‘Red Dawn’ — A Cold War Movie Classic
When I was a kid in the early 80s, me and my friends loved to play war. The woods and fields around our homes were ripe for adventure and flights of imagination. We carried toy guns that looked real, got scraped up and rubbed dirt on it, killed imaginary bad guys by the bushel, and did all the things that would make modern parents either pass out or send us off to therapy.
One or two of us would inevitably get “killed,” but we were the good guys, so we always won. And who were the bad guys? Well, I already told you it was the early 1980s, so who do you think the bad guys were? The Soviets, silly. The Ruskies. The Commies. The Pinkos.
The Soviet Union was such an easy enemy to pick. They were all over the nightly news. Our parents and our teachers spoke of their evil ways, their hatred of freedom, their dislike for America, how their massive military was poised to send us straight to hell with the push of a button.
We would speculate endlessly, kids and adults alike, about what set of circumstances could lead us into a war with the Soviets. What would a shooting war look like? Would they invade Western Europe? Would they ever dare try to occupy American soil?
According to the 1984 movie, Red Dawn, yes. Check out this scenario that opens the film:
