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CHAPTER 12: POSTWAR AMERICAOUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYHARRY TRUMAN’SLEADERSHIPThe nation’s new chief executive,Harry S Truman, succeeded FranklinD. Roosevelt as president beforethe end of the war. An unpretentiousman who had previously served asDemocratic senator from Missouri,then as vice president, Trumaninitially felt ill-prepared to govern.Roosevelt had not discussed complexpostwar issues with him, and hehad little experience in internationalaffairs. “I’m not big enough for thisjob,” he told a former colleague.Still, Truman responded quicklyto new challenges. Sometimes impulsiveon small matters, he provedwilling to make hard and carefullyconsidered decisions on large ones.A small sign on his White Housedesk declared, “The Buck StopsHere.” His judgments about howto respond to the Soviet Union ultimatelydetermined the shape of theearly Cold War.ORIGINS OF THE COLD WARThe Cold War developed as differencesabout the shape of the postwarworld created suspicion and distrustbetween the United States and theSoviet Union. The first — andmost difficult — test case was Poland,the eastern half of which hadbeen invaded and occupied by theUSSR in 1939. Moscow demanded agovernment subject to Soviet influence;Washington wanted a moreindependent, representative governmentfollowing the Western model.The Yalta Conference of February1945 had produced an agreement onEastern Europe open to different interpretations.It included a promiseof “free and unfettered” elections.Meeting with Soviet Minister ofForeign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotovless than two weeks after becomingpresident, Truman stood firm onPolish self-determination, lecturingthe Soviet diplomat about the needto implement the Yalta accords.When Molotov protested, “I havenever been talked to like that in mylife,” Truman retorted, “Carry outyour agreements and you won’t gettalked to like that.” Relations deterioratedfrom that point onward.During the closing months ofWorld War II, Soviet military forcesoccupied all of Central and EasternEurope. Moscow used its militarypower to support the efforts ofthe Communist parties in EasternEurope and crush the democraticparties. Communists took over onenation after another. The processconcluded with a shocking coupd’etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948.Public statements defined thebeginning of the Cold War. In 1946Stalin declared that internationalpeace was impossible “under thepresent capitalist development ofthe world economy.” Former BritishPrime Minister Winston Churchilldelivered a dramatic speech in Fulton,Missouri, with Truman sittingon the platform. “From Stettin inthe Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,”Churchill said, “an iron curtain hasdescended across the Continent.”Britain and the United States, hedeclared, had to work together tocounter the Soviet threat.CONTAINMENTContainment of the Soviet Unionbecame American policy in thepostwar years. George Kennan, atop official at the U.S. embassy inMoscow, defined the new approachin the Long Telegram he sent tothe State Department in 1946. Heextended his analysis in an articleunder the signature “X” in theprestigious journal Foreign Affairs.Pointing to Russia’s traditional senseof insecurity, Kennan argued thatthe Soviet Union would not softenits stance under any circumstances.Moscow, he wrote, was “committedfanatically to the belief that with theUnited States there can be no permanentmodus vivendi, that it is desirableand necessary that the internalharmony of our society be disrupted.”Moscow’s pressure to expandits power had to be stopped through“firm and vigilant containment ofRussian expansive tendencies. ...”The first significant applicationof the containment doctrine camein the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean.In early 1946, the UnitedStates demanded, and obtained, afull Soviet withdrawal from Iran,the northern half of which it hadoccupied during the war. That summer,the United States pointedlysupported Turkey against Soviet demandsfor control of the Turkishstraits between the Black Sea andthe Mediterranean. In early 1947,American policy crystallized whenBritain told the United States thatit could no longer afford to supportthe government of Greece against astrong Communist insurgency.In a strongly worded speech toCongress, Truman declared, “I believethat it must be the policy of theUnited States to support free peopleswho are resisting attempted subjugationby armed minorities or by outsidepressures.” Journalists quicklydubbed this statement the “TrumanDoctrine.” The president askedCongress to provide $400 million foreconomic and military aid, mostlyto Greece but also to Turkey. Afteran emotional debate that resembledthe one between interventionistsand isolationists before World WarII, the money was appropriated.Critics from the left later chargedthat to whip up American supportfor the policy of containment, Trumanoverstated the Soviet threat tothe United States. In turn, his statementsinspired a wave of hystericalanti-Communism throughout thecountry. Perhaps so. Others, however,would counter that this argumentignores the backlash that likelywould have occurred if Greece, Turkey,and other countries had fallenwithin the Soviet orbit with no oppositionfrom the United States.Containment also called for extensiveeconomic aid to assist the recoveryof war-torn Western Europe.With many of the region’s nationseconomically and politically un-260261