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[00:00]
Narrator
The History channel original podcast
[00:06]
Tom Hanks
September 1945. Germany, Japan have surrendered unconditionally. The destruction and death of the Second World War is over. There is jubilation around the world. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as the globe's two dominant superpowers. They fought side by side when they shared a common enemy. But now that that enemy has been defeated, an American Soviet rivalry appears unavoidable. This is World War II with Tom
[00:44]
Jeremy Reagan
Hanks episode 20 Fallout.
[00:52]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
It's official. It's all over. It's total victory. The day of America and her allies peace. It's wonderful.
[01:04]
Tom Hanks
The war is over. The entire world begins to breathe and live again.
[01:11]
Historian/Analyst
The Allies won this war in the cause of freedom and the ideals of anti fascism, the ideals of democracy.
[01:22]
One of the great legacies of the Second World War is that a disputatious, complicated, often wrong nation like the United States can in extremis marshal significant force to do the right thing. It took us a long time, as Churchill is alleged to have said, you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing. Once we've exhausted every other possibility. We spent blood and treasure to defeat fascism.
[01:56]
The United States had fulfilled Roosevelt's ambitions to be the arsenal. Democracy to orders of magnitude no one could have predicted.
[02:07]
Tom Hanks
In New York, hundreds of thousands line the docks to greet America's ships and welcome home their sons and daughters. President Harry Truman is honored with the ticker tape parade through the city's canyon of heroes. Speaking in Central park, the President addresses the nation.
[02:29]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
The world cannot afford to let the cooperative spirit of the Allies in this war disintegrate. The world simply cannot allow this to happen.
[02:43]
Tom Hanks
In Red Square, thousands celebrate and honored Generalissimo Joseph Stalin.
[02:50]
Jeremy Reagan
He's dressed in a white marshall summer uniform with shoulder boards like a Russian Romanov. Emperor Stalin emerges from the Second World War with astonishing, almost religious prestige.
[03:04]
Historian/Analyst
In the Soviet Union, Stalin and the United States had made an alliance that ultimately brings Hitler and then Japan to its knees. The spirit of cooperation is so high that Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied command in Europe, probably one of the future staunchest anti communists in American history, stands right next to Stalin.
[03:33]
Tom Hanks
The bloodshed and horror of the Second World War is unprecedented in human history. Nearly 70 million people are killed, the majority civilians. An estimated 27 million Soviets, 20 million Chinese, 10 million Germans and Japanese, 1 million British and Americans and 6 million Jews.
[04:03]
Narrator
Europe is destroyed. The Brits are bankrupt. The Americans and the Soviets, they're demobilizing.
[04:14]
Historian/Analyst
What's really clear coming out of World War II is that the United States has an incredibly important role to play in the world. She hasn't been physically touched by the war other than Pearl Harbor. America is the superpower.
[04:30]
Narrator
There's every expectation that some kind of peaceful coexistence will emerge. When the Americans talk about the way they want the international system to be, they talk about the United Nations. The United nations, in many ways is Franklin Roosevelt's dream come true during the war. It's Roosevelt who says we must have this international body. It's a very hopeful group, lots of ideals. The UN charter, all of this comes into being in 1945.
[05:05]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Here, leaders of the United nations, representing all but a fraction of the Earth's population, are laying the foundations of international security in the post war world out
[05:15]
Historian/Analyst
of the fires of war. They wanted for there to be an organization where we don't have 1939 again.
[05:23]
The United nations combines two ideas. The first is the General assembly, where equal states can meet and confer and make resolutions. There is also the wartime military alliance between the Soviets, the British, France and the United States, as well as China. And that's the Security Council. That will be the cornerstone to ensuring peace.
[05:45]
Because it's not just winning the battle of the day, it's trying to prevent the next one.
[05:53]
Tom Hanks
One of the first challenges is to determine how Germany will fit into the post war world.
[06:00]
Narrator
We can't today perhaps understand just how threatening and powerful Germany seemed to the allied leadership in 1945. They had just fought two world wars, the greatest enemy of which of theirs was Germany. Ultimately, they realized the control of Germany is going to play a huge role in determining the future of Europe.
[06:26]
Historian/Analyst
The American view is just like the Soviet one at the beginning, in the sense that we've got to divide Germany. We've got to make sure that it can never rise up again. That's the first urgent thing.
[06:39]
Tom Hanks
The Allies split Germany into four occupation zones. The British, Americans and French will govern western Germany. The Soviets will govern the East. Berlin, deep within the Soviet zone, is divided between all four nations. The wartime allies have very different plans for the new Germany.
[07:00]
Historian/Analyst
What Stalin is doing is taking as much of the wealth as much of the factories, as much of the productive capacity and stockpiles from occupied Germany back to the Soviet Union. Stalin would say he was only taking what the Germans owed him for the horrible suffering during the war. Conversely, the Western allies want Germany rehabilitated.
[07:24]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The Western idea is not to devastate Germany economically through reparations, but bring them into global markets, connect Germany to the world and through that you'll get German people who are incentivized to do things that are constructive instead of destructive. So it's going to need industrialists, middle managers, local governance. And many of these people would have been members of the Nazi party.
[07:48]
Tom Hanks
The crimes of the Nazi Third Reich are so horrific that the wartime Allies determine there must be an attempt to achieve justice.
[07:57]
Historian/Analyst
Nuremberg is highly symbolic as the spiritual heart of Nazi Germany and as the place where hopefully the demons of Nazism can be purged.
[08:08]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Everyone in court stands up as the tribunal enters. Four judges and alternate members. French, American, British and Russian. The defendants are to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against them. Rudolf Hirsch, neif.
[08:28]
Jeremy Reagan
Not guilty.
[08:29]
Tom Hanks
22 Nazi leaders are put on trial.
[08:32]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
The next defendant called was Ribbentrop.
[08:35]
Tom Hanks
The niche.
[08:36]
Historian/Analyst
Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg tribunals, announces that history will judge the fairness of the trial not by the convictions and the executions it obtains, but by the acquittals. But the Soviets are expecting these to be good old fashioned show trials.
[08:53]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Wilhelm Keitel Speckle.
[08:56]
Jeremy Reagan
I plead not guilty.
[08:58]
Historian/Analyst
Stalin had seen how effective show trials could be in his own consolidation of power in the 1930s.
[09:05]
Jeremy Reagan
Not guilty.
[09:06]
Historian/Analyst
And was happy to give the Germans a trial.
[09:08]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Hermann Wilhelm Goering.
[09:12]
Jeremy Reagan
Not guilty.
[09:13]
Historian/Analyst
And then hang them.
[09:16]
Tom Hanks
12 of the defendants receive the death sentence. Herman Goering avoids the gallows by committing suicide. Seven are given lengthy prison terms, although the Soviets object. Three are acquitted.
[09:33]
Narrator
From 45 onwards. You just have this constant growing tension between the United States and Britain on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. And Stalin has to play quite a careful game. He wants to keep what he has, but he doesn't want to directly antagonize the United States with because the United States is still much more powerful economically. It has complete air and sea control and it has the atom bomb.
[10:04]
Tom Hanks
World War II devastated the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin must rebuild his country, ensure its security and consolidate his power. But some of Stalin's ambitions will conflict with the post war plans of his Western allies.
[10:23]
Narrator
Stalin saw the wartime alliance as a way to defeat Nazi Germany, but never something that would permanently reshape the globe or that would make capitalism and communism friends. Stalin is an ideologue that can never be forgotten. He believes that communism and capitalism are incompatible, that they will actually at some point win a great fight for the future. And he believes communism will win.
[10:49]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin is in an extraordinary position. There's a moment when he reviews what they've conquered in World War II and he looks at the map of Europe and Russia and he says we really haven't done badly and it's an understatement.
[11:03]
Narrator
The Red army is in Berlin and most countries to the east, Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Soviet wave broke right around Berlin and they just never receded.
[11:17]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin has done better than any of the greatest czars in Russian history. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, he's created the biggest Russian empire in history.
[11:25]
Tom Hanks
Stalin intends to create a buffer against the west militarily and ideologically.
[11:32]
Narrator
He would say we have now had two world wars where first Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union have been invaded through Eastern and Central Europe. I am going to make sure that they are never a threat to the Soviet Union again.
[11:45]
Historian/Analyst
For Stalin, the key thing for Eastern and Central Europe is that it must be loyal to the Soviet Union. That's non negotiable and the recipe for doing that is communism.
[11:55]
He starts to create a new economic centralized system in Central and Eastern Europe. Controlled governments, armies, secret police, factories, agricultural systems, with all of the decisions effectively for the economies of those countries being made in Moscow.
[12:13]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The Europe that the United States wants to build does not look very much like the Europe that the Soviets want to build.
[12:19]
Tom Hanks
The United States has an enormous advantage over the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb. The Soviets construct numerous sites across the USSR in order to accomplish task number one.
[12:34]
Jeremy Reagan
Task number one is to create a nuclear weapon at breakneck speed. No resources are too much.
[12:42]
Historian/Analyst
The nuclear program is what the Soviet Union was almost designed to do. It's a big country with lots of natural resources it can marshal immobilize for the nuclear project. It's not completely unlike the Manhattan Project, which was also top down secretive and resource heavy. And the Soviet Union puts the full weight of its coercive power behind this project.
[13:02]
Tom Hanks
Stalin puts one of his most ruthless lieutenants in charge. The chief of his secret police, Lavrenti
[13:10]
Jeremy Reagan
Beria, is a man of brutal ruthlessness and sadism. One of the great monsters of the Soviet story. He rapes women, he tortures victims himself, but he's also as efficient as a Swiss clock and he uses everything. He happily turns off power in several cities just to power a project. He gives scientists villas dachas, cars, shooting rifles, holidays, but at the same time he threatens to kill them and their whole families if they ever deceive him. And he drives on the project.
