“The winds of change were never warm.”
This is the story behind the story—the Cold War’s beginning told without the sugarcoating. From Stalin’s stolen chair to Truman’s frozen silence, this isn’t your textbook history. It’s a poetic, brutal unpacking of American myth and manufactured consent.
This version is free, because truth should be.
Subject index: Cold War, History, Free Download, Truman, Stalin, Political Writing, Educational, E-book, Nonfiction, PDF, Antiwar, Geopolitics, US History, Soviet Union, Storytelling, Poetic Nonfiction
You must log in or register to comment.
7·3 days agoAt the next meeting, Stalin entered the room, looked at Attlee’s seat—and PHYSICALLY PICKED UP THE CHAIR AND REMOVED IT
No source. The sources at the bottom (well, those that work) don’t include the word “chair” anywhere.
On no, which ones aren’t working? Citing my sources and the integrity of my work is very important to me. You can find a video of it here: https://youtu.be/gSD0IfSfrW4
Footage at 16:50
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/63/announcement-dropping-atomic-bomb-hiroshima
No results found
https://atomicarchive.com/history/hiroshima-nagasaki/index.html
page not found
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/berlin-airlift
page not found
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/collection/cold-war-timeline
page not found
Thank you for bringing it to my attention! I will also be updating my sources. I will look at the others you listed now!
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/online-collections/decision-to-drop-atomic-bomb
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. Berlin Airlift Lesson Plan.
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/lesson-plans/berlin-airlift
Cold War International History Project
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project
Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/atomic-bombing/index.html
Can add
t=16m50sto the link to have it load on the spot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSD0IfSfrW4&t=16m50sThe action looks less intense than the all-caps description indicates. Still marked this to check out later. Suggest backing up sources at archive.today, ghostarchive, and web.archive.org and providing both links so that you do not run into this issue later.
That’s super helpful—thank you! I just added the timestamp link so it goes straight to the moment. And good call on backing it up, I’ll archive the footage on web.archive and ghostarchive just in case. Appreciate you looking out for long-term integrity. This post means a lot to me.
More meant all those citation links could be archived so that link rot won’t have you having to replace dead links in the future. Don’t know that those archive youtube, but if you use a downloaded the video could be added to the regular archive.org if it’s not already there. Can also upload a copy of the e-book/PDF/whateverformats as a backup.
Thank you, I really appreciate the heads-up.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
That footage could very well just be of Stalin pushing a chair out of the way for photos, or something like that, quite different from what you wrote.
I appreciate your opinion and I encourage everyone to watch and have their own perceptions!
Thank you for fixing the link you cited. I’ve seen that photo many times—it’s widely circulated. But it’s not the same as the footage. The photo doesn’t capture the actual interaction or the chair movement. That’s why I cited the video, not just a still image. It’s a different kind of evidence—and it speaks for itself.
No file by this name exists.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The introduction is very well written, the style is nice. It leads you very well into— (the sentence was cut off)
Stalin didn’t understand democracies.
Not in theory
And… you’ve lost me.
The guy that had a massive library. That read a bunch… Didn’t understand democracies, not even in theory? I refuse to believe that. You can dislike Stalin, think he is a dictator. But to say he didn’t understand [liberal] democracies? That is ridiculous to me.
I’ll skip the part about him being a dictator, down until the part with the chair, we have already talked about that. I hold that Stalin simply moved the chair out of the way, so that pictures could be taken (looking closer at the video, it seems as if Attlee even helps push the chair out of the way). Besides that, this kind of claim ought to be sourced! (e.g. with a footnote). Also Stalin did not sit down in the video you provided (which you wrote he did).
No panic. No questions. No visible reaction.
Just vibes—and the quiet confidence of a man who already knew about the Manhattan Project thanks to Soviet spies in Los Alamos.This is an interesting idea! I have been working on The Cold War & Its Origins (Denna Frank Flemming) wherein the essentially opposite idea is laid out. That Stalin did not know it was the atom bomb and simply thought it a more conventional weapon. So it gives me something to ponder on.
The next part about editing the request also ought to be sourced/footnoted. And the Section III Pravda, even if it is in the sources at the bottom.
Having skimmed your book… I think The Cold War & Its Origins is a much better book.
I agree The Cold War & Its Origins is a great book! I admire Fleming’s diplomatic analysis. Just to clarify though, this isn’t a book—it’s a standalone piece. If the style or approach doesn’t resonate, that’s completely fine. Not everything is for everyone. But circling back repeatedly to compare or critique something you weren’t the audience for feels less like scholarship and more like ego.
Still, thanks for the interaction—and I want my work to foster cognitive dissonance.
That said, I would genuinely love to see your work whenever you complete it. Not to critique or tear it apart the way you approached mine, but because I truly enjoy reading, learning, and discussing this topic.
The part about making an e-book made me mistake this for a book, my bad. Its also why I made recommendations towards footnotes.
As i said, I do specifically like your writing style.
Ego? Maybe. Maybe some autistic desire to see what I think is wrong corrected. I dont really know.
Not being the audience? Not sure how you determine that.Since you seem to already know of the book, I’m not sure you will be interested in my work, it is simply transforming a scanned PDF version into EPUB, its the same book with the same words, nothing new or interesting.
I am autistic as well, please don’t use our diagnosis thrown around like this, it furthers the stigma against us. Additionally, we can’t use autism as a crutch or excuse. It’s not okay.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
Do you think Truman’s decision to nuke Japan was justified? Why or why not? Curious to know how others see this.
of course not, I think it would be really hard to ever justify dropping a nuke, but especially because they specifically chose areas that would have the most civilian and non-military casualties. It was just an atrocity, and it did not end the war, the Soviets did that.
Exactly. The decision wasn’t just militarily unnecessary—it was strategically theatrical. They deliberately targeted high-civilian zones to make a global statement, not to win a war that was already collapsing. The Soviet entry into the Pacific front was the death blow. The bombs were about power projection, not peace. I appreciate your insight, my friend—it’s wild how normalized this atrocity is in mainstream U.S. education.
