in this program you'll learn why duth and Northern Minnesota were so vitally important to our National Defense at the height of the Cold [Music] War these are the Cold War secrets of northern Minnesota [Music] I know this guy my name is Ray Kowski retired from the Air National Guard spent 33 years with the guard 30 of them in the cockpit and U we're doing a overview of the Cold War years my uncle was a waste Gunner on a B17 in World War II here's a B7 that got my interest up and my father was also interested and so he would take me up to the airport and we would watch the Mustangs fly and that's when I decided I want to fly with the air guard so I got qualified in the f89 as a 179 fighter pilot during the height of the Cold War in the Air National Guard at du and I got certified to sit nuclear alert which was a real eye opener a cold war war is a non-shooting war by the major countries involved if you go back through history you'll find that occurs a lot well the Romans hired people to fight against the Germans what is the Cold War the Cold War was a conflict between the United States of America and the Soviet Union it was an ideological struggle for global domination between American capitalism and Soviet communism now open your workbooks for a pop quiz on when the Cold War began the Cold War started historians say being a historian in 1945 during World War II President Roosevelt Churchill and Stalin got together at Yalta on the Black Sea to decide what they were going to do with Europe my name is Aaron Brown I teach and I right so yeah we have this idea that the Cold War started um 1946 you know after they partitioned Germany and you saw the Soviets behaving antagonistically towards the Americans and vice versa I would argue that the real cold war the reason those things happened started in 1917 it started with the Russian Revolution you know we've been at war with the Soviet Union since the end of the Russian Revolution back at the end of World War I yeah my name is Jay Hagen I'm the Veterans Memorial Hall program manager here with the St Louis County Historical Society over my shoulder is the Veterans Memorial Hall where we try to keep a record of all veterans of Northeastern Minnesota the whole museum is set up chronologic for motans involved in all the conflicts but because the Cold War straddled several conflicts question is where did you start it is 1947 the start of the Cold War and uh one can argue several points on that where what what was the starting of the of the Cold War on August 6th 194 45 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 9th they targeted Nagasaki the atomic bombings in Japan ended World War II but they started a new era of fear my name is Ron Hine I was born and raised in northern Minnesota and then I joined the Army National Guard the Cold War to me was the fear that we would explode the world would explode again into a World War September of 1949 the Soviets exploded their first nuclear bomb totally unexpected by the US military or the US intelligence agencies the children of the Cold War uh thought a lot about nuclear Annihilation I don't remember a day in school that we weren't saying the Pledge of Allegiance and then the next thought was okay where would I Duck and Cover [Music] he duck and my name is Brianna fiant and I'm the curator at the Richard bong veterans Historical Center it was a real fear even as a child I would be trying to go to sleep and I'd see a plane go over and I'd think what if that plane had a bomb and it and they dropped it right now but I also remember hearing about the ducking cover and having kids hide under the desk and and then people just scoffing at that and saying how ridiculous was that concept that that would protect them remember what to do friends the group I'm teaching now has uh no direct memory of 9/11 you have to go back another 10 plus years to get to the Cold War I'd say today's generation's a little more conscious of AI and climate change and the possibility that we'll blow ourselves up for some other reason so the Cold War joins with World War II World War W the Civil War Etc is just part of our history it's not direct not direct for today's younger people even today many motans remain unaware of how integral Northern Minnesota was to the Cold War our involvement began slowly and inauspiciously as 50 Air National Guardsmen were activated to serve first at the duth Armory then at du's sleepy little airport meanwhile the Soviet threat grew [Music] the air defense in 1951 consisted of the ground Observer core stationed in high platforms Church Towers their job was to scan the skies with binoculars and that there was something strange call it into a filter Center I don't know what the filter Center was going to do with it because they didn't have anything to respond to it while we're doing this the Russians they're building t4s at a great rate to they finally ends up building 850 of the damn things so now the Soviets had a long range bomber that tu4 bull could reach America's Heartland on oneway missions if you see a picture of the duth airport in 1951 all it is is three short runways about 4,500 ft as the threat started to loom larger the Air Force expanded the main Runway the 0927 Runway to about 8,000 ft and people realized that the Luth was critical to the Cold War geography the primary factor maybe even the factor that made dth