[13:45]
Historian/Analyst
It's not going to be quick for Stalin. There's no way that he can flip a switch and acquire nuclear weapons. But the Soviet Union simply can't sit on its laurels. In 1946. It has to ready itself for a new phase of conflict.
[13:57]
Tom Hanks
After the turmoil of the second World War, the people of Great Britain and the United States hoped to return to a normal, prosperous life with peaceful coexistence among nations, including with the Soviet Union.
[14:11]
Narrator
For the past five years, Stalin had been your friend. He had been uncle Joe.
[14:17]
Tom Hanks
But once again, a familiar voice sounds a warning.
[14:22]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
Winston Churchill's in a pretty bad mood. He was thrown out by the British public in a dramatic election defeat in 1945. His wife said it might be a blessing in disguise. He said, well, I think it's a pretty good disguise. He feels he won the second world war, he saved Britain. And here he is on the speaking circuit.
[14:41]
Tom Hanks
Winston Churchill receives an invitation to give a speech at a small college in President Truman's home state.
[14:48]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
This is an opportunity for Churchill to say some things that he's got in his mind. It's also an opportunity to spend some time with the president of the United States of America. And then he's going to stand on that stage and he's going to tell the American people some home truths.
[15:04]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
[15:14]
Historian/Analyst
The famous iron curtain speech where he very clearly lays out what is happening in Europe. One side free, the other side not.
[15:24]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Behind that line, all our subjects to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
[15:34]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
Churchill sees Soviet communism and Stalinism as great a threat really, as Nazism was a generation before.
[15:42]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
This is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up.
[15:48]
Narrator
It's dynamite because what Churchill is doing is reframing the wartime alliance.
[15:56]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The Soviet empire was a malign force in the world.
[16:00]
Narrator
Truman, by the way, is absolutely on board with this speech. But to Stalin, this is just proof that Churchill is a warmonger.
[16:09]
Tom Hanks
The alliance that defeated Nazi fascism is beginning to fray.
[16:21]
Narrator
Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History that doesn't suck is a chart
[16:31]
Podcast Host/Commentator
topping history telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade, from the 18th century to the 20th.
[16:38]
Narrator
Original music and immersive sound design accompany us on our storytelling journey.
[16:42]
Historian/Analyst
Listen to and follow History that doesn't Suck. An odyssey podcast available now on Apple
[16:48]
Narrator
podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
[16:59]
Tom Hanks
In late 1946, the French vote to elect a new government. The communist party does well, winning a plurality of seats in the French legislature.
[17:11]
Historian/Analyst
With the politics of Europe in a state of extraordinary upheaval, because of the catastrophe of the war, you do have a high degree of concern in Washington about countries in western Europe turning in a communist direction.
[17:22]
There's a lot of unrest. There are strikes starting to take place in France. There's a huge pro communist movement movement in Italy. And Stalin thinks maybe he'll win some of these countries without even having to send an army in
[17:37]
Tom Hanks
to the south. Stalin attempts to pressure Turkey into giving him control of the turkish straits, which would allow access to the mediterranean and the middle east. And in Greece, communist guerrillas and government forces are fighting an ongoing civil war.
[17:54]
Narrator
These are countries that have never been viewed as essential to American security. The United States does not have a history of backing the governments of Turkey or Greece.
[18:04]
Tom Hanks
The British have been funding the greek army and sending weapons to Turkey.
[18:10]
Historian/Analyst
But early in 1947, in the White house, this document arrives and it's a shocker. It's from the British government and it says, for a long time we've been supporting Greece and Turkey, but we are broke.
[18:24]
Narrator
This is a really important moment. The winding down of the British Empire, early 1947. They do not wish to be this sort of great force in the eastern mediterranean, which they had been for a long time.
[18:36]
Historian/Analyst
It becomes clear to Truman and the American state department that this issue in Greece and Turkey is actually a threat to national security. They believe that if Greece and Turkey become stalinized, these are dominoes, and the rest of western Europe could possibly fall.
[18:51]
Narrator
And the British say to the Americans, if you want to make sure these places remain pro western, you, as the United States are going to have to use military force. Now that is a real put up or shut up moment for Truman.
[19:05]
Historian/Analyst
Truman is a very practical, plain spoken, linear thinker. He doesn't come into office with some big vision of what the world should be. He sort of picks up the mantle of FDR and tries to build a post war order according to what he thought FDR would have done. But really, from the moment of meeting Stalin at potsdam onward, he's starting to formulate his own views.
[19:29]
And now Truman recognizes that this is a turning point in this new post war world. What's happening on another side of the globe can be critical to America's national security.
[19:41]
Tom Hanks
After deliberating with his diplomatic and military advisors, President Truman addresses a joint session of congress.
[19:48]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure. We must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
[20:08]
Tom Hanks
The United States is shifting away from isolationism. The Truman Doctrine is now US Policy.
[20:15]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The Truman Doctrine is the culmination, going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson, of setting out these American ideals, setting out these American principles, but this time backing them with more power, more force, because Truman's vision is that the US Will support any country that is resisting communist aggression, any country.
[20:32]
Historian/Analyst
It is difficult to overstate what a dramatic departure the Truman Doctrine is for the United States.
[20:39]
In 1941, the United States had to be dragged into war. But what Truman is saying is now we're ready to take the fight wherever democracy requires us.
[20:49]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
We must take immediate and resolute action.
[20:54]
Historian/Analyst
Truman asks Congress, and he receives $400 million of military aid for Greece and Turkey. This is only the beginning.
[21:04]
Podcast Host/Commentator
This is a radical shift, not only in the way that America had thought about its place in the world, but a radical shift in where Harry Truman's own mind was. It's actually putting American power behind a global ideological contest with the Soviet Union.
[21:18]
Tom Hanks
As the American Soviet alliance fades, a contest between superpowers emerges. Europe is in the grip of one of the coldest winters in memory. People have little to eat and struggle to stay warm. They begin to despair. At the slow pace of post war recovery.
[21:40]
Historian/Analyst
Western governments have not been able to rebuild their economies. Agriculture has been destroyed, transportation has been destroyed, manufacturing has been destroyed, and there's an enormous refugee crisis that is ongoing.
[21:55]
During the war, there was a deliberate forced movement of populations. So there are millions and millions of refugees on the roads, in camps, in towns and cities and villages that are not their own.
[22:08]
Tom Hanks
Truman and his advisors fear that Europe is on the verge of collapse. General George Marshall, one of the chief architects of American victory in World War II, believes the whole world hangs in the balance.
[22:22]
Narrator
What Truman and George Marshall, his Secretary of State realize is you need to rebuild the European economy. It has to be not just the militarized Truman Doctrine, but there needs to be a way of getting money to support Western European or capitalist states.
[22:37]
Historian/Analyst
The Marshall plan is a $13.3 billion essentially handout to foreign governments to help these countries rebuild themselves, westernize and stabilize politically.
[22:50]
Narrator
And it would be keeping people alive in places where starvation was an actual real thing. So it's done for altruistic reasons, but also geopolitical ones.
[23:01]
Historian/Analyst
President Truman and George Marshall believe that the best guarantee against communism are well fed bellies, good schools, orderly societies, the kind of things that can only happen in a prosperous economy.
[23:16]
Tom Hanks
Stalin recognizes how Marshall's plan threatens his objectives.
[23:21]
Podcast Host/Commentator
To him is another trick it's another American way to try to undermine the Soviet Union and pull Europe into the American orbit.
[23:29]
Jeremy Reagan
It's presented as Stalin's typical paranoia. Actually, he's got every reason to distrust the West. He was right.
[23:37]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Today our aid to the free nations of Europe is helping them to resist dictatorship.
[23:44]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin understands that Western goods with Western money would lead to Western values of liberal democracy, of open society and also would spread the attractions of capitalism. And it would undermine Stalin's own rule.
[24:00]
Narrator
So for him, the Marshall Plan has to be stomped down.
[24:04]
Tom Hanks
Stalin directs the countries under his command to reject the American offer.
[24:09]
Historian/Analyst
Very clearly, Stalin has drawn a line and said, this is my turf, this is your turf, and that's that.
[24:17]
Tom Hanks
Stalin expects to maintain complete control of the East European countries liberated from Germany by the Red Army. But one nation will test him.
[24:27]
Historian/Analyst
Czechoslovakia is deeply connected to the Western European economy. The Czechs have advanced industry. They could become wealthy with access to Western capital in the form of the Marshall Plan.
[24:38]
Tom Hanks
The democratically elected government in Prague is led by President Edvard Benedict. Several of its ministers are members of the Czech Communist Party. Stalin pressures Bene to reject American aid and compels the Czech Communists to seize control. Over the next few months, local Communists stir up unrest throughout the country.
[25:01]
Historian/Analyst
The citizens of Czechoslovakia haven't quite gotten the memo that they're really the subordinates of Soviet power.
[25:08]
Tom Hanks
In 1948 there is a communist led coup in Prague that topples the Benez government and places another East European country firmly in Moscow's orbit.
[25:19]
Narrator
Nalz Stalin decides to take fewer risks in Eastern Europe. No risks at all. He doesn't believe that ultimately communism will flower politically and economically and that working peoples around the world will just embrace it because it is the true and scientific approach to human civilization. He believes in power
[25:41]
Jeremy Reagan
across Eastern Europe. He crushes any hint of liberalism, free speech. He doubles down on his Soviet system. He arrests tens of thousands of people. More people are sent to the gulags after the war than before the war in the 1930s during the Great Terror.
