8. WORLD WAR TWO ... AND STARTUP OF THE COLD WAR
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| THE EFFORT TO STOP STALIN FROM EXTENDING HIS "COMMUNIST" EMPIRE |
Traditionally it was Britain's role to do the offsetting of a
would-be imperial aggressor attempting to overrun all of Europe. But Britain was in no shape, or certainly in
no mood, to play that role anymore.
Devastated Nuremberg, Germany -
1945
Cologne, Germany in ruins
Bremen, Germany at War's
end – 1945
US Army
Nuremberg War CrimesTrials: looking
down on the defendants'
dock. ca. 1945-46.
Surviving leaders of Nazi German are put
on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes committed under
their authority.
National Archives.
Winston Churchill, accompanied by Truman, delivering
his
"Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Mo. –
March 5,
1946
As he had done with his own people during the dark days of World
War Two, Churchill was calling now on America
to take up the challenge facing the world.
For if the West (under American leadership) did not act now in a show of
strength, it would clearly be dragged into war a third time in the 20th
century. America and Britain needed to
stand together to block Stalin's aggressions.
The American press was scandalized that Churchill would speak so brazenly
about some dark intentions on the part of our friends the Soviet Russians and
their leader "Uncle Joe" Stalin. But these voices of journalistic
enlightenment would soon change their tunes – finally recognizing a mounting
problem in Europe.
Still, it would take some time to get Americans to see these
rising dangers. But thankfully Truman was able more quickly to
develop support in Congress, even from the once-isolationist Congressional
faction. But he had to proceed
cautiously.
Containing Communism. Actually whereas even the
U.S. State Department was still caught up in its dream of friendship with the
Soviets – one of their members posted in Kiev, George Kennan, answered a request by
the U.S. Treasury Department to explain why the Soviets were not planning to
work with the new World Bank (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). In his Long Telegram
(February 1946) Kennan described in detail the Soviet anti-capitalist (and
Russian nationalist) mindset – and called for the "firm and vigilant
containment of Russian expansive tendencies."
The report soon became the basis for a larger analytical study of
Soviet goals and strategies (September 1946) – intended for the President's
eyes only. But the Kennan report itself
was so clear in its analysis and call for a strategic response that it was
published in the July 1947 edition of Foreign Affairs under the
authorship of "X." It had the
effect not only of helping to awaken America to the need for vigilance against
Soviet aggression but it also gave the resultant U.S. policy its identifying
label: "Containment" (of Communism).
The Truman Doctrine.
In the meantime a problem had developed in the Eastern Mediterranean
region: 1) a Communist-inspired
rebellion against the restored Greek monarchy – supported mainly by Tito's Communist Yugoslavia to the
north of Greece – and 2) Turkey, under intense pressure from Stalin to bring this gateway country
guarding the entrance and exit of the Black Sea (where Russia's largest naval
port was located) under Soviet mastery – Soviet mastery such as had been
happening all across Eastern Europe wherever the Russian Red Army found itself
in rather permanent occupation following the expulsion of Hitler's armies from the region.
Truman was intent that neither Greece nor Turkey
should fall under such Stalinist domination.
Thus in 1947 he went to Congress for funding (which he quickly received)
in support of the "Truman Doctrine" – pledging American support of
those countries struggling against efforts to bring them under dictatorial
oppression. Neither Soviet Russia nor
Communist Yugoslavia were specifically named as the aggressors. But most people knew who was meant. And thus direct military and financial aid
was extended to Greece and Turkey as the beginning of the American effort to
protect Europe from an expanding Communism.
The Truman Doctrine - President
Truman addressing Congress –
March 12, 1947
Harry S. Truman Library
and Museum
Greek Commanders and Lt.
General James A. Van Fleet,
chief US military representative in Greece, standing over
dead Communistn guerrillas
near the Yugoslav border –
May 1949
| THE MARSHALL PLAN |
German citizens now struggle to find ways to survive
Makeshift life in
Hamburg
Imperial War Museum,
London
Sheep resuming a normal life
in a bombed out hangar in Leipzig
One quarter of the city was totally flattened
by Allied bombing
And recovery was not quick: Hamburg still in Ruins – 1947
Italy, despite its dropping out of the war earlier,
also finds life very hard
Hunger in Palermo,
Sicily
Thus Truman recognized the urgency of
answering the social-economic challenges arising in Western Europe. Again (also 1947) Truman requested – and received
(1948) – authorization to pour massive amounts of funding in dollar grants to
European nations to help them rebuild their industrial and social
infrastructure, however as the Europeans themselves saw the need. This included former enemies Italy and
Germany as well. All they needed to do
was submit plans for funding for the development of a specific project and they
would receive American support.
More than $12 billion was granted over the next few years (and
billions more after that) to Europeans through the European Recovery Program,
more popularly known as the Marshall Plan – carefully named after
the highly esteemed former Commanding General and now (since January of 1947) Truman's Secretary of State, George Marshall. It was Truman who let Marshall take the lead
in publicizing the plan (Marshall's Harvard commencement speech in June of
1947) and who even put Marshall's name on the program rather than his own,
knowing that such a request for unprecedented funding (the initial request was
for an unheard-of $5.3 billion) would sell better in Congress if it were
identified with Marshall rather than with Truman himself!
