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FULL MOVIES ENGLISH SUB (2026) - FULL | Reelshort
#drama #cdrama #romantic #love #movie #shortdrama #showhots #2026
FULL MOVIES ENGLISH SUB (2026) - FULL | Reelshort
#drama #cdrama #romantic #love #movie #shortdrama #showhots #2026
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Short filmTranscript
00:01August 6th, 1945.
00:05An American B-29 bomber took off from the island of Tinian at 2.45 a.m. local time.
00:13As they approach the target area, the weapon is checked for the last time.
00:21At 8.15 a.m., the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
00:28The Second World War had entered its terrifying endgame.
00:34At stake was the future of the world.
00:38In the coming atomic age, which nations would serve as pawns?
00:45And which nations would have a seat at the post-war table?
00:54World War II was a conflict of immeasurable scale.
00:59A total war, laying waste to entire nations and changing the world forever.
01:06From this devastation, new powers would emerge.
01:10Allies would become enemies.
01:13And an iron curtain would fall across Europe.
01:17A fragile peace would be threatened by a new kind of conflict.
01:22As two major superpowers vied for supremacy.
01:27Once again, the world stood on the brink.
01:31How did this come to pass?
01:34How did the Cold War emerge?
01:37From the endgame of World War II.
01:50The end of the Second World War threw the world into chaos.
01:55Amidst the rubble of the old order, uncertainty reigned.
02:01Would the world enter a period of international cooperation?
02:05Or yet another rivalry between great nations?
02:08And what would be the decisions that tipped the balance?
02:13History generally tends to be multi-causal.
02:17And if we claim that only one thing caused the Cold War,
02:20we're looking for trouble because in reality it's always a combination of things.
02:25Peace came at a price for millions of people across Europe and Asia.
02:30As the post-war manoeuvres of victorious nations established a new order of global superpowers.
02:38It's an action-reaction type situation.
02:41The Soviets do something, the Americans react.
02:44The Americans do something, the Soviets react.
02:48In this charged atmosphere, power was found in military strength.
02:54Geographical control and ideological influence.
02:58Setting the stage for the US and Soviet Union to emerge as key players in a Cold War of their
03:07own making.
03:17With the defeat of Germany in May 1945, the Allies were able to turn their full attention to the ongoing
03:26war in the Pacific.
03:28Battle weary and with waning resources, the Japanese recognise their increasingly precarious position in the face of Allied strength.
03:42But they were not yet defeated.
03:51Crucially for the Western Allies, once Nazi Germany was defeated, they obviously wanted to bring the war against Japan to
03:58a close as quickly as possible.
04:01The Western Allies recognised that the Soviet Union had a role to play in ending the war in the Pacific,
04:08owing to its strategic location.
04:13Within air range of Japan, the Soviet Union offered a way into Manchuria and Korea.
04:21And the proximity allowed for submarine operations against the Japanese Navy.
04:26Stalin understood that in order to really have any say in the post-war settlement in East Asia, he better
04:35be in military control of parts of northern China and indeed parts of Japan.
04:40Roosevelt had made territorial concessions in the far east, the southern Sakhalin island, which had belonged to Japan, and likewise
04:49the Kuril Islands, and also the occupation of North Korea.
04:54And in return for that, Stalin was prepared to declare war on Japan and help liberate China.
05:02In 1945, a number of key events caused a shift in the US position, ultimately shaping the end game of
05:11World War II.
05:15By March, the US had taken the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese.
05:21This led to the Battle of Okinawa and the significant losses to the Japanese Navy.
05:28And by April, the US had a new president in Harry Truman, following the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
05:40Now gaining traction in the Pacific theater, the new leadership was less convinced about the need for Soviet involvement in
05:48order to end the war.
05:51Truman did not want to be in debt to the Soviets, but he needed something more than victory in Iwo
05:57Jima to avoid calling on their help.
06:04There can be no peace in the world until the military power of Japan is destroyed.
06:14By July, Truman had an ace up his sleeve and was confident he could end the war without relying on
06:21the Soviet Union.
06:23Backed by government and military support since 1942, a secret, US-run program undertook a comprehensive approach to atomic weapons
06:34research.
06:35In the race to arm themselves against the threat of enemy forces, present and future.
06:43This was the Manhattan Project.
06:47That it consisted of dozens and dozens of scientists, and only a few of them were actually American.
