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COLD WAR: COMRADES, 1917-1945 {PART 1 OF 24} (TV)

Summary

The first in this twenty-four-part documentary series examining the events of the Cold War, from 1917 to the early 1990s. This series consists of interviews and archival footage, accompanied by historical narration by Kenneth Branagh. The program opens with views from an old bomb shelter provided for the United States Congress, illustrating the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation. A discussion follows of "the big three" of World War II--Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt--and their allied forces, which descended on Adolf Hitler's Germany. Backtracking to 1919, the documentary explores the schism that formed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union when the U.S. contributed troops to fight against the Bolshevik Revolution. By the 1920s, both nations had turned their attentions to domestic matters, first the Russians because of devastation from the war, and then the U.S. suffering as well under the Great Depression. When Franklin Roosevelt became president, inaugurating his socially oriented New-Deal programs, he opened communications with Russia for the first time in sixteen years. Meanwhile, Stalin's government had collectivised the Russian economy, and citizens from the U.S.S.R., the United States, and other nations were agitating against the rise of fascism in Spain and Germany. Red-Army volunteer David Ortenberg states that the oppression and brutality of Stalin's regime were kept hidden from the world. Western powers were dismayed when Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1938. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland, provoking France and Britain to declare war; the Nazis soon occupied France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia, and Greece, while StalinÕs Red Army occupied the Baltic states and Finland. Sir Frank Roberts of the British Foreign Office explains that Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union and other European nations finally united the Soviet and British armies against the Nazis. The United States joined the allied forces in 1941 after the Japanese bombing of Peal Harbor. Zoya Zarubina of Soviet Intelligence recalls the meetings of "the big three," while George Kennan of the U.S. State Department and Sergo Beria of Soviet intelligence note that Roosevelt was unaware of Stalin's covert monitoring of the Americans during the summits. The allied cooperation came to a head with the D-Day invasion of occupied France, although the liberation of Europe did not reach Poland, which went unaided by the Red Army. Hugh Lunghi of the British delegation talks about the 1945 summit at Yalta, during which Churchill and Stalin negotiated the redivision of Europe among the victors of the second world war. That same year Roosevelt died, and American and Russian troops finally came face to face as they spread across a defeated Germany. Al Aronson and Jim Kane, of the U.S. Sixty-Ninth Infantry, and Luibov Kozinchenko and Lieutenant General Alexander Gordeyev, of the Red Army Fifty-Eighth Guards, reflect on the meeting of American and Russian soldiers, while Red Army photographer Yergeni Khaldei recalls the final allied offensive on Berlin. The program concludes with outlines of the following: the creation of the United Nations; the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; early Soviet espionage in the United States; and the election of a new British Prime Minister. Commercials deleted.

Cataloging of this program was possible by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, 1999.

This selection from the Alan Gerry Cable Collection has been made available by the Gerry Foundation, Inc.

Details

  • NETWORK: CNN
  • DATE: September 27, 1998 Sunday 8:00 PM
  • RUNNING TIME: 0:46:38
  • COLOR/B&W: Color
  • CATALOG ID: T:58481
  • GENRE: Public Affairs/Documentaries
  • SUBJECT HEADING: Cold War; She Made It Collection (Pat Mitchell); U S S R - History - Revolution - 1917-1921; U S S R - Foreign relations - U S; U S S R - Foreign relations - Great Britain; U S S R - Foreign relations - Germany; World War II; She Made It Collection (Pat Mitchell)
  • SERIES RUN: CNN - TV series, 1998-1999
  • COMMERCIALS: N/A

CREDITS

  • Pat Mitchell … Executive Producer
  • Jeremy Isaacs … Executive Producer
  • Vivian Schiller … Senior Producer
  • Martin Smith … Series Producer
  • Isobel Hinshelwood … Series Associate Producer
  • Alison McAllan … Series Associate Producer
  • Ted Turner … Series Concept by
  • Svetlana Palmer … Research
  • Miriam Walsh … Film Research
  • Neal Ascherson … Writer
  • Carl Davis … Music by
  • Kenneth Branagh … Narrator
  • Al Aronson
  • Sergo Beria
  • Winston S. Churchill
  • Alexander Gordeyev
  • Adolf Hitler
  • Jim Kane
  • George Kennan
  • Yergeni Khaldei
  • Luibov Kozinchenko
  • Hugh Lunghi
  • David Ortenberg
  • Frank Roberts
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • Joseph Stalin
  • Zoya Zarubina