But aid to Greece was only one aspect of the problem. It had been a year now since Kennan’s “Long Telegram” and Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech at Fulton. Something more than a simple aid bill was called for. On this Truman, Marshall, Acheson, Clifford—virtually all who had a say in policy—were agreed. One ranking State Department official, Joseph M. Jones, urged that Secretary Marshall, not the President, go before Congress, to rouse the nation to the reality of the crisis, because, as Jones wrote in an internal memorandum, Marshall was “the only one in Government with the prestige to make a deep impression.”
Things were indeed “happening in a hurry,” as Truman told his sister. The morning of the 27th, he called the congressional leaders to his office for a crucial meeting. They listened first to Marshall, who, in measured tones, told them, “It is not alarmist to say that we are faced with the first crisis of a series which might extend Soviet domination to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.” The choice was “acting with energy or losing by default.”
Acheson, who thought Marshall had failed to speak with appropriate force, asked to be heard. There was no time left for a measured appraisal, Acheson said. Greece was the rotten apple that would infect the whole barrel. “The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to win all the possibilities.” When Acheson finished (according to his own later account), Vandenberg told the President in a sonorous manner that if he would say the same thing in the same way to Congress, then he, Vandenberg, would lend his support and so would a majority on Capitol Hill—his clear implication being that aid to Greece and Turkey could be had only if Truman shocked Congress into action. But in his memoirs, for all his regard for Acheson, Truman would make no mention of Acheson’s remarks or the Vandenberg response as described by Acheson. Truman said only that Marshall had made it “quite plain” that the choice was to act or lose by default—“and I expressed my emphatic agreement to this.”
The meeting ended at noon. Nothing was disclosed of what had been said.
The crowds in Mexico City were such as Truman had never experienced. Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets to see and cheer an American President for the first time. The trip had been Truman’s idea and the acclaim was thrilling. He returned the “Vivas!” of the throngs (one woman shouted, “Viva Missouri!”), and several times broke away from his Mexican and Secret Service escorts to shake hands with people. “I have never had such a welcome in my life,” he told the Mexican legislature, to whom he pledged anew Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy. To a crowd of American citizens later, he said he hoped they would remember that they, too, were ambassadors.
The next morning, he announced suddenly that he wished to make an unscheduled stop at Mexico City’s historic Chapultepec Castle, where, with one simple, unheralded gesture, he did more to improve Mexican—American relations than had any President in a century. Within hours, as the word spread, he had become a hero.
The long motorcade pulled into the shade of an ancient grove of trees. Truman stepped out of his black Lincoln and walked to a stone monument bearing the names of Los Niños Héroes, “the child heroes,” six teenage cadets who had died in the Mexican-American War in 1847, when American troops stormed the castle. According to legend, five of the cadets had stabbed themselves, and a sixth jumped to his death from a parapet rather than surrender. As Truman approached, a contingent of blue-uniformed Mexican cadets stood at attention. As he placed a floral wreath at the foot of the monument, several of the cadets wept silently.
After bowing his head for a few minutes, Truman returned to the line of cars, where the Mexican chauffeurs were already shaking hands with their American passengers.
The story created an immediate sensation in the city, filling the papers with eight-column, banner headlines. “Rendering Homage to the Heroes of ‘47, Truman Heals an Old National Wound Forever,” read one. “Friendship Began Today,” said another. A cab driver told an American reporter, “To think that the most powerful man in the world would come and apologize.” He wanted to cry himself, the driver said. A prominent Mexican engineer was quoted: “One hundred years of misunderstanding and bitterness wiped out by one man in one minute. This is the best neighbor policy.”
President Truman, declared Mexican President Miguel Alemán, was “the new champion of solidarity and understanding among the American republics.”
Asked by American reporters why he had gone to the monument, Truman said simply, “Brave men don’t belong to any one country. I respect bravery wherever I see it.”
The three-day whirlwind visit ended on March 6, when the presidential party departed on The Sacred Cow before dawn. Moonlight reflected on the plane’s wings as Truman looked out the window. Despite the hour and the chill morning air, a thousand people had come to see him off.
Less than a year before, in July 1946, as only a few were aware, Truman had asked Clark Clifford to prepare a comprehensive analysis of Soviet-American relations, the first of its kind.
The project began at once, and though Clifford remained in charge, and with his editing gave the finished effort much of its tone and emphasis, the real work—research and writing—was done by his assistant, George Elsey, who had suggested the project in the first place. He had felt, Elsey later explained, that Truman was judging Russia on “too narrow a basis,” his concerns limited too often to whether or not Russia was keeping its agreements.
