Evan Thomas, Author, "Ike's Bluff"
Вставка
- Опубліковано 14 жов 2012
- Our guest is Evan Thomas, author of "Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World." The newly released historical narrative details President Eisenhower's eight year term in office from 1953-1961. Thomas suggests that Eisenhower used the threat of nuclear war to prevent open conflict with the Soviet Union while never fully revealing just how far he was willing to go in deploying the weapons.
It might be considered boring by some, but C-SPAN has had some of the best content on cable television.
I LOVE your Craft How Art!
They manage to stay impartial yet have some of the best informational programmes.
I gotta say Thank you Evan Thomas. For those of us who found joy exploring history studying its great figures Ike always stood out. Your comment on Ike disliking Dulles is spot on confirmation of what too many believed, but no one ever stated. Just could never reconcile how a guy like Eisenhower ever got along with, could tolerate a mad dog like Dulles, i.e., despot wannabe always stuck out. Well, just thanks I guess.
Interesting interview.
just realized ive become a cspan person and thats terrifying
About Eisenhower and nuclear weapons: I read somewhere (maybe 50 years ago) that Eisenhower saw nuclear weapons as the least expensive way to counter soviet tanks mostly because nuclear weapons require fewer people than other weapon systems for the same threat, and that made possible less expensive defense budgets.
Yes that is true. Relatively cheap to make and maintain compared to planes, tanks, troops etc. They were the best “bang” for your buck. You could destroy an entire battlefield full of tanks with one or two tactical nukes. Of course they had the strategic city killers of 20 megatons to take out the capital’s of the USSR and Red China in one fail swoop.
I am currently reading this book, and I recommend it. Interesting and well written
Excellent interview.
Genuinely illuminating.
Great book
56:37 This statement shocked me when I heard it because it is exactly my view of Eisenhower and it was articulated so well here. Judgement and wisdom are THE most important characteristics a President must have. Eisenhower’s resume was the best any Presidential candidate has ever had. Therefore he was one of the best Presidents we have ever had.
No he wasn't. If he had the Dulles brothers killed he would have been.
Who could play Evan Thomas in a movie? Edward Norton. .
The story goes that Ike and Kay Somesby finally went to bed but Ike was flacid. This caused some amusement for the American officers who knew all this; but a British officer defended Ike and said: "I think he had rather a lot on his mind at the time."
so what he had a temper. A temper is normal to a degree. the modern world has made wimps of us all. MM arr
Thomas does a nice job here and doesn't pull his punches when it came to Ike's many health problems and alcohol and drug usage. Overall Ike comes out looking good here, but he never fully overcomes the legend that he was detatched and fearful of confrontation.
Talk about Ike.
15:40 Mamie was quite beautiful when young. But powerful men gravitate to younger women because they can. Ike wanted to leave Mamie for Kay Summersby. Marshall blew up and forbade it. It's all in "Plain Speaking", the oral biography of Harry S Truman.
It was among other things an explosive issue that US soldiers married so many English girls while stationed in the UK. And the US was trying to present a (false at that time) image of being in Europe for moral not economic or gain reasons. Marshalls Plan was for real, as was the reconstruction of Japan, but it would have provided immense ammo for wives of soldiers particularly officers to demand troop withdrawal from Europe. Which was wrecked, starving, and had literally millions of attractive young widows and "ruined" women (collaborators, rape victims, single mothers of kids with occupying Germans, prostitutes, spies who had used sex to get information).
Had Eisenhower ditched Mamie for Kay... It would have been perceived as open season for all these desperate European women to marry US soldiers by their wives and sweethearts, a substantial voting bloc. Marshall's whole plan could have collapsed and not much stopped the USSR at that point from occupying further west.
The movie "Berlin airlift" and others later warned about predatory relationships, like women marrying soldiers to get to the USA then intending to ditch them.
Great interview and clear assessment by Thomas of one of our greatest American leaders. Watching highlights in 2020 of this extraordinary man makes me weep for how far the perception and the reality of America has fallen since January 20, 2017.
Were Ike here today, he would be incredulous and outraged. Then he'd enter 1600 Penn with a bullwhip and drive Trump the draft dodger and his minions shrieking into the streets.
