But Truman was as determined that Stalin should not be able to do that. Truman was keenly aware of the immense financial crisis Europe was facing – with all of its dangerous political implications as it found itself running out of the funding needed to get healthy economies back up and running again.  Truman thus worked out a plan to help Europe with its dollar shortage, by simply extending huge dollar grants to the European countries to help get them back on their feet. These were not loans.  They were outright financial gifts, ones that would be given freely as the European countries submitted to America well-designed proposals for reconstruction.  If these programs seemed doable, then America would provide the financing for the programs.

Thus it was that Truman's secretary of state (former general), George Marshall, announced this plan at a Harvard commencement speech in early June of 1947. And so it was also that the world came to learn of the famous "Marshall Plan."¹

All European countries (including even former enemies Germany and Italy) were invited to participate in the Plan.  But the Russians saw this as a move that would put America at the center of the European recovery.  Consequently, Russia announced that it would not be participating. It also became quite clear that neither would they let any of the East European countries under their control participate in the Marshall Plan.

Thus sixteen countries of West Europe gathered in Paris in July of 1947 to discuss the Marshall Plan, offering the Europeans billions of dollars in grants – under the condition that they work together to determine the way the funds were to be distributed.  This was one of the big objectives of the Plan, to get the Europeans to rebuild Europe jointly, and not just separately as competing nations.  Indeed, the whole European side of the Plan was put under the multinational Organization of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), thus helping to birth a new European unity movement.

¹Truman himself called for the Plan to go under Marshall's name, knowing that Marshall had a much better standing than he did with the frugal Republicans of Congress, who would have to approve the huge spending that the Plan called for

But if Truman was having difficulty in awakening America to the growing danger to Europe and the West coming from Moscow, an event that took place in early 1948 helped him immensely. Czechoslovakia, or at least the Czech or western portion of the country, had long been identified with the modern Western culture of Europe.  It had been a stable democracy before the war, and with its former president, Edvard Beneš, back in the presidency after the war, it appeared as if Czechoslovakia would retake its important place in Western society.

But a number of major problems threatened that possibility. First was the presence of the Russian Red Army on the borders of the country, in a position to easily overrun Czechoslovakia if Stalin decided to do so.  Secondly, the Communist Party in the 1946 elections had gained 38 percent of the vote, making it the largest of the parties in the country, though by no means itself a majority party.  It had been given a number of seats on the national cabinet (though not a majority of them), but most importantly the premiership (Gottwald) and the head of the armed forces and the national police.  This would prove to be most strategic for the Communists. Thirdly, the Czechoslovak cabinet was talking openly about the possibilities of participating in the Marshall Plan, something that Stalin opposed strongly.  And fourthly, President Beneš was a person who by natural temperament placed kindly cooperation above all other considerations in the running of his presidency (he had cooperated with Chamberlain back in 1938 in agreeing not to use his army of forty well-armed and well-trained divisions to oppose  Hitler’s taking of Czechoslovakia’s Sudeten borderlands – a huge mistake!).  And fifthly, the Communists looked like they were going to lose a lot of seats in the coming mid-1948 elections because of a national backlash against their abuse of their police powers (bullying political opponents, Nazi style).

As 1948 approached, the Communists knew that they needed to do something bold before they got scooted out of power.  An intervention by the Red Army would likely only backfire against them. So instead they intensified the use of their police powers, removing the last of the non-Communist police officials (despite the outcry of the country).  At this point (February 1948) a number of the non-Communist cabinet ministers offered their resignations, hoping that it would force Beneš to finally take a firm stand against the mounting Communist agitation in the government – and in the streets. But Beneš, fearful of a Soviet military intervention, accepted the resignations of the non-Communists and, under pressure from Gottwald, appointed Communists in their place.  Then the Communist-directed police and military began the roundup of non-Communist officials. Other cabinet members either resigned or bowed to Communist authority, except Foreign Minister Masaryk, who was found dead three floors below an open window – declared by the authorities to be a suicide (actually records opened with the fall of Russias Soviet government in the early 1990s revealed that in fact he had been thrown out the window).  Thousands of people were arrested, thousands more fled the country.  Then what was left of Czechoslovakian government lined up behind the Communists, calling for the creation of a new Constitution (May) – which the voters then approved by an 89 percent favorable vote (like Hitler's plebiscites!).  A vote at the end of May gave the Communists an absolute majority in the parliament, and soon sole rights to exist as a political party.  At the beginning of June, Beneš resigned as president, his place was taken by Gottwald, and in September Beneš died, bringing symbolically Czechoslovakia's democratic era to an official end.  It would be forty years before Czechoslovakia would see national freedom again.

