Cold War Kansas - Dr. Landry Brewer; Unknown

today on k pr presents a bigger than expected role that kansas played in the cold war i'm kate mcintyre landry brewer is the bernhard assistant professor in the department of social sciences at southwestern oklahoma state university in say or oklahoma he's the author of cold war kansas landry thanks for joining us today my pleasure terry thank you for having me tax back to the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties and set the stage for us how did russia our ally in world were to become our sworn enemy ian just the course of a few years well the soviet union was a communist nation and so at a logically very different in fact antithetical to the united states and great britain and france we the democratic west are firm believers that people should get to decide for themselves how they will be governed the soviet union on the other hand as a communist nation believe that each nation should only be governed by a communist government

though we were allies at the end of world war two the closer we came to the end of the war the more difficult that our relations with the soviet union became especially as the soviet army the red army marched west to force a german surrender which it did in may nineteen forty five but the red army marched through several nations and as i tell my students where the red army went communism usually followed and the red army occupied eastern germany and poland and hungary and several other eastern european nations and forced those countries to accept communist governments as world war two was intent which is why by the time you reach say march of nineteen forty six former british prime minister winston churchill at the invitation of president truman came to president truman's home state of misery specifically to westminster college where he delivered a speech and introduce the expression iron curtain to the united states and he said that an

iron curtain has descended across the continent of europe and what he was saying was that the soviet union was exerting control over several nations in eastern portion of europe and what happened was the united states had to assume a new role in the world after world war two historically the united states had been an isolationist nation we're more concerned about what was going on within our own borders then we were what was going on overseas and especially in iraq however at the end of world war two we quickly became concerned that the soviet union was intent on not only occupying and controlling several eastern european nations but in fact was intent on further expanding their own reach and forcing other countries perhaps in europe and maybe even elsewhere to ultimately accept communism which is why nineteen forty seven the american government became determined to stop the spread of communism of soviet communism in

europe first and ultimately we applied containment to our foreign policy worldwide so i typically explain why students in and presentations that i give is that the cold war ended virtually as soon as world war and the cold war began virtually as soon as world war to an end i visited landry brewer he's the author of cold war kansas when are you already mentioned winston churchill's famous iron curtain speech in fulton missouri just as a side note my grandfather spent mcintyre senior was at that iron curtain speech in fulton missouri i i thought for years that this was just sort of a you know of a family lore that was assured but i actually came across his ticket to that speech and several years ago and it is identical to the ones that are in the winston churchill museum in full museum so i guess he really was there after all my college years i know because that's what

was the significance of churchill making that speech not in washington dc not in a major city on the east or west coast but in the nation's heartland i think it's it can be difficult for those of us who are alive today in twenty twenty one in the united states to imagine or remember a time when we didn't have constant communication where we didn't have knowledge immediate knowledge in fact of what's going on not just around the state around the nation around the world and information traveled slowly in the nineteen forties radio was popular but i think most americans read newspapers if they'd been gathered news at all but what was going on in europe with the soviet union and the control it was increasingly exerting over eastern european nations was not something that most americans were really aware of so men winston churchill going to westminster college there in fulton missouri in

nineteen forty six and he told the world with president truman beside him onstage that the soviet union was increasingly controlling those nations and the british didn't have a lot of information about what was going on behind it i think it served as a wakeup call in the united states because we have been allies with the soviet union during world war two we found common cause in fighting against an adversary in nazi germany and it is strange even for march twenty first century perspective it does seem unusual that wartime allies would so quickly become post war adversaries and i would imagine that in the nineteen forties nineteen forty five and six and seven it might seem odd for the average american to quickly understand to grasp how the soviet union could appear to do a one at and go from

being our ally to being our work our cold war adversaries and so churchill's fulton missouri speech was quite profound and impactful when they gave us a pretty neat expression in the term iron curtain landry brewer is the author of cold war kansas he teaches history at southwestern oklahoma state university landry you can't talk about the cold war without talking about kansas is favorite son tommy about the role of president dwight d eisenhower arguably the most important cold war president dwight eisenhower the son of abilene kansas was one of only two presidents during the entire cold war to serve two full terms ronald reagan being the other he was president early in the cold war of course are the corps began and there's no hard start date to a non event like the cold war i typically tell my students certainly by the nineteen forty seven you could argue actually before world war