06:54These scientists came from Germany, had fled Germany during World War II.
06:59They came from Denmark, from Sweden, they came from all over the world.
07:10We know that as long as men are free to ask what they will, science will never regress.
07:16Freedom itself will never be wholly lost.
07:21Headed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project changed the world forever by successfully producing the first atomic
07:31bomb.
07:35The whole reason for the U.S. Manhattan Project was because there was a huge concern that Hitler and Hitler's
07:43Germany were acquiring the bomb.
07:48And Albert Einstein himself warned President Roosevelt that the Germans could be acquiring a bomb and that it was high
07:57time for the United States to enter into its own effort to acquire an atomic bomb.
08:04The complex work of developing the technology took place over three years in purpose-built industrial plants at Oak Ridge,
08:13Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford in Washington State.
08:19But after years of work, the true capabilities of atomic weapons remained unknown.
08:25The United States knew that it would have to test this atomic weapon to understand exactly what the power would
08:34be, how much damage would be caused.
08:37Frankly, whether or not the thing would go off at all.
08:42And so they chose the desert mountainous areas in New Mexico as the place to test the bomb.
08:53The first test was scheduled for July 16, 1945.
08:59Project leaders J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves observed the test from different locations.
09:09So if one was killed, the other could carry on the work.
09:26Once the successful test took place at the Trinity site, it was quickly understood that in fact this was a
09:33weapon that could be usable in war.
09:36This new weapon had the potential to change the nature of war completely.
09:41And for now, only the United States possessed it.
09:46President Truman, understanding the portent of this nuclear bomb, he decided that it should be used and he decided that
09:56it should be used as a way to really stop the war with Japan as quickly as possible.
10:03If Truman could defeat the Japanese without Soviet support, he would not have to contend with Stalin's demands around the
10:12future of post-war Japan.
10:19The day after the successful testing of the atomic bomb, Truman attended the Potsdam conference, emboldened by the knowledge of
10:28his secret weapon and the weakening position of the Japanese military.
10:34One of the great set pieces of the conference at Potsdam is that this is the moment that Truman will
10:41inform Stalin that they have the atom bomb.
10:44Stalin doesn't bat an eyelash. He just says wonderful news.
10:47And I hope you use it to great success to win the war. So Stalin doesn't look surprised.
10:54The Soviets had spies, you know, in the Manhattan Project. They had them in Britain as well.
11:00And understood that nuclear weapons were coming.
11:04So he probably knew stories of the atom bomb before Truman.
11:10The Potsdam conference, which was held after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was the last gathering of the big three.
11:17But by this point, the big three was no longer the same personalities.
11:22With Roosevelt's death in April 1945, his successor Truman could not develop the same level of rapport with Stalin as
11:34FDR had.
11:35In Potsdam, this newly configured big three settled on a plan for victory in the Pacific and what role the
11:43Soviet Union would play in this final campaign.
11:46We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole.
11:55Truman signed the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, along with Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.
12:04Demanding Japan's immediate and unconditional surrender.
12:12Although present at the conference, Stalin did not sign the declaration because the Soviet Union had not yet declared war
12:19on Japan.
12:22On the same day the Potsdam Declaration was signed, there was another allied power leadership change, this time in Britain.
12:33After an unexpected defeat at the general election, Winston Churchill was replaced as prime minister by Labour leader Clement Attlee.
12:41Now, a lot of people thought Churchill was going to win, the great war leader.
12:47But then as the votes start coming in, it becomes clear at Potsdam that indeed it's going to be a
12:53landslide for Labour.
12:55It shows that the country is ready for a new policy to face new world conditions.
13:02And Churchill actually sort of has to get up and leave.
13:05And all this played into Stalin's hands because it meant he was the only continuity leader from the Second World
13:13War.
13:14Stalin was no longer dealing with Churchill, he was no longer dealing with Roosevelt.
13:19He was dealing with two new heads of state who he felt he could mould to his will.
13:34This dramatic electoral swing in Britain was symbolic of the global post-war landscape.
13:41Huge shifts in politics, technology and culture were reshaping societies around the world.
13:521945 would prove to be one of the most momentous years in world history.
13:58And the biggest story was yet to come.
14:05As the fighting in the Pacific ground on, it became clear to the Western allies that victory could only be
14:13won at a tremendous and devastating cost.
14:19Fighting against the Japanese had convinced us that the Japanese would fight to the last person.