Westerners were shocked by the Communist takeover in formerly free Czechoslovakia ... including finally the Americans.  Truman of course was not. Nor did he come to the same sense of alarm as did the newly awakened Americans.  In America the Czechoslovakian crisis succeeded in reviving an old Red Scare, one that would shape nearly all understandings of America's role in the world for the next generation.

Truman saw things a bit differently.  He certainly understood the challenge that Marxist ideology posed to the values of Western democracy. But he was more interested in how this challenge directed political behavior of specific societies, in particular Stalin's Russia.  Truman was more interested in power politics than in grand ideology. He was thus able to carry off a highly advantageous diplomatic move, one that within a couple of years would have been impossible, given the rising ideological mood of America.  This diplomatic move concerned Tito's Yugoslavia.

During World War Two Josip Broz Tito had headed up a huge military unit of Communist Partisans that gave the Germans a massive amount of trouble in Yugoslavia. In early 1945, as a full German defeat looked increasingly likely, Tito took charge of a new provisional government debating the question of forming a new republic or continuing the monarchy under the young King Peter II.  In elections held in November of 1945, the pro-monarchists largely boycotted the event, delivering a huge victory to Tito's pro-Republicanists – dominated heavily by the Communists, who had achieved a very high moral standing among Yugoslavia's various ethnic groups because of their dedication to ousting the Germans from the land.

Though Tito was a loyal Stalinist, he was also an independent thinker, and had specific plans of his own for Yugoslavia.  Those plans included incorporating all of the Trieste territory to the northwest of the country (including shooting down American planes supplying Trieste with aid) plus building his own diplomatic alliance with the Greek Communists to the south.  This upset Stalin greatly because he was afraid that Tito's activities would call forward a strong American response (which it did), Stalin having come to appreciate the strengths of the new American leader, Truman.

Tito also had his own ideas of how he wanted to unite economically the ethnically divided Yugoslavia.

Such independent-mindedness annoyed Stalin greatly, as he wanted all Communist organizations to function under his sole authority.  Problems between Tito and Stalin thus began to develop.

Ultimately, Tito refused to attend the second meeting of Stalin's new Cominform held in June of 1948, expecting to be verbally attacked by Stalin. Stalin was furious at this affront and called for Tito's expulsion from the Cominform, Stalin expecting his personal disapproval to be the undoing of the independent-minded Tito.  When expulsion did not seem to have the desired effect, Stalin took up his more usual program of seeking to eliminate any who dared to oppose, or even question, him. None of Stalin's efforts succeeded however.  Tito in turn now went after any supposed Stalinists in his own country, arresting thousands.

This turn of events opened the way for Tito to access America's Marshall Plan (1951).  Receiving American financial (and also some military) support did not exactly align Tito with the growing Western diplomatic alliance headed up by America. But it effectively made Yugoslavia an openly neutral or non-aligned country in the Cold War.  Indeed, Tito went on to be one of the key leaders of an international movement – at the time principally among Asian states – which declared itself to be aligned with neither the West nor the East.  These non-aligned countries saw themselves as comprising a new "Third World."

Truman was not looking for Yugoslav loyalty in his swing of economic support behind his former adversary.  What Truman did achieve through this support of Communist Yugoslavia was keeping Stalin from acquiring Yugoslavia as another satellite state, one particularly that might have given Stalin the opportunity to extend his political reach all the way to the Adriatic Sea just opposite Italy and thus also a position on the Mediterranean Sea, a goal long sought by the Russians.  In supporting the Communist Tito, Truman had contained Stalin.  That loomed in importance much larger in Truman's mind than the idea of opposing Communism, no matter where it showed its head, for such ideological crusading would have helped drive Tito back into Soviet hands, the very thing sought by Stalin.

