This reminds me of an old joke British politician “our spies are well educated. They studied at Oxford or Cambridge” US politician “our spies are well educated. They studied at Harvard, Yale or West Point” Soviet politician “such a lot we have in common”
In 1999, an 87-year-old British woman held a press conference in front of her home to announce that for nearly four decades, she’d worked as a spy for the Soviet Union. In fact, Melita Norwood was the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy. From World War II through the Cold War, she stole nuclear secrets from the office where she worked as a secretary and passed them to Moscow. Norwood was coming clean because a Cambridge historian had discovered her espionage while writing a book, but she was unrepentant. She told The Times of London that “in the same circumstances, I know that I would do the same thing again.”
... You don't ever have to accept that someone did the right thing. But you do have to realize why they did something so very wrong. With all the neurosis of british politics after the second world war, I can only say I hope the fool is somewhere honest and gentle, now.
@@83j049733rfe4 Communism never works out to be better than democracy. It just doesn't work and is always run by fanatics who want to destroy anyone who doesn't think like them. I do wish we would learn to get along with each other in a better fashion. Sigh.
@@ToddSauve The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make different. Between the failures of industry and government, regardless of politics, I've had to conclude that imposing some hegemony on a populace is faulty. In the current climate where the politician has given his or her power up to the forces of the market, and to the economists that say "It won't happen again!", I can't advocate for some form of anarchy either, because that's what we have, right now. There is a Kurdish figure by the name Abdullah Ocalan, and he used to be a stalinist. But has since rejected it and envisioned something he calls Democratic Confederalism. And I'm not entirely sure that is the exact way forward myself. But at the end of the day, I am left with two certainties, Melita was awful to have done what she did, and yet I can't blame her entirely. Even Anthony Blunt betrayed the very crown he curated art for. And we have yet to figure that perfect way of governing a community. Isiah Berlin had it wrong. And so did Ayn Rand and George Boole and Leo Strauss, B.F. Skinner, Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud with so many of the others. And rather than sad, I think I have to feel hope. Because we've yet to imagine some better way that is truly in touch with us and our need of sovereignty. It is still waiting to be seen. We are not a lost cause.
I've said before that this complementary series is getting slicker and more interesting and again this shows again in this episode. Really enjoying them alongside all of the other great content. As ever, thanks.
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In the end the only USSR spy that mattered in terms of how fast the USSR got the atomic bomb was Klaus Fuchs. The way to make an atomic bomb was known to all the major nations of WW2. The issue for all of them was how you could ever get enough U235 out of U238. U238 (Uranium) is not actually a very rare metal in the Earth. But the useful part of Uranium, U235 is. It makes up less the a percent of any U238 found. So the issue always was and still is how do you separate the U235 from the U238 in great enough number to build multiple atomic bombs? This is issue was why Japan and Germany gave up on a atomic bomb project in WW2. They thought if they worked on it maybe they would get 1 atomic bomb and only then if the war lasted 8+ years. But the US developed a way to separate the U235 from the U238. In simple terms you smash the Uranium up into dust, put it in turbines, spin them very fast for a long time and the U235 separates from the U238. In reality it is much more complex then that. And was what made the US and UK think the USSR would not get the bomb for years before they did. The USSR did get the bomb when they did because Fuchs told them how to go about separating the U235 from the U238. This made it so the USSR didn't have to go through the years of trial and error of tests to find the best way to separate the U235. Even today the way you actually separate U235 from U238 is a guarded secret that very few people in very few nations know how to completely do (not the vague way I mentioned above). All of the other atomic spies info was considered of not much use by the USSR. They just used it to make sure they were doing things correct on the easy parts of building the bomb. Again, separating the Uranium is the real issue and always has and will be. The Rosenbergs though did provide other valuable intel to the USSR in jet airplanes, missiles, and radar.
The difficulty of uranium enrichment is presumably why it was the centrifuges which were targeted by the US malware Stuxnet when sabotaging the Iranian nuclear programme around 2009-2010.
@@alphamikeomega5728 You are correct. The knowledge to make an atomic weapon can be gained by any nation who sends one person through a proper engineering school. The issue they will still have is "how do we get the material to make such a weapon" and then second "how do we deliver it". Enrichment and missile technology today is the real hurdle to becoming a nuclear state. And every nation that has gotten nukes so far has gotten help on how to make them from other nations (willingly, unwillingly, or through payments to the people with the correct knowledge).
Think you're being a bit dismissive by claiming that Klaus was the only spy that mattered. Morris Cohen never revealed which American scientists (so it couldn't have been Klaus) passed on the vital information to him. Also, the information passed on by George Koval allowed the Soviets to understand the plutonium bomb in detail. And truth be told, there were numerous over agents like Oscar Seborer, whose full stories have only come to light in the last 5 years or so. There were likely many more agents who were never detected, which also shows how compromised the Manhattan Project was.
@@PhillyPhanVinny France? Of the five legal nuclear states that was the only one Fuchs didn’t help develop. Arguably the UK as well as the US reneged on the war time agreements and didn’t share its data until after the UK detonated a thermonuclear device. Once the US again offered technology sharing the UK accepted, the French much more wisely told the US where they could go stick their rockets.
Your understanding of enrichment is awful. Firstly U235 and U238 are isotopes of uranium so to separate them you need them in a form where individual atoms can be separated from one another by some physical or chemical process. reaction rates do depend on the reduced mass of atoms in a bond to a degree so chemical reactions can enrich a product in one isotope or another, the best example being the water in battery acid gradually becoming enriched in D20 for instance in the Oslo tram system. But that isn’t much use for a heavy atom like uranium where the difference in reaction rate is too small to be important. So we need a physical process and that requires that individual U atoms can move separately which means a liquid, a gas, or a solution. Now given that yellow cake isn’t that pure to begin with and hasn’t yet been smelted to produce metal you react with fluorine to produce UF6 which is a gas. You then feed this into a gas centrifuge (essentially a set of cylinders inside one another spinning very fast, hence the code name tube alloys) and the U235 version migrates to the outside marginally slower than the U238 version so you take the gas from the core of the centrifuge into another and repeat and so on until you end up with either reactor grade UF6 which you convert to uranium oxide for fuel or continue on to bomb grade material which is converted to uranium metal. The exhausted gas is used to create depleted uranium which has its uses where you want a very dense metal. To be honest nobody who knows what they are doing goes much beyond reactor grade anymore. You just feed that into a reactor where the flying subatomic particles convert some of your U238 into plutonium which being a different element is much easier to purify and get your fissionable material when you reprocess the spent fuel.
How can that man in the thumbnail possibly be anti-American? He's wearing a little American flag! If the last twenty years has taught me nothing else, it's that only true patriots wear little flag pins.
Brilliant Astrid Thankyou ! .I love these Spies & Ties Episodes They tell us so much more about the struggle and help put into context some of today's troubles
This is so interesting! My sister and I watched The Imitation Game last night and I was so excited that I could tell her who the Cambridge Five were thanks to you. She was shocked. Also, she was shocked at just how sloppy of a spy the drunk dude was.
Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/SAT_022_PI Distrust between the USSR and the Western Allies runs deep. So we ask you: is a Cold War between them inevitable if and when this war is finally over? Read our code of conduct before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Your team understands, but most, I would guess, don’t understand the root/s of the distrust of the West/US by the USSR elites. I have read a lot about this budding distrust, but have always thought the West was much more trusting. It was close to the time that the Cambridge 5 (or 4) defected to Moscow because their spying and selling of govt top secrets was found out. I grew up in the Soviet Bloc (satellite country).
Fantastic as usual; the way you keep engrossing narratives flowing through such a dense amount of information is so well-done. Thank you for your work!
Thank you so much! Knowing there are history enthusiasts like you out there who appreciate our work, makes it all that much more worthwhile and rewarding. Please stay tuned and keep bringing the positivity!
