Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

Benn Steil is an American economist, author of a great new book on “The Marshall Plan”, and senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

* Fission involved breaking apart the nuclei of heavy elements like uranium or plutonium.* Fusion involves forcing the nuclei of lighter elements, like hydrogen or deuterium, together.* And deuterium, which is basically heavy hydrogen, is far easier to get your hands on than uranium.* But there’s still not a ton of it.* There is one […]

* President Roosevelt responded to Einstein’s letter by setting up the Advisory Committee on Uranium under Lyman J. Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards.* Side note: his daughter Isabel would eventually marry Clarence Myers and go on to generate the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator with her mother.* Which is complete bullshit BTW.* The committee […]

* In 1913, H. G. Wells wrote a book called The World Set Free* The novel begins: “The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. . . . Always down a lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more.”* […]

* The Potsdam declaration on Japan was tricky.* It was drafted while Churchill was still PM.* In fact it was probably one of the last things he did as PM.* But it was signed by Attlee.* Stalin had to be involved, but he couldn’t sign it because the U.S.S.R. was still technically under a non-agression […]

* Episode 69.* Ray’s favourite number.* Have you actually had one yet, Ray?* Sister in law?* Truman had given his final approval to the plan to invade Kyushu, the southern most island of Japan, just two weeks before leaving for Potsdam.* A Russian invasion of Manchuria and Korea figured prominently in the grand strategy that […]

Well the election result shocked everyone.  And the rest of the contingent at Potsdam weren’t very happy about it either.  We might think that the Soviets would be please to be dealing with a British government made up of socialists.  But that wasn’t the case.  Stalin didn’t like Attlee or the British Labour Party.  Despite […]

Attlee was Churchill’s lame duck deputy PM.  In fact he was the first Deputy PM the UK ever had.  I didn’t realise this, but in the UK the role of the Deputy PM isn’t like you’d expect, like it is in Australia or like the Vice-President in the USA.  The Deputy PM doesn’t take over […]

Stalin arrived in Potsdam a day late. Claimed he had a small heart attack. Might have been a ruse. It gave the others a day to take a tour of Berlin on July 16 and see the destruction first hand. During the first week of the conference, everyone was jubilant, having won the war – but Truman quickly […]

Prof Michael Neiberg is Chair of War Studies and Professor of History, Department of National Security and Strategy, US Army War College. He has also written a number of excellent books on the First World War  – as well as the book we are talking about today – Potsdam: The End of World War II […]