James Hershberg, a Cold War historian, rates Cold War scenes in movies based on their realism.
He separates fact from fiction regarding the nuclear arms race and atomic secrets depicted in Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" (2023), starring Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, and Emily Blunt; Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964), with Peter Sellers; and "The Hunt for Red October" (1990), starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. Hershberg also explains the details of the Cold War's proxy wars, shown in "Charlie Wilson's War" (2007), starring Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman; "Thirteen Days" (2000), with Kevin Costner; and "WarGames" (1983), with Matthew Broderick. Lastly, he discusses the tactics and realism of spying and spycraft portrayed in Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" (2015), starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance; "The Lives of Others" (2006); and "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962).
Hershberg is a professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He used to run the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
You can find his books here:
"Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam": https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=20877
"James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age":
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2162
He separates fact from fiction regarding the nuclear arms race and atomic secrets depicted in Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" (2023), starring Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, and Emily Blunt; Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964), with Peter Sellers; and "The Hunt for Red October" (1990), starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. Hershberg also explains the details of the Cold War's proxy wars, shown in "Charlie Wilson's War" (2007), starring Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman; "Thirteen Days" (2000), with Kevin Costner; and "WarGames" (1983), with Matthew Broderick. Lastly, he discusses the tactics and realism of spying and spycraft portrayed in Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" (2015), starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance; "The Lives of Others" (2006); and "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962).
Hershberg is a professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He used to run the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
You can find his books here:
"Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam": https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=20877
"James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age":
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2162
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00 Collision in 400 yards.
00:02 [TIRES SCREECHING]
00:04 [EXPLOSION]
00:06 Well, that is highly dramatic, not especially realistic
00:10 to what actually happened during the Cold War.
00:12 Hi, I'm James G. Hirshberg, professor
00:15 of history and international affairs
00:17 at George Washington University.
00:19 I used to run the Cold War International History Project,
00:23 and I have written books about the nuclear arms race.
00:26 Today, we'll be looking at Cold War themes in movies
00:30 and judge how real they are.
00:32 As historical actor as he goes, this
00:42 is very accurate and faithful to the events
00:47 of the swap of Francis Gary Powers, the American U2 pilot,
00:52 and the Soviets by Rudolph Abel.
00:56 The scene in which he gets a message inside a nickel
01:01 is realistic, because that actually did happen,
01:03 although apparently the nickel got lost,
01:05 and he lost track of it.
01:07 And then it was given to the police
01:10 when a newspaper boy discovered it.
01:14 [RUSTLING]
01:16 We've received information concerning
01:18 your involvement in espionage.
01:20 I can't verify that Abel was in his underpants,
01:23 the agents had their guns drawn and all of that.
01:26 But he was arrested, and it was determined
01:31 that he had been part of a ring.
01:34 [RUSTLING]
01:37 Generally, the Soviets were presumed and verified
01:49 to have more human intelligence capabilities
01:53 inside the United States than the US had in the Soviet Union.
01:58 This was true, for example, of atomic intelligence.
02:00 The Soviets were able to have a ring that
02:02 included scientists associated with the Manhattan Project.
02:06 So intelligence was a game that went on,
02:08 but generally it's believed that the US tended to rely more
02:12 on technology for intelligence.
02:15 [LASER FIRE]
02:17 [GRUNTING]
02:20 I think it really does reflect the historical events.
02:25 It doesn't have everything.
02:26 For example, it shows this shooting down of Powers U-2
02:31 on May 1, 1960.
02:33 It was not known until decades later
02:35 that the Soviets also accidentally shot down
02:37 one of their own planes that was chasing the U-2
02:41 and killed the pilot, which was rather unfortunate.
02:44 [GRUNTING]
02:47 I need to know where the planes have flown,
02:49 and we must have this talk now.
02:51 And then you can sleep a little.
02:53 I don't believe Powers ever claimed
02:56 that he was tortured, per se, like torture at Guantanamo
03:00 or that kind of thing.
03:01 But the idea of preventing sleep,
03:06 that was not unrealistic.