@@perihelion7798 i can’t even look at it 🙏😳 , I normally direct and Style Indy and Spartacus, when I sit infront of the camera I can’t see myself, I am so sorry , it’s torture for me as well 😂😇
Some of these Spies and Ties episodes are the best in the series. There is is a lot of information in these that I have never heard before. I guess it takes the secret information longer to leak out and make it into books and and videos.
Missed out the premiere as I went to bed a bit earlier last night, so gonna have to catch the replay later. This looks like another episode many of us have been waiting for. Thanks Astrid & team for another interesting episode here!
It gets worse when the NSA was able to break a subset of Soviet diplomatic cables they didn’t pass the information to the State Department which they thought was riddled with with Soviet agents but they did pass it over to the British head of station in Washington who they trusted and was of course Kim Philby.
I've only recently discovered this channel and I love it! And Astrid, you are so adorable! Very entertaining delivery. This seems to be the last in the Spies & Ties series (Aug 2022) -- do you plan to do more in this espionage line? Would love to see more. Thanks for all your great work on this and other TimeGhost series!
We love hearing from you Perihelion! We never tire of the positive comments and support. Very glad you enjoy the series, it's folks like you who have helped make the TimeGhost Army community so supportive, thoughtful, and positive. Please keep the great discussion & comments coming, and we'll see you next time!
I love how Astrid pronounces the name of DuPont. @2:37, Actually, this was still the Bureau of Investigation. The FBI, or Federal Bureau of Investigation, wouldn't be formed until later. The Bureau of Investigation didn't have as much power of the FBI had/has.
I hadn’t known the Soviet spy network was that deep into US society. It makes one wonder if the McCarthyism of the 50s was a backlash of that when it finally came to light…
It absolutely was. McCarthy unfortunately was a horrible alcoholic and not the best man to be making the case against red infiltration even if he had been sober. But he was an intelligence officer in ww2 and i am certain that he had people on the inside who were feeding him information after the war. If you want to see much of what McCarthy saw but couldn't reveal at the time (his enemies knew this and used it against him), take a deep dive into the VENONA files and the Mitrokhin Papers. Ronald Radosh is highly recommended for the broad overview of communism in America, as is David Horowitz, though he is not an easy read.
@@williamjpellas0314 McCarthy picked on anti-Communism as a campaign issue in 1950, several years after the Red Scare started, and it could easily have been something else. One commentator who knew both him and his controversial assistant Roy Cohn suspected McCarthy was not particularly serious about anti-Communism in reality, while Cohn was. Cohn, who was Jewish, was embarrassed about how many Jews in the USA were inclined to Communism and seems to have made countering it one of his missions in life. McCarthy was fed information by Hoover's FBI and McCarthy was photographed playing golf with Hoover, although after his downfall Hoover would have nothing to do with him. Prior to Communism, McCarthy took up the cause of Germans accused of massacring American prisoners at Malmedy in 1944. There were allegations that they had been tortured in US Army custody, and one reason McCarthy may have taken up the issue is that there were a lot of German-Americans in his part of Wisconsin.
@@ciprianbodea7838 "Nightmare In Red" by R.M. Fried, published 1991, is a pretty good overview. "Citizen Cohn" by Nicholas von Hoffman, 1988, is a good biography of McCarthy's right-hand man although he outlived McCarthy by nearly three decades and was later a mentor to a certain Donald Trump.
Fortunately this time around, the FBI did not wait quite as long to retrieve classified information from someone who was going to pass it on to foreign powers.
@@tomhenry897 It's amazing that Trump was caught red-handed in illegal possession of classified information, and his fans are still griping about Hillary Clinton's e-mails.
I love your accent and mean no disrespect but it took me a second to understand “tentacles”? “Did she say ten tackles? Are the covering american football suddenly?”
This is a unrelated but I thought I'd share it. During the height of the Cold-War my old man served as Ranger and from birth he was taught that Russians were the enemy. When he entered the service the propaganda cranked that notion to 1000% But when he was deployed to Honduras and was he stuck waiting at the dock for replacement equipment a Russian merchant ship docked right beside them. The merchant ship's rations were rotten or something so a few English speaking Russians walked to my dad's unit and said "HELLO! pretty-faced Americans! :D" and bartered vodka in exchange for MRES. My father used to believe all Russians were psycho murder-hobos, but after two weeks they spent together, these guys turned be the nicest people you could ever meet. (Plus the vodka was kick ass) Guess the moral of the story is: you can't always judge a man by his government, especially in countries like Russia.
I don't think this has anything to do with those spies, but the US culture in general. It still works to this day and there has been no soviet union since 30 years.
@@ciprianbodea7838 Blacklisted by History is an incredibly biased revision of history defending McCarthy at every point. The book isn't completely lies, it's true that some of McCarthy's targets weren't innocent, and were sometimes even actual communists or even spies, but it goes so far in defending McCarthy it reads more like a legal defense than a biography. McCarthyism and the Red Scare has seen significant cultural pushback to the point that sometimes it's entirely dismissed that there were, in fact, Soviet spies or sympathizers working in American govt. and society, but just because red spies were around doesn't make the majority of McCarthy's rabid accusations true or justified. The biggest issue with McCarthy wasn't that he was feverishly trying to combat communist espionage, but his inability or refusal to differentiate between actual Soviet or Communist Chinese agents and regular Americans who had some communist or communist-adjacent views while still being anti-communist overall (and definitely isn't cooperating with or is spying for the Communist Bloc). The book glosses over this entirely, I'd say give it a read with a critical eye but a few truths about some of the good McCarthy was trying to do doesn't make it fine for a book of that nature to just conveniently skip over all of his awful conspiratorial manhunts.
Large mabe earrings, red tie…very nice styling. I have to congratulate you Astrid for your excellent diction…I heard many from that part of the world who sounded awful in English.
"On this episode, Spies and the American Atomic Program" Me: The universe must have a peculiar sense of humor to time this episode to current events in America.
And didn't actually go after people who were likely to be spies. He just kind of pointed at some famous people and went "I'm getting moderate Social Democrat vibes from you. YOU MUST BE A SOVIET SPY! YOU'RE DEFINITELY ON THIS REAL LIST OF COMMUNISTS I HAVE YET REFUSE TO SHOW ANYONE BUT I INSIST IS REAL!"
When you remember the Korean War was ongoing during a lot of the Red Scare, it was DEFINITELY a genuine concern, just like German and Japanese sabotage risks during World War II. Those who blow it off as mere paranoia ignore historical facts or listen too much to only McCarthy. Even more moderates like Senator Margaret Chase Smith said Communism was too dangerous to treat lightly or allow as a political force (she and other members of Congress actually voted to ban the Communist Party as a political institution in the US). It was frightening times and an adversary who was difficult to predict.
The persecution of the "Premature Anti-Fascists" was the most obvious way to deflect one's own very Fascist sympathies and cowardice. "You were publicly against this now-popularly-understood evil we were all eventually publicly against, but before I was publicly against it (and when I was maybe saying supportive things about it). That makes you suspicious!"
@Griffin Anderson The Committee on Un-American Activities was actually started by a NY congressman who was a Soviet spy. The original intent of the Committee was to hunt down German sympathizers during the war.
How did the spy’s send over the information in times of war? I assume that they couldn’t simply cable to the Soviet consulate so how did they do it? I assume they didn’t send over people as the seas and skies are dangerous between either your country, the enemy, and the ones you are sending information to.
Besides, the fact that the soviets got the bomb too may have saved us a nuclear war, since it created a balance, rather than a monopoly that could have allowed the US to deploy nuclear weapons as a common tactical device, such as McArthur suggested against the chinese during the korean war.
MacArthur was crazy when it comes to geopolitical strategy and proper use of the bomb. He had first wanted to use A-bombs to clear out beach heads during the Invasion of mainland japan. Had Japan not immediately surrendered, then who knows the radiation exposure that would have been inflicted on American personnel?