two ended the cold war had begun because of the role that espionage was plying joseph stalin spying on the united states even while we were allies during the war nevertheless president truman was the first american president during the cold war and so he established the foreign policy that every american president until the end of the cold war in the nineteen nineties followed president eisenhower was no exception now he'd approached the military and the military posture a little differently than truman head especially in the amount of money he wanted to spend or rather not spend president eisenhower was critical of president truman's profligate spending as he sought the felt united states was spending way too much money at you know more than fifty billion fifty two billion dollars a year on art department of defense which he thought was outrageously high president eisenhower was perpetually worried about bankrupting the united states by the

expansive growth of military spending is when he became president he will spend less money his approach was called the new look he wanted to rely more on the nation's nuclear arsenal as a nuclear deterrent to discourage adversaries like the soviet union from either attacking united states directly or more likely attacking one of our allies especially our nato allies in western europe so president truman relied more heavily excuse me president eisenhower relied more heavily on the nation's nuclear deterrent and was under president eisenhower that we transitioned from having the just the atomic bomb the type we dropped on japan at the end of world war two in august nineteen forty five we transition to a more powerful nuclear bomb the thermonuclear bomb also known as the hydrogen bomb in the early nineteen fifties the soviet union also developed the much stronger nuclear bombs and so the cold war in is a new phase as both the united states and soviet

union have long range bombers airplanes i can travel long distances to drop these much more powerful nuclear bombs and both the united states and soviet union develop missiles that could fly thousands of miles while president eisenhower wasn't for president he faced several nuclear war scarce especially from nineteen fifty six all into the end of his second term he was running for re election in nineteen fifty six and we had a nuclear war scare over the suez canal in egypt and then he had more scares with the chinese and men in southeast asia some of his advisors placed a lot of pressure on him to use nuclear weapons in southeast asia he resisted all of those calls for nuclear weapons yet ironically the united states developed the intercontinental ballistic missile and icy bmi as it was called was a missile that could carry a nuclear bomb

thousands and thousands of miles from one continent to another with the advent of the icy be on airplanes were not necessary anymore you could send a pilotless icy be him from the united states to the soviet union and vice versa the soviet union to build the world's first successfully flew the world's first i see beat him in nineteen fifty seven when that happened which was followed two months later by the launch of the first ever artificial satellite called sputnik a tremendous amount of pressure was placed on president eisenhower to catch up to the soviets and he did make developing the american icy been a national priority and so you see a lot more money and a lot more effort going into develop that icy be him and the first american icy be him was the atlas missiles and the state of kansas housed two different versions of the icy be in called the atlas missile landry brewer is the author of cold war kansas landry un's a nice indian

that inter continental ballistic missiles how in kansas in the middle of the country managed to get so many i c b evans here in our state now kansas says location was one of the reasons why it was chosen to host so many i c b u and i see bins were always going to be attached to an air force base in kansas had bases in critically and forbes air force base and showing air force base as well as mcconnell air force base in wichita which tells a different kind of missile but the atlas nussle was the first american icy billion and there were various criteria about where these i see me and to be located and one of the criteria was that they had to be outside of the range of soviet submarine launched ballistic missiles and so they wanted these icy been launch complexes to be in the middle of the country if possible and so kansas certainly

satisfies that being in the geographical center of the nation and forbes air force base in topeka housed another lane atlas e i c b hands all within about oh forty miles or so of forbes and topeka and then down the road accidents a line a shilling air force base that housed twelve atlas caf i c b ends and the muscles were a little bit different but they yeah they both could fly very long distances they could fly there are six or seven or even up to nine thousand miles of necessary they could fly those great distances and the flu so fast up to sixteen thousand mph that if missiles those alice missiles have been launched from kansas they would've arrived inside the soviet union and the less than forty five minutes and when they arrived they would have delivered nuclear

