Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

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...

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. &#...

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 do...

  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’l...

  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...

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 SOCIALI...

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.   [et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_post_nav]

  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...

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,...

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 h...

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 Hor...