra Maestra. We explore the infrastructure of the revolution—including hospitals, schools, and even cigar factories—and the strategic brilliance of Law Number Three, which promised "land to the tiller." Meanwhile, back in Havana, Fulgencio Batista’s grip on power began to fracture as he lost the support of the Catholic Church, the judiciary, and eventually his primary benefactor, the United States. From the humorous origins of "Ray Crocs" to the grim reality of domestic sabotage, this episode examines how the revolutionary movement effectively out-governed the state before the final blow was ever struck.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mountain Shadow Government - Cold War 302 (Cuban Revolution #27)

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:13:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Miami Pact - Cold War 301

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:36:00 -0000

In this episode, Cameron and Ray delve into the complex internal and external power struggles facing Fidel Castro in the late 1950s as he attempts to consolidate his leadership over the anti-Batista movement. The discussion highlights the stark divide between Castro’s rural guerrilla army—influenced by the increasingly Marxist leanings of Raul Castro and Che Guevara—and the urban resistance led by Frank País, who sought middle-class and American support. The hosts explore the "draconian" discipline maintained within the rebel ranks, including the summary execution of spies, and the elimination of rival revolutionary groups like the Directorio Revolucionario after their failed 1957 assassination attempt on Batista. The episode concludes with Castro’s calculated rejection of the "Miami Pact," a move designed to prevent the old political elite from co-opting the revolution and to ensure that his guerrilla forces remain the ultimate authority in a post-Batista Cuba.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Castro Goes Viral. - CW 300 (Free)

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:43:00 -0000

Episode 300 marks a major waypoint for the Cold War Podcast, and the discussion dives straight back into the hard mechanics of revolution. Castro is alive, hiding in the Sierra Maestra with a tiny guerrilla force, but survival alone isn’t victory. This episode explores the real problem facing Fidel Castro in 1957: how to overthrow a dictator when you barely have a few dozen fighters, almost no supplies, and multiple rival revolutionary movements competing for legitimacy. Cameron and Ray unpack how revolutions are built in parallel layers—mountain guerrillas, urban resistance networks, propaganda operations, logistics pipelines, and political alliances—and how Castro slowly stitched these together into something that looked like a shadow government. The episode focuses heavily on Castro’s extraordinary media strategy, his manipulation of foreign journalists, and the way American media unexpectedly turned him into a global celebrity before he ever seized power. Along the way, the discussion examines the growing ideological tensions between urban moderates and radical guerrillas, the role of figures like Che Guevara, Celia Sánchez, and Frank País, and the contradictions of courting middle-class support while drifting steadily toward Marxism. By the end, the revolution is no longer just a jungle insurgency—it’s a fragile, volatile coalition hurtling toward open confrontation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Castro Goes Viral - CW 300

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:42:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Castro Is Dead. Long Live Castro - CW 299

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 08:13:00 -0000

In this episode, Cameron and Ray pick up the Cuban Revolution story at its most fragile moment: Fidel Castro has just landed in eastern Cuba with 82 men, most of them dead, scattered, or captured within days. Batista’s regime confidently declares Castro dead, the international press runs with it, and the revolution appears finished before it has begun. But history, as usual, has other plans. From hiding under sugarcane leaves to scraping together a band of 19 survivors in the Sierra Maestra, Castro learns guerrilla warfare the hard way. The episode traces his first small victories, the brutal countermeasures of the Batista regime, and the human cost borne by peasants caught in between. The story then pivots to one of the most consequential acts of propaganda in Cold War history: Castro’s calculated courtship of the international press. Through Herbert Matthews’ risky journey into the mountains and his front-page New York Times reporting, the world learns that Fidel Castro is very much alive, organised, and growing. This episode explores how myth, media, theatre, and violence intertwine at the birth of a revolution—and how a handful of men with rifles, cigars, and a journalist changed global perceptions overnight.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Worst Landing in Revolutionary History - CW 298

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 03:19:00 -0000

Episode 298 follows Fidel Castro’s disastrous return to Cuba aboard the *Granma* and the near-total collapse of his carefully laid plans within days of landing. What was meant to be a coordinated uprising turns into a brutal fight for survival as delays at sea, bad weather, poor logistics, and immediate detection by Batista’s forces leave Castro’s men sick, starving, scattered, and under constant aerial and ground attack. Drawing heavily on Castro’s later reflections and Che Guevara’s diaries, the episode explores leadership under failure, revolutionary psychology, and the razor-thin line between annihilation and persistence. With only a handful of surviving fighters and a few rifles, Castro reframes catastrophe into resolve, convinced that even seven guns are enough to win a revolution.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To Cuba or to Martyrdom - CW 297

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 04:31:00 -0000

In this episode of *The Cold War*, Cameron and Ray trace the strange, lucky, unlikely, often chaotic road that led Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and their small band of exiles from a rented farm outside Mexico City to the deck of the *Granma* in late 1956. The show follows their botched guerrilla training, their arrest by Mexican police, Che’s absolute refusal to hide his communism, the ideological debates that erupted right inside the interrogation room, and the role of former presidents of Mexico and Cuba in getting them released. Fidel’s memoirs come alive in long excerpts about Stalin, Trotsky, Che’s stubborn fearlessness, and the enormous role of luck in history. The episode finishes with Che’s own recollection of meeting Fidel, forging their bond, and boarding the *Granma* with the now-famous vow: *“In 1956, we will be free or we will be martyrs.”*

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Fidel Met Che - Cold War 296

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 10:58:00 -0000

In this episode, Fidel Castro steps out of prison in 1955 and straight into revolutionary planning. We trace his transformation from imprisoned dissident to a man preparing an armed insurrection in exile. We explore his belief in luck, conviction and humility, his frustrating attempt to re-enter Cuban politics, his move to Mexico, and his first electrifying meeting with Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Cameron and Ray dig into why Castro’s charisma made him dangerous to Batista, how Che’s time in Guatemala radicalised him, and how American corporate interests helped crush democracy in Latin America. Along the way we hear about cigars, motorcycle diaries, CIA “successes” that produced decades of bloodshed, Cuban rum, and why delusional certainty sometimes wins revolutions.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History Will Absolve Me - CW 295 Preview

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 06:17:00 -0000

Fidel Castro’s first attempt to ignite revolution in Cuba ends in disaster — but also forges the legend. We follow the aftermath of the failed 1953 Moncada Barracks raid: the brutal reprisals, Fidel’s near-execution, the unlikely lieutenant who saves him, the public opinion shift as Batista’s regime overreaches, and Fidel’s transformation from fiery idealist to imprisoned revolutionary intellectual. We hear how History Will Absolve Me is born, what Fidel is reading behind bars (spoiler: Trotsky and Roosevelt), and how his personal life gets… complicated. By the time he’s released after only two years, Castro is no longer just a nuisance — he’s become the most famous man in Cuba and an unstoppable symbol of rebellion.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History Will Absolve Me - CW 295

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 06:16:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Castro’s First Swing: The Moncada Misfire (preview)

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 03:54:00 -0000

In this episode, Cam and Ray bring their trademark banter and historical nerdery to the story of Fidel Castro’s first attempt at revolution — the ill-fated 1953 Moncada Barracks attack. What starts as a coup joke about Batista’s boredom quickly spirals into a lively mix of history and comedy. We follow a 26-year-old Fidel as he decides that ballots and lawsuits won’t topple a corrupt regime, so he turns to bullets instead. The episode explores his planning, paranoia, and sheer audacity as he leads a small group of poorly armed men in a doomed assault on one of Cuba’s largest military garrisons. Along the way, the boys detour into mobsters, Catholic apostles, ham-radio fanatics, and whether Ray actually has friends who play pool. By the end, we’re left with Fidel’s first great failure — the Moncada disaster — and the foreshadowing of the revolution to come.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Castro’s First Swing: The Moncada Misfire - Cold War #294

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:46:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #293 (preview) - Castro’s Crossroads

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 05:10:00 -0000

In this preview of Cold War #293, Cameron and Ray dig into the aftermath of Batista’s March 1952 coup in Cuba and how it shaped Fidel Castro’s early strategies. The conversation explores Castro’s proclamation denouncing the coup, his first failed attempts to rally the public, and why the Cuban people weren’t yet ready for revolution. We see how Castro pivoted from politics to pamphlets, protests, lawsuits, and eventually the realization that only a professional revolutionary force could succeed. Along the way, the hosts connect Batista’s propaganda playbook with U.S. media bias, draw parallels to Iran’s 1953 coup, and reflect on the timeless tactics of seizing power. They also detour into the Mob’s growing influence in Havana and the darker history of honeypot operations linking Epstein, Maxwell, and intelligence agencies. For full episodes, check out Cam & Ray Cold War in the podcast app of your choice or go to acoldwar.com.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #293 - Castro’s Crossroads

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 05:02:00 -0000

In this episode of Cold War, Cameron and Ray dig into the aftermath of Batista’s March 1952 coup in Cuba and how it shaped Fidel Castro’s early strategies. The conversation explores Castro’s proclamation denouncing the coup, his first failed attempts to rally the public, and why the Cuban people weren’t yet ready for revolution. We see how Castro pivoted from politics to pamphlets, protests, lawsuits, and eventually the realization that only a professional revolutionary force could succeed. Along the way, the hosts connect Batista’s propaganda playbook with U.S. media bias, draw parallels to Iran’s 1953 coup, and reflect on the timeless tactics of seizing power. They also detour into the Mob’s growing influence in Havana and the darker history of honeypot operations linking Epstein, Maxwell, and intelligence agencies.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #292 Preview - Batista’s Bloodless Coup: Havana 1952

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 01:42:00 -0000

In this preview of episode of The Cold War, Cameron and Ray take us to Havana in 1952, when Fulgencio Batista staged a meticulously planned coup d’état. They walk through the midnight maneuvers at Camp Columbia, the arrest of generals, the swift control of communication hubs, and the apathy of the Cuban people after years of corruption. We see how Batista positioned himself as “the man” while suspending civil liberties, dissolving Congress, and reassuring both the Americans and local elites. Alongside this, Fidel Castro makes his first serious moves as a revolutionary—drafting a proclamation condemning Batista’s coup and beginning the trajectory that would define his life. The conversation ties Batista’s actions to lessons from Rome, Mussolini, and even contemporary American politics, blending history, irony, and sharp commentary.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #292 - Batista’s Bloodless Coup: Havana 1952

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 01:35:00 -0000

In this episode of The Cold War, Cameron and Ray take us to Havana in 1952, when Fulgencio Batista staged a meticulously planned coup d’état. They walk through the midnight maneuvers at Camp Columbia, the arrest of generals, the swift control of communication hubs, and the apathy of the Cuban people after years of corruption. We see how Batista positioned himself as “the man” while suspending civil liberties, dissolving Congress, and reassuring both the Americans and local elites. Alongside this, Fidel Castro makes his first serious moves as a revolutionary—drafting a proclamation condemning Batista’s coup and beginning the trajectory that would define his life. The conversation ties Batista’s actions to lessons from Rome, Mussolini, and even contemporary American politics, blending history, irony, and sharp commentary.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #291 Free - The Lawyer for the Poor

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 11:52:00 -0000

In this episode, Cameron and Ray continue the story of Fidel Castro’s early years, charting his transformation from a fiery young activist entangled with street gangs into a determined reformer and aspiring politician. They explore how Castro navigated gang violence in Havana, his involvement with the nonviolent September 30th movement, his bold courtroom defenses, and his law practice dedicated to the poor. The episode also covers his growing disillusionment with Cuba’s political parties, his clashes with President Prío’s corruption, his unlikely meeting with Batista, and his relentless drive to clean up his reputation and pursue political power. Along the way, Cam and Ray weave in colorful anecdotes, wry humor, and comparisons to figures from Rome and Napoleon to highlight the revolutionary forces shaping Castro’s trajectory.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #291 - The Lawyer for the Poor

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 11:51:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 290 Free - The Making Of Fidel

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 03:52:00 -0000

Cameron and Ray pick up Fidel Castro’s story in 1948 as he returns from Colombia in the wake of the Bogotazo riots. We follow Castro through his early 20s as he campaigns for Eduardo Chibás, clashes with Havana police over accusations of corruption, and narrowly escapes being framed for murder. The conversation dives into the student-led bus fare protests—linked to shady U.S. business deals—that propelled Castro into the spotlight. We hear about his whirlwind romance and three-month honeymoon in the United States, his growing fascination with Marxist thought, and his balancing act between rival student gangs and political factions. The episode ends with the murder of his close friend, fellow activist Manolo Fuentes, a turning point that forces Castro to reconsider his alliances and the dangerous reality of Havana’s violent political landscape.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 290 - The Making of Fidel

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 03:50:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 289 Free - The Rise Of Fidel

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 07:19:00 -0000

In this episode, Cam and Ray kick off their deep dive into the life and legend of Fidel Castro. Picking up from the Batista coup of 1952, they trace Fidel’s early years—born illegitimate on his father’s sugar plantation, educated by Jesuits, and shaped by political violence. We follow Fidel through elite boarding schools, law school radicalisation, and his early attempts to overthrow regimes across Latin America. From jumping ship with a machine gun to surviving student death threats, Castro emerges as a man driven by revolutionary ideals, a hunger for justice, and an almost messianic sense of destiny. Along the way, we encounter Perón, Guevara, Trujillo, and Gabriel García Márquez—and we get a glimpse of the revolutionary vanguard that would eventually upend Cuba forever.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 289 - The Rise Of Fidel

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 07:18:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CS 288 Preview - Seven Governments, One Puppetmaster

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 05:02:00 -0000

In this raucous and revelatory episode of The Cold War Podcast, Cameron and Ray finally reach the man of the hour: Fulgencio Batista. From humble military stenographer to kingmaker of a chaotic Cuba, Batista’s rise is traced through coups, constitutions, and crushing dissent. Cameron performs a blistering freestyle rap tribute to Ray (“Ray Bear Has No Hair”), then the duo dive into Batista’s reign, the boom years of WWII, puppet governments, violent suppression of opposition, and the eerie parallels to authoritarian creep in modern democracies. The episode also explores the cultural fallout of constant violence, Fidel Castro’s formative influences, and the suicide of Eduardo Chibás on live radio—a moment that cemented Castro’s revolutionary zeal. Come for the history, stay for the dick jokes, cos this one’s got everything.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 288 Member - Seven Governments, One Puppetmaster

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 05:01:00 -0000

In this raucous and revelatory episode of The Cold War Podcast, Cameron and Ray finally reach the man of the hour: Fulgencio Batista. From humble military stenographer to kingmaker of a chaotic Cuba, Batista’s rise is traced through coups, constitutions, and crushing dissent. Cameron performs a blistering freestyle rap tribute to Ray (“Ray Bear Has No Hair”), then the duo dive into Batista’s reign, the boom years of WWII, puppet governments, violent suppression of opposition, and the eerie parallels to authoritarian creep in modern democracies. The episode also explores the cultural fallout of constant violence, Fidel Castro’s formative influences, and the suicide of Eduardo Chibás on live radio—a moment that cemented Castro’s revolutionary zeal. Come for the history, stay for the dick jokes, cos this one’s got everything.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #287 (free)

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 01:53:00 -0000

In this episode of the Cold War podcast, Cam and Ray continue their wild ride through Cuban history, focusing on the rise and fall of Gerardo “Macho Man” Machado, the proto-strongman president who turned Cuba into a playground for rich tourists—and a pressure cooker for everyone else. From political repression and violent union crackdowns to communist organizing and student uprisings, this chapter sets the stage for Cuba’s eventual revolution. Along the way, we meet fascinating figures like Julio Antonio Mella (the OG Castro prototype), discuss the communist roots of Cuban resistance, and learn how America played both arsonist and firefighter in the region. Plus: cigars, lesbians, and martinis. You’re welcome.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #287 - The Fall of Macho Man Machado

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 01:52:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #286 - The Macho Man Cometh (Cuban Revolution #11)

Mon, 19 May 2025 02:34:00 -0000

In this wild episode, Cam and Ray kick things off with a “Cam-hole” into the politics and economics of Cuba in the early 20th century. From rigged elections to sugar-fueled financial collapses, and from macho presidents to the American colonization of Cuba’s economy, it’s a vivid portrait of how imperialism, tourism, and opportunistic strongmen shaped the island nation. Expect dead bankers, disco communists, FDR parallels, Einstein in the slums, Hemingway’s horniness, and some brutal political satire.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

285 - Cuban Schemes & Sugar Dreams

Wed, 14 May 2025 21:57:00 -0000

In this episode, Cam and Ray pick up the story of post-independence Cuba as it slides from colonialism into an economic and racial stranglehold orchestrated by the United States. They trace the rise and fall of early Cuban presidents like José Miguel Gómez and Mario García Menocal, highlighting the rampant corruption, U.S.-controlled infrastructure, and systematic exclusion of Black Cubans from political and economic power. From the installation of U.S. companies like ITT and United Fruit to the brutal repression of the Independent Colored Party in 1912, the episode paints a damning portrait of Cuba as a pseudo-independent client state. Cam and Ray also reflect on the romanticised myths of American benevolence, challenge common perceptions of anarchism, and tie it all into modern parallels of power, race, and empire.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #284 - Freedomish

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 04:11:00 -0000

In this episode, Cameron opens with a wild midnight ER visit that turns into a rumination on aging, mortality, and kung fu-induced hypochondria. Once the chest pains are out of the way, we pick up where we left off on Cuba’s “independence” after the Spanish-American War - President Tomás Estrada Palma, the illusion of Cuban self-rule under the Platt Amendment, and the classic U.S. playbook of indirect colonialism. We unpack how American businesses flooded Cuba, bought up the land, rigged elections, and backed friendly elites.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#28 - Yalta: Let The Small Birds Sing

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 03:10:00 -0000

Like he had before Tehran, FDR refused the idea of an Anglo-American bloc when he and Churchill met briefly in Malta before the conference.

He's trying hard to avoid putting Stalin on the defensive.

Because he knows that in the game of wartime diplomacy, the player with the most troops on the ground had the loudest voice.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first six episodes totally free and the first 20 minutes of our premium episodes using the player above. You might want to start with Episode 1, unless of course you're an old school George Lucas fan, in which case feel free to start at Episode IV. We don't recommend it though.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #283 - The Platt Amendment

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 11:02:00 -0000

Following the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Occupation Government of Cuba forced elections. They tried to engineer Cuba into voting to become one of the United States - instead the Cuban people chose independence. So the U.S. introduced the Platt Amendment, aimed at long term control over Cuba's military and economy while declaring them to be a sovereign nation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 282 - Rigging Democracy

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 03:33:00 -0000

We look at the complexities surrounding America's occupation of Cuba at the dawn of the 20th century - General Leonard Wood’s appointment as governor, his controversial educational and economic reforms favoring American interests, and the racial tensions arising from imported labor practices. We look at America's strategic objectives behind colonial expansion, comparisons to Britain's occupation tactics in Egypt, and the intricacies of Cuba's manipulated elections aimed at ensuring American influence persisted post-occupation - the realities of imperialism, independence movements, and geopolitical manipulation, setting the stage for understanding the roots of the Cuban revolution.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 281 - The American Land Grab

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 08:25:42 -0000

Towards the end of 1899, a new American governor was appointed in Cuba - General Leonard Wood, the recent commander of the Rough Riders along with Teddy Roosevelt. He set up thousands of free schools and introduced economic reforms - which caused a massive wave of dispossession and bankruptcy and enabled an American land grab.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 280 - A U.S. Military Dictatorship

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 06:22:22 -0000

So, it's 1898, the Spanish have evacuated the island of Cuba after 400 years of rule, and the United States have taken their place. They ran Cuba as a military dictatorship. General Brooke, the first U.S. governor of the island, said, "There is not a sensible man who thinks we can leave for a long time."

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 279 - Gunpowder In Hell (Cuban Revolution #4)

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 09:48:07 -0000

When the U.S. troops landed in Cuba, it changed the nature of the war. The old racism returned. Of course, when the war was over in July, the U.S. had no intention of letting the Cuban people have their independence. As the commander of US forces in Cuba said: "Why, these people are no more fit for self-government than gunpowder is for hell." In the fight for freedom, lives had been lost and the country had been wiped out economically. Yet the Cubans still weren't going to get their independence.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 278 - Rough Riders, Buffalo Soldiers

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 10:39:15 -0000

So in January of 1898, the Cubans were on the verge of victory in their battle for independence against Spain. And while the US government was happy to see Spain out of the picture, they had no intention of allowing Cuba to be independent. Since the days of Jefferson back in the 1790s, almost every presidential administration in Washington had imagined Cuba would eventually be US territory. The newly elected President, William McKinley, wanted to take Cuba without war if possible. But some, like future President Teddy Roosevelt, couldn't wait to turn it into a war.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #277 - José Martí (Cuban Revolution #2)

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 23:33:26 -0000

In this episode we introduce one of Cuba's greatest heroes - José Martí. Castro frequently referred to Martí as the “intellectual author” of the Cuban revolution. He fought to free Cuba from Spain and to protect it from the hungry ambitions of the United States. Meanwhile, the creation of "Yellow Journalism" invented the modern American propaganda playbook - how to convince the country to go to war to protect the commercial interests of a few rich men.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #276 - The Cuban Revolution (Part 1)

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 12:50:53 -0000

It's finally time to talk about the Cuban Revolution. But of course before we can do that story justice, we need to explain some back story. Everything needs to be understood in context. Let's go back in time to when Spain still had its American colonies.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #275 - 1983

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:27:46 -0000

Some people have said 1983 was the most dangerous year in human history. On four separate occasions, the U.S.A. and the USSR nearly ended up in a hot nuclear war. Soviet leaders apparently became deeply worried that the US was preparing to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the USSR under the cover of a NATO exercise titled ‘Able Archer.’ Brian J. Morra is a former U.S. intelligence officer and a retired senior aerospace executive who took part in the events of 1983 and has written an excellent and terrifying book on the topic, "The Able Archers". He's our guest today.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #274 - Witch Hunt

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 02:42:06 -0000

Today we interview Andrea Balis & Elizabeth Levy, co-authors of the book "Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare", a cutting-edge look into a pivotal moment in US history: McCarthy's infamous "witch hunt" for communists during the 1950's Red Scare.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 273 - Black Propaganda

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 03:19:08 -0000

The reasons the CIA got involved in Tibet are complicated. But they seem to have had nothing to do really with protecting the Dalai Lama or any sort of ideological belief in Tibetan independence. It had more to do with weakening China once it became a communist country. The covert goal of the United States National Security Council was to "Discredit the prestige and ideology of International Communism" by using "black" propaganda - manufactured lies about fabricated atrocities which were disseminated through credible sources.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 272 - Tertia Optio

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:31:09 -0000

For nearly two decades, the CIA ran a covert operation designed to train Tibetan insurgents and gather intelligence about the Chinese, while smuggling weapons and money into Tibet, pushing Tibetan supporters of the Dalai Lama to launch violent uprisings, and using "black propaganda" to spread lies about Chinese atrocities in the region. But the U.S. never supported Tibetan independence. They were just another pawn in the Cold War.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #271 - The Dalai Lama of Marxism

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 23:03:42 -0000

During the 1950s, social unrest rocked Tibet, partly because of power struggles at the top level of the government and partly because the poor masses wanted a revolution like the one in China. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama actually began to support the idea of Marxism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #270 - Two Opposing Things

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 11:31:40 -0000

There's nothing hotter than Tibetan-on-Tibetan violence, especially when it's the two top government officials having a civil war over the new Dalai Lama, as happened in Tibet in 1947. But don't let anyone ever tell you that making a child the head of a religion and government isn't a sensational idea. It's NEVER gone badly. EVER. And did you know that the Dalai Lama was responsible for the first CIA officer ever to get killed in the line of duty? Good luck with that next reincarnation, fella.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #269 - The Great Game

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:45:53 -0000

In 1904, the British sent an army into Tibet to secure it for Britain. It resulted in a massacre when the British opened fire with their new Maxim machine guns on Tibetans holding spears. The Dalai Lama was forced to flee the country. Over the next few decades, Tibet was oppressed by the British and China (also controlled by Britain, especially after the "Boxer Rebellion") who sent in "the Butcher of Kham" to control Tibetan uprisings. When the 13th Dalai Lama finally died, he was replaced by Lhamo Dhondup, the current Dalai Lama, who was ratified by China's new Kuomintang Government.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #268 - The CIA and Tibet

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 07:22:25 -0000

We all know that Tibet and China have a history, and that the U.S.A. is always in the middle of it. But you may not know that The United States recognizes Tibet to be part of the People’s Republic of China or that the UK and the U.S.A. have spent over a century trying to wrest control over Tibet away from China. This is part one of that story.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #267 - Coup De Grace Of The Coup D'etat

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 01:49:12 -0000

The CIA's second attempt at a coup succeeds. Mossadegh is driven into hiding and General Zahedi declares himself the new leader of the country. The CIA celebrates wth champagne.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #266 - The First Attempt

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:05:54 -0000

It's the middle of 1953, and the CIA is ready to execute their coup against the democratically elected government of Iran. The plan? Spend a bucket load of money hiring thugs to cause riots in the streets. Blame it on Mossadegh and then bribe a corrupt member of the Iranian military to go and arrest him. Unfortunately for the CIA, it didn't go to plan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #265 - The CIA Green Light

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 02:15:32 -0000

In early 1953, Churchill initiated a plan with the CIA to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, involving key figures like General Sahedi and the Rashidian brothers. Aided by disinformation campaigns, the Shah fled Iran, stirring public outcry. Despite initial resistance from Eisenhower, pressure from the Dulles brothers and ongoing chaos in Iran convinced him to approve the coup. The CIA allocated significant funds to destabilize Mossadegh’s government, ultimately leading to Mossadegh realizing the U.S. would not support him against British interference. The situation escalated with organized turmoil, political bribery, and strategic assassinations, culminating in Mossadegh's political isolation by mid-1953.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #264 - "C" not "M"

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 02:05:00 -0000

Ever wondered why the heads of MI6 are called "M"? Well they aren't. They are called “C”. It all started with Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who signed his docs with a green “C.” This guy was a true legend—a retired Navy man who became the spymaster extraordinaire, famous for his love of gadgets and high-speed Rolls-Royce drives. His dramatic life included cutting off his own foot after a car crash to save his son. MI6 has always been shrouded in secrecy, with its chiefs staying out of the limelight. But thanks to novels and movies, especially those by Ian Fleming, the real-life adventures of these spies have become legendary.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #263 - A New Hope

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 07:35:08 -0000

The election of Eisenhower as U.S. President in Nov 1952 gave the British a new hope that the country might now support their plans to overthrow the Iranian government. Even before Ike took office, they sent Monty Woodhouse, the former chief of MI6 in Tehran, to Washington to start working with the Dulles brothers, soon to be the guys running the U.S.'s overt and covert foreign policy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #262 - Enter Kermit

Sat, 18 May 2024 23:46:23 -0000

Mossadegh is more popular than ever. But that isn't going to stop the British from conspiring against him. They decide that next time they try to bring down his government, they will need to find a way to get the mob on their side. Key to their future plans will be General Zahedi and the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #261 - Mossadegh's Victory

Sat, 04 May 2024 05:41:20 -0000

In July of 1952, eight months after he got back from Washington, and in the middle of fighting Anglo-Iranian in the World Court, Mossadegh paid a visit to the Shah and asked him to relinquish control over the army. The Shah refused. So Mossadegh resigned. The British and the Shah were ecstatic and appointed a new puppet PM who announced a new order - the British would be back in control over the oil and anyone who complained would be arrested. The country erupted in protest. And Mossadegh was re-appointed within days - now with complete control over the army.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #260 - Mo Oil Mo Problems

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 04:41:54 -0000

As Mossadegh wins the hearts and minds of Americans and the world, the British re-elect Churchill who considers Mossadegh "an elderly lunatic bent on wrecking his country and handing it over to the communists."

