Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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. 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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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 exactly that. 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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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?     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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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.   ← #126 - The Berlin Airlift #128 - Kim Il Sung →

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.     ← #125 - The Berlin Blockade #127 - Syngman Rhee →

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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. 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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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 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. Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

* 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.* Long Biên Bridge, built in 1899-1902 by the architects Daydé & Pillé of Paris, at that time, one of the longest bridges in Asia 1.68 kilometres (1.04 mi)* And it was there in Hanoi on a hot September day in 1945, in front of hundreds of thousands, that Ho proclaimed Vietnamese independence.* Ho was 55.* It was his first time in Hanoi.* He had travelled four days from his base to get there.* By foot, boat and, because he was still sick, being carried in a stretcher.* Giap tells the story:* The strain had an effect on his health. He fell ill. For several days, in spite of the fatigue and the fever, he pushed himself and continued his work. Every day in coming to make my report, I worried about his condition. Invariably he responded: “It will pass. Come on in and bring me up to date.” But I clearly saw that he was weakening and had lost considerable weight. One day, I found him in a state of crisis, delirious with fever. We were terribly short of medicine, just had some aspirin and quinine tablets. He took them, but they had no effect. Ordinarily, except for his moments of repose, he never lay down. Now he lay on his cot for hours in a coma. Of all those who worked habitually by his side I was the only one wh

* 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, except movements with wrinkled brown fingers. Fam made notes. It was agreed we should have a further meeting. They wrote their names down in Chinese characters which were romanized into Fam Fuc Pao and Ho Tchih Ming.* He later wrote:* “Baudelaire felt the wings of insanity touch his mind; but that morning I felt the wings of genius touch mine.”* Fenn, who had studied graphology, the study of handwriting analysis, also provided an analysis of Ho’s handwriting, from which he concluded:* The essential features are simplicity, desire to make everything clear, remarkable self-control. Knows how to keep a secret. Neat, orderly, unassuming, no interest in dress or outward show. Self-confident and dignified. Gentle but firm. Loyal, sincere, and generous, would make a good friend. Outgoing, gets along with anyone. Keen analytical mind, difficult to deceive. Shows readiness to ask questions. Good judge of character. Full of enthusiasm, energy, initiative. Conscientious; painstaking attention to detail. Imaginative, interested in aesthetics, particularly literature. Good sense of humor.* Faults: diplomatic to the point of contr

* 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 obligatory quotas of rice assigned to each farmer for sale to the government.* Farmers tried to grow other drops, like sweet potatoes but it didn’t help.* Then as supply levels dropped, prices went up and people couldn’t afford to buy food.* Millions of Vietnamese died.* Streets were littered with dying peasants, and oxcarts were filled with corpses.* Families roamed from village to village, hoping to find grain.* Or they retreated to their homes, shared the few remaining morsels, and died quietly, one by one.* Some people, having consumed everything that could be eaten—bark, roots, leaves, dogs, and rats—resorted to cannibalism, causing parents to fear that their children would be stolen and eaten.* Some parents sold their children for a few cups of rice.* Duong Thieu Chi, a provincial official in Nam Dinh, a city in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam, said he made sure to avoid eating in restaurants or stalls when he traveled during these months, for fear that the meat served might be rat or human flesh.* A French observer wrote: “From looking at these bodies, which are shriveled up on roadsides with only a handful of straw for clothes as well as for the burial garment, one feels ashamed of being human.”* In May 1945, as the crisis eased

* 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 the late 1920s, were gaining strength in the north.* From Cairo, FDR traveled to Tehran for meetings with Churchill and, for the first time, Stalin.* During their initial get-together, FDR stressed to Stalin the importance of preparing the people of Indochina for self-government along the lines of what the United States had done in the Philippines.* Stalin agreed that Indochina should not be returned to France and said he supported independence for all colonial subjects.* Because if Stalin was anything, he was a nice guy.* A note taker at Tehran noted that “The president remarked that after 100 years of French rule in Indochina, the inhabitants were worse off than they had been before.”* When Roosevelt brought up his trusteeship scheme, implying that Chiang Kai-shek agreed, and Stalin expressed support.* As the meeting drew to a close, they agreed there was no point in discussing the India matter with Churchill.* For the British, FDR’s idea was a dangerous game of dominoes:* If Indochina was allowed to fall from colonial control, what would keep Burma, Malaya, India, and other parts of the British Empire from being next?* after learning of another Roosevelt attack on the “hopeless” French rec

* 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.* Unfortunately when he got there, in July 1923, Lenin was already ill and dying.* He died January 1924.* Ho took the news hard: “Lenin was our father, our teacher, our comrade, our representative. Now, he is a shining star showing us the way to Socialism.”* He stuck around in Moscow for a while, attending meetings of the Comintern, giving speeches about Asian self-determination, but again felt like a “voice crying in the wilderness.”* The Moscovites, like the French, were mostly interested in Europe.* But his time in Moscow was useful and a relief.* He didn’t have to watch over his shoulder for French police to arrest him for treason.* And he got to know various Soviet leaders, including Grigory Zinoviev, one of the original Politburo, and Kliment Voroshilov, one of the original five Marshals of the Soviet Union.* And he became known as a specialist in asian affairs.* In the autumn of 1924, the Soviets sent him to southern China, ostensibly to act as an interpreter for the Comintern’s advisory mission to Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist government in Canton but in reality to organize the first Marxist revolutionary organization in Indochina.* To do that, he publis

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 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.

