5 Ridiculous Cold War Myths You Learned in History Class
The second half of the 20th century was dominated by the world's two remaining superpowers facing each other down. The rest of the world rallied behind one or the other as Soviet and American forces started in on spying and covert warring. There were good guys and bad guys, and it was all bullshit. For instance ...
#5. "Ich bin ein Berliner"
It was the culmination of Kennedy's remarks in West Germany at one of the most volatile points in the Cold War. The speech was a hugely important, brilliantly scripted rallying cry for democracy, but there's a reason people still repeat to this day.
See, while Kennedy confidently delivered his kicker, "Ich bin ein Berliner" and prepared to drop the mic and walk offstage, the Germans were laughing their asses off. Because the phrase that Kennedy thought meant "I am a Berliner" actually translated to "I am a jelly-filled doughnut!"
Wikipedia
"This comedian is terrible. Bring on David Hasselhoff!"
Why It's Bullshit:
According to German professor Reinhold Aman in his epic volume Maledicta, "No intelligent native speaker of German tittered in Berlin when JFK spoke." Despite the BBC, The Guardian, MSNBC, CNN, Time magazine and The New York Times reporting otherwise, Aman says, "'Ich bin (ein) Berliner' means 'I am a Berliner' ... and absolutely nothing else!"
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"I am neither delicious nor fattening" has a special word in 36 languages.
The pedantic jack offs who still repeat this anecdote claim the use of the word "ein" is what screwed Kennedy. They point out that "Ich bin Berliner" means "I am from Berlin," and that adding the "ein" changes the meaning. Both facts are true. A rough English equivalent of what Kennedy said was "I am a New Yorker," whereas the phrase the pedantic jack offs claim he should have said translates to "I am from New York." The jelly doughnut myth is like claiming that an audience in Manhattan heard a politician say "I am a New Yorker" and took him to mean "I am a New Yorker magazine." Saying "I am a New Yorker" makes more sense as a symbolic statement of solidarity, and it's the same in German. Which is why people who speak German generally compliment Kennedy's choice as being the more nuanced, conversational phrasing.
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Because Germans are absolutely not known for being brazen and awkward.
There's also the fact that people who are actually from Berlin don't call that particular pastry a Berliner, since that would turn every day of their lives into an Abbott and Costello routine.
So why have smug people been making this claim for the past 20 years? The earliest reference anyone's been able to come up with is the 1983 spy novel Berlin Game. A fictional character claims that Kennedy said he was a doughnut. In reviewing the novel, The New York Times treated it as a reference to an amusing fact, rather than a reference to a completely made-up fact, and to this day, you can't say "Ich bin ein Berliner" in a room full of educated people without having them shout something about a jelly doughnut at you.
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Get better friends, dude.
#4. The Euphoria of the Space Race and Moon Landing
In 1961, Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon before the clock struck the '70s. Sure, it was mostly about national ego-stoking, but that was important. The two most armed nations in the history of the world were in a Mexican standoff, and the Space Race gave them a less deadly way to measure dicks without pulling the trigger.
In the sort of uncynical display of national unity you just don't see anymore, Americans responded to their president's call to action with a decade-long, nationwide pep rally for their finest nerds as they fired the best shit they could build into the sky. The Space Race was so serious that when Russia realized they couldn't keep up, they just started firing cosmonauts in the direction of the moon and watched them burn up like they were kindling.
Wikipedia
Russia had run out of adorable dogs by the late '50s.
And when America finally pulled it off? The moon landing? The freaking moon landing!? How awesome would it have been to be on the planet for that!? It must have been like every hometown team in America had won the Super Bowl and World Series on the same freaking night.
Why It's Bullshit:
Remember when George W. Bush vowed to return to the moon by 2020 and send a man to Mars? The nation responded by glancing around and pointing out, "We sort of got problems right here, dude." The Bush administration soon abandoned the idea in the face of tepid public support. Well, if you want to know what life was like during the Space Race, we've just jogged your memory.