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #259 - Mossadegh at the UN

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 23:50:22 -0000

In October 1951, Mossadegh flew to New York to address the United Nations and then to Washington to meet with Truman. It was the first time the UN was used by a poor, post-colonial country to voice their grievances against Western aggression. He was going toe-to-tow with Britain’s great white hope, Sir Gladwyn Jebb.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #258 - The Template

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 10:34:14 -0000

In actual fact, it wasn’t the CIA that came up with the template for using covert action to destabilise and overthrow a country’s government - it was a fascist British Foreign Secretary and the British academics he hired to bring down Mossadegh. The CIA just took that model and employed it - first in Iran, and then over and over and over again.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #257 - Operation Oompa-Loompa

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 23:06:47 -0000

In 1951, the British were planning to invade Iran to re-take control of the country’s oil assets. Meanwhile, there were Nazis on the streets of London.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #256 - DIVORCE

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 07:10:36 -0000

The British PM sends a fascist Catholic member of the British elite, Sir Richard Stokes, to talk to Moss the Boss. Mossadegh says he wants a divorce. As he’s leaving Iran, Harriman meets with the Shah and “suggests” it might be time for Mossadegh to go.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #255 - Harriman The Harasser

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:32:00 -0000

Truman sent Harriman to Iran to try to bring about a diplomatic resolution to the tensions with Britain. It did not go well.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #254 - The Epic Showdown (Operation Ajax part XII)

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 11:36:41 -0000

Mossadegh started to take over the AIOC offices and appointed a French-educated engineer as the managing director of the new National Iranian Oil Company. The AOIC refused to allow Iran to transport their oil in British tankers. It turns into an epic showdown. The British started planning to have Mossadegh removed from power. Meanwhile the United States got more and more involved.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #253- The Good Americans (Operation Ajax part XI)

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 07:08:35 -0000

In the middle of the 20th century, Iranians really liked Americans, mostly due to the fact that their experiences with them (up until that time) had been mostly positive, unlike the British and the Russians. And the Americans were, in 1951, still trying to convince the British to play fair with the Iranians. If only that attitude has lasted.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #252 - Mossa-Mania (Operation Ajax part X)

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:50:21 -0000

After the assassination of Razmara, Mossadegh’s oil committee voted unanimously to nationalise the AIOC. Iran went crazy for Mossadegh. It was Mossa-Mania. The British were furious and tried to appoint a new Prime Minister, the latest in the line of “guys they were sure could get the job done”. It backfired. Massively.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #251 - Fedayeen

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 23:54:32 -0000

The increasing tensions in Iran, driven in part by British imperialism, leads to the formation of a religious terror group called Fedayeen-i-Islam, the first of its kind.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #250 - The National Front

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 04:05:18 -0000

In 1949 the Iranian Majlis put forward a bill to revoke the British oil concession. This, combined with worker riots in Abadan, prompted the British to take action. Meanwhile, Mossadegh forms a new political party, The National Front, and General Ali Razmara, who had been one of General Schwarzkopf's most trusted officers, is made PM at the “suggestion” of the British.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #249 - Mossadegh vs The Shah

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 03:59:51 -0000

When Reza makes himself Shah, Mossadegh is livid. He refuses to agree to it. Then he turns down multiple senior positions in the Shah's cabinet. He ends up retiring from public life at age 45, gets imprisoned, and tries to commit suicide. He returns when the Shah is forced to abdicate, but an attempted assassination on the new Shah makes the political situation in Iran even worse. And a flamboyant American soldier arrives to help build a brutal paramilitary police force - General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Sr.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 248 - Iranian Kryptonite

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 11:16:30 -0000

Mossadegh had two non-negotiables that drove his political game. First, he was a die-hard believer in the rule of law, which put him on a collision course with autocrats like Reza Shah. Second, he was all about Iranian self-rule, making him Public Enemy No. 1 for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He wasn't just against them; he was their kryptonite.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #247 - Black Gold & Betrayal: The Untold Story of Iran's Oil Empire

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 23:55:56 -0000

Dive into the turbulent history of oil in Iran, where George Reynolds, a self-taught geologist funded by Aussie entrepreneur William Knox D’Arcy, battled smallpox, bandits, and desert heat to uncover the largest oil field ever found. Reynolds' discovery catapulted Iran into the global energy arena, but not without exploitation and strife. D'Arcy and the Scots invested heavily in what became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company—later BP—creating a colonial empire in Abadan that funneled wealth away from Iranians. Winston Churchill recognized the geopolitical prize, leading the British government to buy a majority stake in the company. Despite internal revolutions, worker strikes, and the rise of nationalist figures like Mohammad Mossadegh, the relationship between Iran and Britain remained fraught, embedded in a complex web of financial and political interests. From world wars to the overthrow of regimes, the story of Iranian oil is a saga of ambition, betrayal, and raw power.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #246 - Reza Shah

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 03:06:26 -0000

We’re talking about Reza Shah, a soldier who rose to power from a humble background, pulled of a British-engineered coup, and effectively ruled Iran from 1921 - 1941.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 245 - The Strangling of Persia

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 10:19:41 -0000

Iran's first attempt at democracy ended when the British and the Russians decided amongst themselves to divide up Iran in 1907 and supported the new Shah's desire to crush the parliament. But the Iranians fought on, exiled the Shah and replaced him with his 11 year old son. Then they hired an American banker to clean up corruption. The British and Russians didn't like that, so they had him thrown out as well.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#244 - Operation Ajax (II)

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 01:21:46 -0000

The Shah continued selling the family jewels to the British and Russians, including the entire Iranian tobacco industry. He was eventually assassinated and replaced by his son, who had learned nothing. In 1901 he sold William Knox D'Arcy the entire Iranian oil industry. This shaped all of subsequent Iranian history.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 243 - Operation Ajax (I)

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 22:38:51 -0000

In this episode, we delve into the history of Iran, focusing on the US's role in ending democratic rule in 1953 and installing Mohammad Reza Shah's dictatorship, a fact well-known in Iran but only admitted by the US in the 90s. This event led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, headed by Ayatollah Khomeini, and fueled anti-Western sentiments across the Middle East. We discuss the significant figure of Mohammad Mossadegh, and the history of Iran under the Qajar shahs, the stagnation and foreign exploitation during this period, and the controversial Reuter concession of 1872, which was a significant surrender of Iran's industrial resources to foreign control, but was quickly cancelled due to widespread opposition.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #242 - Psychological Warfare

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 04:06:15 -0000

The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the concept of psychological warfare. The Rosenberg trial, which began in March 1951, was a sensational case involving accusations of espionage for the Soviet Union. The couple, tried alongside fellow Communist Morton Sobell, were defended by Manny and Alexander Bloch. The trial involved key testimonies, including that of David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, who admitted to passing on atomic information. The Rosenbergs were found guilty and sentenced to death. The trial was heavily influenced by the ongoing Cold War tension and the fear of Communist threat.

We also discuss the creation of the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), designed to coordinate Cold War psychological warfare and propaganda. The PSB worked on creating a narrative to justify prosecuting the Rosenbergs, though this narrative faced opposition. The PSB was later dissolved and its functions transferred to other organizations. The use of psychological operations continues today, conducted by the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States Agency for Global Media.

Finally, the we explore the 'spiral of silence' theory by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a concept explaining how individuals often conform to majority opinion due to fear of isolation. This concept is particularly relevant in the context of mass communication and public opinion.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 241 - The Rosenberg Trial

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 22:53:57 -0000

We continue the shocking story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, charged with conspiracy to commit espionage from 1944 to 1950. The US government sought the death penalty and engaged in questionable tactics during the trial, while public debate grew over the extreme sentencing. We discuss the role of Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s future mentor and lawyer, the unethical conduct of judge Irving R. Kaufman, and the damaging testimony of David Greenglass, which falsely implicated his sister, Ethel.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 240 - The H Bomb (part 2)

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 01:37:42 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 239 - The H Bomb

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:29:21 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #238 - The "Pumpkin Papers"

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 03:06:39 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 237 - Hiss & the Rosenbergs

Fri, 12 May 2023 21:32:31 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 236 - Monty

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 23:44:38 -0000

Our final NATO episode! The Pentagon is worried that there isn’t enough military budget to pay for both domestic and European defence. Until someone had the insight that the two might be closely related. So now the Western Union’s defense committee had to pick a commander-in-chief.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 235 - Forging The Alliance

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 22:08:18 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 234 - “The Vandenberg Resolution”

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 07:48:00 -0000

Everyone is trying to figure out a model for European co-operation. Secret meetings at the Pentagon between the US, UK and Canada in March/April 1948 explored three possible extensions of the Brussels pact. Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys then put together a pan-European conference at The Hague (when he wasn’t getting sneaky blowjobs from the wife of a duke). The CIA even had their own secret operation. But the turning point was “The Vandenberg Resolution”.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 233 - Big Stick Diplomacy

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 02:40:55 -0000

During 1947-48, England and France had been working on their own treaty as well as one involving the so-called Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). That became the basis of discussions about a broader treaty creating a United States of Europe, something many US and European leaders wanted, especially in light of the Marshall Plan. But the path to get there wasn’t clear. Europe was scared of upsetting the Soviets without US guarantees of military support, but the US wasn’t ready to offer that up just yet.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #232 - Norway Wants The Money

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 05:02:11 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#231 - Finlandization

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 00:15:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#230 - The Communist "Coup"

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 02:16:00 -0000

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #229 - Peak Communism

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 10:51:00 -0000

After Benes took control of Czechoslovakia again after WWII, with the support of the Allies, he ran a program of ethnic cleansing, mostly targeting people of German ancestry. And the Czech Communist party became the most popular political party of any country in history in proportion to the total national population.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #228 - Czechoslovakia

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 23:49:00 -0000

Let’s talk about the history of Czechoslovakia. The anti-semitic founder of the modern state was well connected in the USA, all the way up to POTUS. His list of important American friends included a Nazi-lovin’ industrialist. But the state he founded was friendly to Jews and pushed through some socialist progressive reforms…. Until it was abandoned by the Western powers and practically handed to Hitler on a silver platter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 227 - Something Wicked This Way Comes

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 05:47:00 -0000

Significant electoral victories and strikes by domestic socialist parties in France and Italy pushed the UK to insist on American military support for the Marshall Plan’s rollout. In the United States, there were divergent views on whether or not that was a good idea - until something happened in 1948 which sealed the deal.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 226 - Empire By Invitation

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 04:54:00 -0000

European recipients of the Marshall Plan funds were quite clear to the USA that they needed help keeping the socialists down and out of their countries. And the USA recognized that its own economic welfare rested on the revival of Europe. Funding a pro-capitalist European recovery was a matter of national self-interest.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 225 - The Creation of NATO

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 22:39:00 -0000

We want to take a break from Korea to talk about the creation of NATO. Obviously relevant with the whole Ukraine situation. And it took on a new kind of mission during the Korean War. But let’s go back and look at where it came from.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #224 ‘Thank God that’s over.’

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 21:48:00 -0000

MacArthur is gone but he isn’t going quietly. He thinks he can rally his support into a run for the POTUS job. He is gravely mistaken.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #223 - Terminated

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 21:44:00 -0000

By April 1951, MacArthur wanted to nuke China. But Truman had had enough of his giant ego. It was time for him to go.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #222 - Operation KILLER

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 03:30:00 -0000

Ridgway thought there was no reason for the US army to abandon the Korean peninsula. They just needed to do a better job of digging themselves in. The transformation of Eighth Army after the coming of its new commander astonished and profoundly impressed all those who witnessed it. Meanwhile, MacArthur’s relationship with the Joint Chiefs, and Truman, just became worse and worse. And China conducted its withdrawal methodically, giving the US a chance to back down and save face before it was too late.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #221 - “The Soldier’s General”

Sun, 28 Aug 2022 22:49:00 -0000

General Matthew Bunker Ridgway, “The Soldier’s General”, takes over command of the 8th Army and his “back to basics” approach was exactly what was needed.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #220 - Without Further Bloodshed

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 04:32:00 -0000

By early Feb 1951, it became evident that a military disaster for the UN in Korea wasn’t likely. Under the new command of Ridgway, after Walker had died in a jeep accident, the 8th army were holding on. Meanwhile in China… They also thought they could win the entire Korean Peninsula. So weren’t really trying hard to negotiate a peaceful settlement with two Koreas. But then… On 15 March 1951, MacArthur, who heard that Truman was going to push for peace, gave a press interview…. in breach of Truman’s orders to keep his mouth shut.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #219 - Every Weapon We Have

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 02:58:00 -0000

In December 1950, MacArthur and Truman are both threatening the use of atomic weapons against China and North Korea. Meanwhile, the British are trying to talk them into making peace with China, while Truman struggles with massive unpopularity back home.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #218 - Six Year Recap

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 17:42:00 -0000

While Cam is in the USA, the lads sit down to have a lazy chat about the highlights of the last six years of talking about the Cold War.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 217 - Tarzan

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 19:23:00 -0000

The big question for the Pentagon was why the US collapsed so quickly. They could blame the winter and the mountains - but the Chinese had to contend with those as well. And the US wasn’t sure what their next move was. Truman wanted a quick settlement, but MacArthur wanted escalation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 216 - Not Their Best

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 21:43:00 -0000

As they are swiftly kicked out of Korea by Mao’s forces in December 1950, everyone seems to be angry at America. The Chinese, the North Koreans, the South Koreans, the British… even the Americans are angry at themselves. Because, like Mexico, they didn’t send their best people.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #215 - The Double Life of Katharine Clark

Wed, 11 May 2022 03:57:00 -0000

Today we're talking to Katharine Gregorio, author of "The Double Life of Katharine Clark, The Untold Story of the American Journalist Who Brought the Truth about Communism to the West". Clark was her great-aunt, a foreign correspondent who, while posted in Belgrade in the mid-1950s, befriended Milovan Djilas, the former heir apparent to Tito in Yugoslavia and author of the classic "Conversations with Stalin", which Clark helped get published in the West, at great risk to herself and her husband.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #214 - "Chinese Laundrymen"

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 23:37:00 -0000

MacArthur can feel victory slipping through his fingers in Korea. He was certain the Chinese had been scared off. He was very, very wrong. His choice lay between escalation or humiliation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 213 - Advancing In A Different Direction

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 01:12:00 -0000

Back to the Korean War and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir aka Lake Changjin. China and the UN/ROK forces fight in freezing cold temperatures. Well, when I say “fight”, I mean the UN forces were “advancing in a different direction”.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #212 - Taiwan Part 4

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:02:00 -0000

This is part four of our recent chat about the history of China and Taiwan with James Shone, a teacher who has lived and worked in Taiwan for over a decade. He’s recently started a podcast about the history of Taiwan - https://taiwanthroughtime.com/.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #211 - Fugitives by Danny Orbach

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 23:47:00 -0000

Dr. Danny Orbach is an Associate professor in general history and East Asian studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His new book, Fugitives, is a history of Nazi mercenaries during the Cold War.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #210 - Taiwan Part 3

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 23:14:00 -0000

This is part three of our recent chat about the history of China and Taiwan with James Shone, a teacher who has lived and worked in Taiwan for over a decade. He’s recently started a podcast about the history of Taiwan - https://taiwanthroughtime.com/.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 209 - Taiwan Pt 2

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 05:25:00 -0000

Part two of our recent chat with James Shone about Taiwan. Don't forget to check out this new podcast about the history of Taiwan - https://taiwanthroughtime.com/.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 208 - School's In

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 03:44:00 -0000

We were recently invited by Paul Giordano, a listener of this show, to give a lecture to the kids studying the Cold War at EF Academy in NY where Paul is the Humanities Department Chair. We spoke for about 40 minutes then did some Q&A with the very bright kids in his class. This is a recording of our Zoom call. We're available for more school lectures, kids' parties, wedding and bar mitzvahs.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #206 - The Battle of Lake Changjin

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 00:50:00 -0000

The backdrop to the early stages of the Korean War was a US Presidential election which Truman was expected to lose. He also survived his second assassination attempt, this time by Puerto Rican nationalists. The first assassination attempt was by Zionist terrorists. Back in North Korea, China and the US fight over the Chosin Reservoir, aka the Battle of Lake Changjin.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #207 - Taiwan part 1

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 22:44:00 -0000

In 1949, the Kuomintang retreated from mainland China to the island of Formosa, now known as Taiwan. Ownership of Taiwan would become a major issue during the Cold War, and continues to be a cause of regional tensions, as well as China-US tensions, today. Joining us to talk about it today is James Shone, a teacher who has lived and worked in Taiwan for over a decade. He’s recently started a podcast about the history of Taiwan - https://taiwanthroughtime.com/.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 205 - MacArthur’s Graveyard

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 03:11:00 -0000

Okay - no more foreplay. By early November 1950, Macarthur thought he had the Chinese scared and on the run and he continued his push to the Manchurian border, aka “the Home-by-Christmas Offensive”, assuring his troops they would all be home by Christmas. Little did he know that his 150,000 men were advancing unwittingly into 300,000 Chinese troops and 80,000 North Korean remnants and guerrillas. Neither the CIA or MacArthur’s own intelligence units had any clue what they were walking into. It was to become MacArthur’s Graveyard.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 204 - Mao's Sejanus

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 03:49:00 -0000

For many years, China’s big bad had been the Kuomintang. As MacArthur and the US/UN forces continued to ignore their warnings about their occupation of North Korea, the USA very quickly became the new Chinese enemy number one. But not all of the Chinese leadership believed they were ready to go to war with the US. Lin Biao, one of the heroes of the revolution, turned down Mao’s request to lead them in war against the US. He died in a mysterious plane crash, was declared an enemy of the revolution, and became Mao’s Sejanus.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 203 - More Foreplay

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 22:59:00 -0000

The Chinese sent the US and UN enough warnings that they wouldn’t idly stand by and allow forces to march into North Korea in 1950. But the US refused to listen. Their arrogance and racist worldview made it impossible to listen. Bizarrely, they interpreted Chinese warnings and probes in October as simply evidence of weakness and reluctance to fight. And while most Americans today know little about the Korean War, the Chinese have not forgotten the lessons of how to deal with the United States.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #202 - Kim Buck Tooth

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 05:46:00 -0000

The point of the Wake Island conference, from Truman’s perspective, was to help Douglas MacArthur to understand who was giving the orders. And Dougie Mac understood perfectly. HE WAS. Still convinced the Chinese weren't going to give him any trouble, MacArthur pushed his troops closer to the Chinese border. When Mao attacked in late October, he decimated American and ROK troops. When they managed to capture a couple of soldiers who happily identified themselves as Chinese, fighting as part of a huge Chinese force coming to aid the North Koreans, the Americans refused to believe it. Over and over and over. Because it's impossible to understand something you are paid not to understand.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 201 WHO’S THE BOSS

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 06:35:00 -0000

Without permission from the UNSC, the US and ROK forces crossed the 38th parallel. The Truman Administration ordered MacArthur to keep the crossing a secret. He ignored them and broadcast it publicly. He had them by the balls and they knew it. Truman ordered MacArthur to meet with him on Wake Island so he would know who the boss was. MacArthur knew all too well - he was.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 200- Spies and Traitors, Part Two

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 22:36:00 -0000

This is part two of our recent interview with Michael Holzman, author of the new book: SPIES AND TRAITORS - Kim Philby, James Angleton and the Friendship and Betrayal That Would Shape MI6, the CIA and the Cold War.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #199 - Michael Holzman, Spies and Traitors, part 1

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:42:00 -0000

This is part one of a two-part interview with Michael Holzman, author of the new book: SPIES AND TRAITORS - Kim Philby, James Angleton and the Friendship and Betrayal That Would Shape MI6, the CIA and the Cold War

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #198 - Wol, Wolmi-Do

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 23:33:00 -0000

While MacArthur plans his Inchon invasion, Stalin and Nehru are trying to negotiate a peace deal, but it was rejected by the USA. The KPA are setting up people’s democratic committees in the South while they have a chance. But then MacArthur’s landing at Inchon goes more smoothly than anyone could have imagined - mostly because the North had already been decimated. MacArthur goes back to Tokyo, convinced the war is already over. But he doesn’t want to stop at driving the North back behind the 38th parallel. He wants to control the entire country.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #197 - No Gun Ri

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 22:42:00 -0000

American soldiers slaughter hundreds of innocent civilians at No Gun Ri, then deny it for 50 years. Lieutenant Eugene Clark does some brass balls recon of Inchon ahead of

Dougie Mac’s big landing, aka “Operation Common Knowledge”.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #196 - Experts At Retreating

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 22:30:00 -0000

While Australian Mustangs are supporting - and sometimes killing - the Americans troops in Korea, an Australian journalist prevents war crimes by the South against prisoners. The North, who see the South as collaborators and traitors, also commit atrocities, as do the Americans. The British government finally and reluctantly send a token force, which gets insulted by the Americans as soon as they arrive. And when the UN forces are almost defeated, Dougie Mac comes up with his grand plan - to land at Inchon. Everyone - EVERYONE - thinks he is batshit crazy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #195 - Mixing The Colors

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 21:52:00 -0000

More and more US troops landed in Korea in July-August 1950, only to get immediately crushed by the North. The segregated African-American unit, the 24th infantry of the 25th division, got special criticism for their inability to stand their ground. Yet the US/UN troops were actually killing a lot of KPA troops. Meanwhile Rhee’s ROK men were forcing young South Koreans at gunpoint to join the army - to fight for freedom - whether they wanted to or not.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 194 - General Kimchi

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 23:36:00 -0000

The next US unit to face the North Koreans was the 34th infantry - 1981 men, but still no tanks, no anti-tank weapons. Did the US learn from their first disaster in Korea? Meanwhile, on 10 July, Dougie Mac was formally appointed Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command - despite the UN wanting someone else for the job. A US General gets captured by the North Koreans… and learns to like kimchi.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 193 - Yanks v Tanks

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 08:59:00 -0000

The first US troops to engage the North Koreans was “Task Force Smith” as the Battle of Osan. They were sent in there by MacArthur to deliver “an arrogant display of strength.” It was a complete disaster.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 192 ‘Stop The G—Ks’

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 10:00:00 -0000

MacArthur recommends “the full utilization” of the US military to Korea and Truman approves. Although the UK was completely and utterly broke, they agreed to get involved, even though privately they didn’t buy the American claim that Kim’s was taking orders from Moscow. And they were worried that the Americans might want to drop another atomic bomb. According to one senior US military officer: “All those officers, those generals: they really thought that they were going to go over there and ‘stop the g—ks’.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 191 - The Lumpy Phallus

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:59:00 -0000

Gen Douglas MacArthur, the “American Caesar”, was a rabid Christian who believed it was his personal mission in life to crush communism and help the United States dominate world affairs. A complete narcissist, he enjoyed the company of prostitutes and sycophants, and ran Japan like a shogun. By 1950, he was 70 years old.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 190 - Don't Call It An Invasion

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 05:54:00 -0000

Back to the Korean War. We start with a quick re-cap of previous episodes to remind us what happened. After the North attacked the South on June 25, 1950, the US pulled together a coalition (of sorts) of countries to defend the South, lead by 70-year-old General Douglas MacArthur. Truman told the British prime minister, Clement Attlee, “The only way to meet communism is to eliminate it.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 189 - Richard Lim

Fri, 21 May 2021 01:33:00 -0000

We're joined by Richard Lim from the "This American President" podcast to talk about Truman and his Cold War decisions. It gets a little... tense.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 188 - The Dulles Brothers

Fri, 07 May 2021 01:09:00 -0000

John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles personified the “Soviets As Evil” mindset. They were the classic examples of the American Cold War paradigm. Upper class political blue bloods, fundamentalist Christians, who were big business lawyers, hated Communism, and who set out to remake the map of the world.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 187 - KNEEL SUCK CRACK

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 22:16:00 -0000

Beetle Smith’s last act as CIA director is to come up with the idea of a CIA “Murder Board”. After Eisenhower is elected POTUS, the new CIA director is Allen Dulles, brother of the new Sec of State, John Foster Dulles.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 186 - Project Artichoke

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 22:48:00 -0000

In 1951, the CIA spent $100 million buying arms and ammunition to support 200,000 Chinese anti-communist guerrillas who were going to fight against Mao. The only problem was - the guerrillas didn’t exist. Then, to counter the rising problem of double agents in their ranks, the CIA set up secret torture prisons in Germany, Japan, and Panama. It was in Panama that the CIA started Project Artichoke.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 185 - Wagging The Dog

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 02:07:00 -0000

In 1951, the CIA’s budget was ballooning out of control to fund it’s massive covert operations which were all complete disasters. But they were secret disasters, so nobody, not even Congress or the President, let alone the general public, ever heard about most of them. While the CIA happily sent thousands of Koreans and Chinese agents to their deaths, they reported back to Washington that everything was going exactly to plan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 184

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 04:05:00 -0000

The CIA’s first attempt to train foreign agents and parachute them into Soviet territory ended in disaster. So did their second attempt. And their third. And so on. But they did it anyway. Then the Korean War happened and Bedell Smith became the fourth CIA director in as many years. He inherited a disaster.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 183 - CIA <3 Nazis

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 03:42:00 -0000

If there's one thing the CIA loved in its early days, it was hiring Nazis - like General Reinhard Gehlen who ran their West German spying operation and ended up running West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW 182 - CIA Front Groups

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 23:32:00 -0000

The CIA wanted to secretly funnel American cash to European politicians, criminals and businesses that would do their bidding. They also wanted to influence public opinion about capitalism, communism, but without appearing to. To accomplish this, they set up an enormous number of front groups, many of which still exist today. They also hid known fascist murderers in the US because they thought they might be useful.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 181 - Plausible Deniability

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:23:00 -0000

On September 1, 1948, Frank Wisner took charge of the CIA’s covert operations. Known as the OPC - The Office of Policy Co-ordination. Although the CIA was a publicly known entity, the OPC was top secret. One of the first things he did was establish a multinational media conglomerate for spreading anti-Communist and pro-American propaganda. He spent millions trying to tip the political scales around the world by interfering in elections. In his mind, he was preparing for WWIII. According to one of his earlier hires: “We ran things. We were seen as kings. We went all over the world and we did what we wanted.'' Meanwhile the US Government passed a secret law saying that if the CIA was caught out doing something illegal, official policy was to lie about it to the American people and to the world.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CW #180 - Ret. U.S. Major Danny Sjursen

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 05:30:00 -0000

Taking a short break from our CIA series this week to talk to retired U.S. Major Danny Sjursen. Danny was a U.S. Army strategist and history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. These days he’s an outspoken critic of American imperialism.

