Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

During the rest of Day Two of Yalta they discuss how much Germany should pay in reparations and how many Germans should go to Russia as slave labour. On Day Three, the talk turns to FDR’s passion project – The United Nations. We go into some detail about the early vision for the UN, the men behind it, the concerns the Big Three had about how it would impact on their own plans for global and regional dominance – and the use of the Security Council veto.

As the Yalta conference now turns to whether or not France should have a role in the occupation of Germany, the Allied Control Commission and the UN Security Council, we thought it was a good time to do a quick bio on France’s post-WWII leader, Charles de Gaulle, aka “The Big Asparagus Stalk”, aka “Chucky D”.

On day two of the Yalta Conference Franky wanted to discuss the role of France in the German occupation. Joey hijacked the agenda to demand agreement on dismemberment. And Winny just sucked his thumb because no-one cared what he thought about anything. PS ignore the episode number I think it is when we recorded the show. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Part four (!!!) of our “quick” biography on Fidel Castro, using the New York Times’ obituary, breaking it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we’re making these Castro episodes free to guests.This is absolutely the last part, we promise!

Part three (!!!) of our “quick” biography on Fidel Castro, using the New York Times’ obituary, breaking it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we’re making these Castro episodes free to guests. And yes – there is a part four! But it’s the last part, we promise!

Part two of our “quick” biography on Fidel Castro, using the New York Times’ obituary, breaking it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we’re making these Castro episodes free to guests.

With the recent death of Fidel Castro, we decided to take a quick detour from our linear narrative to jump ahead in time and talk about one of the major figures, not only of the Cold War, but of the 20th century. A hero to many, reviled by just as many, his death brought on a new spate of Western media coverage. After reading much of it, we just had to provide our own perspective. We decided to tackle the subject by taking one of the major media obituaries, by the New York Times, and break it down, line by line, to uncover the propaganda. And we’re making this episode free to guests.  

Like he had before Tehran, FDR refused the idea of an Anglo-American bloc when he and Churchill met briefly in Malta before the conference.He’s trying hard to avoid putting Stalin on the defensive.Because he knows that in the game of wartime diplomacy, the player with the most troops on the ground had the loudest voice.

We FINALLY start talking about day one of the Yalta conference, explaining the key cast of characters – and a lemon tree.

Today we have another special guest – Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of History in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Prof Fredrik Logevall. He’s also the co-author of America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (co-authored with Campbell Craig, who we had on in episode 20).

  This is the third and final of our episodes about the Cambridge Five! This week – Donald Maclean. After being recruited at Cambridge, he started working for the Foreign Office assigned to the division that looked after the League of Nations. Over the next few years, 45 boxes of documents were photographed and sent to Moscow. He rose to become the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington and Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee on atomic energy matters, where he was Moscow’s main source of information about US/UK/Canada atomic energy policy development. After returning to London, he became the head of the American Department in the Foreign Office.    

  This is the second of our episodes about the Cambridge Five! This week – Guy Burgess. Where the others were highly self-controlled and shunned public scrutiny, he was wildly flamboyant, openly homosexual and often embroiled in scandal because of his drunken behaviour. He had the ability to charm anyone he sought out, including Churchill, and attracted an astonishing array of contacts, as well as lovers, as he flitted between MI5, MI6, the BBC and the FO. At one point he was simultaneously running agents for both British and Soviet intelligence. Between 1941 and 1945 he passed more than 4,600 documents to Moscow.  

This is the first of two episodes about the Cambridge Five! This week – Kim Philby, arguably the most effective spy in the history of spying. The man running British operations against the Russians in the early years of the Cold War was actually working for the Russians himself. And there was every possibility that had it not been for one mistake, Philby would have gone on to become CSS, Chief of the British Secret Service. That mistake – sharing a flat with Guy Burgess – the subject of next week’s show. If you want to know more about Philby’s amazing life, read his autobiography, MY SILENT WAR.  