Surprising comment. Suggesting that if the US had a monopoly on the atom bomb would be worse for peace than having a counter-weight (i.e., the USSR), was a line the KGB used to recruit spies in the US and in England.
Yes because preventing Mao from committing more murders than Hitler or ending the Kim dynasty before they set up the most monstrous regime in human history would be such would be such a bad thing lol
@@ethanduncan1646 Yes? Dropping more than 20 nuclear bombs on innocent people would cause large protests and, eventually, communist revolution against american regime
I don't want to be mean at all or anything but I really don't like how this lady speaks. It's hard to understand her to the point where it becomes frustrating. This is a very interesting topic and it is a damn shame that Indy wasn't the one presenting it.
@@canaluludorel5838 I've spoken English my whole life and I don't like how this lady speaks and get frustrated w it too. Like you said, if it wasn't an interesting topic, I wouldn't listen to it at all.
I would love for Ms Deinhard take on the post war witch hunts of HUAC....maybe in the cold war series that will follow this.....uhoh....¡¡SPOILER ALERT!!
I'm with Donovan. If the axis wins, it's all moot. And the Soviets had just as much justification to be suspicious of the West as vice versa. Let's not forget 1919.
Besides, the fact that the soviets got the bomb too may have saved us a nuclear war, since it created a balance, rather than a monopoly that could have allowed the US to deploy nuclear weapons as a common tactical device, such as McArthur suggested against the chinese during the korean war.
Love the episode, I have read some of this and what will happen in Canada,...... But I know Oppenheimer was under FBI surveillance going all the way back to 1940 and he had a mistress who committed suicide after the war because the J Edgar Hoover kept a detailed file on him all the way up to the 1950's! Then a spy in communication officer in Canada turned crown evidence over the RCMP Right after the war and both the US Britain and Canada held trials and about the same time. But most of the agents didn't do any hard time!!! The most time I think was 10 to 15 years or deported back to there own countries...... I know that 1 or two of the spies committed suicide before the trails or after the trails???? Sorry I didn't mean to jump ahead!!!? You forgot to mention that one of Oppenheimer assistance was passing along information to the NKVD. When the NKVD couldn't get Oppenheimer they went after the people around him! But the FBI was more focused on the top scientist in the beginning...... But this is what sparked the McCarthy area in the 1950's Still love the episode Astrid love the tie!! Keep stealing Indy's wardrobe it goes well with your videos!
@@brucetucker4847 Hoover also had quite a grip on many US institutions. It was not until the late1960s that mainstream media in the USA would even dare to criticise him. The FBI could fight very dirty - critics might find their private lives or tax affairs investigated by the FBI.
Hoover kept files of dirt on all the politicians, to include Roosevelt as insurance. He could destroy anyone at any time with leaks. He set the standard for how the FBI works today, which is how the agency escapes any real oversight.
The prevalence of Soviet spies at every level of British and American society is such a strong testament to the faith of these men and women that they were really building a better world. Whatever we think of their actions in retrospect, I can’t help but admire their dedication to what they saw as the cause of the poor and downtrodden.
I don´t want to be mean but these people worked for Stalin, who had no problems sending thousands of people to prison camps or to be purged by his secret police. The USSR was, like Nazi Germany, an inhuman state built on propaganda, slave labor and mass murder. What I find really terrifying is the fact that these people really thought they would help to build a better world. The NKVD was just as cruel as the Gestapo and if Stalin really would have defeated the USA during the Cold War and russian troops would have occupied America it would have lead to more mass murder, a cruel dictatorship and slave camps. The Red Army was, like the Wehrmacht, a tool for an bloodthirsty dictator. Look what Nazi Germany and the USSR did 1939 to Poland: Deportations, mass murder and torture (Katyn / Warsaw Ghetto). Again I don´t want to be mean but in my opinion there is not much to admire about these people.
@@nightbreed2244 Thank you for commenting in good faith, so I will try to respond in the same way (as impossible as that might be in a RUclips comment section). The Stalinist Soviet Union was not equivalent to Nazi Germany. I'm aware of the examples of Stalinist crimes that you mentioned, but they did not make the Soviet Union an "inhuman state". What they made it was an unfortunately unremarkable state, by international standards. There are very few countries that haven't committed awful crimes at some point in their history. To take just one example, the American "Manifest Destiny" genocide of Native Americans was basically a successful lebensraum. Or, if you'd prefer a contemporary example, the British indifference towards and deliberate exacerbation of the Bengal famine was no more or less inhuman than the Holomodor. But, and not to diminish the seriousness of these crimes, they do not make their states as fundamentally evil as the Nazis. Nazi Germany was founded with the *explicit* purpose of waging a genocidal war for the benefit of the "master race". The Nazis set out from the beginning to create a totalitarian, oppressive state for its own sake. They are not just responsible for the Holocaust and the domestic evils done in Germany, but also for starting *unprovoked* the bloodiest war in human history. The Soviet Union may never have measured up to it's goal of overthrowing the inhuman system of global capitalism, but at least that is a goal born out of a love for humankind and a desire to liberate the exploited and oppressed. The tragedy of the Soviet spies is not that they were sacrificing themselves for the Cold War boogeyman that you described, but that they were laying their lives down for a state that had abandoned the cause for which it ostensibly existed.
@@ethanmagnuson2988 Thanks for the quick answer. I respect your opinion but I still think that Nazism and Communism were at this time a huge danger to democratic countries. Another thing that I find really disturbing (it has nothing to do with the video) is the fact that a country does not need to be an autoritarian state lead by an racist psychopath like Hitler to make people commit mass murder. Look what US - Troops did during the vietnam war in My lai. Despite labeled a "massacre" the mass murder of civillians at this village were not done in a moment of rage but planned and carried out cold and calculated. And My lai was not just the only war crime done by american troops during that war. The only difference was that the higher ups in the army had no chance to cover it up. There are two books about these things: Kill Anything that moves by Nick Turse (there is an audiobook version on youtube) and Tiger Force about an special military team which was send into the warzone to fight the Vietcong with their own tactics but turned into a death squad and started killing every vietnamese civilian they came across. When My Lai made the news a lot of people said things like: "This is war it had to be done", "They just followed orders." etc. and actually defended the soldiers who carried out the killings. Of course not all US - soldiers during that war were sadistic mass murders but for me there is not a big difference between american soldiers who killed vietnamese civilians out of pure sadism and the Nazi soldiers / SS Death Squads who killed jews / russians at the eastern front during WW2.
@@nightbreed2244 I'd definitely agree that Nazism was (and is) a major threat to democracy, but I can't recall many examples of Communists coming to power in a democratic countries and turning them authoritarian. During the 20th century, most Communist revolutions overthrew colonial and/or authoritarian regimes. When they did come to power in democratic countries, such as Salvador Allende in Chili, they usually respected their countries democratic institutions. I'll admit that most Communist revolutions did not *establish* democratic traditions where none existed, but there are exceptions. Your point about My Lai is well made. It's really scary how cruel and vicious human beings can be when put in the wrong situation. And it boggles my mind how the higher-ups involved in trying to cover up My Lai (like Colin Powell) were able to survive with their reputations intact.
Communists EVERYWHERE, this sounds like a job for J. Edgar Hoover to go sniff out. That would be a miniseries all in its own on Hoover and the Red Scare...
Only problem is that Hoover missed mostly of the actual spies. As another post noted, one of the reasons Hoover wasn't fired for incompetence (along with having compromising info on everyone) was that much of this, including who the spies were, didn't become known until long after he was dead. And although Senator Joseph Mccarthy was right in highlighting Soviet penetration of the US Government, he grossly exaggerated the numbers (for political gain) and those numbers frequently changed. The anti-communist witch hunt he contributed to was too clumsy and heavy-handed, whilst most of the real spies were too smart for the likes of Mccarthy and HUAC, and went undetected.
