Cold War

later, "the nuclear weapon is something with which you frighten people [who

have] weak nerves." Yet if the war had proven anything, it was that Russian

nerves were remarkably strong. Rather than intimidate the Soviets, Dean

Acheson pointed out, it was more likely that evidence of Anglo-American

cooperation in the Manhattan Project would seem to them "unanswerable

evidence of ... a combination against them. ... It is impossible that a

government as powerful and power conscious as the Soviet government could

fail to react vigorously to the situation. It must and will exert every

energy to restore the loss of power which the situation has produced."

In fact, news of the bomb's development simply widened the gulf further

between the superpowers, highlighting the mistrust that existed between

them, with sources of antagonism increasing far faster than efforts at

cooperation. On May 11, two days after Germany surrendered—and two weeks

after the Truman-Molotov confrontation—America had abruptly terminated all

lend-lease shipments to the Soviet Union that were not directly related to

the war against Japan. Washington even ordered ships in the mid-Atlantic to

turn around. The action had been taken largely in rigid bureaucratic

compliance with a new law governing lend-lease just enacted by Congress,

but Truman had been warned of the need to handle the matter in a way that

was sensitive to Soviet pride. Instead, he signed the termination order

without even reading it. Although eventually some shipments were resumed,

the damage had been done. The action was "brutal," Stalin later told Harry

Hopkins, implemented in a "scornful and abrupt manner." Had the United

States consulted Russia about the issue "frankly" and on "a friendly

basis," the Soviet dictator said, "much could have been done"; but if the

action "was designed as pressure on the Russians in order to soften them

up, then it was a fundamental mistake."

Russian behavior through these months, on the other hand, offered

little encouragement for the belief that friendship and cooperation ranked

high on the Soviet agenda. In addition to violating the spirit of the Yalta

accords by jailing the sixteen members of the Polish underground and

signing a separate peace treaty with the Lublin Poles, Stalin seemed more

intent on reviving and validating his reputation as architect of the purges

than as one who wished to collaborate in spreading democracy. He jailed

thousands of Russian POWs returning from German prison camps, as if their

very presence on foreign soil had made them enemies of the Russian state.

One veteran was imprisoned because he had accepted a present from a British

comrade in arms, another for making a critical comment about Stalin in a

letter. Even Molotov's wife was sent to Siberia. In the meantime, hundreds

of thousands of minority nationalities in the Soviet Union were removed

forcibly from their homelands when they protested the attempted

obliteration of their ancient identities. Some Westerners speculated that

Stalin was clinically psychotic, so paranoid about the erosion of his

control over the Russian people that he would do anything to close Soviet

borders and prevent the Russian people from getting a taste of what life in

a more open society would be like. Winston Churchill, for example, wondered

whether Stalin might not be more fearful of Western friendship than of

Western hostility, since greater cooperation with the noncommunist world

could well lead to a dismantling of the rigid totalitarian control he

previously had exerted. For those American diplomats who were veterans of

service in Moscow before the war, Soviet actions and attitudes seemed all

too reminiscent of the viselike terror they remembered from the worst days

of the 1930s.

When Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met in Potsdam in July 1945, these

suspicions were temporarily papered over, but no progress was made on

untying the Gordian knots that plagued the wartime alliance. Truman sought

to improve the Allies' postwar settlement with Italy, hoping to align that

country more closely with the West. Stalin agreed on the condition that

changes favorable to the Soviets be approved for Romania, Hungary,

Bulgaria, and Finland. When Truman replied that there had been no free

elections in those countries, Stalin retorted that there had been none in

Italy either. On the issue of general reparations the three powers agreed

to treat each occupation zone separately. As a result, one problem was

solved, but in the process the future division of Germany was almost

assured. The tone of the discussions was clearly not friendly. Truman

raised the issue of the infamous Katyn massacre, where Soviet troops killed

thousands of Polish soldiers and bulldozed them into a common grave. When

Truman asked Stalin directly what had happened to the Polish officers, the

Soviet dictator responded: "they went away." After Churchill insisted that

an iron fence had come down around British representatives in Romania,

Stalin dismissed the charges as "all fairy tales." No major conflicts were

resolved, and the key problems of reparation amounts, four-power control

over Germany, the future of Eastern Europe, and the structure of any

permanent peace settlement were simply referred to the Council of Foreign

Ministers. There, not surprisingly, they festered, while the pace toward

confrontation accelerated.

The first six months of 1946 represented a staccato series of Cold War

events, accompanied by increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. In direct

violation of a wartime agreement that all allied forces would leave Iran

within six months of the war's end, Russia continued its military

occupation of the oil-rich region of Azerbaijan. Responding to the Iranian

threat, the United States demanded a U.N. condemnation of the Soviet

presence in Azerbaijan and, when Russian tanks were seen entering the area,

prepared for a direct confrontation. "Now we will give it to them with both

barrels," James Byrnes declared. Unless the United States stood firm, one

State Department official warned, "Azerbaijan [will] prove to [be] the

first shot fired in the Third World War." Faced with such clear-cut

determination, the Soviets ultimately withdrew from Iran.

