Cold War

[Kirk's Raider's]

So the Cold War started in 1919 when the United States,the UK ,France and Japan tried to assist the " Whites ( the remnants of the Czar's Army vs the Bolsheviks. The US Amy had the " Polar Bear " Brigade in Vladivostok armed with Mosin-Nagent rifles to guard the port of Vladivostok so supplies from Seattle could reach the White's. There was also a third force that fought both the Whites and the Reds called the "Greens" . Not much us well known about the Green's.
There were public demonstrations at least in the US and UK that forced the removal of troops from Siberia.
The West with the definite exception of Germany did not recognize the Soviet Union.
Ironically it would be right wing business men in the United States that would forge important economic development in the USSR in the mid to late 1920s.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

The US would not establish formal diplomatic relations with the USSR until 1933. However per history.com by googling " Henry Ford investment in the USSR" Ford signed an agreement with the USSR to build a car and truck factory and sent US managers and Engineers to supervise the new plants. These plants would definitely play a major role in WW2.
Also Du Pont and RCA also signed deals with the USSR.
Lenin was quoted as saying" the West will sell us the rope by which we will hang them".
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[Kirk's Raider's]

said:

I agree with the multinational part setting up shop there in Russia in the 1920s. In 1946, the US held 50% of the world's wealth with only 5% of the world's population, and was the only country in the world that possessed the atom bomb. If the communists were that big of threat to National Security, they could have used the Atomic Bomb. Patton thought this way also.

By 1948 or so the Soviets thanks to their spies would have the A bomb as well. That's an interesting story. In 1942 or 43 two young men entered the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco and told the receptionist about their work on the " Manhattan Project". She thought they were just pranksters and was about to call the San Francisco Police but then she at the last second referred them to the MKVD (latter renamed KGB) officer to talk to them. The MKVD officer though they were full of **** but he did submit a report to one of the top Soviet physicist. The physicist told the MKVD officer that these kids were on to something.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

said:

I believe it. Russia was economic colony for big businessmen from America, just like the south was/is during Reconstruction to the present, and that's why they did not totally obliterate the south or Russia.

I don't know about the colony part. The USSR did business with whomever was willing to business with them. The Americans did not even own the plants.
Also Fred C. Koch as the daddy of the present day Koch brothers played a critical role in the development of the Soviet Petroleum Refining Industry.
See the Wikipedia article on Fred C. Koch.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

The Soviet Union had an important military relationship with Wemiar Germany. The Germans could train in the USSR without being monitored by the West. The Germans could also build weapons in the USSR without restrictions. The Germans could also train the Soviets.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

sai:

I met multinational.

Yes but the Soviet Union was never under the political or economic control of any nation. In other words the Soviet Union was not Guatemala. The West can be payed but they don't own any industrial plants.
Also hopefully someone can post the Wikipedia article on German -Soviet relations 1918 to 1941.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

[quote said:

I'm quite sure no business man from America wanted to own anything in Russia because of its instability and hostile view of America.

Here's a link:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjw5su5h4LiAhVtdt8KHSRgAm8QFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact&usg=AOvVaw2WINxSLLy0nNK4k5B7kUXD

[/quote]
Well the hostility was mutual but the US was able to still have economic relations with the Soviet block up until the fall of Communism in Europe. Of course the caveat would be not as extensive a relationship had Eastern Europe been capitalistic.
Absolutely the Germans would have a racial superiority complex about Germans being superior to the Russians but this would bite them on the proverbial ***.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

sai:

Keep in mind also, that Truman and Eisenhower both had nuclear superiority over the Russians. Pretty much a monopoly on nukes.

True but in a sense it didn't matter. The Soviet Union was not interested in a war with the West over Territory. All they needed was a viable nuclear detent which they had thanks to the A bomb and the Soviets copied a B -29 that strayed over their territory. The Soviets would try to overthrow governments where possible starting by supporting the Greek communist party during the Greek Civil War . Stalin also assured Mao Se Tung during the Chinese Civil War.
The Soviets would provide aid and even volunteer pilots to aid their ally North Korea during the Korean-War.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

Where things get really tricky is the Chinese Civil War where Stalin supported both sides although obviously Stalin did recognise Communist China and there were apparently good relations that deteriorated when Kruss hev (sp?) came to power.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

said:

It doesn't matter because the U.S. had a nuclear backdrop that terrified the rest of the world. Eisenhower dispersed nukes in Greenland, Iceland Greece, Italy and Japan. America kept ahead of the Soviets and far ahead of the Chinese. In the 1958 Confrontation with the Chinese over the islands Quermoy and Matsu in the Formosa straights in which the Chinese communists were going to invade but better judgement prevailed.

