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How the United States scared Stalin with an atomic bomb
How the United States scared Stalin with an atomic bomb

Video: How the United States scared Stalin with an atomic bomb

Video: How the United States scared Stalin with an atomic bomb
Video: STOP saying "WELL DONE"! Use these 7 English alternatives instead 2024, May
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Comrade Stalin's thoughts on atomic weapons. It's September 1946. A little more than a year has passed since the US used the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear blackmail of the Soviet Union by Washington begins.

Back at the meeting of the allies in the summer of 1945 in Potsdam, that is, BEFORE the use of atomic weapons, US President Truman, as if by chance, told Stalin that the United States had a new weapon of terrible destructive power. Churchill writes in his memoirs that when he approached Truman, he asked him about the reaction of the head of the USSR to these words. The US President replied that it seems that Stalin did not understand what was at stake, since there was no reaction. In fact, emerging from the evil of the meetings, Stalin asked to immediately connect him with Kurchatov …

The atomic strikes by the United States against Japan were a demonstration of strength and capability. Only not before Japan, but before the USSR. Stalin did not succumb to nuclear blackmail - the Soviet Union forced the creation of its "bomb", which appeared in our country in 1949. The project was supervised by Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. Not as a scientist, of course, but as an organizer.

But all this will only be there. In 1946, the likelihood of a US nuclear strike against the USSR was high. In Washington, there were corresponding military plans, which have long been declassified and it is not difficult to get acquainted with them.

So let's get back to the original source. On September 25, 1946, the newspaper Pravda published the answers of I. V. Stalin. The full title of the material is as follows: "Answers to the questions posed by the Moscow Sunday Times correspondent, Mr. Alexander Werth, in his note to Comrade Stalin on September 17, 1946."

Ask yourself a question: why would Pravda suddenly print answers to questions on the first page? Why would Stalin suddenly answer the questions of an Anglo-Saxon journalist? I want to say right away that in 1946 there were only two such cases (we will talk about in the torus one of these days). So Stalin considered it important and necessary to answer and publish the answer in such a way that it was impossible not to notice it. Who was he talking to? To those who tried to continue the nuclear blackmail of the USSR.

Here is an excerpt from this extremely short interview, with the question-answer, for the sake of which everything, in fact, was started.

Question. Do you think that the de facto US monopoly of the atomic bomb is one of the main threats to the world?

President's visit

So, in November 1963, Kennedy arrived in Texas. This trip was planned as part of the preparatory campaign for the 1964 presidential election. The head of state himself noted that it is very important for him to win in Texas and Florida. In addition, Vice President Lyndon Johnson was a local and the travel to the state was emphasized.

But the representatives of the special services were afraid of the visit. Literally a month before the president's arrival, Adlai Stevenson, the US representative to the UN, was attacked in Dallas. Earlier, during one of Lyndon Johnson's performances here, he was booed by a crowd of … housewives. On the eve of the President's arrival, leaflets with the image of Kennedy and the inscription "Wanted for Betrayal" were posted around the city. The situation was tense, and troubles awaited. True, they thought that demonstrators with placards would take to the streets or throw rotten eggs at the president, no more.

Leaflets posted in Dallas ahead of President Kennedy's visit
Leaflets posted in Dallas ahead of President Kennedy's visit

Local authorities were more pessimistic. In his book The Assassination of President Kennedy, William Manchester, a historian and journalist who chronicled the assassination attempt at the request of the President's family, writes: “Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes feared incidents, Attorney Burfoot Sanders, senior Justice Department official in this part of Texas and the vice president's representative in Dallas,told Johnson's political adviser Cliff Carter that given the political atmosphere in the city, the trip seemed "inappropriate." The city officials had trembling knees from the very beginning of this trip. The wave of local hostility towards the federal government had reached a critical point, and they knew it."

But the pre-election campaign was approaching, and they did not change the presidential travel plan. On November 21, a presidential plane landed at the airport of San Antonio (Texas' second most populous city). Kennedy attended Air Force Medical School, went to Houston, spoke at the university there, and attended a Democratic Party banquet.

The next day, the President went to Dallas. With a difference of 5 minutes, the vice president's plane arrived at Dallas Love Field airport, and then Kennedy's. At about 11:50 am, the motorcade of the first persons moved towards the city. The Kennedys were in the fourth limousine. In the same car with the President and the First Lady were US Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, agent William Greer was driving.

Three shots

It was originally planned that the motorcade would travel in a straight line on Main Street - there was no need to slow down on it. But for some reason, the route was changed, and the cars drove along Elm Street, where cars had to slow down. In addition, on Elm Street, the motorcade was closer to the educational store, from where the shooting was carried out.