By the time Elsey was finished in September 1946, the report ran to nearly 100,000 words. It was immensely detailed and clearly influenced by Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” but most of it had been drawn from interviews with or written reports from a dozen or more key people within the executive branch, including the State and War departments, and in all it was a far more alarming state paper than the “Long Telegram,” even though, as Elsey himself later said, most of the material had been previously called to Truman’s attention by Byrnes, Forrestal, Harriman, Leahy, even Harry Hopkins as early as April 1945.
Titled “American Relations with the Soviet Union,” it began by stating that such relations posed the gravest problem facing the United States and that Soviet leaders appeared to be “on a course of aggrandizement designed to lead to eventual world domination by the U.S.S.R.”
The Soviet Union was “consistently opposed” to British-American efforts to achieve world peace agreements, because the longer peace settlements were postponed, the longer Red Army troops could “legally” remain in “enemy” countries. Moreover, the Soviets were maintaining excessively large military forces in the satellite countries. The Soviets already dominated Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. In Austria only the presence of British, French, and American occupation troops prevented a Soviet takeover.
Communist parties were growing in France and Italy. In a weak and divided China, the USSR was “in a position to exert greater influence there than any other country.” The Soviets were supplying the Communist forces in China, while in Korea, the Soviets had shown that they would consent to the unification of the country only if assured of a “friendly” government.
Most ominous was Soviet military power:
Generalissimo Stalin and his associates…are supporting armed forces stronger than those of any potential combination of foreign powers and they are developing as rapidly as possible a powerful and self-sufficient economy. They are seizing every opportunity to expand the area, directly or indirectly, under Soviet control in order to provide additional protection for the vital areas of the Soviet Union.
The menace was gathering. Russia was rapidly developing “atomic weapons, guided missiles, materials for biological warfare, a strategic air force, submarines of great cruising range….” The Soviet Union, the grim report continued, was also actively directing espionage and subversive movements in the United States.
Since the “language of military power” was the only language the Russians understood, it was necessary that the United State
s maintain sufficient military strength to “confine” Soviet influence. Therefore, the United States, too, must be prepared to wage atomic and biological warfare. “The mere fact of preparedness may be the only powerful deterrent to Soviet aggressive action and in this sense the only sure guarantee of peace.”
In reviewing the situation in the Middle East, the report noted that the Soviets hoped for the withdrawal of troops from Greece to establish another of their “friendly” governments there. The Soviet desire for Turkey was a puppet state to serve as a springboard for the domination of the eastern Mediterranean.
Finally, the report concluded that in addition to maintaining its military strength, the United States “should support and assist all democratic countries which are in any way menaced or endangered by the U.S.S.R.”
George Kennan, when asked to look at a nearly completed draft, judged it “excellent.” Truman, who was up much of one night reading the final report, called Clifford at his home early the next morning to ask how many copies there were. Ten, Clifford said. Truman wanted the other nine put immediately “under lock and key.” The report was so “hot,” he told Clifford, that if it ever came out its effect on his efforts to resolve the East-West conflict peacefully would be “exceedingly unfortunate.”
How much effect it had on Truman is difficult to gauge. He never said. Clifford, when recounting the Truman years, would stress its great far-reaching influence, while Elsey would be far more modest. “The impact of having it all drawn together may have had some influence on the President,” Elsey would speculate. “Again, I don’t think one can—you never know and neither the President nor anyone else is ever able—to say exactly what all the influences are that help make up his mind.”
All the same, it was Clifford and Elsey who, after Truman’s return from Mexico, put the finishing touches to the historic speech Truman would make before Congress concerning the situation in Greece, and much that was in the speech came directly from the report.
At a Cabinet meeting on March 7, Truman’s first day back from Mexico, Acheson said the complete disintegration of Greece was only weeks away. “If we go in we cannot be certain of success in the Middle East and Mediterranean. If we do not go in there will be a collapse in these areas.” There was also, of course, the possibility of “military risk.”
Truman felt he faced a decision as difficult as any ever to confront a President. The money for Greece was only the beginning. “It means the United States is going into European politics….” The President’s staff viewed the speech as potentially the most important of his career.
A first draft had been prepared at the State Department, but Truman thought it too wordy and technical, more like an investment prospectus, as he later wrote. He also wanted the addition of a strong statement of American policy. Acheson made cuts and revisions, modified several passages, including a key sentence that essentially repeated what had been in the Clifford-Elsey report about helping countries in jeopardy from the Soviet Union, only here the Soviet Union was not to be mentioned by name.