a key air defense Bastion you have to get a globe out and and hold it up and realize the closest distance from Moscow to Washington DC is over the top oh yeah and it certainly displays why we were important well my name is Jim Chapman and uh the reason I'm here is uh I was a uh pilot in the Deluth Air Guard from 1956 to 1980 we were stationed here in duth obviously and the Soviet Union is here well right over the Artic Circle is where the airplanes would have come industrial America is down here as well as a ton of population so we're right smack in the way of this whole thing if they came we had to stop them of course we were not the only line of defense against Russia in 1958 Canada and the United States created NORAD a unique military command jointly run by two Nations to Monitor and defend North American airspace now let's tour the facilities in northern Minnesota that contributed to this effort you are on the Air National Guard base in duth Minnesota and this is operations used to be known as the 179th fighter Interceptor Squadron now the 148th Fighter Wing In My Time the Army guard and the air guard were considered reserved called up in time of War but during the Cold War the Air Force could not fulfill all the fighter cockpits for air defense they needed the guard and so selective guard units and selective locations that would be effective in stopping a Soviet Air Attack were part-time active duty part-time guard uh imagine yourself a civilian you have a job downtown so who are these guys this is Dick Beckman owned a furniture store downtown sat nuclear alert this guy was a dentist this guy was an airline pilot it was all walks of life actual air Crews probably 85% were traditional Guardsmen we call them Weekend Warriors at the time I was a fulltime EMP employee with a local bank so weekdays a banker nights and weekends a pilot in the in the guard I I thought of it as putting on a different head I'd take off my bank head and put on my guard head because I couldn't mix the two so you drove through the gate you're a civilian let us walk down the hall and make you an active duty Air Force pilot okay you walk up here to the desk you sign in and the moment you finish signing in you are no longer a civilian you are an active duty Air Force pilot or Navigator and you will be that way until you come back out here and you sign out okay you're going to go from here just as you were an air crew walk out the front door and we'll go to the alert facility if we were on nuke alert at the time when often times we are you still wouldn't go out to the airplane you go under the vehicle you drive over to the sage building and you would sign out a nuclear authentic Ator and you would come back here then when you had that nuclear authenticator and walk out to the alert barn with your equipment and when we were on alert when you came out you checked in and you went into the center Bay when we had the nuclear weapons there would be a nuclear loaded f101 in there with two Genies on the other side on the outside would be an f11 loaded with two Genies they were called 15minute airplanes because it took that long to get the approvals to launch them in the middle were two 101s with no nuclear weapons just conventional we had two airplanes on 5 minute alert and two airplanes on 15minute alert the 5 minute alert was normally unarmed uh the 15minute alert was armed at that point with Genies a big ugly air-to-air missile uh very strong weapon I think we're on we've been talking about the genie picture of it and that's it 9 ft long 850 lb one on each Wing the best bomber killing weapon that the Air Force had it could not be jammed it could not be decoy no matter what the bomber did this was going to get it part of the pre-flight included checking it for Nicks scratches I can remember going out to the alert barn with our safety officer and I have been the cockpit I flown it but there was a a different feeling about walking into this thing and coming up to that airplane with that a2a 1.7 kilotons of nuclear weapon one under each Wing that I was about to control we did the pre-flight so we walk around the airplane running your hands over a nuclear weapon checking that the safety pin is in making sure that the fins were tied down and wouldn't be flopping in Flight that was a real moment in time you know I've been Joel fighter pilot but now all of a sudden I'm more than n I'm uh signed for this airplane this nuclear weapon on board to them certainly real world stuff um yeah this is a first ever test of the air 2A nuclear Genie conducted by the Air Force when this mushroom cloud comes out kind of like the genie coming out of the bottle these guys see the launch they experience this bright light and then they decide to look up no hats no cover soon they are surprised by the shock wave and if you could hear the audio it would be saying hey it worked it worked it worked none of these guys lived to see [Music] retirement this is like old H Wick right now you were in the former alert facility of the 179 to 148 Fighter Wing and this was active up until I think 1991 this is the area where most of the time the air Crews congregated with come in here and there would be a board over there uh with the airplane tail numbers on it and the crew and which Bay it was in and you went to that airplane we would normally get there at 6 set up set up the airplane so