Soviets could spy so much on the allies just because allies didn't worry enough about Soviet espiomage during WWII. A giant mistake that later cost Anerica her nuclear monopoly.
I read part of a book three years back that described the Soviet penetration of the USA during WWII. Both the FBI and Army Intelligence knew there was a good deal of Russian espionage taking place in the US and Mexico, but they were constantly stymied by the US State Department in their efforts to trail, observe, and arrest these enemy agents. It must have been maddening for them. For decades many people have dismissed Senator Joe McCarthy's fearmongering because of his opportunism and willingness to malign anyone who got in his way (and some who didn't). But his essential claim was correct; America was rife with Soviet spies. It's a pity someone of higher caliber, who was not in it for himself, had been leading the effort to rid our nation of this menace, assuming it can be done. I say this because we've also tried eliminating poverty, drugs, and terrorism. All of these are largely existential threats that have more to do a person's ideology. If you want to change a man's way of thinking, you won't succeed with threats of violence and jail time. Only through continuous education and experience is there any chance of mitigating the problem, thus it is generational in nature.
The CIA was in part founded as a continuation of the OSS, which had been closed down. The OSS had recruited some leftish people during the war, finding them useful for some missions, especially in central and eastern Europe, but the CIA worked to ensure such people were not recruited into its own ranks and some fell prey to the Red Scare.
What do you call someone who defends the home land that they are from? USA a patriot. I don't hear many people using the term national patriotism today. If anything like that it's national socialism that's the problem.
I can understand how an American can become disillusioned with the USA. But to then conclude that the Soviets are better is mind boggling. Even if you truly believed in communism it is hard to believe you would think the Soviets are the answer.
If you’re interested in learning more about this historical moment, I would highly recommend Eric Hobsbawm’s book on the 20th century, specifically the chapter on social revolution in the early 20th century. As a former CPGB member who later became disillusioned, he gives a great insider’s look at the psychology of the thousands of people who dedicated their lives to the movement during this period.
Why not? The high tide of US Communism was in the 1930s, during the Depression. Not himself a Communist, indeed he was right-wing, the future actor Robert Mitchum recalled staying at a "hobo camp" and one man there was prostituting his own daughter out for 10 cents a time. She was 12 or thereabouts. Total human degradation in the US of A. In such circumstances, also in the "Hoovervilles", the Communist agitator might get a hearing. And if he told you the USSR offered hope, you might believe him.
A few months before his death he met the king of Saudi Arabia on a boat in the Red Sea. The controversial US relationship with Saudi Arabia pretty much started right there. Realpolitik or a different kind of naivete?
@@patriotadam4091 I am not sure what "thew steel dossiere" is, but I do know that classified nuclear documents were recently retrieved from the Florida residence of a former US president.
@@patriotadam4091 I knew that, as a patriot, you would be outraged by this treasonous behavior. In the interest of national security and the preservation of American liberal democracy, we must hope that Trump is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Secret documents (possibly concerning information about nuclear weapons systems) were recently seized from the former US President’s home during an FBI search. They had been illegally taken when he left office.
This reminds me of an old joke
British politician “our spies are well educated. They studied at Oxford or Cambridge”
US politician “our spies are well educated. They studied at Harvard, Yale or West Point”
Soviet politician “such a lot we have in common”
?
@@hansalce147 The joke is that the people the UK and the US think are their best spies are the same people the KGB regards as their best agents….
@@hansalce147 All those same well-educated spies were working for the Soviets . . .
@@hansalce147 Their spies infiltrated those universities, or maybe their spies are the professors, or their spies also studied there.
?
In 1999, an 87-year-old British woman held a press conference in front of her home to announce that for nearly four decades, she’d worked as a spy for the Soviet Union.
In fact, Melita Norwood was the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy. From World War II through the Cold War, she stole nuclear secrets from the office where she worked as a secretary and passed them to Moscow.
Norwood was coming clean because a Cambridge historian had discovered her espionage while writing a book, but she was unrepentant. She told The Times of London that “in the same circumstances, I know that I would do the same thing again.”
There is a pretty good movie about her story. It's worth a watch.
Nothing like a traitor coming out and being unrepentant. Why do we make laws anyway?
...
You don't ever have to accept that someone did the right thing.
But you do have to realize why they did something so very wrong.
With all the neurosis of british politics after the second world war,
I can only say I hope the fool is somewhere honest and gentle, now.
@@83j049733rfe4 Communism never works out to be better than democracy. It just doesn't work and is always run by fanatics who want to destroy anyone who doesn't think like them.
I do wish we would learn to get along with each other in a better fashion. Sigh.
@@ToddSauve
The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make different.
Between the failures of industry and government, regardless of politics, I've had to conclude that imposing some hegemony on a populace is faulty.
In the current climate where the politician has given his or her power up to the forces of the market, and to the economists that say "It won't happen again!", I can't advocate for some form of anarchy either, because that's what we have, right now.
There is a Kurdish figure by the name Abdullah Ocalan, and he used to be a stalinist. But has since rejected it and envisioned something he calls Democratic Confederalism. And I'm not entirely sure that is the exact way forward myself.
But at the end of the day, I am left with two certainties,
Melita was awful to have done what she did, and yet I can't blame her entirely. Even Anthony Blunt betrayed the very crown he curated art for.
And we have yet to figure that perfect way of governing a community. Isiah Berlin had it wrong. And so did Ayn Rand and George Boole and Leo Strauss, B.F. Skinner, Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud with so many of the others.
And rather than sad, I think I have to feel hope.
Because we've yet to imagine some better way that is truly in touch with us and our need of sovereignty.
It is still waiting to be seen.
We are not a lost cause.
I've said before that this complementary series is getting slicker and more interesting and again this shows again in this episode. Really enjoying them alongside all of the other great content. As ever, thanks.
Thank you Cris, very glad you're enjoying it. Stay tuned for more
Add to video please : jozef werobej, marian kukieł, Jan Kruszewski, tadeusz Stefan münnich, walerian czuma, lorenzo Vivalda, Georg alexander hansen, zdislaw Wincenty przyjalkowsky, mieczysław Neugebauer, františek masařík, libor zapletal, Ludvík cupal, wladyslaw Langner, Czech paratrooper františek pospíšil, henry louis gabriel michaud, Marcel haegelen, françois ingold, Robert De Roux, nicolae dascalescu, jacques arthuys, Antonio gandin, brunetto brunetti, Carlo calvi di bergolo please to add in videos
@@WorldWarTwo general Charles delestraint was communist?
@@WorldWarTwo general gustave Bertrand in 1940-1945 was against fascism and collaboration? Was he a Democrat?
@@WorldWarTwo generals brunetto brunetti, Antonio gandin in 1943-1945 was against fascism and ISR?
In the end the only USSR spy that mattered in terms of how fast the USSR got the atomic bomb was Klaus Fuchs. The way to make an atomic bomb was known to all the major nations of WW2. The issue for all of them was how you could ever get enough U235 out of U238. U238 (Uranium) is not actually a very rare metal in the Earth. But the useful part of Uranium, U235 is. It makes up less the a percent of any U238 found. So the issue always was and still is how do you separate the U235 from the U238 in great enough number to build multiple atomic bombs?
This is issue was why Japan and Germany gave up on a atomic bomb project in WW2. They thought if they worked on it maybe they would get 1 atomic bomb and only then if the war lasted 8+ years. But the US developed a way to separate the U235 from the U238. In simple terms you smash the Uranium up into dust, put it in turbines, spin them very fast for a long time and the U235 separates from the U238. In reality it is much more complex then that. And was what made the US and UK think the USSR would not get the bomb for years before they did.