Danny talks to use about his journey from being your typical post-9/11 U.S. soldier wanting revenge, to the war critic that he is today. We also talk about the nature of the military-industrial complex, the so-called “West Point Mafia”, Trump’s military track record, Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and what might happen if Trump tries to declare martial law.

Follow Danny at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris “Henri” Henrikson.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #179 - Covert Psychological Operations

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:08:00 -0000

Even the CIA’s original legal counsel warned them that covert missions were illegal - but they did them anyway. On December 14, 1947, they were ordered to execute “covert psychological operations designed to counter Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities." Their first mission was to spend tens of millions of dollars of secret cash to influence the Italian elections. “We were terrified…. and going beyond our charter,” according to an early CIA operative.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 178

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 02:56:00 -0000

In 1947, Truman’s popularity was plunging. The CIA came out of his attempt to scare the hell out of the country. Exit Director Vandenberg and enter Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Allen Dulles, the National Security Council and some loosey-goosey wording in the CIA’s charter that you could drive a semi-trailer through.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where are the rest of the episodes?

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 04:37:00 -0000

If you're looking for our more recent episodes, you'll need to sign up to be a Cold War subscriber.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 177 - Director of Centralized Snooping - CIA Part 2

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 03:37:00 -0000

After Truman's decision to shut down the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan’s deputy, Brigadier General John Magruder, met secretly with John McCloy, the assistant secretary of war, taking advantage of the fact that Henry Stimson, secretary of war and a huge opponent of the idea of an "American Gestapo", had just retired. Together they decided to countermand Truman and keep the OSS together. After Truman eventually realised he had made a mistake, he appointed the deputy director of naval intelligence, Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, a rich Democrat from Missouri, to be the director of the Central Intelligence GROUP. Admiral Leahy wrote his office diary for January 24, 1946: “At lunch today in the White House, with only members of the Staff present, RAdm Sidney Souers and I were presented with black cloaks, black hats, and wooden daggers” by Truman, who then knighted Souers as chief of the “Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers” and “Director of Centralized Snooping.” But Souers didn't last long, and six months later, General Hoyt Vandenberg became the second director of central intelligence.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 176 - The CIA (part 1)

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 22:49:00 -0000

According to Truman, he never intended for the CIA to be a “Cloak & Dagger Outfit”. It was intended to be a centralized reporting agency, not to act as a spy organization. Today we start a series about how the CIA rose from the ashes of Wild Bill Donovan's incompetent OSS after WWII.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 175 - Domestic Happiness

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 04:26:00 -0000

Tito’s form of Communism quickly became much more liberal that those in the Soviet bloc countries and China. The question is why? The collectivisation of land was put in reverse. The police were reformed and the press was given additional freedoms. Tito turned the tables on Stalin, accusing the USSR of abandoning socialist principles in favour of imperialist expansion.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 174 - SMERSH

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 04:34:00 -0000

Tito has his own Central Committee member Žujović arrested for treason, which leads the Cominform to expel Yugoslavia. This creates a rift between the pro=Soviet Yugoslav Communists and the pro-Tito Communists, and Tito sends thousands of “Cominformists” to slave in the camp on Goli Otok. To show that he could out-Stalin Stalin, he announced there would be ‘greater boldness and a faster pace in setting up collective farms’, which caused violent resistance in certain areas of the country. Stalin then sends agents from SMERSH to assassinate Tito.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #173 - Titoism

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 01:53:00 -0000

Tensions between Yugoslavia and the USSR continue to increase in the late 40s, eventually erupting when the Soviets declared the Yugoslav Communist Party was undemocratic and neither Marxist-Leninist nor Bolshevik.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #172

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 02:26:00 -0000

My guest today is Obrad. He grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia and joined the Yugoslav Armed Forces in the late 1970s. Today he lives in Canberra, Australia.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #171

Sat, 05 Sep 2020 01:26:00 -0000

This week we have a couple of guests from Slovenia - Lovro and Izak. They are 20-year-old students of international relations at The University of Ljubljana. They joined Cam on Zoom a few weeks ago to talk about Slovenia today and how the era of Tito and the Republic of Yugoslavia are taught in the schools and remembered by their families.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #170

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 23:38:00 -0000

Although all of the Ustashi leadership managed to escape Yugoslavia, one remained behind - Archbishop Stepinac. Not really a leader, more like an enthusiastic supporter. When Tito’s attempts to get him to publicly apologise for the crimes of the Catholics fails, he is put on trial - which creates massive international condemnation against Tito and the Communists.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #169 - Escaping Yugoslvia

Sat, 15 Aug 2020 00:14:00 -0000

Chetniks escaping from Yugoslavia get shelter from the Vatican, but their leaders eventually settle in the UK and USA. Thousands of other fleeing Yugoslavs are sent back home by the British while almost all the leading Ustasha vanished in Austria and did not reappear until several years later in Argentina, Spain and the United States. Many anti-Communists clung to the hope that the Western Allies and in particular the United States would step in to save them from Communism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #168

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 22:30:00 -0000

The new Yugoslavia tries to industrialise. Tito enjoys the luxury that came with being the Premier and gets a new wife, but his biggest issue in the years immediately following the war was how to unite the country. Hundreds of thousands of anti-Communist Yugoslavs attempted to flee the country, took to the hills to continue fighting, or went into civil opposition.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Cold War #167

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 01:16:00 -0000

Tito’s relationships with both Stalin and Churchill suffer as a result of the fight over control of Trieste, the behaviour of Soviet soldiers in Yugoslavia, and Tito’s manipulation of the first free elections in Yugoslavia in 1945.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #166

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 09:14:00 -0000

The near catastrophe of the Seventh Offensive led to recriminations between the British and Tito but it showed the Germans regarded Tito as a serious foe. Himmler said in a speech later in 1944: ‘He is our enemy, but I wish we had a dozen Titos in Germany, men who were leaders and had such great resolution and good nerves that though they were constantly encircled they would never give in.’ Meanwhile, the Western media described him variously as a lesbian, Russian officer, a Ukrainian, a Polish count or a Polish Jew, while many believed that he did not exist at all and that TITO was an acronym for Third International Terrorist Organisation. Eventually Churchill decided he had to meet this man for himself. But while his relationship with Churchill improved, things with Stalin got worse.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #165 - Dead Men On Leave

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 02:00:00 -0000

At the second session of AVNOJ, 29 November 1943, the delegates became a legislative assembly under the Presidency of Tito, who was proclaimed Marshal. But this momentous occasion was followed with tragedy. During the winter of 1943–4 the Germans carried out ‘Operation Kugelblitz’ (‘Thunderbolt’), which the Partisans called the Sixth Offensive. In January 1944 Fitzroy Maclean came back to Bosnia with two remarkable proofs of Winston Churchill’s regard for Tito. One of them was Winston’s son Randolph Churchill, “a flabby bully”, who was now an officer in the British military mission. The head of the Soviet Mission was the Red Army’s General Korneyev, "an incurable drunkard", according to Stalin. The Americans weren't really interested. Their main target was the British Empire.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 164

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 01:32:00 -0000

Churchill sends Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, one of the founders of the SAS, to Tito as his official representative. Churchilll’s decision to support Tito and Partisans - ie communists - over the Chetnik royalists has been the subject of much debate and anger for decades.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 163 - IF IT BLOATS IT FLOATS

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 05:24:00 -0000

In November 1942 Tito set up his first form of Communist government, the Anti-Fascist Council for Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). Hitler asks Mussolini to send all of the Croatian Jews to German camps - Mussolini agrees, but his troops, lead by General Mario Roatta, refused to obey. Hitler's next attack on the Partisans, 'Operation Weiss’, began on 20 January 1943, with 90,000 Germans, Italians and Croats versus 20,000 Partisans. Tito was trapped but had a cunning plan - he did a peace deal with the Nazis to buy himself some time.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #162 - SEXY NAZI WEREWOLF BIKINI BABES FROM HELL

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:38:00 -0000

Tito barely gets out of Užice alive before the Germans arrive. Then he gets betrayed by Stalin, narrowly escapes capture again, tries to resign as party secretary, and finally sets up his new HQ at the Bosnian town of Bihać.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #161

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 02:14:00 -0000

Tito started his campaigning in the middle of 1941, after Operation Barbarossa had distracted the Nazis away from Yugoslavia. He met with the Chetnik leader Draza Mihajlovic to try to form a unified front. In Užice, a town of some 12,000 inhabitants, Tito proclaimed a symbolic ‘Red Republic’ boasting its own hotel, bank, factories, newspaper and prison.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War #160 - The Greatest Of All Evils

Thu, 21 May 2020 21:54:00 -0000

The Jasenovac concentration camp, established in Slavonia, aka "the Auschwitz of the Balkans", "specialized in one-on-one violence of a particularly brutal kind" and prisoners were primarily murdered manually with the use of blunt objects such as knives, hammers and axes. In the words of the Nazi general, von Horstenau, "The greatest of all evils must be Jasenovac, which no ordinary mortal can glimpse." It was run by Catholics.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cold War 159

Fri, 15 May 2020 04:14:00 -0000

In 1941, after the creation of the NDH, Ante Pavelić, the leader of the Catholic fascist Ustasha, went to Rome to receive the blessing of Pope Pius XII - while his administration was publicly saying they were going to kill a third of the Croatian Orthodox. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1941 Roman Catholic priests, attended by armed Ustasha, carried out mass baptisms in Orthodox villages. But the ones who were only baptised were lucky. This is when the mass slaughter of Orthodox Christians, by Catholics, began. The German Plenipotentiary General to the NDH, the historian Glaise von Horstenau, wrote in June that ‘according to reliable reports from countless German military and civilian observers during the last few weeks, in country and town, the Ustasha have gone raging mad’. WARNING: Gird your loins for this episode. It gets pretty graphic.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#158 - Catholic Fascists

Sat, 09 May 2020 00:26:44 -0000

On this episode we talk about the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, lead by Ante Pavelić, and his Catholic fascist group, the Ustasha.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#157 - Operation Punishment

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 02:52:00 -0000

As caretaker secretary of the Yugoslav Party from 1937 to 1940, Tito first moved the Central Committee from Paris to Zagreb, then built up a new, young leadership loyal to him. These guys would be his inner circle for decades to come. When, in February 1941, the Yugoslav regent Prince Paul did a deal with Hitler to avoid an invasion of Yugoslavia, the Serbian Orthodox went nuts and overthrew Paul's government, installed 18 year old King Peter, tore up the pact with Germany, and destroyed the Gestapo HQ in Belgrade. Hitler, unsurprisingly, did not take this well.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#156 - The Old Wet Baby Trick

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 00:36:00 -0000

Back to Tito and Yugoslavia. In 1934, the Croat Catholics rose up against the Serb King Alexander, leading to his assassination by a Ustasha agent while visiting France. Meanwhile Stalin purged the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party, opening the door to a new generation of younger, more radical leadership, with Tito becoming the General Secretary. While living in Paris, he loved to visit to graves of the original "dictatorship of the proletariat" - the Paris Communards, who took power briefly in 1871, before being executed en masse by the French government.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#155 - The Human Factor

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 11:40:00 -0000

My guest today is Archie Brown, emeritus professor of politics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, where he served as a professor of politics and director of St Antony's Russian and East European Centre. He has written widely on Soviet and Russian politics, on communist politics more generally, on the Cold War, and on political leadership. His new book is The Human Factor, about the end of the Cold War.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#154 - Tito (III)

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 05:17:00 -0000

By the time Tito got back to his home country in 1920, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman empires had all been broken up.

In their place were the independent states of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, commonly known as Yugoslavia.

It was then that Tito began his career as a revolutionary.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#153 - Tito (II)

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 04:24:00 -0000

In order to understand the career of Josip Broz Tito, we need to understand the religious and political history of the Balkans. As historian Richard West says: anyone who approaches the Yugoslavs without some knowledge of their religious history is like a chicken trying to understand a ladder.

So on this episode, we do a quick review of the region from the fall of Rome through to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#152 - Tito (I)

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 23:58:00 -0000

Josip Broz Tito grew up in poverty on a small farm in Croatia. He dropped out of school at 13, and apprenticed as a locksmith and mechanic. In 1913 he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army and ended up in WWI, where he was injured and captured by Russians. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, he became a Bolshevik and fought with them against the White Army.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#151 - First Lightning

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 03:27:00 -0000

After the bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviets work their asses off to get their own nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, despite the enormous financial commitment it required and the other, more pressing social and economic problems the country was facing after WWII.

They saw it as a matter of self-defence against the USA.

In 1947, Andrei Zhdanov introduced the 'two-camps doctrine’.

And finally, on 29 August 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb: RDS-1, codenamed "First Lightning", but known to the West as "Joe-1".

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#150 - The Red Napoleon

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 21:28:00 -0000

When Stalin and Molotov heard what Truman had said at Potsdam about the USA having a new bomb ready, they saw it as a direct threat to the Soviet Union and increased their support for Soviet scientists. They might have been further advanced if it hadn't been for the purge of Soviet military strategists like Mikhail Tukhachevskii, aka "The Red Napoleon".

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#149 - The Soviet Bomb

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 21:35:00 -0000

It’s commonly thought in the West that the Soviet Union stole all of the secrets for building a bomb from their spies in the West. Not exactly correct. When nuclear fission was discovered in Berlin in December 1938, the Soviets were as quick to react as the West. But their economy wasn't as strong, and they had many more problems to contend with, so it didn't get a high priority. And then 4 million Germans invaded. On this episode we being to tell the story of the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet scientists who lead the work.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#148 - The Biltmore Program

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 07:44:00 -0000

When WWII broke out, the Zionists declared their support for Britain. It's not like they were going to throw their lot in with the Nazis. For the Arabs, the choice was trickier. The British were seen by the Arabs as the protectors of Zionism while the Nazis were against the Jews - and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And for the first few years, the Nazis looked like the favourites to win.

Then Churchill came to power in the UK and threw his lot in with the Zionists. In May 1942 an Extraordinary Zionist Conference in New York voted to support what became known as the Biltmore Program, for the hotel in which they met. It called for “Palestine to be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world."

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#147 - Jewish Terrorism

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 13:09:00 -0000

After The Peel Commission recommending moving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians off their land by force, the Arab Revolt re-emerged with hundreds of terrorist attacks during 1937-38 against the British and Jews - and even against Arab collaborators. The British cracked down and deported many of their leaders. Irgun, the Jewish militant group, met this threat with their own terrorism. Hitler used the situation to score propaganda points against the Jews and the British.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#146 - The Peel Commission

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 23:37:00 -0000

After the Great Arab Revolt of 1936, the British pretended not to understand the causes of Arab anger and held The Peel Commission to get to the bottom of it. Peel recommended partitioning the land, giving one-fifth to the Jews - forcing 225,000 Arabs to move off their land.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#145 - The Black Hand

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 01:07:00 -0000

While the Jews were trying to get close to Mussolini, the Arabs modelled themselves after Hitler. The Husseinis, led by Amin al-Husseini, aka Hajj Amin, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in 1935 set up the Palestinian Arab Party which had its own youth corp, al-Futuwwa, similar to the Hitler Youth and was even officially called the “Nazi Scouts”.

Another Arab terrorist group in 1935 was run by Syrian-born, Egyptian-educated preacher and cleric, Sheikh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam. He had fought against the French in Syria and eventually had to hide out in Palestine. He organized a terrorist network called the Black Hand. After the “cement barrel incident,” al-Qassam lead an attack on the Jews which ended in his martyrdom, paving the way for generations of young Arab men, and which lead to the “Great Arab Rebellion” of 1936.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#144 - The 1929 Riots

Wed, 25 Dec 2019 13:08:00 -0000

On 15 August 1929, a rowdy group of Jewish Revisionist activists marched to the Western Wall proclaiming "The Wall is ours". They insulted the Prophet, Islam, and the Muslim community at large. It lead to large scale riots and violence. The British were powerless to stop it. This lead a band of Haganah officers set up their own group, called “Haganah Bet” or “Haganah B.” It would later be called Irgun and described as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, British, and United States governments.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#143 - Fascist Jews

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 22:54:00 -0000

From 1921 - 29, there was mostly peace in Palestine. But the Zionist immigration continued unabated. And the larger they got, the more politically aggressive they became. In 1925, a new Jewish right-wing political party, Betar, was created, aligning itself with Mussolini - making them fascist Jews. They urged the Palestine Jews to demand full control of the Temple Mount, the site of the old Jewish temple and called by Arabs al-Haram al-Sharif (the noble compound or sanctuary), the third-holiest site in Islam.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#142 - The Unjust Policy

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 10:11:00 -0000

In the early 1920s, violence between Muslims and the Jews continued to escalate. Because they didn't trust the British to defend their interests, the newly formed (and illegal) Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah, was formed. Churchill came to visit Palestine - and made things worse. Without a doubt, the British military continued to favor the Arabs. General Sir Walter Congreve, commander of British forces in the Middle East, said in October 1921: “In the case of Palestine [the sympathies of the Army] are rather obviously with the Arabs,… the victim[s] of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British Government.”

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#141 - Dirty Idle Wasters

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 23:12:00 -0000

When the British finally captured the Middle East from the Ottomans in October 1918, under the command of General Edmund Allenby, with the support of TE Lawrence and his Sharifians, Hussein and Faisal, the British immediately tried to walk back on the Sykes-Picot agreement. They figured they did all the hard work, so fuck the French.

Most British officials believed that the Arabs could be persuaded to live with Zionism. As Lawrence put it: “There would be no difficulty in reconciling Zionists and Arabs in Palestine and Syria, provided that the administration of Palestine remained in British hands.”

In April 1918 Allenby established the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), headed by Major-General Sir Arthur Money, with Brigadier G. F. Clayton as chief political officer.

As you’d expect, they looked down on both Jews and Arabs. Money, for one, said the Jews of Jerusalem were “bringing up the rising generation in their schools to be dirty, idle wasters.… Their men turn out more idle wasters and their women more prostitutes than the rest of the population put together." And he regarded the Jews “as a class inferior morally and intellectually to the bulk of the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the country.”

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#140 - The Rothschilds And Zionism

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 04:56:00 -0000

The Balfour Declaration took the form of a letter, dated November 2, 1917, from the foreign secretary to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British banker and zoologist, who headed Britain’s Zionist Federation.

In this episode we explore the Rothschilds and their relationship with Zionism.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#139 - The Balfour Declaration

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 22:09:00 -0000

Things in Palestine really started to heat up in 1908 - the year of The Young Turk Revolution. It was around this time that the violence between the Jews and the Arabs started to escalate beyond what was mostly localised troubles over property rights. And it took on a nationalist feel. The Jews started to arm themselves. The governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, wrote: “We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups … aiming to take Palestine from us.”

In 1915, Britain and France sat down to work out who was going to control what in the Middle East after the war - what became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. By 1917, when the Allies were bogged down on the Western Front, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. They hoped it would bring the American Jews to their cause, would help bring the United States into the war and keep Russia involved - and would stop the Jews from allying themselves with Ze Germans.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#138 - Intervening In Foreign Elections

Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:49:00 -0000

Americans were SHOCKED to discover that Russia had interfered in their 2016 Presidential elections. How dare they interfere with the democratic process of a sovereign nation! Of course, those same Americans probably have no idea that their own country has, according to the research done by my guest today, done the same thing over 80 times since the end of WWII.

Today I interview Dov H. Levin Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong about his research on what he calls his Partisan Electoral Intervention by the Great Powers dataset (PEIG). It shows how many times the USA and USSR/Russia intervened in foreign elections in the years 1946 - 2000.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#137 - The Ultimate Goal

Fri, 08 Nov 2019 06:51:00 -0000

Quite soon after the first Zionist emigration to Palestine, tensions between the Jews and the Muslims started to erupt in small scale violence. Zionist settler Ahad Ha’Am wrote that the other Zionist colonists “behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass without justification, beat them shamefully without sufficient cause and then boast about it.” Another early settler, Vladimir Dubnow, wrote in October 1882: “The ultimate goal … is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years.… The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.” And the first violence erupted at the very first Zionist colony, Petach Tikva. It wasn't based on religious or political or racial differences - it was over land. Villagers who had worked the land had it taken away from them. They saw it as Russian colonialism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#136 - British Interests

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 23:53:00 -0000

One fascinating witness of early zionism is Sir Ronald Storrs, who, in 1917 became, in his own words "the first military governor of Jerusalem since Pontius Pilate”. In 1940 he wrote a terrific little book, "Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine." This episode explain the roles of Chaim Weizmann, Herbert Samuel and World War I on Britain's support for the zionist agenda in Palestine. The British were eager to get the Jews to help them defeat the Germans and Ottomans. They also hoped that supporting the zionist agenda would help them secure war loans from the United States - and bring the US into the war. They also hoped that putting a bunch of grateful Jews under a British protectorate in Palestine would help them secure the eastern approach to the Suez Canal, the jugular vein of British commerce.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#135 - Baksheesh

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 01:44:00 -0000

By 1881, on the eve of the start of the Zionist Jewish influx, Palestine’s population was 457,000—about 400,000 of them Muslims, 13,000–20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox). In addition, there were several thousand more Jews who were permanent residents of Palestine but not Ottoman citizens. The overwhelming majority of the population was Arab, about 70 percent rural. Most of the Jews and Christians lived in Jerusalem.

But then foreign Jews started buying land in Palestine. When the first Jews started to arrive from Russia, the governor of Jerusalem was ordered to bar Russian, Rumanian, and Bulgarian Jews from landing in Jaffa and Haifa. The following year he was instructed to stop the sale of state lands to Jews, even if they were Ottoman citizens. But they kept coming anyway.

Many of the Zionists had been lead to believe the land was mostly empty. Many people believe that still today. Of the Palestinians, many Zionists believed they were "primitive, dishonest, fatalistic, lazy, savage". The Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky, in 1914 wrote:

"We must not forget that we are dealing here with a semi-savage people...."

The cause of the Zionists was supported by certain Western leaders, especially those who were Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#134 - Zionism

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 05:53:00 -0000

The idea of Jews returning to Palestine had been around since they were evicted by the Romans, but in a modern sense it really started to take shape in the late 19th century after the pogroms in Russia. On this podcast we talk about the vision some of the early proponents of Zionism had, including Leo Pinsker, Moses Hess, and Theodor Herzl.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#133 - The Creation Of Israel

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 22:41:00 -0000

Although you may not think of Israel as part of the Cold War paradigm, it’s played such a huge role in American foreign policy, and we have to cover it. It’s also played, and continues to play, a huge role in the story of oil, which is, of course, a huge part of the Cold War story. Because, as you know, the Cold War was all about economics. In this episode, we give a quick overview of anti-Semitism and the creation of the State of Israel. In our next episodes we're going to go deep into the story of Zionism.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#132 - A LAND WAR IN ASIA

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 13:57:00 -0000

Kim's "invasion" of the South gave the US the pretext they needed to ramp up military spending via NSC-68 and to support Rhee directly and indirectly by committing one of the classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Admiral Forrest Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, declared later: ‘I was fully aware of the hazards involved in fighting Asiatics on the Asiatic mainland, which is something that, as a naval officer, I have grown up to believe should be avoided if possible."

But they did it anyway.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 83 was pushed through - the Soviet Union did not veto it because it was still boycotting the Security Council - and Truman immediately decided to throw everything he had at Korea, shocking not just the Koreans, the Soviet and the Chinese, but also the British.

Truman call it a "police action", a phrase he would later regret.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#131 - THE UN V NORTH KOREA

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 23:00:00 -0000

WWII had created a strong US economy, mostly for military spending coming out of the public treasury.

Lots of industrialists made a fortune during that period.

And it was going away after the war.

In the aftermath of World War II, US armed forces had not merely been reduced – they had been allowed to crumble to the brink of collapse.

Truman's new Defense Secretary, Louis Johnson, had cut the military to the bone.

It makes sense that they needed to find a way to keep the country on a war footing in the absence of a real war.

Korea - and NSC-68 - provided

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#130 - The China Lobby

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:19:00 -0000

Americans were told that the invasion by North Korea was a total surprise. It was positioned as another Pearl Harbour. But this isn’t exactly true. They must have known it was coming and when it was coming. They just chose to ignore it. Why? Who stood to benefit from the invasion?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#129 - Who Started The War?

Fri, 23 Aug 2019 22:39:00 -0000

In the South, despite claims of "freedom", the US administration shut down the KPR, the ‘Korean People’s Republic’, a popular political party lead by Yo Un-hyung, and closed down the most prominent Seoul newspaper that was sympathetic to the KPR. Meanwhile the free market introduced in the South lead to a 3000% spike in rice prices as people engaged in speculation and profiteering. So the US then cancelled the free market. The UN decided to have a nationwide vote for a new government of Korea. The North and other parties refused to participate until after unification, but the vote proceeded anyway. And the constant skirmishes on the 38th parallel finally lead to war - but who started it is still debated to this very day.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#128 - Kim Il Sung

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 22:31:00 -0000

Meanwhile in the North, the Soviets chose Kim Il Sung to be their hand-picked President. Unlike Rhee, who had spent most of the last 35 years of Japanese occupation chilling in Hawaii, Kim had spent his life fighting the Japanese occupation, first as a guerrilla, then as a Major in the Soviet Red Army. But the actual architect of the North Korean state was Soviet General Terentii Shtykov.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#127 - Syngman Rhee

Sat, 10 Aug 2019 13:31:00 -0000

In the early hours of June 25, 1950, North Korean forces attacked across the 38th parallel that divided the country into a pro-Western regime in the south and a pro-Soviet regime in the north.

It officially kicked off the first major conflict of the Cold War.

The Korean War.

According to Paul M Edwards, the founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of the Korean War in Missouri:

"Whether intentional or not, America’s history of misunderstandings, misjudgments, misdirections, denials, and bold-faced lies to Americans and others, has greatly weakened the memory of the Korean War , and led to the loss of many of the significant lessons it might well have taught us."

According to Bruce Cumings, former chair of the history department at the University of Chicago:

"Least known to Americans is how appallingly dirty this war was, with a sordid history of civilian slaughters amid which our ostensibly democratic ally was the worst offender, contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists."

