1 00:00:14,700 --> 00:00:15,890 Peace and prosperity 2 00:00:17,390 --> 00:00:20,000 An iron curtain has descended across the continent 3 00:00:20,100 --> 00:00:25,790 the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities led by Communists 4 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,500 Have you ever been a member of the Communist party? 5 00:00:32,690 --> 00:00:34,690 I shall continue to fight for peace 6 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:43,800 How much time do we have? 7 00:00:43,810 --> 00:00:45,200 This is the atomic age 8 00:00:52,400 --> 00:00:58,000 Lavishing in peace with 67 million people gainfully employed -the most in our history- 9 00:00:58,400 --> 00:01:01,900 the United States today represents an achievement in good government 10 00:01:01,990 --> 00:01:04,300 unsurpassed in the history of man, 11 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,500 while at the throttle controlling the wheels of our destiny is a spirit 12 00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:13,000 encouraging ever greater progress efforts on farming, industry, 13 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:16,300 in science and business that ensure the great majority 14 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,700 a way of life that is physically gratifying and spiritually uplifting. 15 00:01:22,090 --> 00:01:24,700 The seed of our good fortune had root here. 16 00:01:25,100 --> 00:01:30,700 ...preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States 17 00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:32,800 so help me God 18 00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:40,900 Republican Dwight David Eisenhower was elected president in 1952 19 00:01:41,300 --> 00:01:44,200 in a landslide win carrying 39 states. 20 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:51,200 A hero of WW2, gentle yet tough, labeling the ongoing Korean war as useless 21 00:01:52,100 --> 00:01:57,400 Eisenhower, the general, would end it and restore American confidence and optimism: 22 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:01,890 Now we look forward to the future with faith in ourselves, in our country 23 00:02:02,500 --> 00:02:05,500 and in the creator who is father of us all. 24 00:02:06,700 --> 00:02:10,300 And with faith in the most powerful arsenal ever assembled 25 00:02:10,900 --> 00:02:16,300 just 3 days before his election, the US tested its first hydrogen bomb 26 00:02:16,590 --> 00:02:19,590 on what had been the island of Elugelab. 27 00:02:20,500 --> 00:02:23,200 The 65 ton device was too big to drop by plane. 28 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:30,400 Elugelab burned for 6 hours under a mushroom cloud 100 miles across 29 00:02:30,990 --> 00:02:33,700 and then disappeared forever. 30 00:02:41,800 --> 00:02:46,000 Who was this new American president with a grandfather's face? 31 00:02:46,590 --> 00:02:49,590 At Potsdam he had opposed the atomic bombings of Japan 32 00:02:50,190 --> 00:02:52,900 he'd pushed hard for a second front to help the Soviets 33 00:02:53,500 --> 00:02:57,390 and developed a friendly relationship with Soviet General Zhukov. 34 00:02:58,300 --> 00:03:00,400 Stalin held him in high regard. 35 00:03:10,900 --> 00:03:14,200 He was the first foreigner to ever witness a parade in Red Square 36 00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:17,800 from the platform atop Lenin's tomb 37 00:03:18,700 --> 00:03:22,600 and 6 weeks after his inauguration in March 1953 38 00:03:23,200 --> 00:03:26,190 a fresh opportunity presented itself 39 00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:30,100 Americans woke to the news that Joseph Stalin was dead. 40 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:33,400 Despite his extraordinary brutality 41 00:03:34,300 --> 00:03:38,200 most Russians revered him for leading the nation to victory over the Nazis 42 00:03:38,500 --> 00:03:43,300 and turning a backward Russia into a modern industrial state. 43 00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:47,790 While the public mourned, the new somewhat uncertain Soviet leaders 44 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:52,200 created the onerous ghost of a man who'd ruled their lifes like an ancient czar 45 00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:58,200 for 30 years, decided to ease tensions with the capitalist west. 46 00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:02,700 They wanted above all to focus on improving their quality of life at home 47 00:04:03,390 --> 00:04:07,000 and called for coexistence and peaceful competition. 48 00:04:07,890 --> 00:04:10,590 How would America's new leadership respond? 49 00:04:13,100 --> 00:04:17,800 Winston Churchill was re-elected a 2nd time to office in 1951 50 00:04:18,400 --> 00:04:23,200 announcing 50 years of international diplomacy from the golden age of 51 00:04:23,500 --> 00:04:27,100 the European empires to the horrifying rise of fascism. 52 00:04:28,300 --> 00:04:32,800 But this new nuclear age held a special terror for the old man. 53 00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:37,300 He urged Washington to seize this unprecedented opportunity 54 00:04:37,600 --> 00:04:41,800 and pressed for an international summit with the new Soviet leaders. 55 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:43,190 He had hopes for Eisenhower 56 00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:45,900 6 weeks went by 57 00:04:46,500 --> 00:04:47,700 silence 58 00:04:48,290 --> 00:04:51,600 and then, Eisenhower eloquently spoke of peace: 59 00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:55,500 This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense 60 00:04:55,800 --> 00:05:00,600 under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. 61 00:05:01,200 --> 00:05:04,500 The Soviets, inspired, reprinted the speech widely 62 00:05:05,090 --> 00:05:08,700 but then, 2 days later, an answer came back to Moscow 63 00:05:09,300 --> 00:05:13,500 from Eisenhower's secretary of state John Foster Dulles: 64 00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:19,800 the peace offensive, was a peace defensive, taken in response to US's strength 65 00:05:20,400 --> 00:05:24,600 and the Communists were endlessly conspiring to overthrow from within 66 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:28,200 every genuinely free government in the world. 67 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:32,700 It was insulting and the Soviets were perplexed, wondering 68 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:36,290 whether it was the moderate Eisenhower or hard lined Dulles 69 00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:39,600 who spoke for this new administration. 70 00:05:40,500 --> 00:05:45,000 The son of a presbyterian minister, Dulles had made a career on Wall St. 71 00:05:45,600 --> 00:05:51,600 in 1920s and 30s as a lawyer for the corporate powerhouse Sullivan&Cromwell 72 00:05:52,490 --> 00:05:56,400 Dulles never waivered in his commitment to protecting US business interests 73 00:05:56,990 --> 00:05:59,400 or in his hatred for Communism. 74 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:03,590 Despite his later vehement denials of any dealings with the Nazis 75 00:06:03,900 --> 00:06:06,600 he worked for banker clients and helped secure 76 00:06:06,900 --> 00:06:09,900 more than a billion dollars in German bond sales in the US. 77 00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:13,500 He also dealt extensively with IG Farben corporation, 78 00:06:13,800 --> 00:06:16,800 a significant contributor to the Hitler regime. 79 00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:22,790 Dulles was set on the idea of an aggresive liberation of citizens under Soviet control: 80 00:06:23,400 --> 00:06:25,800 Everywhere I look around the world, the question is, 81 00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:31,200 what -maybe- we gonna lose next, y'know? We seem to be on the defensive 82 00:06:31,800 --> 00:06:33,290 and they're on the offensive. 83 00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:42,600 By this time the Korean police action had become a 2.5 year nightmare 84 00:06:43,200 --> 00:06:48,300 and endless maneuvers for useless hill sides as elusive as 85 00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:52,200 the jungles of south Vietnam 15 years later. 86 00:06:53,100 --> 00:06:58,200 Battling Soviet trained and equipped North Koreans, WW2 hero general Douglas MacArthur 87 00:06:58,500 --> 00:07:03,300 had pushed north towards the Chinese border, despite repeated warnings from Beijing 88 00:07:03,890 --> 00:07:07,500 ensuring Truman that the Chinese would never enter the war. 89 00:07:08,700 --> 00:07:13,500 In the late fall of 1950 hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops 90 00:07:13,790 --> 00:07:18,300 streamed across the Yalu river, sending US and allied forces reeling backwards 91 00:07:18,900 --> 00:07:23,700 in a frantic retreat. The marines who spearheaded the breakout did not 92 00:07:24,300 --> 00:07:28,490 consider it a retreat. "Retreat, hell!" said their commander. 