[26:03]
Tom Hanks
Marshall aid is an essential component in the American post war recovery plan for Europe. But its success widens the increasing divide economically and and politically between east and West.
[26:17]
Historian/Analyst
We are now in a bipolar world.
[26:21]
Jeremy Reagan
America emerged from the war enriched. They want to see us weaken for
[26:26]
Tom Hanks
many years and impose their will on us.
[26:29]
Historian/Analyst
It's a world of rivalry like the world had never seen.
[26:33]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
The Soviet Union has proved again and again that it cannot be trusted.
[26:38]
Historian/Analyst
And it's a race. It's a competition for preeminence and it's ultimately going to be a competition for security.
[26:46]
Tom Hanks
And Berlin, the former capital of the third Reich, is at the center of the conflict. In the summer of 1948, billions of Marshall aid dollars flow into the countries of western Europe.
[27:01]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Europe is slowly but surely edging back towards economic health. Careful planning for the use of the $324 million allotted has helped western Germany temporarily to its feet.
[27:13]
Tom Hanks
Great Britain and the United States merge their German occupation zones. The French will soon join them. A common currency is introduced, the deutsche mark. Stalin understands that the western powers intend to establish a strong and independent West Germany. Since the end of the war, Great Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union have occupied Berlin. It lies deep within Soviet dominated eastern Germany.
[27:44]
Narrator
Now imagine for someone as paranoid as Stalin having these western militaries going back and forth between Berlin and the western occupation zones. This is a source of instability, disruption. It's dangerous.
[27:59]
Tom Hanks
Stalin wants to sever direct contact between Berlin and the western half of Germany.
[28:05]
Narrator
He doesn't want to invade West Berlin because that's an act of war. But what he believes he can do is he can blockade Berlin.
[28:11]
Historian/Analyst
At this time, Berlin is still a pile of rubble. It has very little tactical significance for the United States government.
[28:20]
Jeremy Reagan
So it really made no sense to keep West Berlin. And Stalin believed that in the end the west would blink and withdraw.
[28:31]
Tom Hanks
On June 24, the Soviets cut all road, rail and water routes, leaking West Berlin to western Germany.
[28:39]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Suddenly, the trains stopped. Traffic between Berlin and the western zones was banned.
[28:46]
Jeremy Reagan
The famous autobahns were deserted, and even
[28:49]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
canal traffic was at a standstill. The blockade even cut electric power and put out 75% of the lights.
[28:58]
Historian/Analyst
Truman is a pragmatic person. This could be a moment where he says, it's not worth saving this city because I don't know what Stalin's gonna do. I don't know how dangerous this is gonna be. Instead he says, we're not going anywhere.
[29:13]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The US And Britain realize that this is Stalin testing the wire. It'll be Berlin first, then it'll be elsewhere. And the allies choose to make it a red line.
[29:23]
Historian/Analyst
Keep in mind, it's 1948. For Truman, it's an election year. It's the first post war election. It's the first election in the nuclear age, the first election in the television age. He's aware that all eyes are on him.
[29:36]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The British and Americans ask, what can we do short of war? And the answer is they can keep Berlin supplied not by road, not by rail, not by canal, but by air.
[29:48]
Tom Hanks
The British and The Americans construct an air bridge into West Berlin.
[29:54]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The plan is to deliver on airplanes everything that a modern city needs to survive. Food, got coal, you've got fuel, you've got medical supplies. It's a superb example of an operation that's pulled together very quickly. Huge numbers of aircraft, planes flying around the clock. These British and American officers, the same officers that have organized the triumphs of logistics that you see during the second World War.
[30:21]
Tom Hanks
A continuous stream of cargo planes land in West Berlin every few minutes. But to reach the city, they must fly over hundreds of miles of Soviet controlled territory.
[30:33]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
They're choosing to defy Stalin. And if you fill the airspace with military aircraft, even though they're unarmed, you have to assume that Stalin might strike back.
[30:47]
Historian/Analyst
So you have all this military capacity. You have the paranoia and fear in Washington and in Moscow. You have this hall of mirrors quality. The two countries are involved in a kind of escalatory spiral.
[31:02]
Tom Hanks
Truman now deploys dozens of B29s to air bases in England. The same plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[31:14]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
Nuclear weapons go from being a secret weapon to a public strategic weapon.
[31:20]
Historian/Analyst
The pressure on Truman at this point is incalculable. He knows that this move could be provocative enough to start World War iii.
[31:29]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
But the Americans are hoping that this strong show of resolve will encourage Stalin to back off. They are gambling that Stalin does not want World War three.
[31:43]
Tom Hanks
After nearly a year of daily international tension, Stalin halts the blockade.
[31:51]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Here's a glimpse of Berlin itself as the first trains and vehicles got going at night.
[31:55]
Tom Hanks
All routes that connect Berlin to the west are reopened. Restrictions within Berlin between the Soviet zone and American, British and French zones are lifted as well.
[32:07]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin set up a challenge for the West. He was probing the West. He needed to know how far he could go. But in fact, Truman rose to the challenge. And in the end, it's Stalin who blinks.
[32:30]
Narrator
Best thing that's ever happened to you, financially.
[32:32]
Historian/Analyst
Go easy.
[32:33]
Jeremy Reagan
Sold my car on Carvana.
[32:35]
Historian/Analyst
Amazing offer, really.
[32:36]
Narrator
I hit 200 on the scratcher.
[32:38]
Historian/Analyst
Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check?
[32:40]
Narrator
No.
[32:41]
Historian/Analyst
How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once.
[32:46]
Tom Hanks
Okay, that's fair.
[32:47]
Jeremy Reagan
It's like the lottery, except you always win.
[32:50]
Historian/Analyst
Not like the lottery at all, actually.
[32:52]
Tom Hanks
Exactly.
[32:53]
Historian/Analyst
Inexplicably good offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana.
[32:58]
Jeremy Reagan
Pickup fees may apply.
[33:07]
Tom Hanks
As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union continue to to deteriorate, Western governments plan to provide collective security against possible soviet aggression.
[33:19]
Historian/Analyst
When the United States and the Soviet union look like they can be on the verge of war, it became obvious that the United States couldn't continue to ad hoc this to lurch from crisis to crisis to crisis.
[33:31]
The post war path that FDR anticipated was one in which the the United nations would help adjudicate disputes and rule the peace. What he was not able to fully anticipate was that a struggle against his former ally, the Soviet union, would become the defining force of the era.
[33:56]
Tom Hanks
Representatives from Europe, Canada and the United States meet in Washington to discuss the formation of a new military alliance. The north atlantic treaty organization, NATO.
[34:09]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The idea is to create what military strategists call deterrence. It's an alliance that is created to make sure that the Russians know that if they attack one state in the alliance, they could theoretically face a war against all of the states in that alliance. NATO is created to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.
[34:29]
Historian/Analyst
Well, what Harry Truman does with the Marshall plan, with the Truman doctrine with NATO is establish an infrastructure of deterrence to try to contain the communistic influence.
[34:46]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
If there is anything inevitable in the future, it is the will of the people of the world for freedom and for peace.
[34:56]
Tom Hanks
But the world is about to cross a threshold from which there is no return. In an appropriately desolate landscape, the Soviet union prepares to test its first atomic bomb.
[35:11]
Jeremy Reagan
Lavrenti barrier. Stalin's kind of mega manager arrives to supervise In a little hut in the middle of nowhere. He's incredibly nervous. If it doesn't work, his downfall is quite likely. He watches from a safe distance.
[35:35]
Tom Hanks
The test is a success.
[35:37]
Historian/Analyst
Stalin's overjoyed and relieved. Now he's got an equal footing with the west, and they cannot push him around anymore.
[35:47]
Jeremy Reagan
After this period when Stalin's struggling to catch up with America, he's back in the game.
[35:52]
Historian/Analyst
Truman's a poker player, and for these years after the war, he always had an ace in the hole. He had the bomb, the soviets didn't. That surety was gone. There was no turning back.
[36:03]
You've got two superpowers, two nuclear powers that are facing each other across the world, and all of a sudden the world is much less stable.
[36:13]
Podcast Host/Commentator
An 18th or 19th century scholar would
[36:15]
Narrator
say, oh, you're gonna have a war between those two powers. It's inevitable, right, because they're the two great superpowers. But the atomic weapons change things. If the soviets and the United States can't compete in the military sense directly because it's too dangerous, well, then you compete indirectly.
[36:34]
Historian/Analyst
After 1949, there'll be one war after the other. Big wars, small wars, guerrilla wars, proxy wars between the two superpowers. But what hasn't happened is the big one. There has not been a World War 3, a general war involving the globe that involves nuclear weapons.
[36:59]
World War II began in a universe that would have been recognizable 50 years before it ends, in a world that wouldn't have been recognizable to anyone because of the splitting of the atom. The moral and philosophical underpinnings that enabled the Allies to triumph in World War II, an appreciation for the individual support for the dignity of all peoples, a bias for democracy, have for almost a century now enabled us to live and thrive in a world where Armageddon is always at hand. But it hasn't come, not least because we've done the right thing.
[37:53]
Tom Hanks
The Second World War alters everything. National, political, even moral. Boundaries are redrawn. What was inconceivable before the war is now part of the fabric of life. The conflict that follows the Cold War poses even graver consequence, because now, for the first time in human history, the world could literally destroy itself. One war replaced by another, and the world remains on edge. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed, the only way to win the next world war is to prevent it. World War 2 with Tom Hanks is produced by A E Factual Studios, Utopia
[38:45]
Jeremy Reagan
Limited, Playtone Productions and Back Pocket Studios
[38:49]
Tom Hanks
in association with Motion Entertainment for the History Channel. This episode was narrated by Tom Hanks
[38:55]
Jeremy Reagan
and mixed by John Lloyd. Additional voicing provided by me, Jeremy Reagan
[39:00]
Tom Hanks
from the History Channel.
[39:01]
Jeremy Reagan
Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler for Playtone, executive producers are Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.

