Cold War thread

[not-bono-ever]

In the absence of an all encompassing CW thread, I thought I would start this un. post yer stuff about orthodox/ revisionist/ post revisionist perspectives. Still fascinates me, as i'm a CW kid and shit historian

Interesting podcast here about US nuclear policy during the CW ( and afterwards towards the end ) but mostly about the CW period.Its an hour long but you can have it on in the background

A History of Things That Didn't Happen - War on the Rocks

The history of nuclear weapons is, thankfully, largely a history of things that haven’t happened. Since 1945, nuclear weapons have dominated strategy and

warontherocks.com

 

[not-bono-ever]

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[Killuminator_88]

Fun fact in the midst of the cold war there was a shipping freight that just went missing out one day in the ocean and nobody seemed to care about it. Like one ship, just gone, no sources, no accusations, no outcries from family.

It was just gone

 

[Killuminator_88]

Fun fact in the midst of the cold war there was a shipping freight that just went missing out one day in the ocean and nobody seemed to care about it. Like one ship, just gone, no sources, no accusations, no outcries from family.

It was just gone

I tried doing research on this a few years back. I heard about it from a kid at school when I was younger but at the time I wasn't interested in random ships disappearing in the ocean. Anyways what I managed to dig up is Null. Zero records, zero evidence, zero reports. I eventually gave up on that lead for a few months. I didn't even have my friend's number from years back and there was no way I could find him now.

My little investigation was hopeless, and after finding out hundreds of ships go missing every year there was no way I could find 1 ship through all that, and without nothing but rumours to go on I gave up eventually. It just wasn't worth it if I wasn't even sure there was actually a ship.

 

[krtek a houby]

Fun fact in the midst of the cold war there was a shipping freight that just went missing out one day in the ocean and nobody seemed to care about it. Like one ship, just gone, no sources, no accusations, no outcries from family.

It was just gone

What's your avatar all about?

 

[Killuminator_88]

What's your avatar all about?

It's the symbol "8" repeated multiple times. There was a videogame called LISA : The Pointless which was a fan game, and basically that game had a faction of people with Red and Green jerseys with the number 88 on it called the Infinity Franchise. Their entire purpose was to start killing and move up in folds of 8

Just search up "LISA Infinity Franchise" and you'll see a bunch of results about it

 

[krtek a houby]

It's the symbol "8" repeated multiple times. There was a videogame called LISA : The Pointless which was a fan game, and basically that game had a faction of people with Red and Green jerseys with the number 88 on it called the Infinity Franchise. Their entire purpose was to start killing and move up in folds of 8

Just search up "LISA Infinity Franchise" and you'll see a bunch of results about it

What's your username all about?

 

[seventh bullet]

A potentially good thread with lots to explore. Weird start.

For a wee while I've been collecting examples of anti-Communist propaganda of the printed word designed for both popular consumption and pompous chin stroking. One person's dull is another's technicolour, however mapping it onto the developing political situations of the time (mid-twentieth century) it has been interesting and cringe. A lot of cringe, actually.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

When I was growing up the Cold War was in full swing. It was used to justify everything from NATO to nuclear weapons to involvement in Korea and Vietnam, to interventions in parts of the 3rd world, to support for right wing dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece etc etc. All because the Russians wanted to invade us and impose their version of communism on our free society.

Fast forward to 2021. Russia is still the bad guy, still expansionist, still causing trouble in parts of the world which we are involved in. But where did all the communism go to? What about the desire to impose a whole new way of life on western populations?

Is it possible that there was never any such plan for world domination?

 

[Carl Steele]

I don't know about world domination but the Soviet Union did manage to create some of the most boring societies in the history of the human race. Not long after the wall fell I took a very leisurely train trip through the DDR. East Berlin was a like never-ending UK 1960's council estate without the opportunity to buy drugs. Dresden was similar, although just beyond the five or six party (as in communist) hotels outside the railway station I found a pizzeria packed to the rafters with excited teenagers stuffing themselves with gooey slop in celebration of the impending return of capitalism.

That said, apparently there were psychological advantages to living in a society where your entire existence wasn't commodified.

 

[seventh bullet]

Was it just 'official' culture in the DDR (which was never taken that seriously by the masses even during the Stalin era further east in the USSR), or did people have more complex inner lives on the other side of the anti-fascist rampart?

 

[PTK]

Never mind the Cold War, what about the Cod War?