On our first episode about the Korean War we delve into the background of the guy who was hand-picked by the United States to be the first President of South Korea: Syngman Rhee.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#126 - The Berlin Airlift

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 05:00:00 -0000

As part of their plan to re-build Germany, the USA secretly released a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, printed in New York, to replace the old Reichsmark. Frustrated at how the US, UK and France were re-building their zones of Germany without first reaching an agreement with the USSR, on June 24 1948, Stalin erected a physical blockade (or, as he preferred to call it, "a defensive measure") around West Berlin to prevent all traffic from Trizonia from entering into the city. The response of the US/UK was a massive airlift - an incredibly bold move, basically threatening Stalin to shoot their planes down and start another war. Luckily he chose not to do that, and instead backed down and ended the blockade. Meanwhile, Truman signed National Security Council document No. 30 (NSC-30) officially known as the "United States Policy on Atomic Warfare” - which made it official that the US would continue to use nuclear weapons as part of their arsenal.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#125 - The Berlin Blockade

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 04:37:00 -0000

The fault of the Berlin Blockade is often laid at the feet of Stalin. But the truth is a little more complicated.

By 1948, the situation in Germany was still messy. The Four Powers (USA, USSR, UK, France) in control of Germany couldn't agree on a path forwards. Russia and France wanted to keep Germany weak. The USA and UK wanted to build it back up into a European economic power. And they wanted it to be firmly in the capitalist economic bloc. So the USA and UK took a dump on the principles of the Allied Control Commission and just made decisions regarding the future of the two-quarters of Germany under their control. France later joined them. This is what lead Stalin to stop them from entering Berlin, which was fully within the Soviet zone of occupation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#124 - Freedom Under God

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 00:45:00 -0000

In 1951, the American Congregational minister James Fifield and his team of geniuses came up with a brilliant idea. To mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed to hold a massive series of events devoted to the theme of “Freedom Under God." The campaign was supported by everyone with wealth who hated the New Deal: Republicans leaders of industry and politics. The goal was to convince Americans think Christianity, laissez-faire capitalism and America went together like peanut butter and jelly.

And then, in 1954, the Scottish Presbyterian minister George Docherty gave a powerful sermon in his Washington DC church, declaring that, “to omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life.” A few months later, President Eisenhower signed the phrase into law.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren't a subscriber (or aren't logged in).

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#123 - The Apostle To Millionaires

Sat, 29 Jun 2019 08:06:00 -0000

After Father Coughlin was shut down, another anti-Communist Christian leader rose in his place - James Fifield aka "The Apostle to Millionaires", aka "St. Paul of the Prosperous" aka "the Thirteenth Apostle of Big Business". Unlike Father Coughlin, Fifield was happy to associate himself with rich capitalists - and to take their money to pay for his mansion, his butler, and his limousine. It was Fifield - and his rich patrons - who cracked the code of how to associate Christianity with Capitalism in the minds of Americans - and to make America a Christian nation "Under God".

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first six episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1, unless of course you're an old school George Lucas fan, in which case feel free to start at Episode IV. We don't recommend it though.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#122 - Father Charles Coughlin

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 04:01:00 -0000

Today we talk more about Christians who opposed the New Deal. In the 30s there was a guy called Father Charles Coughlin, a Canadian-American Roman Catholic priest based near Detroit. Commonly known as “the radio priest", he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience: first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s the content of his broadcasts had shifted from theology to economics and politics, with an estimated 30 million listeners tuning in to his weekly broadcasts. He’s also known as the father of hate radio.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#121 - Truman's Hysteria

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 23:43:00 -0000

In 1950 Harry Truman complained about a “great wave of hysteria” sweeping the nation - the Red Scare. He should know. He was really largely responsible for creating it. Between the launching of his "loyalty program" in March 1947 and it's finish in December 1952, some 6.6 million persons were investigated to see if they were Communist sympathizers. Not a single case of espionage was uncovered, though about 500 persons were dismissed in dubious cases of “questionable loyalty" - which was never defined.

Meanwhile in Hollywood, the FBI were worried that that "so-called intellectuals" might be influencing scripts. Because if it's one thing you don't want in a democracy, it's intellectuals.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#120 - The Trials Of Harry Bridges

Fri, 31 May 2019 01:35:00 -0000

In his "New Deal", FDR brought back the ideals of the "Social Gospel", a 19th century Christian reform movement, to justify the creation of the modern welfare state. For a while, at least, some American Christian leaders were big fans of socialism.

However, starting with FDR, and for the next 25 years, successive American administrations tried every trick in the book to kick Aussie union leader Harry Bridges out of their country. They all failed.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#119 - Red Scare Part 5

Wed, 22 May 2019 03:43:00 -0000

Manufacturers and the media also used the Dies Committee to silence their critics. Any attempt to criticise the behaviour of industrialists was called "socialism". Along with communist witch hunts, another tactic industrialists used to protect themselves against the New Deal was the newly invented idea of Public Relations - a fancy name for corporate propaganda.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#118 - Red Scare Part 4

Fri, 17 May 2019 22:03:00 -0000

The Red Scare continues. In 1939, Martin Dies Jr claimed that the Justice Department was investigating 2,850 known communists in government and that FDR had ordered a purge of all those named. But it was all a disinformation campaign launched by Hoover. The President hadn't ordered a purge - but he HAD secretly ordered Hoover to make a list. As it turned out, the list included Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Mrs. James Roosevelt (FDR’s mother), and other prominent figures close to the President were listed as financial contributors to two or more of the suspect groups. And then one member of the Dies Committee accused Eleanor Roosevelt of being part of the Communist Fifth Column.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#117 - Red Scare Part 3

Thu, 02 May 2019 04:32:00 -0000

As Red Fever grew in the United States in the 1930s, Herbert Hoover asked J. Edgar Hoover to help him blame the Bonus March of 1932 on the Communists. In August 1936, FDR invited JEH to the White House to discuss “subversive activities”. Hoover told him the biggest threat to America was an Australian - International Longshoremen and Warehousemen union President Harry Bridges. So FDR secretly authorized the FBI to conduct non-criminal “intelligence” investigations. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA aka the Dies Committee, as it was run by Democrat Martin Dies of Texas) was created as a temporary committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938, mainly as a way to undermine the New Deal and the labor movement by investigating Communist influence in them. It changed America forever.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#116 - Red Scare Part 2

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 03:16:00 -0000

In April 1919, US authorities discovered a plot for mailing 36 bombs to prominent members of the U.S. political and economic establishment. One of those was Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer. He decided it was the work of Russian Communists, so he ordered the U.S. Justice Department to launch The Palmer Raids. And do you know who was in charge of the Palmer Raids? A 24-year-old American patriot - J. Edgar Hoover. Within three months after taking office, he controlled files on more than sixty thousand people. Hoover began to prepare for an American counterrevolution. Unfortunately, the Russian Communists had nothing to do with the 1919 bombings. It was the work of Italian anarchists. But that didn't stop Hoover from turning the Communists into Public Enemy Number One. Even though he would himself say, years later, that the Communist Party’s influence on American life in the 1920s was “virtually nonexistent”. And even though the new Attorney General in 1924 instructed Hoover that the Bureau should not concern itself with the “political or other opinions of individuals". JEH didn't let that stop him.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#115 - Red Scare Part 1

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 21:47:00 -0000

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. HUAC is best remembered for the Alger Hiss case and the Hollywood blacklists. But the American fear of socialism and communism pre-dates HUAC by a century. In large part, it was rooted in RWG's trying to prevent social progress. It also had some racist elements. After the Russian Revolution, Americans went to Russia to fight for the Monarchy. In 1919, there was the Overman Committee, a senate subcommittee to investigate Bolshevism in the United States.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

[mepr-rule id="219" ifallowed="hide"]Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes[/mepr-rule]

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#114 Operation Lea

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 04:42:00 -0000

Finally, on Oct 7, 1947, the French made their offensive into the Viet Bac region: Operation Léa - aka Princess Leia. So-called because it was a smart, feisty, brave diplomat and warrior of a plan. But because he had less troops than he wanted, Valluy scaled down his plans. General Raoul Salan, the guy in charge of the operation, predicted it would all be over in three weeks.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED AGAIN. The Vietminh faded quietly into the jungle. Meanwhile Bao Dai talks to the French about forming an alternative government.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#113 Toxic Nuts

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 22:53:00 -0000

Ho wonders aloud to a journalist why the Vietnamese were not being given the same opportunity as the Philippines, who had just been given their independence from the US, or India, which had just won its independence from the UK.

All the Americans seem to care about is whether or not he's a Communist.

Meanwhile French Minister of War Paul Coste-Floret declared, “There is no more military problem in Indochina. The success of our arms is complete.”

And France has Madagascar problems involving toxic nuts.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#112 Keyser HO-ze

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 02:39:00 -0000

Ho and his team disappear into the jungle north of Hanoi. The French think they have won. George Marshall dithers.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#111 - The War Begins

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 03:18:00 -0000

After the Haiphong incident, Ho started preparing Hanoi for an attack. First, he made a public speech appealing to the French to withdraw their troops.

They ignored him.

“If those gooks want a fight, they’ll get it,” declared French General Valluy.

Ho, Giap and Truong Chinh came up with a three stage plan, borrowed from Mao. And so the First Indochina War begins in earnest.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#110 - Domino Theory

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 04:12:00 -0000

Vietnam. 1947.

The U.S. Consul in Saigon, Charles Reed, is the first American official to use the term "domino theory". He's talking about what will happen in Cambodia and Laos if Cochin China falls to the VietMinh, who he wrongly concludes are taking orders from Moscow.

Meanwhile Ho is playing Good Cop Bad Cop while making preparations for war. While the French are convinced the whole thing will be over in a matter of weeks, membership in local militia and guerrilla units from Giap's "Combat Villages" reach almost one million people.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#109 - The Haiphong Incident

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 23:14:00 -0000

Vietnam. Late 1946. The gears of war are turning. One President commits suicide. Another continues to fight for a peaceful settlement. A new government is formed. Then the French army in Indochina decides to take matters into its own hands. They seize a Chinese junk in Haiphong harbour - a deliberate provocation. The Vietminh fire on the French. The French respond by bombing the city. French Indochina High Commissioner d’Argenlieu made a bold prediction, especially for a Frenchman: “We will never retreat or surrender.”

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#108 - The First Indochina War (Part V)

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 23:42:00 -0000

Ho Chi Minh goes to Paris for the big sit down with the new French government. But right from the start, things do not go as planned. Meanwhile, the United States are doing their best to ignore the situation. And Ho finally gives in and admits publicly that this is going to end up in a war and tells the story of the tiger and the elephant. Meanwhile, back in Vietnam, Giap is consolidating Viet Minh power. And a religious mystic is assassinated.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#107 - The First Indochina War (Part IV)

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 22:18:00 -0000

Ho Chi Minh agrees to go to Paris for a second round of talks with the French about the independence of Vietnam. But just before he is due to leave, the French High Commissioner in Vietnam screws him over. And then, the next day, the French government collapses. Ho goes anyway, but has to spend a few weeks in the luxury seaside resort of Biarritz waiting for the new French government to get its shit together. While there, he visits Lourdes and hopes for a miracle.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#106 - Andrew Roberts, Churchill

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 05:23:00 -0000

Andrew Roberts has a huge new biography out on England's favourite son, Winston Churchill, and he was nice enough to come on the show to answer a few of our questions about the man. You may remember Andrew talked to Cameron and David about his Napoleon biography a few years ago.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#105 - The First Indochina War (Part III)

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 22:00:00 -0000

In Hanoi, a new provisional coalition government was established on January 1, 1946. Ho Chi Minh was to be named president and Nguyen Hai Than from the nationalist VNQDD party as vice president. The Vietminh and the Chinese controlled the north. The French controlled the South, with the full support of the Americans and British, and they prepared to send troops to the north as well. On March 6, the Vietminh and the French, under intense Chinese pressure, signed a “Preliminary Convention,” wherein the French recognized the “Republic of Vietnam” as a “free state” within the Indochinese Federation and French Union. Everyone who met Ho came away impressed with his sincerity, intelligence and commitment to his cause. Perhaps surprisingly, the one person who wasn't supporting Ho was Stalin, even though Ho was leading the first Communist revolution outside of the USSR.

Here's a picture of the seahorse for reference.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#104 - The First Indochina War (Part II)

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 22:56:00 -0000

Peter Dewey was the first of nearly 60,000 Americans to be killed in Vietnam. Truman sells out the Vietnamese to keep De Gaulle happy. And the French arrive back in their old colony.

Here's a picture of the seahorse for reference.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#103 - The First Indochina War (Part I)

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 00:37:00 -0000

After Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam in September 1945, the British and Chinese troops arrived in Saigon and Hanoi to disarm the Japanese and prepare the return of the French - and the shooting begins. Some scholars thing that *this* was the beginning of the First Indochina War. Meanwhile, Ho continues to try to get Truman's support. But who will Truman stand behind? A people wanting self-determination? Or the French colonialists?

Here's a picture of the seahorse for reference.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#102 - Ho Chi Minh VI

Fri, 07 Dec 2018 03:39:00 -0000

* As they grew stronger, Giáp's forces took more territory and captured more towns

* And then on 15 August they heard that the Japanese Emperor had declared his country's unconditional surrender to the allies.

* Unfortunately for Ho and Giap, the U.S. had a new President.

* Truman didn’t care, or maybe even know, about FDR’s plans for Indochina.

* And the French, of course, saw their opportunity to get in good with the new administration.

* And they wanted to make sure they would be able to reclaim colonial control after the war.

* The Truman administration wanted France to help them block Soviet expansion after the war.

* And so they decided to allow France to take back Indochina.

* When world leaders convened in San Francisco in late April and May to form the United Nations, senior U.S. officials did not raise the issue of trusteeship for Indochina.

* On the contrary, U.S. secretary of state Edward Stettinius assured French foreign minister Georges Bidault that “the record is entirely innocent of any official statement of the U.S. government questioning, even by implication, French sovereignty over Indochina."

* A report prepared for Harry Truman on June 2 acknowledged that “independence sentiment in the area is believed to be increasingly strong” but declared that “the United States recognizes French sovereignty over Indochina."

* When Truman met Chiang Kai-shek in Washington some weeks later, he dismissed any notion of trusteeship for Indochina.

* So much for The Atlantic Charter.

* Then came the Potsdam conference.

* DeGaulle wasn’t invited, because he annoyed the fuck out of everyone.

* And because he’d sent forces to the old French mandates of Syria and Lebanon, despite the Allies telling him not to.

* And at Potsdam the Vietnamese got well and truly shafted.

* In order to disarm the Japanese in Vietnam, the Allies divide the country in half at the 16th parallel.

* Chinese Nationalists would move in and disarm the Japanese north of the parallel while the British would move in and do the same in the south.

* And they agreed to return of all French pre-war colonies in Southeast Asia (Indochina).

* Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia will once again become French colonies following the removal of the Japanese.

* But in the meantime, the Chinese occupation of the north meant the Vietnamese had time to consolidate their position before the French came back.

* And the fact that China and Britain needed to do the cleaning up of the Japanese reinforced the idea in the minds of the Vietnamese that France was now a second rate power.

* Then, when Japan surrendered in August, it created a power vacuum which the Viet Minh were able to exploit.

* As Ho had always said, they had to wait for the right moment to strike.

* And this was it.

* DeGaulle, in the meantime, made a typically clueless speech.

* On August 15, he sent a message from “the Mother Country to the Indochinese Union,” expressing France’s “joy, solicitude, and gratitude” for Indochina’s “loyalty to France” and her resistance to the Japanese.

* Even as he uttered those words, however, in the jungles of Tonkin, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh readied to make a triumphant entry into Hanoi.

* Their message to the crowds awaiting them: With Japan defeated and France prostrate, the moment of liberation was at hand.

* Hanoi is a city in the north of Vietnam.

* Near the coast.

* The name means “inside the river"

* Hanoi has been inhabited since at least 3000 BCE

* And was the administrative center of the colony of French Indochina.

* The French had built a new part of the city which was in Baron Haussmann, the man who designed modern Paris

* It had wide boulevards, shady trees, an opera house and formal gardens, French shops, sidewalk cafes.

* It was the Paris of Asia

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#101 - Ho Chi Minh V

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 02:37:00 -0000

* Ho believed the army’s job was largely going to be propaganda until the conditions were right for war.

* But he also decided that for propaganda purposes, they had to win a military victory within a month of being established, so on 25 December 1944 Giáp led successful attacks against a couple of French outposts.

* Two French lieutenants were killed and the Vietnamese soldiers in the outposts surrendered.

* The Viet Minh suffered no casualties.

* A few weeks later, Giáp was wounded in the leg when his group attacked another outpost at Dong Mu.

* Through the first half of 1945, Giáp's military position strengthened as the political position of the French and Japanese weakened.

* On 9 March the Japanese removed the titular French regime and placed the emperor Bảo Đại at the head of a puppet state, the Empire of Vietnam.

* Bao Dai was the 13th and final Emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, the last ruling family of Vietnam

* he renamed his country "Vietnam"

* He was 32

* Ho summed up the situation like this: “The Japanese became the real masters. The French became kind of respectable slaves. And upon the Indo-Chinese falls the double honor of being not only slaves to the Japanese, but also the slaves of the slaves—the French.”

* By April the Vietminh had nearly five thousand members, and was able to attack Japanese posts with confidence.

* In one of the ironies of history, between May and August 1945 the United States, keen to support anti-Japanese forces in mainland Asia, actively supplied and trained Giáp and the Viet Minh.

* The U.S. will work with anyone who is the enemy of their enemy.

* Just like they worked with Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

* Captain Charles Fenn of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sought out a meeting with Ho in early 1945.

* He had heard about Ho’s organization and about Ho’s role in helping locate downed American pilots and providing intelligence on Japanese troop movements.

* According to Fenn, Ho saved 17 US pilots before the war ended.

* He also heard that when Ho got out of prison in China, he used to drop by the Office of War Information in Kunming in Southern China to read Time Magazine.

* Ho was still hoping to get the support of the US.

* He believed they would be even more eager than the Soviets to help him get rid of the colonialists.

* After their first meeting in March 45, Fenn wrote the following description of the meeting in his diary:

* Ho came along with a younger man named Fam. Ho wasn’t what I expected. In the first place he isn’t really “old”: his silvery wisp of beard suggests age, but his face is vigorous and his eyes bright and gleaming. We spoke in French. It seems he has already met Hall, Blass, and de Sibour [OSS officers in Kunming], but got nowhere with any of them. I asked him what he had wanted of them. He said—only recognition of his group (called Vietminh League or League for Independence). I had vaguely heard of this as being communist, and asked him about it. Ho said that the French call all Annamites communists who want independence. I told him about our work and asked whether he’d like to help us. He said they might be able to but had no radio operators nor of course any equipment. We discussed taking in a radio and generator and an operator. Ho said a generator would make too much noise—the Japs were always around. Couldn’t we use the type of set with battery, such as the Chinese use? I explained they were too weak for distant operation, especially when the batteries run down. I asked him what he’d want in return for helping us. Arms and medicines, he said. I told him the arms would be difficult, because of the French. We discussed the problem of the French. Ho insisted that the Independence League are only anti-Jap. I was impressed by his clear-cut talk; Buddha-like composure, e

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#100 - Ho Chi Minh IV

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 09:16:00 -0000

* Welcome to #100!

* And we are still talking about 1944!

* When we finished last time, Ho Chi Minh was making his way to the Red River Delta.

* The Japanese have chased the French out of Vietnam and didn’t bother to protect the northern regions.

* So Ho and the ICP are getting ready to make their move.

* Surprisingly, they talk about a “post coup euphoria”.

* Apparently the Vietnamese were so happy to see the end of the French, they were happy to replace them with the Japanese.

* They realised the Japanese were probably going to lose the war, which is a good thing for the Vietnamese.

* In October 1944, Ho wrote a “Letter to All Our Compatriots,” in which he analyzed the current situation and said “the opportunity for our people’s liberation is only in a year or a year and a half. The time approaches. We must act quickly!”

* So the ICP decided to start with introducing the Viet Minh flag and doctrine to the people.

* And preparing themselves for a general uprising once the Japanese had been defeated by the Allies.

* Which even THEY knew was going to happen sooner or later.

* And the Viet Minh would be the force greeting the Allies when they came to Vietnam.

* They had already started to build connections with the Americans.

* On November 11, 1944, a U.S. reconnaissance plane piloted by Lieutenant Rudolph Shaw had engine trouble while flying over the mountains along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier.

* Shaw was able to parachute to safety, but was spotted by French authorities stationed in the vicinity, and patrols were sent to locate him.

* But Members of a local Vietminh unit got to him first, and they decided to deliver him to Ho.

* For the next several days, the Vietminh troops led him over mountains and jungle trails toward Pac Bo, the jungle location of Ho’s HQ cave, walking at night and resting during the day in caves to avoid the enemy.

* In the end, it took almost a month to cover a distance of only forty miles.

* None of Shaw’s escorts had been able to communicate with him

* according to his own account, they communicated only when he said “Vietminh! Vietminh!” and the Vietnamese responded, “America! Roosevelt!”

* but when he arrived at Pac Bo, Ho greeted him in English: “How do you do, pilot! Where are you from?”

* Shaw was reportedly so excited that he hugged Ho and later said to him, “When I heard your voice, I felt as if I were hearing the voice of my father in the United States.”

* Despite the fact that Wilson ignored his attempts to get the League of Nations to address Vietnam back in 1919, Ho was still hopeful that they would come to his aid.

* He had probably read about FDR’s position on Indochina.

* For example, he had said “France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that.”

* Another thing that helped the VM was the famine of 1944-45.

* The northern regions of the country had relied on rice to be shipped from the south.

* But then in 1944, a combination of French and Japanese policies, typhoons, drought, insect plagues, and Allied bombings, meant the south couldn’t produce enough rice for the country.

* The Japanese had also mandated shipments of rice to Japan

* and they ordered farmers in the north to shift their crops from rice to oil seeds, peanuts, cotton, and jute.

* Do you know what jute is?

* I had to look it up.

* plant or fiber that is used to make burlap, hessian or gunny cloth.

* The French and the Japanese, like the British in India, stockpiled rice for themselves while the native population starved.

* In 1944 when US bombing cut off northern supplies of coal to Saigon, the French and Japanese used rice and maize as fuel for power stations.

* The French authorities refused to reduce taxes or to increase the price of obligator

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#99 - Ho Chi Minh III

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 22:28:00 -0000

* On December 7 1941, Japan’s main carrier force, seeking to destroy the American fleet and thereby purchase time to complete its southward expansion, struck Pearl Harbour.

* And the world celebrated.

* As De Gaulle said “that’s it, the war’s over."

* He was totally confident in U.S. superiority.

* He must have been part American.

* Unfortunately FDR’s confidence in de Gaulle was much lower.

* He hated him.

* And the more powerful de Gaulle became, the less sure FDR was that the French should get their colonies back after the war.

* But if Indochina and potentially other colonies should not be returned to the colonial powers after the war, what should happen to them?

* Roosevelt proposed a trusteeship formula by which the colonies would be raised to independence through several stages.

* Those not ready for independence—which in FDR’s view included all of France’s possessions—would be placed under a nonexploitive international trusteeship formed by the United Nations.

* In laying out this plan to British foreign secretary Anthony Eden in March 1943, the president singled out Indochina as an area that should be controlled by this new system.

* Eden, who would end up playing a huge role in Britain’s Indochina policy for the next dozen years, wondered outlaid whether FDR was being too harsh on the French.

* FDR just ignored him and said that France should be prepared to place part of her overseas territory under the authority of the United Nations.

* Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, the man who wrote the original draft of the UN charter, Mr Ol’ Black Threesome himself, asked "But what about the American pledges to restore to France her possessions?"

* Roosevelt replied that those pledges applied only to North Africa.

* Sumner thought “hmmmm I bet there’s a lot of blacks in North Africa…."

* FDR’s trusteeship sounded a lot of like Wilson’s mandate system that divided up the Middle East after WWI.

* But this was going to be totally different.

* Because it had a different name.

* The way he saw it, the enforcement mechanism would be a greater degree of international accountability.

* As before, the core principle was that a colonial territory is not the exclusive preserve of the power that controls it but constitutes a “sacred trust” over which the international community has certain responsibilities.

* Eden knew that this was old wine in new bottles, and he didn’t like the taste.

* He and others in the Foreign Office suspected the Americans of seeking to use trusteeships to their own economic advantage—the “international supervision of colonies” would simply be a smoke screen by which America could facilitate access to the economic resources of the colonies and spread her influence globally.

* And the British didn’t like the sound of “international supervision”, especially of their own colonies.

* He suggested other countries would, at most, had an advisory capacity.

* FDR though insisted that it be an international trusteeship.

* So the Brits just changed the subject, talked about black threesomes, and that was that.

* So FDR went to Cairo for his only wartime meeting with Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of China’s Kuomintang nationalist government.

* FDR wanted Chiang on board with his trusteeship program.

* But Chiang resisted, expressing a preference for outright independence for Indochina and other Asian colonies.

* Probably because it would make them easier for him to take over.

* FDR tried to sweeten the deal by saying he supported the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule.

* So Chiang said “go tell Winny The Poo that, then come back and talk to me about Indochina."

* Meanwhile, the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong, who had been waging an intermittent struggle against Chiang’s Nationalist (Guomindang) government since

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#98 - Ho Chi Minh II

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 23:21:00 -0000

* Ho’s speech to the French socialist congress in 1920 was 12 minutes long and delivered without notes.

* It got some applause but that was about it.

* He realised that French socialists were more worried about affairs at home than they were about colonialism in a distant land.

* When a group of socialists broke off to form the French Communist Party, Ho went with them.

* He had read Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” a document that attracted him as a means of liberating Vietnam and other oppressed countries from colonial rule.

* Other Marxist writers whose work he knew seemed concerned only with how to achieve a classless utopia.

* Only Lenin spoke powerfully about the connection between capitalism and imperialism and about the potential for nationalist movements in Africa and Asia.

* Only Lenin offered a cogent explanation for colonialist rule and a viable blueprint for national liberation and for modernizing a poor agricultural society such as Vietnam’s.

* Lenin’s message was simple and direct.

* In their struggle to overthrow the capitalist system in advanced industrial countries, Communist parties in the West should actively cooperate with nationalist movements in colonial areas in Asia and Africa.

* He understood that Many of these movements were controlled by the native middle class, who, in the long run, were not sympathetic to social revolution.

* But the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

* Who said that first?

* The earliest known expression of this concept is found in a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, the Arthashastra, which dates to around the 4th century BC, while the first recorded use of the current English version came in 1884

* The king who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the enemy.

* The king who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend (of the conqueror).

* So any alliances with bourgeois nationalist groups should be implemented with care, and only on the condition that local Communist parties maintain their separate identities and freedom of action.

* But given such limitations, Lenin viewed the national liberation movements of Asia and Africa as natural, albeit temporary, allies of the Communists against the common enemy of world imperialism.