that we are on 5 minute alert status we could get the airplane started and get on the runway in 5 minutes these doors were not locked because if the horn went off you had to get out of here in a hurry the outside Bays where the nuclear weapons were you would go in there and you would have to have a key it have to be two people to go in you could not go in there by yourself doors were locked so your crew chief had to open them up and you could open them up two keys two man control we'd go upstairs have dinner maybe study a little bit maybe watch a little TV this is where the air Crews most of the time uh spent there used to be windows in here the big TV set was here recliners that you could watch a TV TV set in uh and in this area was a pool SL pingpong table they built these little rooms so you could shut the door and you could get some sleep in case somebody's out watching TV or something like that and that's where you lived and in the back uh was a bathroom and uh that's where you spent your time here down there but not out of the barn occasionally we'd get scrambled somebody would wander into the airspace and they wouldn't know who it was so we'd go take a look and see who it was that is a scramble horn and when that thing went off it was not quiet like this there was activity like you wouldn't believe we stayed within running distance of the aircraft when I think there's still a handrails there we slide down the handrails and then out to the airplane again job of the fivem minute alert was to ID because there would be people that would wander into the airspace job of the 15minute alert was to shoot him down if that's what was required you as alert pilot when you came up here would have the same requirements as an active duty guy you would have to be uh go through the human reliability program you had to have a medical examination and you had to pass the safety uh rules test on safety issues for the a2a and during all that time the whole time we had the being the nle weapons in the Air Force did zero accidents zero issues located across the runway from the duth Air National Guard base this is the duth sage building Sage stands for semi-automatic ground environment that was the military term used to describe the building's massive IBM computers which monitored our airspace opened in 1959 its operations were kept top secret until it closed in 1983 today it is the home of umd's Natural Resources Research Institute where they still remember the building's Cold War history every day you walk into this building every day and you're you're reminded when you walk in this is not a normal building the sage building here in duth had responsibility for command and control of aircraft that we would send up to kill the incoming bombers this was built to keep people safe this building was designed for an indirect nuclear blast would it have worked I don't know so original to our building is this huge elevator well this is this is where I like to talk about our building and the unique past back in the day and so here's our first floor this is what we call the garage area and then our second floor held the computer two computers one was a backup so when they had to do repairs they alternate between the two computers third floor where they had the big screens to strategize watching for any unfriendly missiles coming over the North Pole let's continue the super secret Sage tour do you want to see the railroad tracks first so this is the space we call it the garage this was the area that for the sage building they had these locomotive generators this place was designed to be off grid self-contained and self energized you're going to see four sets of train tracks so here's one set two set and that's where they essentially rolled in res set these essentially locom and the fourth one instead of driving a train they just power the building there' be two in service and two out of service and they just plug them in and out that's all that's left of them now let's continue the Tour all right so this is the second floor during the sage building times this would have held a computer and a backup computer you'd walk through these computers and this is a unique ceiling structure you'll see basically anti- pancake design where you have a floor and then a trampoline of concrete underneath it this was designed for some pretty uh let's just say high concussion this big viewing area would have been right there this was all opened up like the rest of that space is all opened up and then there's a balcony going around so that the screen was over on this side so I'm going to take you to the super secret staircase in the bowels of the building uh this staircase goes down to rolf's office it was a way to escape if there was an emergency come and look that has been boarded up down in his office you can't see it this is the only access and it's just here it's just a Staircase to Nowhere I'm going to take you back here it's our North American Air Defense command seal these are some of the last remaining vest ages of the sage building and this building's been remodeled and remodeled but I have another cool thing to show you and here's what everyone loves talk about your cold war icon this means you have to be very careful with conversations this was a top secret building no one could talk about it to their family their friends people who lived down the road