Summary6 min read

World War II with Tom Hanks

Episode: Fall Out

Release Date: July 28, 2026

Overview

Theme:
"Fall Out" explores the complex, turbulent aftermath of World War II, focusing on how the victorious Allied powers—America and the Soviet Union—transitioned almost immediately from coalition to confrontation. The episode traces the emergence of the Cold War, dissecting the crucial political, economic, and ideological shifts that shaped the new world order: the crafting of the United Nations, the division and rebuilding of Germany and Europe, the Nuremberg Trials, escalating US-Soviet tensions over atomic weapons and ideology, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, formation of NATO, and the dawn of the nuclear arms race.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Postwar Celebrations and Shifts (00:05–04:13)

Jubilation but Lingering Tensions: After unconditional Axis surrenders in 1945, the world celebrates, but tensions between the US and USSR surface quickly.
Superpowers Emerge: The United States and Soviet Union stand dominant, but their alliance frays with their common enemy vanquished.

Notable Quote:
"The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as the globe's two dominant superpowers... an American Soviet rivalry appears unavoidable." – Tom Hanks (00:05)

2. The Cost and Legacy of War (03:33–04:13)

Unparalleled Devastation: Nearly 70 million dead; the majority civilians—27 million Soviets, 20 million Chinese, 10 million Germans and Japanese, 6 million Jews.
American Strength: The US, left mostly unscathed physically, assumes a new, elevated role in shaping postwar order.

Notable Quote:
"The Allies won this war in the cause of freedom and the ideals of anti-fascism, the ideals of democracy." – Historian/Analyst (01:10)

3. Founding the United Nations (04:30–05:53)

A Bid for Lasting Peace: Roosevelt's vision materializes as the UN forms, blending the hope of universal cooperation with the reality of a Security Council built from wartime alliances.
Key Structures: General Assembly for equal representation; Security Council for real power—Britain, France, China, USSR, US.

4. Germany: Division and Justice (06:00–09:32)

Partition: Allied occupation splits Germany and Berlin into four zones.
Contrasting Aims: Soviets strip resources; Western Allies seek economic recovery.
Nuremberg Trials:
- Symbolic attempt to purge Nazism and deliver justice to 22 top Nazi leaders.
- Differing attitudes: US seeks fair trial; Soviets favor show trials and summary justice.

Notable Quote:
"The Western idea is not to devastate Germany economically... but bring them into global markets... And many of these people would have been members of the Nazi party." – Podcast Host/Commentator (07:23)

5. Breakdown of Wartime Alliance & Stalin’s Expansion (10:03–12:19)

Buffer Zone: Stalin consolidates power in Eastern Europe; communism becomes the “non-negotiable” tool of control.
Resource Mobilization: USSR invests huge resources into military recovery—and the race for the A-bomb.

Notable Quote:
"Stalin has done better than any of the greatest czars in Russian history... he's created the biggest Russian empire in history." – Jeremy Reagan (11:16)

6. The Atomic Arms Race (12:19–13:56; 35:11–36:12)

The Bomb’s Impact: US possesses atomic monopoly; Soviets rush to catch up under Lavrenti Beria's brutal direction.
Balance of Power: Soviet test of their own atomic bomb in 1949 ends American monopoly—ushering in a new, more dangerous era.

Notable Quote:
"Truman's a poker player... he always had an ace in the hole... That surety was gone. There was no turning back." – Historian/Analyst (35:52)

7. The Iron Curtain Speech (14:11–16:08)

Churchill’s Warning: March 1946: Churchill, in the US, declares “an iron curtain has descended” across Europe, starkly framing the ideological divide—and solidifying Western suspicion of Soviet intentions.

Notable Quote:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." – Winston Churchill Voice Actor (15:03)

8. The Truman Doctrine (17:53–20:53)

Crises in Greece & Turkey: Britain can't support governments resisting communist pressure; the US, under Truman, steps in.
Defining US Policy: Truman Doctrine pledges US support for "free peoples" resisting subjugation—committing America to global anti-communist intervention.

