A COLD WAR

The next US unit to face the North Koreans was the 34th infantry - 1981 men, but still no tanks, no anti-tank weapons. Did the US learn from their first disaster in Korea? Meanwhile, on 10 July, Dougie Mac was formally appointed Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command - despite the UN wanting someone else for the job. A US General gets captured by the North Koreans… and learns to like kimchi.

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The first US troops to engage the North Koreans was “Task Force Smith” as the Battle of Osan. They were sent in there by MacArthur to deliver “an arrogant display of strength.” It was a complete disaster.

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MacArthur recommends “the full utilization” of the US military to Korea and Truman approves. Although the UK was completely and utterly broke, they agreed to get involved, even though privately they didn’t buy the American claim that Kim’s was taking orders from Moscow. And they were worried that the Americans might want to drop another atomic bomb. According to one senior US military officer: “All those officers, those generals: they really thought that they were going to go over there and ‘stop the g—ks’.”

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Gen Douglas MacArthur, the “American Caesar”, was a rabid Christian who believed it was his personal mission in life to crush communism and help the United States dominate world affairs. A complete narcissist, he enjoyed the company of prostitutes and sycophants, and ran Japan like a shogun. By 1950, he was 70 years old.

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Back to the Korean War. We start with a quick re-cap of previous episodes to remind us what happened. After the North attacked the South on June 25, 1950, the US pulled together a coalition (of sorts) of countries to defend the South, lead by 70-year-old General Douglas MacArthur. Truman told the British prime minister, Clement Attlee, “The only way to meet communism is to eliminate it.”

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We're joined by Richard Lim from the "This American President" podcast to talk about Truman and his Cold War decisions. It gets a little... tense.

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John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles personified the “Soviets As Evil” mindset. They were the classic examples of the American Cold War paradigm. Upper class political blue bloods, fundamentalist Christians, who were big business lawyers, hated Communism, and who set out to remake the map of the world.

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Beetle Smith’s last act as CIA director is to come up with the idea of a CIA “Murder Board”. After Eisenhower is elected POTUS, the new CIA director is Allen Dulles, brother of the new Sec of State, John Foster Dulles.

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In 1951, the CIA spent $100 million buying arms and ammunition to support 200,000 Chinese anti-communist guerrillas who were going to fight against Mao. The only problem was - the guerrillas didn’t exist. Then, to counter the rising problem of double agents in their ranks, the CIA set up secret torture prisons in Germany, Japan, and Panama. It was in Panama that the CIA started Project Artichoke.

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In 1951, the CIA’s budget was ballooning out of control to fund it’s massive covert operations which were all complete disasters. But they were secret disasters, so nobody, not even Congress or the President, let alone the general public, ever heard about most of them. While the CIA happily sent thousands of Koreans and Chinese agents to their deaths, they reported back to Washington that everything was going exactly to plan.

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