warheads that were officially they are called for i get turned lush with three point a three mega turn but i walked around dublin just say four megaton which means there're equivalent to about four million tons of tnt to put them in perspective the nuclear bombs inside of the kansas atlas missiles that twenty one atlas muscles housed in kansas in the early nineteen sixties were about two hundred times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki at the end world war two in august nineteen forty five top economic benefit that posting these icy be announced today for kansas well building these launch complex is above the atlas e m e al assaf a special for the al assaf because the alice echols the final in the atlas series and it was the alice launch complexes were the most complicated to build their the largest and consequently the most expensive hour talking about twenty

twenty five i believe there are some million dollars was the contractor was awarded to build these and what happened was because of problems specifications and problems they ran into a cost overruns about doubled the price and so there is a huge launch complexes very large underground structures they're sometimes called their own cities' air force crews will have to live underground so they had living quarters they're made from heavily reinforced concrete and rebar and vo facilities that actually housed the missiles themselves are extremely large and extremely costly to build but they did provide thousands of jobs for kansans people in kansas and then people came from a neighboring states like oklahoma for example two want to work at these launch complexes as they were under construction and so the and building these facilities pumped millions of dollars

into the state of kansas and people also found jobs which was helpful to the locals and in and around the shelling dan and forbes and even though mcconnell at wichita back in the year early nineteen sixties and so the magnitude of this project was just that enormous an idea in my home state of oklahoma we housed the atlas after missile twelve or attached to an air force base in southwest oklahoma take my own father worked at two of billy atlas of launch complexes well they're under construction the nineteen sixties and his father worked at another one of the complexes so i understand how important that the jobs they were created by building these launch complexes were because my father was a twenty year old newlywed with a baby on the way and he made enough money working for these launch complexes to put down a down payment on the house

then he and my mother bought for the birth of my oldest sibling unpaid hospital the thing was two hundred dollars for his birth a nearly nineteen sixties and in kansas you had even more jobs that were created because he had many more missile sites that were constructed so millions and millions of dollars plan to the state of kansas jobs provided business has prospered individuals prospered in the state prospered as a result but there was some pushback right where's these were being built an especially among that first and help students in my research i did come across and some information indicating not everyone in camp this was thrilled there was actually more pushback in kansas that i came across the night in any other state including my home state of oklahoma you alluded to some mcpherson college students who showed up and protested at the nearby atlas missile site when it was under

construction and their leader said that said they weren't necessarily protesting just the atlas missiles are just this missile complex and construction so much as they are they were protesting the cold war and they wanted peace and of course and not war interestingly also came across newspaper cartoon i have the specific newspaper escapes me at the moment but it was actually a cartoon that showed some pigs were to put iran in a field with the missiles pointed skyward in the foreground an unbeliever caption something like grain crop for the heartland and so there was there were concerned by students are concerned there was concern by individuals there was concern by the editorial staff of at least one newspaper and in fact in my reading local news accounts what

comes up frequently is this public knowledge this understanding especially nearly air force bases but even more broadly around kansas was that in the event of a soviet nuclear attack kansas would almost surely be in soviet crosshairs because the soviets would likely target our icy below which sites as well as the nearby air force base is that operated them and so ford air force base and showing air force base and mcconnell air force base would likely have been targeted by soviet nuclear weapons and kansans know it and desolate land a brewer he is the author of cold war kansas what happened to those icy be un sites as they would do you commissioned these titan two sides attached to mcconnell air force base were all empty because the government would always remove all the salvageable materials that they can use

elsewhere and as far as the titan two sides attached to mcconnell air force base they're actually dynamite in and not usable in any shape form or fashion afterward as far as the atlas uni al assaf sites after the salvageable materials were removed they're actually put up for sale in fact i buy came across an ad in the wall street journal from nineteen sixty five listing atlas missile sites for sale including a kansas missile sites and so they're typically sold to either private individuals or business owners or in some cases they were ultimately deeded for the costs of the dollar to a local school districts i know kansas state university for example came to own and operate free of the decommissioned atlas sites i believe it was one that was into al assaf sites and then there are some other local public school districts that came down some of the abandoned at la sites now if you fast forward several years