* It was the ability of the Western capitalist countries to locate markets and raw materials in underdeveloped countries that sustained the world capitalist system and prevented its ultimate collapse.

* Cut off the tentacles of colonialism in the far-flung colonies, and the system itself could be overthrown.

* Ho Chi Minh assured his Vietnamese allies in Paris that Communism could be applied to Asia,; more than that, it was in keeping with Asian traditions based on Confucian notions of social equality and community.

* On top of that, Lenin had pledged Soviet support, through the Comintern, for nationalist uprisings throughout the colonial world as a key first step in fomenting worldwide socialist revolution against the capitalist order.

* What could be more relevant to Indochina’s situation?

* Years later speaking of Lenin’s pamphlet, he said “What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled in me. I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted aloud as if addressing large crowds: ‘Dear martyrs, compatriots! This is what we need, this is our path to liberation.’ ”

* Ho stayed in Paris for a few years - writing plays, writing articles for many magazines, reading victor Hugo and Voltaire and Shakespeare.

* Then he finally came to the conclusion that the French Communists cared for the plight of the Vietnamese only slightly more than the other French socialists, so in 1923 he moved to Moscow, hoping to meet Lenin.

* U

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#97 - Ho Chi Minh I

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 23:00:00 -0000

In 1919 a 29 year old Vietnamese man wrote a list of demands for political rights for his people to present to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. Nobody paid him any attention. His name was Nguyen Ai Quoc. He devoted the rest of his life to achieving those demands. History remembers him as HO CHI MINH.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#96 - Marshall Plan III

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 04:07:00 -0000

* America’s approach to providing financial aid wasn’t popular with some of their allies either.

* Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, resented American dollar diplomacy, in particular the linking of desperately needed financial assistance to London’s submission on political matters central to British sovereignty.

* The American loan agreement, signed in December 1945 after nearly four months of difficult and often humiliating negotiations in Washington, required Britain to accept American air and naval bases on British and Commonwealth territory.

* Bevin’s decision to support the manufacture of British nuclear weapons was driven not by a German or Soviet threat, but by his belief that the country “could not afford to acquiesce in an American monopoly of the new development.”

* So, in other words - he wanted the UK to have nuclear powers to defend themselves against America.

* Britain, as Bevin saw his country, was “the last bastion of social democracy,” standing against both “the red tooth and claw of American capitalism and the Communist dictatorship of Soviet Russia.”

* This is coming from a country that, until recently, had imperial control over 25% of the world.

* Mmmmm smell that social democracy.

* Another recent ally was also suspicious.

* Russia.

* The Kremlin was receiving a constant flow of intelligence from highly placed British sources—among whom Guy Burgess at the Foreign Office in London and Donald Maclean at the British embassy in Washington.

* Maclean, who had access to all of the embassy’s classified cable traffic, was reporting that “the goal of the Marshall Plan was to ensure American economic domination of Europe.”

* The spies also warned Stalin that the Brits and Americans were getting ready to announce that they were going to renege on the Yalta agreement regarding reparations.

* They were going to cut off German reparations to the USSR, which at the time was the Soviet’s only source of foreign income.

* Instead, they were going to re-build Germany.

* Well the parts under their control, anyway.

* And the Marshall Plan aid was to be implemented outside the United Nations framework, because they wanted some of it to go to Germany - and Germany was not a member of the U.N.

* And the Soviets needed the German money and goods to finance their efforts to control Eastern Europe.

* And - in the early stages, the ERP funds were going to be offered to Eastern European countries and even the U.S.S.R.

* The United States offered immense grants of cash and material aid to all of the European nations, not just those in the West, on the sole condition that the recipient nations agree upon a common economic plan to use these resources.

* Of course, this economic plan had to be based upon market capitalism, a stipulation not mentioned formally in the proposal but obvious nevertheless.

* Eastern European nations that accepted the American offer, as many were initially keen to do, would therefore have become incorporated into the American economic system, gravitating naturally into the U.S. orbit as their material fate became dependent upon American, not Russian, alliance.

* In addition, the terms of the Marshall Plan, when released, as we’ve discussed, gave the Americans a very high degree of say in how the money was spent.

* And it forced the recipients to buy products from American companies.

* And to give up their own funds for the Americans to spend however they saw fit.

* SPECIAL PROVISIONS: The Administrator is authorized to use funds made available to promote an increase in production in participating countries of materials required by the U. S. where there are actual or potential shortages in the U. S.

* This involved strategic goods needed for military purposes, and it prevented recipients from selling these things to Moscow or Eastern European cou

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#95 - Marshall Plan II

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 23:05:00 -0000

* Something that Marshall mentions only briefly in his speech is the effect that would have on the US economy. (around the 7’20" mark)

* Europe’s economy might have been destroyed after the war, but America’s wasn’t looking too bulletproof, partly BECAUSE the European economy had been shattered.

* In 1947, there were serious concerns about the state of the US economy.

* Benn Steil:

* There was a report written in 1946, I think, by the SWNCC, the State, War and Navy department staff, which said “The conclusion is inescapable, that, under present programs and policies, the world will not be able to continue to buy United States exports at the 1946-47 rate beyond another 12-18 months.”

* They anticipated “substantial decline in the United States export surplus would have a depressing effect on business activity and empolyment in the United States.”

* And in 1946, the gross national product of the U.S. was already down 11.6% on the previous year, as the government stopped spending money on the war effort.

* Navy Secretary James Forrestal characterised American priorities in Europe as “economic stability, political stability and military stability… in about that order."

* Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Clayton redefined the problem as one of disposing of America’s “great surplus.”

* He explained in May 1947 : “The capitalistic system, whether internally or internationally, can only work by the continual creation of disequilibrium in comparative costs of production.”

* "Let us admit right off that our objective has as its background the needs and interests of the people of the United States. We need markets -- big markets -- in which to buy and sell."

* Clayton was saying implicitly what Dean Acheson had argued explicitly in 1944: the profitability of America’s corporate system depended upon overseas economic expansion.

* Marshall and other advocates of the program also spoke openly of the parallel between their policy and America’s earlier westward expansion across the continent.

* America needed to expand.

* But wait!? I thought it was the SOVIETS who were trying to take over the world?

* Marshall argued that the nation faced an either-or situation.

* He claimed that Unless the plan was adopted “the cumulative loss of foreign markets and sources of supply would unquestionably have a depressing influence on our domestic economy and would drive us to increased measures of government control.”

* So by defining America’s expansion as the key to prosperity, Marshall defined foreign policy as the key to domestic problems and to the survival of democracy at home.

* (The Tragedy of American Diplomacy - William Appleman Williams)

* If the European economy didn’t recover quickly, it would crash the US economy.

* It’s all connected.

* And if the European economy DID recover, but as part of a Soviet trading bloc, it would STILL crash the US economy.

* (Cox, Michael, and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe. "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy? Rethinking the Marshall Plan.”):

* And so they came up with a plan.

* A plan to give $13 billion to European countries over 4 years.

* So The Plan, Contrary to popular mythology, it was not just a simple program of aid.

* It had a TON of conditions.

* It wasn’t like the U.S. just dumped pallets of cash on Europe’s doorstep and said “have at it”.

* This was very carefully engineered and managed so that it would benefit the American economy.

* And Truman politically.

* As the influential British economist Sir Alec Cairncross pointed out, US Aid to Europe had been flowing across the Atlantic for the better part of two years even before Marshall's speech.

* What made the June 1947 initiative different, he noted, was its attempt to link aid to the reform of European institutions and practices.

* Moreove

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#94 - Marshall Plan I

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 21:51:00 -0000

* One of the greatest pieces of mythology to ever be produced in America is the “Marshall Plan”.

* It’s right up there with the idea of glorifying the “Founding Fathers”, who were actually just tax dodgers who orchestrated a bloody coup.

* It’s also of course one of America’s greatest pieces of foreign policy.

* The Marshall Plan is sold to Americans as the greatest gift mankind has ever received since Jesus died on the cross.

* Even today, 70 years later, it’s almost impossible to find analysis of the MP that doesn’t position it as a ‘gift’ or ‘humanitarian aid’.

* But the truth is, it was really neither of those things.

* The Marshall Plan was completely self serving.

* You will often hear it it was about stopping the Soviets from spreading Communism and stopping another World War, and those things are partially true.

* But that’s also missing the point.

* Both for the U.S. as a whole and, particularly, for Truman.

* And it was a genius move.

* It was, at the time, the biggest transfer of wealth from the public treasury into the hands of the wealthy during peacetime probably in history.

* But nearly nobody understands it.

* I’ve been researching this topic for years and the lack of understanding of it blows my mind.

* But let’s go back a bit and provide some background.

* The European winter of 1946-47 was the worst in a hundred plus years.

* widely believed to be the snowiest winter since 1813-14

* Not the coldest, but it was the snowiest winter in a long time.

* Known as a “hunger winter"

* And of course everyone was still living in the aftermath of war.

* The Germans, Brits and Americans had been terror-bombing civilian populations for years.

* railways, bridges and roads were blown up, factories smashed, farms and fields ravaged by tank battles and firefights

* The war had also forced the old European colonial powers, most notably Britain and France, to begin the painful and, they soon learned, financially costly process of withdrawing from some of their overseas possessions, either as a result of military retreat or simply because they could no longer afford their imperial commitments.

* Or because the Americans insisted on it.

* Open door policy, free trade, and all that.

* Apart from complete destruction of their economies and infrastructure and the deaths of tens of millions of their people, Europe had to contend with something else.

* The realisation that they sucked.

* At the beginning of the 20th century, European countries prided themselves on their superiority.

* But In the space of thirty years the most powerful nations in the history of the world had set upon themselves in two ruinous wars.

* They had killed tens of millions of their citizens, injured tens of millions more, and had stripped from each of themselves of the rank of first-class power.

* Even Great Britain who was victorious in both wars.

* At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a belief in the superiority of European civilization.

* Now that seemed like a cruel joke.

* Superior civilizations don't elevate warmongers to absolute political power in order to destroy themselves in unremitting industrial warfare.

* They don't bombard defenceless civilians, or send conscripted soldiers to certain death in battle after battle, or massacre ethnic minorities, or attempt to commit genocide.

* So The conclusion seemed inescapable: the European way of politics had wrought disaster.

* So across Europe, people wanted dramatic changes.

* And political movements arose to drive those changes.

* And most of them were left leaning.

* Because these superior European countries had all been capitalist.

* Yes, even Nazi Germany.

* Nazi Fascism was extreme capitalism.

* They believed in private property and a ma

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#93 - The X Article

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 01:22:00 -0000

* The X Article.

* George Kennan, the Soviet expert who wrote the Long Telegram, wrote another piece, but this time published publicly and anonymously, in July 1947, just after Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” speech.

* The actual title of the article was "The Sources of Soviet Conduct”.

* It was published in Foreign Affairs magazine.

* He used the pseudonym “Mr X” and so it’s known as the X Article.

* It began as a private report prepared for Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in January 1947.

* It was never intended as a public document.

* But Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, urged Kennan to publish it, so he obtained permission from Forrestal to publish the article under the pseudonym “X”.

* Whereas The Long Telegram was a review of how the Soviet Union saw the world - and The Clifford-Elsey Report took those facts and interpreted how they affected the world and what the United States should do about it - The X Article took the information presented in the two prior reports and constructed a road map for the Cold War.

* The first sections of the article provide a potted history of Leninist and Stalinst ideology and the current political reality of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

* His conclusion is kind of interesting.

* As you might expect, he talks about containing the expansion of the Soviets.

* "confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world."

* He says Soviet power "moves inexorably along a prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile wound up and headed in a given direction, stopping only when it meets with some unanswerable force."

* Unfortunately he didn’t concentrate at all on how US power and expansion acted as contributing factors to Soviet behavior.

* As Thomas Paterson wrote in Meeting The Communist Threat:

* Too simply, he applied one interpretive model to Russia and another to the United States: Russia's foreign policy derived from a response to internal needs not external threats; America's foreign policy derived from a response to external challenges.

* Mostly he talks about America providing a good example to the world.

* He said that if America has internal fighting, if it struggles economically, if it doesn’t look after its own people, if it embarks on global wars, then it is playing right into the hands of the Communists.

* Because that what they predict the U.S. will do.

* However - if the U.S. keeps its nose clean, looks after its people, and doesn’t take an aggressive global stance, then the Leninist ideology will look stupid and will struggle to keep the faith of the people.

* And here we are, 71 years later, and I hate to tell you - the Russians were right!

* Anyway, back to Walter Lippman, The right-leaning influential journalist and one of the fathers of modern propaganda.

* He took issue with the X article - at the time, he didn’t know who the author was - and wrote a series of articles about it, which ended up as a book called “The Cold War”.

* Which popularised the term.

* It’s usually said that the term was first coined by Herbert Bayard Swope, another Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

* called the greatest reporter of his time by Lord Northcliffe

* He is known for saying, "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time."

* He did publicity work for Bernard Baruch in 1947.

* Swope wrote a speech for Baruch, which he delivered to Congress on 16 April 1947.

* The line was: "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war."

* HOWEVER

* On 19 October 1945, George Orwell published an essay "You and the Atomic Bomb” in which he wrote: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#92 - The Truman Doctrine

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 23:00:00 -0000

* And so on March 12, 1947, before a joint session of Congress, President Truman articulated, for the first time, a comprehensive American foreign policy for the postwar world.

* He did not mention the Soviet Union by name, or refer to the need to contain its power in Europe, though he did place American freedom against "totalitarian regimes."

* Appealing to American universalist ideals, he declared that U.S. foreign policy henceforth must side with any nation facing aggression, anywhere in the world.

* WATCH IT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=-LMXGFhfbCs

* READ IT: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/harrystrumantrumandoctrine.html

* Why not the UN?

* Because the U.S.S.R. would intervene.

* But that’s the POINT of the UN.

* International co-operation.

* Here we are, a year and change after the creation of the UN, and the U.S. is already acting unilaterally in European affairs.

* His key phrases:

* I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

* I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

* I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

* What about the free peoples who are resisting armed MAJORITIES?

* What about the free peoples of Palestine?

* You’ll notice that in his speech, Truman never mentions the Soviets by name.

* But he hints at them.

* He mentions Yalta and “totalitarian regimes”.

* So the Soviets have officially gone from being Allied and friends to the boogieman.

* BTW.

* Please note that Truman in 1947 is referring to the U.S.S.R. as a “totalitarian regime”.

* When people point to the U.S.S.R. and say “look! Socialism doesn’t work!” I always point out that it wasn’t actually socialism or communism - it was totalitarianism.

* People seem to think that socialism has to be totalitarian.

* Which is, of course, nonsense.

* Australia has a form of socialism - "social democracy".

* One of our two major political parties, the ALP, calls itself a democratic socialist party.

* So does Finland.

* So does Sweden.

* None of those countries have totalitarian governments.

* Socialism and democracy can go together.

* Just remember that.

* Back to Truman.

* His speech was really just a rehash of Churchill’s “We Will Fight Them On The Beaches” speech.

* Truman expanded on it.

* “We will fight them on the beaches… of other countries… even if they don’t want us to."

* And how did the Soviets respond to his speech?

* Six days later, Nikolai Novikov, who had returned from Washington to Moscow to take part in a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, discussed Truman’s speech with Molotov.

* He said The speech showed that the United States would support “reactionary regimes” in those countries where they existed, and would try to undermine the progressive regimes of Eastern Europe.

* Novikov writes in his memoirs That Molotov replied with an ironical smile

* Molotov said, “The President is trying to intimidate us,” “to turn us at a stroke into obedient little boys. But we don’t give a damn. At the meeting of the Council [of Foreign Ministers] we will firmly pursue our principled line.”

* Origins of Cold War; an International History, 2e (2005).pdf - page 73

* Now the implications of the Truman Doctrine were enormous.

* Until 1947, the U.S. had openly criticised countries that played power politics.

* Now it has committed itself to playing it on a global scale.

* But as a political tactic, it worked: Truman received the support he wanted from Republicans who wanted the U.S

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#91 - The Baruch Plan

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 09:34:00 -0000

* So here we are in 1946.

* The Truman administration has decided on a “containment” policy.

* But who is going to contain the containers?

* According to the Novikov telegram, the Soviets felt like they had to contain the US.

* And the U.S. felt like they had to contain the Soviets.

* So the Americans were trying to figure out how they were going to to it, and how much they were willing to spend on it.

* In terms of atomic weapons control, the United States Atomic Energy Commission developed a classified plan to achieve international control, which came to be known as the Acheson-Lilienthal report, and submitted it to Secretary of State Byrnes in January 1946.

* It was named after Dean Acheson, at the time the Under Secretary of State - we’ve mentioned him briefly before, but he’s going to be a major character during the 1950s - and David E. Lilienthal, Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

* But it was written mostly by the committee’s chief scientific consultant, Robert Oppenheimer,

* They recommended that all global fissile material be owned by an international agency to be called the Atomic Development Authority, which would release small amounts to individual nations for the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy.

* But there was a twist.

* The stockpiles and atomic production plants would be strategically distributed geographically.

* Lots of different countries would have some inside their borders.

* So everyone would know what each country had.

* And the UN would have inspections and access.

* If a nation bent on atomic war seized the international plants within its borders, and refused access and inspections, everyone would know immediately what was happening.

* Other nations would have atomic plants within their own borders so that they would not be at a disadvantage.

* If a nation did seize the Authority's installations that were located within its territory, it would still take at least a year or more to produce bombs.

* So the plan would provide a huge measure of security against surprise attacks.

* Not a bad plan.

* The report also said that the United States would have to abandon its monopoly on atomic weapons, revealing what it knew to the Soviet Union, in exchange for a mutual agreement against the development of additional atomic bombs.

* It made no mention of when the United States should destroy its nuclear arsenal, but it did acknowledge that doing so was a necessity.

* The background to this report is the Conference of Foreign Ministers held in Moscow between December 16 and 26, 1945.

* The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union agreed to create a United Nations commission to advise on the destruction of all existing atomic weapons and to work toward using atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

* The resulting body, the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission - UNAEC - was created on January 24, 1946, with six permanent members (the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, China, and Canada) and six rotating members.

* That same month, U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes created a special advisory committee headed by Acheson and Lilienthal, to compose a report that the U.S. Government would present to the UNAEC.

* And of course, in that great American White House tradition, a great committee of serious and intelligent men was commission to spend many months of their time researching and writing a serious report about a very serious subject, so that, when it was delivered seriously to the President who commission the report, he could just go “nah fuck that” and throw it in the bin.

* But By the time they delivered their report, Truman had decided “nope, fuck that, we’re keeping the bomb to ourselves"

* But he couldn’t just come out and SAY that, because it would mean reneging on an important pi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#90 - The Novikov Telegram.

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 04:09:00 -0000

* The last, and certainly most conspicuous, of the four events that transformed the political culture of Washington in 1946 was a speech given in early March by Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Truman's home state of Missouri.

* Like Stalin's speech of four weeks earlier, it was prepared for public consumption.

* Truman had read a draft in advance and approved it, though he would later equivocate on this point.

* He sat behind Churchill as the legendary leader, speaking in the great rolling cadences now so familiar to Americans, declared that an "iron curtain" had fallen on Europe, dividing the free people of the West from a tyrannical, totalitarian regime in the East.

* Sometimes called the opening shot of the Cold War, this passage is one of the most often-quoted in post 1945 world affairs:

* Churchill said near the end: "I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines ... What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will be."

* This is coming from the guy who bitterly opposed to collapse of the British Empire which controlled 25% of the world only a few years earlier.

* Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

* These four developments of February and early March 1946 - Stalin’s speech, Pearson’s revelations, the Long Telegram, and Churchill’s speech - went a long way toward solidifying American attitudes with respect to the Soviet Union.

* The Pearson revelations and the Stalin speech demonstrated to lawmakers of both parties that continued efforts at cooperation with the USSR would be risky to sustain in the hardening atmosphere of American politics.

* General suspicion of the Soviet Union moved to the mainstream-it was now the easier, politically safer stance for a congressional representative or senator to take.

* Add the four together and the picture was clear: Stalin's Soviet Union presented no immediate danger, but neither could it be trusted.

* Because the Soviets could not be trusted, the United States needed to act, rather than stand idly by as it had in the 1930s.

* The questions now was - what to do about it?

* They didn’t want another war.

* And at this stage, the U.S. didn’t have a tradition of carrying a highly military budget during peacetime.

* Many in congress, and perhaps even Truman, believed that the expensive game of military readiness was something the old, defunct European nations did - the U.S. was an exception.

* Plus, Truman wanted to keep the government budget low and balanced and to avoid the inflation that a lot of people were predicting would come after the war ended and the economy returned to a consumer footing, with millions of soldiers returning home.

* As the Soviet threat seemed a long way off, Truman could afford to take his time and do it on the cheap.

* One of the first things he did was to screw Stalin on Iran.

* As we’ve mentioned in the past, Stalin had troops in Iran during WWII to stop the Nazis taking the oil reserves.

* As did the British, who of course had a long history with oil concessions - I think we talked about that on the Bullshit Filter series on Syria.

* Stalin demanded an oil concession from Iran that was equivalent to the one they gave the British.

* American and British diplomats worked with the Iranian leader Ahmad Qavam (and, secretly behind the scenes, with the heir to the Persian throne, Reza Pahlevi) to demand the removal of Soviet troops sent by Stalin to the northern part of the country and to suppress the Iranian communist party, Tudeh.

* Stalin agreed to withdraw his forces in exchange for an oil concession; but once the troops were out, the Iranians-backed by Washington-reneged on the oil agr

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#89 - The "Long Telegram"

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 22:55:00 -0000

* Stalin’s speech in February 1946 wasn’t a declaration of war.

* It wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been said in the past.

* He issued no direct threats toward the United States, and emphasized above all else the security of the Soviet state and the communist experiment.

* Rather, Stalin showed, if his previous words and actions had been insufficient, that he regarded the postwar world as a continuing realm of competition in which the Soviet system would fight for its survival in the face of capitalist encroachment.

* Close ties with the West were not in the cards.

* The situation, as far as he was concerned, was the same as it had been before the Great Patriotic War: rivalry was inevitable, broad-ranging cooperation all but impossible.

* And that’s when George F. Kennan, counselor at the American embassy in Moscow, when asked to explain Stalin's position, wrote his famous 5,500-word answer (not 8000 words, as it’s often referred to) in the form of a telegram he sent to the State Department.

* It’s known as the “Long Telegram”

* We’ve mentioned Kennan a few times in the past, but I think we should stop for a minute and do a small bio.

* After all, the man did more to shape United States policy during the cold war than any other person.

* George FROST Kennan was born in 1904

* His mother died two months later from a ruptured appendix.

* But for a long time Kennan thought she died giving birth to him.

* Which has to be some kind of burden as a kid.

* Growing up he wasn’t close to his father or stepmother.

* But at the age of 8 he went to Germany to stay with his stepmother in order to learn German.

* It was the first of numerous languages he would eventually master: Russian, French, Polish, Czech, Portuguese and Norwegian.

* So this would have been around 1912.

* Just before WWI.

* He eventually got a bachelor's degree in History from Princeton in 1925 and went to work for the United Stated Foreign Service which had only been created the previous year.

* his first job was as a vice consul in Geneva, Switzerland

* Then he was transferred to a post in Hamburg, Germany where he was selected for a linguist training program that lasted three years.

* In 1929 Kennan began his program on history, politics, culture, and the Russian language at the University of Berlin's Oriental Institute.

* He was following in the footsteps of his grandfather's younger cousin, also called George Kennan,who was a major 19th century expert on Imperial Russia.

* And by 1931 he was in Latvia, where he worked on Soviet economic affairs.

* When the U.S. began formal diplomacy with the Soviet government during 1933, Kennan went to Moscow with the U.S.Ambassador, William C. Bullitt.

* Who of course Steve McQueen portrayed in the 1968 film BULLITT.

* Joking.

* Bullitt was actually fired from that job in 1936 when a journalist blew the whistle on him for being involved in the illegal money exchanges in Russia.

* He was briefly engaged to Roosevelt's personal secretary and lifelong companion, Missy LeHand (Job), but she broke off the engagement after a trip to Moscow during which she reportedly discovered him to be having an affair with Olga Lepeshinskaya, who was Stalin’s favourite ballet dancer, and maybe mistress.

* Bullitt’s second wife, BTW, was Louise Bryant, author of Six Red Months in Russia, played by Diane Keaton in the 1981 film REDS.

* He divorced her when he found out she was having a lesbian affair with English sculptor Gwen Le Gallienne.

* ANYWAY.

* Back to Kennan.

* Kennan served as deputy head of the mission in Moscow until April 1946.

* Near the end of that term, the Treasury Department requested that the State Department explain recent Soviet behavior, such as its disinclination to endorse the International Monetary Fund and the Wo

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#88 - Mine All Mine

Sun, 29 Jul 2018 23:06:00 -0000

* In October 1945, Navy Day 1945 in New York City, at the Commissioning of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman gave a speech.

* Here’s a clip.

* https://youtu.be/BjUz4BPWwbc?t=2m21s

* FAKE TRUMAN ACCENT: “We don’t seek any more land - because we already took as much as we could from the Native Americans, and the Mexicans, and the Hawaiians, and the Spanish."

* He went on to say The world "cannot afford any letdown in the united determination of the allies in this war to accomplish a lasting peace."'

* So he’s all about working with the Soviets and finding a lasting peace.

* Or is he?

* Privately it seems like he didn’t believe peace with the U.S.S.R. was possible.

* Like FDR before him, Truman envisioned a world with open international trade - something the U.S. economy desperately needed - which meant global capitalism.

* But the U.S.S.R. had just turned back the Nazis, fighting them for years without much support, and had played a huge role in their final defeat.

* and they had the world’s largest land army.

* They weren’t about to kowtow to the American new world order.

* The only way the USA could force the Soviets to go along with it was war.

* And the Soviets had just proven - again - how difficult their country was to invade.

* And the American people wouldn’t support another war.

* Especially not to overthrow a recent ally, just because they wanted to enforce their own new world order.

* Not yet, anyway.

* Some in Washington believed the U.S. had no real choice but to find a way to work with the USSR

* Other believed the Soviets couldn’t be trusted, and pointed to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

* They conveniently ignored the places where the Soviets had kept to their agreements - Greece, Czechoslovakia, Hungary.

* As of October 1945, Truman and his inner circle seem to have no grand strategy regarding working with the Soviets at this stage.

* But over the next few months, they started concluding that they weren’t going to be able to work with Stalin.

* And by late 1947, the term “Cold War” had already entered the political lexicon.

* and America's containment strategy had been implemented.

* At the end of World War II the United States possessed far and away the world's largest economy.

* Its GDP was five times that of Great Britain, four times that of the Soviet Union.

* As we’ve pointed out many times - this was mostly due to the fact that the U.S. was the only major economy not flattened by the war.