Marshall Plan food shipments
arriving in Europe
Paid by funds from the US
Marshall Aid Plan, Berliners are
employed to clear rubble and begin
reconstruction
Marshall Plan aid working
to rebuild West Berlin
French farmer using a US
tractor sent under the Marshall Plan
A Dutch street before and
after with the help of Marshall Plan assistance
U.S. International Communications
Agency
Hamburg apartment buildings
in 1943 and again in 1951
-- with the help of Marshall Plan assistance
National Archives
[1]The results were amazing.
Europe recovered and whatever social antagonisms had produced the war in
the first place disappeared, the wounds of war were bound up, everyone was
cared for, and a just and lasting peace resulted among the nations involved, at
least those in West Europe free to participate in the Marshall Plan (free from Stalinist domination).
TENSIONS IN EUROPE
Pro-Western Foreign Minister
Jan Masaryk honored by floral
wreath and minute of silence
by Communists Premier Klement
Gottwald (left) and Defense Minister Ludvik Svoboda
Armed Czech Workers' Militia
who bullied non-Communists
into submission
marching through Prague
in celebration of
the new Communist government ruling
Czechoslovakia - 1948
A bus used as a roadblock
across a major highway from the
West into Berlin
US planes airlifting supplies
into Berlin during the blockade of
the city by Stalin
Helping Tito.
A major shift occurred within the Communist camp when a personal rivalry
ultimately developed between Stalin and Yugoslavia's Communist
dictator, Marshall Joseph Broz Tito (formerly America's rival in the
contest for Greece). Stalin was hugely annoyed that Tito would want to do Communism his
own way – and made a move to isolate Tito – and then expel him from
membership in Stalin's Communist community –
expecting this to completely undercut Tito's position in Yugoslavia. But the move failed – and now (mid-1948) Tito decided to join the nations that
were requesting Marshall Plan aid, helping further
secure Tito's position at the head of
Yugoslavia (this was a popular move among the Yugoslavians).
The realist Truman was more than willing to help
his former rival – for although this did not make Tito an ally in the
growing Cold War, it certainly helped contain Stalin's Empire so that
it did not
reach down through Yugoslavia to the Adriatic and thus also the
Mediterranean
Sea.
Stalin thus lost big on that move.
NATO.
Also damaging to Stalin, the Berlin incident convinced both the
Americans and West Europeans (and Canadians) that a peacetime military defense
organization was needed – an agreement that an attack on any member would be
taken as an attack on them all. Most
importantly it bound America to the ongoing military defense of Europe. And thus in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) was born.
The Foreign Minister of 12 Western nations assembled to
sign the North Atlantic Treaty with Dean Acheson at the
podium at the State Department – April 4, 1949
| CHALLENGES IN ASIA |
Japan itself posed no particular problems because it had been so
thoroughly defeated by American power, and was accordingly so thoroughly
occupied by supreme American power. Yet
Commanding General Douglas MacArthur had deemed it wise to let
the Japanese Emperor continue in office as some kind of unifying symbol – as
long as he cooperated with the American occupation. He did – and things went well in Japan.
Devastated Hiroshima -
1945
U.S. Air Force
In the background, a Roman Catholic
cathedral on a hill
in Nagasaki. ca. 1945.
National Archives
MacArthur arrives in Yokohama,
Japan – August 30, 1945
The man once considered a
god, Emperor Hirohito, meets with
residents of a new housing project near
Tokyo – part of the
democratization
of Japanese authority
U.S. Army
But like the wartime leaders of Germany, Japanese leaders
(except the emperor!) were put on trial for war crimes
But Americans sensed that Chiang was facing serious
difficulties from the huge
Chinese
peasant army under the command of Communist leader, Mao Tse-Tung (Mao
Zedong) – and in late 1945 Truman sent General Marshall to China as a
special envoy,
to help these two Chinese political factions come together for the
post-war
tasks ahead (the Cold War had not yet set in – and the
word "Communist" had not yet come to have the threatening quality for
Americans that in just a couple of years it would quickly take on). But the hatred of these two men for each
other was intense – and little by little even any pretense of cooperation
between the two ceased to exist. By
early 1947 Marshall realized that he was getting nowhere (and Truman needed him in Washington
anyway as his new Secretary of State).
By that time it was clear that China was headed for a huge civil war
between Mao's Communists and Chiang's Nationalists. Ultimately, Soviet Russia would aid Mao – and America would send aid to Chiang, as the issue became another
key piece in the growing Cold War.
Furthermore, Chiang's political strength had been
in the urban coastal regions of China – largely Japanese-occupied during the
war. That loss both strategically and
politically would prove ruinous for Chiang. On the other hand, Mao's strength had been based in the
peasant countryside – where he presented his brand of Communism (eventually
known as Maoism) as some kind of rural populism. He skillfully employed all the rural and
agrarian symbols he could in order to make a deep emotional link with peasant
China (still smarting from its loss during the Boxer Rebellion). And thus, little by little, Mao was able to expand his hold over
the Chinese countryside – until in early 1949 he was able also to overtake the
last of Chiang's urban strongholds.
Chinese refugees (at right)
stream into Hong Kong from China
in 1950, passing others going the
opposite direction
Go on to the next section:The War in Korea (1950-1953)
Miles
H. Hodges