03:08 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:11 Prisoner exchanges were made.
03:17 I wouldn't call them common.
03:19 It was not unheard of when one side had someone
03:24 the other wanted, and the other had someone
03:27 who could be exchanged for there to be a negotiating process.
03:31 I would give this scene an 8.
03:35 Torpedo.
03:36 The Americans are shooting at us again.
03:38 Pitch is too high.
03:41 The torpedo's rushed.
03:42 There were frequent games of cat and mouse
03:46 involving US and Soviet submarines
03:48 and also US penetrations by airplanes of Soviet airspace
03:54 to test the reactions of the Soviets.
03:57 But actually having confrontations like that
03:59 was extremely rare.
04:01 Captain, I think it's a Konevalov.
04:03 Increase the flank.
04:04 I'm sorry.
04:04 Give me the bay until red October.
04:05 He's taking position behind us.
04:07 Right full rudder.
04:08 Right full rudder.
04:11 The Soviets were able to develop a quieter submarine that
04:14 could approach American shores with nuclear weapons.
04:17 Of course, during the Cold War, the Soviets
04:19 had what were called SLIBMS, submarine-launched ballistic
04:22 missiles that could hover off the coast of the United States
04:27 and knock out all the major cities
04:29 along the eastern and western coasts with nuclear weapons
04:32 without the missiles even going out of the atmosphere.
04:36 My officers and I request asylum in the United States
04:41 of America.
04:44 The film was, of course, inspired
04:46 by the Tom Clancy novel, which came out years earlier
04:50 in the midst of the Cold War.
04:52 And Clancy was inspired by a real event
04:55 of the defection of a Soviet barge commander,
04:59 Yonis Plesky, first to Sweden and then eventually
05:02 to the United States.
05:04 And there was a case that also influenced him
05:07 and the eventual movie of a Soviet ship
05:13 of much smaller dimensions in which there was an attempted
05:17 mutiny that was suppressed.
05:20 But there was no full-scale defection
05:24 of such a large group that was depicted in the movie.
05:27 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:29 [INAUDIBLE]
05:31 You arrogant ass.
05:32 You've killed us.
05:33 [TIRES SCREECHING]
05:36 Well, that is highly dramatic, not especially realistic
05:40 to what actually happened during the Cold War.
05:42 Direct confrontations between US and Soviet submarines
05:46 was extremely rare.
05:48 You did have a sort of game of submarines tracking each other
05:52 and trying to track submarines through other methods.
05:57 And so both sides used them, and both sides suffered accidents.
06:01 And what made them so important was,
06:05 unlike land-based missile silos that were stationary,
06:09 if submarines were almost completely
06:11 invulnerable to Soviet attack, because they moved around
06:16 far underneath the water.
06:17 So I'd give this scene perhaps a five.
06:22 In order to guard against surprise nuclear attack,
06:25 America's Strategic Air Command maintains a large force
06:29 of B-52 bombers airborne 24 hours a day.
06:33 The movie is historically accurate
06:36 to a considerable extent.
06:37 The US did have a program known as Chrome Dome in which
06:40 there were dozens of B-52 bombers armed
06:44 with thermonuclear weapons close to fail-safe points.
06:48 Within a couple of hours of the Soviet targets
06:51 in the Soviet Union, airborne 24 hours a day.
06:55 And the idea was to make deterrence.
06:58 Mad.
06:59 And of course, it was mad in the sense of insane,
07:02 as the movie shows.
07:05 That was real.
07:06 I was under the impression that I
07:07 was the only one in authority to order
07:09 the use of nuclear weapons.
07:11 In the late 1950s, especially during Eisenhower's second
07:14 term, US presidents did delegate authority
07:18 to lower ranking commanders.
07:21 In the case that they believed an attack was taking place
07:24 and they could not communicate with Washington,
07:27 they would have the ability and the right
07:30 to order nuclear weapons use.
07:33 Premier threatening to explode this if our planes carry out
07:35 their attack?
