Table Of ContentDawning of the Cold War
Dawning o f the
C o ld War
The United States’ Quest for Order
Randall B. Woods & Howard Jones
The University of Georgia Press ■ Athens ÔC London
© 1991 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
All rights reserved
Designed by Richard Hendel
Set in Sabon
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America
95 94 93 92 91 5 4 3 ^
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Woods, Randall Bennett, 1944-
Dawning of the Cold War: the United States'
quest for order /
Randall B. Woods and Howard Jones,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-8203-1265-7 (alk. paper). —
ISBN 0-8203-1266-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
i. United States—Foreign relations—1945-1953.
2. Cold War. 3. World politics—1945-1955.
I. Jones, Howard, 1940-.
ii. Title.
E813.W58 1991
327.73—dc20
90-10922
CIP
British Library Cataloging in Publication Data available
C O N T E N T S
Preface, vii
Acknowledgments, xiii
PART I ■ CHALLENGE
One The Grand Alliance and the Road to Victory, 3
Two Harry S. Truman and the Policy of Mediation, 33
Three Walking the Tightrope: James F. Byrnes and the
Diplomacy of the Middle Way, 73
Four Confrontation and Containment: From the Iron Curtain
Speech to the Paris Peace Conference, 98
PART II ■ RESPONSE
Five A Policy of Firmness: The Truman Doctrine
and Global Strategy, 133
Six The Search for a Creative Peace Through
the Marshall Plan, 153
Seven Emerging Crisis in Berlin, 174
Eight Equivalent Response: Berlin Blockade and Airlift, 197
Nine From Berlin to NATO: The Establishment of Order
in Western Europe, 217
Ten Toward New Directions in the Cold War, 243
Notes, 257
Bibliography, 305
Index, 321
■ v
On November 15, 1989, East German workers began punch
ing holes in the Berlin Wall, the ultimate symbol of the Cold War. For
a generation that ugly gash had marred not only the face of a graceful
and historic city but the psyche of the entire Western world. Its demise
came suddenly. Despite perestroika and glasnost, free elections in Poland,
and the subsuming of the Hungarian Communist party within a broad
socialist front, commentators had predicted only a week before the wall’s
opening that it would be the last symbol of the Cold War to go because
its destruction would signal the bankruptcy of Communist rule in Eastern
Europe. Berlin, they argued, would have to wait years for free access.
The abruptness with which the Berlin Wall was breached and the rapid
onset of reform in Eastern Europe point above all to the extent to which
the Communist regimes established in Europe following World War II de
pended on Soviet power. To Wojciech Jaruzelski in Poland, to Egon Krenz
in East Germany, to Communist leaders in Hungary and throughout the
Eastern bloc, Mikhail Gorbachev made clear that Soviet troops would not
be sent in support of efforts to crush dissent. Given the overwhelming
popular demand within their countries for political reforms and freedom
of travel, the old guard in Eastern Europe faced the choice either of be
coming reformers themselves or of relinquishing power.
What the world has witnessed during the past year is the destruction
of the old order in Europe, a regime established during and immediately
after World War II. This is true for the non-Communist as well as the
Communist world. The advent of Gorbachev, perestroika, democracy,
and national self-determination within the Eastern bloc has dramatically
altered Western politics. It has made the United States, if not superfluous
to European affairs, at least more peripheral. The question of German
unification and the opening up of the East have dramatically altered plans
for European integration. Held together for so long by a common enemy,
NATO is threatened by the diverging interests of its members. Commit
ments and circumstances that have prevailed for forty years are changing
with dizzying speed.
This book is about the establishment of the postwar order that is now
■ vii
viü ■ PREFACE
disintegrating. Indeed, the end of the Cold War should not obscure the
reality or the importance of that phenomenon as a historical subject.
Between 1945 and 1950 the Soviet Union was an exhausted, brutalized
nation, determined never again to be subjected to a holocaust such as
that inflicted by Hitler and the Wehrmacht. The USSR was ruled by the
iron-fisted and dictatorial Joseph Stalin and an entrenched nomenklatura
dedicated to the perpetuation of its power. A totalitarian form of gov
ernment, widespread devastation of the domestic economy, a sense of
isolation, and a power vacuum combined to convince the Kremlin that it
should project Soviet power into surrounding territories. American and
British leaders perceived the Soviet Union as an expansionist, aggressive
state bent on dominating as much of Europe and the Middle East as pos
sible. The essentially conservative men who ruled Britain and the United
States feared Soviet imperialism and felt threatened by Communism (in
sofar as they understood it) as a political and economic system. The clash
between East and West from 1945 through 1950 was real, intense, and
immensely dangerous. That the world is apparently entering a less con
frontational, more pragmatic period makes the perceptions and events
surrounding the dawning of the Cold War no less real or meaningful. We
hope that this book contributes to an understanding of this most important
historical phenomenon.
Although much of Europe lay in ruins at the close of World War II,
those who had survived the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy looked to the future with a good deal of anticipation. The war had
spawned the Grand Alliance, a massive coalition of anti-Fascist powers
presided over by Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
Not only had these nations succeeded in defeating the Axis, but they had
joined together to form a new collective security organization, the United
Nations. But popular hopes for a prolonged period of peace, democracy,
national self-determination, and international harmony were to be dashed
on the rocks of the Cold War.