and drove by it every day didn't know what was going on on in here no one really understood outside of the military knew what kind of a threat that we were preparing for at the height of the cold war thousands worked at the duth Air Force base with a hundred more at the sage building meanwhile across town the duth Armory quietly played its role here in duth people knew about the Air Force I don't believe there was much understanding of the role the Army National Guard was playing in the Cold War yeah this is the original Armory in duth the basic purpose of an Armory of course is to house a military unit the Armory here in duth is one of the largest drill fls that that I've ever seen in any Armory that I've ever been in we would have between 7 and 800 people I still wow when I walk across it how big it is I was a uh caner they called it a gun bunny but when I became a staff officer then I was assigned here in duth my desk was actually right over here as long as I can remember this hung in this office right above here the room that we're in right now is the room that we refer to as the War Room during the Cold War when they uh had an aircraft artillary battalions were were here along this wall would have been this huge plexiglass screen with all the symbols on it portraying the current tactical situation because of the Air Force presence it was not felt necessary to have anti-aircraft artillery in fixed positions man 24 hours a day so the guns here in duth were kept in the Armory but within hours they could be set up and be made ready to fire sweep up wastepaper shells after firing put paper in can that is a piece of History this program will soon visit more Cold War sites in northern Minnesota but first we return to Superior Wisconsin where the Richard ibong veterans Historical Center looks after Minnesota's Cold War past we are in the storage room of the vong veteran Center this is where we store all the items that are not on exhibit so we don't ever have everything out on the floor at one time we rotate things in and out and we have about 20,000 items in the collection so those that are in storage are in here so this is something Ry donated to the museum everything is temperature humidity controlled uh we have fire suppression systems we are very much running out of room so this is a sign donated by um Jim McIntosh he is the one who built the Genie model and uh this was built up at the 148th the design is from Douglas aircraft but then the guys at the 148 added all the color and then they hung this up in the workshop where they were working it was a way to interject a little bit of fun and and levity to a scary thing that they were doing let me look at it it's a genie is that supposed to be the three wishes first wish of course is no nuclear war and then after that who knows nothing tragic empty boxes so this is a cold war practice bomb that washed up on the shore of Lake Superior the reason it's red is because it's a practice bomb I did have Ray Kowski come in and tell me all about this so and there's there was still sand in there any sort of ordinance or Armament materials that come in the door I have checked out immediately to make sure that they're not dangerous something like that that would be important to history yes I would want it in a safer place when I bring people down here for tours one of the things I always ask them is if they can tell me what this is and nobody has ever guessed correctly so this washed up on on the shore of Lake Superior 30 years ago and somebody found it and they didn't know what it is either they hung it up in their garage and then about 5 years ago it got brought into here and so I worked with a guy up at the 148 he did most of the work to figure out that it was part of the fuel injection system of a Nike Apache missile it was used by NASA so they were sending these Apache missiles up up into space to do weather testing and then once they got all the data then it would fall back into the Earth's environment and fall apart and all the pieces fall into the lake that's the secret of the lake is how much stuff is still in there I mean there's so many stories in this Museum right now about the Cold War in duth and Minnesota as well right there this one's a radar missile and this is one that we would carry with the F4 when we were on alert here at duth we wander on this way way I guess this uh what you see here is the git the git will keep you awake through about six Six GS uh you got bladders here bladders here bladders around your stomach to make sure that you uh keep your blood up here in the early days we didn't need gits because we didn't do any of the air combat dog fighting with that airplane we had to in those git Pockets you carry a checklist and you can see some of the stuff that we carried earplugs there's my security badge and that e6b is a flight planning computer this is the canopy off the F16 this one was on takeoff roll and uh it sucked up some birds and the airplane went into a swamp up the road just a little bit yep very hard they ran some tests on because there was a rumor out that uh a buzzard would break it what they do is they get the thing really cold and they shoot Frozen ducks at it they have chicken guns they call them I guess yeah you can break it you know if you get a strong enough frozen duck um it it will penetrate um for me it's important to have this