#cold war history

[foone]

Re: the Fagot anti-tank rocket, it reminds me of my favorite story of Soviet weapon design.

So, the Nazis were working in infrared homing missiles during WW2 but never completed any by the time the war ended (though they got close).

The Americans collected a lot of information on these systems, through spies and Operation Paperclip, and started work on their own guided air-to-air missile: the AIM-9 Sidewinder.

They worked on it from 1946 to 1955, when it was operationally complete and authorized for mass production.

The first time they got used was the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, in 1958. The Taiwanese air force was flying American F-86 Sabres, vs China's MiG-17s. The MiG-17 outclassed the F-86s, flying over them so high the Sabres couldn't hope to hit them, and then they could swoop down and attack when they had the advantage.

So the US decided to help out: they secretly helped Taiwan modify their F-86s with the new heat seeking missile, and provided something like a dozen of the missiles to use again the MiG-17s.

On the 24th of September, the F-86s engaged the MiG-17s with the new missiles, surprising them with the ability to attack when the MiG-17s were supposedly outside the operational range of the F-86s, shooting some planes down. This was the first use of guided air to air missiles in combat.

Four days later, there was another skirmish, and an F-86 shot an AIM-9 Sidewinder into a MiG-17... And it didn't explode.

The MiG-17 made it back to base, with the groundbreaking new missile type never before seen in the history of warfare, and it was mostly intact. The Soviets convinced the Chinese to send them the missile, and within two years they had developed the Vympel K-13: a clone of the AIM-9 Sidewinder.

The US took the best of Nazi scientists weapon development, then spent over a decade developing a never before seen super-weapon that would change air combat forever... And one of the first DOZEN fired ended up embedded in plane, unexplored, and then delivered to their greatest enemy.

They might as well just have mailed the schematics to the Kremlin. And I think that's hilarious.

#Cold war history #Cold war

[samedmunds]

East German Hijinks

I've been taking a look at the Cold War Museum in Virginia's digital archive of photos, interviews, and declassified documents from members of the US Military Liaison Mission in East Germany. It's a really weird bit of espionage history where basically each occupying power in Germany granted each other the ability to have stationed a handful of military personnel separate of any embassy or consulate who could just sorta... go places. They called it touring. These guys are sort of diplomatically immune and can go most places in the country outside of certain restricted zones (which the Americans immediately ignored).

Looking at the loosely organized photo gallery from servicemen who were stationed there from the 60s to the late 80s, there were a few commonalities that really stood out, in between family photos, state dinners, and visiting dignitaries. But every. single. person. had at least one photo of their service vehicle (usually a Jeep or a Ford muscle car) in a Situation.

That second to last one there is left for the caption.

They did a lot of off-roading so they could get covert photos of field activities, convoys, rail resupply, and field exercises. I'm particularly fond of The Device here

But there's also a lot of the human element in there (lots of irritated Kommandatura)

and my personal favorites:

And this last one just has incredible vibes:

#history #cold war #cold war history #military #espionage #photography #film photography

[racefortheironthrone]

In Egypt, there is a 190 mi depression called the Qattara Depression. For decades, there has been talk of filling the depression with water to create an inland sea. Because the depression is in the desert, the constant evaporation would mean water would continually flow in (meaning hydroelectric turbines would continually move). Also, the constant evaporation could result in greater rainfall to the area which in turn would support vegetation. There has been talk about creating a channel linking the depression to the Mediterranean to allow saltwater to flow in, but there are those who think the constant evaporation would make the lake saline. So, I wondered if they could use freshwater from the Nile instead? What if they diverted water from the Nile right before it flowed into the Mediterranean and redirected it towards the depression (I think you mentioned redirecting Dorne's rivers in you economic development post)? Would they just need a canal/channel to do this, or would they need to dam the end of the river?

I think this project is the definition of "cool but impractical."

Look on the map below at the proposed routes to the Mediterranean, which have all been rejected for being too expensive (hence why the U.S proposed it as a showcase for the truly insane "Project Plowshare" (see above) as a means of reducing construction costs) and how much longer a canal linking the Qattara Depression to the Nile would be in comparison.

Next, look at the legend of the map that shows that the most logical paths for a canal to take would go through active oilfields and minefields left over from the Battle of El Alamein. I don't want to think about the engineering difficulties inherent in safely digging a canal through that terrain.

This is why, at the end of the day, the Egyptians went with the Aswan Dam project instead - which was itself an incredibly difficult public works effort in terms of the complexities of engineering and the competing tensions between economic development, environmental impact, social dislocation, cultural preservation, etc.

#public works #canals #gamal abdel nasser #project plowshare #atoms for peace #history #cold war history #egypt #economic development #well theres your problem podcast

[deadpresidents]

Russian archival records obtained for this book show that [Joseph] Stalin colluded with his favorited U.S. candidate in 1948, Henry Wallace, [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s Soviet-friendly wartime Vice President.

