The Cold War: What We Saw
20 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 6.7K ratingsNovember 9, 2019, is the 30th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down, freeing East Germany from communism, and marking the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. But when did the Cold War start? Why does it matter 30 years later? Find out in this ten-part series, transport back in time, feel what it was like to live through the end of the Cold War, and understand why that struggle was a battle for civilization itself. Bill Whittle narrates this compelling series about two competing ideologies battling for global supremacy in the ashes of World War 2.
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Episodes
A Pizza Hut Parade | Part 13
April 24, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 80.9 MBNixon 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 li...
The Liberators | Part 12
April 17, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBA change of commanders comes too late to reverse the situation in Southeast Asia as Richard Nixon's program of 'Vietnamization' eases America out of its worst-directed war. But long before the last American serviceman leaves Vietnam, a new generation of liberators rise to the challenge of saving American tactics, weaponry and doctrine from themselves. Thirty thousand feet above the Green Spot at Nellis Air Force Base, a loud, uncouth, unpleasant warrior / poet emerges. ...
From The Jaws Of Defeat | Part 11
April 10, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBMired not only in the jungles of Southeast Asia but, worse, mired in outdated, rigid doctrine, fossilized tactics, and declining morale, a light can be made out in the middle of America's darkest night. A swaggering fighter jock, married to a movie star, turns a demoralized, undertrained and under-led group of dispirited American flyers into a snarling Wolfpack that pulls off a supersonic ambush in one of the greatest military operations of all time. Meanwhile, on the ...
Welcome To The Suck | Part 10
April 03, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 64.1 MBYou stepped out of a big, air-conditioned silver bird, out into the kind of heat, sunlight and humidity that even Americans raised in the Deep South could not believe. You would wander around, wondering where your ground transport was, and what your barracks might be like, and once the immensity of the new reality fully hit, someone with more time in-country might notice your expression and mutter, "Hey man. Welcome to the suck." When USS Maddox came under attack from N...
Cloaks and Daggers | Part 9
March 27, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 81.9 MBWith the mechanisms of apocalypse firmly in place, both sides accelerate their efforts to determine the actual capabilities of the other. No detail is too insignificant: attempts are made to recover Soviet test warheads from the bottom of the ocean. By the time USS Triton circumnavigates the globe underwater, the full potential of the nuclear submarine as the preeminent weapon of the Cold War becomes apparent. And so the ever-increasing pressure to discover how many wa...
To The Precipice | Part 8
March 20, 2020 10:00 - 52 minutes - 45.4 MBFollowing the Bay of Pigs disaster, and a second crisis in Europe resulting in the deadly grey reality of the Berlin Wall, an over-confident Nikita Khrushchev decides to further test what the Soviets see as a weak and vacillating Kennedy administration. As US reconnaissance overflights of Cuba resume after a hiatus following the events at Playa Giron, analysts are shocked to discover rings of Russian-made surface-to-air missile installations. While these themselves pose ...
Playa Giron | Part 7
March 13, 2020 10:00 - 45 minutes - 40 MBHe had grown up a rich kid, believe it or not: the illegitimate son of a millionaire planter and a servant girl half his age. He was named "Truth," he was handsome and rugged, a 6'3" charismatic giant who had arrived back on his native shore with Che Guevara and handful of men on a leaky tub named "Granma." He faced off against Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama and lived to see the election of Donald Trump...
We Like Ike | Part 6
March 06, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 70.3 MBIn 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 leadi...
Death In The Kremlin | Part 5
February 28, 2020 11:00 - 45 minutes - 39.5 MBJoseph Stalin, the architect and instigator of the 42-year Cold War, has died five years into the conflict. Across the Atlantic, a new Republican President, who had worked closely with Uncle Joe during World War II, is a mere two months in office. As the knives come out for the succession fight inside the Kremlin, will a brief window of opportunity be enough to completely reset the conflict? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Forgotten War | Part 4
February 21, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 59.3 MBAlthough the entire Cold War passed without shots being fired between the two superpowers, the Cold War was anything but bloodless. The Korean conflict marked the beginning of proxy wars, regional conflicts backed by the full military might of both the United States and the Soviet Union. A brilliant amphibious landing turns the tide on the Korean Peninsula; meanwhile, America raises the stakes with a bomb so powerful it takes an atomic bomb to simply light the fuse. See...