Museum because we're preserving stories and we're preserving the experiences of local men and women and we're telling the everyday story we're not telling the story of the people that make it into the history books were telling the stories of those who didn't but still played a crucial role in what happened our tour of Cold War sites continues to the north this is the bowar missile site in French River Minnesota it was called a remote site but it was vitally important to the Cold War my name is Jim rol uh I was stationed at the 74th missile Squadron on French River the base itself was considered remote in 1961 the Air Force constructed the bumar missile site near French River it consisted of 28 shelters each one of them housed a nuclear weapon 28 silos 28 missiles right here if ever needed those those would be the first line of defense cuz they could fire way on up as you can see how big they were the way these things work is this building opens up by the roof sliding apart and the missile coming up it would take off 30 seconds after someone at the sage building push the launch button we're looking at a group of uh 74th Air Defense command missile Squadron I can't believe I'm smiling we had probably 3 to 400 people somewhere in around that that's covering 24 hours a day 7 days a week Crews we were in the you might you would probably say the service end brought in equipment in repaired things the duth Air Force Base delivered nuclear warheads to French River via military Convoy Ray Kowski retraces this route for our program today I never drove the Convoy route and I wasn't aware of it until I ended up talking to some people about it the buar Warhead would leave the airport via the the Martin Road and would stop at every crossing road now coming up on the Rice Lake Road they would actually get out stop the traffic both ways until a convoy uh passed by these convoys going across uh civilian roads and through populated areas although not densely populated were not unusual it happened up in Maine uh probably happened over at Fargo I don't know how they scheduled these convoys if they made them at times when they expected the least amount of traffic early in the morning and I have no idea how fast they went or how many trucks they had pinning the nuclear warhead between them then now you're entering the bmark this is probably all the further will go though the missiles were removed in 197 2 the bowar missile site now privately owned remains we now join Ron Hine from the St Louis County Historical Society as he retrieves a piece of its history a 1/8 scale model of a nuclear missile not an actual missile okay we are uh on the way to uh elely Minnesota to pick up a scale model of a bmart missile of the type that was housed at at the bmart missile site near French River this is the top secret mission yes and we don't have any armed guards or anything like that well it's a a mini Convoy mini Convoy but it is top secret so nobody's going to know about it except us come on uh did you want to go down and take a look at the thing see if it's worth your while oh I know it's for a while really oh absolutely oh my god well come on I just can't believe there was so much of a fuss about this missile it's crazy it's just been hanging here for decades well there it is wow really no kidding and there's the base that it wow it goes on oh that's fantastic I'm glad it's not a real one we had first of all no idea that there even existed a model of this bmart missile I did a little research on it I found that it is a 1/8 scale model of a full-size Bart missile it is very unique to find it in kind of an out of thee way place like elely Minnesota I'm currently serving as the president of the Board of Governors for the St Louis County Historical Society and uh this missile it's going to be used as part of the Deluth and the Cold War exhibit that we have at the uh Depot in Luth and uh it truly is not only a great addition to the exhibit but the piece of history that needs to be preserved well I don't know why my husband thought he had to have it but oh I think it was a colonel Fowler maybe was in his office okay when the site closed down I don't know if the guys just went around looking for souvenirs or motos I have no idea I I I think he asked if he could take it I don't I don't think he just walked off with it well I saw on TV that there was going to be a program at the Depot and someone mentioned the bowmark missile site and I thought oh my god I've got a missile in my basement maybe they want it that's exactly how it happened I didn't think it mattered to anybody oh it's fabulous it's it's absolutely fabulous and to have the have the units logo on here is just say when I mean they were ready they were ready say when and we'll do it my husband Gerald Jacobson was a missile maintenance technician I guess you'd call it you know after he passed away I thought well you know what am I going to do with this thing I think he would be very relieved to know that it's going to a a better place oh boy is it going to work oh there we go U we've just finished picking it up that's same great shape well as we parted company today uh she ended the conversation by saying enjoy your missile [Music] unusual oh yeah uhhuh the two Ram Jets this some mod the borack missile used at the base yeah I was surprised to see that uh on there yeah I see you got our emblem