This was cool-headed thinking on the part of Truman, something unfortunately that would be lost on the vast majority of Americans – who at this point were beginning to see things in absolute Black-White (or Red-White!) dimensions.

Stalin's expectations at war's end were that the Western occupation of parts of the Berlin capital city would not last more than a year or two. But it became increasingly clear over the next couple of years that the French, British, and Americans were planning to stay in place in Berlin until the country was fully reunited and all German occupation zones were vacated by the wartime Allies. Annoyed by this resistance, Stalin began to put pressure on Berlin by ceasing to deliver agricultural goods to the city, which in turn caused the Allies to suspend the shipment from their zones of German industrial machinery to the Russians. Meanwhile Berliners in the municipal elections were turning sharply against the Communists, concerning Stalin greatly. Stalin knew that somehow the Western Allies had to be driven from Berlin.

To make matters worse for Stalin, the Western Allies were holding talks in early 1948 about uniting their three German occupation zones into a single political unit, thus creating a Federal Republic, complete with its own currency, the Deutsche Mark, this new Germany also eligible to receive Marshall Plan funding.

This was the signal for Stalin to shut down the West’s access to Berlin by way of the rail, highway, and canal routes which passed through the Soviet-controlled East German zone.  The program started off sporadically at first, the Soviets probably testing the resolve of the Western Allies.  But the Allies responded by airlifting supplies into Berlin.  Then the Soviets eased off their restrictions, for a while at least, although they harassed the flights in and out of Berlin (causing a major mid-air crash in April).  Finally in late June with the introduction of the new Deutsche Mark (in West Berlin as well as the rest of the country) the Russians acted to shut down completely all land access into Berlin, leaving only air access to Berlin – but estimating that any such continuing air supply to Berlin would prove financially ruinous to the Western Allies.  On this point they miscalculated greatly the resolve of Truman not to be bullied out of Berlin.  Berlin and its outcome thus became a symbol of strength and determination, for both sides of this new contest.

Militarily the Westerners were vastly outnumbered.  Soviet military forces positioned in the Soviet zone numbered about 1.5 million.  In Berlin itself there were only less than 23,000 Western troops, and in West Germany as a whole less than 100,000. If the Russians decided to simply grab Berlin, there would have been no way of stopping them.  But that would have constituted an act of war, and the fact that America now had numerous quite deliverable atomic bombs – and a president proven willing to use them – caused Stalin to head off any idea of a shooting war.  The idea of shooting down unarmed supply planes was for the same reason something Stalin knew he could not let happen.  But he believed that he could simply wait out the Westerners, resulting in their eventual loss of Berlin, and in the process gain a great symbolic victory.  This would then ultimately impress all of Germany with the idea of who truly ruled in central Europe.  Winter was coming and surely the very expensive airlift would have failed by then.

But the Western airlift by the Americans and the British was an impressive display of Western resolve, and Western power.  Through the winter the airlift continued, bringing in more food and fuel than had been brought to the city previously by the land routes!  Also a December 1948 municipal election boycotted by the Communists led to a complete victory for the pro-Western candidates, effectively ending the idea of an all-Berlin city government – the Communists responding by setting up a government of their own in the Soviet sector of Berlin.  Like Germany, Berlin was now divided into two cities, East and West Berlin.  Movement between the two sectors still continued (ending only with the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961).  But there was now truly an East Berlin and a West Berlin.

The Soviets were gaining nothing by this maneuver, instead throwing a lot of political advantage to the West.  The French, British, and American sectors found good reason to put aside any tactical disagreements and work together more closely.  The blockade also inspired the rapid development of the German Federal Republic. And it impressed the Germans very favorably toward their French, British and American occupiers who appeared to them more as their deliverers rather than their occupiers.  On the other hand it made the Russians appear more to be the oppressors of Germany.

And it stirred great sympathy from the Americans for their former German enemies.

Finally in May of 1949, the Soviets indicated a willingness to end the blockade. The two sides met and the blockade was lifted.  But the bringing of supplies into Berlin by air continued, just in case.  By July the Allies had built up a 3-month reserve of supplies in Berlin just to send a message to the Soviets to not ever again try to squeeze the Westerners out of Berlin.