Notable Quote:
"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure." – President Harry Truman (19:48)

9. The Marshall Plan & Schism in Europe (21:54–26:17)

European Recovery: The Marshall Plan commits $13.3 billion to rebuild Western Europe—both for humanitarian and strategic reasons.
Stalin's Response: USSR and East European nations reject US aid; direct pressure (e.g., in Czechoslovakia) cements Soviet domination.

Notable Quote:
"President Truman and George Marshall believe that the best guarantee against communism are well fed bellies, good schools, orderly societies..." – Historian/Analyst (23:00)

10. The Berlin Airlift (27:00–32:06)

Blockade: 1948, Stalin tries to starve out West Berlin via blockade.
Allied Response: Instead of retreating, the US and UK supply the city by air for almost a year—demonstrating resolve without open warfare.
Breakthrough: Blockade ends with Western victory and heightened standing.

Notable Quote:
"A continuous stream of cargo planes land in West Berlin every few minutes... They're choosing to defy Stalin. And if you fill the airspace with military aircraft... you have to assume that Stalin might strike back." – Winston Churchill Voice Actor (30:20; 30:32)

11. The Creation of NATO and Militarized Rivalry (33:06–34:45)

Collective Security: NATO formed to "keep Americans in, Russians out, and Germans down."
Infrastructure of Deterrence: Wraps Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan into a strategic umbrella.

12. The World Changes Forever (36:12–37:52)

Perpetual Tension: Two nuclear-armed superpowers locked in lasting, indirect conflict—"a world much less stable."
No WWIII: Deterrence keeps the peace, at least at the global level, but proxy wars proliferate.

Notable Quote:
"World War II began in a universe that would have been recognizable 50 years before; it ends, in a world that wouldn't have been recognizable to anyone because of the splitting of the atom." – Historian/Analyst (36:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Winston Churchill on American/Allied behavior:
"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing. Once we've exhausted every other possibility." (01:21)
Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." (15:03)
On Atonement and the Nuremberg Trials:
"History will judge the fairness of the trial, not by the convictions... but by the acquittals." – Historian/Analyst, on Robert Jackson, Nuremberg chief prosecutor (08:36)
The Stakes of Nuclear Weapons:
"Now, for the first time in human history, the world could literally destroy itself. One war replaced by another, and the world remains on edge." – Tom Hanks (37:52)

Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------| | 00:05 | Allied victory, new rivalry emerges | | 03:33 | Human cost of war, civilian devastation | | 05:14 | Establishment of the United Nations | | 06:38 | Division and occupation of Germany/Berlin | | 07:47 | Nuremberg Trials begin | | 10:22 | Stalin's expansion in Central/Eastern Europe | | 12:19 | Atomic arms race starts | | 15:03 | Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech | | 19:48 | Truman Doctrine articulated | | 22:37 | Launch of the Marshall Plan | | 25:07 | 1948: Czechoslovak coup clamps Eastern bloc | | 27:00 | Britain's, US merge West German zones | | 28:30 | Berlin blockade and airlift | | 33:06 | Foundation of NATO | | 35:11 | USSR tests atomic bomb | | 36:59 | World irrevocably changed by nuclear age | | 37:52 | Only way to win next world war is to prevent it |

Conclusion

"Fall Out" delivers a sweeping, deeply human account of the turmoil, ambitions, and decisions that set the stage for the Cold War. Listeners are brought into the mindsets of statesmen, generals, and civilians alike, witnessing the rapid unravelling of postwar unity and the forging of a world defined by ideological rivalry, nuclear dread, and frameworks of deterrence. The podcast offers not only a chronicle of major events but a meditation on how history's greatest conflict remade the planet, and why its aftershocks still shape our fate.

Final Word (37:52):
"The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it." – President Dwight D. Eisenhower

For listeners seeking insight into how the Second World War bled seamlessly into the Cold War era, "Fall Out" provides vivid storytelling, incisive analysis, and a timely warning for the generations that inherit this fragile peace.