By the time the Big Three finally met again after Tehran, it was February 1945, the US had re-taken the Phillipines. But the they were still a long way from Japan. And in Europe, they were all facing fierce crystal-meth fuelled German resistance. Plus we have Pomeranian dogs, golden fleece, a Greek revolutionary, a Jew who is burned at the stake, and the introduction to the Cambridge Five!  

Today we go back to 1898 and discuss The Philippine–American War, sometimes referred to as “The First Vietnam”. Trust us – it’s relevant to our story. Why did the United States invade the Philippines in 1898? And why did 200,000 Filipinos have to die as a result? And why did the US occupy it for the next 50 years? Listen and find out.

  Professor Campbell Craig is the Professor of International Relations at Cardiff University. He has held senior fellowships at Yale University, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the European University Institute, and, most recently, at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol, and has given invited lectures at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Chicago, Columbia, Cambridge, Sciences-Po, the Free University of Berlin, the London School of Economics, University of Copenhagen, and other universities. His most recent books are The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (with Sergey Radchenko), and America’s Cold War: the Politics of Insecurity (with Fredrik Logevall).    

A month after the opening of the second front, the Roosevelt administration organized a conference on postwar economic planning in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at which American officials set up institutions designed to open up free trade around the world and to promote industrial development in former European colonies.It was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.It’s known as the Bretton Woods Conference.And it was a major turning point in the global economy.

Roosevelt and Churchill had their first war summit meeting in Casablanca in January 1943.The first Big Three conference was held in Tehran, Iran in November 1943. It turned out to be the most important summit of the war. In four days of meetings, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin debated the second-front question and hashed out the basic outline of a postwar European order.      

  We start in August 1942. Churchill is still in Moscow, getting down with Uncle Joe. Stalin accuses the British of being a bunch of pussies, too scared to fight the big bad Nazis.To try to break up the UK/USA/USSR love nest, the Nazis dig up 3000 dead bodies of Polish generals (Katyn massacre) and lay the blame on the Soviets who deny it (but their fingers are crossed behind their backs). And Stalin dissolves the Comintern, pretending, for the moment, that he has no intention of trying to spread Communism any further around the globe.    

  Our guest today is Dr Peter Ellyard, a futurist, strategist, speaker and author living in Melbourne, Australia. He is known for his unique perspectives on global trends and emerging global markets. He talks to us about the role that “planetism” and the rising global middle class has on the future of the species and preventing future global wars. You can read more about Peter here or order his books here.    

  In June 1941, the UK, USA and USSR slowly started to come together to defeat Germany and Japan. The Grand Alliance is often called the “Strange Alliance” because it united the world’s greatest capitalist state, the greatest communist state and the greatest colonial power.  

In this episode we talk about the non-aggression pact signed between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939, known as the Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact, and then how Hitler decided to terminate it in 1941 when he launched a surprise invasion on the USSR, known as “Operation Barbarossa”. We also talk a little of the history of Poland, The Munich Agreement, and Stalin’s fondness for a good tune.  

Today’s episode starts off with part 4 of our series on economics, where we look at the role of the media, and then launches into Stalin’s “Great Terror”. And we finish answering a question from a listener about Brexit.  

Our first guest on the Cold War series is Doug La Follette, Secretary of State of Wisconsin! Here’s some background. – Doug is the Secretary of State of Wisconsin a position to which he was first elected in 1974!– And he’s been the SoS pretty much ever since then, with a short break for a few years in the late 70s.– Doug’s a member of the La Follette political dynasty.– He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marietta College, a Master of Science in chemistry from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University.– Doug was known as an environmentalist before running for public office, and was an organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970.– He is the author of the book The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth.– He has also served on the board of directors of Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Sierra Club.– And he was a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar in 2003.– And finally – he’s a very old friend of Sir J. David Markham. HOW TO LISTEN If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Part 3 of our three-part series on economics and war, where we drill down into the various ways companies profiteer from war and how it stimulates the economy via “Military Keynesianism”. To summarise the last three episodes, here are some of the main ways war is good for business:1. It’s good for companies selling weapons, both to their own country and to other countries, funded by tax dollars.2. It’s good for companies selling other goods required during and after a war, including everything from food and clothing to reconstruction efforts – also funded by tax dollars.3. It’s good for companies who want to gain access to undeveloped markets with new sources of natural resources and cheap labour.4. It’s good for companies who want to lock up control of export markets that they can sell their goods and services to.5. It’s good for companies who use war to get primary technological research done (and paid for by the taxpayers) that then makes its way into the hands of corporations.  

  Part 2 of our three-part series on economics and war. Still talking about trade and access to foreign markets. We look at the CIA’s overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the Marshall Plan and the Open Door policy.  

This is going to be the first in a series of episodes where we talk about economics and war. I know – economics is a scary boring subject, but it’s really just the study of how people make and spend money. In this episode we’re going to argue that economics (money) was a significant factor in the genesis of the Cold War (and pretty much every other war in history too). We’ll talk about imperialism, gunboat diplomacy, big stick diplomacy, dollar diplomacy, propaganda, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, economic hit men, and the Monroe Doctrine. As Major General Smedley Butler wrote: “War is a racket”.

  Okay so we’re still talking about IDEOLOGY. On our last episode we didn’t get time to get into talking about CAPITALISM, so that’s what we’re doing on this episode. We talk a little about the history of capitalism, try to define it, and discuss how the United Kingdom’s imperialist control over 25% of the world’s economy wasn’t something that FDR was willing to tolerate. If the UK wanted US support in WWII, they were going to have to bend over and take it up the English Channel.  

Welcome Premium Subscribers! Thanks for your love and support and the occasional reach-around. We want to tickle you in all the right places. On this episode, our first premium episode, we continue talking about IDEOLOGY. SOCIALISM v CAPITALISM. TWO IDEOLOGIES ENTER, ONE IDEOLOGY LEAVES. Or something like that. What are they? How are they different? This episode is a very quick overview of SOCIALISM. If you want to know more, we suggest you read a fucking book.

This is part one of a few episodes that will explain the military, ideological and economic conflicts and tensions between the US, UK and USSR before the Cold War. In this episode, we look at the “Polar Bear Expedition” and the first “Red Scare” in the US.

Part Two of our mini-biography of FDR.   ← #4 - FDR Part One #6 - The First Red Scare →

Part One of our mini-biography of everyone’s favorite wheelchair pilot, FDR. His family background (opium traders), his rise, his polio, his affairs, his reforms, his ballsy attitude, his assassination attempt, his concentration camps and how incredibly fucked America was when he was sworn in. In 1933, the US was in dire straits. Three years into the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and a third-rate military. When he died in 1945, it was the world’s leading economic and military superpower.

Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili aka STALIN. Unlike Churchill and Roosevelt, Joseph wasn’t born into the elite classes of society. His father was a cobbler; his mother, a housemaid. As a young man, he trained to become a priest, but it didn’t take. Soon afterwards he discovered the writings of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, alias Lenin, and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, ending up the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. ← #2 - Enter Churchill #4 - FDR Part One →

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a fascinating character. His reputation as a “great man”, as the brave British wartime leader who defeated the Nazis, hides his reputation before and after WWII – a racist who enjoyed participating in “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples” and who even his peers thought had extremely racist views. We’re not here to demonise Churchill, but, on the other hand, it’s our job to peel away the layers of mythology to find the real man who popularised the term “the Iron Curtain”. If you like our intro music, it’s by the very great Jofre Horta Antoniou!

Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon military analyst who in 1971 released to the media what became known as “the Pentagon Papers”, says that “The understanding of the Cold War that 99 out of 100 Americans hold right now … is a fairy tale.” We agree – and we’re here to try to crush that fairytale.   If you like our intro music, it’s by the very great Jofre Horta Antoniou! #2 - Enter Churchill →