07:36 No, sir.
07:37 It is not a thing a sane man would do.
07:39 The doomsday machine is designed to trigger itself automatically.
07:42 The doomsday machine was a concept that was discussed.
07:47 The Soviets did develop a doomsday machine known
07:49 as Operation Perimeter, in which hundreds of miles east
07:53 of Moscow in the Ural Mountains, a bunker was built.
07:58 In that bunker, they lost communications with Moscow.
08:02 And if they had evidence to believe that nuclear
08:05 detonations were taking place, they
08:07 could launch a missile that would send an authorization
08:11 to all surviving nuclear missiles.
08:14 And this would fire them all against the United States.
08:19 Deterrence is the art of producing
08:21 in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack.
08:26 Dr. Strangelove brilliantly was the first movie
08:30 to highlight the madness, the absurdity
08:34 of the nuclear arms race.
08:35 But there had also been a couple of serious what
08:39 were known as broken arrows, accidents involving
08:42 nuclear weapons, including B-52 carrying
08:46 multiple nuclear weapons that crashed in North Carolina.
08:50 And there were ensuing crashes, for example,
08:54 in Palomares in Spain, there was a B-52 crash.
08:57 And then finally, in January 1968
08:59 in Thule in northern Greenland.
09:01 But that actually led to the cancellation of Chromedome,
09:05 because it was simply seen as too dangerous.
09:07 [SCREAMING]
09:10 [EXPLOSION]
09:12 [EXPLOSION]
09:14 The idea that there could have been a mistaken order
09:18 or a deliberate order by a person who
09:22 was fanatic about the inevitability of World War III
09:25 and desiring that the US get the first strike in
09:30 was not entirely historically implausible.
09:33 You had Curtis LeMay, for example,
09:36 the director of Strategic Air Command,
09:38 that if he believed the Soviets were about to launch
09:41 a nuclear attack in the United States,
09:43 he would launch a preemptive strike,
09:45 whether authorized or not.
09:47 And Eisenhower was not happy to hear about that.
09:50 It's clear that humans are fallible,
09:52 technology is fallible, it's designed by humans.
09:56 And crazy people like Jack D. Ripper
09:59 do exist in the world and in the military.
10:03 I'd give it a 10.
10:04 You know, for breaking that orthodoxy
10:07 and really generating a far more skeptical, not necessarily
10:12 cynical, discourse.
10:14 The Milan anti-tank missile.
10:15 [APPLAUSE]
10:18 Let's kill some Russians.
10:19 [EXPLOSION]
10:24 In the war in Afghanistan, the US
10:27 did not send troops directly.
10:29 But instead, this was the latest in a series of proxy wars.
10:33 In which there were indirect confrontations
10:35 between the US and the Soviet Union or the communist world.
10:39 In which both sides wanted to avoid a direct military
10:42 conflict that could escalate.
10:44 But they still wanted their side to prevail
10:47 and used massive amounts of military, economic,
10:51 and political support.
10:52 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:59 It is accurate to the extent that providing the Stinger
11:04 missiles, the shoulder-fired missiles to the Mujahideen,
11:08 who were fighting against the Soviet occupation
11:11 of Afghanistan, was a crucial element.
11:14 Because the Soviets had helicopter gunships that
11:18 could be enormously effective.
11:20 Especially against the Mujahideen,
11:23 who tended to be based in mountain ridges that
11:26 could overlook targets and things like that.
11:28 Suddenly, the helicopters made them very vulnerable.
11:31 The ability to shoot those down was crucial.
11:35 And that really, truly did scare the hell out of the Soviets.
11:39 Villages have been napalmed.
11:41 And we helped kill the guys who did it.
11:42 Yeah, but they don't know that, Bob.
11:44 We always go in with our ideals and we change the world.
11:48 And then we leave.
11:49 At the end of the movie, having kicked the Soviets out
11:52 and inflicted large casualties, the Americans
11:54 considered this a great victory and basically walked away,
11:58 leaving Afghanistan to whatever happened.