14:28And for their emperor and for their nation.
14:32American military planners had assessed America could lose up to a million casualties storming the Japanese mainland.
14:40Truman decided that it was in an ironic way to save lives.
14:44This was the main argument that he has written about and why he decided to use the bomb in war.
14:55On August 6th, the American B-29 Superfortress aircraft, known as the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
15:06in Japan.
15:20The bomb destroyed the city and killed as many as 80,000 people instantly.
15:27Many more subsequently died of radiation poisoning.
15:38On August 8th, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.
15:43This was a surprise to the Japanese, who had asked Stalin to mediate between Japan and the United States.
15:53The Soviets invaded Manchuria the next day.
15:59But there was an even bigger shock for Japan ahead.
16:04On August 9th, three days after Hiroshima was bombed, and the same day the Soviets invaded...
16:13...U.S. forces dropped an atomic bomb on another Japanese city.
16:20Nagasaki.
16:25The dropping of the atomic bomb really was an enormous watershed moment on so many levels.
16:34The bomb annihilated everything within a one-mile radius.
16:43An estimated 40,000 people were killed that day.
16:49With tens of thousands more dying later from injury and poisoning as a result.
17:01In the face of overwhelming Allied power, the Japanese leadership had few remaining options.
17:07This is the Emperor of Japan having a look at the ruins of his capital before the decision to surrender
17:12was made.
17:14Fearing more atomic attacks and Soviet invasion, Japan decided they could not continue the war.
17:22On August 15th, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on national radio.
17:29It was formalised on September 2nd, with the signing of the Instrument of Surrender.
17:36This ended the conflict in the Pacific.
17:39Very shortly, I trust we'll all be going home.
17:47After six years and millions of deaths, the Second World War was over.
17:54God grant that in our pride of the hour, we may not forget the hard tasks that are still before
18:02us.
18:03That we may approach these with the same courage, zeal and patience with which we face the trials and problems
18:12of the past four years.
18:25Although the guns fell silent in 1945, the effects of the war would ripple across the globe for many years
18:33to come.
18:33US and Soviet relations continued to oscillate between friendly differences and competitive opposition.
18:42But the existence of atomic weapons meant this rivalry would be different to any in history.
18:49It really, I think, hit the entire global community like a thunderclap.
18:58In the middle of the Nevada desert, a model community was set up to undergo an atomic blast.
19:05There was this realisation that there was this tremendous new force that could be used in warfare.
19:14And that was so enormously destructive.
19:18World leaders were gripped by the realisation that there was really a new game afoot.
19:23A new, really super-destructive type of weapon.
19:30The extent of devastation caused by a single atomic bomb meant that for the first time in history,
19:38humankind had the technology to destroy itself.
19:42The atom bomb was a genie that could not be put back in its bottle.
19:47If the Americans had the bomb, and this is one of the things that made them a superpower,
19:52the Soviet Union also had to have this bomb.
20:00Fueled by anxiety and mistrust, a steadily escalating arms race began to develop.
20:07By 1946, the US already had the technology to develop multiple atomic bombs.
20:16Secretly, the Soviets were advancing their own atomic weapons programme.
20:23The scientists who helped develop the atomic bomb immediately called on the US government to place atomic energy under international
20:36control.
20:42For a brief moment, it seemed that the threat of atomic weapons might actually be contained, managed in a new
20:51spirit of global cooperation.
20:55The US proposal also asked for the destruction of the United States atomic arsenal.
21:02But at the last minute, Truman put Bernard Baruch in charge of the plan.
21:08The Baruch plan proposed that the Atomic Development Authority would have governance over the development and use of atomic energy.
21:18And when he went to defend the US proposal, he dropped unceremoniously the requirement that the US arsenal would have
21:27been destroyed.
21:33The United States decided that it could not risk giving up its nuclear deterrent.
21:41The bombs became the only real insurance policy the US had against the Soviets.
21:47whose massive conventional armies could very well soon be bolstered with atomic weapons of their own.
21:56So we have the beginning of the arms race, something that American atomic scientists had exactly predicted.
22:04and that this would make the world less safe rather than more safe.
22:10Fire!
22:21For the time being, Stalin and Truman were consumed by the pressing needs of a shattered Europe.
22:29Economies were crumbling, borders were in flux, and food and housing were scarce.
22:37Millions of Europeans were displaced as a result of the war.