Wikipedia
"Screw adventure, we've got expensive wars to do."
Despite the rosy picture the media has painted in hindsight, the race to the moon was surprisingly and consistently unpopular with the American media and public throughout the '60s. Three years before the moon landing, Newsweek announced that "The U.S. space program is in decline" and seemed like "an embarrassing self-indulgence" next to Vietnam and national poverty. According to Gallup, most Americans polled during the 1960s thought the Space Race wasn't worth the money being invested. And they didn't just want a little belt-tightening, either.
academia.edu
Unless that belt was around the throat and everything was about 60 percent more erotic.
In case you don't read graphs so well, that's a majority of Americans opposing the U.S. government spending any money at all on a trip to the moon in 1961, 1965 and 1967 -- two freaking years before the moon landing. The only difference between the national sentiment during the Space Race and America's feelings about Bush's Mars quest is that back then, the government ignored insignificant things like "how people felt."
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"Which is why you're all going home and having peace gateau for dinner."
All the doubters must have felt pretty stupid after Neil Armstrong did a slow motion touch down dance on the surface of the moon, right? Actually, "Even after Neil Armstrong's 'giant leap for mankind,' only a lukewarm 53 percent of the public believed that the historic event had been worth the cost," which, according to Rotten Tomatoes, puts the moon landing closer to Deep Impact and Mars Attacks! than The Right Stuff and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
#3. The Arms Race Was an Actual Race
For America, it all started with the missile gap, when intelligence estimates revealed that Russia was kicking our ass. From then through the Reagan administration, it was on like nuclear Donkey Kong. The U.S. and Russian governments kept tabs on one another, and with each weapon the other side built, they built another to even the scoreboard.
The arms race was illogical, with both sides eventually building enough weapons to level one another, then building 100 times more than that. But it was understandable. Neither side was going to admit that they didn't have the most weapons. Hell, some have even argued that it was an unavoidable byproduct of the way international relations work.
Why It's Bullshit:
Pretending the arms race was anything less than a decades-long confidence scheme is like blaming the laws of economics for Bernie Madoff. One thing your history teachers have right is that it did all start with that "missile gap." When the Soviet Union reportedly developed a significant military superiority, the United States responded with a massive splurge on nuclear weapons and bombers to "close the gap." So how much of a gap was there, actually?
Note that every number on that left side is enough bombs to kill fucking everything.
You'll notice that America was the first to push their crazy, out-of-control war machine into maximum overdrive. According to the CIA, from 1955 to 1961, U.S. Air Force Intelligence exaggerated Soviet missile and aircraft strength to the point that they were adding more than one zero to their numbers. This led to the production of thousands of heavy bombers, nuclear missiles, a nuclear-powered bomber and even a goddamn flying saucer (the Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar) to try to keep up with an imaginary threat.
Wikipedia
This came from either Wikipedia or a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
Russia got spooked by the fact that the U.S. was building flying goddamn saucers and appeared to be tooling up for nuclear Armageddon and responded by overcompensating. But the arms race only happened in the first place because of a very simple three-step process. The military-industrial complex would 1) make up some crazy expensive weapons 2) claim that Russia had those weapons 3) get permission from the U.S. government to build them.
This all happened on Eisenhower's watch, and by the time he left office he realized what the U.S. Air Force and the CIA were up to and told Congress that the missile gap showed "every sign" of being what The New York Times described as "a fiction." And in one of the ballsiest speeches ever given, he retired with a grim warning to the nation about the "military-industrial complex" taking over U.S. interests.
Wikipedia
Shut up, you pot-smoking hippie.
So how were we so woefully, utterly ill-informed? Check out this extract from a 1962 conversation between President Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor, commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
McNamara: I think that there was created a myth in this country that did great harm to the nation. And it was created by, I would say, emotionally guided but nonetheless patriotic individuals in the Pentagon. There are still people of that kind at the Pentagon. I wouldn't give them any foundation for creating another myth.
Kennedy: You mean like the missile gap?
