This 1946 article puts a nice face on a subject that both American diplomats and military men were eager to hide from the world - the issue involving a total lack of military preparedness. The journalist reported on the military's push to bulk-up the reserves to an acceptable level, but the real story was that all branches of the armed services were on a recruiting drive for more men (and women) to make up for the fact that the post-war deployment program had drastically reduced the combat effectiveness of practically every unit. Under heavy pressure from civil authorities to save money, military planners failed to retain the services of numerous combat veterans to train the newest recruits. This partially explains the lack of accomplishments attained by the earliest divisions deployed to halt the North Korean advances in 1950. Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 generated a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the West, and a good deal of it is reflected in the attached column. A list of possible successors was provided; two of the names played an immediate roll in the governance of the Soviet Union: Georgy Malenkov (1902 – 1988) - who ruled for three days, until he was replaced by Nikolai Bulganin (1895 – 1975). Bulganin ran the shop until he, too, was replaced by Stalin's right-hand man: Nikita Khrushchev
(1894 – 1971) - who was known in some corners as "the hangman of the Ukraine".
Read about the "Soviet Congress"
Joseph Stalin (1878 - 1953) is credited as the author of the attached article, Russia's Plan for World Conquest, and it outlines all the various methods Soviet agents can subvert and curry-favor among the various youth and labor groups that are based in the industrialized democracies of the West:
"...here is the Russian Dictator's nine point program for world conquest, taken from his recorded writings, which are now on file in the Stalin Archives of the National War College in Washington, D.C. Italicized sentences have been inserted throughout the article in order to point up Stalin's plan in the light of today's crucial events." [ie. the Korean War] "As Lenin has said, a terrible clash between Soviet Russia and the capitalist States must inevitably occur...Therefore we must try to take the enemy by surprise, seize a moment when his forces are dispersed."
Click here to read about Soviet collusion with American communists.
The Cold War was not often seen as a subject for poetry - but that didn't stop a popular versifier like Berton Braley (1882 – 1966). He took a look around at the post-war world and saw plenty subjects that rhymed:
"You'll meet, methinks, a lot of pinks
Whose statements are dogmatic
That Communists are Liberals
And really Democratic;
But when you hear that type of tripe
Keep this fact in your nut
- That Communists are Communists and nothing else but!"
His poem went on for three more stanzas... "Two continents apart, the Yalu and the Rhine wind down to the sea. But in the continuing struggle of freedom against Communism, they share the common roll of destiny."
"Of the two rivers, perhaps the Yalu is of more immediate concern, for behind its 500 miles of coursing waters stand the bulk of the Red forces under Red China chief Mao Tse-tung... Few people had heard of the Yalu until the Korean War began. But it gained world-wide prominence in November, 1950, when 200,000 Chinese Reds came pouring across its bridges to aid the North Koreans as they retreated before UN troops..." A small notice from the closing weeks of the 1952 presidential contest between retired General Eisenhower (R) vs former Governor Adlai Stevenson (D) in which Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped forth to muddy the waters with one of his characteristic insults:
"McCarthy charged Stevenson was 'part and parcel of the Acheson-Hiss-Lattimore group' and that Stevenson in 1943 (as a State Department official) had a plan to 'foist Communism' on Italy when Mussolini fell."
Whether the comment convinced anyone was not recorded, but Eisenhower won the 1952 election by a wide margin, as did all Republican candidates.
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