22:43The Allies faced a major refugee problem in Europe because many of Europe's major borders were being withdrawn.
22:50There were millions of refugees, many of them survivors of the Holocaust.
22:56So it was really a horrible scene in the summer of 1945.
23:03Anyone who describes it, describes it as people with kind of a hollow look in their eyes.
23:08Hopeless, desperate, hungry, sick.
23:14It's hard to forget how chaotic and how damaged infrastructure was.
23:20How long it took people to get home, for example.
23:24There were so many displaced people, they didn't have passports, they didn't have money.
23:31The train tracks had been disrupted, you know, roads had been blown up, bridges didn't exist.
23:39Displacement is completely ubiquitous.
23:43It's nearly the normal state to be displaced in some way, shape or form.
23:52There was nobody working in the fields, you know, there were no food products.
23:58And disease was rampant.
24:01This was worse in the winter of 1946, which was one of the worst winters in the 20th century.
24:07You know, many, many thousands of people died from exposure.
24:14So it was really a nasty, terrible, awful scene that the Allied armies had to deal with.
24:28The Allies set up a relief and rehabilitation program to provide support for the victims of war.
24:35This aid was to be delivered in the form of food, shelter, medical services and other basic necessities.
24:42It was the first time in history that the needs of refugees had been anticipated during wartime.
24:49And cooperated international planning had occurred in order to meet those needs.
24:57Many people were successfully repatriated.
25:01But not everyone was in a position to go home.
25:07Many did not want to live in a communist society without religious and political freedom.
25:13Those peoples were terrified at the thought of being locked in or trapped in the Soviet Union
25:19or under the Soviet sphere of influence.
25:21The Soviet Union emerged from the ruins of the Second World War,
25:27expecting to be recognized as the greatest power in Eurasia.
25:33They had defeated Nazi Germany, their forces occupied much of Eastern and Central Europe.
25:40They expected recognition, they expected certain status.
25:45They wanted influence across Europe.
25:48Stalin also wanted to prevent foreign influence on displaced persons,
25:53as he believed this would reduce the efficacy of the Soviet propaganda machine.
25:58Stalin recognized the power of propaganda in portraying the success of communism in the Soviet Union.
26:05The sort of Cold War story that we grew up with in the West was that communism was just imposed
26:10by force everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe.
26:13And I don't think it was anything like that simple or straightforward.
26:16First of all, you're dealing with populations that had already been brutalized by war,
26:21that already were very used to states requisitioning things, moving people around.
26:27A lot of places that had experienced Nazism or German occupation were, for the most part, pleased to be turning
26:33to what seemed to be the opposite and the alternative.
26:38With his own end game in mind, Stalin set about creating an empire throughout Eastern Europe.
26:45He envisaged an industrious, productive and prosperous society operating under communism.
26:52And spread across his network of Soviet states.
26:57He wanted all Eastern Europeans repatriated to address the post-war labour shortage in the USSR.
27:05In order to create a strong and influential global presence, Stalin knew he needed to rebuild and was keen to
27:14take advantage of the refugee crisis to achieve this end.
27:18There was a shift everywhere to the left as a perhaps natural consequence of having seen the extremes of the
27:25far right.
27:27Here, police have been standing by to break up any large demonstrations.
27:31The cause of which was clearly the rapidly approaching clash between extreme left and extreme right.
27:36It was a kind of golden time for communism.
27:41Stalin established control of Soviet satellite states by influencing communist governments in countries including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and
27:59East Germany.
28:00He also expected that the peoples of Eastern Europe would appreciate having been liberated by the Red Army from fascism
28:09and having experienced the 1930s and what capitalism in the 1930s meant for pretty much everywhere in Eastern Europe, which
28:17was not good.
28:19People might want an alternative and of course the main alternative available was Soviet communism.
28:26But this was not without its challenges.
28:30Anti-Soviet partisans throughout Eastern Europe resisted Soviet occupation, influence and control.
28:37In the parts of the Soviet Union which were acquired during the Second World War, there are some very well
28:44organized armed resistance to Soviet occupation.
28:51The partisans were a motley crew driven by diverse motivations, but with a single goal, independence.
28:59They're hanging in there for so long, not because they're completely unable to see that they've lost this war, but
29:07because they're expecting World War Three to be just around the corner.
29:13The partisans held out hope of Western intervention, but as time wore on, it became clear that they were on
29:22their own.
