We Like Ike | Part 6

The Cold War: What We Saw

We Like Ike | Part 6

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Published on Mar 6, 2020, 10:00:00 AM
Total time: 01:16:48

Episode Description

In the years after World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower was arguably the most popular man on the planet. Ike’s prestige was so immense that in 1948, President Harry S Truman offered him the top slot on the 1948 Democratic ticket, with the offer to revert to his former position as Vice President under Eisenhower. It wasn’t enough. 

But by 1952, a Draft Eisenhower committee threw an enormous rally: thousands of screaming fans, movie stars, and Irving Berlin himself leading the crowd in a rendition of God Bless America… all of this for a man who wasn’t even there. Finally persuaded, General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower, facing a brace of unknown Soviet leaders named Malenkov and Khrushchev. But no one — not even those who had so strongly lobbied for him — were prepared for the anti-military, anti-war statements and policies from the man who had been assumed to be the fiercest of Cold Warriors. 

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More about The Cold War: What We Saw

November 9, 2019, is the 30th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down, freeing East Germany from communism, and marking the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. But when did the Cold War start? Why does it matter 30 years later? Find out in this ten-part series, transport back in time, feel what it was like to live through the end of the Cold War, and understand why that struggle was a battle for civilization itself. Bill Whittle narrates this compelling series about two competing ideologies battling for global supremacy in the ashes of World War 2.