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Transcript199 lines

[00:00]
Narrator
The History channel original podcast
[00:06]
Tom Hanks
September 1945. Germany, Japan have surrendered unconditionally. The destruction and death of the Second World War is over. There is jubilation around the world. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as the globe's two dominant superpowers. They fought side by side when they shared a common enemy. But now that that enemy has been defeated, an American Soviet rivalry appears unavoidable. This is World War II with Tom
[00:44]
Jeremy Reagan
Hanks episode 20 Fallout.
[00:52]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
It's official. It's all over. It's total victory. The day of America and her allies peace. It's wonderful.
[01:04]
Tom Hanks
The war is over. The entire world begins to breathe and live again.
[01:11]
Historian/Analyst
The Allies won this war in the cause of freedom and the ideals of anti fascism, the ideals of democracy.
[01:22]
One of the great legacies of the Second World War is that a disputatious, complicated, often wrong nation like the United States can in extremis marshal significant force to do the right thing. It took us a long time, as Churchill is alleged to have said, you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing. Once we've exhausted every other possibility. We spent blood and treasure to defeat fascism.
[01:56]
The United States had fulfilled Roosevelt's ambitions to be the arsenal. Democracy to orders of magnitude no one could have predicted.
[02:07]
Tom Hanks
In New York, hundreds of thousands line the docks to greet America's ships and welcome home their sons and daughters. President Harry Truman is honored with the ticker tape parade through the city's canyon of heroes. Speaking in Central park, the President addresses the nation.
[02:29]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
The world cannot afford to let the cooperative spirit of the Allies in this war disintegrate. The world simply cannot allow this to happen.
[02:43]
Tom Hanks
In Red Square, thousands celebrate and honored Generalissimo Joseph Stalin.
[02:50]
Jeremy Reagan
He's dressed in a white marshall summer uniform with shoulder boards like a Russian Romanov. Emperor Stalin emerges from the Second World War with astonishing, almost religious prestige.
[03:04]
Historian/Analyst
In the Soviet Union, Stalin and the United States had made an alliance that ultimately brings Hitler and then Japan to its knees. The spirit of cooperation is so high that Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied command in Europe, probably one of the future staunchest anti communists in American history, stands right next to Stalin.
[03:33]
Tom Hanks
The bloodshed and horror of the Second World War is unprecedented in human history. Nearly 70 million people are killed, the majority civilians. An estimated 27 million Soviets, 20 million Chinese, 10 million Germans and Japanese, 1 million British and Americans and 6 million Jews.
[04:03]
Narrator
Europe is destroyed. The Brits are bankrupt. The Americans and the Soviets, they're demobilizing.
[04:14]
Historian/Analyst
What's really clear coming out of World War II is that the United States has an incredibly important role to play in the world. She hasn't been physically touched by the war other than Pearl Harbor. America is the superpower.
[04:30]
Narrator
There's every expectation that some kind of peaceful coexistence will emerge. When the Americans talk about the way they want the international system to be, they talk about the United Nations. The United nations, in many ways is Franklin Roosevelt's dream come true during the war. It's Roosevelt who says we must have this international body. It's a very hopeful group, lots of ideals. The UN charter, all of this comes into being in 1945.
[05:05]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Here, leaders of the United nations, representing all but a fraction of the Earth's population, are laying the foundations of international security in the post war world out
[05:15]
Historian/Analyst
of the fires of war. They wanted for there to be an organization where we don't have 1939 again.
[05:23]
The United nations combines two ideas. The first is the General assembly, where equal states can meet and confer and make resolutions. There is also the wartime military alliance between the Soviets, the British, France and the United States, as well as China. And that's the Security Council. That will be the cornerstone to ensuring peace.
[05:45]
Because it's not just winning the battle of the day, it's trying to prevent the next one.
[05:53]
Tom Hanks
One of the first challenges is to determine how Germany will fit into the post war world.
[06:00]
Narrator
We can't today perhaps understand just how threatening and powerful Germany seemed to the allied leadership in 1945. They had just fought two world wars, the greatest enemy of which of theirs was Germany. Ultimately, they realized the control of Germany is going to play a huge role in determining the future of Europe.
[06:26]
Historian/Analyst
The American view is just like the Soviet one at the beginning, in the sense that we've got to divide Germany. We've got to make sure that it can never rise up again. That's the first urgent thing.
[06:39]
Tom Hanks
The Allies split Germany into four occupation zones. The British, Americans and French will govern western Germany. The Soviets will govern the East. Berlin, deep within the Soviet zone, is divided between all four nations. The wartime allies have very different plans for the new Germany.
[07:00]
Historian/Analyst
What Stalin is doing is taking as much of the wealth as much of the factories, as much of the productive capacity and stockpiles from occupied Germany back to the Soviet Union. Stalin would say he was only taking what the Germans owed him for the horrible suffering during the war. Conversely, the Western allies want Germany rehabilitated.
[07:24]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The Western idea is not to devastate Germany economically through reparations, but bring them into global markets, connect Germany to the world and through that you'll get German people who are incentivized to do things that are constructive instead of destructive. So it's going to need industrialists, middle managers, local governance. And many of these people would have been members of the Nazi party.
[07:48]
Tom Hanks
The crimes of the Nazi Third Reich are so horrific that the wartime Allies determine there must be an attempt to achieve justice.
[07:57]
Historian/Analyst
Nuremberg is highly symbolic as the spiritual heart of Nazi Germany and as the place where hopefully the demons of Nazism can be purged.
[08:08]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Everyone in court stands up as the tribunal enters. Four judges and alternate members. French, American, British and Russian. The defendants are to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against them. Rudolf Hirsch, neif.
[08:28]
Jeremy Reagan
Not guilty.
[08:29]
Tom Hanks
22 Nazi leaders are put on trial.
[08:32]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
The next defendant called was Ribbentrop.
[08:35]
Tom Hanks
The niche.
[08:36]
Historian/Analyst
Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg tribunals, announces that history will judge the fairness of the trial not by the convictions and the executions it obtains, but by the acquittals. But the Soviets are expecting these to be good old fashioned show trials.
[08:53]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Wilhelm Keitel Speckle.
[08:56]
Jeremy Reagan
I plead not guilty.
[08:58]
Historian/Analyst
Stalin had seen how effective show trials could be in his own consolidation of power in the 1930s.
[09:05]
Jeremy Reagan
Not guilty.
[09:06]
Historian/Analyst
And was happy to give the Germans a trial.
[09:08]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Hermann Wilhelm Goering.
[09:12]
Jeremy Reagan
Not guilty.
[09:13]
Historian/Analyst
And then hang them.
[09:16]
Tom Hanks
12 of the defendants receive the death sentence. Herman Goering avoids the gallows by committing suicide. Seven are given lengthy prison terms, although the Soviets object. Three are acquitted.
[09:33]
Narrator
From 45 onwards. You just have this constant growing tension between the United States and Britain on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. And Stalin has to play quite a careful game. He wants to keep what he has, but he doesn't want to directly antagonize the United States with because the United States is still much more powerful economically. It has complete air and sea control and it has the atom bomb.
[10:04]
Tom Hanks
World War II devastated the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin must rebuild his country, ensure its security and consolidate his power. But some of Stalin's ambitions will conflict with the post war plans of his Western allies.
[10:23]
Narrator
Stalin saw the wartime alliance as a way to defeat Nazi Germany, but never something that would permanently reshape the globe or that would make capitalism and communism friends. Stalin is an ideologue that can never be forgotten. He believes that communism and capitalism are incompatible, that they will actually at some point win a great fight for the future. And he believes communism will win.
[10:49]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin is in an extraordinary position. There's a moment when he reviews what they've conquered in World War II and he looks at the map of Europe and Russia and he says we really haven't done badly and it's an understatement.
[11:03]
Narrator
The Red army is in Berlin and most countries to the east, Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Soviet wave broke right around Berlin and they just never receded.
[11:17]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin has done better than any of the greatest czars in Russian history. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, he's created the biggest Russian empire in history.
[11:25]
Tom Hanks
Stalin intends to create a buffer against the west militarily and ideologically.
[11:32]
Narrator
He would say we have now had two world wars where first Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union have been invaded through Eastern and Central Europe. I am going to make sure that they are never a threat to the Soviet Union again.
[11:45]
Historian/Analyst
For Stalin, the key thing for Eastern and Central Europe is that it must be loyal to the Soviet Union. That's non negotiable and the recipe for doing that is communism.
[11:55]
He starts to create a new economic centralized system in Central and Eastern Europe. Controlled governments, armies, secret police, factories, agricultural systems, with all of the decisions effectively for the economies of those countries being made in Moscow.
[12:13]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The Europe that the United States wants to build does not look very much like the Europe that the Soviets want to build.
[12:19]
Tom Hanks
The United States has an enormous advantage over the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb. The Soviets construct numerous sites across the USSR in order to accomplish task number one.
[12:34]
Jeremy Reagan
Task number one is to create a nuclear weapon at breakneck speed. No resources are too much.
[12:42]
Historian/Analyst
The nuclear program is what the Soviet Union was almost designed to do. It's a big country with lots of natural resources it can marshal immobilize for the nuclear project. It's not completely unlike the Manhattan Project, which was also top down secretive and resource heavy. And the Soviet Union puts the full weight of its coercive power behind this project.
[13:02]
Tom Hanks
Stalin puts one of his most ruthless lieutenants in charge. The chief of his secret police, Lavrenti
[13:10]
Jeremy Reagan
