We Like Ike | Part 6

The Cold War: Prelude To The Present

The Daily Wire

Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2020

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the years after World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower was arguably the most popular man on the planet. Ike’s prestige was so immense that in 1948, President Harry S Truman offered him the top slot on the 1948 Democratic ticket, with the offer to revert to his former position as Vice President under Eisenhower. It wasn’t enough. But by 1952, a Draft Eisenhower committee threw an enormous rally: thousands of screaming fans, movie stars, and Irving Berlin himself leading the crowd in a rendition of God Bless America… all of this for a man who wasn’t even there. Finally persuaded, General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower, facing a brace of unknown Soviet leaders named Malenkov and Khrushchev. But no one — not even those who had so strongly lobbied for him — were prepared for the anti-military, anti-war statements and policies from the man who had been assumed to be the fiercest of Cold Warriors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Joseph Stalin, architect of the 42-year-long conflict notice the Cold War, was dead.
0:07.9	Five years had passed since this strange World War III had begun, but on March 1, 1953,
0:13.6	the instigator of it all had been found on the floor of his dacha, soaked in his own urine,
0:18.6	and died five days later.
0:20.6	Stalin had faced off against Truman, but died a mere 40 days after Eisenhower's election.
0:26.2	Eisenhower would go on to face cruise ship.
0:28.5	It would in turn face Kennedy, but for most of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, his
0:32.7	Soviet opponent would be Leonid Brezhnev, a faceless, unimposing secretary who would
0:37.9	depose Khrushchev in a palace coup.
0:41.5	Brezhnev would then face Nixon, then Ford, then Carter.
0:45.2	Ronald Reagan would begin his two-term still-facing Brezhnev, whose 18 years in power was second
0:50.2	only to Stalin himself.
0:52.4	But when Brezhnev died in 1982, early in Reagan's first term, Reagan found himself against
0:57.6	Yuri Andropov for little over a year, and then Constantine Chernyenko for a mere 13 months.
1:04.2	Then came Gorbachev, a communist true believer like all of his predecessors, but one who'd
1:08.8	had no choice but to try to loosen the bonds of fear, suspicion, and corruption that anchored
1:14.3	the Soviet Union while the United States roared into the information age.
1:19.1	But Reagan would not be in office when the Soviet Empire collapsed, that final milestone
1:23.9	would be marked by President Bush.
1:26.6	The four decades of the Cold War would contain six of the seven leaders of the Soviet Union,
1:32.0	Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Dropov, Chernyenko, and Gorbachev.
1:37.7	Only Lenin missed the Cold War.
	...

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