Kennedy's motorcade movement diagram
Kennedy's motorcade movement diagram

Shots rang out at 12:30. Eyewitnesses took them either for the claps of a cracker, or for the sound of the exhaust, even the special agents did not immediately find their bearings. There were three shots in total (although even this is controversial), the first was Kennedy wounded in the back, the second bullet hit the head, and this wound became fatal. Six minutes later, the motorcade arrived at the nearest hospital, at 12:40 the president died.

The prescribed forensic medical research, which had to be done on the spot, was not carried out. Kennedy's body was immediately sent to Washington.

Workers at the training store told police that the shots were fired from their building. Based on a series of testimonies, an hour later, Police Officer Tippit attempted to detain warehouse worker Lee Harvey Oswald. He had a pistol with which he shot Tippit. As a result, Oswald was still captured, but two days later he also died. He was shot by a certain Jack Ruby while the suspect was being taken out of the police station. Thus, he wanted to "justify" his hometown.

Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby

So, by November 24, the president was assassinated, and so was the prime suspect. Nevertheless, in accordance with the decree of the new President Lyndon Johnson, a commission was formed, headed by the Chief Justice of the United States of America Earl Warren. There were seven people in total. For a long time, they studied the testimony of witnesses, documents, and in the end they concluded that a lone killer had attempted to assassinate the president. Jack Ruby, in their opinion, also acted alone and had exclusively personal motives for the murder.

Under suspicion

To understand what happened next, you need to travel to New Orleans, the hometown of Lee Harvey Oswald, where he last visited in 1963. On the evening of November 22, an altercation broke out at a local bar between Guy Banister and Jack Martin. Banister ran a small detective agency here, Martin worked for him. The reason for the quarrel had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination, it was a purely industrial conflict. In the heat of the argument, Banister pulled out his pistol and hit Martin in the head with it several times. He shouted: "Will you kill me the way you killed Kennedy?"

Lee Harvey Oswald is being brought in by the police
Lee Harvey Oswald is being brought in by the police

The phrase aroused suspicion. Martin, who was admitted to the hospital, was interrogated, and he said that his boss Banister knew a certain David Ferry, who, in turn, knew Lee Harvey Oswald quite well. Further, the victim claimed that Ferry convinced Oswald to attack the president using hypnosis. Martin was considered not entirely normal, but in connection with the assassination of the president, the FBI worked out every version. Ferry was also interrogated, but the case did not receive any further progress in 1963.

… Three years have passed

Ironically, Martin's testimony was not forgotten, and in 1966 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison reopened the investigation. He collected testimony that confirmed that the Kennedy assassination was the result of a conspiracy involving former civil aviation pilot David Ferry and businessman Clay Shaw. Of course, a few years after the murder, some of this testimony was not entirely reliable, but still Garrison continued to work.

He was hooked on the fact that a certain Clay Bertrand appeared in the report of the Warren Commission. Who he is is unknown, but immediately after the murder, he called New Orleans lawyer Dean Andrews and offered to defend Oswald. Andrews, however, remembered the events of that evening very poorly: he had pneumonia, a high temperature and he took a lot of drugs. However, Garrison believed that Clay Shaw and Clay Bertrand were one and the same person (later Andrews admitted that he generally gave false testimony regarding Bertrand's call).

Oswald and Ferry
Oswald and Ferry

Shaw, meanwhile, was a famous and respected figure in New Orleans. A war veteran, he ran a successful trade business in the city, participated in the public life of the city, wrote plays that were staged throughout the country. Garrison believed that Shaw was part of a group of arms dealers who were aiming to bring down the Fidel Castro regime. Kennedy's rapprochement with the USSR and the lack of a consistent policy against Cuba, according to his version, became the reason for the assassination of the president.

In February 1967, the details of this case appeared in the New Orleans States Item, it is possible that the investigators themselves organized the "leak" of information. A few days later, David Ferry, who was considered the main link between Oswald and the organizers of the assassination attempt, was found dead at his home. The man died of a cerebral hemorrhage, but the strange thing was that he left two notes of confused and confused content. If Ferry had committed suicide, then the notes could be considered dying, but his death did not look like a suicide.

Clay Shaw
Clay Shaw

Despite shaky evidence and evidence against Shaw, the case was brought to trial, and hearings began in 1969. Garrison believed that Oswald, Shaw, and Ferry had conspired in June 1963, that there were several who shot the president, and that the bullet that killed him was not the one fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. Witnesses were summoned to the trial, but the arguments presented did not convince the jury. It took them less than an hour to reach a verdict: Clay Shaw was acquitted. And his case remained in history as the only one brought to trial in connection with the Kennedy assassination.

Elena Minushkina

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