on there well we had that uh just say one it means we'll fire it anytime you want it it would have done what it was supposed to do thank God we didn't use it because it would be the end of what we know is civilized the bowar missile site was designed for offense Minnesota also featured defensive installations like the Finland Air Force Station where romes or radar domes monitor the skies for enemy aircraft unfortunately nothing remains of the Finland station other than some abandoned housing but to show you what the Finland station looked like we visit a virtually identical station in Omaha Nebraska it's not the actual site but it's the closest to the real thing we could find well my name is Mor Crawford I was stationed in Finland Minnesota for 3 years I guess and I met my wife there in Silver Bay and uh Finland base is gone so anyway this is the Omaha Air Force Station uh Omaha is basically the same as Finland and and it's the way it's laid out in the buildings I think they were all built from the same set of prints this was the original radar search radar they were searching the skies 24 hours a day looking for the bad guys looking for Igor coming over the North Pole to bomb us so we had all these radar sites looking for these planes coming and we had Interceptor planes sitting on the ground in duth and Michigan and all over I was radar maintenance technician I worked in the search Tower the 27 FPS 27 search Tower well this is a piece of a piece of the site every time we went up there I pick up stuff because everything was disappearing rusting you know and this is time to me Time in a Bottle this is a piece of the uh 27 Tower where I worked and I don't know if it was a wall or part of the floor but after they tore everything apart up there there were all these chunks laying around and my wife is a keeper and she'd collect stuff and uh she got a bunch of these and gave them to all the guys that were stationed up there that we knew so well let's go look at some more buildings again we are in Omaha but everything Marv is telling you was in Finland please put Nebraska out of your mind you know this was a little city they had a commissary which is like a grocery store in civilian life yeah these These are barracks in Finland there were four of these this was the NCL Club see that there was a guy at Finland named George Thompson and he had responsibility for all the physical facilities and somehow he got this extra lumber for something and they used that to build the curling club so it wasn't illegal Curling Club well the club wasn't illegal the building was that he curled in was was what was illegal I was in there I broke my leg in there I was going to be this great curler I spun around and fell straight down on my leg that was the end of my curling curling ring yeah there's a curling ring that's where it was the curling club bye-bye I didn't like the weather I never liked snow after I met Sandy and found you know a relationship I thought it was pretty good A lot of the guys that were stationed up there said that was the best assignment they ever had and uh and it was a good place now that all the pieces are on the board we'll show you what it might have looked like in practice if Northern Minnesota had been called upon to defend the United States in 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis began when the Soviet Union installed medium- range ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba capable of reaching the United States in minutes the Cold War basically was flareups from 19 48 pretty much onward there were flare-ups the Korean war was one of those first flareups of the Cold War you know the Soviets took the North Korean side and we took the South Korean side and so it was a proxy war that was going on but I mean that was your first engagement same thing then Vietnam comes up and now the cold war is in essence sprung up again the North Vietnam is supported by Russia and the South Vietnam is supported by the United States I mean we went in both of those locations to stop communist stop the spread of Communism another one of the flareups of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 62 they were U2 aircraft that had gone over Cuba and taken photographs of missile installations that were being put up Kennedy um blockaded the island of Cuba to make sure that no missiles would actually get there but during that period we had gone to Defcon 3 which was two steps away from World War III in my 24 years of flying I've had oh a few interesting times but the one that really stands out my mind happened 60 years ago it was at the very Heights of the Cuban Missile Crisis I came to the base at a time and it was briefed that the five minute alert aircraft had Genies loaded the five minute alert was normally unarmed now that was very unusual it it never had happened before so I knew that this was getting pretty tense well long story short I set up the aircraft had a normal evening of talking and then and the deep dark of night the scramble horn went off well um my first thought was we're at War cuz that's the only time we would fly with these Genies on board were at War my second thought was for my family I I I was very concerned about that we lived about a mile from the base and if the base was hit my family would have been hit but then I had to kind of put those thoughts to the back of my mind