93 00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:31,200 "We're just advancing in a different direction". 94 00:07:31,500 --> 00:07:35,400 Time magazine called it the worst defeat the US had ever suffered. 95 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:39,290 Truman wrote in his diary: WW3 is here. 96 00:07:40,490 --> 00:07:45,290 MacArthur repeatedly and Truman separately threatened to use the bomb. 97 00:07:45,900 --> 00:07:48,000 General Curtis Lemay volunteered to direct the attacks 98 00:07:48,890 --> 00:07:52,790 and, unknown to the public, American and Soviet pilots were engaging in direct 99 00:07:53,690 --> 00:07:59,100 air warfare, the only extended combat between the two sides during the Cold War. 100 00:08:01,500 --> 00:08:05,990 The drama of Truman firing MacArthur for insubordination: 101 00:08:06,300 --> 00:08:08,700 General MacArthur is one of our greatest military commanders 102 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:15,100 but the cause of world peace is much more important than any individual. 103 00:08:16,800 --> 00:08:21,590 And the shock of seeing their all powerful military failing to defeat 104 00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:27,300 ill equipped Chinese peasants drew Truman's popularity to a record low 105 00:08:27,900 --> 00:08:32,100 with the public of 22%. No victory in sight, the UN forces pounded 106 00:08:32,700 --> 00:08:36,000 month after month the North and the South with massive unrelenting 107 00:08:36,600 --> 00:08:40,790 conventional air bombing, similar to the campaign visited upon Japan 108 00:08:41,100 --> 00:08:44,690 5 years earlier. Weapon of choice was napalm. 109 00:08:45,290 --> 00:08:48,000 Almost every major city in North Korea was burned to the ground, 110 00:08:48,590 --> 00:08:51,600 a little was left standing in the South. 111 00:08:53,100 --> 00:08:57,600 Although Mao Zedong was imagining a world wide conflict, Stalin in the 112 00:08:58,200 --> 00:09:02,700 summer of 1951 pushed the North Koreans to the bargaining table. 113 00:09:03,300 --> 00:09:06,900 But negotiations dragged on for 2 more years. 114 00:09:07,200 --> 00:09:09,300 What are talking about? What are we arguing about? 115 00:09:09,900 --> 00:09:13,500 You know that this insignificant little hill is of no importance to you 116 00:09:13,790 --> 00:09:17,700 and no importance to us. So how can it be worth any man's life? 117 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:22,500 Don't you feel some responsibility towards thousands of 118 00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:28,500 Despite some progress at the negotiations and the Soviet peace initiative 119 00:09:29,100 --> 00:09:33,600 after the death of Stalin, Eisenhower now threatened to widen the war. 120 00:09:34,200 --> 00:09:38,100 He suggested to his commanders that the Kaesong area in North Korea 121 00:09:38,700 --> 00:09:43,500 might be a good place to showcase America's new tactical atomic bombs. 122 00:09:44,390 --> 00:09:49,800 The Joint Chiefs and National Security Council endorsed atomic attacks on China. 123 00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:55,200 Eisenhower and Dulles made sure the communist leaders knew of these threats. 124 00:09:56,100 --> 00:10:00,300 The US also began bombing the dams near Pyongyang, North Korea, 125 00:10:00,900 --> 00:10:04,800 causing enormous floods and destroying the rice crop. 126 00:10:05,400 --> 00:10:10,200 The Nuremberg Tribunal had condemned similar actions by Nazis in Holland 127 00:10:10,500 --> 00:10:13,500 in 1944 as a war crime. 128 00:10:14,400 --> 00:10:18,900 With causalties skyrocketing on both sides, an armistice was finally signed in 129 00:10:19,200 --> 00:10:25,200 July of 1953, dividing the country exactly where the war had begun 3 years earlier. 130 00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:31,500 The US, despite claims of stopping communism, was perceived as having lost. 131 00:10:32,400 --> 00:10:34,200 Because, it had not won. 132 00:10:34,800 --> 00:10:39,300 Vice president Richard Nixon would later insist that Eisenhower's nuclear threats 133 00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:43,800 had worked brilliantly, teaching him the value of unpredictability and 134 00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:50,300 inspired Nixon's own Mad Man thesis which he applied to Vietnam less than 20 years later. 135 00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:57,300 What was clear was the message to Asians who tried to challenge US interests. 136 00:10:58,200 --> 00:11:03,500 Some 3-4 million Koreans lay dead out of a population of 30 million, 10%, 137 00:11:04,790 --> 00:11:09,600 as well as over a million Chinese and 36,000 Americans. 138 00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:14,400 China had stood up proudly to the Americans, as the Vietnamese later would, 139 00:11:14,700 --> 00:11:17,400 enhancing their international prestige. 140 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:24,000 But America would block Chinese entry to the UN until 1971. 141 00:11:24,590 --> 00:11:29,400 The Soviets by comparison looked weak widening their gulf with China. 142 00:11:30,300 --> 00:11:33,600 As for the US, it was Churchill who grasped the real meaning: 143 00:11:34,500 --> 00:11:40,490 Korea does not really matter now. I'd never heard of the bloody place until I was 74. 144 00:11:41,100 --> 00:11:46,500 Its importance lies in the fact that it has led to the re-arming of America. 145 00:11:47,700 --> 00:11:51,300 The defense budget had grown 4 times to almost $50 billion, 146 00:11:52,190 --> 00:11:56,390 and military spending would hover it more than 50% of the US budget 147 00:11:56,700 --> 00:11:58,200 for the rest of the 1950s. 148 00:11:59,400 --> 00:12:03,590 Under Eisenhower a permanent war economy was to be achieved. 149 00:12:03,900 --> 00:12:07,490 Put it another way, it was not just General Motors that was good for America, 150 00:12:07,800 --> 00:12:12,600 anti-communism was good for business. 151 00:12:13,790 --> 00:12:17,100 Hang out the banners, beat the drums, we'll take Ike to Washington. 152 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:23,100 During his campaign, Eisenhower had in fact on little to lower the cold war 153 00:12:23,400 --> 00:12:28,500 temperature, fanning the flames of anti-Sovietism with calls to move beyond 154 00:12:29,100 --> 00:12:34,700 the democrats' containment to a republican liberation of the Eastern Block. 155 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:43,200 Although he despised the venomous anti-communist Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy 156 00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:49,490 and privately deplored his tactics, he backed down during the campaign from 157 00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:54,300 defending his mentor general George Marshall who McCarthy had accused of 158 00:12:54,900 --> 00:12:59,700 virtual treason for losing China as secretary of State. 159 00:12:59,800 --> 00:13:02,490 Even if there were only one communist in the state department, 160 00:13:03,100 --> 00:13:04,900 that'd still be one communist too many. 161 00:13:09,100 --> 00:13:12,390 Marshall refused to respond and told Truman at the time, that 162 00:13:12,990 --> 00:13:16,600 if at this point in his life he had to explain that he was not a traitor 163 00:13:17,500 --> 00:13:19,300 it was hardly worth the effort. 164 00:13:19,900 --> 00:13:23,800 But it wasn't long before he resigned as secretary of defense. 165 00:13:24,400 --> 00:13:27,400 From 1950 on, McCarthy made headlines: 166 00:13:28,300 --> 00:13:34,600 I have here in my hand a list of 205, a list of names who I've made known 167 00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:38,790 to the secretary of State as being members of the Communist party who, 168 00:13:39,390 --> 00:13:43,300 nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. 169 00:13:44,200 --> 00:13:47,800 Senator, senator Iselin, I'd like to verify that number sir, 170 00:13:48,500 --> 00:13:49,400 how many communists did you say? 171 00:13:50,200 --> 00:13:52,600 Oh I, major I said there're exactly, 172 00:13:55,100 --> 00:13:58,100 105 card carrying communists in the defense department at this time 173 00:13:58,700 --> 00:13:59,600 How many sir? 174 00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:01,700 Ahem, 275, and that's absolutely all I have to say on the subject 175 00:14:02,600 --> 00:14:03,500 at this time. Come babe. 176 00:14:04,400 --> 00:14:05,900 How many did he say? 177 00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:09,800 I'd be a lot happier if we could just settle on the number of 178 00:14:10,100 --> 00:14:12,800 communists I know there are in the Defense Department. 179 00:14:13,400 --> 00:14:19,400 The next day in another state he lowered his number to 57. 180 00:14:20,400 --> 00:14:23,700 Although he'd stayed silent when it mattered, Truman in one of his 181 00:14:24,300 --> 00:14:28,200 finest speeches deplored the mood and hysteria that he had done 182 00:14:28,800 --> 00:14:30,000 so much to create: 183 00:14:30,300 --> 00:14:32,700 Now I am going to tell you how we are not going to fight communism. 