The Alliance That Saved the World - April 4, 1949

On April 4, 1949, twelve nations signed a treaty in Washington, D.C. that would divide the world into two armed camps for four decades and whose consequences are still unfolding today. The founding of NATO looks like a straightforward story of democratic nations banding together against Soviet aggression, but the man who became NATO's first Secretary General told the honest version in a single sentence: "Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." This episode holds all three of those purposes simultaneously alongside the Soviet perspective, the human cost, and the haunting question of whether the alliance that prevented World War III planted the seeds of the conflict now reshaping Europe.