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Yet the very nature of the new weapon proved a mixed blessing, making it as much a source of provocation as of diplomatic leverage. Strategic bombing surveys throughout the war had shown that mass bombings, far from demoralizing the enemy, often redoubled his commitment to resist. An
American monopoly on atomic weapons would, in all likelihood, have the same effect on the Russians, a proud people. As Stalin told an American diplomat 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, militarily defined by its opposition to the other.

To assure that no one misunderstood, Russia moved quickly to impose a steel-like grip on Eastern Europe. In August 1947 the Soviets purged all left-wing, anticommunist leaders from Hungary and then rigged elections to assure a pro-Soviet regime there. Six months later, in February 1948,
Stalin moved on Czechoslovakia as well, insisting on the abolition of independent parties and sending Soviet troops to the Czech border to back up Soviet demands for an all new communist government. After Foreign
Minister Jan Masaryk either jumped or was pushed from a window in Prague, the last vestige of resistance faded. "We are [now] faced with exactly the same situation . . . Britain and France faced in 1938-39 with Hitler,"
Truman wrote. The Czech coup coincided with overwhelming approval of the
Marshall Plan by the American Congress. Two weeks later, on March 5,
General Lucius Clay sent his telegram from Germany warning of imminent war with Russia. Shortly thereafter, Truman called on Congress to implement
Universal Military Training for all Americans. (The plan was never put in place.) By the end of the month Russia had instituted a year-long blockade of all supplies to Berlin in protest against the West's decision to unify her occupation zones in Germany and institute currency reform. Before the end of spring, the Brussels Pact had brought together the major powers of
Western Europe in a mutual defense pact that a year later would provide the basis for NATO. If the Truman Doctrine, in Bernard Baruch's words, had been
"a declaration of ideological or religious war," the Marshall Plan, the
Molotov Plan, and subsequent developments in Eastern Europe represented the economic, political, and military demarcations that would define the terrain on which the war would be fought. The Cold War had begun.

Chapter 3: The Role of Cold War in American History and Diplomacy.

3.1 Declaration of the Cold War.

In late February 1947, a British official journeyed to the State
Department to inform Dean Acheson that the crushing burden of Britain's economic crisis prevented her from any longer accepting responsibility for the economic and military stability of Greece and Turkey. The message,
Secretary of State George Marshall noted, "was tantamount to British abdication from the Middle East, with obvious implications as to their successor." Conceivably, America could have responded quietly, continuing the steady stream of financial support already going into the area. Despite aid to the insurgents from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, the war going on in
Greece was primarily a civil struggle, with the British side viewed by many as reactionary in its politics. But instead, Truman administration officials seized the moment as the occasion for a dramatic new commitment to fight communism. In their view, Greece and Turkey could well hold the key to the future of Europe itself. Hence they decided to ask Congress for
$400 million in military and economic aid. In the process, the administration publicly defined postwar diplomacy, for the first time, as a universal conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

Truman portrayed the issue as he did, at least in part, because his aides had failed to convince Congressmen about the merits of the case on grounds of self-interest alone. Americans were concerned about the Middle
East for many reasons—preservation of political stability, guarantee of access to mineral resources, a need to assure a prosperous market for
American goods. Early drafts of speeches on the issue had focused specifically on economic questions. America could not afford, one advisor noted, to allow Greece and similar areas to "spiral downward into economic anarchy." But such arguments, another advisor noted, "made the whole thing sound like an investment prospectus." Indeed, when Secretary of State
Marshall used such arguments of self-interest with Congressmen, his words fell on deaf ears, particularly given the commitment of Republicans to cut government spending to the bone. It was at that moment. Dean Acheson recalled, that "in desperation I whispered to [Marshall] a request to speak. This was my crisis. For a week I had nurtured it."

When Acheson took the floor, he transformed the atmosphere in the room.
The issue, he declared, was the effort by Russian communism to seize dominance over three continents, and encircle and capture Western Europe.
"Like apples in a barrel infected by the corruption of one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and alter the Middle East . . .
Africa . . . Italy and France." The struggle was ultimate, Acheson concluded. "Not since Rome and Carthage has there been such a polarization of power on this earth. . . . We and we alone are in a position to break up" the Soviet quest for world domination. Suddenly, the Congressmen sat up and took notice. That argument, Senator Arthur Vandenberg told the president, would be successful. If Truman wanted his program of aid to be approved, he would—like Acheson—have to "scare hell" out of the American people.

By the time Truman came before Congress on March 12, the issue was no longer whether the United States should extend economic aid to Greece and
Turkey on a basis of self-interest, but rather whether America was willing to sanction the spread of tyrannical communism everywhere in the world.
Facing the same dilemma Roosevelt had confronted during the 1930S in his effort to get Americans ready for war, Truman sensed that only if the issues were posed as directly related to the nation's fundamental moral concern—not just self-interest— would there be a possibility of winning political support. Hence, as Truman defined the question, the world had to choose "between alternative ways of life." One option was "free," based on
"representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, and freedom of speech and religion." The other option was
"tyranny," based on "terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, .
. . and a suppression of personal freedoms." Given a choice between freedom and totalitarianism, Truman concluded, "it must be the policy of the United
States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities."

Drawing on the "worst case" scenario implicit in Kennan's telegram,
Truman, in effect, had presented the issue of American-Soviet relations as one of pure ideological and moral conflict. There were some who criticized him. Senator Robert Taft, for example, wondered whether, if the United
States took responsibility for Greece and Turkey, Americans could object to the Russians continuing their domination over Eastern Europe. Secretary of State Marshall was disturbed at "the extent to which the anticommunist element of the speech was stressed." And George Kennan, concerned over how his views had been used, protested against the president's strident tone.
But Truman and Acheson had understood the importance of defining the issue on grounds of patriotism and moral principle. If the heart of the question was the universal struggle of freedom against tryanny—not taking sides in a civil war— who could object to what the government proposed? It was,
Senator Arthur Vandenberg noted, "almost like a presidential request for a declaration of war. . . . There is precious little we can do except say yes." By mid-May, Truman's aid package had passed Congress overwhelmingly.

On the same day the Truman Doctrine received final approval, George
Marshall and his aides at the State Department were busy shaping what
Truman would call the second half of the same walnut— the Marshall Plan of massive economic support to rebuild Western Europe. Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, Belgium—all were devastated by the war, their cities lying in rubble, their industrial base gutted. It was difficult to know if they could survive, yet the lessons of World War I suggested that political democracy and stability depended on the presence of a healthy and thriving economic order. Already American officials were concerned that Italy—and perhaps France—would succumb to the political appeal of native communists and become victims of what William Bullitt had called the "red amoeba" spreading all across Europe. Furthermore, America's selfish economic interests demanded strong trading partners in Western Europe. "No nation in modern times," Assistant Secretary of State Will Clayton had said, "can long expect to enjoy a rising standard of living without increased foreign trade." America imported from Europe only half of what it exported, and
Western Europe was quickly running out of dollars to pay for American goods. If some form of massive support to reconstruct Europe's economy were not developed, economic decay there would spread, unemployment in America would increase, and political instability could well lead to communist takeovers of hitherto "friendly" counties.
3.2 Cold War Issues.

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