A COLD WAR

By 1881, on the eve of the start of the Zionist Jewish influx, Palestine’s population was 457,000—about 400,000 of them Muslims, 13,000–20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox). In addition, there were several thousand more Jews who were permanent residents of Palestine but not Ottoman citizens. The overwhelming majority of the population was Arab, about 70 percent rural. Most of the Jews and Christians lived in Jerusalem.

But then foreign Jews started buying land in Palestine. When the first Jews started to arrive from Russia, the governor of Jerusalem was ordered to bar Russian, Rumanian, and Bulgarian Jews from landing in Jaffa and Haifa. The following year he was instructed to stop the sale of state lands to Jews, even if they were Ottoman citizens. But they kept coming anyway.

Many of the Zionists had been lead to believe the land was mostly empty. Many people believe that still today. Of the Palestinians, many Zionists believed they were "primitive, dishonest, fatalistic, lazy, savage". The Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky, in 1914 wrote:

"We must not forget that we are dealing here with a semi-savage people...."

The cause of the Zionists was supported by certain Western leaders, especially those who were Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus.

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The idea of Jews returning to Palestine had been around since they were evicted by the Romans, but in a modern sense it really started to take shape in the late 19th century after the pogroms in Russia. On this podcast we talk about the vision some of the early proponents of Zionism had, including Leo Pinsker, Moses Hess, and Theodor Herzl.

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Although you may not think of Israel as part of the Cold War paradigm, it’s played such a huge role in American foreign policy, and we have to cover it. It’s also played, and continues to play, a huge role in the story of oil, which is, of course, a huge part of the Cold War story. Because, as you know, the Cold War was all about economics. In this episode, we give a quick overview of anti-Semitism and the creation of the State of Israel. In our next episodes we're going to go deep into the story of Zionism.

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Kim's "invasion" of the South gave the US the pretext they needed to ramp up military spending via NSC-68 and to support Rhee directly and indirectly by committing one of the classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Admiral Forrest Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, declared later: ‘I was fully aware of the hazards involved in fighting Asiatics on the Asiatic mainland, which is something that, as a naval officer, I have grown up to believe should be avoided if possible."

But they did it anyway.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 83 was pushed through - the Soviet Union did not veto it because it was still boycotting the Security Council - and Truman immediately decided to throw everything he had at Korea, shocking not just the Koreans, the Soviet and the Chinese, but also the British.

Truman call it a "police action", a phrase he would later regret.

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WWII had created a strong US economy, mostly for military spending coming out of the public treasury.

Lots of industrialists made a fortune during that period.

And it was going away after the war.

In the aftermath of World War II, US armed forces had not merely been reduced – they had been allowed to crumble to the brink of collapse.

Truman's new Defense Secretary, Louis Johnson, had cut the military to the bone.

It makes sense that they needed to find a way to keep the country on a war footing in the absence of a real war.

Korea - and NSC-68 - provided

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Americans were told that the invasion by North Korea was a total surprise. It was positioned as another Pearl Harbour. But this isn’t exactly true. They must have known it was coming and when it was coming. They just chose to ignore it. Why? Who stood to benefit from the invasion?

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In the South, despite claims of "freedom", the US administration shut down the KPR, the ‘Korean People’s Republic’, a popular political party lead by Yo Un-hyung, and closed down the most prominent Seoul newspaper that was sympathetic to the KPR. Meanwhile the free market introduced in the South lead to a 3000% spike in rice prices as people engaged in speculation and profiteering. So the US then cancelled the free market. The UN decided to have a nationwide vote for a new government of Korea. The North and other parties refused to participate until after unification, but the vote proceeded anyway. And the constant skirmishes on the 38th parallel finally lead to war - but who started it is still debated to this very day.

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Meanwhile in the North, the Soviets chose Kim Il Sung to be their hand-picked President. Unlike Rhee, who had spent most of the last 35 years of Japanese occupation chilling in Hawaii, Kim had spent his life fighting the Japanese occupation, first as a guerrilla, then as a Major in the Soviet Red Army. But the actual architect of the North Korean state was Soviet General Terentii Shtykov.

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In the early hours of June 25, 1950, North Korean forces attacked across the 38th parallel that divided the country into a pro-Western regime in the south and a pro-Soviet regime in the north.

It officially kicked off the first major conflict of the Cold War.

The Korean War.

According to Paul M Edwards, the founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of the Korean War in Missouri:

"Whether intentional or not, America’s history of misunderstandings, misjudgments, misdirections, denials, and bold-faced lies to Americans and others, has greatly weakened the memory of the Korean War , and led to the loss of many of the significant lessons it might well have taught us."

According to Bruce Cumings, former chair of the history department at the University of Chicago:

"Least known to Americans is how appallingly dirty this war was, with a sordid history of civilian slaughters amid which our ostensibly democratic ally was the worst offender, contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists."

On our first episode about the Korean War we delve into the background of the guy who was hand-picked by the United States to be the first President of South Korea: Syngman Rhee.

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As part of their plan to re-build Germany, the USA secretly released a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, printed in New York, to replace the old Reichsmark. Frustrated at how the US, UK and France were re-building their zones of Germany without first reaching an agreement with the USSR, on June 24 1948, Stalin erected a physical blockade (or, as he preferred to call it, "a defensive measure") around West Berlin to prevent all traffic from Trizonia from entering into the city. The response of the US/UK was a massive airlift - an incredibly bold move, basically threatening Stalin to shoot their planes down and start another war. Luckily he chose not to do that, and instead backed down and ended the blockade. Meanwhile, Truman signed National Security Council document No. 30 (NSC-30) officially known as the "United States Policy on Atomic Warfare” - which made it official that the US would continue to use nuclear weapons as part of their arsenal.

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