re: OT history nerds: East Germany/Berlin

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West Berlin totally buried within east Germany. I’m shocked the Russians didn’t immediately close in on it and take it over early in the Cold War.

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Oh, they tried to pull that stunt then the US responded with what is known as "The Berlin Airlift" by flying supplies over East Germany to the citizens of West Berlin. The Russians knew damned well not to challenge our Air Force regarding flying over East German air space.

Times (and our country) were very different under Truman and Eisenhower than they are today.

I spent a few months TDY in Berlin it was always fascinating to me to cross over at check point Charlie it was like walking out of a color picture and into a black and white.

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TigerHornII

great post. recommend some books for me on this topic.

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TY!

Start with Moorhouse's "Devil's Alliance" to get some pre-War background. There are parts that are not easy to read - at one point, the NKVD got so bad on the Russian side of Poland that Polish Jews were fleeing to the Nazi-controlled side.

One of Thomas Sowell's books - sorry, I can't recall which, but they are all great reads - goes into depth on the roots of fascism and its connections to socialism.

"Operation Snow" will give you some insight into NKVD inroads into the FDR administration and is more useful background. It is one of many books written after the decrypts from the Venona program were declassified, and I would also recommend any of those other books. Through various means, we read the USSR's internal comms for decades. The books written all cover various aspects of the Cold War, and provide a lot of insight into Communist thinking, including the Stasi. Eleanor Roosevelt personally revealed one of those methods to the Soviets because she simply considered it impolite to read their mail. Thankfully, we found other ways to read it.

Before he became a political pundit, Dinesh D'Souza also wrote some things exploring the common philosophical roots of fascism, socialism and communism. I can't recall the title, but the one I read was heavily references to original source documents and the ones I spot-checked all held up.

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I was in Honors Tech and Civ; the Honors program was then a new thing. Small class, lots of interaction. Tech and Civ should be nationally mandatory for all engineering curricula IMO. Even the huge non-Honors auditorium class was great content. There were two profs teaching it at the time, mine was the one with red hair and a beard. Which one was he?

What years were you at AU?

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75-82

Lewis had a beard, but I don't remember it being red. Maybe.

Bro those are some terrible suggestions. Sowell and D'Souza are not authorities on fin de siecle political philosophy nor are they authorities on fascism. For an actual study which doesn't reinforce your own idiotic belief system, you should start with people like Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton, and Roger Eatwell. You could also go to Timothy Mason's work as well as Nicos Poulantzas book on fascism.

You could also actually read what the fascists wrote, as many of them were prolific writers.

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crazy4lsu

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I have read what the fascists wrote, in the process of checking the sources. You clearly haven't.

If you can't accept Sowell for the authority that he is, it is you who owns the idiotic belief system.

IIRC the first postwar leaders of East Germany were German communists who had fled to the Soviet Union after Hitler's rise. Stalin didn't trust anybody who had stayed in Germany (he didnt trust anybody who had fled, either. He had purged a good many of the expats, but there were some left).