* And now it also had the bomb.

* Initially Truman and Byrnes, his new Sec of State, thought they could dangle the bomb in front of Stalin as a way to induce him to accept their view of the world.

* Not in a “do it or we’ll drop it on you” approach, although that was always an unspoken threat, but in a “do it and we might share our atomic secrets with you” approach.

* Of course, what they didn’t know at the time, was they didn’t HAVE any secrets.

* Stalin knew it all.

* In the first Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) conference, which took place in London from September 11 to October 2, Byrnes tried to use a combination of threats and sweets to get Molotov to budge on a range of issues - the control of Germany and eastern Europe - but Molotov just laughed in his face.

* By December, Byrnes had been told by Truman to stop trying to woo the Russians.

* In fact, Truman got all up in his face for trying to conclude a deal without the White House’s approval.

* He felt Byrnes had over-stepped his authority.

* It’s like Truman has become Stalin and Byrnes is Molotov.

* Truman is beginning to mistrust and sideline Byrnes already and he’s only six months into the job of SoS.

* Now Truman is going to start playing tough again with the Russians.

* In September the departing

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#87 - The Aftermath Part 2

Fri, 06 Jul 2018 01:01:00 -0000

* The military had long declared that radiation dissipated quickly in the atomic cities and posed little threat to the soldiers.

* A 1980 Defense Nuclear Agency report concluded, “Medical science believes multiple myeloma has a borderline relationship with exposure to ionizing radiation. That is, there are some indications that exposure to radiation may increase the risk of this disease, but science cannot yet be sure.”

* In the years that followed, thousands of other “atomic vets,” among the legion who participated in hundreds of U.S. bomb tests in Nevada and in the Pacific, would raise similar issues about exposure to radiation and the medical after-effects.

* The Japanese government repeatedly asked the U.S. for the full footage of what was known in that country as “the film of illusion,” to no avail.

* A rare article about what it called this “sensitive” dispute appeared in the New York Times on May 18, 1967, declaring right in its headline that the film had been “Suppressed by U.S. for 22 Years.”

* Surprisingly, it revealed that while some of the footage was already in Japan (likely a reference to the film hidden in the ceiling), the U.S. had put a “hold” on the Japanese using it — even though the American control of that country had ceased many years earlier.

* Then, one morning in the summer of 1968, Erik Barnouw, author of landmark histories of film and broadcasting, opened his mail to discover a clipping from a Tokyo newspaper sent by a friend.

* It indicated that the U.S. had finally shipped to Japan a copy of black and white newsreel footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

* The Japanese had negotiated with the State Department for its return.

* From the Pentagon, Barnouw learned in 1968 that the original nitrate film had been quietly turned over to the National Archives, so he went to take a look.

* So he got his hands on it and made a short 16 film, “Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945”.

* He arranged a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and invited the press.

* He approached the three TV networks that existed back then and offered them the film, but none expressed interest in airing it.

* Despite this exposure, not a single story had yet appeared in an American newspaper about the shooting of the footage, its suppression or release.

* When that footage finally emerged, journalist Greg Mitchell spoke with the man at the center of the drama: Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.

* McGovern told him: “I always had the sense, that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force — it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn’t want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done — at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn’t want the material out because...we were sorry for our sins. But the AEC, they were the ones that stopped it from coming out. They had power of God over everybody. If it had anything to do with nukes, they had to see it. They were the ones who destroyed a lot of film and pictures of the first U.S. nuclear tests after the war.

* He later said: “The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation.”

* Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

* Four days after Wilfred Burchett's story - remember him from the last episode? Aussie journalist, first into Hiroshima? - splashed across front pages around the world, Major General Lesli

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#86 - The Aftermath Part 1

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 05:58:00 -0000

* TRUMAN ANNOUNCES THE BOMB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN_UJJ9ObDs

* On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 civilians instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow.

* Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others.

* Mr. Akihiro Takahashi was 14 years old, when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

* He was standing in line with other students of his junior high school, waiting for the morning meeting 1.4 km away from the center.

* "The heat was tremendous . And I felt like my body was burning all over. For my burning body the cold water of the river was as precious as the treasure. Then I left the river, and I walked along the railroad tracks in the direction of my home. On the way, I ran into an another friend of mine, Tokujiro Hatta. I wondered why the soles of his feet were badly burnt. It was unthinkable to get burned there. But it was undeniable fact the soles were peeling and red muscle was exposed. Even I myself was terribly burnt, I could not go home ignoring him. I made him crawl using his arms and knees. Next, I made him stand on his heels and I supported him. We walked heading toward my home repeating the two methods."

* He was under medical treatment for about year and half.

* Eiko Taoka, then 21, was one of nearly 100 passengers said to have been on board a streetcar that had left Hiroshima Station at a little after 8:00 a.m. and was in a Hatchobori area, 750 m from ground zero, when the bomb fell. Taoka was heading for Funairi with her one year old son to secure wagon in preparation for her move out of the building which was to be evacuated. At 8:15, as the streetcar approached Hatchobori Station, an intense flash and blast engulfed the car, instantly setting it on fire. Taoka’s son died of radiation sickness on August 28.

* When we were near in Hatchobori and since I had been holding my son in my arms, the young woman in front of me said, ‘I will be getting off here. Please take this seat.’ We were just changing places when there was a strange smell and sound. It suddenly became dark and before I knew it, I had jumped outside.... I held [my son] firmly and looked down on him. He had been standing by the window and I think fragments of glass had pierced his head. His face was a mess because of the blood flowing from his head. But he looked at my face and smiled. His smile has remained glued in my memory. He did not comprehend what had happened. And so he looked at me and smiled at my face which was all bloody. I had plenty of milk which he drank all throughout that day. I think my child sucked the poison right out of my body. And soon after that he died. Yes, I think that he died for me.

* Ms. Akiko Takakura was 20 years old when the bomb fell. She was in the Bank of Hiroshima, 300 meters away from the hypocenter. Ms. Takakura miraculously escaped death despite over 100 lacerated wounds on her back. She is one of the few survivors who was within 300 meters of the hypocenter.

* Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers. I, I was so shocked to know that fingers and bodies could be burned and deformed like that. I just couldn't believe it. It was horrible. And looking at it, it was more than painful for me to think how the fingers were burned, hands and fingers that would hold babies or turn pages, they just, they just burned away. For a few years after the A-bomb was dropped, I was terribly afraid of fire. I wasn't even able to get close to fire because all my senses remembered how fearful and horrible the fire was, how hot the blaze was, and how ha

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#85 - The Decision Part 3

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 04:37:00 -0000

* Truman met often with Byrnes in the first few months of his Presidency.

* But there are almost no records or notes of what they discussed.

* And that was apparently Byrnes’ preference.

* He was known as being paranoid about leaks.

* a very devious politician

* Truman referred to him as his “conniving” secretary of state

* Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who liked Byrnes and found him personally charming, nevertheless had no illusions about him: “He was an operator. He was a kind of prior Lyndon Johnson.”

* Throughout this period Byrnes spoke with the authority of—and personally represented—the president of the United States on all atomic bomb-related matters in the Interim Committee’s deliberations.

* It is also quite clear that by early July 1945 when he was sworn in as secretary of state, Byrnes was firmly in control of U.S. foreign policy.

* And as we’ve seen before - while Truman seems to have looked up to Byrnes as a mentor, Byrnes privately didn’t like Truman.

* One of Truman’s close friends and advisers, his appointments secretary Matthew Connelly, later said that Byrnes thought Truman was "a nonentity, with no abilities to speak of, no knowledge of how to conduct foreign policy, or much else for that matter.”

* Matthew Connelly later described Byrnes without reservation as “a very Machiavellian character,” adding that “I never trusted him.”

* Similarly, Robert G. Nixon—who served as White House correspondent for the International News Service at the time—would later remark that “Byrnes looked down on Truman. He had a superior attitude.… He, in a sense, despised Truman … he looked upon Truman as an accident of history and not a very good accident at that.”

* According to Clark Clifford, Admiral Leahy, who initially was favorably disposed towards Byrnes, came to regard him as a “horse’s ass.”

* Bernard Baruch, the financier who presented Truman’s first nuclear arms control proposal at the United Nations in 1946, regarded his friend Byrnes as “power-crazy—that he wants to decide everything himself.…”

* Averell Harriman recalled that after Potsdam, “I was through with Jimmy Byrnes … I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him.”

* Almost immediately after taking office, Truman demonstrated his great trust in Byrnes by informing him of his intention to appoint him secretary of state sometime that summer—as, of course, he did. It should be kept in mind that the position of secretary of state carried far more weight in 1945 than it does today.

* At the time, before the post of national security adviser was established, it was the premier Cabinet office.

* Under then-existing law—with no vice president in office once Truman succeeded Roosevelt—the secretary of state was next in line of succession.

* If anything happened to Truman, Byrnes would become president.

* And of course, everyone knew that Byrnes *should* have been President.

* He was going to be FDR’s Veep in the 1944 election - up until the very last moment, when Truman was picked instead.

* Byrnes also appears to be a logical candidate for the adviser who convinced Truman to postpone meeting Stalin until the atomic bomb had been tested—one of the truly fundamental strategic decisions of the spring and summer.

* Although our information is even more sketchy in this area, we have seen that his mandate—and his alone—included both atomic and diplomatic issues.

* Moreover, all the other top advisers directly involved in diplomacy were pressing for an early meeting with Stalin, Thus, either Truman made the decision against their advice on his own or some other highly placed adviser concerned with the atomic bomb convinced him the new weapon would be critical in his approach to Stalin.

* So everything points to Byrnes as the man who made the decision to bomb Japan.

* Not to win the war - but as a message to

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#84 - The Decision Part 2

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 21:49:00 -0000

* By June 18 events had progressed to the point where Admiral Leahy was able to note privately in his personal diary:

* It is my opinion that at the present time a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s defense against any future trans-Pacific aggression.

* This is two months before Hiroshima.

* But also on June 18, when Grew spoke to Truman about brokering peace with the Japanese, The President shut him down.

* He said he wanted to hold off until the Potsdam meeting.

* Which, as we know, he was putting off to coincide with the Trinity test.

* About 5000 American troops died between May and August. (page 22)

* A total of 24,000 casualties during that period.

* The Battle of Okinawa 1 April until 22 June, 1945.

* If saving American lives was the objective, why not talk peace with the Japanese during this period?

* Unfortunately we don’t know much about what Truman was thinking during these months.

* Contemporaneous documents concerning Truman’s attitude at this time are scarce.

* We have far fewer hard facts illuminating his calculations than we have concerning the thinking of Marshall, Stimson, and Grew.

* Truman did give a public speech in June where he said his main priority was minimizing the loss of American lives.

* And yet the invasion was set for November 1, 1945.

* Which everyone knew was going to be a bloodbath.

* Admiral Leahy said that he could not agree with those who said to him that unless we obtain the unconditional surrender of the Japanese that we will have lost the war.

* Which suggests at least some people were worried about the optics.

* McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, claims that at the June 18 meeting, he strongly advocated to Truman that they should spell out terms of surrender to the Japanese, assuring them that they could keep the Emperor,

* The President said that is just what I have been thinking about. “Why don’t you draft something and take it to Jimmy Byrnes.”

* Byrnes, as we know, was acting as a special advisor to Truman and was soon to become the Sec of State.

* He also thought HE should be the President.

* And he disliked Truman.

* When McCloy took his proposal to Byrnes, it was shot down because Byrnes thought it would be considered a weakness on America's part to conclude the war without a total surrender.

* So twice on June 18, Truman told people that he agreed with the idea of offering the Japs a deal.

* But then Byrnes said no.

* And it never happened.

* Like the official Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, the internal War Department report concluded the atomic bomb had not been needed to end the war.

* Its assessment of the impact of the Soviet declaration of war paralleled that of American historian Ernest May: It was a “disastrous event which the Japanese leaders regarded as utter catastrophe and which they had energetically sought to prevent at any cost.…”

* Had the atomic bomb not been available or not been used, the study concluded, it is “almost a certainty that the Japanese would have capitulated upon the entry of Russia into the war.…”

* The Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies.

* The entry of Russia into the war would almost certainly have furnished this pretext, and would have been sufficient to convince all responsible leaders that surrender was unavoidable.

* And, as we know, American leaders had been trying to get the Soviets to engage with the Japanese since a few days after Pearl Harbour.

* General George C. Marshall, June 18, 1945: "An important point about Russian participation in the war is that the impact of Russian entry on

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#83 - The Decision Part 1

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 22:16:00 -0000

* On 15 August 1945, about a week after the bombing of Nagasaki, Truman tasked the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey to conduct a study on the effectiveness of the aerial attacks on Japan, both conventional and atomic.

* Did they have an effect on the Japanese surrender?

* The Survey team included hundreds of American officers, civilians and enlisted men, based in Japan.

* They interviewed 700 Jap military, government and industrial officials.

* And had access to hundreds of Japanese wartime documents.

* Less than a year later they published their conclusion - that Japan would likely have surrendered in 1945 without it, without a Soviet declaration of war, and without an American invasion.

* “It cannot be said that the atomic bomb convinced the leaders who effected the peace of the necessity of surrender. The decision to surrender, influenced in part by knowledge of the low state of popular morale, had been taken at least as early as 26 June at a meeting of the Supreme War Guidance Council in the presence of the Emperor."

* It goes on to say that there wasn’t a unanimous agreement amongst the military, especially the War Minister, and the Army and Naval Chiefs of Staff.

* They wanted to fight on.

* But that’s why the Emperor was brought into the discussions to accept the Potsdam terms.

* According to the report:

* “So long as the Emperor openly supported such a policy and could be presented to the country as doing so, the military, which had fostered and lived on the idea of complete obedience to the Emperor, could not effectively rebel."

* The report says the only thing the atomic bombings achieved was that they sped up the process.

* The War Minister and the two Chiefs of Staff were looking for a way to surrender without losing face.

* And the nuclear attacks gave them that.

* Because the military were able to conclude that there was no way of defending the home islands against further atomic attacks.

* So they could surrender without losing face.

* But the report strongly suggests the Japanese would have surrendered anyway and probably pretty quickly after the Emperor got involved.

* They had been trying to get the Soviets to intercede with the United States.

* The Soviets, as we know, kept stalling until the Potsdam Declaration on 25 July.

* Then they declared war on 9 August.

* The made the decision to surrender on August 10 and they publicly accepted the Potsdam terms on August 15.

* But in the 73 years that have passed since Hiroshima, poll after poll has shown that most Americans think that the bombings were totally justified—and, moreover, that they had saved a very significant number of lives which might otherwise have been lost in an invasion.

* 56% of Americans according to a poll in 2015.

* Which is down from 85% in 1945.

* But it’s a lot considering that the Strategic Bombing Survey concluded as early as 1946 that it wasn’t necessary to get Japan to surrender.

* And considering senior American military leaders from Admiral Leahy to MacArthur, Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson all said they didn’t think the bombing was necessary.

* So if it wasn’t necessary, why did it happen?

* WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?

* In 1990, J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote:

* The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it.

* But does this mean dropping the bombs was wrong?

* Not necessarily.

* We obviously can’t put ourselves in the shoes of American leaders in 1945.

* But I think there are two questions we CAN ask.

* 1. Did American military and government leaders in 1945 think they had to use, or should use, th

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#82 - Alex Wellerstein

Tue, 29 May 2018 01:50:00 -0000

Our guest today is Alex Wellerstein, a self-described "historian of science, secrecy, and nuclear weapons". He's a Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He blogs here and is on Twitter here. He is also the creator of the NUKEMAP. Alex joined us to talk about the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Did Truman know Hiroshima contained civilians? Did he know the military were going to bomb Nagasaki a few days later? How much deliberation went into the question of whether or not the bomb should be used? And was it necessary to end the war with Japan? These questions and more on this episode.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#81 - GROUND ZERO

Fri, 18 May 2018 03:53:00 -0000

Kistiakowsky and his team armed the device shortly after 5am and retreated to the control bunker.
Their final task was to switch on a string of lights on the ground that would serve as an ‘aiming point’.
The air force wanted to know what the effect of the blast would be on a B-29 30,000 feet up and some miles away.
In case of an accident, Groves left Oppenheimer in the control bunkers and joined Bush and Conant at base camp another 5 miles to the south.
There they picked up the countdown by FM radio.
Those in shelters heard it over the PA system.
Some of the scientists were with a party of onlookers 20 miles away on Compania Hill.
Teller said, ‘We were told to lie down on the sand, turn our faces away from the blast and bury our heads in our arms. No one complied. We were determined to look the beast in the eye.’
However, though it was not yet dawn, they smothered their faces with suntan lotion.
Teller himself wore a pair of dark glasses and heavy gloves and pressed a welder’s glass to his face.
At precisely 5:30am on Monday, 16 July 1945, the atomic age began.
As the firing circuit closed, 32 detonators fired around the outside of the high-explosive shell.
The shockwave produced hit the tamper, squeezing and liquefying it.
The plutonium sphere inside shrank to the size of an eyeball.
In the centre, polonium alphas kicked neutrons from the beryllium – one, two, maybe as many as nine of them.
This was enough to start a chain reaction in the plutonium.
It went through 80 generations in millionths of a second, generating millions of degrees of heat and millions of pounds of pressure.
The X-rays given off super-heated the air, generating another shock wave.
The explosion vaporized the tower and turned the asphalt around the base into green sand.
The bomb released approximately 18.6 kilotons of power, and the New Mexico sky was suddenly brighter than many suns.
Some observers suffered temporary blindness even though they looked at the brilliant light through smoked glass.
Here’s an eyewitness account:
Trinity Test, July 16, 1945 Eyewitness Report by Victor Weisskopf, an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist, one of the giants of 20th century physics.
He died in 2002, aged 93.
You have asked me to submit to you an eye witness account of the explosion. I was located at base camp and watched the phenomenon from a little ridge about 100 yds. east of the water tower. Groups of observers had arranged small wooden sticks at a distance of 10 yds. from our observation place in order to estimate the size of the explosion. They were arranged so that their distance corresponded to 1000 ft. at zero point. I looked at the explosion through the dark glass, but I have provided for an indirect view of the landscape in order to see the deflected light.
When the explosion went off, I was first dazzled by this indirect light which was much stronger than I anticipated, and I was not able to concentrate upon the view through the dark glass and missed, therefore, the first stages of the explosion. When I was able to look through the dark glass I saw flames and smoke of an estimated diameter of 1000 yds. which was slowly decreasing in brightness seemingly due to more smoke development. At the same time it rose slightly above the surface. After about three seconds its intensity was so low I could remove the dark glass and look at it directly. Then I saw a reddish glowing smoke ball rising with a thick stem of dark brown color. This smoke ball was surrounded by a blue glow which clearly indicated a strong radioactivity and was certainly due to the gamma rays emitted by the cloud into the surrounding air. At that moment the cloud had about 1000 billions of curies of radioactivity whose radiation must have produced the blue glow.
The first

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#80 - The Plug & The Hole

Fri, 11 May 2018 22:14:00 -0000

Back to Alamogordo.
The army leased a ranch in the middle of the Jornada del Muerto site and converted it into a military police station and field laboratory.
They thoroughly vacuumed it to make a makeshift clean room and sealed its windows with black electrical tape.
Just like Ray’s infamous kill room.
Nearly 2 miles to the northwest, they marked out the spot for Ground Zero.
Three concrete-roofed observation bunkers with bullet-proof glass portholes were dug 10,000 yards north, west and south of Ground Zero.
From there, the test would be controlled and the explosion would be filmed and measured.
Scientists wanted to determine the symmetry of the implosion and the amount of energy released.
They also wanted to get estimates of the damage that the bomb would cause and study the behaviour of the resulting fireball.
The biggest concern was the radioactivity the test device would release.
It was hoped that favourable meteorological conditions would carry the radioactivity into the upper atmosphere.
As they were proposing to do the test in the middle of the thunderstorm season, the army stood ready to evacuate the people in surrounding areas.
Two towers were built.
One was 800 yards south of Ground Zero.
Made of heavy wooden beams, it was 20 feet high, topped with a broad platform like an outdoor dance floor.
One day, the contractors returned to find that it had disappeared.
Harvard physics professor Kenneth T. Bainbridge, recruited from MIT’s radar project, the man in charge of Project Trinity, had loaded the platform with canisters of radioactive waste from Hanford and surrounded it with 100 tons of high explosives.
Before dawn on 7 May, he detonated the largest chemical explosion ever set off to test the instruments and procedures in a practice firing.
The tower at Ground Zero had been prefabricated in steel and was shipped in sections to the Trinity site, where concrete footings had been sunk 20 feet into the rocky desert floor.
The four feet were 35 feet apart and the tower rose 100 feet above the ground.
Near the top was a platform with a removable centre section and corrugated iron sheets on three sides.
The open side faced the camera bunker to the west.
Above the platform was a $20,000 electrically driven heavy-duty winch.
On 12 July, the plutonium core was taken to the test area in an army sedan.
The non-nuclear components of the bomb left for the test site at 12:01 am on Friday the 13th.
The idea was to put a ‘reverse English’ on the ill-luck of that day.
‘reverse English’ - Billiards. a spinning motion imparted to a cue ball in such a manner as to prevent it from moving in a certain direction.
As they rode through Santa Fe in the small hours, the convoy sounded a siren.
At midnight because the army did not want to risk some late-night drunken driver speeding out of a side street into a truck full of high explosives.
Final assembly of "the gadget" - which was its nickname - took place in the ranch house.
Before it began, one of the physcists, Robert Bacher, asked for a receipt from the army.
As Los Alamos was technically part of the University of California, he didn't want the university to be liable for the several million dollars-worth of plutonium they were about to vaporize.
Imagine that conversation - so…. Where’s our plutonium? Ummm we blew it up. You WHAT? That’ll be $2 billion, bucko.
Then the team installed the neutron initiator that would trigger the explosion between the two hemispheres of plutonium.
These were hot to the touch due to the alpha particles they were already giving off.
HOT JAMES BROWN (Bowie FAME riff, Carlos Alomar)
The plutonium ball was then placed inside a cylinder of U-238 tamper.
The core wa

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#79 - Jeffrey Hogue

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 04:16:00 -0000

Today we have a special guest - Jeff Hogue from the "History of the Cold War" podcast. We invited Jeff on to chat about his thoughts on the bombing of Japan.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#78 - Alamogordo

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 04:50:00 -0000

On 6 June, Stimson again briefed Truman on S-1.

* The briefing summarized the consensus of the Interim Committee, set up as an advisory group on atomic research.

* It’s job was the advise on the proper use of atomic weapons in wartime and to develop a position for the United States on post-war atomic policy.

* The committee comprised of Bush, Conant, Compton, the Under Secretary of the Navy, The Assistant Secretary of State and the director of the Office of War Mobilization, soon to be Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes.

* Oppenheimer, Fermi, Compton and Lawrence served as a scientific panel, while General Marshall represented the military.

* They had met on 31 May and concluded that the United States should not share its nuclear secrets and should try to retain superiority in nuclear weapons in case international relations deteriorated.

* Most present thought that the US should protect its monopoly for the present, though they realized that the secrets could not be held for long.

* It was only a matter of time before other potentially hostile countries, particularly Russia, would be capable of producing atomic weapons.

* Some thought the Soviets would catch up in 3 or 4 years.

* Groves countered with a twenty-year estimate.

* He was convinced the U.S. Had a stranglehold on the world’ supply of uranium.

* There was also some discussion of free exchange of nuclear research for peaceful purposes and the international inspection system that such an exchange would require.

* Lawrence’s suggestion that a demonstration of the atomic bomb might possibly convince the Japanese to surrender was discussed over lunch and rejected.

* No one knew whether the bomb would go off.

* If it did not, it would do much to improve Japanese morale.

* If they were warned, the Japanese might put American prisoners of war in populated areas or make an all-out effort to shoot down the plane.

* Besides, the shock value of the new weapon would be lost.

* These reasons and others convinced the group that the bomb should be dropped without warning on a dual target – a munitions factory surrounded by workers’ homes.

* Still no one realized quite how devastating the bomb would be.

* The weirdest thing about the committee meeting?

* There seems to have been no discussion about whether or not they SHOULD use the bomb - only where and when they should use it.

* On 1 June, the committee met with representatives from DuPont, Tennessee Eastman, Westinghouse and Union Carbide to get input from the contractors.

* This further convinced the Interim Committee that the US had a lead of three to ten years on the Soviet Union in making the bomb.

* As a result, in his meeting with the president on 6 June, Stimson told Truman that the Interim Committee recommended keeping S-1 a secret until Japan had been bombed.

* The attack should take place as soon as possible and without warning.

* The president was of course due to meet Churchill and Stalin in Potsdam on 17 July.

* While the British were already on board with the Manhattan Project, Truman and Stimson agreed that the president would stall if asked about atomic weapons by Stalin as it might be possible to gain concessions from Russia later in return for technical information.

* Stimson told Truman that members of the Interim Committee generally held the position that international agreements should be made in which all nuclear research would be made public and a system of inspections would be devised.

* They were even considering domestic legislation to that effect.

* However, if international agreements didn’t get worked out, the US should continue to produce as much fissionable material as possible to maintain its current position of superiority.

* Although the bomb had not yet been tested, a target selection group was set up in late April.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#77 - Bombing Japan

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 23:29:00 -0000

* Which brings us to April 1945.

* Only weeks before Germany surrendered on May 7, FDR dies.

* And Truman takes over as POTUS.

* He knew nothing of the Manhattan Project or the atomic bomb.

* He was briefed on it immediately by Sec of War Stimson.

* By the time Truman took office, Japan was near defeat.

* Keep in mind that the bomb was developed primarily to fight the Nazis.

* But now that they are out of the picture, nobody wants a $2 billion white elephant.

* At this stage, American aircraft were attacking Japanese cities at will.

* As we mentioned recently, the B-29 was the world’s first pressurized bomber.

* So it could fly at high altitudes that the few remaining Japanese fighters couldn't reach.

* Although kamikaze pilots did take down quite a few.

* BTW, do you know what the B stands for in B-29?

* Lots of people think it stands for “bomber”.

* But it really secretly stands for the name of the guy who came up with the name of the planes - Barry.

* It’s the Barry-29.

* A single fire-bomb raid on Tokyo in March 1945 killed nearly 100,000 people and injured over a million.

* On 13 April, the Imperial Army Air Force’s laboratory where early Japanese research on the atomic bomb had been done was hit.

* And that’s something we haven’t talked about - the Japanese attempts to build a bomb.

* In 1934, Tohoku University professor Hikosaka Tadayoshi released his "atomic physics theory".

* Hikosaka pointed out the huge energy contained by nuclei and the possibility that both nuclear power generation and weapons could be created.

* Keep in mind that the West didn’t understand that concept until 1938 when the Germans worked it out.

* Leading Japanese physicist Nishina Yoshio was keen on utilizing nuclear fission as a military weapon, but was also justifiably concerned that other countries like the U.S., were also trying to create a nuclear weapon.