The Cold War wasn't going to be won with Nuke's. It did matter that the Soviet Block and Communist China could and did successfully overthrow governments they considered hostile. Not that they always succeeded. The Soviets and Chinese were not cowered by the threat of Nuke's. The Chinese zArmy in Korea was certainly not intimidated at all. In the 1960s Chinese troops in Vietnam manned anti-aircraft guns and shot down US aircraft without fear of Nuke's.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

said:

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union through the arms race, so are still going to tell me the Soviets weren't cowered by nukes? They spent the little money they had on making nukes instead of on food for their people.

I hope you're not trying to persuade us into believing that the Chinese Army was something special, are you? Truman did not have the guts to let MacArthur fight more north past the 38th and he refused to bomb Chinese war installation/bases. It don't matter anyway because they got pushed back way past the 38th back into China.

You're using proxy wars as a basis for your argument, which I don't feel holds much water considering the way the US dealt with Korea and Vietnam was like the redheaded step children. Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ just didn't care until it was too late.

That's one argument but has been disputed.
The Chinese Army was certainly special. New historical evidence disputes that the Chinese grossly outnumbered the UN Coalition. The Chinese Army in the winter offensive of 1950 to 1951 without air support , without naval support, with very limited artillery support inflicted the heaviest conventional defeat the US military would suffer in the 20th Century. Yes the Chinese Army would be pushed back from Seoul but the Chinese Winter offensive was a remarkable military achievement.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

said:

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union through the arms race, so are still going to tell me the Soviets weren't cowered by nukes? They spent the little money they had on making nukes instead of on food for their people.

I hope you're not trying to persuade us into believing that the Chinese Army was something special, are you? Truman did not have the guts to let MacArthur fight more north past the 38th and he refused to bomb Chinese war installation/bases. It don't matter anyway because they got pushed back way past the 38th back into China.

You're using proxy wars as a basis for your argument, which I don't feel holds much water considering the way the US dealt with Korea and Vietnam was like the redheaded step children. Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ just didn't care until it was too late.

If one Google's " Did Ronald Reagan defeat the USSR " on the first page is an article from the Atlantic Magazine that argues Regan did not defeat Communism in Eastern Europe and another article from Sanford University argues Regan certainly does deserve credit for ending the Soviet Union. Certainly there is disputes among the academic community that Regan and Regan Aline was responsible for the end of the Soviet Union.
A counter argument is simply that a Communist economy is simply inefficient.
I would argue Regan can get some credit but the fear of Nuke's did not stop the USSR from supporting it's Third World allies.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

lurid said:

So what, the won a battle and lost the war. Getting pushed back is clear indicator of getting beat.

Not sure if China list the war. China maintained the territorial integrity of North Korea. China showed that they certainly had a viable military. China was able to maintain a buffer state between South Korea and the Chinese border. China certainly gained international prestige in the newly emerging Third World countries.
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[Kirk's Raider's]

sai:

So you're saying that China entered the Korean War just for some recognition? I don't know how an army with 2 million people can garner much respect.

No not at all. I just pointed out that after the Korean-War the PLA definitely earned China some "street cred" with other nations.
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[O' Be Joyful]

I don't know about the colony part. The USSR did business with whomever was willing to business with them. The Americans did not even own the plants.
Also Fred C. Koch as the daddy of the present day Koch brothers played a critical role in the development of the Soviet Petroleum Refining Industry.
See the Wikipedia article on Fred C. Koch.
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And don't forget about the aptly named Armand Hammer.

Russia in 1921--as now--was on the ropes. The communists had power, but revolution had sunk the country into chaos. Agriculture nearly collapsed. The city of Moscow went without running water for 22 years. Western pro-capitalist powers blockaded the communists, refusing to trade. Yet Lenin vowed not only to restore Russian glory but eventually to destroy capitalism itself. How? By exploiting capitalist greed.