184 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:38,700 We are not going to transform our fine FBI into a Gestapo secret police. 185 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:40,800 That is what some people would like to do. 186 00:14:41,100 --> 00:14:44,700 We are not going to try to control what our people read and say and think. 187 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,300 We are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian 188 00:14:48,900 --> 00:14:52,200 country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat. 189 00:14:53,100 --> 00:14:54,600 In short, we are not going to end democracy. 190 00:14:55,800 --> 00:14:57,900 We are going to keep the Bill of Rights on the books. 191 00:14:59,400 --> 00:15:03,600 But throughout the 1950s, political debate essentially continued to vanish 192 00:15:03,900 --> 00:15:09,900 in the US, as Eisenhower never publicly attacked the extremist tactics of 193 00:15:10,200 --> 00:15:14,700 either the Red Scare or the Lavender Scare that targeted gays and lesbians. 194 00:15:17,400 --> 00:15:22,200 Behind the scenes, the real power was being exercised by director J. Edgar Hoover, 195 00:15:22,500 --> 00:15:28,200 who had Eisenhower's full support tapping telephones, opening mail, 196 00:15:28,500 --> 00:15:31,800 installing bugs, breaking into offices and safes. 197 00:15:32,400 --> 00:15:36,900 Hoover often played up the phony threat of a surprise Soviet attack on the US, 198 00:15:40,200 --> 00:15:45,000 and in 1956 briefed Eisenhower on the specter of a dirty bomb unleashed in 199 00:15:45,300 --> 00:15:48,600 Manhattan, killing hundreds of thousands of people. 200 00:15:51,300 --> 00:15:56,400 What's in the box? 201 00:15:57,900 --> 00:16:00,300 Curiosity killed the cat, and it certainly would have you if you followed 202 00:16:00,900 --> 00:16:02,400 your impulse to open it. 203 00:16:15,900 --> 00:16:20,400 Hoover was totally convinced Communism was behind the black civil rights movement 204 00:16:20,700 --> 00:16:25,200 from WW1 on and had spied on every single black leader since. 205 00:16:26,700 --> 00:16:30,900 His FBI was busy on a number of other fronts leaking information to its 206 00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:36,600 high level assets in the press and launching, in 1956, a program called 207 00:16:36,900 --> 00:16:40,800 Cointelpro of dirty tricks designed to disrupt 208 00:16:40,850 --> 00:16:45,000 ultimately some 2300 left-wing organizations. 209 00:16:45,600 --> 00:16:49,500 By 1960, the FBI had begun investigations at more than 210 00:16:50,100 --> 00:16:55,200 400,000 individuals and groups, all with Eisenhower's support. 211 00:16:55,500 --> 00:17:00,600 Patriotic pageants and... pockmarked the landscape. Paranoia was rampant: 212 00:17:01,200 --> 00:17:05,400 Communism in reality is not a political party, it is a way of life, 213 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:11,400 an evil, a malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease 214 00:17:11,700 --> 00:17:15,900 that spreads like an epidemic. And like an epidemic, its quarantine is necessary 215 00:17:16,500 --> 00:17:18,900 to keep it from infecting this nation. 216 00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:22,200 A second, more damaging, set of Hollywood hearings began. 217 00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:27,000 Artists and citizens were hauled before committees in order to name names. 218 00:17:29,700 --> 00:17:34,500 To writer Mary McCarthy the purpose of the hearings was not to combat subversion, 219 00:17:34,800 --> 00:17:39,300 but to convince Americans to accept the principle of betrayal as a norm of 220 00:17:39,900 --> 00:17:42,600 good citizenship. It worked. 221 00:17:43,500 --> 00:17:48,600 Renowned... journalist I.F.Stone had earlier denounced the attempt to turn 222 00:17:48,900 --> 00:17:52,500 a whole generation of Americans into stool pigeons. 223 00:17:53,400 --> 00:17:58,500 The perception of our heroic WW2 ally was now deeply tarnished in the US 224 00:17:59,100 --> 00:18:03,000 by the Berlin airlift, the spies, the Korean war and the 225 00:18:03,600 --> 00:18:07,500 further revelations of the brutalities of the Stalin purges. 226 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:11,600 But the Red Scare itself was far more damaging to America. 227 00:18:12,500 --> 00:18:16,100 It certainly decimated the legal communist party USA 228 00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:19,700 whose membership had dropped from 80,000 in 1944 229 00:18:20,300 --> 00:18:26,900 to below 10,000 by the mid 1950s, with probably 1500 of them FBI informants. 230 00:18:27,500 --> 00:18:29,600 9 years putting on an act I hate being hated for doing it. 231 00:18:30,500 --> 00:18:31,400 Something happened at HQ? 232 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:35,300 No, HQ, they still think I'm a low soul who'd sell out on his own people 233 00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:38,600 Y'know you guys have a home and a family, when your day's work is done 234 00:18:38,900 --> 00:18:40,400 you go home where they're glad to see you 235 00:18:41,600 --> 00:18:44,300 I've got nothing but a bunch of slimy commies who'd cut my throat 236 00:18:44,600 --> 00:18:45,800 and throw me in the river when they're through with me 237 00:18:46,700 --> 00:18:49,400 Look, Ken, you've got to get me out of this thing, you've got to wipe 238 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:52,100 this red smear of me, i can't take it any longer. 239 00:18:53,300 --> 00:18:57,800 More importantly, the Red Scare eviscerated the US left, the labor unions, 240 00:18:58,400 --> 00:19:01,700 and political and cultural organizations which had spurred 241 00:19:02,300 --> 00:19:06,200 the reforms of the New Deal of 1930s and 40s. 242 00:19:08,910 --> 00:19:12,200 With the exception of the civil rights and anti-nuclear movements, 243 00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:18,200 left-wing'd descend and progressive reform throughout the 1950s would remain silent, 244 00:19:19,100 --> 00:19:23,000 and the labor movement would never recover. 245 00:19:23,300 --> 00:19:27,500 To this day, the Eisenhower 50s are remembered as an era of the lonely, sad, 246 00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:32,300 capitalist corporation man and his gray flannel conformity. 247 00:19:34,100 --> 00:19:38,900 Fearing defense spending would bankrupt the country, Eisenhower and Dulles 248 00:19:39,500 --> 00:19:43,700 called for a new look defense policy that would cut the size of the army 249 00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:49,100 and rely on cheaper nuclear weapons to be used as would other munitions, 250 00:19:50,300 --> 00:19:53,300 based on the assumption that any war with the Soviets would become 251 00:19:53,900 --> 00:19:55,700 a full scale nuclear one. 252 00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:00,200 Though he had once abhorred atomic weaponry, Eisenhower told the British ambassador: 253 00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:08,000 As he set out to convince a weary public, there was no difference between 254 00:20:08,600 --> 00:20:10,700 conventional and nuclear weapons. 255 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:16,700 He told a reporter in 1955 that he considered nuclear weapons to be as 256 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:21,800 available for use as other munitions. Churchill was shocked, 257 00:20:22,100 --> 00:20:25,700 so was Pulitzer prize winning NY Times columnist James Reston, who 258 00:20:26,300 --> 00:20:30,500 wondered why no single congressman questioned Eisenhower's commitment 259 00:20:31,300 --> 00:20:35,500 to sudden atomic retaliation without congressional approval. 260 00:20:36,100 --> 00:20:41,800 In August of 1953, the Soviets exploded a 400 Kton proto-hydrogen bomb 261 00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:45,700 in Kazakhistan, shocking the world. 262 00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:49,000 They seemed to have closed the gap, and were now only 10 months behind 263 00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:51,100 the American H-bomb effort. 264 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:58,600 In december of 54 Eisenhower ordered 42% of atomic 36% of hydrogen bombs 265 00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:03,100 deployed overseas closer to the Soviet union. 266 00:21:03,700 --> 00:21:07,910 Meanwhile he and Dulles intensified their efforts to vanquish the taboos 267 00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:10,600 surrounding the use of nuclear weapons. 268 00:21:11,200 --> 00:21:16,900 As early as december 1953 Eisenhower had unveiled his atoms for peace program 269 00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:21,700 in a speech at the UN, mesmerizing the 3500 delegates: 270 00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:27,100 If the peoples of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, 271 00:21:27,700 --> 00:21:33,100 they must be armed with the significant facts of today's existence. 