Jean Edward Smith wrote a great book about Ike as well called Eisenhower In War and Peace.
While I would love to see the scene you described, I really don't think Ike would have done something like that. He did have a temper but he was pretty good at managing it and not being publicly critical of Presidents or superiors. He detested Gen. Douglas MacArthur at the end but kept it primarily to himself. He often disagreed with Kennedy and primarily kept it to himself. Eisenhower was a great general and a great President.
No he wouldn't. He would be thrilled that Jared was negotiating assassinations of journalists and that Tillington and Pompeo were organizing corrupt deals for US corporations. Just like the Dulles brothers.
Actually under Trump the USA was much more honestly what it really is and has been since 1790s. Expansionist, brutal, unreliable as an ally or treaty partner, racist, sexist, stupid, arrogant, and self certain. Trump is the absolute American, a creature that could only come to fame and power in the USA. Like Andrew Jackson the genocidal maniac.
Ike definitely deserves to have a memorial in DC. I look forward to seeing it when it is officially unveiled. There are so many great monuments in DC, I'm sure this will be added as one of the greats.
He does not. John Adams and Harry S Truman were very far greater men with actual principles who changed our whole world. It says a lot that you want the sponsor of the Nazi Dulles brothers memorialized but don't care about the two men that set new fairer world orders in motion.
@@crhu319 - You don't think that Eisenhower changed our world for the better? Negating what he did in WWII since he wasn't the President at the time, do you drive? He called US action in the Korean War to an end and oversaw the largest expansion of the middle class in US history. I am not a fan of the Dulles brothers either but that is just one aspect of Eisenhower's Presidency. I can bring up negative things about both Adams and Truman, both of whom I respect immensely.
Does Thomas share the socialist views of his grandfather, a multiple-time presidential candidate while representing the socialist party?
Socialism as espoused by US media, 90% of which is in 6 corporate donors
hands, is known as Democracy in the rest of the world. Iran, Guatemala, and Indonesia offered revenue sharing to USA's corporate owners in a 50/50 distribution, with Chile's copper mine assets. Iran's oil was offered at 50% as was the Columbia canal that begat a new country that promised 90% to keep their leaders from being assassinated or banned like Mosaddeq, Allende, Sukarno, or likely target of a coup.--see Puerto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, and more if in the USA's hemisphere. 80 election coups, 81 if W v Gore is counted as FL's real win after the recount both EC and popular vote counts as all the media delayed calling FL for Gore until their final count protocols were followed but Fox called it for W early so other channels hopped on their call which was known to be false but murdoch knows false propaganda is more profitable than factual news. Riots spawned by Farcical Opinionated Xenophobic noise kill the ratings of other real news. Violent societies are more profitable than functioning democracies...especially for the media covering the tragedies when the manure they spread ignites.(see El Paso)
"Ike may or may not have slept with Kay Summersby" ?!?!?! Yikes man, next you'll tell me David Irving is a respected historian!! That is an EXTREME MINORITY position you have there. You certainly have NOT done your homework if you are implying Ike had a simple platonic relationship with Summersby.
Yes Truman and Marshall knew all about it.
Page turner
Easy for him to judge them when he wasn't there. A person doesn't have to be perfect to be a good president. MM arr
51:50 Sadly, I don’t think journalists on the left believe this any longer. Hatred has done great harm to journalism.
Or the right. Hannity, O'Reilly. oh my God.
@@DumbledoreMcCracken - They aren't journalists. They are pundits and opinion hosts.
@@nates9029 yup
@@nates9029 Farcical Opinionated Xenophobic noise is not news. Tucker's Farcical Alt-Right Turpitudes (aka F.A.R.T.s when abbreviated) are believed to be common scents for the fans of former noise channel in the 1st sentence.
Did you pay any attention at all to the total corruption of the 1950s-60s? Rich pals buying houses for the POTUS, military officers feeding fake intel to columnists to get budget boosts? History validates that a hostile suspicious and adversarial view of the establishment is the necessary stance to keep a democracy on track. As we found out in Watergate.
With no budget whatsoever for research, it's amazing that real time news can get it right as often as it does.
I paid in for fifty years against my will and some Ivy League spoiled draft dodger uses the word "entitled".