* Before the war, he was apparently friendly with Einstein and Neils Bohr

* Nishina had previously established his own Nuclear Research Laboratory to study high-energy physics in 1931 at RIKEN Institute (the Institute for Physical and Chemical Research), which had been established in 1917 in Tokyo to promote basic research.

* BTW, Ricoh, the Japanese camera company, also came out of Riken.

* In 1936 Nishina constructed a 26-inch (660 mm) cyclotron, and a 60-inch (1,500 mm), 220-ton cyclotron in 1937.

* In 1938 he also purchased a cyclotron from the University of California, Berkeley.

* After meeting Japanese director of Japan’s Army Aeronautical Department's Technical Research Institute, lieutenant-general Yasuda Takeo (surname first), Nishina told him about the possibility of Japan building its own nuclear weapon’s arsenal.

* In April of 1941, Army Minister and later Prime Mininster Tojo Hideki (yeah, that Tojo) ordered Yasuda to look further into the possibility of Japan being able to create nuclear weapons.

* Yasuda then passed the order down to viscount Ōkōchi Masatoshi director of the RIKEN Institute, who then passed the order down to Nishina.

* By this time, Nishina had over 100 nuclear researchers.

* Japan’s Army and Navy were always in competition with one another, so perhaps it would come as no surprise that the Imperial Japanese Navy's Technology Research Institute had been looking in to the possibility of creating nuclear weapons, too.

* They had been in talks with scientists from the Imperial University in Tokyo, for advice on constructing and possible use of nuclear weapons.

* This resulted in the formation of the Committee on Research in the Application of Nuclear Physics, chaired by Nishina, that met 10 times between July 1942 and March 1943.

* It concluded in a report that while an atomic bomb was, in principle, feasible, "it would probably be difficult even for the

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#76 - Operation Alsos

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 21:57:00 -0000

Of course, while the bomb was being designed, they had to figure out how they were going to deliver it.
And WHO was going to deliver it.
Way back in March 1944, the US Army Air Force, with William Sterling "Deak” Parsons and his team at Los Alamos, developed two bomb models and began testing them with B-29 bombers.
Thin Man, named for President Roosevelt, was the design carrying the plutonium gun, while Fat Man, named for Winston Churchill, was an implosion prototype.
Emilio Segrè, Italian-American physicist, had designed a lighter, smaller uranium bomb was later dubbed Little Boy, Thin Man’s brother.
Thin Man, the one named for FDR, was eliminated four months later because of the predetonation problem.
Which is ironic, because FDR himself also was eliminated a few months after that.
The problems with figuring out how to create a reliable chain reaction meant the estimates of when a bomb could be delivered that Bush had given the President in 1943 would have to be revised.
The new timetable was presented to Roosevelt’s Army Chief of Staff General Marshall by Groves on 7 August 1944, two months after the Allied landings on Normandy on 6 June.
It said that small implosion weapons using uranium or plutonium would be ready in the second quarter of 1945, if experiments proved satisfactory.
Groves was more confident that a uranium gun bomb could be delivered by 1 August 1945, and another one or two more by the end of that year.
Marshall and Groves acknowledged that German surrender might take place by summer 1945, making it likely that Japan would be the atomic bomb’s first target.
Expenditures on the Manhattan Project had reached $100 million a month by mid-1944.
No one was sure that Groves’ deadline of 1 August 1945 could really be reached.
The Germans were by then in retreat on all fronts and the Japanese were being pushed back in the Pacific
it wasn't certain that a weapon would be ready for use in the war at all.
Meanwhile, just in case a bomb was ready in time, they needed to start working out how they would deliver it.
The US Army Air Force started training in September 1944 at Wendover Field Air Force Base in western Utah
Where Chrissy won at craps when she was 21.
On the border of Nevada and Utah.
Near the Bonneville Salt Flats Raceway, about 100 miles west of Salt Lake City.
BTW, Wendover Air Base is still there today.
It’s a civil air base.
But it’s one of the most intact World War II training airfields.
Numerous films and television shows have been filmed using Wendover Field, including The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), Con Air (1995), Mulholland Falls (1996), Independence Day (1996), Hulk (2003) and The Core (2003).
Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets began drilling the 393rd Bombardment Squadron of the 509th Composite Wing in test drops with 5500-pound orange dummy bombs, nicknamed pumpkin bombs, on the Great Salt Lake.
Not to be confused with the pumpkin bombs thrown by the Green Goblin.
These had the same ballistic characteristics as Fat Man.
Tibbets was recognized as the best bomber pilot in the Air Force.
He had led the first B-17 bombing mission from England over occupied Europe.
Then he had flown Eisenhower to his command post in Gibraltar before the Allied landings in northwest Africa and conducted the first bombing raids there afterwards.
More recently, he had been a test pilot for Boeing’s new B-29 Superfortress and worked with the physics department of the University of New Mexico to determine how well the B-29 could defend itself against fighter attack.
BTW - the Superfortress was the single most expensive weapons project undertaken by the United States in World War II, exceeding the cost of the Manhattan Project by between $1 and 1.7 billion.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#75 - The Beer Can Experiment

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 03:48:00 -0000

* President Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project to go full steam 26 days after Fermi’s success, on 28 December 1942

* The U.S. would end up spending $2 billion on it. (about $22 billion in 2018 dollars)

* Do you know why it cost so much?

* 130,000 people

* When I thought of the Manhattan Project, I used to imagine it was a handful of guys sitting around a blackboard scribbling equations in chalk.

* Over 90% of the cost was for building factories to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons.

* Remember that you couldn’t just go to Amazon and buy pure uranium-235 or plutonium.

* It had to be made. A LOT of it had to be made.

* And they still didn’t even know how to make it.

* So they ran up parallel factories trying various methods.

* Out of that 130,000 people, do you know how many knew they were working on developing an atomic bomb?

* Probably not many.

* It was one of the best kept secrets in military history.

* Imagine - 130,000 people working on a project that didn’t know what it was for!

* And I’m not just talking about the worker bees - the management didn’t know either.

* And of course in December 1942, nobody knew how long the war would last or how long it would take to build a bomb.

* So it was highly likely they the war would be over before they figure it out.

* But they did it anyway.

* While Bush was seeking approval from the president, Oppenheimer had suggested that a bomb laboratory be set up in an isolated area.

* It would operate secretly but allow a free exchange of ideas between theoreticians and experimentalists who would work side by side.

* The site chosen was the Los Alamos Boys Ranch School in New Mexico.

* Which, BTW, used to be called just Mexico.

* The owners of the boys’ school occupying the site was eager to sell, and Groves was equally eager to buy.

* it was easy enough to get to Santa Fe by train, Los Alamos itself was virtually inaccessible, located on a mesa, or flat-topped hill, about 30 miles northwest.

* a private ranch school for boys, modeled after the Boy Scouts

* Famous graduates of the school include William S. Burroughs and Gore Vidal

* The official name for the site during the war was Project Y.

* It was only after the war, when it’s existence became public, that it was referred to as Los Alamos.

* Oppenheimer was put in charge, despite him being a leftie and the fact he didn’t have a Noble Prize when many of the people working in the team did.

* But he was apparently a great leader.

* According to some of the other scientists who worked there, nobody else in that laboratory even came close to him in his knowledge.

* There was human warmth as well.

* Everybody certainly had the impression that Oppenheimer cared what each particular person was doing.

* In talking to someone he made it clear that that person’s work was important for the success of the whole project.

* He seems to have the ability to walk into a room where a major scientific debate was going on, listen, sum up everyone’s points, and then when he left, everyone knew what the right answer was.

* He insisted that everyone at Los Alamos could know everything about the project - they weren’t relegated to their particular piece of the puzzle.

* He created a spirit where everyone felt important and involved.

* Meanwhile, on the production side of things, they still had challenges.

* Huge amounts of material had to be obtained.

* But that’s just the start of their problems.

* More than three million board cubic feet of timber were required, for instance, and the magnets needed so much copper for windings that the Army had to substitute silver, borrowing almost 15,000 tons of silver bullion from the US Treasury.

* They couldn’t get

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#74 - Benn Steil & The Marshall Plan

Sun, 18 Mar 2018 01:54:00 -0000

Benn Steil is an American economist, author of a great new book on "The Marshall Plan", and senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#73 - K

Fri, 02 Mar 2018 02:27:00 -0000

* Fission involved breaking apart the nuclei of heavy elements like uranium or plutonium.

* Fusion involves forcing the nuclei of lighter elements, like hydrogen or deuterium, together.

* And deuterium, which is basically heavy hydrogen, is far easier to get your hands on than uranium.

* But there’s still not a ton of it.

* There is one D atom in 6420 of H.

* D accounts for approximately 0.0156% of all the naturally occurring hydrogen in the oceans, while protium, the other isotope of hydrogen, accounts for more than 99.98%.

* But a fusion bomb is also a lot more powerful than a fission bomb.

* That’s why all of the nuclear weapons today operate by fusion instead of fission.

* BTW, a fusion bomb is also known as a hydrogen bomb or thermonuclear bomb, becaue a fusion bomb actually contains a fission bomb which creates the heat, thermo, required to initiate the fusion reaction, the nuclear part.

* In late November, there was a scare.

* Neither Groves nor the S-1 Executive had been told that Compton was building the experimental pile at Stagg Field.

* They were faced with the vision of a chain reaction possibly running wild in heavily populated Chicago.

* However, Fermi’s calculations provided reasonable assurance that this was not going to happen.

* But for a few days there, everyone was panicking.

* So let’s talk about k.

* And I’m not talking about Tommy Lee Jones from Men In Black.

* Here’s the situation.

* Remember that to get a fission reaction to happen, you had to get just the right number of neutrons to hit the right number of uranium nuclei, causing them to fission, which would give off more neutrons, which would hit more nuclei, etc.

* Some of the neutrons would be lost, they might bounce in a direction where there wasn’t a uranium nuclei.

* So you have to put up a kind of shielding that would make the neutrons bounce back into the chamber.

* To quantify this, the physicists came up with a number - k.

* If the number of neutrons in the chamber was less than k, there was no chain reaction, the process would just fizzle out.

* If it was exactly k, when k = 1, you had a sustainable reaction.

* But if it was larger than k, it could go supercritical, and you might have a bomb go off in the middle of Chicago.

* But of course at this stage nobody knew if achieving k was even possible.

* To try and achieve k, they put the uranium in the middle of the pile and surrounded it with cubes of graphite, which would act as a moderator, slowing down the neutrons.

* The first pile that Fermi built on the campus at Columbia in September 1941 comprised cans of uranium oxide surrounded by graphite bricks.

* Its k was 0.87.

* Which he said sucked but at least it was a starting point.

* By July 1942, at Stagg Field, they had edged k up to 0.918, then 0.94.

* To get closer to k they realised they were going to need purer graphite and uranium metal, instead of uranium oxide, which had too many impurities.

* The problem was - uranium metal of that purity didn’t exist.

* It wasn’t until November that they could get enough manufactured, from a range of companies who were all working without knowing exactly why, to their specifications.

* So in November, Fermi started to build the main pile in Chicago.

* interestingly, some of the physicists working on the project were pacifists.

* They believed that the existence of atom bombs would prevent future wars.

* But Fermi still didn’t know if the pile would go critical.

* So they had the idea to cover the entire thing in a huge rubber balloon so they could pump all of the air out of it.

* Gases absorb neutrons and they wanted to negate that factor.

* The balloon was made by Goodyear, who of course weren’t allow to know WHY they were building this huge rubber balloon.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#72 - The Manhattan Project

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 21:56:00 -0000

* President Roosevelt responded to Einstein’s letter by setting up the Advisory Committee on Uranium under Lyman J. Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards.

* Side note: his daughter Isabel would eventually marry Clarence Myers and go on to generate the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator with her mother.

* Which is complete bullshit BTW.

* The committee met for the first time on 21 October 1939.

* It’s function was to look into the current state of research on uranium to recommend an appropriate role for the federal government.

* On 1 November 1939, the Uranium Committee recommended that the government should immediately obtain 4 tons of graphite, which was used to slow down the neutrons coming from the fission reaction, and 50 tons of uranium oxide.

* But there was still no proof that the whole thing would work.

* Even if you could create a chain reaction, how would you fit everything you needed into something of a size that could be used as a bomb?

* Fermi himself thought that there was ‘little likelihood of an atomic bomb, little proof that we were not pursuing a chimera’.

* Keep in mind that this was before Pearl Harbour, before the U.S. was officially even at war.

* One guy who believed that America was going to end up at war was Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Foundation.

* Bush was a legendary engineer and inventor.

* Among other things, he founded the company now known as Raytheon, which developed better vacuum tubes, he developed the work that lead to the digital circuits, came up with the idea of hypertext, and was vice president of MIT and dean of the MIT School of Engineering.

* in June 1940 Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Committee with Bush at its head.

* Its priorities were the development of radar, proximity fuses and anti-submarine devices.

* The Uranium Committee fell under its remit.

* It was reconstituted as a scientific body and purged of its military membership.

* In the interest of security, foreign-born scientists were barred from the committee and further publication of articles on uranium research was banned.

* In 1941, Plutonium was discovered.

* They found that plutonium-239 was 1.7 times as likely as U-235 to fission.

* And they could produce large amounts of fissionable plutonium from the plentiful U-238.

* So now there were two options - U-235 and plutonium.

* Meanwhile, Bush had been appointed director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.

* This had been established by an executive order on 28 June 1941 – six days after German troops invaded the Soviet Union – giving Bush direct access to the White House.

* The National Defense Research Committee, now headed by James Conant, president of Harvard University, was downgraded to an advisory body while the Uranium Committee became a section of the OSRD, codenamed S-1 – Section One of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.

* It was S-1 that Truman discovered was sucking up a ton of money in 1943 and they told him he wasn’t allowed to know anything about it.

* Meanwhile, over in England, the Military Application of Uranium Detonation Committee, or MAUD, which was set up in 1940 to research atomic weapons, issued a report that said fission of U-235 could happen even with fast neutrons.

* They estimated that a critical mass of 22 pounds would be large enough to produce an enormous explosion.

* A bomb that size could be loaded on existing aircraft and be ready in around two years.

* The Americans read the report.

* It reminded them that fission had been discovered in Nazi Germany nearly three years earlier, and since spring 1940 a large part of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin had been set aside for uranium research.

* Meanwhile

* In September 1941, Werner Heisenberg, one of the key pion

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#71 - The World Set Free

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 21:36:00 -0000

* In 1913, H. G. Wells wrote a book called The World Set Free

* The novel begins: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. . . . Always down a lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more."

* In the book, the human race develops an atomic bomb.

* This was written in 1913.

* A few years earlier, Frederick Soddy had published a book about the properties of radium which Wells had read.

* Soddy and others, including Rutherford, had the slow natural radioactive decay of elements like radium continues for thousands of years, and that while the rate of energy release is negligible, the total amount released is huge.

* Wells wondered what would happen if you could get all of that energy to release at once?

* He got a lot of the details wrong - but plutonium, the fissile material used in the first atomic explosions, wasn’t actually discovered until 1941.

* Wells's "atomic bombs" have no more force than ordinary high explosive and are rather primitive devices detonated by a "bomb-thrower" biting off "a little celluloid stud."

* He also said that ‘A man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city’.

* I don’t know about a handbag, but suitcase bombs certainly are a thing.

* In the 1960s the U.S. built a mini nuclear device-- the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM).

* It weighed 80-100 pounds, was small enough to fit in a duffel bag or large case and was designed for sabotage missions-- airfields, bridges, dams.

* It had an explosive charge of roughly one thousand tons of TNT (one kiloton).

* The Russians also developed a suitcase bomb.

* The highest ranking GRU defector, Stanislav Lunev, has said that suitcase nukes might be already deployed by the GRU operatives on US soil to assassinate US leaders in the event of war.

* He claimed that arms caches were hidden by the KGB in many countries.

* They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices or Molniya as its known in Russian.

* Just like Mad Max’s Interceptor, a sequence of specific actions had to be taken in the correct order to render the device safe prior to moving or opening the container, or the device would automatically detonate.

* This detonation was designed to be lethal to anyone in its immediate proximity, as well as being sufficient to destroy all materials in the cache.

* In 1992, KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the UK, and brought with him 30 years of handwritten archives.

* He indentified the location of one hidden suitcase radio transmitter, not a bomb, which exploded when Swiss authorities sprayed it with a high pressure water cannon in a wooded area near Bern.

* Several others caches were removed successfully.

* The lightest nuclear warhead ever acknowledged to have been manufactured by the U.S. is the W54, which fit into 11 in by 16 in (28 cm by 41 cm, small enough to fit in a footlocker-sized container) cylinder that weighed 51 lbs (23 kg).

* Anyway, back to Wells’ book.

* His bombs ‘made a mighty thunder in the air, and fell like Lucifer’.

* They produced ‘tremendous pillars of fire . . . Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds.’

* They destroyed buildings like a scythe cutting down grass, while mountainous clouds billowed up into the air.

* The book was published in 1914, just as World War I was starting.

* In 1932, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, a Wells fan, read the book.

* The following year, he realized that you could indeed make an atomic bomb.

* In the first memorandum passed to President Roosevelt, outlining the possibility of making a bomb, Szilard’s first citation is to The World Set Free.

* F

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#70 - No Military Justification

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 21:26:00 -0000

* The Potsdam declaration on Japan was tricky.

* It was drafted while Churchill was still PM.

* In fact it was probably one of the last things he did as PM.

* But it was signed by Attlee.

* Stalin had to be involved, but he couldn’t sign it because the U.S.S.R. was still technically under a non-agression treaty with Japan.

* Truman also wanted Chiang KaiShek to sign it.

* Which meant it needed they needed to get it translated and sent to him at his remote headquarters nears ChongKing in central China.

* The final text gave Japan “an opportunity to end this war” before the “prodigious land, sea and air forces of the United States, the British Empire and of China, many times reinforced by their armies and air fleets from the west, are poised to strike the final blows upon Japan . . . until she ceases to resist.”

* It also advised the Japanese of what befell the Germans when they fought to the end.

* It warned that “the might that now converges on Japan is immeasurably greater than that which, when applied to the resisting Nazis, necessarily laid waste to the lands, the industry and the method of life of the whole German people.”

* But of course it’s worth keeping in mind that many in the Japanese military prided themselves on their particular militaristic interpretation of the Bushido code.

* The classic book, Bushido, the Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe, written in 1899, portrays Bushido - which he says translates as Military-Knight-Ways - as being very similar to the code of chivalry supposedly adopted by the European knights in the Middle Ages.

* He portrays it as relatively pacifistic.

* It’s about courage and honour, sincerity, frugality, loyalty, mastery of martial arts, and honour to the death, but stresses morality as well.

* It was the code of the samurai.

* Here’s some crazy numbers.

* By the end of the 19th century, somewhere between 5% and 10% of the Japanese population were samurai.

* The census at the end of the 19th century counted 1,282,000 members of the "high samurai", allowed to ride a horse, and 492,000 members of the "low samurai", allowed to wear two swords but not to ride a horse, in a country of about 25 million.

* Under the bushidō ideal, if a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could only regain it by performing seppuku (ritual suicide).

* In an excerpt from his book Samurai: The World of the Warrior, historian Stephen Turnbull describes the role of seppuku in feudal Japan:

* In the world of the warrior, seppuku was a deed of bravery that was admirable in a samurai who knew he was defeated, disgraced, or mortally wounded.

* It meant that he could end his days with his transgressions wiped away and with his reputation not merely intact but actually enhanced.

* The cutting of the abdomen released the samurai’s spirit in the most dramatic fashion, but it was an extremely painful and unpleasant way to die, and sometimes the samurai who was performing the act asked a loyal comrade to cut off his head at the moment of agony.

* Unfortunately bushido was hijacked and adapted by militarists and the government from the early 1900s onward as nationalism increased around the time of the Russo-Japanese War.

* And by WWII, it had reached epic proportions.

* I don’t know how much western strategists understood bushido in 1945, but they were certainly aware of kamikaze pilots.

* Kamikaze translates as "divine wind" or "spirit wind”

* The Kamikaze were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who initiated suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy warships more effectively than was possible with conventional air attacks.

* About 3,862 kamikaze pilots died during the war, and somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 naval person

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#69 - The Atomic Bomb

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 08:23:00 -0000

* Episode 69.

* Ray’s favourite number.

* Have you actually had one yet, Ray?

* Sister in law?

* Truman had given his final approval to the plan to invade Kyushu, the southern most island of Japan, just two weeks before leaving for Potsdam.

* A Russian invasion of Manchuria and Korea figured prominently in the grand strategy that underlay that plan.

* Second, even an invasion of the home islands did little to solve the problem of the estimated 1.8 million Japanese soldiers in mainland China.

* But the Soviets could handle that problem as well.

* In return, of course, for the new territories they wanted as a result.

* Which were mostly old Russian territories lost during the Russo-Japanese war as we discussed in earlier episodes.

* Getting Stalin into the Pacific War was Truman’s number one goal in Potsdam.

* The Japanese knew of course that this was coming and had been trying to negotiate a way to keep their Neutrality pact in place with the Soviets.

* They had offered the Soviets pretty much everything they wanted - southern Sakhalin Island, Port Arthur, and half of Manchuria in exchange for help in keeping the rest of Japan’s conquests in Asia.

* The Russians had informed the Allies about these offers and their rebuttals of them.

* But still the Americans didn’t trust the Soviets and thought they might cut a deal.

* Of course, Truman need not have worried about Russian desires to join the war against Japan.

* Stalin wanted Russia involved in the war as much as Truman did.

* On June 28, 1945, even before he set out for Potsdam, Stalin told his commanders to begin preparations for a war with Japan “in the greatest secrecy.”

* As later reported, “army commanders [were] to be given their orders in person and orally and without any written directives.”

* Almost without debate, Stalin told Truman early on at Potsdam that Russian forces would invade Manchuria no later than mid-August.

* Truman was as happy as a capitalist pig in shit.

* How to end the war with Japan remained a question of intense debate.

* The Allies had insisted on unconditional surrender for Germany, but several strategists argued that the same insistence for Japan might well prove counterproductive.

* The geography of Japan complicated any attempts at invasion and military dominance.

* Culturally, the Japanese people had an attachment to the emperor that argued against an insistence on his removal.

* If the Americans, whose forces would have to bear the brunt of an invasion of the home islands, insisted on dethroning the quasi-divine emperor, it might force the Japanese to fight on for an abstract goal that had little real strategic or political importance.

* The Americans should, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and others argued, allow Japan to keep its emperor in exchange for ending the war.

* Most senior US military officials agreed, noting that only the emperor could sign or endorse a capitulation that the Japanese people would respect.

* Removing him by force might create anarchy and an untenable situation for occupying forces.

* British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin drew a direct lesson from World War I, arguing that “it might have been better for all of us not to have destroyed the institution of the Kaiser after the last war; we might not have had this one if we hadn’t done so.”

* Thus, he argued, the Allies should remain flexible about the emperor’s future.

* Other officials recalled with bitterness Pearl Harbor and insisted that Japan must surrender unconditionally.

* The still-influential former secretary of state Cordell Hull publicly blasted any concessions to the Japanese as “appeasement.”

* His word choice mattered deeply, as it carried the historical implication of both American weakness and the beginning of another round of conflict.