Beria, is a man of brutal ruthlessness and sadism. One of the great monsters of the Soviet story. He rapes women, he tortures victims himself, but he's also as efficient as a Swiss clock and he uses everything. He happily turns off power in several cities just to power a project. He gives scientists villas dachas, cars, shooting rifles, holidays, but at the same time he threatens to kill them and their whole families if they ever deceive him. And he drives on the project.
[13:45]
Historian/Analyst
It's not going to be quick for Stalin. There's no way that he can flip a switch and acquire nuclear weapons. But the Soviet Union simply can't sit on its laurels. In 1946. It has to ready itself for a new phase of conflict.
[13:57]
Tom Hanks
After the turmoil of the second World War, the people of Great Britain and the United States hoped to return to a normal, prosperous life with peaceful coexistence among nations, including with the Soviet Union.
[14:11]
Narrator
For the past five years, Stalin had been your friend. He had been uncle Joe.
[14:17]
Tom Hanks
But once again, a familiar voice sounds a warning.
[14:22]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
Winston Churchill's in a pretty bad mood. He was thrown out by the British public in a dramatic election defeat in 1945. His wife said it might be a blessing in disguise. He said, well, I think it's a pretty good disguise. He feels he won the second world war, he saved Britain. And here he is on the speaking circuit.
[14:41]
Tom Hanks
Winston Churchill receives an invitation to give a speech at a small college in President Truman's home state.
[14:48]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
This is an opportunity for Churchill to say some things that he's got in his mind. It's also an opportunity to spend some time with the president of the United States of America. And then he's going to stand on that stage and he's going to tell the American people some home truths.
[15:04]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
[15:14]
Historian/Analyst
The famous iron curtain speech where he very clearly lays out what is happening in Europe. One side free, the other side not.
[15:24]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Behind that line, all our subjects to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
[15:34]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
Churchill sees Soviet communism and Stalinism as great a threat really, as Nazism was a generation before.
[15:42]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
This is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up.
[15:48]
Narrator
It's dynamite because what Churchill is doing is reframing the wartime alliance.
[15:56]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The Soviet empire was a malign force in the world.
[16:00]
Narrator
Truman, by the way, is absolutely on board with this speech. But to Stalin, this is just proof that Churchill is a warmonger.
[16:09]
Tom Hanks
The alliance that defeated Nazi fascism is beginning to fray.
[16:21]
Narrator
Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History that doesn't suck is a chart
[16:31]
Podcast Host/Commentator
topping history telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade, from the 18th century to the 20th.
[16:38]
Narrator
Original music and immersive sound design accompany us on our storytelling journey.
[16:42]
Historian/Analyst
Listen to and follow History that doesn't Suck. An odyssey podcast available now on Apple
[16:48]
Narrator
podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
[16:59]
Tom Hanks
In late 1946, the French vote to elect a new government. The communist party does well, winning a plurality of seats in the French legislature.
[17:11]
Historian/Analyst
With the politics of Europe in a state of extraordinary upheaval, because of the catastrophe of the war, you do have a high degree of concern in Washington about countries in western Europe turning in a communist direction.
[17:22]
There's a lot of unrest. There are strikes starting to take place in France. There's a huge pro communist movement movement in Italy. And Stalin thinks maybe he'll win some of these countries without even having to send an army in
[17:37]
Tom Hanks
to the south. Stalin attempts to pressure Turkey into giving him control of the turkish straits, which would allow access to the mediterranean and the middle east. And in Greece, communist guerrillas and government forces are fighting an ongoing civil war.
[17:54]
Narrator
These are countries that have never been viewed as essential to American security. The United States does not have a history of backing the governments of Turkey or Greece.
[18:04]
Tom Hanks
The British have been funding the greek army and sending weapons to Turkey.
[18:10]
Historian/Analyst
But early in 1947, in the White house, this document arrives and it's a shocker. It's from the British government and it says, for a long time we've been supporting Greece and Turkey, but we are broke.
[18:24]
Narrator
This is a really important moment. The winding down of the British Empire, early 1947. They do not wish to be this sort of great force in the eastern mediterranean, which they had been for a long time.
[18:36]
Historian/Analyst
It becomes clear to Truman and the American state department that this issue in Greece and Turkey is actually a threat to national security. They believe that if Greece and Turkey become stalinized, these are dominoes, and the rest of western Europe could possibly fall.
[18:51]
Narrator
And the British say to the Americans, if you want to make sure these places remain pro western, you, as the United States are going to have to use military force. Now that is a real put up or shut up moment for Truman.
[19:05]
Historian/Analyst
Truman is a very practical, plain spoken, linear thinker. He doesn't come into office with some big vision of what the world should be. He sort of picks up the mantle of FDR and tries to build a post war order according to what he thought FDR would have done. But really, from the moment of meeting Stalin at potsdam onward, he's starting to formulate his own views.
[19:29]
And now Truman recognizes that this is a turning point in this new post war world. What's happening on another side of the globe can be critical to America's national security.
[19:41]
Tom Hanks
After deliberating with his diplomatic and military advisors, President Truman addresses a joint session of congress.
[19:48]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure. We must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
[20:08]
Tom Hanks
The United States is shifting away from isolationism. The Truman Doctrine is now US Policy.
[20:15]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The Truman Doctrine is the culmination, going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson, of setting out these American ideals, setting out these American principles, but this time backing them with more power, more force, because Truman's vision is that the US Will support any country that is resisting communist aggression, any country.
[20:32]
Historian/Analyst
It is difficult to overstate what a dramatic departure the Truman Doctrine is for the United States.
[20:39]
In 1941, the United States had to be dragged into war. But what Truman is saying is now we're ready to take the fight wherever democracy requires us.
[20:49]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
We must take immediate and resolute action.
[20:54]
Historian/Analyst
Truman asks Congress, and he receives $400 million of military aid for Greece and Turkey. This is only the beginning.
[21:04]
Podcast Host/Commentator
This is a radical shift, not only in the way that America had thought about its place in the world, but a radical shift in where Harry Truman's own mind was. It's actually putting American power behind a global ideological contest with the Soviet Union.
[21:18]
Tom Hanks
As the American Soviet alliance fades, a contest between superpowers emerges. Europe is in the grip of one of the coldest winters in memory. People have little to eat and struggle to stay warm. They begin to despair. At the slow pace of post war recovery.
[21:40]
Historian/Analyst
Western governments have not been able to rebuild their economies. Agriculture has been destroyed, transportation has been destroyed, manufacturing has been destroyed, and there's an enormous refugee crisis that is ongoing.
[21:55]
During the war, there was a deliberate forced movement of populations. So there are millions and millions of refugees on the roads, in camps, in towns and cities and villages that are not their own.
[22:08]
Tom Hanks
Truman and his advisors fear that Europe is on the verge of collapse. General George Marshall, one of the chief architects of American victory in World War II, believes the whole world hangs in the balance.
[22:22]
Narrator
What Truman and George Marshall, his Secretary of State realize is you need to rebuild the European economy. It has to be not just the militarized Truman Doctrine, but there needs to be a way of getting money to support Western European or capitalist states.
[22:37]
Historian/Analyst
The Marshall plan is a $13.3 billion essentially handout to foreign governments to help these countries rebuild themselves, westernize and stabilize politically.
[22:50]
Narrator
And it would be keeping people alive in places where starvation was an actual real thing. So it's done for altruistic reasons, but also geopolitical ones.
[23:01]
Historian/Analyst
President Truman and George Marshall believe that the best guarantee against communism are well fed bellies, good schools, orderly societies, the kind of things that can only happen in a prosperous economy.
[23:16]
Tom Hanks
Stalin recognizes how Marshall's plan threatens his objectives.
[23:21]
Podcast Host/Commentator
To him is another trick it's another American way to try to undermine the Soviet Union and pull Europe into the American orbit.
[23:29]
Jeremy Reagan
It's presented as Stalin's typical paranoia. Actually, he's got every reason to distrust the West. He was right.
[23:37]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Today our aid to the free nations of Europe is helping them to resist dictatorship.
[23:44]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin understands that Western goods with Western money would lead to Western values of liberal democracy, of open society and also would spread the attractions of capitalism. And it would undermine Stalin's own rule.
[24:00]
Narrator
So for him, the Marshall Plan has to be stomped down.
[24:04]
Tom Hanks
Stalin directs the countries under his command to reject the American offer.
[24:09]
Historian/Analyst
Very clearly, Stalin has drawn a line and said, this is my turf, this is your turf, and that's that.
[24:17]
Tom Hanks
Stalin expects to maintain complete control of the East European countries liberated from Germany by the Red Army. But one nation will test him.
[24:27]
Historian/Analyst
Czechoslovakia is deeply connected to the Western European economy. The Czechs have advanced industry. They could become wealthy with access to Western capital in the form of the Marshall Plan.
[24:38]
Tom Hanks
The democratically elected government in Prague is led by President Edvard Benedict. Several of its ministers are members of the Czech Communist Party. Stalin pressures Bene to reject American aid and compels the Czech Communists to seize control. Over the next few months, local Communists stir up unrest throughout the country.
[25:01]
Historian/Analyst
The citizens of Czechoslovakia haven't quite gotten the memo that they're really the subordinates of Soviet power.
[25:08]
Tom Hanks
In 1948 there is a communist led coup in Prague that topples the Benez government and places another East European country firmly in Moscow's orbit.
[25:19]
Narrator
Nalz Stalin decides to take fewer risks in Eastern Europe. No risks at all. He doesn't believe that ultimately communism will flower politically and economically and that working peoples around the world will just embrace it because it is the true and scientific approach to human civilization. He believes in power
[25:41]
Jeremy Reagan
across Eastern Europe. He crushes any hint of liberalism, free speech. He doubles down on his Soviet system. He arrests tens of thousands of people. More people are sent to the gulags after the war than before the war in the 1930s during the Great Terror.