The Thing Begins | Part 3
February 14, 2020 11:00 - 57 minutes - 50.5 MBSo now the board is set and the pieces are in place. In the East, the battle-hardened, seemingly endless divisions of the Red Army, backed by the ruthless and pitiless Joseph Stalin and his state-driven terror. In the West, the idealistic to the point of naïveté allies and their game-changing pika-dons, the nuclear flash-booms that had turned Stalin’s relentless ambition into a pillar of salt. As he tapped his unlit pipe and smoothed his iconic mustache, Stalin was sure ...
Two Bombs | Part 2
February 07, 2020 11:00 - 39 minutes - 34.1 MBAfter the defeat of Germany, Joseph Stalin looked at the pieces laid out on the board in front of him with satisfaction that bordered on glee. His Red Army, consisting of millions of battle-hardened troops, thousands of tanks and an equal number of artillery pieces had come to a halt — temporarily, thought Stalin — where they had encountered the British and American forces attacking from the West. Those forces, he knew, were no match for the sheer mass his Soviet Union ...
An Iron Curtain | Part 1
January 31, 2020 13:00 - 44 minutes - 38.6 MBWorld War III — the Apocalypse that never was — started in the same place that World War II in Europe had ended: Berlin. “An Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent,” said Winston Churchill, and that curtain ran right through the heart of Berlin. One the Eastern side, the collectivist, state-centered world of Joseph Stalin's communist ideology, armed to the teeth with conventional forces. On the other side — the Western side — a war-weary alliance of capitalist c...
Peter Robinson Interview - PLUS Episode 1 Sneak Peek
January 24, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBBefore "The Cold War: What We Saw" officially drops on Friday, January 31st, catch a sneak peek of the first five minutes of episode one, followed by a fascinating interview with host Bill Whittle and the man behind Ronald Reagan's famous "Tear Down This Wall" speech - Peter Robinson. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Cold War: What We Saw
January 16, 2020 21:45 - 2 minutes - 1.11 MBNovember 9, 2019, is the 30th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down, freeing East Germany from communism, and marking the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. But when did the Cold War start? Why does it matter 30 years later? Find out in this ten-part series, transport back in time, feel what it was like to live through the end of the Cold War, and understand why that struggle was a battle for civilization itself. Bill Whittle narrates this comp...
Magnificent Desolation | Part 4
July 20, 2019 13:00 - 1 hour - 86.6 MBNearly every single human with access to a TV set watched the blurry, almost surreal image of Neil Armstrong stepping live onto the surface of the moon. But after Apollo 11 returned to earth, we got an entirely different view of those first historic moments. Join us for the journey of Apollo 11, the seven Apollo Missions that followed, and decades of disappointments and shortfalls, crowned at last with a new hope for our future in space.Learn more about your ad choices. V...
In The Beginning...| Part 3
July 17, 2019 13:00 - 1 hour - 64.1 MBAs the Apollo program finally starts to take wings, learn how the entire program, and everything it accomplished, was actually NASA's backup plan.From a fire during a routine test to Christmas messages from the far side of the moon, see how the Apollo Program got to that one giant leap of Apollo 11 with a series of very small steps, and missteps.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. ...
The Clock is Running and We're Underway! | Part 2
July 15, 2019 13:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBFour satellite launches into the Space Race, and the score—in terms of pounds put into orbit—is Communism, 1300; Capitalism, 33. And the humiliations keep on coming. Playing it safe, America loses a chance to put the first man in space. Instead, they opt to fly a steely-eyed missile chimp. The Russians knock a grand slam homer out of the park as Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin does on the first manned mission what it would take America three more launches to accomplish. In history...
We Choose to Go to the Moon | Part 1
July 13, 2019 09:10 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBTake a front seat ride in the Apollo Lunar Module as it makes its historic descent and avoids a near catastrophe unfolding behind the scenes. Then travel back to a time before the Space Race, to the America of cowboys and Indians, to understand how all of America’s small steps led us to the one giant leap.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Apollo 11: What We Saw
July 02, 2019 17:58 - 1 minute - 506 KBOn July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The mission that got them there, Apollo 11, was the culmination of the nation's decade-long cultural and scientific fascination with outer space. In this four-part series, transport back in time, and understand what Apollo 11 felt like to the millions of Americans who lived through it.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...