* He, Byr

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#68 - Two And A Half Men

Sun, 07 Jan 2018 09:43:00 -0000

Well the election result shocked everyone.
And the rest of the contingent at Potsdam weren’t very happy about it either.
We might think that the Soviets would be please to be dealing with a British government made up of socialists.
But that wasn’t the case.
Stalin didn’t like Attlee or the British Labour Party.
Despite Churchill’s attempts during the election to paint Labour as pro-Soviet, neither Attlee nor Stalin saw themselves as fellow travellers.
To the Labour Party, Soviet-style economic models were horrible.
To the Soviets, the Labour Party seemed no less capitalist or imperialist than the Tories.
Far better, in Stalin’s mind, to deal with the Churchill devil he knew rather than the Attlee devil he most certainly did not.
Attlee wrote: “I knew from experience,” he wrote, “that the communists had always fought us more vigorously than the Tories because they thought we offered a viable alternative to communism. They regarded the Tories as advocates of a dying cause while they thought we were a rival”
The British of course were horrified.
Cadogan called Churchill’s defeat “a display of base ingratitude” on the part of the British people and “rather humiliating for our country.”
Field Marshal Alan Brooke saw the timing of the election itself as another in a long line of Churchill’s mistakes in domestic politics, and one with potentially catastrophic repercussions.
“What a ghastly mistake to start elections at this point of the world’s history!” he wrote in his diary that night, “May God forgive England for it.”
Brooke blamed Churchill personally, saying, “If only Winston had followed any advice, he would have been in at any rate till the end of the year!”
Instead, Brooke noted, Churchill had counted on his personality to carry the election, just as he had counted on his personality to win over Truman and Stalin.
Tragically, he had failed at both.
Some tried to tell Churchill that the British people had not rejected him personally, but the Conservative Party in general.
The data, however, tell a different story.
The Tories actually performed worse in districts where Churchill himself had campaigned.
Clearly, he had lost the faith of the British people even if he could not quite figure out why.
“It may well be a blessing in disguise,” Clementine told him.
“At the moment,” he replied, “it seems quite effectively disguised.”
Attlee himself thought the result had more to do with the economic policies of the Tories in the 30s and the appeasement of Hitler - nothing Churchill could personally be blamed for.
Churchill returned to No. 10 Downing Street for one last meeting as prime minister.
He told Eden that he expected his own political career to be at an end, but that Eden would himself one day return to Downing Street as prime minister.
Churchill appeared to Eden as “pretty wretched, poor old boy.”
Losing the election, Churchill told Eden, was “like a wound which becomes more painful after the first shock.”
The British government had even taken away his bodyguards,
The American delegate Walter Brown observed that “the Empire he had saved did not think enough of him to keep a guard for a single night after he had been defeated.”
Churchill drove down to Chequers for a final weekend at the country home of the prime minister, writing his name and “FINIS” in the guest book as his tenure as Britain’s wartime leader came to an end.
The end was pretty harsh: no one even asked Churchill to deliver an address to the nation when the Japanese surrendered in August.
Churchill told Lord Moran that “it would have been better to have been killed in an aeroplane or to have died like Roosevelt.”
When the king announced he was awarding the Order of the Garter to Eden, Eden replied

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#67 Clement Atlee

Sun, 24 Dec 2017 04:49:00 -0000

Attlee was Churchill’s lame duck deputy PM.
In fact he was the first Deputy PM the UK ever had.
I didn’t realise this, but in the UK the role of the Deputy PM isn’t like you’d expect, like it is in Australia or like the Vice-President in the USA.
The Deputy PM doesn’t take over if the PM is incapacitated or resigns.
If the PM is sick or dies, the Deputy does NOT take over.
In the UK, only the sovereign can appoint a PM.
So having a Deputy who is PM-in-waiting is seen as a no no.
One argument made to justify the non-existence of a permanent deputy premiership is that such an office-holder would be seen as possessing a presumption of succession to the premiership, thereby effectively limiting the sovereign's right to choose a prime minister.
But of course you might think “well surely the Monarch can just say “okay I make you PM and I make you Deputy PM and therefore you’ll take over if something happens”, but apparently that would be too much work.
Attlee was the Deputy PM because the Churchill war ministry was a coalition government of men from both major political parties, handpicked by Churchill.
The idea went back to the first World War, when both Asquith and David Lloyd George had a coalition government in which Churchill was a minister, and back then he was with the Liberal Party, because he’d quit the Tories for a while.
And Attlee was the leader of the Labor Party.
In fact he was the leader for 20 years, from 1935 - 1955.
Not a bad run.
Now remember that Churchill himself HATED socialists more than he hated wasting a cigar, so it was a pretty remarkable thing that he found a way to work with these guys, and it’s something I can respect him for.
Anyway, the UK election had happened before Potsdam, despite Attlee suggesting they should wait until after the defeat of Japan, but the results were still being tallied.
On July 25, the conference took a two-day break so that the most senior British officials could return to London for the tabulation of the votes.
There was a three week delay between the vote on July 5 and the results to give the 3 million troops still overseas time to cast their votes.
Everyone, including Attlee and the British communists, expected Churchill to win, all that seemed in doubt was the size of the majority..
But Churchill later claimed that before he left Potsdam he had had a nightmare. “I dreamed that my life was over,” he later recalled. “I saw it—it was very vivid—my dead body under a white sheet on a table in an empty room. I recognized my bare feet projecting from under the sheet. It was very life like. . . . Perhaps this is the end.”
I wonder if his corpse was smoking a cigar?
The elections produced a historic surprise, of course - it was a landslide victory for Labour and Clement Attlee.
The Conservative majority in the House of Commons disappeared as the number of Tory seats plummeted from 585 to 213.
Labour emerged as the dominant party, meaning that Clement Attlee would return to Potsdam as Britain’s prime minister, and that Churchill would at least temporarily leave government.
Churchill briefly thought about returning to Potsdam and forcing the new Parliament to vote him out, but he soon bowed to the inevitable and resigned.
Attlee offered Churchill and Eden the chance to return to Potsdam with him as advisers, to show the world the continuity of the British system, but both declined.
Attlee himself could hardly believe that he and his party had won, and by such an enormous margin.
When he went to Buckingham Palace to meet the king, George VI told Attlee that he looked quite surprised to have won. “Indeed I certainly was,” Attlee replied.
Needless to say - everyone back at Potsdam was in shock.
No one quite knew what to make of the change; Winston Chur

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#66 - Potsdam Begins

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 09:19:00 -0000

Stalin arrived in Potsdam a day late. Claimed he had a small heart attack. Might have been a ruse. It gave the others a day to take a tour of Berlin on July 16 and see the destruction first hand. During the first week of the conference, everyone was jubilant, having won the war - but Truman quickly learned the Russians weren't going to give in to his demands, and the Allies and Stalin both had secrets. The Allies had a successful test of Trinity, the first atomic bomb. Stalin had Hitler's body. Of course, the A Bomb wasn't really a secret. Meanwhile Clement Attlee is there but being ignored by everyone.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#65 - Michael Neiberg

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 06:18:00 -0000

Prof Michael Neiberg is Chair of War Studies and Professor of History, Department of National Security and Strategy, US Army War College. He has also written a number of excellent books on the First World War - as well as the book we are talking about today - Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#64 - Towards Potsdam

Fri, 17 Nov 2017 06:44:00 -0000

After a string of fuckups, Truman starts listening to other people, like Joseph Davies, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1937-38, one of the guys he had ignored before his first meeting with Molotov. They decide a new meeting of the Big Three is needed - and start to plan the Potsdam Conference. Truman announced James Byrnes, the man who should be President, would be his new Secretary of State. And he finally learns the details of the S-1 project he had uncovered as a senator two years earlier - AKA the Manhattan Project.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#63 - The Old One-Two

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 08:33:00 -0000

Truman listens to certain people who tell him he should get tough with the Russians. At his first meeting with Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister said “I have never been talked to like that in my life."

“Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that,” Truman replied.

Then Truman decides to look tough by ending the Lend Lease shipments to the Soviets. Unfortunately nobody seems to have told him that the USA was still counting on Soviet support to end the Pacific War.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#62 - Truman

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 06:40:00 -0000

Harry S. Truman. Farmer. Soldier. Failed businessman. Given his political career by a mobbed-up bootlegger. Became President through fate. Adopted John Wayne persona to try to look tough.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#61 - FDR Dead

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 07:08:00 -0000

Then, on April 12, 1945, FDR died, aged only 63.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#60 - In Like Flynn

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 06:31:00 -0000

FDR sends one of his inner circle, Edward Flynn, a staunch Catholic, to meet the Pope to try to keep the peace between him and Stalin. Stalin meanwhile revived caesaropapism, the old tradition dating back to Constantine, making himself head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Not a bad promotion for someone who once studied to become an Orthodox priest.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#59 - Stalin Versus The Pope

Fri, 06 Oct 2017 06:08:00 -0000

Stalin crushes the Ukrainian Catholic Church, partly because socialists believe religion is the opium of the masses, and partly because the Pope, Pius XII, had done a deal with Hitler and was a virulent anti-Communist.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#58 - Operation Sunrise

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:35:00 -0000

March 8, 1945. Allen Dulles, the Bern station chief of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (a forerunner of the CIA), met in secret with Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the former head of Heinrich Himmler’s secretariat, who in the last years of the war became the commander of SS forces in northern Italy, to discuss Germany's surrender. The Anglo-Americans neglected to tell the Soviets about the meeting - a breach of their agreements. The Americans called it "Operation Sunrise". Some historians call Operation Sunrise the first episode of Cold War.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#57 - Alger Hiss

Fri, 15 Sep 2017 08:33:00 -0000

On February 13, 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Stettinius and his staff were invited to a reception hosted by Vyshinsky in the commissariat’s guesthouse in Moscow. Little did the Americans know that one member of their staff was a Soviet spy.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#56 - Dracula

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 07:30:00 -0000

What does Dracula have to do with the Cold War? The next issue to drive a wedge between the Big Three was the government of Romania.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#55 - Cold As Ice

Fri, 25 Aug 2017 09:02:00 -0000

Our first post-Yalta episode! Churchill and Roosevelt go home and give big speeches about how well Yalta went and how the Big Three really get each other. And then it all fell apart.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#54 - Nyet

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 05:46:00 -0000

The last day of Yalta! We're out, baby!

Churchill fell asleep in the middle of an important debate and then woke up ranting about the wrong things.

Iran wants everyone to leave their oil alone but no-one cares.

Stalin wanted access to the Black Sea Straits.

And Frank does the last big deal of his life - getting Joe's agreement in writing to join the fight against Japan.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#53 - Declaration Of Liberated Europe

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 06:09:00 -0000

Just when I thought I was out... they pulled me back in! To Yalta!

Before the Big Three left Yalta, they signed a document that promised to allow the people of Europe "to create democratic institutions of their own choice". Of course, at the time, the British were waging a war in Greece to prevent the people creating a government of their own choice... but let's not worry about inconvenient details like that.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#52 - German Reparations Part II

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 08:57:00 -0000

As the Yalta conference comes to a close, the question of German reparations is settled on, but it’s obvious that Stalin still doesn’t trust the other two. And the feeling is mutual.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#51 - German Reparations

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 07:13:00 -0000

Stalin goes hard on the issue of German reparations but meets with pushback from Churchill, while Roosevelt can't seem to make up his mind.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#50 - Summary Execution

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 06:15:00 -0000

So after they agreed on Poland, the rest of the February 9 plenary session is spent talking about Germany.

Specifically - what to do with the Nazi big dogs.

Previously secret British War Cabinet papers released on 1 January 2006 have shown that Churchill had been advocating since 1942 for a policy of summary execution for the top Nazis.

But Stalin suggested, you know, maybe they should be put on trial before being shot like animals?

Everyone was shocked.

But Joe still wanted $10 billion in reparations - and to keep France off of the Control Commission.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#49 - Prof. Serhii Plokhii, Harvard

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 09:35:00 -0000

We have a very special guest. Professor Serhii Plokhii is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, where he also serves as the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute. He’s the author of quite a few award-winning books including "The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine", which in 2015 won the world's most important award for non-fiction, the Lionel Gelber Prize - and a book that’s been invaluable to us while we discuss the Yalta conference, "Yalta: The Price of Peace". Serhii was kind enough to join us to talk about the importance of the Yalta conference and his analysis of the key players, the Big Three, FDR, Churchill and Stalin.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#48 - Settling The Polish Question

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 09:02:00 -0000

Day 9 at Yalta! The official, famous photographs are taken, and someone worries that he's going to be sent to the Gulag as a result. And the Polish question is finally settled to everyone's relief. They can almost go home. Oh and there was no raping.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#47 - The Rapist

Fri, 26 May 2017 06:38:00 -0000

Someone else was at the dinner on February 8, Day 4, at Koreiz villa - Lavrentii Beria the head of the dreaded People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs - a known womanizer and rapist.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#46 - The Big Threesome

Thu, 18 May 2017 06:47:00 -0000

At the end of a long day full of hard bargaining, The Big Three could still relax in one another’s company. In this episode we discuss the most important dinner of the conference.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#45 - Stalin Agrees On Japan

Fri, 12 May 2017 11:53:00 -0000

A deal was struck between FDR and Stalin: the Soviets will join the war with Japan in exchange for territorial acquisitions at Japan’s expense and the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in northeastern China.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#44 - The Bombing Of Dresden

Thu, 27 Apr 2017 22:52:00 -0000

The city of Dresden was the primary victim of the “zone of limitation” agreement reached at Yalta—one of the few direct outcomes of the military consultations held there. In early 1945 Dresden was one of the few major German centers to have escaped systematic Allied bombing. On the night of February 13 - only two days after the end of the Yalta conference - the Royal Air Force Bomber Command executed the first night air raid on the city. “Florence on the Elbe”, as it was known, was reduced to rubble by Allied bombers in three major raids between February 13 and 15 - known by the Allies as Operation Thunderclap.

Altogether 1,300 British and American bombers dropped more than 3,000 tons of bombs including 1,100 tons of incendiaries on a city with one million civilians.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#43 - The Battle Of Balaclava

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 12:30:00 -0000

On Feb 7, the British Chiefs of Staff decided to take the day off to visit the site of the Battle of Balaclava, infamous for the "Charge of the Light Brigade" in 1854. Meanwhile, the Americans and the Soviet military commanders took the opportunity to talk about Russia's entry into the Pacific War against Japan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#42 - Poland's Borders

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 23:11:00 -0000

Conversation at Yalta turns to Poland's borders. Stalin had a new proposal that would mean moving the southern part of the Polish-German border 200 kilometers west - into Germany, right up to the Oder & Neisse rivers. Which was actually giving Poland more of Germany than the U.S. and UK were happy with. They believed it would create 8 or 9 million German refugees.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#41 - Frank Makes Shit Up

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 07:05:00 -0000

On Feb 8, when Stalin arrived for his lunch date with Roosevelt, FDR told him that the Foreign Ministers had met that morning and agreed to accept the two extra countries for the Soviet’s in the UN General Assembly. It was good timing for FDR, because that day they were going to be talking about getting Russia involved in the war with Japan, and he wanted him on side. THE ONLY SMALL PROBLEM - the Foreign Ministers had NOT actually agreed to the two extra votes! Roosevelt made it up! Why? How? To what end? Listen and find out!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#40 - Stalin Plays With Pooh

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 23:32:00 -0000

At Yalta, Feb 7 and 8 - days 4 and 5 - are going to be about trying to get agreement on the Polish issues and the issue of the Soviets entering the war with Japan. Winnie The Pooh is getting played by Uncle Joe, who senses that the US/UK love fest is struggling.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#39 - Stalin Drops The Mic

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 08:26:00 -0000

Back to the question of Poland. Roosevelt suggests changing the Polish-Russian border - in the favour of the Poles. Why? It'd really help him out in the upcoming U.S. election. Churchill agreed with him. Why? It would really help him out in the upcoming British election. Stalin, as you can imagine, was not impressed with their logic.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#38 - Warm Water Ports

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 05:26:00 -0000

Despite their attempts to get the U.K. and U.S.S.R. to give up on the concept of spheres of influence, the Monroe Doctrine remained the dominant way that America built its economic empire after WWII. Russia has always longed for more warm water ports and we explain why that's important. We do a mini bio on Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet deputy people’s commissar for foreign affairs. And we talk about why George Kennan wanted to kill off the idea of the United Nations.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#37 - Poland

Fri, 24 Feb 2017 09:13:00 -0000

We are back talking about Poland and why it was such an important issue to the Big Three at Yalta. As Churchill himself said, Poland was so important, it was discussed at seven out of the eight plenary sessions and the official British record contained 18,000 words on Poland spoken by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. We also talk a little about Operation Paperclip, where America grabbed 1600 Nazi scientists and engineers and took them back to work on for the U.S. government.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#36 - That Little Rat Leo Pasvolsky

Fri, 17 Feb 2017 05:15:00 -0000

So after Sumner Welles resigned, the majority of the work on the UN charter was done by an interesting guy no-one remembers - Leo Pasvolsky. When he died in 1953, his New York Times obituary was subtitled "Wrote Charter of World Organization." In a 1967 letter, Dean Acheson criticized American moralism in international affairs, which he saw as culminating in "that little rat Leo Pasvolsky's United Nations.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#35 - The United Nations

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 09:35:00 -0000

During the rest of Day Two of Yalta they discuss how much Germany should pay in reparations and how many Germans should go to Russia as slave labour.

On Day Three, the talk turns to FDR's passion project - The United Nations. We go into some detail about the early vision for the UN, the men behind it, the concerns the Big Three had about how it would impact on their own plans for global and regional dominance - and the use of the Security Council veto.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#34 - Charles De Gaulle

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 05:33:00 -0000

As the Yalta conference now turns to whether or not France should have a role in the occupation of Germany, the Allied Control Commission and the UN Security Council, we thought it was a good time to do a quick bio on France's post-WWII leader, Charles de Gaulle, aka "The Big Asparagus Stalk", aka "Chucky D".

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#33 - Dismemberment

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 05:59:00 -0000

We're finally back! Sorry about the long wait.

On day two of the Yalta Conference Franky wanted to discuss the role of France in the German occupation. Joey hijacked the agenda to demand agreement on dismemberment. And Winny just sucked his thumb because no-one cared what he thought about anything.

PS ignore the episode number I think it is when we recorded the show. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#32 - Fidel Castro Part 4

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 05:17:00 -0000

Part four (!!!) of our "quick" biography on Fidel Castro, using the New York Times' obituary, breaking it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we're making these Castro episodes free to guests.This is absolutely the last part, we promise!

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#31 - Fidel Castro Part 3

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 09:48:00 -0000

Part three (!!!) of our "quick" biography on Fidel Castro, using the New York Times' obituary, breaking it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we're making these Castro episodes free to guests. And yes - there is a part four! But it's the last part, we promise!

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#30 - Fidel Castro Part 2

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 07:25:00 -0000

Part two of our "quick" biography on Fidel Castro, using the New York Times' obituary, breaking it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we're making these Castro episodes free to guests.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#29 - Fidel Castro

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 11:07:00 -0000

With the recent death of Fidel Castro, we decided to take a quick detour from our linear narrative to jump ahead in time and talk about one of the major figures, not only of the Cold War, but of the 20th century. A hero to many, reviled by just as many, his death brought on a new spate of Western media coverage. After reading much of it, we just had to provide our own perspective. We decided to tackle the subject by taking one of the major media obituaries, by the New York Times, and break it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we're making this episode free to guests.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#27 - Yalta: Day One

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 05:48:00 -0000

We FINALLY start talking about day one of the Yalta conference, explaining the key cast of characters – and a lemon tree.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#26 - Prof Fredrik Logevall

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 10:02:00 -0000

Today we have another special guest - Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of History in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences - Prof Fredrik Logevall. He's also the co-author of America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (co-authored with Campbell Craig, who we had on in episode 20).

HOW TO LISTEN

If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player.

If you haven't already, join our Facebook page and you'll be in the running to win prizes in our regular "Share The Love" and other competitions.

If you'd like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#25 - Maclean

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 04:41:00 -0000

This is the third and final of our episodes about the Cambridge Five!

This week - Donald Maclean. After being recruited at Cambridge, he started working for the Foreign Office assigned to the division that looked after the League of Nations. Over the next few years, 45 boxes of documents were photographed and sent to Moscow. He rose to become the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington and Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee on atomic energy matters, where he was Moscow's main source of information about US/UK/Canada atomic energy policy development. After returning to London, he became the head of the American Department in the Foreign Office.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#24 - Burgess

Fri, 21 Oct 2016 07:58:00 -0000

This is the second of our episodes about the Cambridge Five!

This week - Guy Burgess. Where the others were highly self-controlled and shunned public scrutiny, he was wildly flamboyant, openly homosexual and often embroiled in scandal because of his drunken behaviour. He had the ability to charm anyone he sought out, including Churchill, and attracted an astonishing array of contacts, as well as lovers, as he flitted between MI5, MI6, the BBC and the FO. At one point he was simultaneously running agents for both British and Soviet intelligence. Between 1941 and 1945 he passed more than 4,600 documents to Moscow.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#23 - Philby

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 07:07:00 -0000

This is the first of two episodes about the Cambridge Five!

This week - Kim Philby, arguably the most effective spy in the history of spying.

The man running British operations against the Russians in the early years of the Cold War was actually working for the Russians himself. And there was every possibility that had it not been for one mistake, Philby would have gone on to become CSS, Chief of the British Secret Service. That mistake - sharing a flat with Guy Burgess - the subject of next week's show.

If you want to know more about Philby's amazing life, read his autobiography, MY SILENT WAR.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#22 - Yalta (part 1)

Thu, 06 Oct 2016 22:00:00 -0000

By the time the Big Three finally met again after Tehran, it was February 1945, the US had re-taken the Phillipines. But the they were still a long way from Japan. And in Europe, they were all facing fierce crystal-meth fuelled German resistance. Plus we have Pomeranian dogs, golden fleece, a Greek revolutionary, a Jew who is burned at the stake, and the introduction to the Cambridge Five!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#21 - The First Vietnam

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 06:37:00 -0000

Today we go back to 1898 and discuss The Philippine–American War, sometimes referred to as "The First Vietnam". Trust us - it's relevant to our story. Why did the United States invade the Philippines in 1898? And why did 200,000 Filipinos have to die as a result? And why did the US occupy it for the next 50 years? Listen and find out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#20 - Campbell Craig

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 07:30:00 -0000

Professor Campbell Craig is the Professor of International Relations at Cardiff University.

He has held senior fellowships at Yale University, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the European University Institute, and, most recently, at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol, and has given invited lectures at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Chicago, Columbia, Cambridge, Sciences-Po, the Free University of Berlin, the London School of Economics, University of Copenhagen, and other universities.

His most recent books are The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (with Sergey Radchenko), and America’s Cold War: the Politics of Insecurity (with Fredrik Logevall).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#19 - Bretton Woods

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 21:00:00 -0000

- A month after the opening of the second front, the Roosevelt administration organized a conference on postwar economic planning in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at which American officials set up institutions designed to open up free trade around the world and to promote industrial development in former European colonies.

- It was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.

- It’s known as the Bretton Woods Conference.

- And it was a major turning point in the global economy.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#18 - Tehran

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:54:00 -0000

Roosevelt and Churchill had their first war summit meeting in Casablanca in January 1943.

The first Big Three conference was held in Tehran, Iran in November 1943. It turned out to be the most important summit of the war. In four days of meetings, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin debated the second-front question and hashed out the basic outline of a postwar European order.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#17 - Disgustingly Ugly

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 21:00:00 -0000

We start in August 1942. Churchill is still in Moscow, getting down with Uncle Joe. Stalin accuses the British of being a bunch of pussies, too scared to fight the big bad Nazis.

To try to break up the UK/USA/USSR love nest, the Nazis dig up 3000 dead bodies of Polish generals (Katyn massacre) and lay the blame on the Soviets who deny it (but their fingers are crossed behind their backs). And Stalin dissolves the Comintern, pretending, for the moment, that he has no intention of trying to spread Communism any further around the globe.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#16 - Dr Peter Ellyard

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 07:48:00 -0000

Our guest today is Dr Peter Ellyard, a futurist, strategist, speaker and author living in Melbourne, Australia. He is known for his unique perspectives on global trends and emerging global markets. He talks to us about the role that "planetism" and the rising global middle class has on the future of the species and preventing future global wars.

You can read more about Peter here or order his books here.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#15 - The Grand Alliance

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 23:00:00 -0000

In June 1941, the UK, USA and USSR slowly started to come together to defeat Germany and Japan. The Grand Alliance is often called the "Strange Alliance" because it united the world's greatest capitalist state, the greatest communist state and the greatest colonial power.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#14 - Ribbentrop, Molotov, Barbarossa

Thu, 28 Jul 2016 23:00:00 -0000

In this episode we talk about the non-aggression pact signed between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939, known as the Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact, and then how Hitler decided to terminate it in 1941 when he launched a surprise invasion on the USSR, known as "Operation Barbarossa". We also talk a little of the history of Poland, The Munich Agreement, and Stalin's fondness for a good tune.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#13 - The Great Terror

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 05:13:00 -0000

Today's episode starts off with part 4 of our series on economics, where we look at the role of the media, and then launches into Stalin's "Great Terror". And we finish answering a question from a listener about Brexit.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#12 - Doug La Follette

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 11:06:00 -0000

Our first guest on the Cold War series is Doug La Follette, Secretary of State of Wisconsin!

Here's some background.

- Doug is the Secretary of State of Wisconsin a position to which he was first elected in 1974!

- And he’s been the SoS pretty much ever since then, with a short break for a few years in the late 70s.

- Doug’s a member of the La Follette political dynasty.

- He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marietta College, a Master of Science in chemistry from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University.

- Doug was known as an environmentalist before running for public office, and was an organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970.

- He is the author of the book The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth.

- He has also served on the board of directors of Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Sierra Club.

- And he was a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar in 2003.

- And finally - he’s a very old friend of Sir J. David Markham.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#11 - Economics & War Pt 3

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 15:00:00 -0000

Part 3 of our three-part series on economics and war, where we drill down into the various ways companies profiteer from war and how it stimulates the economy via “Military Keynesianism”. On the suggestion of my wise friend Tony Kynaston, we're making this episode available to non-subscribers, because the subject we're talking about is that important.

To summarise the last three episodes, here are some of the main ways war is good for business:

1. It's good for companies selling weapons, both to their own country and to other countries, funded by tax dollars.

2. It's good for companies selling other goods required during and after a war, including everything from food and clothing to reconstruction efforts - also funded by tax dollars.

3. It's good for companies who want to gain access to undeveloped markets with new sources of natural resources and cheap labour.

4. It's good for companies who want to lock up control of export markets that they can sell their goods and services to.

5. It's good for companies who use war to get primary technological research done (and paid for by the taxpayers) that then makes its way into the hands of corporations.

HOW TO LISTEN

If you aren't already a subscriber, you'll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#10 - Economics & War Pt 2

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 19:51:00 -0000

Part 2 of our three-part series on economics and war. Still talking about trade and access to foreign markets. We look at the CIA's overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the Marshall Plan and the Open Door policy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#9 - Economics & War Pt 1

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 21:28:00 -0000

This is going to be the first in a series of episodes where we talk about economics and war. I know - economics is a scary boring subject, but it's really just the study of how people make and spend money. In this episode we're going to argue that economics (money) was a significant factor in the genesis of the Cold War (and pretty much every other war in history too). We'll talk about imperialism, gunboat diplomacy, big stick diplomacy, dollar diplomacy, propaganda, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, economic hit men, and the Monroe Doctrine. As Major General Smedley Butler wrote: "War is a racket".

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#8 - Mansplaining Capitalism

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 22:59:00 -0000

Okay so we're still talking about IDEOLOGY.

On our last episode we didn't get time to get into talking about CAPITALISM, so that's what we're doing on this episode. We talk a little about the history of capitalism, try to define it, and discuss how the United Kingdom's imperialist control over 25% of the world's economy wasn't something that FDR was willing to tolerate. If the UK wanted US support in WWII, they were going to have to bend over and take it up the English Channel.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#7 - Socialism

Thu, 26 May 2016 22:13:00 -0000

On this episode, our first premium episode, we continue talking about IDEOLOGY.

SOCIALISM v CAPITALISM.

TWO IDEOLOGIES ENTER, ONE IDEOLOGY LEAVES.

Or something like that.

What are they? How are they different?

This episode is a very quick overview of SOCIALISM. If you want to know more, we suggest you read a fucking book.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#6 - The First Red Scare

Fri, 20 May 2016 18:34:00 -0000

This is part one of a few episodes that will explain the military, ideological and economic conflicts and tensions between the US, UK and USSR before the Cold War. In this episode, we look at the "Polar Bear Expedition" and the first "Red Scare" in the US.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#5 - FDR Part Two

Wed, 04 May 2016 01:04:00 -0000

Part Two of our mini-biography of FDR.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#4 - FDR Part One

Sat, 23 Apr 2016 03:01:00 -0000

Part One of our mini-biography of everyone's favorite wheelchair pilot, FDR. His family background (opium traders), his rise, his polio, his affairs, his reforms, his ballsy attitude, his assassination attempt, his concentration camps and how incredibly fucked America was when he was sworn in. In 1933, the US was in dire straits. Three years into the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and a third-rate military. When he died in 1945, it was the world's leading economic and military superpower.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#3 - The Man Of Steel

Sat, 09 Apr 2016 18:49:00 -0000

Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili aka STALIN. Unlike Churchill and Roosevelt, Joseph wasn't born into the elite classes of society. His father was a cobbler; his mother, a housemaid. As a young man, he trained to become a priest, but it didn't take. Soon afterwards he discovered the writings of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, alias Lenin, and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, ending up the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#2 - Enter Churchill

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 19:04:00 -0000

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a fascinating character. His reputation as a "great man", as the brave British wartime leader who defeated the Nazis, hides his reputation before and after WWII - a racist who enjoyed participating in "a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples" and who even his peers thought had extremely racist views. We're not here to demonise Churchill, but, on the other hand, it's our job to peel away the layers of mythology to find the real man who popularised the term "the Iron Curtain".

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1 - Let's Get Cold

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 18:08:00 -0000

Where your intrepid hosts set off on the audio journey of a lifetime and introduce the series.

If you like our intro music, it's by the very great Jofre Horta Antoniou!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices