If the roots of the Cold War
were already growing
out of the end of the Second World War,
and if that is, indeed, evidenced in what we see happening over the course of the
three major meetings of the Big Three from 1943 into 1945,
then the years 1946 and '47
will build upon those roots, the building blocks that were already put in
place.
In 1944 and '45, the Soviet Union
was able to basically install, through a variety of means,
friendly governments in both Yugoslavia and
Albania. 1946 to 1947,
similarly friendly governments, often
communist governments, but at a minimum
Soviet-sympathetic governments, would be installed in
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland.
In 1948,
Czechoslovakia, now partly Slovakia and the Czech Republic, would see the
installation,
again, of another Soviet-friendly government. I think part of understanding the
Cold War
is understanding the onset
of the sense, particularly in the West, that
the Soviet Union was ultimately bent
on expansion. One of the keystones
for understanding where this,
this sort of thinking comes from in the West, but also, it's a reflection of the
development of this sort of thinking
about the Soviet intentions, will be
a letter from George Kennan.
Kennan was a consultant
who had been part of a larger diplomatic mission in the Soviet Union during the
war.
He was a diplomat who spoke fluent Russian,
and really had a, sort of,
on the scene view of events from
Moscow, from the heart
of the Soviet Union. In 1946,
Kennan produced, partly out of his role
as a consultant, an adviser
to Averell Harriman, Kennan produced
what came to be known as the Long Telegram. And it's, sort of, a white
report, a white sheet. It lists...
It makes the case, or particular case,
about how Soviet diplomacy and Soviet
actions should be understood. This
report by George Kennan basically suggests that the Soviet Union, that
Stalin,
is set on the expansion of Communism.
Kennan was an opponent of Communism,
and he believed that the Soviet Union,
given a chance, had a desire to expand its influence, not merely
in Central and Eastern Europe, not merely based on those elections and the
governments installed that we would have seen by '46
in Central Asia and Europe, but more broadly around the world.
So that, very clearly,
he is voicing this perception of the world as now
a matter of contest between two opposing players: the Soviet Union on one side,
and primarily the United States, or the West, on the other.
What he proposes, then, what he suggests as an antidote
to this Soviet drive for expansion
will be a policy that will come to be known, in time,
as Containment. The idea that
wherever we see evidence, and I say we, I shouldn't say we, but the United States,
sees evidence of Soviet expansion,
or expansive behavior, the United States would have an obligation to respond
in kind, in order to check that expansion,
thus containing the Soviet Union
and its aspirations.
From a policy perspective, understand how important Kennan's Long Telegram is,
and this is '46,
because it puts people in a particular mindset. It begins encouraging the
emergence of a particular mindset about how the world operates.
Whether Kennan was right or wrong in his reading of Soviet intentions
is perhaps less relevant than the impact the Long Telegram and subsequent
efforts by Kennan would have on US foreign policy throughout the rest of
the Cold War.
The sort of stated policy of the United States becomes a policy
of Containment, and that's a really important term.
It wasn't just George Kennan, of course.
Another major, major figure,
who would basically
offer the same kind of assessment of global affairs in 1946, was no less a
figure
than Winston Churchill.
Churchill was invited to come to the United States and,
accompanied by President Harry Truman,
they traveled to Missouri,
and Churchill gave, again, an extraordinarily important
speech in Fulton, Missouri,
at Westminster College. And this speech has come to be known as the Iron Curtain
speech
because it's in this speech that
Winston Churchill says, or propounds, this notion
that Europe has effectively been divided now.
Now, remember this is the same Churchill who was talking about spheres of
influence
way back when, in 1944, but here
he's saying it's effectively been divided, that North-South line that we talked
about,
it's set now.
And he calls that line of demarcation an Iron Curtain.
On the one, side you have the West with its ideals,
certainly the ideals that Churchill sees in the West, not everybody might agree with
Churchill, but there they are,
and then the ideals of the Totalitarian, Communist State,
the Authoritarian Stalin in which free and fair elections were not going to happen,
in which, ultimately, what you'll have is a sort of dictatorial,
Communist Soviet-style
colonization going on. So that
he's arguing, here, there's a clear choice. It's one or the other,
choose and decide how the West will respond. It's very much like what
Kennan is proposing in his
Long Telegram. In 1947,
it really comes to a head for the United States.
The U.S., you know, has avoided making outright,
or sort of entering the conflict directly
up to this point. But in 1947, the US is forced to make a choice of how it's
going to respond.
And to begin putting to use this new doctrine of Containment that's begun to
evolve.
And the choice comes in no less a place than Greece,
because in Greece, in the Mediterranean, but in Greece in particular,
you have what amounts to a Civil War ongoing.
Following the Second World War, the government that's in power,
which tends to be sympathetic toward the West, confronts an insurgency led by
Greek communists.
The British, sort of as part of their
long-standing role in the world, as the imperial power,
and having an interest in the Mediterranean, and Greece, partly because
of the Suez Canal,
the British have been supplying material
and funding to the Greek government as they seek to fight off this Communist
Insurgency. But, you have to remember that Britain
and its economic power have been severely damaged during the
Second World War.
The result is that, by 1947, it's become clear that Britain can no longer
continue, or no longer has the desire to continue, supporting
the Greek government.
And so it falls to the United States to assume the mantle,
to become, in essence, the world's police
personnel.
