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Comment by smokey_circles | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's true, but I'll also admit that the history of the cold war is very muddled and I am no historian.

The US's version was written by the white house's journalist. It is not objective and lots has been refuted from calls leaked by the soviets after the fact, and a few of the advisors too.

TruTV/Adam Ruins Everything has a take on it [0] (not saying that's the objective history but they raise some eyebrows).

Some facts we do know though:

1. JFK rode on an anti-communist wave to beat his opponent into office

2. The US moved missiles first

3. The military was following orders from the top

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5wc9V7ggVg

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EDIT: on some reflection, I think I actually just proved your point. If that was just left to the military then cooler heads may not have prevailed

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I can strongly recommend "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" by Michael Dobbs:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2606779-one-minute-to-mi...

For extra nightmare fuel "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" by Daniel Ellsberg:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25663779-the-doomsday...

The latter book literally gave me nightmares.

Additional recommendation: The Fog of War, the McNamara interview documentary. Absolutely fascinating look into the mind of the secretary of defense at the time.

I need to watch that again - saw it years ago when it first came out. I'm currently reading Ellsberg's Secrets A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers - which is pretty shocking - they knew all along they could never win in Vietnam but continued for "reasons".

A quote from the latter:

"The total death toll as calculated by the Joint Chiefs, from a U.S. first strike aimed primarily at the Soviet Union and China, would be roughly 600 million dead. A hundred Holocausts.

I remember what I thought when I held the single sheet with the graph on it. I thought, this piece of paper should not exist. It should never have existed. Not in America. Not anywhere, ever. It depicted evil beyond any human project that had ever existed. There should be nothing on Earth, nothing real, that it referred to."

https://apjjf.org/-Daniel-Ellsberg/3222/article.html

"A hundred Holocausts" - that has haunted me ever since I first read it.

Any similar books that are not written by either born US persons or people heavily influenced by US either via politics or education? Not saying the information in the books are not true, but would love an opinion and summation on the matter from someone not so deep into US politics.

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