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. 

Joseph Stalin, the architect and instigator of the 42-year Cold War, has died five years into the conflict. Across the Atlantic, a new Republican President, who had worked closely with Uncle Joe during World War II, is a mere two months in office. As the knives come out for the succession fight inside the Kremlin, will a brief window of opportunity be enough to completely reset the conflict?

Although the entire Cold War passed without shots being fired between the two superpowers, the Cold War was anything but bloodless. The Korean conflict marked the beginning of proxy wars, regional conflicts backed by the full military might of both the United States and the Soviet Union. A brilliant amphibious landing turns the tide on the Korean Peninsula; meanwhile, America raises the stakes with a bomb so powerful it takes an atomic bomb to simply light the fuse.

So now the board is set and the pieces are in place. In the East, the battle-hardened, seemingly endless divisions of the Red Army, backed by the ruthless and pitiless Joseph Stalin and his state-driven terror. In the West, the idealistic to the point of naïveté allies and their game-changing pika-dons, the nuclear flash-booms that had turned Stalin?s relentless ambition into a pillar of salt. As he tapped his unlit pipe and smoothed his iconic mustache, Stalin was sure that while the West had the Bomb, they did not possess the will to use it; the Americans would not trade Boston for Berlin. Stalin wouldn?t invade because he wouldn?t have to; he?d move the Iron Curtain to keep the Allies out of Berlin. It was a blockade that the West could never get through... but one that they just might be able to get over.

After the defeat of Germany,  Joseph Stalin looked at the pieces laid out on the board in front of him with satisfaction that bordered on glee. His Red Army, consisting of millions of battle-hardened troops, thousands of tanks and an equal number of artillery pieces had come to a halt ? temporarily, thought Stalin ? where they had encountered the British and American forces attacking from the West. Those forces, he knew, were no match for the sheer mass his Soviet Union had mustered, and he was certain that the Western Democracies did not have the stomach for another long and bloody war. Soon all of Europe would be his, and his communist ideology fulfilled.

 

But all of that changed when the Americans had conjured two brilliant flashes of light over Japan and brought a sudden end to the Second World War. Would American atomic wizardry be enough of a deterrent to prevent the Third?

World War III ? the Apocalypse that never was ? started in the same place that World War II in Europe had ended: Berlin. ?An Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent,? said Winston Churchill, and that curtain ran right through the heart of Berlin. One the Eastern side, the collectivist, state-centered world of Joseph Stalin's communist ideology, armed to the teeth with conventional forces. On the other side ? the Western side ? a war-weary alliance of capitalist countries, led by the beacon of individual rights, the United States.

 

In Part 1 of The Cold War: What We Saw, we will peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.

Before "The Cold War: What We Saw" officially drops on Friday, January 31st, catch a sneak peek of the first five minutes of episode one, followed by a fascinating interview with host Bill Whittle and the man behind Ronald Reagan's famous "Tear Down This Wall" speech - Peter Robinson.

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.

Coming January 2020.

Nearly every single human with access to a TV set watched the blurry, almost surreal image of Neil Armstrong stepping live onto the surface of the moon. But after Apollo 11 returned to earth, we got an entirely different view of those first historic moments. Join us for the journey of Apollo 11, the seven Apollo Missions that followed, and decades of disappointments and shortfalls, crowned at last with a new hope for our future in space.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the Apollo program finally starts to take wings, learn how the entire program, and everything it accomplished, was actually NASA's backup plan.From a fire during a routine test to Christmas messages from the far side of the moon, see how the Apollo Program got to that one giant leap of Apollo 11 with a series of very small steps, and missteps.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Four satellite launches into the Space Race, and the score?in terms of pounds put into orbit?is Communism, 1300; Capitalism, 33. And the humiliations keep on coming. Playing it safe, America loses a chance to put the first man in space. Instead, they opt to fly a steely-eyed missile chimp. The Russians knock a grand slam homer out of the park as Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin does on the first manned mission what it would take America three more launches to accomplish. In history's biggest sales pitch ever, the Soviet Union is handing the United States its backside on a platter. In Part 2 of What We Saw, we will watch as America continues its serial humiliation. But then, the space equivalent of a candy apple red '66 Corvette Stingray convertible starts to dig in and get some real traction as the Cold War gets hotter.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Take a front seat ride in the Apollo Lunar Module as it makes its historic descent and avoids a near catastrophe unfolding behind the scenes. Then travel back to a time before the Space Race, to the America of cowboys and Indians, to understand how all of America?s small steps led us to the one giant leap.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The mission that got them there, Apollo 11, was the culmination of the nation's decade-long cultural and scientific fascination with outer space. In this four-part series, transport back in time, and understand what Apollo 11 felt like to the millions of Americans who lived through it.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices