A COLD WAR

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 fu...

* 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 mo...

* 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 r...

* 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...

* 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. *...

* 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 declar...

* 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 o...

* 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...

* 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 co...

* 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 t...

* 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 scien...

* 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...

* Truman met often with Byrnes in the first few months of his Presidency. * But there are almost no records or notes of what they discussed. * And that was apparently Byrnes’ preference. * He was known as being paranoid about leaks. * a very devious politician * Truman referred to him as his “conniving” secretary of state * Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who liked Byrnes and found him personal...

* By June 18 events had progressed to the point where Admiral Leahy was able to note privately in his personal diary: * It is my opinion that at the present time a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s defense against any future trans-Pacific aggression. * This is two months before Hiroshima. * But...

* On 15 August 1945, about a week after the bombing of Nagasaki, Truman tasked the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey to conduct a study on the effectiveness of the aerial attacks on Japan, both conventional and atomic. * Did they have an effect on the Japanese surrender? * The Survey team included hundreds of American officers, civilians and enlisted men, based in Japan. * They interviewed 700 Jap mil...

Our guest today is Alex Wellerstein, a self-described "historian of science, secrecy, and nuclear weapons". He's a Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He blogs here and is on Twitter here. He is also the creator of the NUKEMAP. Alex joined us to talk about the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Did Truman know Hiroshima contained civilians? Did...

Kistiakowsky and his team armed the device shortly after 5am and retreated to the control bunker. Their final task was to switch on a string of lights on the ground that would serve as an ‘aiming point’. The air force wanted to know what the effect of the blast would be on a B-29 30,000 feet up and some miles away. In case of an accident, Groves left Oppenheimer in the control bunkers and joined B...

Back to Alamogordo. The army leased a ranch in the middle of the Jornada del Muerto site and converted it into a military police station and field laboratory. They thoroughly vacuumed it to make a makeshift clean room and sealed its windows with black electrical tape. Just like Ray’s infamous kill room. Nearly 2 miles to the northwest, they marked out the spot for Ground Zero. Three concrete-roofe...

Today we have a special guest - Jeff Hogue from the "History of the Cold War" podcast. We invited Jeff on to chat about his thoughts on the bombing of Japan. HOW TO LISTEN If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player. If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll like it before you sign up,...

On 6 June, Stimson again briefed Truman on S-1. * The briefing summarized the consensus of the Interim Committee, set up as an advisory group on atomic research. * It’s job was the advise on the proper use of atomic weapons in wartime and to develop a position for the United States on post-war atomic policy. * The committee comprised of Bush, Conant, Compton, the Under Secretary of the Navy, The A...

* Which brings us to April 1945. * Only weeks before Germany surrendered on May 7, FDR dies. * And Truman takes over as POTUS. * He knew nothing of the Manhattan Project or the atomic bomb. * He was briefed on it immediately by Sec of War Stimson. * By the time Truman took office, Japan was near defeat. * Keep in mind that the bomb was developed primarily to fight the Nazis. * But now that they ar...

Of course, while the bomb was being designed, they had to figure out how they were going to deliver it. And WHO was going to deliver it. Way back in March 1944, the US Army Air Force, with William Sterling "Deak” Parsons and his team at Los Alamos, developed two bomb models and began testing them with B-29 bombers. Thin Man, named for President Roosevelt, was the design carrying the plutonium gun,...

* President Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project to go full steam 26 days after Fermi’s success, on 28 December 1942 * The U.S. would end up spending $2 billion on it. (about $22 billion in 2018 dollars) * Do you know why it cost so much? * 130,000 people * When I thought of the Manhattan Project, I used to imagine it was a handful of guys sitting around a blackboard scribbling equations in...

Benn Steil is an American economist, author of a great new book on "The Marshall Plan", and senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. HOW TO LISTEN If you're already a subscriber, you can listen to the full show in the player below or subscribe through iTunes or any podcast player. If you haven't heard any of the series and want to know if you'll li...

* Fission involved breaking apart the nuclei of heavy elements like uranium or plutonium. * Fusion involves forcing the nuclei of lighter elements, like hydrogen or deuterium, together. * And deuterium, which is basically heavy hydrogen, is far easier to get your hands on than uranium. * But there’s still not a ton of it. * There is one D atom in 6420 of H. * D accounts for approximately 0.0156% o...