The Game of Risk: Cold War Part 3

“Communism would subject an individual to arrest without lawful cause. Punishment without trial, and forced labor as a chattel of the state. It decides what information he shall receive, what he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think…The differences between Communism and Democracy do not concern America alone…We have sought no territory.” -Harry Truman, Inaugural Address.

New Lisbon, WI – The United States had vowed to fight Communism anywhere and everywhere it raised its head, be it at the state department, or in some Middle Eastern Country. Meanwhile the Russians tried to spread Communism to the world.

In 1947 and 48 Romania and then Czechoslovakia fell to Communism. The West would not watch the same thing happen in Korea. When in in 1950 the North Korean army swept across the 38^th parallel, capturing Seoul, the Southern capitol, within three days, the UN Security Council sanctioned UN forces advancing on the Koreans. They were quickly thrown back across the line again.

The game began to span the world. Before it was over it would spread from Latin America to the Orient. The doctrine was that it was better for Western troops to hold a piece of land then for it to be held by the Communists.

Meanwhile in Russia Stalin was growing old and restive. He accused nine doctors, five of them Jewish, of assassinating him. He began to fear doctors in general. And he began to grow sicker. His heavy smoking was taking a toll at last.

On March 1^st, 1953, Stalin arrived at his quarters after an all-night dinner and movie. With him were Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev. All of them would one day be the premier of Russia themselves.

Stalin did not get up at dawn. The guards however, were terrified of the consequences of waking him, and let him be. But, at 10 PM, Peter Lozgachev decided he needed to check the premier. He entered the room and found Stalin on his back, in pajamas, unconscious. He had been there all day. Peter immediately called the doctors, who took their time, and arrived the next morning.

Stalin died four days later.

In Russia, thousands filed past his mausoleum. For days afterwards, the street in front of where his body had lain in state was littered with trash and lady’s handbags, blown about by the wind.

The Russian radio had always before ignored bad news and only given good news, reporting state edited media. But now it was announced that Stalin was dead. The people were mortified, what would they do now they wondered. Their way of life was gone, their commander. The man who had led them to victory had died.

A new premier was chosen, Georgy Malenkov, one of the men who had come with Stalin that night from the theatre. It was early Spring, 1953, the Cold War was not over, it was only just beginning. And it was about to go out of this world.

 

Andrew C. Abbott

Fear: Cold War Part 2

New Lisbon, WI – Captain James Rice, Green Beret Special Forces, never made it into combat, he broke both his legs not too long after coming through Black Ops training. He described the training as “the hardest thing I ever did.”

Over a very American dinner of rolls, ham, and mashed potatoes, I asked him what the Cold War was like. “We just supposed the missiles were coming, of course it was going to happen. But we just learned to live with it, just like anything else, we were not afraid of it, we just accepted it after a time.”

But not everyone took it so easily as a boy who grew up on a military base.

America was afraid of the Reds. Truly frightened. Not only were they afraid of the bombs, but also of the spies.

Spy rings were discovered. Alger Hiss was charged with selling off state secrets. Joe McCarthy would make a list of Communists in America in places such as the State Department. But that would be later, at the beginning no one was quite sure what to do.

Communism was truly antithetical to everything the West had stood for. It had to be stopped.

On February 22, 1946, G. F. Kennan, US Ambassador to Moscow, was asked why the Russians were refusing the new ideas of America for world peace. He responded with what became known as the Long Telegram. He explained that Russia was not a member of the Western Club, they saw themselves in a perpetual war on capitalism, which they would fight with any means. In their mind, there was no possibility of long term peaceful coexistence with the West.

In 1947, a massive uprising took place in Greece by labor backed workers and Communist agitators. The Socialists there did not know the Soviets would not aid them. They had already said they were not interested in a Red Greece at the secret high level talks with the West. However, Britain asked the US for aid against the rising, not trusting Stalin's promises of no aid to the Communists there. President Truman asked Congress for funds, saying that they would have to fight Communism anywhere and everywhere it attempted to establish itself.