12:03 And that led, of course, to the rise of the Taliban.
12:06 Not only that, the Mujahideen included, famously,
12:11 a number of Arab guerrillas, including Al-Qaeda and Osama
12:15 bin Laden, who certainly viewed the Soviet Union
12:19 as a great devil.
12:20 But once they took care of the Soviets,
12:22 were eager to take on the other great devil.
12:26 And that was the United States, culminating, obviously,
12:28 on 9/11.
12:29 That has triggered a debate about whether a less
12:33 of a ferocious desire for revenge, using any means,
12:37 was the wisest course.
12:39 I'd give it a 7.
12:40 [HORN BLOWING]
12:43 Has he been in touch with the premier?
12:44 Russians are still denying everything, sir.
12:46 Flush the bombers.
12:47 Get the subs in launch mode.
12:50 We are at DEFCON 1.
12:52 DEFCON 1.
12:53 Now, I didn't have security clearance.
12:55 I've never been in NORAD.
12:56 Nevertheless, the danger of an accidental launch
13:03 triggered by a simulation or by a mistake was real.
13:09 And coincidentally, for example, the same year this came out,
13:14 we know of two near nuclear accidents.
13:17 On September 26, 1983, there was a Soviet air defense base
13:23 outside Moscow detected supposedly
13:26 five incoming American ICBMs.
13:29 The director in the site had a Stan Petrov.
13:33 But he decided this made no sense,
13:36 that if there were a real American attack,
13:38 especially with only five missiles.
13:40 So he refused to credit this.
13:44 And so he did not send the report up the line.
13:47 And it turned out that this was a misreading
13:50 from a Soviet satellite.
13:51 And the Soviets actually didn't treat Petrov as a hero.
13:55 They slapped him on the wrist for not
13:56 following standard procedures.
13:58 Tic-tac-toe.
13:59 The only winning move is not to play.
14:10 And obviously, teaching it to play tic-tac-toe
14:12 didn't prevent World War III.
14:14 But the main point of war games, that systems and humans
14:18 are fallible, and the costs can be so great.
14:24 So I think its main point that you
14:26 need to be skeptical of the nuclear machine.
14:30 I'd give it a seven.
14:31 Purpose of this letter is to state my opinion
14:34 that more probably than not, J. Robert Oppenheimer
14:38 is an agent of the Soviet Union.
14:41 The opening letter that is being read to Oppenheimer in that
14:45 scene is absolutely from William L. Borden.
14:50 And Borden wrote this letter in the fall of 1953.
14:53 Went to J. Edgar Hoover, who forwarded it
14:55 to Dwight Eisenhower.
14:59 It charged that, as the clip showed,
15:03 that Oppenheimer more probably than not
15:05 had been a Soviet agent.
15:07 I have to say that virtually all serious historians now
15:11 fully disagree with that claim.
15:15 Most scientists did at the time.
15:18 We have voted two to one to deny the renewal of your security
15:23 clearance.
15:24 The one quibble I might have with that scene
15:27 is in the decision to strip Oppenheimer
15:33 of his security clearance.
15:35 They were clearly influenced by what Oppenheimer's critics,
15:40 including Edward Teller and including the Air Force,
15:43 saw as his lack of support, certainly
15:47 lack of enthusiasm for the hydrogen bomb program.
15:50 Because as an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission,
15:54 Oppenheimer, along with the rest of the General Advisory
15:57 Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission,
15:59 had opposed a crash program to build a hydrogen bomb,
16:04 believing it to both be immoral, potentially
16:07 a weapon of genocide.
16:08 And Oppenheimer believed that a hydrogen bomb was so large
16:11 that it would inevitably kill large numbers
16:15 of innocent civilians.
16:17 And so they opposed it.
16:19 And that influenced the security hearing.
16:22 I give it a nine.
16:23 I think Oppenheimer is a terrific movie.
16:26 My only complaint is that it's too short.
16:28 It's only three hours long.