272 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:38,200 He promised energy too cheap to meter at home and abroad, ignoring 273 00:21:38,500 --> 00:21:43,000 scientists' warnings about the dangers of proliferation. 274 00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:47,500 Over the years the administration would propose initiatives to use 275 00:21:47,800 --> 00:21:52,300 nuclear bombs for planetary excavation or creating harbors in Alaska 276 00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:57,700 freeing inaccessible oil deposits, creating underground reservoirs 277 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:01,600 producing steam desalinizing water. 278 00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:05,800 There were schemes to blast a bigger and better Panama canal, and 279 00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:10,300 to alter weather patterns, and even melt the polar ice caps. 280 00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:14,800 Hamburgers from an atomic electric skillet are tasty testimonials of 281 00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:17,500 things to come in the atomic age. 282 00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:23,200 But when a massive hydrogen bomb test in the Marshall Islands in March of 54 283 00:22:23,500 --> 00:22:28,000 went awry and contaminated islanders and Japanese fishermen, 284 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:30,700 international outrage ensued. 285 00:22:46,600 --> 00:22:51,100 The word fallout entered the lexicon, and opposition to nuclear testing grew globally 286 00:22:52,300 --> 00:22:56,800 new organizations were spun, people marched in the streets once more. 287 00:22:58,300 --> 00:23:02,800 The respected non-aligned Indian prime minister Nehru publicly denounced 288 00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:07,600 US leaders as dangerous self-centered lunatics who would blow up any people 289 00:23:07,900 --> 00:23:10,900 or country who came in the way of their policy. 290 00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:15,700 Eisenhower told his national security council: everybody seems to think that 291 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:19,000 we're skunks, saber rattlers and war mongers. 292 00:23:19,900 --> 00:23:23,500 Dulles worried: comparisons are now being made between ours and 293 00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:25,900 Hitler's military machine. 294 00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:32,800 But Eisenhower could still speak eloquently and be believed: 295 00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:39,700 I come here representing a nation that wants not an acre of another people's land, 296 00:23:40,300 --> 00:23:43,600 that seeks no control of another people's government, 297 00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:49,300 that pursues no program of expansion in commerce or politics or power of any sort 298 00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:52,000 at another people's expense. 299 00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:55,300 There were other reasons besides the nuclear buildup 300 00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:59,200 for Nehru's denunciation of US leadership in the world 301 00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:01,900 Nehru knew more than the American public knew. 302 00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:04,900 He knew that Eisenhower was not telling the truth. 303 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,400 In Iran, Britain suffered another reverse with the nationalization 304 00:24:09,700 --> 00:24:12,400 of its huge oil industry, and confiscation of the properties 305 00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:14,500 amidst scenes of violence. 306 00:24:18,100 --> 00:24:22,000 The British turn for help to the CIA with tales of mideast oil 307 00:24:22,300 --> 00:24:27,400 coming under Soviet control, this oil rich region from the Caspian to 308 00:24:27,700 --> 00:24:32,200 the Persian Gulf, unlike Korea, was critical to western interests. 309 00:24:33,100 --> 00:24:37,600 Democraticly elected, immensely popular, prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was 310 00:24:37,900 --> 00:24:44,200 the first Iranian to earn a doctor of laws degree from a European university. 311 00:24:45,100 --> 00:24:49,600 Time magazine named him 1951's Man of the Year. 312 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:52,600 He inspired the Arab masses throughout the region 313 00:24:52,900 --> 00:24:57,400 who pulsated with nationalist fever, ready to take over their own affairs. 314 00:24:58,900 --> 00:25:03,100 Dulles and his brother Allen who was now head of the CIA knew Mosaddegh 315 00:25:03,700 --> 00:25:08,800 was not a communist, but feared a takeover by the small communist party. 316 00:25:09,700 --> 00:25:14,500 And with Eisenhower's full approval deployed the CIA to get rid of the 317 00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:20,500 madman Mosaddegh, buying up journalists, military officials, members of parliament 318 00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:27,400 and ominiously the services of the extremist warriors of Islam, a terrorist gang. 319 00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:32,800 In August of 53, organized mobs caused chaos in Tehran spreading rumours 320 00:25:33,100 --> 00:25:35,800 that Mosaddegh was Jewish and communist. 321 00:25:36,100 --> 00:25:39,700 The CIA and British intelligence paid street thugs to destroy mosques. 322 00:25:41,500 --> 00:25:45,700 Among the rioters was Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's future leader. 323 00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:52,000 Mosaddegh and thousands of his supporters were arrested for treason, some executed. 324 00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:56,800 Former premier Mosaddegh's ruined house is a mute testimony to 3 days of bloody rioting 325 00:25:57,400 --> 00:26:02,200 culminating in a military coup from which the one time dictator of Iran fled for his life. 326 00:26:03,100 --> 00:26:08,800 The Shah who had fled to Rome comes home. Iranian oil may again flow westward. 327 00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:16,600 Reinstating the Shah on the throne, the US turned on the financial spigots for the next 328 00:26:16,900 --> 00:26:21,700 25 years, creating its strongest military ally in the middle east. 329 00:26:21,810 --> 00:26:25,700 Cutting down the British share, 5 US oil companies now received 330 00:26:26,010 --> 00:26:29,010 40% ownership of a new consortium. 331 00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:35,300 Those celebrate it in the western media as a great victory, the downside would be enormous. 332 00:26:36,500 --> 00:26:39,800 Instead of seeing a change of attitude at Stalin's death, 333 00:26:40,110 --> 00:26:44,310 the Soviets would perceive the US imposing another puppet government 334 00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:48,810 on a nation with which it shared a 2000 km border 335 00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:55,400 along with the Nato alliance, and now saw a western strategy of encirclement. 336 00:26:56,900 --> 00:27:01,400 Blowback is an espionage term for the violent unintended consequences of 337 00:27:01,700 --> 00:27:07,100 a covert operation on the civilian population of the aggressor nation. 338 00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:13,400 And in this case the US, despite temporary success and a new supply of oil, 339 00:27:13,710 --> 00:27:17,300 had outraged the citizens of a proud nation. 340 00:27:17,900 --> 00:27:23,600 It may have taken 25 more years for blowback to manifest, but in 1979, it did. 341 00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:27,800 Fed up with fixed elections and the repressions of Savak, 342 00:27:28,110 --> 00:27:32,900 the despised intelligence agency given to torture, people revolted 343 00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:38,610 embracing the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, and forced out the Shah. 344 00:27:39,500 --> 00:27:43,400 The Iranian coup would poison the US relations with the Iranian people for 345 00:27:43,700 --> 00:27:49,710 another 30 years into the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 346 00:27:52,110 --> 00:27:56,900 The CIA had now come into its own, and the next year organized the overthrow of 347 00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:02,600 Guatamala's popular leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman who challenged the giant 348 00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:07,600 US commercial interests in his impoverished central American nation. 349 00:28:07,910 --> 00:28:11,800 Dulles believed Arbenz was secretly a communist and, if not stopped, 350 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:14,800 would invite Soviet infiltration into the region. 