The USSR did get the bomb when they did because Fuchs told them how to go about separating the U235 from the U238. This made it so the USSR didn't have to go through the years of trial and error of tests to find the best way to separate the U235. Even today the way you actually separate U235 from U238 is a guarded secret that very few people in very few nations know how to completely do (not the vague way I mentioned above). All of the other atomic spies info was considered of not much use by the USSR. They just used it to make sure they were doing things correct on the easy parts of building the bomb. Again, separating the Uranium is the real issue and always has and will be.
The Rosenbergs though did provide other valuable intel to the USSR in jet airplanes, missiles, and radar.
The difficulty of uranium enrichment is presumably why it was the centrifuges which were targeted by the US malware Stuxnet when sabotaging the Iranian nuclear programme around 2009-2010.
@@alphamikeomega5728 You are correct. The knowledge to make an atomic weapon can be gained by any nation who sends one person through a proper engineering school. The issue they will still have is "how do we get the material to make such a weapon" and then second "how do we deliver it". Enrichment and missile technology today is the real hurdle to becoming a nuclear state. And every nation that has gotten nukes so far has gotten help on how to make them from other nations (willingly, unwillingly, or through payments to the people with the correct knowledge).
Think you're being a bit dismissive by claiming that Klaus was the only spy that mattered. Morris Cohen never revealed which American scientists (so it couldn't have been Klaus) passed on the vital information to him. Also, the information passed on by George Koval allowed the Soviets to understand the plutonium bomb in detail. And truth be told, there were numerous over agents like Oscar Seborer, whose full stories have only come to light in the last 5 years or so. There were likely many more agents who were never detected, which also shows how compromised the Manhattan Project was.
@@PhillyPhanVinny France? Of the five legal nuclear states that was the only one Fuchs didn’t help develop. Arguably the UK as well as the US reneged on the war time agreements and didn’t share its data until after the UK detonated a thermonuclear device. Once the US again offered technology sharing the UK accepted, the French much more wisely told the US where they could go stick their rockets.
Your understanding of enrichment is awful. Firstly U235 and U238 are isotopes of uranium so to separate them you need them in a form where individual atoms can be separated from one another by some physical or chemical process. reaction rates do depend on the reduced mass of atoms in a bond to a degree so chemical reactions can enrich a product in one isotope or another, the best example being the water in battery acid gradually becoming enriched in D20 for instance in the Oslo tram system. But that isn’t much use for a heavy atom like uranium where the difference in reaction rate is too small to be important. So we need a physical process and that requires that individual U atoms can move separately which means a liquid, a gas, or a solution. Now given that yellow cake isn’t that pure to begin with and hasn’t yet been smelted to produce metal you react with fluorine to produce UF6 which is a gas. You then feed this into a gas centrifuge (essentially a set of cylinders inside one another spinning very fast, hence the code name tube alloys) and the U235 version migrates to the outside marginally slower than the U238 version so you take the gas from the core of the centrifuge into another and repeat and so on until you end up with either reactor grade UF6 which you convert to uranium oxide for fuel or continue on to bomb grade material which is converted to uranium metal. The exhausted gas is used to create depleted uranium which has its uses where you want a very dense metal.
To be honest nobody who knows what they are doing goes much beyond reactor grade anymore. You just feed that into a reactor where the flying subatomic particles convert some of your U238 into plutonium which being a different element is much easier to purify and get your fissionable material when you reprocess the spent fuel.
How can that man in the thumbnail possibly be anti-American? He's wearing a little American flag! If the last twenty years has taught me nothing else, it's that only true patriots wear little flag pins.
I consider myself a patriot, and I never felt a needed a little flag pin to show that. Actions speak a lot louder than decorations, IMO.
Whoooooosh! Right over the jome sounds.
So by that logic, Trump is a patriot.
@@lcacela that is indeed the joke.
Indeed, how could someone like that possibly leak nuclear secrets to other countries? Preposterous!
Brilliant Astrid Thankyou ! .I love these Spies & Ties Episodes They tell us so much more about the struggle and help put into context some of today's troubles
Thank you Daniel, very glad you're liking the series!
This is so interesting! My sister and I watched The Imitation Game last night and I was so excited that I could tell her who the Cambridge Five were thanks to you. She was shocked. Also, she was shocked at just how sloppy of a spy the drunk dude was.
Thank you for watching, Heather
@@WorldWarTwo And why is Stalin called Joseph? His name is Iosif. in Russian , these are 2 different names.
@@_b_x_b_1063 It is easier in English. And we know who he is, or was, anyway. Besides, he is long dead.
@@_b_x_b_1063 He was also.known as Uncle Joe. Just easier for western press to humanise him at the time.
@@_b_x_b_1063 The English-speaking world only knew him as Joseph. Or, briefly, Uncle Joe.
I think this has become my favorite mini series on this channel. Thank you for another cool episode!
Thank you Hannah for your support and always kind words
Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/SAT_022_PI
Distrust between the USSR and the Western Allies runs deep. So we ask you: is a Cold War between them inevitable if and when this war is finally over?
Read our code of conduct before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Your team understands, but most, I would guess, don’t understand the root/s of the distrust of the West/US by the USSR elites. I have read a lot about this budding distrust, but have always thought the West was much more trusting. It was close to the time that the Cambridge 5 (or 4) defected to Moscow because their spying and selling of govt top secrets was found out. I grew up in the Soviet Bloc (satellite country).
It cut both ways.
The Vulture reminds me of Aldrich Ames, or Robert Haansen, it was about love or money.
I always *LOVE* Astrid’s fascinating videos in this series!
Thanks Stephen, glad you love her episodes! She's a dynamic lady and I love her videos too
Fantastic as usual; the way you keep engrossing narratives flowing through such a dense amount of information is so well-done. Thank you for your work!
Thank you so much! Knowing there are history enthusiasts like you out there who appreciate our work, makes it all that much more worthwhile and rewarding. Please stay tuned and keep bringing the positivity!
Love the idea that this tie would be hiding the cool imaginery if the jacket were closed. Very spy-like! 3.5/5
I wore it for you darling because it was hidden in a video before :)))))
@@astriddeinhard433 This is one of the many reasons why you are the best!
OK...but that flipped collar completely trigger my dormant OCD! Through the entire video!
@@perihelion7798 i can’t even look at it 🙏😳 , I normally direct and Style Indy and Spartacus, when I sit infront of the camera I can’t see myself, I am so sorry , it’s torture for me as well 😂😇
@@astriddeinhard433 The content and delivery quickly soothed my raging OCD, and I soon forgot about it. Thanks.
Some of these Spies and Ties episodes are the best in the series. There is is a lot of information in these that I have never heard before. I guess it takes the secret information longer to leak out and make it into books and and videos.
You are truly an excellent storyteller Astrid. You draw us in. ❤❤
❤️
I love this series. Anything about spies is really interesting but Astrid adds a lovely flair to each spy story from this time period.
Thank you, very glad you're enjoying it
@@WorldWarTwo---Your welcome. And I always enjoy Astrid's video's. She's really interesting to listen too.
Missed out the premiere as I went to bed a bit earlier last night, so gonna have to catch the replay later. This looks like another episode many of us have been waiting for. Thanks Astrid & team for another interesting episode here!
Thanks for watching as always
Hi Astrid
Awesome story to hear.
Really suprised soviet agents in usa.
This war is full of great stories of spies.
Excited for more.
Thanks.
Naveen Raj Thank you for watching as always. Very nice seeing your name in the comments every week
It gets worse when the NSA was able to break a subset of Soviet diplomatic cables they didn’t pass the information to the State Department which they thought was riddled with with Soviet agents but they did pass it over to the British head of station in Washington who they trusted and was of course Kim Philby.
I've only recently discovered this channel and I love it! And Astrid, you are so adorable! Very entertaining delivery. This seems to be the last in the Spies & Ties series (Aug 2022) -- do you plan to do more in this espionage line? Would love to see more. Thanks for all your great work on this and other TimeGhost series!