The nature of Wallace’s relationship with the Kremlin has long been a subject of speculation. Soviet intelligence is known to have unimaginatively code-named the Vice President CAPTAIN’S DEPUTY during the war. But no evidence has ever emerged that Wallace was recruited as a Soviet agent. He was, however, we can now discern, a Soviet tool. He sincerely believed that “peaceful coexistence” between the Soviet Union and the United States not only could be achieved, but was essential for world peace. All the while, he looked away from (and naively followed Soviet propaganda denying) the existence of Stalin’s mass forced labor and terror programs. According to [President Harry S.] Truman’s counsel Clark Clifford: “It was never clear to me how aware he [Wallace] was of the uses to which the Communist Party was putting him, but whether he knew it or not, he was following the communist line, serving communist ends, and betraying those Americans who supported him as a serious alternative to the two main candidates [in 1948].” Wallace’s naivete about Soviet communism turned him into an asset for Stalin, if not a recruited Soviet agent.

Wallace decided to run in the 1948 U.S. election as the Progressive Party nominee. In April and May that year, he secretly liaised with Stalin about public policies that would be advantageous for the Soviet Union, coordinating his public statements with the dictator. Wallace secretly met with the youthful Soviet ambassador to the UN in New York, Andrei Gromyko, who dispatched the candidate’s messages to the Soviet foreign minister, [Vyacheslav] Molotov, and to Stalin himself. In his memoirs, Gromyko admitted to meeting Wallace, but downplayed the meeting’s significance, suggesting that after talking with him he considered that Wallace had lost contact with the pulse of American life. Archival documents in Moscow reveal that in fact Stalin took Wallace’s position and candidacy seriously, approving his public positions, and answering questions that the former Vice President put to him, which Stalin annotated in his distinctive pencil. Their alignment produced a published open letter from Wallace to Stalin, vetted by the Soviet leader in advance, to which Stalin then publicly replied, all as agreed between the two men.

Wallace’s Presidential election bid in November 1948 dismally failed; he ended up getting barely 2 percent of the vote, while Truman, to his and the nation’s surprise, won a second term. He defeated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in one of the greatest upsets in U.S. Presidential history. Ironically, the staff of Wallace’s failed 1948 campaign included none other than the Soviet atom spy Ted Hall. Following his unsuccessful White House run, Wallace had a crisis of faith in his pro-Stalinism. This may have been caused by his realization that Stalin had used and discarded him after the election. Stalin had gotten what he wanted from Wallace. In 1952, Wallace published an article, “Where I Was Wrong,” describing “Russian Communism” as “utterly evil.” The Kremlin and its intelligence services nevertheless learned an important strategic lesson for later in the Cold War: that it could use the freedoms inherent within American electoral campaigns to influence candidates favorable to the Soviet Union.

-- From Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West by Calder Walton, Simon & Schuster, 2023 (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

#History #Henry A. Wallace #Vice President Wallace #Soviet Union #Cold War #Cold War History #Joseph Stalin #Stalin #Stalinism #Communism #Soviet History #Espionage #1948 Election #Harry S. Truman #President Truman #Thomas E. Dewey #FDR #Franklin D. Roosevelt #President Roosevelt #Roosevelt Administration #Politics #Political History #Russia #Russian History #Soviet Communism #Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West #Spies #Calder Walton #Simon and Schuster #Simon & Schuster

[tomorrowusa]

Vivek Ramaswamy and other Republicans are trying to rehabilitate the memory of Richard Nixon. I will concede that Nixon is at least a step up from Donald Trump; Nixon wrote his own books and probably even read them.

In the current GOP, Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford are nonpersons; the integrity and honesty of Ike and Jerry are too high a standard for today's cesspool-dwelling Republicans.

Current Republicans are Reaganites In Name Only. If he somehow returned, Uncle Ronnie would castigate the Kremlin-friendly Trumpsters who play footsie with the Evil Empire which is now led by a onetime KGB (secret police) colonel.

The Bush clan has never been on great terms with the Trump crew. Jeb's kid, George P. Bush, had tried to save his own political skin by pandering to MAGA – but to no avail.

So Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon enters into the revisionist GOP pantheon.

