The Hid­den His­tory of the Cold War, Part One
Part 1a 47:13 | Part 1b 45:09 | Part 1c 44:38 | Part 1d 47:24 | Part 1e 44:45 | Part 1f 10:47
(Recorded April, 1984)

This broad­cast exam­ines inter­na­tional fas­cism as a reac­tion to the found­ing of the for­mer Soviet Union and the growth of social­ist move­ments in other coun­tries and how this devel­op­ment led to World War II. The pro­gram focuses on the crit­i­cal sup­port Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists and financiers gave to Hitler’s Ger­many and how this affected allied mil­i­tary pol­icy dur­ing the war, as well as the incor­po­ra­tion of the Third Reich’s intel­li­gence forces into the CIA at the conflict’s conclusion.

Pro­gram high­lights include: Her­bert Hoover’s diver­sion of aid req­ui­si­tioned by Con­gress to Pol­ish and Baltic armies fight­ing against the U.S.S.R. in the early 1920’s; the growth of Mussolini’s “cor­po­rate state” (as he termed his fas­cist sys­tem of gov­ern­ment); the Hearst news­pa­per chain’s glow­ing por­trayal of Nazi Ger­many and Fas­cist Italy prior to the out­break of World War II; the Amer­i­can Legion’s award­ing of an hon­orary mem­ber­ship to Mus­solini in 1935; the Curtis-Wright Company’s delib­er­ate betrayal of dive-bombing (a closely-guarded U.S. Navy tech­nique) to the Axis pow­ers; Alger Hiss’ role as spe­cial coun­sel to the Nye-Vandenburg com­mit­tee (inves­ti­gat­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions’ aid to the Axis pow­ers); the Allies’ re-storation of fas­cist infra­struc­ture in French North Africa and Italy fol­low­ing “lib­er­a­tion;” the British polit­i­cal betrayal of and mil­i­tary attacks upon the anti-fascist par­ti­sans in Greece before the end of the war; the for­ma­tion of guerilla groups estab­lished by the Nazis dur­ing the war’s clos­ing days in order to fight against the Soviet Union; the adop­tion of the Nazi guer­rilla groups by the CIA and other West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies; the fierce war­fare con­ducted by the fas­cist gueril­las (under West­ern spon­sor­ship) in Poland and the for­mer Soviet Union until 1953; the incor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi East­ern Front intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion into the CIA (under the stew­ard­ship of its wartime head, Gen­eral Rein­hard Gehlen); the Third Reich gen­e­sis of many of the “catch-phrases” of the Cold War, includ­ing “Bet­ter Dead than Red” and “Iron Curtain.”