McNamara: The missile -- that's right.
aqua-velvet
"There was only one, pulled out for children's birthdays and Christmas."
Kennedy: That missile gap -- as one of those who put that myth around, a patriotic and misguided man -- [laughter] -- that came right out of ... You were one of them and, it's because we assumed ...
Taylor: Well, it was an honest mistake ...
histclo
"Bread lines? We thought these were war lines."
Yeah. That's Kennedy being told that the arms race was founded on a myth as ridiculous as Paul Bunyan, and being able to do nothing about it, because the guys in the room are the ones who made up the lie in the first place. But, before you go casting Kennedy as the peace loving hero in the Cold War, you should probably know ...
Bertrand Russel is so goddamn badass.
ReplyI said "Is that Liam Neeson playing Castro?" and then read your caption. WTF?
ReplyThe space race initially had nothing to do with the moon. The clue is in the name. The US put a man on the moon to save face because they couldn't handle the fact that the Russians got into space first. The article was more than right to call it ego stroking though
ReplyMy history teacher told us about how he and his family cried when they saw the moon landing. He's probably not a good indication of a "typical American" though because he went on to be a University professor of history and chemistry. Maybe thats why we think everyone reacted that way, because the people who did are the people telling everyone else about it
ReplyTry learning History in Canada. All hail the Monarchy!!! I swear the books read like a soap opera, with the 12 Colonies as the crazy ex, and BNA as the level headed "lets still be friends" ex. They basically tell you Canada is this awesome, peace loving country that saved the slaves.... which is completely untrue. Also we won the war of 1812.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesAlso, history books in Japan paint the US as the aggressor in WW2.
Well, the unconditional surrender demand did sort of make us the aggressor toward the end. Not that I am criticizing. It is good for the world to know that if we get pissed off enough we will kill you until you beg like a stupid dog for us to stop. If every country fought like that, there would be far fewer wars. Look at the messes we get into when we don't play for keeps.
Don't feel bad. It's not like American schools are any better. There's another Cracked article explaining how the Monarchy wasn't nearly as oppressive towards the colonists as US textbooks would have you believe. They also like to paint the Mexican-American War as anything other than a land-grab by conquest.
I have also heard rumours that USA is the reason that Germany didn't win WWII.
Ron, Japan DID surrender and you nuked them anyway. No wonder you're seen as the aggressors.
Eh, maybe I saw these things on the History Chanel. My German teacher did mention the Berliner thing, but only as an example of how you can be technically wrong, but still have everyone understand you.
ReplyWe never got to the cold war in history class... They just kept repeating the same period from some point in europe to the civil war... Probly because none of the history books were made after the civil war... Our school system was bad about dumping all the "new books money" into "new uniforms for the football team".
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAlso, I'd always heard #5 as "I am a hotdog", not "I am a jelly doughnut".
...Ich bin ein Frankfurter?
THat's why they call 'em wieners in Frankfurt
Ich bin ein Hamburger?
There's some serious distortion in this article unfortunately (through partial truths given too much emphasis), and a huge amount of moral equivocation.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesWhile the "missile gap" arms race was indeed partly motivated by weapons companies pushing for their own interests, there had to be existing fear for them to capitalize off of, spin campaigns usually need some basis of truth. The Soviets did indeed get a working bomb by the end of the 40's, and kept building. While we were always further ahead than we realized, they did for a time have a larger bomber force, which they intentionally tried to play up using deception. It wasn't until the first U-2 overflights in the 50's in Russia that we realized they only had a couple wings of their new long range Bison bomber. US intelligence officials had literally thought that the Soviets had hundreds of the things when in fact they'd been circling the same squadron over Moscow multiple times during a military parade. The Soviets were always good at propaganda as a political weapon to intimidate by inflating their own power in the minds of their adversaries (as they sought it, this served as a deterrent force which gave them room to push their own interests elsewhere).