and attend to the job at hand which was getting the airplane started getting out the runway and then do whatever we had to do after that my backseater and I got it there airplane we got it started everything was good in his uh he had his systems were all good mine were good I called my wingman he was good to go uh so I called the tower for taxi takeoff clearance um instead of clearance they uh referred me to my military controller uh who I then contacted and he said to stand down shut off the engines it was mistake and uh resume our 5 minute alert status well uh tremendous relief um I'm 90 years old I was flying for 24 years and that incident stands out as the most intense 5 minutes that I've ever spent it was really something uh it it sitting here now it seems big deal but boy it was a big deal then apparently what had happened is that there was a black bear on the fence here at the air base and U it triggered a intruder alert unfortunately there was some wiring issu and instead of firing off an intruder alert that triggered a scramble alert those were your two possible alerts so some black bear and Deluth nearly caused World War III the bear seems awfully convenient it wouldn't take much to have these alerts sounded really somebody touches the wrong button or whatever uh could very well have been the bear but I have some doubts and who knows it could have been some spy who had crossed over at Grand Portage and had worked his way down you know trying to steal Air Force Secrets who knows we don't know to say that we almost started World War III is to me a little bit over the top the other piece of this of course is that the president has the red telephone and he could have picked up the telephone and said uh you know we had a bear climb a fence up in duth and don't worry about it we're recalling all our aircraft and uh you know please don't uh don't get too excited about this and push a button or [Music] anything let's take a look at our communist adversaries during the Cold War but not in the Soviet Union here in our own backyard Northern Minnesota was once home to more Communists per capita than anywhere else in the country and they were persecuted for it Northern Minnesota had an outsized connection to the international socialist movement well as you can see here that's that's Gus Hall that's his mug shot when he went to the lenworth penitentiary in Kansas City when the United States needed a boogeyman to talk about communism in infiltrating our society this was the mug shot that they would show people well this is where Gus Hall came from Cherry Minnesota he was born here in a cabin in 1910 I did interview Gus Hall um near the end of his life he told me that you know he worked in the in the logging camps as a teenager his father was a very active socialist he wasn't initially uh of his father's politics but by the time he got back from working in the logging camps he was radicalized by the working conditions in the in the camps uh he became a leader in the American Communist party and of course most notably he was a four-time presidential candidate on the Communist Party ticket during the peak of the Cold War very fascinating guy from right here in northern Minnesota the Iron Range is a string of densely populated little towns in a very rural area where they had discovered the richest iron ore in the whole world and so people from 41 countri countries came to work in the mines immigrant workers far from home trying to survive very dangerous working conditions very low pay of course they became conscious of their condition I mean it was shorthand down at the capital for years to talk about the range as though it were a socialist Haven I don't think that was really true but that's why there was such a pocket of socialist thought because these workers were really radicalized by their conditions the conditions they faced which were unique to this place we're at masaba Co-op park near Cherry Minnesota uh this is a really unique place where a bunch of working people formed a Cooperative Recreation Area 95 years ago and it's been in operation ever since created mostly by Finnish immigrants mostly a recreational facility there's a beach you could go paddling on the lake swimming but it has a lot of cultural elements too they would have performances music and um it had a very strong political element too so um this was kind of a a hideaway a retreat I mean it kind of got the reputation of being you know where all those socialists and Communists hang out but in truth it was a place where people came to do fun things it's Unique because uh it's the only one surviving this is the only explicitly socialist artifact I think left on the Range we finally got on the National Historic register in 2019 it's so rare in historical terms to find something that still has the kernel of its existence still alive but you know this place just lives and breathes history here this is a real early picture of A Midsummer Festival we built a new SAA here's that original picture of John T Bernard AR speaking to an estimated crowd of 10,000 people there were many plays done here in fact in the early days the plays were non-stop oh this one here you got to shoot this one I mean this is Classic this was probably done on the commemoration of Lennon's H 100th birthday from the looks on the dates and this was probably a prop for a stage play and you