351 00:28:15,100 --> 00:28:19,600 In reality, communist influence was minimally a party of approximately 352 00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:22,300 4000 members. 353 00:28:22,900 --> 00:28:28,000 Future of Guatemala lies at the disposal of leaders loyal to Guatemala 354 00:28:28,310 --> 00:28:33,100 who have not treasonably become the agents of an alien despotism which sought 355 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:36,400 to use Guatamala for its own evil ends. 356 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:43,900 From bases in Honduras and Nicaragua in June 54, CIA trained mercenaries attacked. 357 00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:46,900 And Arbenz surrendered to a military junta. 358 00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:53,210 The events of recent months and days add a new and glorious chapter to 359 00:28:53,510 --> 00:28:56,500 already great tradition of the American states. 360 00:28:58,010 --> 00:29:02,200 Arbenz's replacement, anti-communist strong man Castillo Armas 361 00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:06,410 set up a brutal military dictatorship employing death squads 362 00:29:07,010 --> 00:29:11,810 and was assasinated 3 years later. The democratically elected Arbenz 363 00:29:12,410 --> 00:29:16,300 warned that 20 years of fascist bloody tyranny was coming. 364 00:29:16,350 --> 00:29:17,300 He was wrong. 365 00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,110 The tyranny that followed actually lasted 40 years, and 366 00:29:21,710 --> 00:29:24,110 took up the lives of some 200,000 people. 367 00:29:24,700 --> 00:29:29,810 The word communism was now being used as a description of not only 368 00:29:30,110 --> 00:29:33,410 the Soviet system, but for anyone, any place, any time 369 00:29:34,010 --> 00:29:37,000 who wanted change in their way in their country. 370 00:29:37,610 --> 00:29:40,310 Be it a labor leader, a reformer, a peasant activist, 371 00:29:41,210 --> 00:29:44,800 a human rights worker, or even a priest reading the gospel and 372 00:29:45,410 --> 00:29:50,200 organizing self help groups based on radical or pacifist messages. 373 00:29:53,110 --> 00:29:57,010 Events of even greater significance were unfolding simultaneously 374 00:29:57,610 --> 00:29:58,810 in Vietnam. 375 00:29:59,410 --> 00:30:01,510 The British had yielded much of their empire, but the French 376 00:30:02,100 --> 00:30:06,010 who had been humiliated by the German invasion of WW2 were still 377 00:30:06,310 --> 00:30:09,910 fighting for their enormous colonies in Indo China, and Africa. 378 00:30:11,110 --> 00:30:15,010 As the British in Iran had done in order to receive American aid 379 00:30:16,210 --> 00:30:21,310 the French daemonized their enemy, Ho Chi Minh, as a communist fanatic 380 00:30:21,610 --> 00:30:24,600 although they knew that he represented the same rebellion 381 00:30:24,910 --> 00:30:28,210 they had been fighting since the late 1800s. 382 00:30:30,910 --> 00:30:34,210 For the Vietnamese people, it had always been a struggle for their 383 00:30:34,810 --> 00:30:38,110 independence, well before the Russian revolution and 384 00:30:38,710 --> 00:30:41,400 the concept of communism had taken root. 385 00:30:42,610 --> 00:30:45,610 But in this time period, it was naturally assumed that 386 00:30:45,910 --> 00:30:48,900 Asian communism was directed from Moscow. 387 00:30:49,210 --> 00:30:52,210 The truth was that Stalin had always shown caution in Asia, 388 00:30:52,810 --> 00:30:57,000 denying significant aid to Mao, as he would for Ho Chi Minh, 389 00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,610 seeing little to gain by inflaming the French. 390 00:31:03,610 --> 00:31:07,510 Ho, who'd received US assistance when he led the resistance 391 00:31:07,810 --> 00:31:11,710 to the Japanese during WW2, had asked president Truman for help 392 00:31:12,310 --> 00:31:15,010 in setting up an independent Vietnamese state. 393 00:31:15,310 --> 00:31:16,810 He received no response. 394 00:31:17,410 --> 00:31:21,910 In 1950 he found out why: Truman was back in the other side. 395 00:31:22,510 --> 00:31:27,010 By april of 1954 Ho Chi Minh's peasant army had finished hauling 396 00:31:27,310 --> 00:31:30,910 extremely heavy anti-aircraft guns and howitzers through 397 00:31:31,500 --> 00:31:34,210 almost impassable jungle and mountain terrain, 398 00:31:34,810 --> 00:31:39,310 to lay siege to an encircled French army at Dien Bien Phu. 399 00:31:42,910 --> 00:31:45,910 A battle to the death is joined in Dien Bien Phu, an isolated French 400 00:31:46,510 --> 00:31:50,110 union stronghold deep in communist held territory of Indo China. 401 00:31:50,710 --> 00:31:53,110 The battle is at its height as French forces repulse repeated 402 00:31:53,710 --> 00:31:56,110 fanatical charges by 40,000 reds. 403 00:31:56,410 --> 00:32:00,310 Supplied by airlift reinforcements, a garrison outnumbered 4 to 1, 404 00:32:00,910 --> 00:32:04,810 kills or wounds 10,000 of the attackers while sustained severe losses 405 00:32:05,410 --> 00:32:08,710 of its own in the first single battle of the 8 year war. 406 00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:15,310 Incredibly the US was paying 80% of the French war costs. 407 00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,510 Eisenhower justified it by describing the countries in the region 408 00:32:20,100 --> 00:32:24,610 falling like dominoes, ultimately leading from Thailand, Indonesia and 409 00:32:24,910 --> 00:32:27,310 Malaysia to Japan itself. 410 00:32:27,910 --> 00:32:31,810 Though Eisenhower ruled out sending US ground forces, the Joint Chiefs' 411 00:32:32,410 --> 00:32:37,510 drop plans for operation Vulture, an air campaign against Viet positions 412 00:32:38,110 --> 00:32:44,100 which included the possibility of using 3 small tactical a-bombs. 413 00:32:44,410 --> 00:32:48,610 Nonetheless the French alongside the British rejected this option, 414 00:32:48,910 --> 00:32:54,910 and on may 7th after 56 grueling days the French garrison fell. 415 00:32:55,510 --> 00:32:59,410 And France's days of colonial conquest in Asia were over. 416 00:32:59,710 --> 00:33:02,410 Despite the fact that his forces controlled most of the country 417 00:33:03,010 --> 00:33:06,600 Ho gave in to pressure from Soviets and the Chinese who feared 418 00:33:06,910 --> 00:33:09,910 US intervention and at Geneva accepted a proposal that would 419 00:33:10,810 --> 00:33:16,310 temporarily divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel with Ho's forces 420 00:33:16,610 --> 00:33:21,110 withdrawing to the north and French backed forces retreating to the south. 421 00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:25,610 A national election was scheduled for 1956 to unify the country. 422 00:33:26,210 --> 00:33:29,510 The US promised not to interfere. But it did, 423 00:33:30,110 --> 00:33:34,310 installing a conservative, corrupt, catholic in a Buddhist country. 424 00:33:34,910 --> 00:33:39,410 Ngo Dinh Diem wasted no time in crushing rivals and jailing communists, 425 00:33:40,310 --> 00:33:42,410 thousands of whom were executed. 426 00:33:42,610 --> 00:33:47,110 With US backing, Diem then subverted the most important provision of 427 00:33:47,710 --> 00:33:51,010 the Geneva agreement: cancelling the 1956 election. 428 00:33:51,910 --> 00:33:55,510 Eisenhower later explained that, had the elections been held 429 00:34:03,910 --> 00:34:07,210 As a result the insurgency was soon rekindled, and within 430 00:34:07,510 --> 00:34:11,710 a few short years the French war would become the American. 431 00:34:21,010 --> 00:34:24,610 Across the globe in Africa, the Vietnamese struggle became an inspiration 432 00:34:25,210 --> 00:34:29,110 for the Algerian revolutionaries who would outlast the French 433 00:34:29,710 --> 00:34:34,210 in a brutal 8 year war from 1954 to 62. 434 00:34:35,110 --> 00:34:38,410 This finally gutted the French empire in Africa. 435 00:34:41,410 --> 00:34:46,810 In 1953, Eisenhower symbolically went to Madrid to offer a huge loan 436 00:34:47,410 --> 00:34:51,310 to feared fascist dictator Francisco Franco in return for the 437 00:34:51,910 --> 00:34:54,010 establishment of nuclear bases. 438 00:34:54,310 --> 00:34:58,510 Spain was then admitted to the UN in 1955, 439 00:34:58,810 --> 00:35:02,110 although communist China was still denied membership. 440 00:35:03,010 --> 00:35:06,310 The US also supported Portugal, which clung to an enormous 441 00:35:06,910 --> 00:35:11,410 ramshackle plantation and apartheid empire in southern Africa 442 00:35:12,010 --> 00:35:15,010 as well as neighboring south Africa where minority whites 443 00:35:15,310 --> 00:35:18,010 strictly suppressed the black majority. 444 00:35:19,510 --> 00:35:24,010 By the mid 1950s the reputation of the US in the third world 445 00:35:24,310 --> 00:35:27,610 reached rock bottom, as it allied itself with some of the world's 446 00:35:27,910 --> 00:35:29,710 most reactionary regimes. 