The nuclear war that is about to break out between the two windows, the Cold War Film Festival in May

Most of the film viewing and reading in May was related to the Cold War. After re-reading " Goodbye Lenin ", the impression that I watched in junior high school seems to be only the first hour left. Now it seems that the collapse of East Germany is really a very dramatic event. The film also triggered the enigmatic love of German in my mind, and I watched " Silent Classroom " and " Bridge of Spies " in succession - two stories revolving around West Berlin. It must be said that West Berlin is a very special and very interesting land, especially in the context of the Cold War, which is similar to a capitalist window placed in a socialist country.

Nowadays, most people think that West Berlin is part of West Germany, but what is interesting is that West Berlin was under the joint control of Britain, France and the United States until the merger of East and West Germany. Although the passports of West Berlin citizens are in the style of West Germany, the nationality column reads " West Berlin City ". This West Berlin enclave surrounded by East Germany was naturally coveted by the Soviet Union. In 1948, the Berlin Blockade initiated by it closed the land connection between West Berlin and the capitalist camp, in an attempt to force Britain, the United States and France to abandon the land of West Berlin. .

However, the "Berlin Airlift" initiated by the Western camp shattered Stalin's dream. In one year, the British and US Air Forces flew more than 270,000 round-trip flights to transport supplies from fuel daily necessities to milk and eggs. There is even a plane landing at Tempelhof, the main airport of Berlin Airfreight every minute. In 1949, the Soviet Union finally abandoned the blockade of West Berlin, allowing West Berlin to be connected to West Germany by road, rail, canal and air.

It's a very interesting thing to think about the citizens of West Berlin driving their cars through - hostile countries, hostile camps - Nazi-built highways on East German soil to West Germany or Czechoslovakia. So far, only Koreans in the Kaesong Industrial Park in North Korea have such a feeling when they drive on the deserted road connecting Kaesong and Seoul, but it is already impossible to do so. blown up by that great leader.

In order to prevent East German nationals from using West Berliners' cars to smuggle out of the country, East Germany also came up with various methods: zone speed measurement - not to prevent speeding, but to monitor whether vehicles have abnormal route behavior, services on the road The district restaurant sets up a separate dining area for West Berliners to prevent the civilians from both sides from communicating... Why is West Berlin not worried that its citizens will go to East Germany, while the Communist German Democratic Republic - East Germany, this will write democracy So worry about the country above the country name? What a fun thing to do.

The prototype of "Bridge of Spies" is also a true story: the use of Soviet spies in exchange for American pilots of U-2 spy planes shot down by the Soviet Union. It is a very real reflection of the difficulty that the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to exchange information privately with each other in the espionage era of the Cold War. This high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft must be no stranger to Chinese people. The military museum in Beijing also displays the one that shot down from Taiwan. Before there were satellites, the pilots on this plane that could fly at a height of 70,000 feet—more than 20,000 meters were already enough to see the shallow arc of the earth and became a “satellite” in that era.

In the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, we have to mention the hot wars and flashpoints. Of course, the most dangerous is the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s, which became the closest human beings to nuclear war, that is, the actual destruction of human beings. The book "Midnight Comes: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" describes such a story: in the capitalist world of the Americas, in the Western Hemisphere, in Cuba, a " communist showcase " Inside: a truck loaded with medium-range missiles drives on an unpaved, extremely muddy forest road; top-secret boxes containing nuclear warheads are placed in a humid and sweltering basement, and Havana’s long-closed brothels have to be The air conditioner was removed to ensure a safe temperature and humidity; the fanatical Castro shouted to Khrushchev to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the great power to the north, the No. 1 imperialist country. Very ironic isn't it?

The United States, which can send probes to the moon, connects the 380,000-kilometer moon to a country that only takes a few minutes, and it takes hours to decipher an encrypted telegram from the Soviet Union, not intercepted but just normal leader-to-leader communications. ; The Soviet ambassador wanted to send the message to Moscow and asked the Western Union courier not to be attracted by the beauties on the side of the road while riding a bicycle - this might delay another half an hour. Subsequent negotiations between the two sides turned out to be as absurd as a certain journalist in Washington and a KGB officer at the Soviet embassy in the United States — as absurd as the "Bridge of Spies" negotiators. In the end, Moscow found that the way to deliver accurate information to Washington was directly through Moscow Radio.

High-tech warfare of great powers - each of hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs is several times the total tonnage of all bombs in World War II, loaded on strategic bombers and patrolled 24 hours a day in the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Bering Sea and over the Mediterranean in preparation for dropping it on Soviet targets within two hours. Very powerful, isn't it? And the most ridiculous thing is, when will these bombs be dropped? How to prove that these nuclear bombs, which are enough to completely destroy mankind, are really what the President of the United States or the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union needs to drop? How can they prove that they didn't lose their minds even though they wanted to put it in? " Dr. Strangelove " may only be a little exaggerated, but it turns out that such a simple design is enough to destroy human beings three hundred and sixty times. Fortunately, today's world has been slightly away from the shadow of nuclear war, but don't forget that today's "Doomsday Clock" has been adjusted to one hundred seconds to midnight.

As stated in the book, the Cuban Missile Crisis appears to have ended with Kennedy winning and Khrushchev betraying Castro and withdrawing the missiles deployed in Cuba. However, the ultimate beneficiary seems to be the most inconspicuous "pawn" Castro. The promise from the United States "will not invade Cuba" has made him sit on the throne of the country's supreme leader for 40 years. The "winner" Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas a year later in 1963, and Nikita Khrushchev was sacked by Brezhnev's plan the following year in 1964. Today, however, even though this socialist fortress and showcase Cuba has been rotated from the hands of the Castro brothers to Canel (the current president of Cuba, Miguel_Díaz-Canel, Taiwanese translation Kanai) from the dynastic destiny of North Korea, it has not The same is out of touch with the world after a long-term blockade, lack of aircraft parts, difficult to import cars, etc., and has become a country abandoned by time.

Perhaps it is the real history that creates such absurd and fantastic things.

To learn more about the Cuban Missile Crisis, you can read one of the best books on the missile crisis in recent years, "Midnight is Coming: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Edge of Nuclear War" , the movie "Breakout" Thirteen Days is also a good choice.