* 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 countries, so they could use Marshall Plan funds to buy raw materials, eg uranium and plutonium, that they needed. (the_marshall_plan_-_the_extension_of_empire.pdf)** More on that later.* But This of course was intolerable to the Soviets – as the Americans, of course, knew it would be.* As we discussed with Benn Steil when he was on the show, it was planned from the beginning the the Soviets would have to turn down the American money, and insist that the countries in Eastern Europe that were in their sphere of influence would also turn it down.* As Bevin said to his private secretary, after Molotov stormed out of their last Foreign Ministers meeting in 1947: “This is the beginning of the Western bloc.”* The Marshall Plan, Molotov said, was “nothing but a vicious American scheme for using dollars to buy its way” into European affairs.* If the Soviets had just said “yes sure wonderful” and jumped both feet into the Marshall Plan, they probably could have killed it from the inside.* Which is what Ambassador Novikov had recommended.* But instead, Stalin refused to be part of it on principle.* Which turned out to have dramatic consequences for t

* 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.* Moreover, although the tone of the speech was mild and nonideological, its implications were anything but.* it was the most dedicated effort so far to reduce Communist influence in Europe and was intended to affect not only the most obvious countries like France and Italy, but also the smaller states under Soviet control.* This was certainly how George Kennan conceived of the Plan.* Although Kennan continued to believe that the basic cause of the crisis in Western Europe was not Communism as such but the need to restore the continent’s economic health, he was in no doubt that the Plan had a deeply subversive purpose.* Dean Acheson agreed, noting that what US “citizens and the representatives in congress alike always wanted to learn in the last analysis was how Marshall aid operated to block the extension of Soviet power and the acceptance of Commu nist economic and political organisation and alignment.* At a meeting on 28 May 1947, when U.S. Officials decided that the East European countries would be allowed to participate in the program, they stipulated that any countries taking part would have to reorient their economies away from the USSR toward broader European

* 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 market economy – they just wanted it to serve the State.* And the monarchies were all capitalist.* So after WWII, people are exploring new ideas, creating left parties, which were being supported by Moscow.* Because who else is going to support left-leaning parties?* These parties were in a good position to seize political power in places like Greece, Italy, and France, where they had huge political credibility as a result of their dominant role in resistance campaigns against fascism.* And those parties talked about the economic state of affairs in Europe, which was obviously atrocious.* In France, you could only buy meat on the black market, and bread was almost as hard to get.* And hard when you got it* In Britain, which suffered far less than most of Europe, the economy had hit rock bottom.* Even in the once-mighty British realm, two years after a war they had technically won, people lived on bare rations and in unheated homes, often without electricity.* The worst suffering by far, however, was taking place in Germany.* So it’s all well and good to contain the Soviets.* But what do you do if the people in Europe are starving and looking for new political leadership that only the Soviets can provide?* The argument from American strategists was that Am

* 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 decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery… James Burnham’s theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of “cold war” with its neighbours.* So thanks George.* Lippman wrote:* My objection to the policy of containment is not that it seeks to confront the Soviet power with American power, but that the policy is misconceived, and must result in a misuse of American power. It commits this country to a struggle which has for its objective nothing more substantial than the hope that in ten or fifteen years the Soviet power will, as the result of long frustration, “break up” or “mellow.”* He was concerned that Military entanglements in remote places might bankrupt the treasury and would in any event do little to enhance American security at home.* American society would become militarized in order to figh

* 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. to get tough with the Soviets.* The bill to commit American funds to Greece and Turkey passed the Senate easily, by 67 votes to 23.* HOWEVER* When countries give “aid” to other countries, there is ALWAYS – ALWAYS – a quid pro quo.* One quid pro quo here was hypothetical.* Don’t give the Soviets a chance to increase their influence in these two countries.* But according to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal – he was the first guy to ever hold that title by the way, Truman invented it – there was a direct link between foreign aid and the shortage in critical materials.* For Forrestal, aid to Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine was more than a simple effort to contain Communism; he labeled the doctrine “hard and selfish.”* What did he mean?* Well Seventy-three percent of America’s imports consisted of raw materials for the production of necessities for the United States, and 55 percent of these needed imports came from areas within the British Empire, mostly in Asia.* Forrestal put it this way: “These raw materials have to come over the seas and a good many have to go through the Mediterranean. That is one reason why the Mediterranean must remain a free highway.”* So the “aid” to Turkey a

