Blown Away (literally and figuratively)

Tovarisch, I post the following for your perusal:

I must say that I am staggered. I've reached a point in Richard Rhodes's "Dark Sun:The History of the Hydrogen Bomb," which is kind of a followup of his "The History of the Atomic Bomb" where the stuff he is discussing is so . . . well, explosive -- that my brain can't really react to it.

I'm 57 years old and when I was born the events he discusses were already ancient history (six years previous) but reading this stuff literally makes my blood run cold -- worse than any horror movie I've ever seen.

I can't really describe the horror I'm reading on every page; your worst nuclear nightmares come true, in excruciating detail.

Every head of state in the world should make this required reading -- just the "backroom banter" of people like Curtis LeMay and Harry Truman is enough to make the hairs stand up on your neck when you realize that these people are actually discussing how best to be cremating the "Asiatic hordes" -- it's insane.

We were so close -- ths cls -- to Armageddon in 1950 that only a button remained to be pushed.

If people knew how close, there would be outrage today. When people like Mao and Stalin and Truman were bargaining with atomic bombs like chips in a Sunday poker game -- well, let me just say that it reads like a dimestore novel.

If every word weren't true, I would rest easy.

The trouble is, I know every word is true.

I'm not sure, but I think that there are lots of people who don't know who Beria was.

From Montefiore's excellent biography of Stalin, we get the picture of some lunatic actually a bit reminiscent of Himmler -- fussy, temperamental, a complete sadist.

But what I'm reading in this book makes me quail with fear -- I can't describe it. Rhodes can throw in some dark humor, and sometimes seemed to go off on endless tangents which can be very frustrating, which is probably why I threw the book down in disgust years ago. Okay, Dicky Boy, I seemed to say, ya failed with this one.

But now that I am actually in the middle of his tome I see why he saved the best for the middle.

This is quite easily the scariest account of post-WWII developments that I have ever read.

I would describe some of it, but that would be spoiling it.

You owe it yourselves to read this true horror story.

I know that after a few pages i had to check to make sure my atoms were still all assembled in one place, pretending to be me.

 

Well , considering how you describe the story, you must be hooked on the book . I may put it on my want tlist too now.

Note that Stalin introduced Beria as "his Himmler" at Yalta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

He ended up being shot in 1953...

 

Well, knowing what I know about both Himmler and Beria, I would say they were evil twins . . .

BTW you don't have to buy the book -- I belong to something called Scribd which only charges $8.99/mo. for unlimited books . . . this is one of them.

If you read a lot (electronically) then Scribd is for you.

 

Oh, and the way Simon Sebag Montefiore puts it in his excellent bio of Stalin, Beria practically was hugging his executioner's knees to not shoot him (he wasn't so generous to the thousands he personally dispatched)