Russia, on the other hand, although they did not set up a Communist government in Greece, began to support Communist governments in Eastern Europe. The West realized that peaceful coexistence would not happen in the current state of affairs, and a world united under a Red flag was unacceptable. It would now be a race between Russia and the rest of the world to snatch up third world countries.

Meanwhile little children learned how to hide under desks away from H-bombs. No one told the children that it would never work, wood cannot stop hydrogen. The Russians were trying to hide behind iron and away from freedom, and Stalin had forgotten to tell them it also would not work.

Andrew C. Abbott

It Is Mutual: Cold War Part 1

“Oh East is East and West is West,

And never the Twain shall meet.”-Ballad of East and West.

 

New Lisbon, WI – March 8, 1862. The War Between the States was barely a year old, but already the Northern Blockade of Southern ports was working, and imports and exports were becoming much less frequent.

At Hampton Rhodes, the place where several rivers met, a group of blockade ships had been stationed, until the Confederate ship the Merrimac, an ironclad vessel that cannon balls could not penetrate appeared. Sinking two ships, evening brought an end to the battle which the North could not hope to win. In the morning Merrimac prepared to sink the rest of the fleet, as their guns were powerless against them, when the Monitor appeared, a Union Vessel also ironclad. The two ships fired at each other for hours, but to no avail, no shots pierced the armor. Mutually effective weapon systems had been achieved. To win, one side or the other would have to come up with some new sort of weapon.

In 1945, America dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. For the first time in history a weapon of the magnitude to kill millions of people at a blast had come to be. Not long afterwards the hydrogen bomb came into existence, making the A-Bomb look like a fire cracker, as the new bomb had 100 times the old one’s power.

America was the only nation with this weapon, Word War II had ended, and the world was deciding how to rebuild. There were multiple conferences, from Casablanca to Burr Oaks, in which Churchill and Roosevelt and later Truman tried to appease Stalin, saying that “If we treat Uncle Joe as a part of our club, he may someday act like a part of our club.”

However, the Russians were not a part of the Western “club,” their leadership was altogether different. They began to build a wall, an “Iron Curtain” across East Europe. However, they dared not provoke war, because if they did, they knew that Moscow could easily look like Nagasaki.

So talks continued, the Allies conducted an over 300 day airlift of food to Berlin, the leaders met at conferences, and the people of Russia continued to go hungry. But the honeymoon was over between the allies. It was an alliance forged quickly in war. Churchill had said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would have given the devil a favorable reference. Some thought he may have done just that when he joined forces with Stalin.

The modern ironclad sailed the air dropping bombs instead of cannon balls, raining death. It would have to be accepted.

On August 29, 1949, the Russians activated an operation codenamed First Lightning. They detonated their first atomic bomb that day. The honeymoon was not only over, so was the American superiority. The devil now had a bite.

 

Andrew C. Abbott

Muslims Today

Wisconsin Dells, WI – According to Wikipedia, 23% of the world population is Muslim, including a cousin of mine.

Recently while at a Library in Tennessee I met a women who is a Muslim, with all of the traditional clothing, who homeschools her children, her husband has a job, and they live quite normal lives here on the outside except for their clothing.

America was once a melting pot, but now it is a salad bowl. At once time in America it was illegal, basically, to be anything but a Protestant in many places. Now you can be an atheist, or a Mormon, or nearly anything as long as your understand the American contract.

The American Contract is that you have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to defend those rights, so long as you do not violate those of others. The freedom of speech includes the right to be offended. While we may not like something someone else is doing, they may equally not like what we are doing; power can never be used to remove our own right to be offended.

If someone wishes to be a Muslim, and to celebrate the month of Ramadan, which is going on right now, you have the right to do so. The American Contract protects that right. A religion that encompasses nearly a quarter of the world’s population will be as varied as the many different groups calling themselves Christian. Because one member in one place does something should not be seen as a reflection of the entire group. Sometimes they disagree with each other so much that they come to blows, as in Syria’s current Civil War.

The right to speak your mind bears with it the right to be contradicted.

 

Andrew C. Abbott