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
260
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-
261