Cold War Cast

It’s been a while!  Today we’re back on track talking about the 1951 film The Steel Helmet, the story of an American army in disarray during the early years of the Korean War eventually finding its fighting spirit thanks to a grizzled “retread” from the Second World War.   This film turns out to be […]

On June 25 of 1950, the Korean War finally went hot.  North Korean troops made light work out of the ill-prepared South Koreans and captured Seoul by June 28.   Back in the US President Truman was whisked away from Missouri and back to Washington to sit down and make some tough decisions.  US forces, […]

In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin delivered a bombshell speech accusing the State Department of being riddled with communists.  While there was already a sense of paranoia of communist infiltration in the United States, McCarthy’s speech kicked off a period of intense fear of communist subversion known as the (second) Red Scare.  In this […]

On January 12, 1950 Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a speech that was widely perceived as a diplomatic blunder, giving acquiescence to the commies to invade South Korea without the US interfering.   In this episode we look at what the Truman administration was *actually* trying to do as well as the reactions to […]

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman sent out for an assessment of the world situation.  His National Security Council came back with the top secret NSC-68, an extremely important document  of the Cold War that prescribes messianic Americanism (backed with a lot of military might!) as the antidote to the Bolshevik plague looking to infect […]

Last week we talked about Kim Il Sung as a man, this week we’re talking about his political philosophy of Juche, which still more or less guides North Korea to this date.  I’ll discuss how Juche is a reaction to the (North) Korean experience of the 20th Century, compare/contrast it to traditional Marxism and then […]

Kim Il Sung is a Cold War curiosity, but his presence looms over North Korea today as something resembling the state religion of the DPRK.  In this episode we talk about Kim Il Sung as a man (and myth) and in the next episode we’ll look deeper into his political philosophy of juche, which guides […]

I figured this would be timely, given the summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump in a couple of days.  Today we’re talking about the split between North Korea and South Korea and how it’s a holdover relic from the Cold War.   I think it’s interesting to note that there was so much […]

Today we’re pivoting to Asia as we talk about China in the early Cold War.  This episode will cover a lot of ground and it’s going to seem like we’re not giving some significant events their just due, but we will cover the main ideas and give a good introduction to China in the Cold […]

Synchronicity, maybe?  We’re just about to hit Korea on our Cold War timeline and big things are potentially happening in the world.  In this episode I go “off the cuff” a little to give some of my thoughts and interpretation on the developing situation on the Korean peninsula such as Kim Jong Un’s mindset, Trump’s […]