A COLD WAR

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

If there's one thing the CIA loved in its early days, it was hiring Nazis - like General Reinhard Gehlen who ran their West German spying operation and ended up running West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

On September 1, 1948, Frank Wisner took charge of the CIA’s covert operations. Known as the OPC - The Office of Policy Co-ordination. Although the CIA was a publicly known entity, the OPC was top secret. One of the first things he did was establish a multinational media conglomerate for spreading anti-Communist and pro-American propaganda. He spent millions trying to tip the political scales aroun...

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

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

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

If you're looking for our more recent episodes, you'll need to sign up to be a Cold War subscriber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Truman's decision to shut down the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan’s deputy, Brigadier General John Magruder, met secretly with John McCloy, the assistant secretary of war, taking advantage of the fact that Henry Stimson, secretary of war and a huge opponent of the idea of an "American Gestapo", had just retired. Together they decided to countermand Truman and keep the OSS together. After Truman even...

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

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

Tito has his own Central Committee member Žujović arrested for treason, which leads the Cominform to expel Yugoslavia. This creates a rift between the pro=Soviet Yugoslav Communists and the pro-Tito Communists, and Tito sends thousands of “Cominformists” to slave in the camp on Goli Otok. To show that he could out-Stalin Stalin, he announced there would be ‘greater boldness and a faster pace in se...

Tensions between Yugoslavia and the USSR continue to increase in the late 40s, eventually erupting when the Soviets declared the Yugoslav Communist Party was undemocratic and neither Marxist-Leninist nor Bolshevik. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Obrad. He grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia and joined the Yugoslav Armed Forces in the late 1970s. Today he lives in Canberra, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

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

Tito’s relationships with both Stalin and Churchill suffer as a result of the fight over control of Trieste, the behaviour of Soviet soldiers in Yugoslavia, and Tito’s manipulation of the first free elections in Yugoslavia in 1945. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The near catastrophe of the Seventh Offensive led to recriminations between the British and Tito but it showed the Germans regarded Tito as a serious foe. Himmler said in a speech later in 1944: ‘He is our enemy, but I wish we had a dozen Titos in Germany, men who were leaders and had such great resolution and good nerves that though they were constantly encircled they would never give in.’ Meanwh...

At the second session of AVNOJ, 29 November 1943, the delegates became a legislative assembly under the Presidency of Tito, who was proclaimed Marshal. But this momentous occasion was followed with tragedy. During the winter of 1943–4 the Germans carried out ‘Operation Kugelblitz’ (‘Thunderbolt’), which the Partisans called the Sixth Offensive. In January 1944 Fitzroy Maclean came back to Bosnia w...

Churchill sends Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, one of the founders of the SAS, to Tito as his official representative. Churchilll’s decision to support Tito and Partisans - ie communists - over the Chetnik royalists has been the subject of much debate and anger for decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In November 1942 Tito set up his first form of Communist government, the Anti-Fascist Council for Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). Hitler asks Mussolini to send all of the Croatian Jews to German camps - Mussolini agrees, but his troops, lead by General Mario Roatta, refused to obey. Hitler's next attack on the Partisans, 'Operation Weiss’, began on 20 January 1943, with 90,000 Germans, Italians and Croats ver...

Tito barely gets out of Užice alive before the Germans arrive. Then he gets betrayed by Stalin, narrowly escapes capture again, tries to resign as party secretary, and finally sets up his new HQ at the Bosnian town of Bihać. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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