Capitalists, he said, would sell Russia the rope with which to hang them. He meant that if Western businessmen thought they could profit from relieving Russia's immediate distress, they would force their governments to allow them to export grain, tractors, medicine, and other essentials. And whom did Lenin select as rope salesman No. 1? Armand.


Hammer, born in New York in 1898, was quite literally born into the bosom of Marxism and suckled at the proverbial red teat. His father, physician Julius Hammer, held the first membership card in the U.S. Communist Labor Party and was praised by Lenin's lieutenants as a "convinced" communist and "sincere" comrade. His eldest son's name was a homage to communism. (arm and hammer: get it?)


When Armand was 23 and about to graduate with a medical degree from Columbia, Julius sent him to Russia to confer with Lenin. On a cold October day Armand arrived at the Kremlin, where "he exchanged his passport for a pink pass" and entered Lenin's office. So well did the two hit it off that Hammer later said he would have jumped out the window had Lenin asked him to.


He didn't. Instead, Lenin proposed a deal: Hammer would become a Russian government conces-sionaire, through whom capitalists would have to go to sell certain commodities. If Hammer induced U.S. companies to trade, not only would he be serving Russia, but the commissions would make him rich as well. Abandoning the practice of medicine, Hammer set to work.


He brokered a wide variety of deals--in one case earning Russian hard currency by finding U.S. buyers for what he called the "Romanov treasure." (In fact, it was mostly junk taken from the lost-and-found lockers of Moscow hotels.)


With each deal, he helped prop up communism and progressed a little further on his own peculiar way to wealth. It wasn't Ben Franklin's way, but it worked.


"Competing in a free market was not Hammer's strength," writes Epstein. "He learned a mode of business very different from that taught in the west"--one predicated on "getting government concessions and holding on to them." Wealth was really just a matter of buttering up or threatening the right officials--and when necessary laying down a few bribes. (In later years he recorded the giving of such bribes for blackmail purposes, using microphones hidden in his cuff links.)

https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/11/11/218180/index.htm​

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

And don't forget about the aptly named Armand Hammer.

Russia in 1921--as now--was on the ropes. The communists had power, but revolution had sunk the country into chaos. Agriculture nearly collapsed. The city of Moscow went without running water for 22 years. Western pro-capitalist powers blockaded the communists, refusing to trade. Yet Lenin vowed not only to restore Russian glory but eventually to destroy capitalism itself. How? By exploiting capitalist greed.


Capitalists, he said, would sell Russia the rope with which to hang them. He meant that if Western businessmen thought they could profit from relieving Russia's immediate distress, they would force their governments to allow them to export grain, tractors, medicine, and other essentials. And whom did Lenin select as rope salesman No. 1? Armand.


Hammer, born in New York in 1898, was quite literally born into the bosom of Marxism and suckled at the proverbial red teat. His father, physician Julius Hammer, held the first membership card in the U.S. Communist Labor Party and was praised by Lenin's lieutenants as a "convinced" communist and "sincere" comrade. His eldest son's name was a homage to communism. (arm and hammer: get it?)


When Armand was 23 and about to graduate with a medical degree from Columbia, Julius sent him to Russia to confer with Lenin. On a cold October day Armand arrived at the Kremlin, where "he exchanged his passport for a pink pass" and entered Lenin's office. So well did the two hit it off that Hammer later said he would have jumped out the window had Lenin asked him to.


He didn't. Instead, Lenin proposed a deal: Hammer would become a Russian government conces-sionaire, through whom capitalists would have to go to sell certain commodities. If Hammer induced U.S. companies to trade, not only would he be serving Russia, but the commissions would make him rich as well. Abandoning the practice of medicine, Hammer set to work.


He brokered a wide variety of deals--in one case earning Russian hard currency by finding U.S. buyers for what he called the "Romanov treasure." (In fact, it was mostly junk taken from the lost-and-found lockers of Moscow hotels.)


With each deal, he helped prop up communism and progressed a little further on his own peculiar way to wealth. It wasn't Ben Franklin's way, but it worked.