* 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 piece of FDR’s plan* And something he had already agreed to in principle with the UK and USSR* I mean, the very first sentence of the Acheson – Lilienthal report says:* We were given as our starting point a political commitment already made by the United States to seek by all reasonable means to bring about international arrangements to prevent the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes and to promote the use of it for the benefit of society.* A political commitment made by the United States!* Which obviously didn’t mean much to Truman.* So instead he came up with something called the Baruch Plan.* Which was a sneaky way of painting the Soviets into a corner.* The day before the United States submitted the Acheson-Lilienthal report to the United Nations, Truman appointed Bernard Baruch as the American delegate to the UNAEC.* Baruch was a seriously rich stockbroker, known as the “Lone Wolf Of Wall Street” because he refused to join any financial house.* He was a Democrat who had been involved with Woodrow Wilson and FDR and had helped finance Truman’s own 1940 Senate race.* So Baruch delivered a speech to the commission in June of 46,

* 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 agreement, and Iran settled back into the Western camp.* At about the same time, the administration pushed through Congress a low-interest $3.75 billion loan to Britain.* A tough sell initially, it won approval in July, justified not only by new geopolitical imperatives but also by the claim that the United Kingdom would become a lucrative market for American goods and by Britain’s willingness to make its pound sterling convertible to American dollars .* In Germany, the U.S. tried to solidify their control over the political process in the regions they, and the other Western powers, controlled.* The extreme economic deprivation that the people there were suffering under made them targets for communism.* So the Americans, lead by General Lucius Clay, Cassius to his friends, supported anti-communist parties and tried to kick start the economy.* But France and the U.S.S.R. blocked those efforts, because they didn’t want a revival of German power.* So the U.S. needed to take it slowly.* They were also backing Chiang Kai-Sheks’ Kuomintang in China against the communist forces lead

* 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 World Bank.* Kennan wrote his long telegram to Secretary of State James Byrnes, outlining a new strategy for diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.* In his “Long Telegram”, Kennan explained that at the “bottom of the Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity”.* After the Russian Revolution, this sense of insecurity became mixed with communist ideology and “Oriental secretiveness and conspiracy”.* So The Soviet Union’s relations with the West were merely the latest rendition of the long Russian tradition of diplomatic cynicism and duplicity.* Russian statesmen regarded international cooperation as a ruse to lower the guard of the gullible.* Only fools kept their word on the international stage.* This had always been the attitude of Russian leaders, and such cynicism was only magnified and given ideological depth by the struggle between Soviet socialism and the imperialist West.* Nothing the United States might do would earn Moscow’s trust, so irreducibly hardened were these views.* according to Kennan, Stalin needed a hostile world in order to legitimize his autocratic rule.* Stalin thus used Ma

* 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 secretary of war, Henry Stimson, suddenly made an impassioned plea for international atomic control, spelling out to the president and the rest of the cabinet very clearly exactly what was required.* “I consider the problem of our satisfactory relations with Russia as not merely connected but as virtually dominated by the problem of the atomic bomb;” the veteran statesman said in a secret White House meeting.’* His logic was simple.* The United States and Great Britain had kept the building of the bomb a secret from their Soviet ally and had used it ruthlessly to end the war in Japan.* This collusion and secrecy with respect to a manifestly powerful weapon was so threatening to the Kremlin that it would take all steps necessary to build a comparable weapon for itself.* Once it did so, Stimson maintained, an arms race would ensue and the prospect of international cooperation would disappear. Hence the necessity of moving quickly to reach a deal with the Soviet Union that could lead to the establishment of a truly international agency in control of all atomic technologies.* Without such an agency, the two new powers would sooner or later commence an at

* 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 Leslie Groves, director of the atomic bomb project, invited a select group of thirty reporters to New Mexico.* Foremost among this group was William L. Laurence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The New York Times.* Groves took the reporters to the site of the first atomic test.* His intent was to demonstrate that no atomic radiation lingered at the site.* Groves trusted Laurence to convey the military’s line; the general was not disappointed.* Laurence’s front-page story, U.S. ATOM BOMB SITE BELIES TOKYO TALES: TESTS ON NEW MEXICO RANGE CONFIRM THAT BLAST, AND NOT RADIATION, TOOK TOLL, ran on September 12, 1945, following a three-day delay to clear military censors.* “This historic ground in New Mexico, scene of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to Japanese propaganda that radiations [sic] were responsible for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious maladies due to persistent radioactivity,” the a

* 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 hard it was to breathe the hot air. It was really hard to breathe. Maybe because the fire burned all the oxygen, I don’t know. I could not open my eyes enough because of the smoke, which was everywhere. Not only me but everyone felt the same. And my parts were covered with holes.* On August 6, 1945, Yoshito Matsushige was 32 years old, living at home in Midori-cho, Hiroshima.* His home was 1.7 miles away from ground zero, just outside of the 1.5 mile radius of the total destruction created by atomic blast effects.* Miraculously, Matsushige was not seriously injured by the explosion.* With one camera and two rolls of film with 24 possible exposures, he tried to photograph the immediate after effects of the bombing of Hiroshima.* During the next ten hours, Matsushige was only able to click the shutter seven times.* He said, “It was such a cruel sight that I couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter.”* In addition, he was afraid the burned and battered people would be enraged if someone took their pictures.* M