I love this series, as it fills a real void in my knowledge, among many voids. It's always fascinating. Kudos!
We love hearing from you Perihelion! We never tire of the positive comments and support. Very glad you enjoy the series, it's folks like you who have helped make the TimeGhost Army community so supportive, thoughtful, and positive. Please keep the great discussion & comments coming, and we'll see you next time!
Another totally fascinating episode with the always entertaining and informative Astrid! Thank you!
Thank you Chuck!
I love how Astrid pronounces the name of DuPont.
@2:37,
Actually, this was still the Bureau of Investigation. The FBI, or Federal Bureau of Investigation, wouldn't be formed until later. The Bureau of Investigation didn't have as much power of the FBI had/has.
This is a fantastic episode. Amazed how the Soviet Union had spies literally everywhere.
Great episode Astrid & team.
Thank you CrimsonTemplar
The more things change, the more they stay the same huh? The swamp has been an issue since, forever...
Surprised there’s no mention of the enigmatic Perseus. Brilliant video though! Keep it up!
"We are trusting him with America's most important secrets. But his file says he's a communist!" "Oh, it's okay. He stopped going to the meetings."
Astrid is always a treat.
We're glad to have you here too, Brian
Semyon Semyonov name is sometimes translitterated in English as Semen Semenov (sic!), which makes him even more... remarkable.
very good report regards from Argentina
Thanks Horacio, very glad you enjoyed it. Cheers my neighbor to the south 🇦🇷
Brilliant series on the BBC going on presently - The Bomb season 2.
Thanks for the recommendation
talking over the fence in a town in the Iron Range: I hear Mrs. Hall's boy is running for President again. :)
First time watching, love your accent!
This is where I get my Carmen Sandiego briefings with the Chief
I hadn’t known the Soviet spy network was that deep into US society. It makes one wonder if the McCarthyism of the 50s was a backlash of that when it finally came to light…
It absolutely was. McCarthy unfortunately was a horrible alcoholic and not the best man to be making the case against red infiltration even if he had been sober. But he was an intelligence officer in ww2 and i am certain that he had people on the inside who were feeding him information after the war. If you want to see much of what McCarthy saw but couldn't reveal at the time (his enemies knew this and used it against him), take a deep dive into the VENONA files and the Mitrokhin Papers. Ronald Radosh is highly recommended for the broad overview of communism in America, as is David Horowitz, though he is not an easy read.
@@williamjpellas0314 McCarthy picked on anti-Communism as a campaign issue in 1950, several years after the Red Scare started, and it could easily have been something else. One commentator who knew both him and his controversial assistant Roy Cohn suspected McCarthy was not particularly serious about anti-Communism in reality, while Cohn was. Cohn, who was Jewish, was embarrassed about how many Jews in the USA were inclined to Communism and seems to have made countering it one of his missions in life.
McCarthy was fed information by Hoover's FBI and McCarthy was photographed playing golf with Hoover, although after his downfall Hoover would have nothing to do with him.
Prior to Communism, McCarthy took up the cause of Germans accused of massacring American prisoners at Malmedy in 1944. There were allegations that they had been tortured in US Army custody, and one reason McCarthy may have taken up the issue is that there were a lot of German-Americans in his part of Wisconsin.
I suggest you read "Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans to get a better understanding of McCarthy and and "red scare" of the 1950s.
@@ciprianbodea7838 "Nightmare In Red" by R.M. Fried, published 1991, is a pretty good overview. "Citizen Cohn" by Nicholas von Hoffman, 1988, is a good biography of McCarthy's right-hand man although he outlived McCarthy by nearly three decades and was later a mentor to a certain Donald Trump.
A fine report Astrid!
Thank you David!
Excellent. Nice Tie.
Thanks Pierre
This episode oughta get promoted more with the release of the movie Oppenheimer
We will not learn from history and we are repeating it.
Fortunately this time around, the FBI did not wait quite as long to retrieve classified information from someone who was going to pass it on to foreign powers.
Iike Hilary’s private server and the fire at a nuclear weapon resreach facility under Clinton
@@tomhenry897 It's amazing that Trump was caught red-handed in illegal possession of classified information, and his fans are still griping about Hillary Clinton's e-mails.
I love your accent and mean no disrespect but it took me a second to understand “tentacles”?
“Did she say ten tackles? Are the covering american football suddenly?”
This is a unrelated but I thought I'd share it.
During the height of the Cold-War my old man served as Ranger and from birth he was taught that Russians were the enemy.
When he entered the service the propaganda cranked that notion to 1000%
But when he was deployed to Honduras and was he stuck waiting at the dock for replacement equipment a Russian merchant ship docked right beside them.
The merchant ship's rations were rotten or something so a few English speaking Russians walked to my dad's unit and said "HELLO! pretty-faced Americans! :D" and bartered vodka in exchange for MRES.
My father used to believe all Russians were psycho murder-hobos, but after two weeks they spent together, these guys turned be the nicest people you could ever meet. (Plus the vodka was kick ass)
Guess the moral of the story is: you can't always judge a man by his government, especially in countries like Russia.
I'd be curious to know which movies the clips are taken from that are used in the introduction.
Wow. No wonder Joe McCarthy's wild accusations were so often believed.
I don't think this has anything to do with those spies, but the US culture in general. It still works to this day and there has been no soviet union since 30 years.
If you want to delve deeper into who McCarthy was and what he did as a senator, I recommend reading "Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans.
@@ciprianbodea7838 Blacklisted by History is an incredibly biased revision of history defending McCarthy at every point. The book isn't completely lies, it's true that some of McCarthy's targets weren't innocent, and were sometimes even actual communists or even spies, but it goes so far in defending McCarthy it reads more like a legal defense than a biography. McCarthyism and the Red Scare has seen significant cultural pushback to the point that sometimes it's entirely dismissed that there were, in fact, Soviet spies or sympathizers working in American govt. and society, but just because red spies were around doesn't make the majority of McCarthy's rabid accusations true or justified.
The biggest issue with McCarthy wasn't that he was feverishly trying to combat communist espionage, but his inability or refusal to differentiate between actual Soviet or Communist Chinese agents and regular Americans who had some communist or communist-adjacent views while still being anti-communist overall (and definitely isn't cooperating with or is spying for the Communist Bloc). The book glosses over this entirely, I'd say give it a read with a critical eye but a few truths about some of the good McCarthy was trying to do doesn't make it fine for a book of that nature to just conveniently skip over all of his awful conspiratorial manhunts.
Because he spoke the truth
@@DocSeal
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. 😏
Love this set.
We love you too, Andy
Large mabe earrings, red tie…very nice styling. I have to congratulate you Astrid for your excellent diction…I heard many from that part of the world who sounded awful in English.
thank you very much :)
is the vulture, the rosenberg guy?
Great video
Thank you for watching as always, Dr Jones
A wonderful Introducing of this interesting Matter
Thank you for watching as always
Comment for the algorithm, cool episode
Thanks David
@@WorldWarTwo :)
Vielen Dank, Astrid! Diese Staffel wird langsam immer besser.
thank you , darling :)
Y'all do a wonderful job, I hate to become redundant.
Robert, we never get tired of pleasant comments. Thank you & I hope you'll stay tuned
"On this episode, Spies and the American Atomic Program"
Me: The universe must have a peculiar sense of humor to time this episode to current events in America.
:)))
All the videos from this fantastic crew have modern relevance, sadly. We don't learn.
The show "The Americans" had a nod to this Golos and his "craft"
Not a word about mafia and his role in operation husky
Fantastic the wonders of Naivity and Convenience!!!
Venona project
Make a T-shirt with this videos icon! Spy Stalin is marvellous!
Very intersting
So a lot of the '50s red paranoia was pretty well founded. Not that that makes Joseph McCarthy any less of a self-serving, manipulative ideologue.