"Competing in a free market was not Hammer's strength," writes Epstein. "He learned a mode of business very different from that taught in the west"--one predicated on "getting government concessions and holding on to them." Wealth was really just a matter of buttering up or threatening the right officials--and when necessary laying down a few bribes. (In later years he recorded the giving of such bribes for blackmail purposes, using microphones hidden in his cuff links.)

https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/11/11/218180/index.htm​

Very good point that in addition to the father of the Koch brothers , Henry Ford also was a key figure in modernising the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was never truly cut off from the West. After WW1 German arms manufacturers used Soviet factories to avoid allied scrutiny and the German Army advised the Soviet Army.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Also Fred C. Koch as the daddy of the present day Koch brothers played a critical role in the development of the Soviet Petroleum Refining Industry.

And apparently Hitler.

On how the Koch brothers' father built oil refineries for Hitler and Stalin


Fred Koch, the patriarch of the family, was an expert in building oil refineries, and he and a friend named William Rhodes Davis proposed building one in Germany during 1934, '35, that period in there. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in Germany, so this meant working under the Third Reich. And in order to get permission, they actually had to go to Hitler himself, and William Rhodes Davis did the "Heil Hitler" to greet Hitler, and finally they got Hitler to greenlight this proposal so that they could build an oil refinery in Hamburg.​

And the Hamburg Oil Refinery, built by the Winkler-Koch Co., became key, according to several German historians I talked to, to Hitler's war efforts. By the time they built it, it was already clear that Hitler had very major military ambitions, but one of the things he was unable to do was to refine high-octane oil for warplanes. What this plant did was create that capacity, and it eventually supplied much of the fuel that was needed for Hitler's Luftwaffe.


He was not a Nazi, and I certainly don't suggest that in the book, but what he was was an American businessman looking for a good deal, and he was looking all over the world to see how he could make some money. Oddly, and what's been known before, is before working under Hitler's Third Reich, Fred Koch had worked for Stalin, where — under Stalin's first five-year plan — Fred Koch helped build up the Russian, the Soviet oil refineries and really gave huge muscle to the oil industry in the Soviet Union.

https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/4635...ers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise
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[O' Be Joyful]

 

[5fish]

Here is this... Daddy Koch...

https://qz.com/592247/the-father-of...y-helped-build-an-oil-refinery-for-the-nazis/

The New York Times, which first reported the book’s findings, calls the refinery, which supplied fuel to Nazi warplanes, “a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine.” It was personally approved by Hitler, according to Mayer, and eventually destroyed by the US in 1944.

The Washington Post reveals just how much Koch was enamored with the Nazis, in another tidbit from Mayer’s book:

“Mayer writes that the family patriarch, Fred Koch, admired German discipline so much in the 1930s that he hired a fervent Nazi as a governess for his eldest boys. ‘Dark Money’ suggests that the experience of being toilet trained by a Nazi may have contributed to Charles Koch’s antipathy toward government today.”

The book follows the influence of money in right-wing politics, largely focusing on the Koch family, which has long supported conservative causes. Charles and David Koch pledged last year that their network of donors would put nearly $900 million toward political spending in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Their father built the fortune by improving the process of oil refining and constructing plants, including 15 in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. He eventually came to hate Stalin and communism and attempted to enlist in the US military when the country entered World War Two in 1941 to fight Germany.

 

[5fish]

Daddy Koch was... https://thinkprogress.org/john-birc...role-in-founding-the-hate-group-b8fd2ac8b379/

Fred not only founded the company now known as Koch Industries, he also was a founding member of the John Birch Society. As a founding board member, Fred helped engineer a hysterical wave of attacks on labor, intellectuals, public education, liberal clergy members, and other pillars of society he viewed as a threat. Birchers decriedeveryone from former President Eisenhower to water utility administrators as pawns in a global communist conspiracy. In the last two years, as the Koch name has become synonymous with right-wing plutocracy in the United States, the Koch family has played down its relation to the Birchers.

Koch warned that American institutions were honeycombed with communist subversives, from labor unions and tax-free foundations to universities and churches. Art and newsprint, radio and television — all these media had been transmuted into vehicles of communist propaganda. […] Fred Koch was no fly-by-night pamphleteer. He spent a generous portion of his later years using his wealth and influence to fight the communism he abhorred. He was an early member of the The John Birch Society’s National Council, an advisory group to JBS founder Robert Welch. Koch supported a variety of freedom-related causes, all the while continuing to build the company today known as Koch Industries.