 

[seventh bullet]

Hidden Persuaders

www7.bbk.ac.uk

This project may be of interest, from Birkbeck, on the belief in so-called brainwashing in the Cold War era, which still lingers on in some respects to this day, and on here at times, when the occasional silly sausage assumes I'm a STALINIST.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Nuclear Fallout Shelters Were Never Going to Work | HISTORY

Leaking water drums. Missing supplies. Dubious locations. What could go wrong?

www.history.com

Little non taxing piece about the US shelter programme. basically, its was pointless.

as an aside, when living in NY during the last century, i did come across a virtually intact fallout shelter pack. the Morphine had been pilfered but the jar of 500 phenobarbs as mentioned in the article , was intact, how we laughed as we took handfuls , passed out for 24 hours and soiled ourselves. In hindsight, it as probably how things would have worked out in a shelter at the time

 

[VirulentNeoCon]

Anyone interested in this topic may also be inerested in a congruent one, here:A United Front for a Sane Foreign Policy? Can Left and Right co operate?

 

[Serge Forward]

Fuck off.

 

[Idris2002]

I'd always been vaguely aware of sabotage attacks in the DDR during the 1940s and 1950s. I hadn't realised they were this well organized:

Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The fact that the DDR regime had to build a big fucking wall to keep people in was an indictment of their system, alright. But how much did this sort of carry-on influence their decision? These KgU people sound like there was more than a trace of brown in their shirt colours. . . and their provocations would have had the same flavour. And a question not addressed in that wiki link is that of what role Langley or Foggy Bottom might have had in this one.

 

[Serge Forward]

To be fair, the DDR also had more than a trace of brown as it reintegrated a fair few Nazis, some in positions with a fair bit of clout.

Integration or Exclusion: former National Socialists in the GDR

Not only West Germany saw the social rehabilitation of former National Socialists after 1945, former NSDAP members were also integrated into the GDR society and into the echelons of its functional elites.

 

[likesfish]

The DDR regime nearly made communism work they were the only force that took the Cold war ground forces seriously they had tank regiments ready to go at a moments notice when Most of Nato and Russian forces were pissed. tbf their was a non zero chance they might head for Moscow instead of paris either for old times sake or misplaced zeal as Moscow wasn't communist enough

 

[Idris2002]

The DDR regime nearly made communism work they were the only force that took the Cold war ground forces seriously they had tank regiments ready to go at a moments notice when Most of Nato and Russian forces were pissed. tbf their was a non zero chance they might head for Moscow instead of paris either for old times sake or misplaced zeal as Moscow wasn't communist enough

Aye, a Russian contact of mine told me once that he visited the GDR in the early 80s and thought "these guys have made it work, why are they complaining?"

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Seems to me that the East German regime was initiated by violence, enforced by violence, sustained by violence, with little real homegrown support. When the Red Army started the ball rolling they indulged, even encouraged, the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of German women and girls. Nothing would go well after that. No chance of nearly making communism work. Hence the suppression of workers' protests, mass emigration to the West etc.

 

[Idris2002]

Seems to me that the East German regime was initiated by violence, enforced by violence, sustained by violence, with little real homegrown support. When the Red Army started the ball rolling they indulged, even encouraged, the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of German women and girls. Nothing would go well after that. No chance of nearly making communism work. Hence the suppression of workers' protests, mass emigration to the West etc.

I'm not disagreeing with that one bit. My Russian contact is no Ostalgic Joe fan. Nor are the Ossis I know. Even my central Asian friend is very ambivalent once you get her over her initial reaction (when I said I lived in St. Petersburg for a bit, she snapped at me "you mean Leningrad"). The KgU don't seem to have been a bunch of early Havels or Sakharovs, they look a lot more sinister to me.

And if they were being helped, or at least tolerated by those in the western zones of occupied Germany, then that can't have been a good thing. It looks like a deliberate attempt at stirring the pot.

 

[Serge Forward]

The DDR regime nearly made communism work

Depends on your definition of "communism". If its a free and equal society, democratically run by ordinary people, and based on the principle of "from each according to ability to each according to need" (communism), then it didn't even get off the starting blocks. In fact, that definition of communism was never the intention in the DDR or any of the other Eastern European and other state capitalist enterprises of the 20th century.

 

[seventh bullet]

It was the intention long term on a world scale, unfortunately. However, that they were never called or were believed to be communist societies by their governments is hardly controversial.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Hate to use tiktok but this channel does shorts on USSR propaganda etc. fodcses mostly on the Muslim aspect of the SU but some interesting stuff

theladyizdihar

 

[seventh bullet]

Hate to use tiktok but this channel does shorts on USSR propaganda etc. fodcses mostly on the Muslim aspect of the SU but some interesting stuff

theladyizdihar

She was a Great Patriotic War nerd as a kid. Her stuff is okay, but that's only because you can't fit much into videos only three minutes long. She's against the classism and academic gatekeeping that goes on with regard to educational resources, and encourages wide interest in the history of the old Communist-ruled world. The inside of my flat is slowly looking like hers, too.