Cold War Documentary Episode 1: Comrades (1917-1945)
Cold War is a twenty-four episode television documentary series about the Cold War that aired in 1998.It features interviews and footage of the events that shaped the tense relationships between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union drifted apart after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War and the Paris Peace Conference. Diplomatic and extensive trading relationships were established under Roosevelt, but relations soured following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and eastern Poland. After Hitler broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the Western powers worked closely with the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Distrust reemerged as Stalin’s plans for placing Eastern Europe in the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence became apparent towards the war’s end, and came to the fore at the Potsdam Conference, just before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interviewees include George F. Kennan, Zoya Zarubina, Hugh Lunghi and George Elsey. The pre-credits scene shows the US Congress nuclear bunker at The Greenbrier, and introduces the television series by explaining how for several decades the world was close to a nuclear holocaust.
History of China: The Roots of Madness – CIA Cold War Documentary Film (1967)
China: The Roots of Madness is a 1967 Cold War era, made-for-TV documentary film produced by David L. Wolper, written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore H. White with production cost funded by a donation from John and Paige Curran. It won an Emmy Award in the documentary category.
The film attempts to analyze the Anti-Western sentiment in China from the official American’s perspective, covering 170 years of China’s political history, from Boxer Rebellion of the Qing Dynasty to Red Guards of Cultural Revolution. The film focuses on the power struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, amid heavy political intervention from Moscow, with Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong playing the pivotal role at the center stage.
The documentary film was made for television in 1967 — during the Cold War era. It was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Theodore H. White, directed by Mel Stuart, edited by William T. Cartwright and produced by David L. Wolper. Production costs were funded by a donation from John and Paige Curran. The film has been released under Creative Commons license. White’s access to important political figures of the time allowed him to create some rare footage, which included the wedding of Chang Kai-shek and the funeral of Sun Yat-sen. The film won an Emmy Award in the documentary category.
As evidenced by his commentary throughout the films, White, Time magazine’s China correspondent during World War II, was scathing about the People’s Republic of China. Remarking that Chinese had been suffering in a 100-year tragedy, he added:
«There are 700 millions Chinese [in 1967], one quarter of humane kind, who are taught to hate, their growing power is the world’s greatest threat to peace enlightenment. 50 years of torment, bred madness…»
For 50 years, Americans have failed to help the Chinese to find «some entry to the modern world», as the Chinese have «been transformed from our greatest friend into our greatest enemy», as the Chinese have fallen into the vicious cycle of «from the tyranny of Confucius of the Manchu Emperor to the tyranny of communism and Mao».
White referred to Empress Dowager Cixi as «China’s evil spirit… a Manchu concubine…said to have poisoned her own son upon his throne, install her infant nephew as the emperor, killed his mother, and then imprisoned him in 1898″.
Pearl Buck on the Boxer Rebellion:»Empress Dowager had issued an decree that all white people are to be killed, and many have been killed, especially in the north of Shandong, men, women and children of the missionary.»
White’s impression on the downfall of Qing Dynasty: «…and then it vanished, simply vanished, the Manchu Dynasty disappeared overnight, nothing like that had ever happen in all the history, 2000 years of tradition, the whole structure of the imperial confucianism, political thought, dissolving to dust…»
White’s impression on post-Manchu Empire China:»…out of this turbulence, there appeared two types of Asian leaders, arch symbols, the the man of gun, and the man of idea, and these two types of gunman and the dreamer, have perplexed all our efforts in Asia for 50 years since, and they still perplexed and haunted all our policy, even today…»
White’s impression on Sun Yat-sen:»…was a man of dream, the dream of China, powerful, free of emperors and foreigners, made him from his youth a revolutionary…Slowly from the early 1920, Sun Yatsen had somehow built a government, a tiny southern foothold at Canton, ringed by hostile warlords. By 1924 the ageing revolutionary had learned, idea and gun must go together…in 1923 he tells the New York Times: We have lost hope of help from America, England, France, the only country that show any sign of helping us in the south is the Soviet government of Russia…»
White on Kuomingtang left wing: «[they] no longer trust their army leader at the front. Borodin is urging: ‘Get rid of Chiang Kaishek.’ In four short years, the communist had grown 60,000 members. To hear the left wing Nationalist: ‘No revolution is completed, until peasants own their land, and workers their factories.’ Chiang disagreed.»
While the film won an Emmy Award in the documentary category soon after its release, contemporary critics have criticised his «callous and condescending» portrayal of Chinese. Film Threat remarked that White never attempted to take on board the Chinese viewpoint, and points out there were unconfirmed rumours that the CIA was involved in the film’s making.
The Secret of Flight (1955) Dr Alexander Lippisch
The timeless educational series by brilliant German aeronautical engineer Dr. Alexander Lippisch, explaining the phenomena and physics of of flight in an understandable and engaging manner. Produced in 1955 by the University of Iowa.
Al final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, agentes encubiertos aliados se involucran en una desesperada carrera contra otros para captar a la élite de la comunidad científica de Alemania, en un esfuerzo por obtener una ventaja importante en la inminente guerra fría y la carrera espacial. «A la caza de científicos nazis», examina esta búsqueda esencial a través de relatos de testigos de estas audaces misiones.
Program: Secrets of the Dead
Episode: The Hunt for Nazi Scientists
At the end of World War II, undercover Allied agents engaged in a desperate race against one another to capture the elite of Germany’s scientific community in an effort to gain a major advantage in the looming Cold War and Space Race. «The Hunt for Nazi Scientists» examines this crucial pursuit through eye-witness accounts of these daring missions.
Durante la ocupación nazi, en las aguas del lago Tinn, en Noruega, se libró una ofensiva mortal. La resistencia noruega luchaba por mantener fuera el alcance de los alemanes el agua pesada. En 1944, se envío un cargamento a Berlín.
En un desesperado acto de sabotaje, un ferry de pasajeros que supuestamente contenía barriles de agua pesada fue hundido en mitad del lago Tinn. Pero, ¿cómo de cerca estuvo Hitler de la bomba atómica? Ahora un equipo de arqueólogos submarinos busca esos barriles. Quieren saber qué hay realmente en su interior.
¿Es posible que contengan la clave de la única arma que podría haber hecho ganar la guerra a Hitler, una bomba nuclear?
«The Atomic Cafe» es una colección de films propagandisticos que traban de concienciar al público americano sobre la bomba nuclear y decirles que ésta no era una amenza. Producidos durante los comienzos de la guerra fría, éstos filmes trataban de eliminar los temores de la población hacia la bomba. En ésos tiempos existía una especie de «halo misterioso» al rededor de la bomba. La gente no sabía realmente que era, salvo que era lo más destructivo jamás hecho. Sin duda alguna éstos filmes que contiene el documental son un pedazo de historia.
World Wars 1 & 2 