The "communists vs. capitalist" section takes a technicality (Russia/China axis) and tries to ride over the underlying general truth. Russia and China WERE closely tied together in the fifties (Russia helped get the Chinese Military on their feet), and only gradually went their separate ways, Nixon's visit to China was an explicit realpolitik attempt to drive a wedge between the two. But saying one country was out of line with the Soviet bloc does not change the fact that there was indeed a Soviet bloc world, which the Soviets used to push their interests against those of the West. The article almost hit on an underlying rationale of Soviet Foreign policy, which was that it was motivated more by realpolitik interests than communist revolutionary ideology by the time of the Cold War. Numerous foreign policy analysts (including Condoleeza Rice's Doctoral Dissertation in the 80's incidentally) described Soviet Foreign policy as taking the shape of the traditional Russian model dating back to the Czarist period, with Communism only serving as a superficial justification. Universal Revolution was a primary driver of the first Bolsheviks, but that ideological vision eventually took something of a back-seat, with the Russians squaring the contradiction by telling themselves that Russia needed to become the dominant superpower in order to eventually bring about the Revolution after the fact. The ideological vision gradually faded as time went on, but it never completely went away.
That pursuit of traditional realpolitik was brutal on the part of the Soviets, backing communist puppet states, revolutions, and dictatorships the world over. While the U.S. led containment strategy practiced it's own brand of regime change with some particularly egregious outcomes such as JFK's sponsoring of the South Vietnamese coup, the legacy of who controlled what and where today reveals the difference of the two systems and which had a better economic and humans rights legacy. The West clearly was the better.
Arguing that the U.S. forced the nuclear umbrella on Europe against Europe's wishes is simply wrong. England and France had the largest nuclear arsenals after America and Russia, still do I believe. In addition to the strategic nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow, London, and Washington DC, the consensus NATO strategy throughout the Cold War was that local tactical nuclear weapons in one form or another were the only guarantee against the Red Army, which through most of the Cold War, had such a massive numerical superiority that conventional (non-nuclear) NATO forces were thought to have little chance of ever stopping it. It is true that there was more popular opposition to this in Europe than America, but the European governments, by and large, were on the same page with the U.S. more often than not.
I did appreciate the nod to JFK as actually beginning American involvement in Vietnam, though it's also probably true that, had he lived, the war would've taken a different course and might not have escalated the way LBJ conducted it. JFK was more of a fan (as the article points out) of pulling strings behind the scenes than overtly committing front-line combat units. JFK likely would've continued to use financial backing and special forces/trainers to wage a low-intensity counter-insurgency.
I agree with pretty much everything except that it was Eisenhower who first got the US involved in Vietnam not JFK.
@thors hammer12345
Thanks, I think you're right, I was typing absent-mindedly there.
Golly, I sure am glad you're using the Cracked comments section as a method for disseminating lengthy essays. Ace choice of platform, chap.
I genuinely enjoyed this comment. It was well thought out, well written, well researched and free of great bias. If only all comments could be this thoughtful.
I too enjoyed this comment. I laughed, I cried. It was much, much better than Cats. I will read it again and again.
This comment was far better than the bullshit article that Jaci s**t out.
That comment under the Castro pic is so on point, my first thought when I saw it was WTF?
ReplyAnyone still believe Apollo landed on the Moon? I sure as s**t don't. Watch "a Funny thing happened on the way to the moon" or "Astronauts gone Wild", or read the article "Wagging the Moondoggie". It was Stanley Kubrick and special effects in the desert.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesYou don't believe it because you're a moron.
Watch the excellent Channel 4 documentary (that's a British documentary, made by intelligent journalists with no sensationalist agenda ) about the moon landing, where the loonie (hah!) objections to it's veracity are systematically deconstructed and destroyed. Turns out all the "experts" who think the moon landings are hokum are talking out their asses.
Or for a more abrasive version theres an episode of Bullshit! on how most conspiracy theories are retarded.
Wait... People need a show to tell them that conspiracy theories are BS?
UR ALL SHEEPELE!1!1!!!