even into the two thousands i came across some interesting information about a entrepreneur is who were turning abandon atlas missile sites into an air b n b even what you might call survivalists haven for people who are concerned about the future of this nation in the state of world affairs and people who felt more comfortable living deeply underground and light of what was going on above ground landry brewer teaches history at southwestern oklahoma city university and he's the author of cold war kansas kansas for the november eight nineteen fifty four describe operation scamper operation scamper interestingly in the early mid nineteen fifties the united states' approach to civil defense that leaned heavily on him mass evacuation of sudan's civil offense in the nation

changed the contours of a change over the year is the bottom line was with the soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb beginning in nineteen forty nine and in the soviet union developing the much stronger thermonuclear bombs united states was concerned of ice about a soviet nuclear attack and so civil defense efforts focused on ways that americans could survive a possible soviet nuclear attack initially the primary concern was an attack by airplane this was over time replaced by fears of a soviet missile attack but in the early mid nineteen fifties civil defense officials decided it would be best to try to evacuation large cities in the event of a looming soviet nuclear attack which were to have included kansas city and in the nineteen late nineteen fifty four local civil defense officials in kansas city with with help from officials in both misery in kansas

conducted an evacuation drill called operation scamper and a map of kansas city was printed and thousands and thousands of copies of the map or hand it out to individuals and i'm the designated a maitre'd an actual a conventional bomb was set off to replicate to represent a nuclear bomb and have they tried to evacuated in an orderly fashion as best they could to simulate what would happen in an actual nuclear attack and interestingly after the fact civil defense leaders there in kansas city in their post mortem on operations camper conceded that they had not accounted for the evacuation of hospital patients or prisoners who had been incarcerated however they were still satisfied with the outcome of operations camper and civil defense officials said in the event of a no nuclear attack kansas city was ready

something humorous that i came across in reading about this was civil defense officials said if you were away from home and your own label seek out sturdy shelter your own label evacuated the best thing that kansas city ins could do was to find the nearest wall in essence hunker down as we in western oklahoma would say and not leave the rest to providence and did like a a a a very good luck today on k pr prisons the outsized roll that kansas played in the cold war professor landry brewer is the author of cold war kansas landry and november thirtieth nineteen eighty three millions of americans including me is glued to their television sets for the broadcast of the made for tv movie the day after talk about the kansas and especially lawrence connection to that maybe i it was seven

not nearly eight years old when the major tv movie the day after it aired on abc television i was only vaguely aware i love that movie and as an adult looking back i'm glad that i was only vaguely aware because i talked to people today who remember the movie you know natalie older than i am and baby talk to me about how scared they were selling it was beyond selling one the day after was was a made for television movie depicting a nuclear attack all in kansas city specifically but also the fallout in nearby kansas specifically lawrence kansas home to the university of kansas and this is what abc did an interestingly the movie's director nicolas myer said he didn't make the movie before the reasons that he typically made movies he knew he didn't even view it is entertainment he viewed as a public service announcement though in the early nineteen eighties when president reagan was in the white house was a time

of renewed tension and fear when you get to the nineteen sixties especially early nineteen sixties we got so close to nuclear war during the cuban missile crisis that i actually both the united states and the soviet union rushed later quite concerned the governments of both nations realize how close we came and for the remainder of the nineteen sixties both presidents kennedy and then soviet leader nikita khrushchev they backed off in their rhetoric in their public speeches and were much less belligerents in their remarks about each other of course president kennedy is assassinated in november of sixty three and replaced with president johnson still what you see was a relaxation of tensions especially to transition out of the sixties and the seventies under say president nixon and ford and we enter into a miracle detente which literally means relaxation of tensions the united states was bogged down in vietnam and the soviet union had other things on its mind yet when you

transition to the early nineteen eighties in the election of ronald reagan who became president in january nineteen eighty one there were renewed tensions as the united states began to ramp up its defense spending once more and president reagan dramatically increase defense spending the soviet union tried to keep up as of the united states and soviet union began to expand their nuclear arsenals and by the time that the day after errant it came at a time of real tension and i write in the book about some nato exercises war exercises over in europe that the soviet union didn't realize were just war exercises they thought that perhaps nato is getting pretty was preparing to attack the soviet union and so when the day after aired in nineteen eighty three not just a cold war but nuclear war was very much in the minds of many americans including kansans and those in kansas city and as i mentioned earlier a nuclear attack has actually depicted and it was quite frightening for those who watched and in fact in the book i

