Retropod is sponsored by Tito's handmade vodka. Drink responsibly.

Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

If you've been keeping up with the news lately, you've no doubt heard about President Trump's cordial visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Given U.S. history with Russia and the former Soviet Union, you know, the Cold War, etc.,

meetings between the two countries are always fascinating and sometimes quite tense.

But back in 1941, a get-together that should have been fraught with

uneasiness didn't turn out that way, which is surprising given the participants, President

Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin. Truman despised communism.

In 1941, after Germany invaded Russia, the then U.S. senator said, quote,

if we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia.

And if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany.

And in that way, let them kill as many as possible.

Yikes.

In a letter to his mother and sister, Truman called the Soviets pig-headed and difficult to work with,

according to Sam Rishay in archivists at the Harry S. Truman Presidential

Library and Museum in Missouri. But at least one man was different in Truman's mind, and that

was Stalin. The Soviet Union's communist leader, a brutal, murderous dictator.

In July of 1945, as the nation's 33rd president, Truman traveled to Germany for the

Potsdam Conference to meet with Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to figure

out an end to World War II.

Truman wanted to get confirmation from Stalin that the Soviet Union would go to war against Japan.

This had the potential to go very badly.

...