“It is the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” the line read in its original state. Acheson changed it to, “I believe it must be the policy of the United States….”
To Clifford, it was time to take a stand against the Soviets, time for “the opening gun” in a campaign to awaken the American people. As he had urged the President to stand fast against John L. Lewis, so Clifford now urged a strong response to Stalin.
George Kennan, on the other hand, thought the speech went too far, and in Paris, Marshall looked it over with Chip Bohlen, who was accompanying him to Moscow, and both felt there was “too much rhetoric.”
When Bernard Baruch, who had no official position in the administration, let it be known that he too wished to have a say in the matter, Truman refused. “If you take his advice,” Truman said, “then you have him on your hands for hours and hours, and it is his policy. I’m just not going to do it. We have a decision to make and we’l l make it.”
(Hearing the story later from Clifford, David Lilienthal wrote in his diary that “the President’s comment interested me because it was so human: one of the few things a President can enjoy is to decide whom he will consult.”)
Truman had Clifford and Elsey finish up the final draft as suited him. He was no Woodrow Wilson, who could sit down at a typewriter the night before addressing Congress at an historic juncture and tap out his own speech. But he knew what he wanted. “I wanted no hedging…. It had to be clear and free of hesitation or double talk.”
In answer to Marshall’s concern about “rhetoric,” Marshall was told that in the opinion of the executive branch, including the President, the Senate would not approve the new policy without emphasis on the Communist threat. Probably that was correct.
“There is, you know, such a thing as being too intellectual in your approach to a problem,” Clark Clifford would say years later in an interview.
The man who insists on seeing all sides of it often can’t make up his mind where to take hold.
Without any disparagement, that was never a problem for Mr. Truman. He wanted all the facts he could get before he made up his mind. But if he could get only 80 percent of the facts in the time available, he didn’t let the missing 20 percent tie him up in indecision. He believed that even a wrong decision was better than no decision at all. And when he made up his mind that was it….
We’d been through the greatest war in which the world had ever been involved…. This is 1947. The war ended in August of 1945. There was every reason for Harry Truman to say, “This is not for us.” And he kept worrying about it, thinking about it…. I remember thinking there was really nothing to impede the Soviet forces, if they chose to, from just marching straight west to the English Channel…. And yet he decided that it had to be done…. Harry Truman looks at this, and he just steps up to it….
The speech setting forth what became known as the Truman Doctrine was delivered in the House Chamber before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, March 12, 1947, beginning a few minutes past one o’c lock. It was a straightforward declarative statement lasting eighteen minutes. Greece was in desperate need, the situation was urgent. The existing Greek government was not perfect, and the government of the United States, no less than ever, condemned extremist measures of the right or left. Though Turkey, unlike Greece, had been spared the destruction and suffering of the war, Turkey also needed American support.
One of the primary objectives of American policy, Truman said, was “the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free of coercion.” This had been a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan, countries that had tried “to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other countries.”
Dressed in a dark suit and dark tie, he read from an open notebook slowly and with great force. His audience listened in silence. Hardly anyone moved. In the front row, John Snyder had his head bowed. Beside him the perfectly tailored Acheson sat as stiff and straight as if at a memorial service, hands folded in his lap. Further along in the same row, Senator Taft fiddled with his glasses, rubbed his face, then yawned. On the dais behind Truman, Speaker Martin and Senator Vandenberg were following the speech line by line in printed copies.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it
must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes….
Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.
We must take immediate and resolute action….
To many who were listening there in the chamber and over the radio, it seemed an odd, ironic time for a crisis. The United States was the richest, strongest country in the world and prospering as few could have ever imagined. Production was up. Incomes were up. There were few strikes. There was no more waiting for new automobiles, no meat shortages any longer. White shirts, nylon stockings, fishing tackle, and golf balls were back on store shelves. Because of the GI Bill, more than 4 million veterans were attending college, as most never could have in other times. Yet the speech seemed disturbingly like a call to arms, “Well, I told my wife to dust off my uniform,” an ex-soldier enrolled at the University of Oklahoma remarked to a reporter.
The cost of winning the war had been $341 billion. Now $400 million was needed for Greece and Turkey. “This is a serious course upon which we embark,” Truman said at the finish, and the look on his face was serious indeed. “I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious…. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation.”
The entire room rose in applause, but as Acheson later wrote, it was more as a tribute to a brave man than a unanimous acceptance of his policy. Truman, holding the closed notebook with the speech in front of his chest with both hands, nodded to the applause left and right, several times, but he never smiled.
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