Professor Campbell Craig is the Professor of International Relations at Cardiff University.

He has held senior fellowships at Yale University, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the European University Institute, and, most recently, at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol, and has given invited lectures at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Chicago, Columbia, Cambridge, Sciences-Po, the Free University of Berlin, the London School of Economics, University of Copenhagen, and other universities.

His most recent books are The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (with Sergey Radchenko), and America’s Cold War: the Politics of Insecurity (with Fredrik Logevall).

 A month after the opening of the second front, the Roosevelt administration organized a conference on postwar economic planning in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at which American officials set up institutions designed to open up free trade around the world and to promote industrial development in former European colonies.
It was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.
It’s known as the Bretton Woods Conference.
And it was a major turning point in the global economy.

Roosevelt and Churchill had their first war summit meeting in Casablanca in January 1943.
The first Big Three conference was held in Tehran, Iran in November 1943. It turned out to be the most important summit of the war. In four days of meetings, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin debated the second-front question and hashed out the basic outline of a postwar European order.

We start in August 1942. Churchill is still in Moscow, getting down with Uncle Joe. Stalin accuses the British of being a bunch of pussies, too scared to fight the big bad Nazis.
To try to break up the UK/USA/USSR love nest, the Nazis dig up 3000 dead bodies of Polish generals (Katyn massacre) and lay the blame on the Soviets who deny it (but their fingers are crossed behind their backs). And Stalin dissolves the Comintern, pretending, for the moment, that he has no intention of trying to spread Communism any further around the globe.

Our guest today is Dr Peter Ellyard, a futurist, strategist, speaker and author living in Melbourne, Australia. He is known for his unique perspectives on global trends and emerging global markets. He talks to us about the role that “planetism” and the rising global middle class has on the future of the species and preventing future global wars.

You can read more about Peter here or order his books here.

In June 1941, the UK, USA and USSR slowly started to come together to defeat Germany and Japan. The Grand Alliance is often called the “Strange Alliance” because it united the world’s greatest capitalist state, the greatest communist state and the greatest colonial power.

In this episode we talk about the non-aggression pact signed between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939, known as the Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact, and then how Hitler decided to terminate it in 1941 when he launched a surprise invasion on the USSR, known as “Operation Barbarossa”. We also talk a little of the history of Poland, The Munich Agreement, and Stalin’s fondness for a good tune.

Today’s episode starts off with part 4 of our series on economics, where we look at the role of the media, and then launches into Stalin’s “Great Terror”. And we finish answering a question from a listener about Brexit.

Our first guest on the Cold War series is Doug La Follette, Secretary of State of Wisconsin!

Here’s some background.

– Doug is the Secretary of State of Wisconsin a position to which he was first elected in 1974!
– And he’s been the SoS pretty much ever since then, with a short break for a few years in the late 70s.
– Doug’s a member of the La Follette political dynasty.
– He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marietta College, a Master of Science in chemistry from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University.
– Doug was known as an environmentalist before running for public office, and was an organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970.
– He is the author of the book The Survival Handbook: A Strategy for Saving Planet Earth.
– He has also served on the board of directors of Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Sierra Club.
– And he was a Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar in 2003.
– And finally – he’s a very old friend of Sir J. David Markham.

If you aren’t already a subscriber, you’ll need to join thousands of other Cold War Heroes and register to listen to our premium episodes.

Part 3 of our three-part series on economics and war, where we drill down into the various ways companies profiteer from war and how it stimulates the economy via “Military Keynesianism”. 

To summarise the last three episodes, here are some of the main ways war is good for business:
1. It’s good for companies selling weapons, both to their own country and to other countries, funded by tax dollars.
2. It’s good for companies selling other goods required during and after a war, including everything from food and clothing to reconstruction efforts – also funded by tax dollars.
3. It’s good for companies who want to gain access to undeveloped markets with new sources of natural resources and cheap labour.
4. It’s good for companies who want to lock up control of export markets that they can sell their goods and services to.
5. It’s good for companies who use war to get primary technological research done (and paid for by the taxpayers) that then makes its way into the hands of corporations.