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Matt and Danny Bessner, from the American Prestige podcast, discuss the advent of the Cold War, exploring the conflict's origins, America's rise to global superpower status, what might have happened if Henry Wallace was vice president, and whether or not Harry Truman doomed the nation to fight a ridiculously deadly, and ultimately pointless, decades-long war with the Soviet Union.

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Ben Zaretsky

Does anyone know more about that soldiers uprising in a crooked Tennessee town that was mentioned?

Anonymous

Battle of Athens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

Mark Schneider

Hey, Guys, I have to say that as a retired history teacher, I love your stuff, and this is to me one of the best episodes yet, as this Hinge Point leads to the Neolib Dead Hellscape we currently inhabit. However, I am going to quibble with your sociology here a little bit. I will recommend reading Henry Miller's 1939 "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare", after he had to leave Paris when the war ramped up. So even though FDR was still in office, and the Hinge could've (?) differed, Miller saw what little consumerist piggies (to quote Chapo) Americans were and where we were going and the slop they wanted. So I kind of doubt Wallace could've altered things, Harry Truman was the "right" man for the US mood, so the Pendergast machine's installing him seems in retrospect like a fait accompli that reflected what the bad old USA truly is.

Anonymous

I just want to say: thank you for making this.

Anonymous

We need novels and movies of the alternate history to inspire future hingepoints

Anonymous

Lots of problems here. But here are my ideas. Real Hinge Point (Discuss) Roosevelt supports Upton Sinclair's gubernatorial run in 1930s in California and his program spreads nationally, creating a mass movement for nerd socialism. This would allow for more room for movement in supporting Soviet-aligned foreign policy. This leftward alignment would allow us to completely turn on our British and French allies and force them to relinquish their colonies for access to Marshall Aid, fulfilling a process that had already begun when we provided funding to Mao and Ho Chi Minh during the war. The US doesn't drop the bomb because, like in Germany, both the US and USSR co-occupy Japan. Jewish refugees are allowed to move back to Western Europe and Nazi supporters are executed en mass. All Nazi property is redistributed to Jewish refugees. Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon become one nation under a secular, federal government. Jerusalem becomes a city-wide museum for the monotheists to engage in the cultivation of religious and spiritual memory. Formally colonized Muslim working class people agree to form a united national front to conquer the Arabian peninsula to oust the Gulf monarchies. Under UN guidance, the oil wealth is distributed fairly among only developing nations in the region.

Anonymous

did anyone else hear the opening of the theme song as "hinge boys"?

Ellen Harold

Seems like circular reasoning. Doesn't everything seem like a fait accompli -- in retrospect? If Truman was so right, what was the need for the tremendous coordinated smear campaign against Wallace that continues TO THIS DAY, 72 years later, judging by certain things one hears on purportedly leftist podcasts.

Anonymous

Do the hinge points episodes not play for anyone else? They’re the only ones in my feed that won’t let me listen to them.

Anonymous

tbh isn't history just the unfolding of one grand fait accompli

orc

This show is amazing, Matt would've made a great priest, his sermonizing is on point

Jordan Thompson

intro music makes me want to unalive