Harry Truman responds in March of 1947
with what comes to be known as the Truman Doctrine.
Its more or less a pledge, but it's like the Monroe Doctrine, it's for the U.S.--
usually the Chief Executive says, hey, this is going to be our policy,
we're announcing this to the world.
What Truman says, and I want to be very careful here, but he says that the United
States
will support, quote, "free peoples"
when they are, quote, "resisting attempted subjugation by
armed minorities, or by outside pressures."
Now, what this means is that in the case of an insurgency,
where a government, i.e., a friendly government to the US, or to the West,
is being challenged by groups from within its
own population, the United States will
believe it's in its own interest to intervene,
to keep certain forces from gaining
the ascendancy. Similarly the United States,
says...Truman says that the US is ready
to come to the aid of any government, any nation,
that faces aggression from outside its borders.
Clearly now, by '47, the United States
is prepared to engage directly in supporting resistance
to what may be perceived as expansion
by Communist forces, or by the Soviet Union.
To that end, in announcing this Truman Doctrine, Harry Truman will ask Congress,
and will receive,
an appropriation for military aid
and support for several governments, including Greece,
that are being threatened.
The rationale, very simply, is a fear that if
you begin not to stand up, not to
halt aggression where it's found,
the idea is that aggression will continue to spread.
And one of the analogies used, and notice it's being used against our former
ally, the Soviet Union, is the analogy of infection.
You may recall that prior to the Second World War,
what had ruled primarily in Britain,
and really been the predominant idea among huge portions of the American population,
was that the proper course to deal with
Hitler was appeasement. The proper course was to
give a little, give a little, but ultimately prevent outright conflict.
I'm not saying that was a right or wrong decision, what ultimately happened with
World War II, but
I want to suggest that the lesson that many Americans,
and many in the West, including Britain, had taken from that example of appeasement
had been that you cannot give, you cannot just
accede to the
demands made by, sort of, these dictators, or
by people in power who are saying, either you give me X or you're going to
get war, you're
going to get trouble. It's a form of blackmail.
So, there is sort of that sentiment running around.
And it is informing, in part, this reaction by Harry Truman in 1947,
and this fear that giving on one issue
will lead, then, to giving on more issues, or surrendering whole portions of the globe
to what's clearly been identified by elements like Churchill and Kennan
as a threat to the West, and,
ultimately, to this idea of freedom.
Along these same lines of action by the United States,
we have in June of 1947, the introduction
of an outright plan for economic and reconstruction assistance
to Europe. While countries in Central and Eastern Europe were,
basically, coming under the control of governments
that were friendly to the Soviet Union, or outright Communist,
there were nations in Western Europe that were in trouble,
that were threatened by the rise of Communism. And
you have to go back and think here about the destruction that the war had wrought.
Basically, in 1946-47, in the winter,
you have in Germany a threat, more than a threat, you have starvation, you
have famine,
infrastructures are wiped out, the ability to move
food and move goods, bridges blown up that will have to be rebuilt.
It's an absolute mess. And in those conditions, as people are starving
and looking for
whatever assistance they can find, or also looking for people to blame for
this problem,
you know, it makes sense that they would turn to,
you know, radical solutions.
And what we see in France, what we see in Germany, are the emergence
of, sort of, growing Communist contingents and Communist support.
Well, remember, the idea is that Communism is first of all negative,
and has been for some time, but that it's looking for expansion.
How do you battle that in the West? It's not just military aid, then,
that the United States will provide after the war, in the immediate post-war
years,
but, in fact, it will be economic assistance, as well.
June of 1947, the plan is announced by Secretary of State, George C. Marshall,
who, of course, had been instrumental as a General, as a military man, during
World War II.
His goal, arguably, will be humanistic,
to suggest that there are just human...
it's a human disaster, that relief efforts are necessitated, to help people deal
with famine, hunger,
unemployment, you name it, to get the economies of Europe
restarted again. So, it's a humanitarian effort.
It will come to be known as the Marshall Plan,
and, in the end, it will bring about 13.5 billion
dollars in aid,
which is a huge, an astounding amount
in 1947, but 13.5
billion dollars in aid to Western Europe.
This aid was rejected by the Soviet Union, and ultimately,
under some compulsion, would be rejected by
its satellite nations.
But what it meant, what the Marshall Plan ultimately meant,
was European recovery. It was a diplomatic tool,
which allowed the US to work against the rise of Communism,
which was understood to be Soviet inspired in Western nations,
much as it was working against it in Greece,
but it also created or helped to create
some important markets for America's post-war production.
Remember, the U.S. is coming out of the war as the arsenal of democracy.
Massive production capabilities have been put to work for the war effort.
And the question, in part, for Truman, is
what does one do to avoid massive unemployment
as the number of jobs decrease, as demand for American goods decreases
after the war, as defense contracts are ended,
and as the veterans return. Well,
with the rest of the world in tatters, one clear option is to begin to create
markets,
to create economic growth abroad
that can then absorb the products from America's factories and America's fields.
That, too, is in part what the Marshall Plan was all about.
It's humanitarian. It's anti-communism.
It's also economics on the domestic front.
All these things are involved in
the Marshall Plan and what comes of it.
In the next segment, I'm going to take up
the issue of Berlin. And we'll move to 1948 and talk a bit about
the Berlin Airlift.
And we'll cover that then.