can see his in this pocket Pravda you know which in Russian means truth to this day it still is run pretty much like the bylaw said you become a member you have to be sponsored by another member you have to come to a work be work bees are kind of a traditional way of doing work Gathering people together and if you come to a work be that means that you're on your way to becoming a member we love workers Gus Hall's father Matt Hallberg was one of the key organizers of this space the dad probably just ordered the boys to get over to masaba park and pound some Nails some of these Rafters might have been put in place by Gus Hall I we don't know this is a picture of Gus Hall someone decided to take them down for I don't know for cleaning or what in case you didn't know it's Cherry Township's most famous citizen oh yeah in the old days it certainly got the you know the stereotypical thing of oh that's those commies it's somewhat painful because it was meant to be painful and hurtful primarily in the ' 50s during the height of the McCarthy period leaders of the Communist Party were being arrested and jailed the persecution was very intense there's a bar you went by it it's called a thirsty moose now it was called buddies for many years prior to that and sitting in the window seat of the bar there was an FBI agent just taking down license plates of everybody who turned down the road people were afraid to come here because they were stigmatized for coming here FBI came to their homes and tried to intimidate them into not participating in mava park so there was a stigma and a fear and intimidation that was heavy here and it it almost destroyed the place a place like this kind of gets swept up into historical trivia when in fact it was Central to a very Vivid discussion debate battle that took place right here in the streets of America deth's time at the center of the Cold War was relatively brief the intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM became America's nuclear weapon of choice after that much of the military technology in northern Minnesota was phased out this is a photograph of the last bullmark leaving the bullmark site in August of 1972 in her Focus now was a devel vment of intercontinental ballistic missiles and in 1976 the guard came off alert along with that the Finland radar station followed by the entire Air Force Base so what was the outcome of the Cold War the Soviets were defeated okay why were they defeated they were defeated because we were willing to fight the proxy wars and we were willing willing to spend the money for new weapons systems that bankrupt the Soviet Union when you talk about the end of the Cold War it ended in Berlin pretty much known that it ended in 1989 fall of the Berlin wall with the fall of East Germany in 1989 and the end of Communism in Russia in 1991 there were signs of a thaw in the Cold War well the cold war that I grew up in uh it's caught the tail end of um I like to tell the story I was watching Saturday morning cartoons in 1988 or so and there was an episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks they're going to give a concert in West Berlin but they crossed the wall to help a kid and they get caught by the East Germans then they give this big concert where they sing about the wall falling down and the wall in the cartoon actually fell down and I'm watching this and I and I thought wow interesting and then like three 4 months later the wall did fall down and so as a kid I'm like the Chipmunks did it they ended the Cold War when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 many considered the Cold War over but was it really the Cold War was technically won Circa 1990 but I don't think it ever really stopped it feels like we're back in a cold war situation right now I think the same same factors are at work today as as they were then well I think we have another example of the Cold War in process and maybe deep into it right now we don't know it yet I think right now we're in in serious trouble with Russia and China I think Russia wants to expand there are countries that are so indebted to China today that there is no way out and I think that that that is a strategy that is being pursued on a daily basis it's it's so trite to say like if you don't study history or repeat it but I think that we repeat it whether we know we're doing it or not uh you know history doesn't repeat it Rhymes we just do it again and again um in new languages in new costumes with new technology I I think at some level we are past the point where we will ever see a quote unquote World War if an adversary China Russia if they really wanted to use quote unquote Force to destroy the United States there are ways that they can do it without firing a shot [Music] yeah that's what keeps me up at [Music] [Music] night what was the Miracle on Ice the Miracle on Ice was a hockey game during the 198 Winter Olympics in which an underdog American team coached by Minnesotan with a dozen Minnesota players defeated the Soviets Powerhouse team what was the Space Race the space race was a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for dominance in outer space during the Cold War the Soviets struck first launching Sputnik in 1957 but American President John F Kennedy set the country on a course to land people on the moon and return them safely by the end of 1969 which we did