29:25Western leaders were in no hurry to return to the battlefields of Europe.
29:32While democratic allied nations like the US and Britain were under pressure from their citizens to bring troops home and
29:39avoid further conflict, Soviet communist leadership was not burdened by such concern for public opinion.
29:49Stalin maintained a strong military and expanded Soviet control in Eastern Europe, comfortable in the knowledge that the US and
29:58Britain would not wage war over these territories.
30:03The Western allies were certainly anxious about the spread of communism, but short of a fight, there was little they
30:10could do.
30:12Stalin continued to expand the Soviet sphere of influence.
30:18Fueled in part by the fears of a Nazi resurgence among the war-torn nations of Eastern Europe.
30:27The Soviets occupied a large section of the newly carved up Germany, including a portion of the capital Berlin.
30:35A city that had been drawn and quartered after the war.
30:42It was here that the clash of cultures between the Soviets and the West was concentrated.
30:55Against this backdrop of shifting ideology and influence, battle-scarred and weary nations had to come to grips with the
31:02post-war world.
31:05How could peace be maintained while populations recovered from not one, but two recent world wars?
31:12How could governments ensure there would not be another war on the horizon?
31:22In the spring of 1945, San Francisco was the center of men's hopes for lasting peace.
31:33The answer lay in stability and global cooperation.
31:42There was strength in numbers, and future security depended on uniting nations.
31:52But not everyone was convinced by this proposed union.
31:59What is the United Nations and what it is intended to be?
32:03The UN is originally much more of a Rooseveltian conception.
32:08In many ways, the United Nations reflects this balance that Roosevelt tried to strike between an older system of international
32:17relations based on spheres of influence and the new spirit of internationalism.
32:23But he also put in there a provision for a separate body, the Security Council, which he called the Five
32:32Policemen, with every permanent members having veto power.
32:38The UN is already created to make sure the United States can't be ordered to do anything it doesn't want.
32:44So therefore, really, what was its purpose?
32:47I think Roosevelt saw it as a body to continue the wartime alliance.
32:52If you set up this body and you give the Soviet Union and Britain and the United States vetoes, then
32:59indeed they will have a stake in continuing the post-war relationship.
33:04The UN Charter was signed in June 1945 and ratified that October.
33:15Let us not fail to grasp this supreme chance to establish a worldwide rule of reason, to create an enduring
33:26peace under the guidance of God.
33:31Seeking to protect human rights and provide aid to those in need, the goal of the United Nations was to
33:38maintain peace and security by upholding international law.
33:45This is the building in Nuremberg, where 20 top Nazis are being tried for many crimes.
33:52One of the first acts under the auspices of the United Nations was the Nuremberg war crimes trial.
34:01In a spirit of international cooperation, the Allies set out to bring forward the leaders of Nazi Germany to account
34:09for their crimes.
34:10One of the things that people thought was that the war was completely blamed, you know, quite rightly, on German
34:15aggression and on Nazi ideology.
34:17In November 1945, the Soviet Union, Britain, the U.S. and France began hearings at the International Military Tribunal in
34:28Nuremberg.
34:29In the first Nuremberg trial, 24 German high officials were put on trial.
34:34The wrongs which we seek to condemn have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate
34:44their being ignored.
34:46The four counts of indictment included the planning of war, conspiracy to conduct aggression and two counts that related to
34:55human rights violation.
34:58Crimes against civilians and crimes against humanity.
35:02It was very difficult to prove crimes against civilians and crimes against humanity.
35:09But there was enough proof they could have found for Nazi Germany committing those crimes.
35:18Prosecuting the Nazis for the killing of civilians raised some uncomfortable ethical questions.
35:26What about killing of civilians in the name of the Russian army, in the name of the British army, in
35:33the American army?
35:35What about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
35:43Could those in the future be labelled crimes against civilians or crimes against humanity?
35:59The Nuremberg trials lasted almost a year and 22 senior German military and political leaders were indicted.
36:13The Tribunal finds that Ribbentrop is guilty on all four counts.
36:24The Nuremberg trials were indicted.
36:28The Nuremberg trials were indicted.
36:31The Nuremberg trials served primarily to catalogue these crimes and to delegitimise the fallen Nazi regime.
36:48The Nuremberg trials were indicted.
36:51The Nuremberg trials were really largely symbolic.
36:53Very few perpetrators were actually condemned or executed.