16:30 Our official estimate at this time
16:32 is that this missile system is the SS-4 Sandow.
16:37 We do not believe that the missiles are as yet
16:40 operational.
16:40 In contrast to the clip, by late in the week,
16:44 they were suspecting that the missile sites were operational.
16:48 Those ships are definitely stopping.
16:51 Mr. President, the ships appear to be stopping.
16:56 Even though they're showing the Soviet ships,
16:58 or Soviet affiliation, approaching the blockade line,
17:02 I think this idea of the ships being
17:04 so close on the blockade line has also been shown
17:08 to be historically inaccurate.
17:10 The ships were far more separated.
17:13 They were not eyeball to eyeball,
17:16 as the crisis is sometimes depicted.
17:19 And the idea that Kennedy got the message saying
17:21 the ships have turned around--
17:23 actually, the message he got was that the ships have
17:25 stopped dead in the water.
17:26 But that was miles from the nearest American ship.
17:30 I'd rate the scene a 7.
17:32 Lives of Others accurately depicts
17:46 the pervasive informing intelligence gathering
17:51 and paranoia that suffused the former East Germany,
17:57 or the German Democratic Republic.
17:59 In the scene, you see the bugging
18:01 of the residents of this very successful writer, who
18:05 believed that he was trusted by the regime
18:08 and not closely surveilled.
18:10 The scene of bugging the apartment
18:12 was absolutely realistic.
18:13 I remember the one time I visited East Germany
18:15 before the wall came down.
18:17 You know, people were very cautious about speaking.
18:21 [speaking german]
18:24 I think it deserves a great deal of credit
18:29 for at least recreating the atmosphere of the times.
18:32 Nazi surveillance was absolutely pervasive,
18:36 both through informers, which did include personal blackmail.
18:40 It was shown, you know, not a word of this,
18:42 or Misha, you know, you're not allowed to speak.
18:46 And then, of course, there was the fact
18:48 that there was a lot of information
18:49 about the Nazi regime, and that you could
18:51 be informed on that, and not a word of this,
18:53 or Misha will be kicked out of college.
18:56 That was absolutely the kind of thing
18:58 that was completely plausible to make even friends, even
19:02 family members, inform on other family members,
19:05 inform on close friends.
19:06 And technical surveillance.
19:08 The bugging of telephones, the bugging of street corners,
19:11 the bugging of park benches.
19:13 I'd give it an eight for historical accuracy.
19:16 Allow me to introduce our American visitors.
19:19 But I have conditioned them, or brainwashed them.
19:23 During the Korean War, the movie is accurate in that,
19:26 you know, there were Americans who
19:27 were taken prisoner in North Korea, who decided
19:30 to stay in communist China.
19:33 And there was a profusion of articles
19:35 that they had been brainwashed.
19:37 That was a new expression that would use.
19:40 And strangle Admiral Mavoli to death.
19:44 Now you just sit there quietly.
19:46 Cooperate.
19:49 And what is not in the movie, but is
19:51 known to every Cold War historian,
19:54 is that was mostly projection.
19:56 Because the CIA engaged in a vast program
20:01 to test LSD and other pharmaceuticals
20:05 to see if they could be used to drug communists,
20:09 to go back to their communist countries
20:12 and commit acts, not necessarily murder,
20:14 but maybe espionage or whatever, to the creation of MK Ultra.
20:18 Which was the large scale CIA program
20:21 that lasted, you know, into the 1960s
20:24 to test LSD out, often on unsuspecting people.
20:29 I'd rate the scene a seven.
20:31 Both were reflecting the paranoia of the McCarthy period.
20:35 But with the added element of hypnosis,
20:38 pharmaceutical drugs to influence people.
20:42 Do you have a favorite Cold War movie?
20:45 There are so many great ones.
20:47 I mean, I think Doctor Strangelove
20:48 is in a class of its own.
20:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]
20:54 [MUSIC PLAYING]
20:57 [MUSIC PLAYING]
21:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
21:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
21:08 [MUSIC PLAYING]