Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicolas E. Reynolds

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

A turning point in history marked by wars, changing political alliances with greedy go for the jugular power grabs.
One of the very best history oriented books. This is about real people radically changing the world.

Excerpts:
Regler saw his duty as maintaining the morale of the troops and working with the civilian population. In 1938 he would boast of saving priceless paintings from destruction and transporting women and children to safety from villages where battles were raging. He was most likely sincere when he said that it was up to the commissars “to halt the cruelties . . . on both sides.” It felt good to be waging the good fight again: for him the winds of “heroic Spain” were blowing away the “stink of Moscow.” He watched “the good Russia” come onto the scene, but worried that “the diabolical Russia” might not be far behind.



Alexander Orlov, the NKVD chief who ran the secret war in Spain for Stalin and made time to entertain Hemingway. National Archives, College Park. Orlov may have gone on to facilitate Hemingway’s visit to Alfambra, the town where he spent the four days in the fall of 1937 with communist guerrillas. They in turn allowed him to witness the attack on the Nationalist train that would drive the plot of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
August 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb and overturned America’s monopoly on super-weapons. A few months later, mainland China fell to the communists. Mao and Chou were now in charge, and Chiang had to make do with ruling the offshore island of Taiwan. In 1950 Stalinist North Korea invaded noncommunist South Korea, starting a war that would last into 1953. At home, the Red Scare intensified when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin launched a witch hunt for communists that made HUAC’s work seem careful and professional.



Castro already knew how to charm a crowd, and spoke a “clumsy but clear” language some called “fidelenglish.” While in the United States, he literally reached out to anyone who came near him and calmly answered most questions put to him. Staying away from anti-imperialist rhetoric, he adeptly sidestepped questions about communists in his movement. During a speech from the bandstand in Central Park, Castro was eloquent but vague about his core political values: humanism and democracy. The only discordant notes came when he met with officials like Vice President Richard Nixon, who lectured him about the dangers of communism.