[26:03]
Tom Hanks
Marshall aid is an essential component in the American post war recovery plan for Europe. But its success widens the increasing divide economically and and politically between east and West.
[26:17]
Historian/Analyst
We are now in a bipolar world.
[26:21]
Jeremy Reagan
America emerged from the war enriched. They want to see us weaken for
[26:26]
Tom Hanks
many years and impose their will on us.
[26:29]
Historian/Analyst
It's a world of rivalry like the world had never seen.
[26:33]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
The Soviet Union has proved again and again that it cannot be trusted.
[26:38]
Historian/Analyst
And it's a race. It's a competition for preeminence and it's ultimately going to be a competition for security.
[26:46]
Tom Hanks
And Berlin, the former capital of the third Reich, is at the center of the conflict. In the summer of 1948, billions of Marshall aid dollars flow into the countries of western Europe.
[27:01]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Europe is slowly but surely edging back towards economic health. Careful planning for the use of the $324 million allotted has helped western Germany temporarily to its feet.
[27:13]
Tom Hanks
Great Britain and the United States merge their German occupation zones. The French will soon join them. A common currency is introduced, the deutsche mark. Stalin understands that the western powers intend to establish a strong and independent West Germany. Since the end of the war, Great Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union have occupied Berlin. It lies deep within Soviet dominated eastern Germany.
[27:44]
Narrator
Now imagine for someone as paranoid as Stalin having these western militaries going back and forth between Berlin and the western occupation zones. This is a source of instability, disruption. It's dangerous.
[27:59]
Tom Hanks
Stalin wants to sever direct contact between Berlin and the western half of Germany.
[28:05]
Narrator
He doesn't want to invade West Berlin because that's an act of war. But what he believes he can do is he can blockade Berlin.
[28:11]
Historian/Analyst
At this time, Berlin is still a pile of rubble. It has very little tactical significance for the United States government.
[28:20]
Jeremy Reagan
So it really made no sense to keep West Berlin. And Stalin believed that in the end the west would blink and withdraw.
[28:31]
Tom Hanks
On June 24, the Soviets cut all road, rail and water routes, leaking West Berlin to western Germany.
[28:39]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Suddenly, the trains stopped. Traffic between Berlin and the western zones was banned.
[28:46]
Jeremy Reagan
The famous autobahns were deserted, and even
[28:49]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
canal traffic was at a standstill. The blockade even cut electric power and put out 75% of the lights.
[28:58]
Historian/Analyst
Truman is a pragmatic person. This could be a moment where he says, it's not worth saving this city because I don't know what Stalin's gonna do. I don't know how dangerous this is gonna be. Instead he says, we're not going anywhere.
[29:13]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The US And Britain realize that this is Stalin testing the wire. It'll be Berlin first, then it'll be elsewhere. And the allies choose to make it a red line.
[29:23]
Historian/Analyst
Keep in mind, it's 1948. For Truman, it's an election year. It's the first post war election. It's the first election in the nuclear age, the first election in the television age. He's aware that all eyes are on him.
[29:36]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The British and Americans ask, what can we do short of war? And the answer is they can keep Berlin supplied not by road, not by rail, not by canal, but by air.
[29:48]
Tom Hanks
The British and The Americans construct an air bridge into West Berlin.
[29:54]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
The plan is to deliver on airplanes everything that a modern city needs to survive. Food, got coal, you've got fuel, you've got medical supplies. It's a superb example of an operation that's pulled together very quickly. Huge numbers of aircraft, planes flying around the clock. These British and American officers, the same officers that have organized the triumphs of logistics that you see during the second World War.
[30:21]
Tom Hanks
A continuous stream of cargo planes land in West Berlin every few minutes. But to reach the city, they must fly over hundreds of miles of Soviet controlled territory.
[30:33]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
They're choosing to defy Stalin. And if you fill the airspace with military aircraft, even though they're unarmed, you have to assume that Stalin might strike back.
[30:47]
Historian/Analyst
So you have all this military capacity. You have the paranoia and fear in Washington and in Moscow. You have this hall of mirrors quality. The two countries are involved in a kind of escalatory spiral.
[31:02]
Tom Hanks
Truman now deploys dozens of B29s to air bases in England. The same plane that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[31:14]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
Nuclear weapons go from being a secret weapon to a public strategic weapon.
[31:20]
Historian/Analyst
The pressure on Truman at this point is incalculable. He knows that this move could be provocative enough to start World War iii.
[31:29]
Winston Churchill Voice Actor
But the Americans are hoping that this strong show of resolve will encourage Stalin to back off. They are gambling that Stalin does not want World War three.
[31:43]
Tom Hanks
After nearly a year of daily international tension, Stalin halts the blockade.
[31:51]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
Here's a glimpse of Berlin itself as the first trains and vehicles got going at night.
[31:55]
Tom Hanks
All routes that connect Berlin to the west are reopened. Restrictions within Berlin between the Soviet zone and American, British and French zones are lifted as well.
[32:07]
Jeremy Reagan
Stalin set up a challenge for the West. He was probing the West. He needed to know how far he could go. But in fact, Truman rose to the challenge. And in the end, it's Stalin who blinks.
[32:30]
Narrator
Best thing that's ever happened to you, financially.
[32:32]
Historian/Analyst
Go easy.
[32:33]
Jeremy Reagan
Sold my car on Carvana.
[32:35]
Historian/Analyst
Amazing offer, really.
[32:36]
Narrator
I hit 200 on the scratcher.
[32:38]
Historian/Analyst
Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check?
[32:40]
Narrator
No.
[32:41]
Historian/Analyst
How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once.
[32:46]
Tom Hanks
Okay, that's fair.
[32:47]
Jeremy Reagan
It's like the lottery, except you always win.
[32:50]
Historian/Analyst
Not like the lottery at all, actually.
[32:52]
Tom Hanks
Exactly.
[32:53]
Historian/Analyst
Inexplicably good offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana.
[32:58]
Jeremy Reagan
Pickup fees may apply.
[33:07]
Tom Hanks
As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union continue to to deteriorate, Western governments plan to provide collective security against possible soviet aggression.
[33:19]
Historian/Analyst
When the United States and the Soviet union look like they can be on the verge of war, it became obvious that the United States couldn't continue to ad hoc this to lurch from crisis to crisis to crisis.
[33:31]
The post war path that FDR anticipated was one in which the the United nations would help adjudicate disputes and rule the peace. What he was not able to fully anticipate was that a struggle against his former ally, the Soviet union, would become the defining force of the era.
[33:56]
Tom Hanks
Representatives from Europe, Canada and the United States meet in Washington to discuss the formation of a new military alliance. The north atlantic treaty organization, NATO.
[34:09]
Podcast Host/Commentator
The idea is to create what military strategists call deterrence. It's an alliance that is created to make sure that the Russians know that if they attack one state in the alliance, they could theoretically face a war against all of the states in that alliance. NATO is created to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.
[34:29]
Historian/Analyst
Well, what Harry Truman does with the Marshall plan, with the Truman doctrine with NATO is establish an infrastructure of deterrence to try to contain the communistic influence.
[34:46]
Historical Figure Voice Actor (e.g., Harry Truman or Winston Churchill)
If there is anything inevitable in the future, it is the will of the people of the world for freedom and for peace.
[34:56]
Tom Hanks
But the world is about to cross a threshold from which there is no return. In an appropriately desolate landscape, the Soviet union prepares to test its first atomic bomb.
[35:11]
Jeremy Reagan
Lavrenti barrier. Stalin's kind of mega manager arrives to supervise In a little hut in the middle of nowhere. He's incredibly nervous. If it doesn't work, his downfall is quite likely. He watches from a safe distance.
[35:35]
Tom Hanks
The test is a success.
[35:37]
Historian/Analyst
Stalin's overjoyed and relieved. Now he's got an equal footing with the west, and they cannot push him around anymore.
[35:47]
Jeremy Reagan
After this period when Stalin's struggling to catch up with America, he's back in the game.
[35:52]
Historian/Analyst
Truman's a poker player, and for these years after the war, he always had an ace in the hole. He had the bomb, the soviets didn't. That surety was gone. There was no turning back.
[36:03]
You've got two superpowers, two nuclear powers that are facing each other across the world, and all of a sudden the world is much less stable.
[36:13]
Podcast Host/Commentator
An 18th or 19th century scholar would
[36:15]
Narrator
say, oh, you're gonna have a war between those two powers. It's inevitable, right, because they're the two great superpowers. But the atomic weapons change things. If the soviets and the United States can't compete in the military sense directly because it's too dangerous, well, then you compete indirectly.
[36:34]
Historian/Analyst
After 1949, there'll be one war after the other. Big wars, small wars, guerrilla wars, proxy wars between the two superpowers. But what hasn't happened is the big one. There has not been a World War 3, a general war involving the globe that involves nuclear weapons.
[36:59]
World War II began in a universe that would have been recognizable 50 years before it ends, in a world that wouldn't have been recognizable to anyone because of the splitting of the atom. The moral and philosophical underpinnings that enabled the Allies to triumph in World War II, an appreciation for the individual support for the dignity of all peoples, a bias for democracy, have for almost a century now enabled us to live and thrive in a world where Armageddon is always at hand. But it hasn't come, not least because we've done the right thing.
[37:53]
Tom Hanks
The Second World War alters everything. National, political, even moral. Boundaries are redrawn. What was inconceivable before the war is now part of the fabric of life. The conflict that follows the Cold War poses even graver consequence, because now, for the first time in human history, the world could literally destroy itself. One war replaced by another, and the world remains on edge. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed, the only way to win the next world war is to prevent it. World War 2 with Tom Hanks is produced by A E Factual Studios, Utopia
[38:45]
Jeremy Reagan
Limited, Playtone Productions and Back Pocket Studios
[38:49]
Tom Hanks
in association with Motion Entertainment for the History Channel. This episode was narrated by Tom Hanks
[38:55]
Jeremy Reagan
and mixed by John Lloyd. Additional voicing provided by me, Jeremy Reagan
[39:00]
Tom Hanks
from the History Channel.
[39:01]
Jeremy Reagan
Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler for Playtone, executive producers are Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.