Oliver Stone's "documentary" is a farce.

[MadHound]

15. Well, I would have to watch the piece in order to judge it fairly,

However there is a lot more to the start, and conduct, of the Cold War than what we're taught in standard high school and college history classes.

For years and decades the US grossly overestimated Soviet power and intentions. For instance, in the aftermath of WWII, the Soviets were pulling up railroad tracks in East Germany. This came to be interpreted as the Soviets were putting down more track in advance of an invasion of West Germany.

Perhaps the biggest, and one can certainly wonder if it was deliberate, overestimation of Soviet power came from one man over a span of twenty years, Reinhardt Gehlen. During WWII, Gehlen served as the head of intelligence for the Nazis in Eastern Europe, namely the Soviets. As the war was winding down, Gehlen decided to try and write his own ticket. He took all the records he could, buried them in a safe place, and then basically proceeded to turn himself over to the US forces. The US was indeed under a legal obligation to turn Gehlen over to the Soviets, but they didn't. Instead, they retrieved his little treasure trove and put him to work for us.

At the time, and for years to come, the US didn't have any sort of intelligence assets in the Soviet Union. The boys in the CIA made Gehlen their top man in Soviet intelligence. Now think about this, what could possibly go wrong, putting a virulent Nazi in charge of gathering and reporting intelligence about his worst enemy, Communists? Yeah, that's exactly what happened. For years Gehlen fed the CIA grossly overstated reports of massive Soviet military buildup. You see, until the US either got eyes in the sky over the USSR, or the US decided to run an independent intelligence operation in the Soviet Union, there was no way to verify what Gehlen fed us. And feed us he did. What later turned out to be dozens of ICBM's magically morphed into hundreds, what were hundreds of troops on the border became tens of thousands. Of course, the US responded, engaging in an arms race where the racing was, at least initially, quite one sided. We were spending our treasure on responding to a military threat that was much less than what we thought.

The kicker is that even when we got the capability to double check Gehlen's reports with U2 overflights and other, more honest intelligence, we continued to act like, and act on, Gehlen's intelligence like it was completely true. We continued to build up our military forces, and in response the Soviet Union built up theirs, and we built up our even further in response to that.

All based on some crazy vengeful Nazi who was feeding us false info. Even after it was proven that his info was false. But by the time it was found out that his intel was false, too many people in power were making too much money. The MIC was in its first full flower during the '50's, and it wasn't going to give up while there was money to be made, which is why we're still saddled with wars of empire to this very day.

Like I said, I haven't watched Stone's show, but if this is what he touches on, then more power to him.