In late August, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy took a break from his typical campaign events to make a pit stop at an unusual venue for mainstream Republicans: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Speaking before a packed house, Ramaswamy was slated to deliver a speech on foreign policy. But his opening remarks served the more provocative purpose of challenging Nixon’s much-maligned status in the annals of conservative history. “He is by and away the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country — probably in all of American history,” said Ramaswamy, without a hint of irony. Ramaswamy’s homage to America’s most disgraced ex-president perplexed some liberal commentators, for whom Nixon remains the ultimate symbol of conservative criminality. But Ramaswamy is far from alone in rethinking Nixon’s divisive legacy. Among a small but influential group of young conservative activists and intellectuals, “Tricky Dick” is making a quiet — but notable — comeback. Long condemned by both Democrats and Republicans as the “ crook” that he infamously swore not to be, Nixon is reemerging in some conservative circles as a paragon of populist power, a noble warrior who was unjustly consigned to the black list of American history. Across the right-of-center media sphere, examples of Nixonmania abound. Online, popular conservative activists are studying the history of Nixon’s presidency as a “ blueprint for counter-revolution” in the 21st century. In the pages of small conservative magazines, readers can meet the “ New Nixonians” who are studying up on Nixon’s foreign policy prowess. On TikTok, users can scroll through meme-ified homages to Nixon. And in the weirdest (and most irony laden) corners of the internet, Nixon stans are even swooning over the former president’s swarthy good looks.

I can understand them loving Nixon for his attempts to improve ties with Putin's old Soviet Union. But Nixon as a sex symbol requires a strong imagination. He's hot only when compared to Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani.

“No man is perfect — Richard Nixon definitely wasn’t — but one element of his legacy that I respect is reviving realism in our foreign policy,” said Ramaswamy in an interview from the campaign trail, pointing specifically to Nixon’s successful efforts to reestablish diplomatic relations with China during the 1970s. “Pulling Mao out of the hands of the USSR was one of the great victories that allowed us to come to the end of the Cold War … and it took an independent thinker like Nixon to lead us out of that.”

What Ramaswamy ignores is that Nixon escalated the Vietnam War after promising "peace with honor" in his 1968 campaign. After Nixon invaded Cambodia in 1970, large protests broke out across the US which led to the killings of unarmed students by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State University in Mississippi.

And Nixon certainly did not pull "Mao out of the hands of the USSR" the way Vivek claimed. The China-Soviet split pre-dates the Nixon administration by over a decade. The USSR and China even fought a small border war against each other in 1969.

Ramaswamy has a pitiful understanding of the world. Like Elon Musk, most of his knowledge of geopolitical history seems to come from memes and dubious social media posts. Tech billionaires are among the most ignorant people on the planet outside of their narrow fields.

#richard nixon #vivek ramaswamy #republicans #republicans think nixon is hot #springtime for nixon #the vietnam war #china #geopolitics #cold war history #tech billionaires #election 2024

[just-history-things]

#cold war #history #cold war history #20th century #poll

[newhistorybooks]

“With engaging prose and fine-grained archival research, Wells compels us to rethink how Latin Americans—from poets and booksellers to revolutionaries and reformers—experienced and understood the Cold War. By framing the era as one marked by struggles between democracy and dictators rather than between capitalism and communism, Wells analyzes the Cold War in Latin America in new and original ways.”

#uwlibraries #history books #latin american history #political history #cold war history

[badoccultadvice]

The Library of a Nuclear Physicist | Part 1 - Meet Jerry

Bonus: my cat is watching you.

A couple of years ago I lucked into a collection of books, scientific papers and journals, and college notebooks all belonging to the same nuclear engineer, Jerry Silverman. Ever since, I've wanted to share it with the world to help expand the understanding of nuclear science and nuclear and cold war history. This is the first video in a series touring the collection.

#nuclear science #nuclear physics #physics #nuclear engineering #cold war history #science and technology #Youtube

[in-sufficientdata]

Well, it's like their visionary Ronald Reagan said: "Mr. Gorbachev, there's nothing wrong with this wall!"

#mine #FrankThorp@twitter #twitter #political #politics #us politics #ronald reagan #border wall #history #cold war history #reposting everything from my twitter feed #i'm about to delete everything so get it while it's hot #tweet: 2019

[skyfire85]

Me, on my way to an environmental conference.

#aircraft #aviation #avgeek #airplanes #airplane #cold war #cold war history #coldwar #aviation history

[way-too-addicted-to-fandoms]

I love being a history major. Because then you get to learn all about why we (specifically Americans) do some of the ridiculous things we do today. Like nuclear bomb drills. There's no real reason why we need to do these, because if a bomb lands close enough, you're just disintegrated. But they started doing them in the 70s to keep people from panicking and to give them something to do to make them feel like they could survive it.

#in reality there's no real effective way to survive it unless you somehow have a perfectly safe bomb shelter #history #cold war #nuclear war #nuclear drills #american history #cold war history #war history #nuclear bombs

[itsblosseybitch]

Updated my Mandy Rice-Davies banner!