36:59In January 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was set up in Tokyo.
37:06To oversee similar trials of war crimes committed by the Japanese, dating back to the 1931 invasion of Manchuria.
37:18As in the case of Nuremberg, the Tokyo war crimes trials only dealt with a tiny portion of officials responsible
37:27for the war.
37:32It's this logistical problem that you have, which is uncomfortable to think about.
37:36But when a regime changes, you know, if millions and millions of people are implicated in atrocities, you can't actually
37:43replace all those people.
37:45So by default, the old regime, however detested it is, however much you're symbolically inverting it and changing it,
37:53you still have to actually go back and use those same people.
37:59The tribunal finds that Schott is not guilty on this indictment.
38:08Through the Nuremberg trials, the spirit of international collaboration provided the foundations for future war crimes prosecutions.
38:16And while the trials could only ever deal with a handful of Axis leaders, the public airing of war atrocities
38:24helped expose the brutality of these regimes to the world by bringing a few key villains to justice.
38:35Flushed with victory, the U.S. and Soviet Union haggled and negotiated with each other, not only over the fates
38:43of defeated leaders, but over the fates of entire nations.
38:47Many territories, freshly liberated from Axis rule, now found themselves caught between two new superpowers and their bids for global
38:58dominance.
38:58In late 1945, London and Moscow would become the next focal points of foreign policy negotiations.
39:07The London and Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, as an outcome of the Potsdam Conference, they were meant to work
39:16out a peace settlement for Europe, but also for Asia.
39:21And this brings us back to this question of what to consider the beginning of the Cold War.
39:29The London Conference of Foreign Ministers, as early September 1945, indicated the Cold War was raging because they couldn't agree
39:36to anything.
39:38This was the peace conference of World War II.
39:41And strangely enough, full cooperation between allies after a war is by no means always so simple.
39:48The Soviets and the U.S. get in a tiffy over occupation of Japan.
39:52The Soviets want to be part of the occupation forces.
39:55The Americans don't want them there.
39:57And the Soviets are not very happy about that, but have to accept that in the end.
40:01But that kind of sidelines that conference.
40:05But then later, there was another conference of foreign ministers in Moscow, and some of those questions were resolved, actually.
40:11Moscow was a little bit more constructive, and peace settlements for many places in Eastern Europe were worked out.
40:23In Moscow, the Allies also struck a deal regarding the fate of post-war Japan.
40:32American General MacArthur commanded the occupation forces, and worked towards creating a democratic Japan to encourage peace.
40:41The United States was the most powerful country at the end of World War II.
40:45It was really in the position to play the most important role in what would be happening in post-war
40:54Europe at the end of World War II, and in Asia as well.
40:59In August 1945, the U.S. and Soviet Union had agreed to a temporary division of Korea along the 38th
41:08parallel to facilitate the removal of Japanese forces.
41:11The three-year plan would see the Soviet army controlling the North under a communist regime, and the U.S.
41:20controlling the South under a military government.
41:23For now, at least, the Soviets were still allies.
41:28But fearing a communist threat in Asia, the U.S. sought out new friends.
41:35Occupied Japan was a perfect candidate, as it was dependent on the United States for its economic survival.
41:42Within only a few years, Japan would change from an enemy of the U.S. to an ally, as the
41:49dramatic axis of global politics continued to shift.
41:55All around the world, local conflicts became entwined with the ambitions of the great powers.
42:02It became clear to U.S. observers that the Soviet Union was intent on extending its sphere of influence beyond
42:10Eastern and Central Europe.
42:12It was time to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
42:18In early 1946, an American diplomat residing in Moscow wrote to President Truman with his assessment of the Soviet situation.
42:28George Kennan's long telegram was a detailed analysis of the historical, political, and cultural forces at play within the Soviet
42:38Union, and how these forces influenced Soviet foreign policy.
42:43George Kennan, one of the preeminent U.S. diplomats at the time, with a great deal of experience in the
42:49USSR, he understood deeply what the Soviet Union represented.
42:54I think he grasped the nature of Soviet foreign policy.
42:59Kennan felt that it was important to push back against Soviet ambitions.
43:03It really talks about the history of Russia and the history of the USSR, and having a kind of peaceful
43:09relationship with its neighbors was not going to be possible.