447 00:35:30,610 --> 00:35:35,110 America's capacity for massive retaliation might keep the balance of 448 00:35:35,410 --> 00:35:39,310 power with the Soviets, but it would prove useless in preventing 449 00:35:39,910 --> 00:35:43,810 the revolutionary upsurge in the developing world, which wished 450 00:35:44,110 --> 00:35:47,710 to steer non-aligned course between capitalist and socialist blocks 451 00:35:48,310 --> 00:35:52,510 and... seeing to spend billions of dollars on arms when 452 00:35:52,810 --> 00:35:55,210 money for survival was in short supply. 453 00:35:55,810 --> 00:35:58,810 To the non-aligned point of view, the American cold war on 454 00:35:59,110 --> 00:36:03,910 Eisenhower's watch was not really a war against communism 455 00:36:04,210 --> 00:36:07,510 as much as it was a war against the poor peoples of the earth 456 00:36:07,810 --> 00:36:10,210 for the resources of the earth. 457 00:36:10,810 --> 00:36:15,310 29 Asian and African leaders met for the first time in 1955 at 458 00:36:15,610 --> 00:36:20,630 Bandung in Indonesia. The host was Indonesia's Achmed Sukarno who 459 00:36:21,380 --> 00:36:23,470 had led the fight against Dutch colonialism. 460 00:36:24,140 --> 00:36:27,850 The stars were Yugoslavia's renegade leader marshall Tito 461 00:36:28,390 --> 00:36:30,680 who had, despite several assasination attempts, 462 00:36:31,230 --> 00:36:33,850 freed himself from Stalin's Soviet grip 463 00:36:34,190 --> 00:36:37,820 along with Nasser of Egypt who had taken on the British empire 464 00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:41,190 Nehru, independent India's first leader 465 00:36:41,610 --> 00:36:43,070 and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh. 466 00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:46,450 Israel, perceived as a US ally, was not invited 467 00:36:46,780 --> 00:36:50,080 to avoid an Arab boycott. Communist China was. 468 00:36:50,710 --> 00:36:54,610 They met on the beautiful island of Java in the world's 4th 469 00:36:54,910 --> 00:36:59,110 largest nation which combined the world's largest muslim community 470 00:36:59,410 --> 00:37:01,510 and the 3rd largest communist party. 471 00:37:02,110 --> 00:37:05,550 This conference is not to oppose each other, 472 00:37:06,090 --> 00:37:07,290 it is a conference of brotherhood. 473 00:37:08,180 --> 00:37:11,470 Dulles proclaimed neutrality an obsolete conception, 474 00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:13,140 immoral and short-sighted. 475 00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:17,610 In one the strangest and little known episodes of this time period, 476 00:37:18,150 --> 00:37:21,530 the prime minister of China, Zhou Enlai, was targeted 477 00:37:22,110 --> 00:37:24,820 by Jiang Jieshi's nationalist government in Taiwan. 478 00:37:25,610 --> 00:37:30,950 Secretly embedded by the CIA, a detonator and bomb were placed on his plane. 479 00:37:31,370 --> 00:37:33,790 But Zhou survived when he changed planes, 480 00:37:34,580 --> 00:37:36,750 although the 16 people aboard were blown 481 00:37:37,380 --> 00:37:39,790 out of the sky under mysterious circumstances. 482 00:37:40,510 --> 00:37:43,010 Zhou maintained an enigmatic silence and 483 00:37:43,470 --> 00:37:45,430 the conference was considered a great success. 484 00:37:47,050 --> 00:37:50,650 But many of these independent leaders would in time be toppled by the US. 485 00:37:53,710 --> 00:37:57,910 The Soviet union, which had first ignored the neutral block, 486 00:37:58,210 --> 00:37:59,710 was beginning to confront its own past. 487 00:38:02,710 --> 00:38:06,010 Premier Nikita Khrushchev who, like Eisenhower, had come from 488 00:38:06,610 --> 00:38:11,110 humble origins and seen the worst of WW2 up close as a political 489 00:38:11,410 --> 00:38:15,610 organizer at the battle of Stalingrad shocked the communist world 490 00:38:15,910 --> 00:38:21,310 in February 1956, emotionally giving voice to what noone had ever 491 00:38:21,610 --> 00:38:24,010 publicly said without being punished. 492 00:38:24,610 --> 00:38:28,810 He detailed Stalin's murderous terror which had left his society 493 00:38:29,410 --> 00:38:33,010 frightened into a conformity even greater than that in the US 494 00:38:33,300 --> 00:38:36,310 which had not suffered the physical terrors. 495 00:38:37,210 --> 00:38:41,710 He decried Stalin's cult of personality and initiated a much 496 00:38:42,010 --> 00:38:45,010 needed policy of de-Stalinization. 497 00:38:45,610 --> 00:38:48,910 The reaction across the communist world was incendiary. 498 00:38:49,510 --> 00:38:53,110 Hard liners were stunned. Mao in China infuriated. 499 00:38:54,010 --> 00:38:56,410 Unrest swept much of eastern Europe. 500 00:38:57,010 --> 00:38:59,110 Crowds gathered outside the parliament in Hungary and 501 00:38:59,710 --> 00:39:03,310 toppled the enormous statue of Stalin, even lynching secret 502 00:39:03,610 --> 00:39:05,410 police officers in the streets. 503 00:39:06,010 --> 00:39:08,710 Kruschev allowed the revolt to take its course, but when the 504 00:39:09,010 --> 00:39:12,010 moderate Hungarian prime minister announced free elections and 505 00:39:12,310 --> 00:39:16,510 said that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw pact of 1955 506 00:39:17,110 --> 00:39:21,310 which was a new parallel organization to the west's Nato, 507 00:39:22,210 --> 00:39:24,910 Kruschev felt he had no other choice or he would be removed 508 00:39:25,510 --> 00:39:27,010 by his hard liners. 509 00:39:27,310 --> 00:39:29,710 Russian tanks rolled into the old city and the resistance 510 00:39:30,310 --> 00:39:33,910 ended with the death of around 2500 Hungarians. 511 00:39:34,510 --> 00:39:38,410 Although this number pales in comparison to the total casualties 512 00:39:39,010 --> 00:39:42,610 from America's interventions in 3rd world countries, Hungary 513 00:39:43,210 --> 00:39:46,210 became one of the biggest stories of cold war, clearly pointing 514 00:39:46,810 --> 00:39:49,510 to Soviet evil and domination. 515 00:39:51,010 --> 00:39:54,010 This is battered Budapest under the brutal Russian boot. 516 00:39:54,610 --> 00:39:57,910 Communist secret police hunt down heroic freedom fighters. 517 00:39:58,210 --> 00:40:01,210 Time magazine called the Hungarian freedom fighter 518 00:40:01,510 --> 00:40:02,710 the man of the year. 519 00:40:05,710 --> 00:40:09,010 At the same time, unknown to the American public, the USA's 520 00:40:09,610 --> 00:40:13,210 hard power continued to manifest globally. 521 00:40:13,810 --> 00:40:17,410 We were not very happy with Mr. Sukarno in, what was that 522 00:40:18,010 --> 00:40:22,510 year? 1958, and I don't thin k we're happy with him in 1965. 523 00:40:23,110 --> 00:40:26,410 Sukarno in Indonesia became a major target. 524 00:40:26,710 --> 00:40:30,310 the CIA plans to unseat him were sometimes ludicrous involving 525 00:40:30,910 --> 00:40:34,210 porno films and beautiful Russian blondes, and supporting 526 00:40:34,810 --> 00:40:39,610 a military coup in 1957 in which CIA pilots bombed targets. 527 00:40:40,210 --> 00:40:43,510 When Eisenhower denied US involvement, he was embarassed when 528 00:40:44,410 --> 00:40:48,610 one such pilot, Al Pope, was shot down in a B-26 and presented 529 00:40:49,210 --> 00:40:50,410 there in a news conference. 530 00:40:50,710 --> 00:40:53,410 The results of these efforts pushed Sukarno towards accepting 531 00:40:54,010 --> 00:40:57,010 more and more Soviet aid. It would take the US another 8 years 532 00:40:57,610 --> 00:41:01,210 to change the power structure in Indonesia in one of the 533 00:41:01,510 --> 00:41:03,610 bloodiest massacres of the century. 534 00:41:05,710 --> 00:41:08,410 An extreme situation has been created in Little Rock. 535 00:41:09,010 --> 00:41:13,210 Projecting a negative international image of the US, federal 536 00:41:13,510 --> 00:41:18,310 troops were sent in the fall of 1957 to Arkansas to protect 537 00:41:18,610 --> 00:41:21,310 newly enrolled black high school students from violent 538 00:41:21,910 --> 00:41:22,810 hateful moms, 539 00:41:26,710 --> 00:41:31,510 whereas the progressive Soviet union was seen by all to be 540 00:41:32,110 --> 00:41:35,710 launching the satellite Sputnik into the night sky. 541 00:41:57,910 --> 00:42:01,210 We had bombs, but suddenly the Soviets had space. 542 00:42:01,810 --> 00:42:03,310 They had rockets and missiles. 543 00:42:03,910 --> 00:42:06,910 Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson said that the Soviets 544 00:42:07,510 --> 00:42:10,510 would soon be dropping bombs on us from space like kids 545 00:42:11,110 --> 00:42:14,410 dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses. 546 00:42:15,310 --> 00:42:17,710 Eisenhower's response was lackadaisical: 547 00:42:18,610 --> 00:42:21,910 they put one small ball into the air, he said 548 00:42:23,110 --> 00:42:27,610 then to drive his point home, he reportedly played 5 rounds of golf that week. 549 00:42:28,510 --> 00:42:32,110 The reason was he knew the truth and could not reveal it, that 550 00:42:32,410 --> 00:42:37,210 US technology had developed hightly secret U2 reconaissance planes 551 00:42:37,510 --> 00:42:42,610 which had for over a year flown 70,000 feet above Soviet 552 00:42:42,910 --> 00:42:46,510 airspace photographing how far the Russians really lagged 553 00:42:47,110 --> 00:42:48,910 behind in the arms race. 554 00:42:49,510 --> 00:42:53,410 CIA director Allen Dulles later gloated: I was able to 555 00:42:53,710 --> 00:42:56,710 get a look at every blade of grass in the Soviet union. 