This week (Oct. 16) in 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected by his fellow cardinals as the youngest pope in 132 years, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, and — being a native of Poland — the first Slavic pope in history.   He took the name John Paul II and then he took it upon himself to bring down the Soviet empire — an empire that had controlled Eastern Europe, including his native Poland, for more than 30 years.

Nine months after his election, in June of 1979, he took his first significant step toward that goal by making an official visit to his Polish homeland, and when he disembarked from his plane at the Warsaw airport and promptly kissed the ground, his countrymen burst with joy, pride and religious fervor.  Hundreds of thousands of Poles greeted his visit to Warsaw, shouting, “We want God, we want God!”   And as he traveled the country the crowds swelled, culminating in the city of Krakow where he addressed nearly 3 million Poles.

His message to his audiences was simple.  “Be not afraid,” he told them, because “faith,” “hope” and “love” will help them overcome any obstacle or enemy, and he reminded his countrymen that religious freedom was their fundamental right, despite what the Soviet-puppet government that ruled them might say.

He also reminded his countrymen, and all the captive peoples of Eastern Europe, how disparate were their personal belief systems — their values, ethics, dreams and religious faith — from the illegitimate and stultifying political systems they lived under.  He was convinced that once those disparities were clearly understood, these political systems would quickly crumble.

His audiences got the message, starting — as he undoubtedly had hoped — with his fellow Poles.  A year after the pope’s visit, Lech Walesa, an unemployed electrician from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, and a man who had once led an illegal strike against that shipyard, stood outside its gates, a picture of Pope John Paul II beside him, to announce the formation of the first-ever independent trade union in a Soviet-controlled country — the trade union Solidarnosc, or “Solidarity.”  “We have the right to strike!” Walesa announced to thunderous cheers.

Continue reading →

This week (Aug. 6) in 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb exploded over its primary target, the Aioi Bridge in Hiroshima, Japan.  President Harry Truman had authorized the use of an atomic bomb against Japan because he had been appalled by the casualties that the U.S. military had suffered fighting the Japanese in the Far East.  The recent battle on the island of Okinawa, for example, had resulted in 50,000 Americans killed, and it was estimated that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would result in 1 million American casualties.

For Truman, the decision was simple.  Dropping an atomic bomb on Japan, rather than ordering American G.I.s to storm Japan’s shores, would save countless American lives.   He was right, although the bomb caused unprecedented physical destruction and — factoring in the effects of the radioactive fallout — more than 100,000 Japanese deaths, both soldier and civilian.

Truman claimed he never regretted for a second his decision to order the use of atomic weapons — a second one was dropped on Nagasaki three days later — but looking at his subsequent actions, that claim appears false.

Or at least debatable, because in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman reversed a trend that had been in place almost since the dawn of time — or at least since the dawn of war.   He refused to cede authority over the future use of atomic, and later nuclear, weapons to the military decision makers.

Continue reading →

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” ­- U.S. President Harry Truman

President Truman’s quote was a political metaphor, but this week (July 24) in 1959, political heat was literally generated in a kitchen during a visit to the Soviet Union by Vice President Richard Nixon.

The venue was a prototype American kitchen in the model home section of the American National Exhibition that was being held in Moscow as part of a cultural exchange program between the United States and the Soviet Union.  A year earlier U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had agreed to a series of cultural exchanges between the two nations in order to foster a better relationship through enhanced understanding.  But when Vice President Nixon, who was hosting Khrushchev on a tour of the American exhibition, stepped into the model kitchen and began pointing out the state-of-the-art American home appliances, from toasters to juice mixers to color televisions to built-into-the-wall washing machines, Khrushchev — who was known for his quick temper — became incensed, loudly claiming that Soviet home appliances were as good or better than American appliances.

From there the merits of washing machines and televisions morphed into a debate over who had the better political system, who had better weapons and weapons delivery systems, who was for peace and who was for war, and even who treated their women better.

Their voices rising, and in Mr. Khrushchev’s case fingers pointing, the argument became as heated as a just-out-of-the-oven casserole, and the reporters covering the exhibition, who had expected a run-of-the-mill story that their editors would bury inside their papers or at the end of their broadcasts, quickly began to record Nixon’s and Khrushchev’s every word.

Continue reading →