Truth
And didn't actually go after people who were likely to be spies. He just kind of pointed at some famous people and went "I'm getting moderate Social Democrat vibes from you. YOU MUST BE A SOVIET SPY! YOU'RE DEFINITELY ON THIS REAL LIST OF COMMUNISTS I HAVE YET REFUSE TO SHOW ANYONE BUT I INSIST IS REAL!"
When you remember the Korean War was ongoing during a lot of the Red Scare, it was DEFINITELY a genuine concern, just like German and Japanese sabotage risks during World War II. Those who blow it off as mere paranoia ignore historical facts or listen too much to only McCarthy. Even more moderates like Senator Margaret Chase Smith said Communism was too dangerous to treat lightly or allow as a political force (she and other members of Congress actually voted to ban the Communist Party as a political institution in the US). It was frightening times and an adversary who was difficult to predict.
The persecution of the "Premature Anti-Fascists" was the most obvious way to deflect one's own very Fascist sympathies and cowardice.
"You were publicly against this now-popularly-understood evil we were all eventually publicly against, but before I was publicly against it (and when I was maybe saying supportive things about it). That makes you suspicious!"
@Griffin Anderson
The Committee on Un-American Activities was actually started by a NY congressman who was a Soviet spy. The original intent of the Committee was to hunt down German sympathizers during the war.
She wears that tie like a boss.
I am :))
The period dress and items help sell this whole channel.
Thank you Miles, we appreciate when people notice the details.
We know that just because they can get information to Stalin...doesn't mean he'll believe it.
Good point
Astrid nice tie do you spy too? 😆 lol
How did the spy’s send over the information in times of war? I assume that they couldn’t simply cable to the Soviet consulate so how did they do it? I assume they didn’t send over people as the seas and skies are dangerous between either your country, the enemy, and the ones you are sending information to.
Get it to the embassy and put it in a diplomatic bag
Radio although vulnerable to interception.
Read The Vinona Secrets... it tells all.
80 years later and this still angers me. Especially as so many of these people were privileged members of the Establishment
Besides, the fact that the soviets got the bomb too may have saved us a nuclear war, since it created a balance, rather than a monopoly that could have allowed the US to deploy nuclear weapons as a common tactical device, such as McArthur suggested against the chinese during the korean war.
MacArthur was crazy when it comes to geopolitical strategy and proper use of the bomb. He had first wanted to use A-bombs to clear out beach heads during the Invasion of mainland japan. Had Japan not immediately surrendered, then who knows the radiation exposure that would have been inflicted on American personnel?
Surprising comment. Suggesting that if the US had a monopoly on the atom bomb would be worse for peace than having a counter-weight (i.e., the USSR), was a line the KGB used to recruit spies in the US and in England.
Yes because preventing Mao from committing more murders than Hitler or ending the Kim dynasty before they set up the most monstrous regime in human history would be such would be such a bad thing lol
@@ethanduncan1646 Yes? Dropping more than 20 nuclear bombs on innocent people would cause large protests and, eventually, communist revolution against american regime
@@ethanduncan1646 hahahahaha.
I don't want to be mean at all or anything but I really don't like how this lady speaks. It's hard to understand her to the point where it becomes frustrating. This is a very interesting topic and it is a damn shame that Indy wasn't the one presenting it.
Hallo. English it's not my primary language but I can understand this lady perfectly. Good day sir.
@@a000000000ful my english is not as good as yours I suppose
@@canaluludorel5838 I've spoken English my whole life and I don't like how this lady speaks and get frustrated w it too. Like you said, if it wasn't an interesting topic, I wouldn't listen to it at all.
Astrid speaks English pretty well. Just listen to a couple of shows and you won't have any more problems.
@@johnb7046 You should take care of yourself. Mental issues my have serious consequences.
I would love for Ms Deinhard take on the post war witch hunts of HUAC....maybe in the cold war series that will follow this.....uhoh....¡¡SPOILER ALERT!!
I believe the team intended to do a Cold War follow-up series. I dearly hope they will go ahead, there is so much to tell.
I'm with Donovan. If the axis wins, it's all moot. And the Soviets had just as much justification to be suspicious of the West as vice versa. Let's not forget 1919.
Besides, the fact that the soviets got the bomb too may have saved us a nuclear war, since it created a balance, rather than a monopoly that could have allowed the US to deploy nuclear weapons as a common tactical device, such as McArthur suggested against the chinese during the korean war.
Love the episode, I have read some of this and what will happen in Canada,...... But I know Oppenheimer was under FBI surveillance going all the way back to 1940 and he had a mistress who committed suicide after the war because the J Edgar Hoover kept a detailed file on him all the way up to the 1950's! Then a spy in communication officer in Canada turned crown evidence over the RCMP Right after the war and both the US Britain and Canada held trials and about the same time. But most of the agents didn't do any hard time!!! The most time I think was 10 to 15 years or deported back to there own countries...... I know that 1 or two of the spies committed suicide before the trails or after the trails???? Sorry I didn't mean to jump ahead!!!?
You forgot to mention that one of Oppenheimer assistance was passing along information to the NKVD. When the NKVD couldn't get Oppenheimer they went after the people around him! But the FBI was more focused on the top scientist in the beginning...... But this is what sparked the McCarthy area in the 1950's
Still love the episode Astrid love the tie!! Keep stealing Indy's wardrobe it goes well with your videos!
Thank you Mikael. Remember we have lots more to cover. Stay tuned every week
@@WorldWarTwo always
If the FBI was responsible for counter-espionage, as there is no CIA yet, how did Hoover not get fired for gross incompetence after the war?
Most of this didn't come out until long after Hoover was dead.
@@brucetucker4847 Hoover also had quite a grip on many US institutions. It was not until the late1960s that mainstream media in the USA would even dare to criticise him. The FBI could fight very dirty - critics might find their private lives or tax affairs investigated by the FBI.
Hoover kept files of dirt on all the politicians, to include Roosevelt as insurance. He could destroy anyone at any time with leaks. He set the standard for how the FBI works today, which is how the agency escapes any real oversight.
Had photos
See all the trouble that comes from having too many Fuchs to give?
This is really great video.
Thank you, very glad you enjoyed it
Checkout "Major Jordan's Diary". FDR may have supplied the parts for the Soviet nuclear program.
A minute to go and 18 likes already. 😁
We appreciate it
The prevalence of Soviet spies at every level of British and American society is such a strong testament to the faith of these men and women that they were really building a better world. Whatever we think of their actions in retrospect, I can’t help but admire their dedication to what they saw as the cause of the poor and downtrodden.
I don´t want to be mean but these people worked for Stalin, who had no problems sending thousands of people to prison camps or to be purged by his secret police.
The USSR was, like Nazi Germany, an inhuman state built on propaganda, slave labor and mass murder.
What I find really terrifying is the fact that these people really thought they would help to build a better world.
The NKVD was just as cruel as the Gestapo and if Stalin really would have defeated the USA during the Cold War and russian troops would have occupied America it would have lead to more mass murder, a cruel dictatorship and slave camps.
The Red Army was, like the Wehrmacht, a tool for an bloodthirsty dictator.
Look what Nazi Germany and the USSR did 1939 to Poland: Deportations, mass murder and torture (Katyn / Warsaw Ghetto).
Again I don´t want to be mean but in my opinion there is not much to admire about these people.
@@nightbreed2244 Thank you for commenting in good faith, so I will try to respond in the same way (as impossible as that might be in a RUclips comment section). The Stalinist Soviet Union was not equivalent to Nazi Germany. I'm aware of the examples of Stalinist crimes that you mentioned, but they did not make the Soviet Union an "inhuman state". What they made it was an unfortunately unremarkable state, by international standards.
There are very few countries that haven't committed awful crimes at some point in their history. To take just one example, the American "Manifest Destiny" genocide of Native Americans was basically a successful lebensraum. Or, if you'd prefer a contemporary example, the British indifference towards and deliberate exacerbation of the Bengal famine was no more or less inhuman than the Holomodor.