The cement of the Grand Alliance, as has been the case with so many
alliances of the past, was the common enemy, and once Germany sur
rendered, national aspirations and anxieties began to rend the alliance
asunder. In the months following the Wehrmacht’s invasion of Russia in
1941, the principal foreign policy goals of the Kremlin were first to stem
the German tide and then to gain control of Poland and the Baltic states
so as to protect the motherland from another invasion by an ambitious
Central European power. Once the tide of war began to turn, however,
Stalin’s vision started to expand. Quite simply, the Soviet leader was pre
pared to project Russian power into as much of Europe as the capitalist
PREFACE ■ IX
democracies would allow. Militarily and politically he proved to be the
ultimate opportunist. Winston Churchill was well aware of Stalin’s inten
tions. As the prime minister saw it, his task was to hold as much of Europe
as possible for capitalism and democracy and at the same time to pre
serve and strengthen what was left of the British Empire. Unfortunately
for the United Kingdom, its power was ebbing rapidly, and as Churchill
recognized, London could not realize its objectives without massive eco
nomic, military, and diplomatic support from the United States. Though he
was committed to democracy and national self-determination for Europe,
Franklin D. Roosevelt was loath to join in an Anglo-American alliance
against the Soviet Union. He believed that the Grand Alliance could be
maintained intact and that its preservation was the key to any success the
United Nations might enjoy. Until his death in April 1945, he concentrated
on disarming the Soviet Union by keeping Britain at arm’s length while
holding out the prospect of a massive postwar reconstruction loan to the
Kremlin.
Though few in the West were willing to admit it, the Yalta accords of
February 1945 sanctioned the division of Europe into two hostile camps.
Stalin was forced to sign the Declaration of Liberated Europe, which
committed each of the occupying powers to hold free elections in its occu
pation zone as soon as possible. But in fact, elections were held in Eastern
Europe only after opposition parties had been outlawed and dissent sup
pressed. In essence, Soviet occupation authorities presided over plebiscites
designed to legitimize local Communist regimes that the Russians had in
stalled. Britain lacked the power and the United States the will to force
the Soviets out of Eastern Europe.
The establishment of totalitarian, Soviet-controlled regimes in Hungary,
Rumania, Poland, Bulgaria, and finally Czechoslovakia alienated a seg
ment of the foreign policy establishment, the public, Congress, and the
press in the United States. Upon his accession to office, Harry S. Truman
assumed a hard line with the Soviets, but he quickly reverted to Roose
velt’s “tripod” approach. Truman’s secretary of state, James F. Byrnes,
and a number of Roosevelt's advisers convinced the new president that
by rejecting the appearance as well as the reality of a common Anglo-
American front, and by wielding the stick of the atomic bomb and the
carrot of a reconstruction loan, Washington could persuade the Soviets to
act reasonably and responsibly. Throughout the summer and fall of 1945
Truman and Byrnes labored with Soviet and British diplomats to ham
mer out peace treaties with Italy, Germany, and their allies and to work
out mutually acceptable occupation arrangements for these countries and
Japan. They failed.
X ■ PREFACE
Following the London Foreign Ministers’ Conference of September and
the Moscow meeting in December, it became increasingly clear to all con
cerned that the Kremlin was not going to permit Western participation
in the reconstruction of its sphere, and that the British and Americans
were going to exclude the Russians from the occupation governments of
Italy and Japan. Moreover, the Soviets appeared determined to expand
their empire by annexing the northern half of Iran and converting the re
mainder of the country into a Soviet protectorate. In early 1946 the Labour
government of Clement Attlee, which had come to power in Britain dur
ing the summer of 1945, hit upon the stratagem of confronting the Soviet
Union within the framework of the United Nations. Whitehall perceived
correctly that many Americans who tended to view London’s attacks on
Soviet imperialism as just another manifestation of power politics found
those assaults acceptable within the context of and in the name of the
United Nations. Finally, by early 1946, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg had
rallied the so-called presidential and congressional wings of the Republi
can party behind a campaign attacking the Democrats for being “soft on
Communism” and for abandoning the peoples of Eastern Europe to Soviet
imperialism.
Responding to events in Eastern Europe and the Near East, to con
tinuing British pressure, and to attacks from a newly unified Republican
party, the Truman administration gradually assumed a more confronta
tional posture toward the Soviet Union during the spring, summer, and
fall of 1946. In March the president sponsored Churchill’s iron curtain
speech, an address that was a virtual call to arms to the non-Communist
world. At the same time, Truman forced the Soviets to back down over
Iran, and he and his advisers labored diligently throughout 1946 to main
tain unilateral U.S. control over the atomic bomb. Though the former
members of the Grand Alliance agreed at the Paris Peace Conference to
sign peace treaties with Germany’s wartime allies, the close of 1946 saw
East and West bitterly divided.
As 1947 opened, the Truman administration perceived nothing less than
the existence of a global campaign directed by the Kremlin to destroy self-
determination, democracy, and capitalism, and to substitute in their place
Communist totalitarianism. Washington’s policymakers were convinced
that areas with high unemployment, runaway inflation, and stunted pro
duction, which included much of Central and parts of Western Europe,
were especially susceptible to Communist influence. According to Wash
ington, the Russians were engaged in a “new kind of war,” a total war
embracing all fronts: economic, political, and social, as well as military.
But the United States’ sole possession of the atomic bomb dictated that