Yet the tensions between the two powers continued to mount. In early

February, Stalin issued what Supreme Court Justice William Douglas called

the "Declaration of World War III," insisting that war was inevitable as

long as capitalism survived and calling for massive sacrifice at home. A

month later Winston Churchill—with Truman at his side—responded at Fulton,

Missouri, declaring that "from Stetting in the Baltic to Trieste in the

Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the [European] continent."

Claiming that "God has willed" the United States and Britain to hold a

monopoly over atomic weapons, Churchill called for a "fraternal association

of the English speaking people" against their common foes. Although Truman

made no public statement, privately he had told Byrnes in January: "I'm

tired of babying the Soviets. They [must be] faced with an iron fist and

strong language. . . . Only one language do they understand—how many

divisions have you?" Stalin, meanwhile, charged Britain and the United

States with repressing democratic insurgents in Greece, declaring that it

was the western Allies, not the Soviet Union, that endangered world peace.

"When Mr. Churchill calls for a new war," Molotov told a foreign ministers'

meeting in May, "and makes militant speeches on two continents, he

represents the worst of twentieth-century imperialism."

During the spring and summer, clashes occurred on virtually all the

major issues of the Cold War. After having told the Soviet Union that the

State Department had "lost" its $6 billion loan request made in January

1945, the United States offered a $1 billion loan in the spring of 1946 as

long as the Soviet Union agreed to join the World Bank and accept the

credit procedures and controls of that body. Not surprisingly, the Russians

refused, announcing instead a new five-year plan that would promote

economic self-sufficiency. Almost paranoid about keeping Westerners out of

Russia, Stalin had evidently concluded that participation in a Western-run

financial consortium was too serious a threat to his own total authority.

"Control of their border areas," the historian Walter LaFeber has noted,

"was worth more to the Russians than a billion, or even ten billion

dollars." A year earlier the response might have been different. But 1946

was a "year of cement," with little if any willingness to accept

flexibility. In Germany, meanwhile, the Russians rejected a Western

proposal for unifying the country and instead determined to build up their

own zone. The United States reciprocated by declaring it would no longer

cooperate with Russia by removing reparations from the west to the east.

The actions guaranteed a permanent split of Germany and coincided with

American plans to rebuild the West German economy.

The culminating breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations came over the

failure to secure agreement on the international control of atomic energy.

After Potsdam, some American policymakers had urged the president to take a

new approach on sharing such control with the Soviet Union. The atom bomb,

Henry Stimson warned Truman in the fall of 1945, would dominate America's

relations with Russia. "If we fail to approach them now and continue to

negotiate with . . . this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their

suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase."

Echoing the same them, Dr. Harold Urey, a leading atomic scientist, told

the Senate that by making and storing atomic weapons, "we are guilty of

beginning the arms race." Furthermore, there was an inherent problem with

the "gun on our hip" approach. As the scientist Vannevar Bush noted, "there

is no powder in the gun, [nor] could [it] be drawn," unless the United

States were willing to deploy the A-bomb to settle diplomatic disputes.

Recognizing this, Truman set Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal to work in

the winter of 1945—46 to prepare a plan for international control.

But by the time the American proposal had been completed, much of the

damage in Soviet-American relations seemed irreparable. Although the Truman

plan envisioned ultimate sharing of international control, it left the

United States with an atomic monopoly—and in a dominant position—until the

very last stage. The Soviets would have no veto power over inspections or

sanctions, and even at the end of the process, the United States would

control the majority of votes within the body responsible for developing

peaceful uses of atomic energy inside the Soviet Union. When the Russians

asked to negotiate about the specifics of the plan, they were told they

must either accept the entire package or nothing at all. In the context of

Soviet-American relations in 1946, the result was predictable—the genie of

the atomic arms race would remain outside the bottle.

Not all influential Americans were "pleased by the growing

polarization. Averell Harriman, who a year earlier had been in the

forefront of those demanding a hard-line position from Truman, now pulled

back somewhat. "We must recognize that we occupy the same planet as the

Russians," he said, "and whether we like it or not, disagreeable as they

may be, we have to find some method of getting along." The columnist Walter

Lippmann, deeply concerned about the direction of events, wondered whether

the inexperience and personal predilections of some of America's

negotiators might not be part of the problem. Nor were all the signs

negative. After his initial confrontation with Molotov, Truman appeared to

have second thoughts, sending Harry Hopkins to Moscow to attempt to find

some common ground with Stalin on Poland and Eastern Europe. The Russians,

in turn, had not been totally aggressive. They withdrew from Hungary after

free elections in that country had led to the establishment of a

noncommunist regime. Czechoslovakia was also governed by a coalition

government with a Western-style parliament. The British, at least,

announced themselves satisfied with the election process in Bulgaria. Even

in Romania, some concessions were made to include elements more favorably

disposed to the West. The Russians finally backed down in Iran—under

considerable pressure—and would do so again in a dispute over the Turkish

straits in the late summer of 1946.