#my edit #mandy rice davies #itsblosseybitch #profumo affair #christine keeler #stephen ward #john profumo #swinging sixties #cold war history #british history

[bookloversofbath]

Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy: Essays in Honour of John Erickson :: Edited by Ljubica Erickson & Mark Erickson

View On WordPress

#0-2978-4913-1 #barbarossa #battle stalingrad #books edited by ljubica erickson & mark erickson #cold war history #first edition books #historic russia #history red army #history russia #history soviet security #history soviet union #history wars #military history #russian history #soviet military history #soviet women tractor driving #ss 20 missile #travniki guards

[master-of-the-opera-house]

Genuinely refuse to believe this hasn't been done before

#soviet history #live slug reaction #Leonid Brezhnev #erich honecker #History shitposting #Ussr #Cold war history #My God help me to survive this deadly love #Berlin wall #history #ik this meme is deader than brezhnev was when he was in power #but. if the shoe fits

[deadpresidents]

Was Henry A. Wallace a spy or just a Soviet tool?

I think Wallace was just deeply idealistic and probably a true Socialist at a time when Americans could not differentiate between Socialism and "evil" Soviet Communism (well...Americans still can't do that), and that his idealism allowed the Soviets to use him to their advantage. But I definitely don't believe he was a spy or even a conscious Soviet asset.

Calder Walton wrote a book last year called Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) that was published my Simon & Schuster and I actually posted this excerpt a few months ago about Wallace and the Soviets during the Cold War that might answer your question a bit better:

Russian archival records obtained for this book show that [Joseph] Stalin colluded with his favorited U.S. candidate in 1948, Henry Wallace, [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s Soviet-friendly wartime Vice President. The nature of Wallace’s relationship with the Kremlin has long been a subject of speculation. Soviet intelligence is known to have unimaginatively code-named the Vice President CAPTAIN’S DEPUTY during the war. But no evidence has ever emerged that Wallace was recruited as a Soviet agent. He was, however, we can now discern, a Soviet tool. He sincerely believed that “peaceful coexistence” between the Soviet Union and the United States not only could be achieved, but was essential for world peace. All the while, he looked away from (and naively followed Soviet propaganda denying) the existence of Stalin’s mass forced labor and terror programs. According to [President Harry S.] Truman’s counsel Clark Clifford: “It was never clear to me how aware he [Wallace] was of the uses to which the Communist Party was putting him, but whether he knew it or not, he was following the communist line, serving communist ends, and betraying those Americans who supported him as a serious alternative to the two main candidates [in 1948].” Wallace’s naivete about Soviet communism turned him into an asset for Stalin, if not a recruited Soviet agent. Wallace decided to run in the 1948 U.S. election as the Progressive Party nominee. In April and May that year, he secretly liaised with Stalin about public policies that would be advantageous for the Soviet Union, coordinating his public statements with the dictator. Wallace secretly met with the youthful Soviet ambassador to the UN in New York, Andrei Gromyko, who dispatched the candidate’s messages to the Soviet foreign minister, [Vyacheslav] Molotov, and to Stalin himself. In his memoirs, Gromyko admitted to meeting Wallace, but downplayed the meeting’s significance, suggesting that after talking with him he considered that Wallace had lost contact with the pulse of American life. Archival documents in Moscow reveal that in fact Stalin took Wallace’s position and candidacy seriously, approving his public positions, and answering questions that the former Vice President put to him, which Stalin annotated in his distinctive pencil. Their alignment produced a published open letter from Wallace to Stalin, vetted by the Soviet leader in advance, to which Stalin then publicly replied, all as agreed between the two men. Wallace’s Presidential election bid in November 1948 dismally failed; he ended up getting barely 2 percent of the vote, while Truman, to his and the nation’s surprise, won a second term. He defeated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in one of the greatest upsets in U.S. Presidential history. Ironically, the staff of Wallace’s failed 1948 campaign included none other than the Soviet atom spy Ted Hall. Following his unsuccessful White House run, Wallace had a crisis of faith in his pro-Stalinism. This may have been caused by his realization that Stalin had used and discarded him after the election. Stalin had gotten what he wanted from Wallace. In 1952, Wallace published an article, “Where I Was Wrong,” describing “Russian Communism” as “utterly evil.” The Kremlin and its intelligence services nevertheless learned an important strategic lesson for later in the Cold War: that it could use the freedoms inherent within American electoral campaigns to influence candidates favorable to the Soviet Union.

#History #Henry A. Wallace #Vice Presidents #Vice President Wallace #Henry Wallace #Soviet Union #Soviets #Cold War #Communism #Socialism #1948 Election #Joseph Stalin #Stalin #Spies #Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West #Calder Walton #VPs #Cold War History #Espionage

[spaceintruderdetector]

https://archive.org/details/ChristopherSimpsonBlowback.AmericasRecruitmentOfNazis2014

#operation paperclip #cold war history #gehlen org #spooks #ww2