mention that mental health experts fielded calls thousands of calls after the airing of the day after for people who are very very upset about what they saw one of the actors in the day after the man in john cullum some of your listeners might remember his role in the cbs show northern exposure back the nineteen nineties he appeared on abc just before the airing of the day after to warn viewers that they would see some very disturbing images in the next two hours for the second hour of the movie which is the portion of the movie that depicts the nuclear attack on the fallout and all the carnage there in kansas abc did an error any commercials so it was sixty consecutive minutes of a nuclear attack and fall out and carnage and lots of death and destruction and this proved to be very upsetting and quite bracing and one of the movie's viewers who was president ronald reagan now he'd actually been given up a private screening of it

before the movie aired there in november but as he wrote in his diary he was quite depressed by the movie because it was fearful that the united states and soviet union were in fact headed toward a nuclear conflict which he didn't want to happen in nineteen eighty seven significantly president reagan and soviet leader mikhail gorbachev signed the it in a treaty the intermediate nuclear forces treaty and for the first time during the cold war an entire class of ballistic missiles was eliminated all missiles with ranges of about three hundred to three thousand miles were eliminated by the united states and soviet union president reagan wrote to nicholas meyer the director of the day after after he signed the imf treaty in nineteen eighty seven and in essence

said your movie had a huge role in this treaty gorbachev himself in his own memoir pointed to that treaty as the first step out of the cold war and so both of the principles that reagan and gorbachev agree about the significance of the imf treaty in the beginning of the end of the cold war and of course kansas played a central role in that movie it was set in kansas it featured kansans not professional actors but abc and small specifically and nicolas myer didn't want professional actors and so many of the cast members even those who had speaking roles not just sit speaking less extras were incidents were residents of lawrence uneven faculty and staff of the university of kansas there in lawrence kansas was very important in this movie that was very important in the cold war but more broadly kansas was so important in its role

with housing intercontinental ballistic missiles in having three air force bases more by doing more air force base is operated i c b evans in kansas that operated i see bins in any other state kansas provided one of the most important cold war presidents in dwight eisenhower and the new factory and of the role of the day after i argue in my book the kansas arguably played the most important most consequential role during the cold war than any other state in the country that a one final question for you you know a teacher in oklahoma levin oklahoma how did you become interested in the kansas and the role it played in the cold war in october of twenty sixteen i was at my parents' house one evening and my father showed me a web site that was a

treasure trove of documents and photos about the atlas caf program in oklahoma he had worked at two of the atlas after missile launch complexes while they were under construction in the early nineteen sixties and i had grown up hearing about missile bases or missile sites and having absolutely no idea what anyone was talking about and so that information when in one year half the other but in october of twenty sixteen when my father showed me this website and i came across so many government documents about the us missile program in oklahoma i was mesmerized as tim i was intrigued and i began researching i did further research and i wrote about it and all that research and writing became a book about the cold war in oklahoma during the course of this research though i found out that kansas housed not just the atlas caf missile that oklahoma also housed but the atlas ii missile and the titan two missile and then i got into further research and i realized that as exciting as oklahoma's

cold war role was kansas may have even had a more exciting any more significant cold war role and so i spent a great deal of time furthering my research about alice missiles and other icy billions and civil offense on the role of president eisenhower and the day after that i got into the i got to learn about kansas military installations and kansas has such an important cold war story when i've run into in oklahoma is people i am forty five years old people my age and younger are largely ignorant of not just in the cold war in general but oklahoma's role i'm confident that the same phenomenon exists in kansas average cans and certainly my age and younger are probably largely ignorant about kansas is very important cold war role and i wrote this book with lots of different kinds of people in mind i think this book has something for everyone i think scholars will benefit from it but also think the average kansans will the

average reader will i think the average kansas college freshman or average kansas high school senior would find a lot of interest a lot of benefit and no artist it's pretty cool in this book i'd been visiting with landry brewery he teaches history at southwestern oklahoma state university and is the author of a cold war kansas professor byrd thank you so much for joining us today and telling the story my pleasure to think of revenue and kate mcintyre keep your prisons will continue right after this