556 00:42:57,910 --> 00:43:03,010 A month later the Soviets launched the massive 6 ton Sputnik 2. 557 00:43:04,210 --> 00:43:07,510 Nonetheless, Kruschev reached out to Eisenhower calling for 558 00:43:08,110 --> 00:43:11,710 a peaceful space competition and an end to the cold war. 559 00:43:12,310 --> 00:43:16,210 But Ike, feeling enourmous political pressure, gloated publicly 560 00:43:16,510 --> 00:43:20,410 about America's vast and growing military superiority. 561 00:43:20,710 --> 00:43:23,410 We're well ahead the Soviets both in quality and in quantity. 562 00:43:23,710 --> 00:43:25,810 We intend to stay ahead. 563 00:43:26,410 --> 00:43:30,010 Pointing to its submarines and huge aircraft carriers 564 00:43:30,310 --> 00:43:33,010 now supplied with nuclear weapons. 565 00:43:33,510 --> 00:43:35,910 Nonetheless, the democrats seized the initiative. 566 00:43:36,510 --> 00:43:39,210 Respected house leader John McCormack declared that 567 00:43:39,810 --> 00:43:44,010 US faced national extinction. Among those who jumped 568 00:43:44,310 --> 00:43:47,610 enthusiastically on this missile gap bandwagon was the 569 00:43:48,210 --> 00:43:51,810 junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy 570 00:43:52,710 --> 00:43:56,010 Eisenhower dismissed these critics as sanctimonious 571 00:43:56,310 --> 00:43:59,910 hypocritical bastards. but gloom 572 00:44:01,410 --> 00:44:03,510 He now commissioned a secret security review that was 573 00:44:03,810 --> 00:44:07,410 authored essentially by Paul Nitze, a furiously anti-communist 574 00:44:08,010 --> 00:44:10,410 Wall St. protege of James Forrestal. 575 00:44:11,010 --> 00:44:14,610 His report, the Gaither report, was devastating. And it was leaked 576 00:44:15,210 --> 00:44:19,110 apparently by Nitze himself to the Washington Post which wrote 577 00:44:19,710 --> 00:44:23,610 that it portrays a US in gravest danger in its history. 578 00:44:24,510 --> 00:44:28,110 In the best tradition of yellow press, the newspaper pictured the 579 00:44:28,710 --> 00:44:32,010 nation moving to the status of a second class power and 580 00:44:32,610 --> 00:44:35,310 urgently called for enormous increase in military spending 581 00:44:36,210 --> 00:44:38,910 from now through 1970. 582 00:44:40,110 --> 00:44:44,310 The publication of Nevil Schute's On The Beach in 1957, 583 00:44:44,910 --> 00:44:48,510 followed by an internationally popular movie, chillingly 584 00:44:49,110 --> 00:44:52,710 showed a handful of survivors of nuclear war waiting in 585 00:44:53,610 --> 00:44:56,910 Melbourne, Australia, the world's southern-most city for the 586 00:44:57,510 --> 00:45:00,810 fallout that had already wiped out the rest of humanity. 587 00:45:02,310 --> 00:45:05,910 Winston Churchill, now in retirement, was attending a party 588 00:45:06,210 --> 00:45:09,510 when asked if he would send a copy of the novel to Eisenhower. 589 00:45:10,410 --> 00:45:14,010 A one time ferocious cold war hero responded with despair: 590 00:45:14,910 --> 00:45:19,110 It would be a waste of money. He's so muddle-headed now I think 591 00:45:19,410 --> 00:45:23,610 the earth will soon be destroyed. And if I were the almighty 592 00:45:24,210 --> 00:45:29,910 I would not re-create it in case they destroyed him too the next time. 593 00:45:30,210 --> 00:45:35,010 After 2 heart attacks, Eisenhower still seemed a decent well meaning 594 00:45:35,310 --> 00:45:38,010 man but lost out of touch. 595 00:45:44,910 --> 00:45:49,710 Right under his nose in America's backyard in early 1959, Fidel Castro 596 00:45:50,310 --> 00:45:54,810 and his revolutionaries finally toppled Cuba's Batista dictatorship 597 00:45:55,110 --> 00:45:58,710 under which American business interests controlled over 80% of 598 00:45:59,010 --> 00:46:03,510 Cuba's resources. Castro said about redistributing land and 599 00:46:04,110 --> 00:46:07,410 reforming the education system. He seized large Cuban land 600 00:46:08,010 --> 00:46:11,610 holdings, and over a million acres from United Fruit and two 601 00:46:11,910 --> 00:46:15,210 other companies, offering compensation, which was rejected. 602 00:46:16,410 --> 00:46:20,610 Like many non-aligned 3rd world leaders, Castro accepted offers of 603 00:46:20,910 --> 00:46:26,610 Soviet aid. In april of 59, he visited the US and met briefly with 604 00:46:27,210 --> 00:46:31,710 vice-president Nixon who dismissed Castro as naive about communism and 605 00:46:32,310 --> 00:46:36,810 later supported his elimination. And when US and British oil 606 00:46:37,410 --> 00:46:41,910 companies refused to process Russian crude at their Cuban refineries 607 00:46:42,210 --> 00:46:46,110 Castro nationalized them and threatened to expropriate all American 608 00:46:46,410 --> 00:46:50,010 property on the island. Eisenhower announced a punishing trade 609 00:46:50,610 --> 00:46:54,510 embargo denying the Cuban people, among other things, markets for 610 00:46:55,310 --> 00:46:58,910 their sugar which the Soviets and Chinese offered to buy. 611 00:46:59,510 --> 00:47:03,110 The embargo would take a terrible toll, though it would be eased 612 00:47:03,410 --> 00:47:06,410 by US at the turn of the century, it would last for more than 613 00:47:06,710 --> 00:47:09,410 50 years and 10 administrations. 614 00:47:10,010 --> 00:47:13,310 Condemned repeatedly by a huge majority of the General Assembly 615 00:47:14,210 --> 00:47:20,210 in 2011, 186 nations were against it, 2 nations supported it: 616 00:47:20,810 --> 00:47:22,310 the US and Israel. 617 00:47:22,910 --> 00:47:28,010 In march 1960, Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to organize 618 00:47:28,610 --> 00:47:32,810 a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. 619 00:47:33,410 --> 00:47:36,710 This plan included the possibility of assasination. 620 00:47:37,610 --> 00:47:41,210 As a symbol to the rest of the world, Castro could not be allowed 621 00:47:41,510 --> 00:47:43,010 to succeed. 622 00:47:43,910 --> 00:47:47,810 The Belgian Congo had been infamously portrayed in Joseph Conrad's 623 00:47:48,410 --> 00:47:51,110 Heart of Darkness in the early part of the century. 624 00:47:52,010 --> 00:47:53,810 Nothing much had changed. 625 00:47:54,410 --> 00:48:00,410 When the Belgians left in 1960, new socialist premier Patrice Lumumba 626 00:48:01,010 --> 00:48:04,910 desperate for help, flew to Washington. But Eisenhower refused 627 00:48:05,510 --> 00:48:09,710 to see him. CIA chief Allen Dulles told Ike that Lumumba was 628 00:48:10,310 --> 00:48:13,910 an African Fidel Castro and persuaded him to authorize a plan 629 00:48:14,510 --> 00:48:17,210 to assasinate him. It was bungled. 630 00:48:17,810 --> 00:48:22,610 But as Congo descended into an anarchic civil war Lumumba was 631 00:48:23,210 --> 00:48:28,010 removed in January of 61 by army mutineers in the presence of 632 00:48:28,910 --> 00:48:33,410 Belgian officers. He was tortured and murdered. And quickly 633 00:48:34,010 --> 00:48:37,310 became a martyred nationalist hero to the 3rd world. 634 00:48:37,910 --> 00:48:40,010 The US was blamed by many. 635 00:48:40,910 --> 00:48:45,710 The CIA, abandoning the UN peace plan, backed Joseph Mobutu. 636 00:48:46,610 --> 00:48:50,210 Stealing billions of dollars in natural resources from the land 637 00:48:50,510 --> 00:48:54,110 as well as from his US supporters and slaughtering multitudes 638 00:48:54,710 --> 00:48:59,510 to preserve his power, Mobutu ruled for 3 decades as a 639 00:48:59,810 --> 00:49:05,510 billionaire dictator, and as the CIA's most trusted ally in Africa. 640 00:49:08,510 --> 00:49:13,610 In his remarkable farewell address of January 1961, Eisenhower 641 00:49:14,210 --> 00:49:19,010 seemed to understand the monstrosity he had created and seemed 642 00:49:19,610 --> 00:49:22,310 almost to be asking for absolution. 643 00:49:22,910 --> 00:49:26,510 We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of 644 00:49:27,110 --> 00:49:32,210 vast proportions. 3.5 million men and women are directly engaged 645 00:49:33,110 --> 00:49:34,610 in the defense establishment. 646 00:49:35,210 --> 00:49:40,310 The total influence -economic, political, even spiritual- is 647 00:49:40,610 --> 00:49:44,210 felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of 648 00:49:44,510 --> 00:49:47,210 the Federal government. In the councils of government, 649 00:49:47,810 --> 00:49:50,810 we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, 650 00:49:51,710 --> 00:49:55,610 whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. 651 00:49:56,510 --> 00:49:59,210 We must never let the weight of this combination endanger 652 00:49:59,510 --> 00:50:01,610 our liberties or democratic processes. 653 00:50:04,310 --> 00:50:07,910 Privately he told Allen Dulles: I leave a legacy of ashes 654 00:50:08,210 --> 00:50:11,810 to my successor. He was close to the truth. 