A Pizza Hut Parade | Part 13

The Cold War: Prelude To The Present

The Daily Wire

Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2020

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nixon goes to China and in a masterstroke of diplomacy turns a two-power Cold War into three-power triangular diplomacy, giving the United States the leverage for Détente, a chance for a soft landing for the Cold War in the 1970s. But Watergate destroys not only the Nixon administration; it reduces American morale and determination to its lowest point during the entire conflict. The Soviet perception of American weakness leads to their invasion of Afghanistan, and the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon unleashed in a picturesque German town named Fulda. And then, seemingly overnight, the situation reverses itself: engaged in their own quagmire in Afghanistan, mired in the Brezhnev Stagnation, and plagued by an embarrassing series of fossilized leaders, the Soviets fall ever farther behind. And across the Atlantic, America's oldest President brings youthful vigor, renewed optimism and unprecedented resolve to a dying national identity, and decides on a plan to resolve the forty-year running stalemate and end the Cold War with a win. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It is an absolutely charming little town.
0:08.6	It streets tidy and its small square beautifully painted.
0:12.2	Its basilica is the final resting place of St. Bonneface, the patron saint of Germany.
0:17.6	Located nearly dead center of the German nation, the town itself has passed largely into
0:22.1	obscurity, but during the Cold War, this was the closest West German town to the extreme
0:27.6	southwestern tip of communist East Germany, just beside the narrow waste of the German
0:33.4	Federal Republic.
0:35.8	A communist invasion from this area would have the smallest distance to cover to cut West
0:40.6	Germany in half and what's more, the small storybook German town lies in the relatively
0:46.1	flat terrain needed for a lightning fast armored attack from the East.
0:51.9	Just beyond it lay the massive NATO installation at Reinhman Air Force Base and the key West
0:56.8	German city of Frankfurt.
1:00.0	This picturesque little German town is named Fulde.
1:03.9	And if the end of the world were to arrive, this is almost certainly where it would begin.
1:26.8	The late one night, well to the north of Fulde in the central German planes, East German
1:47.0	troops backed by red army units and elite forces from the rest of the Warsaw Pact would cross
1:52.5	the border into West Germany, but this was merely a faint, a false attack designed to
1:57.5	draw off and tie up the much more limited conventional resources at the West.
2:02.3	A few hours later, the real attack would begin, a massive, overwhelming, conventional
2:07.7	assault out of the extreme southwestern tip of communist East Germany, and its immediate
2:12.8	objective would be what became known as the Fulde Gap, a relatively narrow choke point
2:18.0	of flatland providing a twin forked pathway into West Germany.
	...

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