Outline of US History by U.S. Department of State - HTML preview

CHAPTER 12: POSTWAR AMERICA

HARRY TRUMAN’S

ment following the Western model .

LEADERSHIP

The Yalta Conference of February

T

1945 had produced an agreement on

he nation’s new chief executive, Eastern Europe open to different in-

Harry S . Truman, succeeded Frank- terpretations . It included a promise

lin D . Roosevelt as president before of “free and unfettered” elections .

the end of the war . An unpretentious

Meeting with Soviet Minister

man who had previously served as of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Mo-

Democratic senator from Missouri, lotov less than two weeks after be-

then as vice president, Truman ini- coming president, Truman stood

tially felt ill-prepared to govern . firm on Polish self-determination,

Roosevelt had not discussed com- lecturing the Soviet diplomat about

plex postwar issues with him, and he the need to implement the Yalta ac-

had little experience in international cords . When Molotov protested, “I

affairs . “I’m not big enough for this have never been talked to like that

job,” he told a former colleague .

in my life,” Truman retorted, “Carry

Still, Truman responded quickly out your agreements and you won’t

to new challenges . Sometimes im- get talked to like that .” Relations de-

pulsive on small matters, he proved teriorated from that point onward .

willing to make hard and carefully

During the closing months of

considered decisions on large ones . World War II, Soviet military forces

A small sign on his White House occupied all of Central and Eastern

desk declared, “The Buck Stops Europe . Moscow used its military

Here .” His judgments about how power to support the efforts of the

to respond to the Soviet Union ulti- Communist parties in Eastern Eu-

mately determined the shape of the rope and crush the democratic par-

early Cold War .

ties . Communists took over one

nation after another . The process

ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR

concluded with a shocking coup

T

d’etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948 .

he Cold War developed as dif-

Public statements defined the be-

ferences about the shape of the

ginning of the Cold War . In 1946

postwar world created suspicion and Stalin declared that international

distrust between the United States peace was impossible “under the

and the Soviet Union . The first — present capitalist development of

and most difficult — test case was the world economy .” Former British

Poland, the eastern half of which had Prime Minister Winston Churchill

been invaded and occupied by the delivered a dramatic speech in Ful-

USSR in 1939 . Moscow demanded ton, Missouri, with Truman sitting

a government subject to Soviet in- on the platform . “From Stettin in

fluence; Washington wanted a more the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,”

independent, representative govern- Churchill said, “an iron curtain has

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OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY

descended across the Continent .” straits between the Black Sea and the

Britain and the United States, he de- Mediterranean . In early 1947, Amer-

clared, had to work together to coun- ican policy crystallized when Britain

ter the Soviet threat .

told the United States that it could

no longer afford to support the gov-

CONTAINMENT

ernment of Greece against a strong

C

Communist insurgency .

ontainment of the Soviet Union

In a strongly worded speech to

became American policy in the Congress, Truman declared, “I be-

postwar years . George Kennan, a lieve that it must be the policy of the

top official at the U .S . embassy in United States to support free peoples

Moscow, defined the new approach who are resisting attempted subjuga-

in the Long Telegram he sent to tion by armed minorities or by out-

the State Department in 1946 . He side pressures .” Journalists quickly

extended his analysis in an arti- dubbed this statement the “Truman

cle under the signature “X” in the Doctrine .” The president asked

prestigious journal Foreign Affairs . Congress to provide $400 million for Pointing to Russia’s traditional sense economic and military aid, mostly to

of insecurity, Kennan argued that Greece but also to Turkey . After an

the Soviet Union would not soften emotional debate that resembled the

its stance under any circumstances . one between interventionists and

Moscow, he wrote, was “committed isolationists before World War II, the

fanatically to the belief that with the money was appropriated .

United States there can be no perma-

Critics from the left later charged

nent modus vivendi, that it is desir- that to whip up American support able and necessary that the internal for the policy of containment, Tru-harmony of our society be disrupt- man overstated the Soviet threat to

ed .” Moscow’s pressure to expand the United States . In turn, his state-

its power had to be stopped through ments inspired a wave of hysterical

“firm and vigilant containment of anti-Communism throughout the

Russian expansive tendencies . . .”

country . Perhaps so . Others, how-

The first significant application ever, would counter that this argu-

of the containment doctrine came in ment ignores the backlash that likely

the Middle East and eastern Medi- would have occurred if Greece, Tur-

terranean . In early 1946, the Unit- key, and other countries had fallen

ed States demanded, and obtained, within the Soviet orbit with no op-

a full Soviet withdrawal from Iran, position from the United States .

the northern half of which it had oc-

Containment also called for ex-

cupied during the war . That sum- tensive economic aid to assist the re-

mer, the United States pointedly covery of war-torn Western Europe .

supported Turkey against Soviet With many of the region’s nations

demands for control of the Turkish economically and politically unsta-

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