655 00:50:12,410 --> 00:50:15,410 Aside from overthrowing foreign governments and intervening 656 00:50:15,710 --> 00:50:19,610 freely around the globe, it was Eisenhower who did more than 657 00:50:19,910 --> 00:50:24,110 anyone else to create the very military industrial complex 658 00:50:24,710 --> 00:50:29,510 he warned of. Under Ike, the US arsenal expanded from a little 659 00:50:30,110 --> 00:50:34,010 more than 1000 to over 22,000 nuclear weapons. 660 00:50:35,210 --> 00:50:38,210 And continuing into the 1960s he authorized more than 661 00:50:39,110 --> 00:50:43,010 30,000 weapons. Nuclear bombs were now the foundation of 662 00:50:43,610 --> 00:50:48,110 America's empire, and provided the new emperor, its president, 663 00:50:48,710 --> 00:50:51,710 with a mystical power that required more and more 664 00:50:52,310 --> 00:50:55,910 suffocating secrecy, even if those powers went far beyond 665 00:50:56,210 --> 00:50:58,310 the original limits of executive power 666 00:50:58,610 --> 00:51:00,710 defined in the constitution. 667 00:51:02,810 --> 00:51:05,810 And, although the bombs themselves were not expensive, the 668 00:51:06,110 --> 00:51:11,510 huge infrastructure was, requiring bases in the US and abroad 669 00:51:11,810 --> 00:51:15,110 and enormous delivery systems by bomber missile, 670 00:51:15,710 --> 00:51:18,110 aircraft carrier and submarine. 671 00:51:19,010 --> 00:51:22,010 Eisenhower additionally made it acceptable US policy 672 00:51:22,610 --> 00:51:24,710 to threaten nuclear attack. 673 00:51:26,510 --> 00:51:30,710 In a Life magazine interview in 1956 Dulles defending 674 00:51:31,010 --> 00:51:34,610 his policy of brinksmanship pointed to 3 different 675 00:51:34,910 --> 00:51:37,610 occasions where the administration had walked to the 676 00:51:38,210 --> 00:51:42,110 brink of nuclear war and forced the communists to back down: 677 00:51:43,310 --> 00:51:46,910 In Korea, Vietnam and the Formosa Straits. 678 00:51:47,810 --> 00:51:51,110 The US would actually do so again against the Soviets 679 00:51:51,710 --> 00:51:54,110 who also threatened to use their nuclear weapons during 680 00:51:55,010 --> 00:51:59,510 the Suez crisis of 1956, and once more in the crisis 681 00:52:00,110 --> 00:52:04,910 with China over the small islands Quemoy and Matsu in 1958. 682 00:52:06,410 --> 00:52:09,110 Eisenhower's successors in the white house have all 683 00:52:09,710 --> 00:52:12,710 followed his example in threatening America's perceived 684 00:52:13,310 --> 00:52:16,010 enemies if they didn't recede to its demands. 685 00:52:17,210 --> 00:52:20,210 Additionally, what is little known is that Eisenhower had 686 00:52:20,810 --> 00:52:24,110 delegated to theater commanders and other specified 687 00:52:24,410 --> 00:52:27,710 commanders the authority to launch a nuclear attack, if 688 00:52:28,610 --> 00:52:31,910 they believed it were mandated by circumstances, and 689 00:52:32,510 --> 00:52:34,310 were out of communication with the president. 690 00:52:35,210 --> 00:52:38,510 And with Eisenhower's approval, some of these commanders 691 00:52:38,810 --> 00:52:42,410 had in turn delegated the same authority to lower level 692 00:52:43,610 --> 00:52:46,910 officers. Thus, there were now dozens of fingers on 693 00:52:47,810 --> 00:52:50,510 the trigger at a time when there were no locking devices 694 00:52:50,810 --> 00:52:52,610 on nuclear weapons. 695 00:52:52,910 --> 00:52:55,010 General Turgidson, I find this very difficult to understand. 696 00:52:55,910 --> 00:52:58,310 I was under the impression that I was the only one in 697 00:52:58,610 --> 00:53:01,010 the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. 698 00:53:02,810 --> 00:53:03,710 Ah, that's right sir. 699 00:53:04,310 --> 00:53:07,010 You are the only person authorized to do so, and although 700 00:53:07,610 --> 00:53:10,910 I hate to judge before all the facts are in, it's 701 00:53:11,510 --> 00:53:13,610 beginning to look like general Ripper exceeded his 702 00:53:14,210 --> 00:53:15,110 authority. 703 00:53:15,410 --> 00:53:17,210 It certainly does, far beyond the point I would've 704 00:53:17,510 --> 00:53:18,410 imagined possible. 705 00:53:19,310 --> 00:53:22,310 Perhaps you're forgetting the provisions of Plan R, sir. 706 00:53:22,610 --> 00:53:23,510 Plan R? 707 00:53:23,810 --> 00:53:30,410 Plan R is an emergency war plan in which a lower echelon 708 00:53:30,710 --> 00:53:33,710 commander may order nuclear retaliation after a sneak attack 709 00:53:34,910 --> 00:53:37,910 if the normal chain of command has been disrupted. 710 00:53:38,510 --> 00:53:40,610 You approved it sir, you must remember. 711 00:53:47,510 --> 00:53:51,410 In august of 1960 Eisenhower approved an operational plan 712 00:53:51,710 --> 00:53:57,110 to launch a nuclear attack simultaneously on USSR and China 713 00:53:57,710 --> 00:53:59,810 within the first 24 hours of a war. 714 00:54:01,010 --> 00:54:03,710 The conservative estimate on the number of deads from US 715 00:54:04,010 --> 00:54:07,610 bombs and fallout was 600 million people, more than 716 00:54:08,210 --> 00:54:12,410 100 holocausts, much less the possibility of a nuclear 717 00:54:13,010 --> 00:54:16,310 winter across the globe that would have ended all life. 718 00:54:17,810 --> 00:54:21,110 In hindsight, Eisenhower presiding over the world's most 719 00:54:21,710 --> 00:54:25,910 powerful nation during perhaps the tensest extended period 720 00:54:26,510 --> 00:54:30,410 in its history, could have with bold action put the world 721 00:54:31,010 --> 00:54:32,510 on a different path. 722 00:54:33,110 --> 00:54:36,710 Signs eminating from Moscow indicated Kremlin was ready 723 00:54:37,010 --> 00:54:38,810 to change course. 724 00:54:39,410 --> 00:54:42,410 But because of ideology, political calculations, 725 00:54:43,010 --> 00:54:47,510 the exigencies of a militarized state and a limited 726 00:54:48,110 --> 00:54:52,310 imagination, Eisenhower repeatedly failed to seize 727 00:54:52,910 --> 00:54:54,710 the opportunities that emerged. 728 00:54:55,010 --> 00:54:57,110 Fathers make mistakes too, y'know, lots of them. 729 00:54:57,710 --> 00:54:59,510 In fact, it's easy for us to make mistakes because 730 00:55:00,110 --> 00:55:01,610 we're trying so hard to live up to the perfect picture 731 00:55:02,210 --> 00:55:03,410 you paint of us. 732 00:55:05,210 --> 00:55:07,010 You're just going to have learn that I'm just an 733 00:55:07,310 --> 00:55:09,410 ordinary human being, with a reasonable amount of 734 00:55:09,710 --> 00:55:13,010 intelligence, capable of handling most situations, 735 00:55:13,610 --> 00:55:17,510 but I'm not a superman. I can't bring about miracles. 736 00:55:18,410 --> 00:55:20,210 Just because I'm your father doesn't mean that I'm 737 00:55:20,510 --> 00:55:22,010 infallible. 738 00:55:22,610 --> 00:55:26,510 It's interesting to think that in 1953 when Eisenhower 739 00:55:26,810 --> 00:55:30,110 was becoming more of a cold war hero, his mentor 740 00:55:30,710 --> 00:55:34,610 general George Marshall became the only career military 741 00:55:35,210 --> 00:55:38,210 officer to be awarded the Nobel peace prize. 742 00:55:39,410 --> 00:55:43,310 Emphasizing the need for a better understanding of history 743 00:55:43,910 --> 00:55:45,710 and the causes of war, he said: 744 00:55:46,310 --> 00:55:49,010 A cost of war is constantly spread before me 745 00:55:49,610 --> 00:55:51,410 written neatly in many ledgers, 746 00:55:52,610 --> 00:55:55,010 whose columns are gravestones. 747 00:55:56,810 --> 00:55:59,810 Marshall, a conservative man who had lived through 748 00:56:00,110 --> 00:56:02,810 two world wars and a depression who, unlike many 749 00:56:03,710 --> 00:56:06,110 generals, rarely wore his medals in public and 750 00:56:06,710 --> 00:56:10,010 reportedly refused a large sum of money for his 751 00:56:10,910 --> 00:56:13,910 memoirs, stood till he died in 1959 752 00:56:14,510 --> 00:56:17,510 in a sort of respected but lonely grandeur 753 00:56:18,110 --> 00:56:20,210 still ostracized by many on the right for 754 00:56:20,810 --> 00:56:24,410 moderation in a time of zealotry, and a tolerance 755 00:56:25,010 --> 00:56:27,410 he was truly the embodiment of. 756 00:56:32,810 --> 00:56:35,510 There's no question the Eisenhower years are remembered 757 00:56:36,110 --> 00:56:37,910 as peaceful and prosperous. 758 00:56:44,510 --> 00:56:47,510 At a time when war with the Soviet union seemed 759 00:56:48,110 --> 00:56:50,510 quite possible, he certainly deserves credit for 760 00:56:51,710 --> 00:56:55,910 avoiding it. But, the inescapable truth is that 761 00:56:56,510 --> 00:56:59,210 the beloved Dwight Eisenhower put the world on a 762 00:56:59,810 --> 00:57:03,110 glide path towards annihilation by the most 763 00:57:03,710 --> 00:57:06,410 gargantuan expansion of military power in history 764 00:57:07,910 --> 00:57:10,910 and left the world a far more dangerous place than 765 00:57:11,510 --> 00:57:13,310 when he first took office. 766 00:57:14,210 --> 00:57:16,310 We stand ready to engage with any and all others 767 00:57:16,910 --> 00:57:21,410 in joint effort to remove the causes of mutual fear 768 00:57:21,710 --> 00:57:24,710 and distrust among nations, so as to make possible 769 00:57:25,310 --> 00:57:28,010 drastic reduction of armaments.