43:13But it also talked about the nature of the totalitarian regime that Joseph Stalin represented, and the necessity of dealing
43:20very strongly with a totalitarian regime and not showing any weakness in the face of that kind of totalitarianism.
43:30Kennan impressed upon the U.S. president, the gravity of the situation, and the diplomatic challenges that lay ahead.
43:38He says at one point in the telegram, the Soviet power is not the same as that of Hitlerite Germany.
43:46Impervious to the logic of reason, the Soviets are highly sensitive to the logic of force.
43:52Therefore, if you push against their aggression, they will draw back and they will try something else.
44:00Hence the origin of the idea of containment.
44:05Kennan advised that the U.S. would have to resist, with force, the Soviet attempt to expand their sphere of
44:12influence.
44:12Truman agreed and favored military and economic strength over diplomacy when it came to Soviet relations moving forward.
44:21This was to eventually inform Truman's move towards containment, which would become integral to U.S. foreign policy during the
44:29Cold War ahead.
44:31If the Soviet Union really wants peace, it can prove it by living up to the principles of the United
44:38Nations Charter.
44:44This becomes a real change intellectually in American policy.
44:49If you start containing something, it's no longer an ally.
44:52The allies don't always work to contain each other.
44:57Kennan is talking about the future, basically the system the Soviets have.
45:01It's not natural.
45:03It'll fall apart sooner or later.
45:05What we should do, we the West, we the United States, is to invest in our own resilience.
45:10Make sure that we have a better society.
45:13Make sure that we have better provision for our people.
45:18Invest in ourselves.
45:20In the long term, we're going to win this.
45:22And that is a very, very important foresight that I think was exactly on target.
45:28As other Western nations entered the fray of the burgeoning Cold War, demonstrations of ideological alignment became key in cementing
45:39post-war relationships and furthering each nation's strategic moves.
45:47Winston Churchill was personally invited by President Truman to speak at Westminster College in Missouri.
45:56This he would call the sinews of peace, i.e. the struggle post-war to secure a lasting and meaningful
46:03peace for Europe.
46:05Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future.
46:15Churchill at that point, of course, is essentially a private citizen, but he's still seen as, you know, a representative
46:22of Britain and he sees himself as such.
46:26From Stepin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
46:37That now-famed speech put Churchill back in the game politically and marked a turning point in international politics.
46:45Churchill had poked the bear.
46:48That is immediately reported in the Soviet press as a hostile act that is seen by the Soviets very much
46:57as some kind of escalation.
47:02The political fallout was such that Truman was forced to distance himself from it, claiming that he hadn't read it
47:08beforehand, which was not true.
47:11And likewise, Clement Attlee stridently distanced himself from it, arguing that Churchill was no longer in government and Churchill's views
47:19did not reflect those of the British government.
47:23Things were shifting in the international political landscape.
47:28The stage was set for jostling world powers to reposition themselves geographically and realign themselves ideologically with the goal of
47:39securing the most strategically beneficial alliances for a new endgame to come.
47:45The chaotic end of World War II sparked the beginning of a new geopolitical era, one of fractured alliances and
47:55renewed uncertainty.
47:57The Truman administration knows the wartime alliance is over, and the question is what way it will go.
48:06By 1947, communism was taking a firmer hold in many Eastern European countries.
48:13Stalin is willing to fight it out in particular theatres where previously he was willing to cooperate.
48:20This Soviet expansion would ultimately inspire the domino theory, whereby it was thought that one nation falling to communism increased
48:29the chances of it spreading to surrounding nations.
48:33The Western powers, although they were concerned about the growing power of the Soviet Union, at the same time it
48:38had been understood that that area was going to be influenced by the Soviet Union.
48:43As the Grand Alliance finally fractured, the superpowers scrambled to gain political advantage and devastating new weapons.
48:54The big race that was on at that point was the race to acquire a so-called hydrogen bomb.
49:03In this epic rivalry, once powerful nations would become pawns in a new conflict.
49:11I would argue that Germany becomes the ultimate cause of the Cold War.
49:16In the struggle between the Soviets and the West, the city of Berlin would once again become a battleground.
49:35While the European Union would have been deceived in China and the other country, they would have been in the
49:35war.
49:35To be a part of the world that sets the European Union and the other country, the European Union would
49:36become a battleground.
49:36In the nationality that was the war on the esquerde.
49:45In the world of Europe, the European Union had been politically
49:55for a distant country in theΠΎΡΠΎΠ½ade.
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