You could also watch a great episode of Mythbusters in which they analyze all the so called "proof" in the Moon landing video that it was faked, such as how the flag waved and how Niel Armstrong walked. SPOILER ALERT: The "proof" is hardly that at all!
Moon deniers make me want to morph into an aging astronaut and punch them in the f*****g face.
I really need another way to deal with fucktards. My knuckles are bruised.
Or... perhaps game theory suggested that an arms race plus containment would be the best strategy to apply economic incentives on both sides to produce but not use the weapons. Our policy of producing multiple weapons with multiple complex delivery mechanisms required the Soviet Union follow suit resulting in their need to devote a large portion of their GDP in this 'economic war', and also creating a whole class of bureaucrats and industrialists who had skin in the game (spreading some of the decision/policy making over a larger range of interests.)
ReplyThe irony of this post, is that you claim that our historical teachings are much more complex then we thought and then simultaneously reduce your conclusions to simplistic sentences describing complex geopolitical events! While I agree in most instances that the "common knowledge" is often wrong in key areas, so is your "alternative knowledge" albeit in different ones! I'd suggest to those that are interested, that they appropriately research the subjects themselves.
ReplyAnd of course, the Vietnam war had nothing to do with Communism and everything to do with republicanism and national self-determination.
Reply"So basically, the Cold War boils down to a bunch of military and industrial people pulling off one of the most profitable cons ever, and the rest of the world being terrified of the deadly results for 40 years."
Replyyou forgot the part where the soviet union lost 15 million people in WW2 and became paranoid, and tried to prevent any European power from getting strong enough to massively invade the motherland (a very common occurrence in history) to America this looked like the soviet union was trying to take over the world leading to the fear of the reds and the constant checking each nation did.
Early Soviet ideology believed that the Russian revolution was just the cusp of a great round of socialist revolutions that would spread throughout the entire industrialized world. And they did often support these revolutions. Surprisingly enough, this did not get them a lot of friends, and isolated them from the international scene. However, all of them failed, and the SU remained the only Communist state (besides Mongolia and the nominally independent Tannu Tuva) for most of the 30's and 40's.
Ironically enough, it was Trotsky, often naively seen as a moderate figure in the modern imagination, who desired an active policy of actively promoting a world revolution even after all of them failed. Stalin, in contrast, supported the policy of socialism in one country, and he won the day. For his entire rule, the Soviet state largely concentrated on itself. It's expansion in the 40's was, like you said, mostly a result of the fact that it was now acting like a traditional imperialist power, aggressively defending its interests.
Americans, however, believed that they were just gearing up for the coming world revolution. They did not understand ideology was no longer playing a serious role in Soviet policy making, being something that they simply made references to while, in any realistic sense, being a fairly typical totalitarian state.
Or the part where the US invaded Russia on behalf of the capitalists fighting the Bolsheviks, or the British and German governments did their best to interfere in the early days of the communist government. They had a reason to be paranoid well before WWII.
You get the Stalin-Kruschev mixed up. The Chinese-Sovyet rift was during the Kruschev reign. Regardless what caused it, it was Mao government's policy to uphold Stalin at Kruschev expense. That meant only Kruschev effigy burning was state sanctioned.
ReplySpace exploration is just another form of corporate welfare. Private industry should be perfectly capable of launching their own satellites and building their own rockets. They could actually do it cheaper and more efficient since they'd be motivated by profit and wouldn't have a bureaucracy to answer to. But they don't have to because they can get the taxpayers to do it for them for free. Space exploration is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution as a right or responsibility of the federal government.
ReplyNO ONE BUT PAUL!!!!
Yes, but a white supremacist scam artist in office.
Gogogogo.
"But they don't have to because they can get the taxpayers to do it for them for free."
NASA does not launch other people's satellites for free.
"Space exploration is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution as a right or responsibility of the federal government."