Still, the events of 1946 had the cumulative effect of creating an aura

of inevitability about bipolar confrontation in the world. The

preponderance of energy in each country seemed committed to the side of

suspicion and hostility rather than mutual accommodation. If Stalin's

February prediction of inevitable war between capitalism and communism

embodied in its purest form Russia's jaundiced perception of relations

between the two countries, an eight-thousand-word telegram from George

Kennan to the State Department articulated the dominant frame of reference

within which Soviet actions would be perceived by U.S. officials. Perhaps

the preeminent expert on the Soviets, and a veteran of service in Moscow in

the thirties as well as the forties, Kennan had been asked to prepare an

analysis of Stalin's speech. Responding in words intended to command

attention to Washington, Kennan declared that the United States was

confronted with a "political force committed fanatically to the belief that

[with the] United States there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it

is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be

broken if Soviet power is to be secure." According' to Kennan, the Russians

truly believed the world to be divided permanently into capitalist and

socialist camps, with the Soviet Union dedicated to "ever new heights of

military power" even as it sought to subvert its enemies through an

"underground operating directorate of world communism." The analysis was

frightening, confirming the fears of those most disturbed by the Soviet

system's denial of human rights and hardline posture toward Western demands

for free elections and open borders in occupied Europe.

Almost immediately, the Kennan telegram became required reading for the

entire diplomatic and military establishment in Washington.

2.3 The Marshall Plan.

The chief virtue of the plan Marshall and his aides were Grafting was

its fusion of these political and economic concerns. As Truman told a

Baylor University audience in March 1947, "peace, freedom, and world trade

are indivisible. . . . We must not go through the '3os again." Since free

enterprise was seen as the foundation for democracy and prosperity, helping

European economies would both assure friendly governments abroad and

additional jobs at home. To accomplish that ^ goal, however, the United

States would need to give economic aid directly rather than through the

United Nations, since only under those circumstances would American control

be assured. Ideally, the Marshall Plan would provide an economic arm to the

political strategy embodied —in the Truman Doctrine. Moreover, if presented

as a program in which even Eastern European countries could participate, it

would provide, at last potentially, a means of including pro-Soviet

countries and breaking Stalin's political and economic domination over

Eastern Europe.

On that basis, Marshall dramatically announced his proposal at Harvard

University's commencement on June 5, 1947. "Our policy is directed not

against any country or doctrine," Marshall said, "but against hunger,

poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be revival of a working

economy. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery

will find full cooperation ... on the part of the United States

government." Responding, French Foreign Minister George Bidault invited

officials throughout Europe, including the Soviet Union, to attend a

conference in Paris to draw up a plan of action. Poland and Czechoslovakia

expressed interest, and Molotov himself came to Paris with eighty-nine

aides.

Rather than inaugurate a new era of cooperation, however, the next few

days simply reaffirmed how far polarization had already extended. Molotov

urged that each country present its own needs independently to the United

States. Western European countries, on the other hand, insisted that all

the countries cooperate in a joint proposal for American consideration.

Since the entire concept presumed extensive sharing of economic data on

each country's resources and liabilities, as well as Western control over

how the aid would be expended, the Soviets angrily walked out of the

deliberations. In fact, the United States never believed that the Russians

would participate in the project, knowing that it was a violation of every

Soviet precept to open their economic records to examination and control by

capitalist outsiders. Furthermore, U.S. strategy was premised on a major

rebuilding of German industry—something profoundly threatening to the

Russians. Ideally, Americans viewed a thriving Germany as the foundation

for revitalizing the economies of all Western European countries, and

providing the key to prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. To a

remarkable extent, that was precisely the result of the Marshall Plan.

Understandably, such a prospect frightened the Soviets, but the consequence

was to further the split between East and West, and in particular, to

undercut the possibility of promoting further cooperation with countries

like Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

In the weeks and months after the Russians left Paris, the final pieces

of the Cold War were set in place. Shortly after the Soviet departure from

Paris the Russians announced the creation of a series of bilateral trade

agreements called the "Molotov Plan," designed to link Eastern bloc

countries and provide a Soviet answer to the Marshall Plan. Within the same

week the Russians created a new Communist Information Bureau (Cominform),

including representatives from the major Western European communist

parties, to serve as a vehicle for imposing Stalinist control on anyone who

might consider deviating from the party line. Speaking at the Cominform

meeting in August, Andre Zhdanov issued the Soviet Union's rebuttal to the

Truman Doctrine. The United States, he charged, was organizing the

countries of the Near East, Western Europe, and South America into an

alliance committed to the destruction of communism. Now, he said, the "new

democracies" of Eastern Europe—plus their allies in developing

countries—must form a counter bloc. The world would thus be made up of "two

camps," each ideologically, politically, and, to a growing extent,

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