But, and not to diminish the seriousness of these crimes, they do not make their states as fundamentally evil as the Nazis. Nazi Germany was founded with the *explicit* purpose of waging a genocidal war for the benefit of the "master race". The Nazis set out from the beginning to create a totalitarian, oppressive state for its own sake. They are not just responsible for the Holocaust and the domestic evils done in Germany, but also for starting *unprovoked* the bloodiest war in human history.
The Soviet Union may never have measured up to it's goal of overthrowing the inhuman system of global capitalism, but at least that is a goal born out of a love for humankind and a desire to liberate the exploited and oppressed. The tragedy of the Soviet spies is not that they were sacrificing themselves for the Cold War boogeyman that you described, but that they were laying their lives down for a state that had abandoned the cause for which it ostensibly existed.
@@ethanmagnuson2988 Thanks for the quick answer. I respect your opinion but I still think that Nazism and Communism were at this time a huge danger to democratic countries.
Another thing that I find really disturbing (it has nothing to do with the video) is the fact that a country does not need to be an autoritarian state lead by an racist psychopath like Hitler to make people commit mass murder. Look what US - Troops did during the vietnam war in My lai.
Despite labeled a "massacre" the mass murder of civillians at this village were not done in a moment of rage but planned and carried out cold and calculated.
And My lai was not just the only war crime done by american troops during that war.
The only difference was that the higher ups in the army had no chance to cover it up.
There are two books about these things:
Kill Anything that moves by Nick Turse (there is an audiobook version on youtube) and Tiger Force about an special military team which was send into the warzone to fight the Vietcong with their own tactics but turned into a death squad and started killing every vietnamese civilian they came across. When My Lai made the news a lot of people said things like: "This is war it had to be done", "They just followed orders." etc. and actually defended the soldiers who carried out the killings.
Of course not all US - soldiers during that war were sadistic mass murders but for me there is not a big difference between american soldiers who killed vietnamese civilians out of pure sadism and the Nazi soldiers / SS Death Squads who killed jews / russians at the eastern front during WW2.
@@nightbreed2244 I'd definitely agree that Nazism was (and is) a major threat to democracy, but I can't recall many examples of Communists coming to power in a democratic countries and turning them authoritarian. During the 20th century, most Communist revolutions overthrew colonial and/or authoritarian regimes. When they did come to power in democratic countries, such as Salvador Allende in Chili, they usually respected their countries democratic institutions. I'll admit that most Communist revolutions did not *establish* democratic traditions where none existed, but there are exceptions.
Your point about My Lai is well made. It's really scary how cruel and vicious human beings can be when put in the wrong situation. And it boggles my mind how the higher-ups involved in trying to cover up My Lai (like Colin Powell) were able to survive with their reputations intact.
Communists EVERYWHERE, this sounds like a job for J. Edgar Hoover to go sniff out. That would be a miniseries all in its own on Hoover and the Red Scare...
Only problem is that Hoover missed mostly of the actual spies. As another post noted, one of the reasons Hoover wasn't fired for incompetence (along with having compromising info on everyone) was that much of this, including who the spies were, didn't become known until long after he was dead. And although Senator Joseph Mccarthy was right in highlighting Soviet penetration of the US Government, he grossly exaggerated the numbers (for political gain) and those numbers frequently changed. The anti-communist witch hunt he contributed to was too clumsy and heavy-handed, whilst most of the real spies were too smart for the likes of Mccarthy and HUAC, and went undetected.
Soviets could spy so much on the allies just because allies didn't worry enough about Soviet espiomage during WWII. A giant mistake that later cost Anerica her nuclear monopoly.
Hello Astrid, aka “she who must be obeyed”.
28th, 15 August 2022
Those who betray their country for money are the most vile of creatures.
At least they don't betray their planet, not yet.
@@oldi184 every business that contribute to climate change is betraying the planet.
I read part of a book three years back that described the Soviet penetration of the USA during WWII. Both the FBI and Army Intelligence knew there was a good deal of Russian espionage taking place in the US and Mexico, but they were constantly stymied by the US State Department in their efforts to trail, observe, and arrest these enemy agents. It must have been maddening for them. For decades many people have dismissed Senator Joe McCarthy's fearmongering because of his opportunism and willingness to malign anyone who got in his way (and some who didn't). But his essential claim was correct; America was rife with Soviet spies. It's a pity someone of higher caliber, who was not in it for himself, had been leading the effort to rid our nation of this menace, assuming it can be done. I say this because we've also tried eliminating poverty, drugs, and terrorism. All of these are largely existential threats that have more to do a person's ideology. If you want to change a man's way of thinking, you won't succeed with threats of violence and jail time. Only through continuous education and experience is there any chance of mitigating the problem, thus it is generational in nature.
"I'd put Stalin on the OSS payroll to defeat Hitler."
BASED BASED BASED BASED
all my homies hate Hitler
The CIA was in part founded as a continuation of the OSS, which had been closed down. The OSS had recruited some leftish people during the war, finding them useful for some missions, especially in central and eastern Europe, but the CIA worked to ensure such people were not recruited into its own ranks and some fell prey to the Red Scare.
Joe McCarthy was right...
What do you call someone who defends the home land that they are from? USA a patriot. I don't hear many people using the term national patriotism today. If anything like that it's national socialism that's the problem.
Blessings and Health, Astrid!
Thank you!! ❤️❤️❤️
And why is Stalin called Joseph? His name is Iosif. in Russian , these are 2 different names.
He's Georgian
'Stalin' is a moniker that means something like 'man of steel.'
Modesty had not been invented yet.
I can understand how an American can become disillusioned with the USA. But to then conclude that the Soviets are better is mind boggling. Even if you truly believed in communism it is hard to believe you would think the Soviets are the answer.
If you’re interested in learning more about this historical moment, I would highly recommend Eric Hobsbawm’s book on the 20th century, specifically the chapter on social revolution in the early 20th century. As a former CPGB member who later became disillusioned, he gives a great insider’s look at the psychology of the thousands of people who dedicated their lives to the movement during this period.
Why not? The high tide of US Communism was in the 1930s, during the Depression. Not himself a Communist, indeed he was right-wing, the future actor Robert Mitchum recalled staying at a "hobo camp" and one man there was prostituting his own daughter out for 10 cents a time. She was 12 or thereabouts. Total human degradation in the US of A. In such circumstances, also in the "Hoovervilles", the Communist agitator might get a hearing. And if he told you the USSR offered hope, you might believe him.
FDR was very naive about Soviet intentions
A few months before his death he met the king of Saudi Arabia on a boat in the Red Sea. The controversial US relationship with Saudi Arabia pretty much started right there. Realpolitik or a different kind of naivete?
He and his wife were socialist
That man in your picture is my beloved Uncle Joe! He hated kids, the British, the French, Germans all day long
Now they don’t have to spy they have Brandon do it for them
I wasn't aware of this nickname of Trump's.
@@shatterquartz Sure Dave,. You realize thew steel dossiere was pure drek. But we have evidence of the Biden families dealings with foreign powers.
@@patriotadam4091 I am not sure what "thew steel dossiere" is, but I do know that classified nuclear documents were recently retrieved from the Florida residence of a former US president.
@@shatterquartz total BS.
@@patriotadam4091 I knew that, as a patriot, you would be outraged by this treasonous behavior. In the interest of national security and the preservation of American liberal democracy, we must hope that Trump is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
How coincidentally topical, unfortunately.
@Сергей Владимирович Таборицкий Trump took nuclear secrets, keep them in hid Mar-a-Lagos property, and it was raided by the FBI.
Secret documents (possibly concerning information about nuclear weapons systems) were recently seized from the former US President’s home during an FBI search. They had been illegally taken when he left office.
You are very biased against the sovjet.
How so?