In 1963, A Stuttering, Nebbish Magazine Editor Negotiated a Secret Deal Between JFK and Khrushchev, Averting Nuclear War

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the editor of the Saturday Review for more than thirty years, Norman Cousins had a powerful platform to shape American public debate during the height of the Cold War. Although he was a low-key, nebbish figure, under Cousins's leadership, the magazine was considered one of the most influential in the literary world and his advocacy on nuclear disarmament affect world politics ( his 1945 anti-nuclear essay “Modern Man is Obsolete” was read by over 40 million).
Cousins was respected by both JFK and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev, whom he visited at his vacation home on the Black Sea. As such, he met with both and passed messages between the two, getting involved in several secret citizen diplomacy missions during the height of the Cold War. He even played a major role in getting the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed. He also wrote JFK's famous 1963 American University commencement speech ("not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."

Today’s guest is Allen Pietrobon, author of Norman Cousins: Peacemaker in the Atomic Age
Cousins was much more important than we realize: he may very well have averted nuclear war.

Transcript

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0:00.0	After the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people from all walks of life
0:10.0	wrote about the sense of fear that settled on them, that something fundamental had changed
0:15.4	in warfare, and it wasn't a good thing.
0:17.6	Robert Lewis, the Inelegate's co-pilot, wrote in his flight log, my god, what have we
0:22.4	done?
0:23.4	Back in the United States, Norman Cousins, who was editor of the popular magazine Saturday
0:28.3	review, rushed to write an editorial.
0:30.6	He penned a column called Modern Man Is Obsolete, and said that in the blink of an eye, weapons
0:35.4	technology had advanced by centuries, but mankind was still fundamentally the same.
0:40.4	As long as this gap existed, humanity was moving unavoidably toward extinction.
0:46.1	It still had a caveman mind, but had weapons that harness the power of the sun.
0:50.2	This column went on to be read by more than 40 million people, and it shaped many of the
0:54.3	fears of the Cold War, as the arms race began and then heated up between the United States
0:59.0	and the Soviet Union.
1:00.4	Unless something changed, a nuclear apocalypse was going to happen.
1:04.2	Although Norman Cousins was only a magazine editor and a nebush low-key one at that, he
1:09.5	used his position and power to develop friendships with the who's who of the mid-20th century,
1:14.7	including Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, White Eisenhower, and later JFK, and even Soviet
1:20.2	Premier Nikita Kruzchev.
1:22.0	He was a tireless advocate of nuclear disarmament, and he did such things as fundraise for a group
1:27.0	of Japanese women who were disfigured in the atomic bomb droppings to come in the United
1:31.0	States and receive medical treatment and reconstructive surgery.
	...

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