The general welfare clause gives the federal government the power to spend tax money on general projects. There are, of course, divergent interpretations, but this Hamiltonian interpretation has been the law of the land for literally all of America's history under the constitution, and good luck overturning 200 years of precedent. Also, the necessary and proper clause gives congress the power to pass any laws necessary for the execution of its powers. Sure, space exploration is never specifically mentioned in the constitution, but that would only be relevant if the 10th amendment "The powers not expressly delegated", like the articles of confederation, rather than "The powers not delegated". It was actually Madison, who wrote the bill of rights, who specifically argued against the inclusion of the word "expressly", as he felt it hampered the federal government too severely. So, in light of that, the 10th amendment only essentially says that the federal government has the powers that it does, which may include relatively general powers, not that it doesn't have the ability to do anything expressly mentioned, which would preclude general powers. When you argue that, you are disingenuously reading the word "expressly" into the 10th amendment.
He does look like Liam Neeson!!
Reply"If you are looking for ransom, our country doesn't believe in money, but what we do have are a geological proximity, and certain friends in the East that will make us a nightmare for people like you." -Fidel Castro, date unknown.
Please don't get me wrong, however in the U.S. and here in Australia it reminds me of that song by Green Day "......One nation controlled by the media."
ReplyYeah thats how it is pretty much everywhere, the only difference is if the media is controlled by the government or corporations.
Since I'm just too lazy to wade through nearly 1000 comments, let me just note that your traffic-light map of the world is slightly mistaken. That big blob of red at the top of the map (known to geographers as "Greenland") is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a nation which has been part of NATO since 1949 and should actually be colored green.
ReplyAlso, there are some incorrectly red-colored bits in Central Asia. While this map is *obviously* using a CURRENT image of the geopolitical world, the northernmost bits of red adjoining all that yellow should be colored yellow (while those bits are all independent nations now, during the Cold War, the Caucasus nations and the Central Asian "Stans" were all part of the USSR). The resolution isn't really clear enough on my screen to tell, but it also looks like Southeast Asia is colored incorrectly. For the bulk of the Cold War era (1954-1975 at least), there should be a little bit of green (to represent South Vietnam) and a little bit of yellow (to represent North Vietnam); in the post-1975 era, the whole of Indochina (the united Vietnam, plus Cambodia and Laos) should be in yellow.
It also looks like the island-nation of Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) is miscolored as well (it appears to be red; it should be green). And while a case could be made for the Philippines being colored in red, that country played host to US military bases throughout the Cold War, so green would be the more appropriate color. Similarly, South Africa, while not exactly welcomed among the green "First Worlders" (being an overtly racist nation tends to do that), the country saw itself as a "bastion" of anti-Communism in Africa and was a MAJOR arms supporter of various anti-Communist movements in Southern Africa, mainly in the neighboring then-Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique. The Russians and Chinese viewed South Africa as being part of that "First World" and the US especially accepted South Africa's participation in anti-Communist activities (so much so that the official US policy on South Africa remained fully accepting of apartheid until well into the late 1980s when more and more US corporations began divesting their business dealings with South Africa and pushing the government to do so as well.
Here we go again :'(
Also, Yugoslavia was a founder member of the non-aligned movement, along with Egypt, and India, I think, and so should be a third world country.
This is one of the most insulting, mind-numbingly stupid articles I've ever read at this site. Guys, stick to your usual funny crap and stay away from things you do not comprehend, OK? Millions of victims of communism, lying in unmarked graves, don't weigh on your conscience even a tiny bit? Morons.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesHow ironic. I won't even start.
Millions dead from NATO bombs too. Are you trying to say that the US fought in only "humanitarian Wars"? I'm no Communist, but it's the dictators who kill people, not their economic policy.
Communism is a pretty s****y economic policy full state control has always proved to be inefficent within most industries even when the leaders aren't murdering assholes.
a little over-hyped, but fundamentally accurate. Four decades of oppression in Eastern Europe, Stalin's purges in Russia, forced famine of Ukraine, and Mao's Cultural Revolution. Far more dead than any other event/force in the 20th century. There's some really bad moral equivocation in the article.
Also, where does one get "NATO killed millions?" There's no factual basis for that, whatsoever.