Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  The reception Marshall’s address received across the Atlantic brightened Conant’s outlook considerably, though he later confessed he had not immediately grasped its significance, in part due to the dull monotone of the general’s delivery. The American press missed its importance as well and failed to accord the event front-page coverage. But when British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin heard portions of the speech the following morning on BBC radio, he knew at once that it was far more than just an aid bill and called it a “lifeline to sinking men” that “brought hope where there was none.”

  At home, Walter Lippmann, an unofficial administration advisor, hastened to explain to his readers the strategy of using American prosperity to curtail Soviet influence. If the purpose of the Truman Doctrine, announced in March, was a quick $400 million fix to shore up the faltering pro-Western regimes in Greece and Turkey, then the Marshall Plan was a far-reaching comprehensive economic and political aid program designed to get Europe back on its feet and combat the spread of Communism. The genius of Marshall’s design was that because it offered a helping hand to everyone—extending the offer of assistance to Germany as well as the Eastern Europeans already under Soviet influence—and encouraged the Europeans to draw up their own plan for an economic coalition, no one could accuse America of having malign intentions. “Our financial intervention in Europe would almost certainly be purged of the suggestion we were treating Europe as a satellite continent in our contest with the Soviets,” Lippmann wrote, “and even in Moscow our real intentions would surely become clearer.”

  To Conant, Marshall’s initiative was exactly what was needed. He immediately enlisted in the newly formed Committee for the Marshall Plan and campaigned for Truman’s policy of aid to Europe. The lure of an American loan could be the first step in a rapprochement with Russia and lay the foundation for a workable atomic agreement. Marshall’s inspiring vision of a new inclusive international order was certainly an improvement over the adversarial tone of the Truman Doctrine. In his effort to get a tightfisted Congress to pay for putting down the Communist-led rebellion in Greece, Truman had resorted to messianic rhetoric, depicting the precipitous two-power rivalry as an inexorable clash between opposing ways of life, culminating in his declaration 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.” The president’s talk of an ideological showdown—and possible military countermeasures—marked a dangerous turn in the administration’s response to the Soviet threat and left Conant so distressed about future nuclear negotiations that it caused him “to lose almost all the hope” to which he still clung.

  The cautious optimism that flickered briefly in the six weeks following Marshall’s speech was snuffed out completely at the end of June when Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov stalked out of the Paris Peace Conference, dragging the reluctant Eastern Europeans with him. Stalin denounced the Marshall Plan as economic imperialism—“a ploy” to “infiltrate European countries.” The Russians promptly organized a Communist trading bloc and brought their territories under more rigid control. The Marshall Plan had envisaged a united Europe without a dividing line, “but the men in the Kremlin would not have it so,” Conant lamented, and instead lowered the Iron Curtain “on one side of the Continent.” All they could do now was hope that “one day it might rust away.”

  In the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, George Kennan, the American chargé d’affaires in Moscow, outlined the administration’s new hardline policy of “containment” aimed at confronting Soviet encroachment. The Russians were bent on tyrannical rule, and in their incessant quest for world power would try to fill every “nook and cranny” unless countered by an “unanswerable force.” Soviet Communist expansion could best be “contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.” Lippmann labeled it a “strategic monstrosity.” The appearance of Kennan’s latest anti-Soviet pronouncements—although only signed by “X”—in the influential journal was tantamount to an official announcement that the White House was adopting a tougher stance. The State Department planners had concluded that diplomatic negotiations with such an implacable foe were pointless.

  Conant was not ready to concede that a settlement with Moscow was a lost cause. Increasingly in the minority among his peers, he still believed there were real advantages to allaying Stalin’s suspicions and working toward some form of agreement to outlaw the proliferation of atomic weapons. Unlike the Nazis, he did not think the Soviets were intent on conquering the world. Rather, he saw the Russian armies hidden behind the Iron Curtain as “defensive,” fearful of a revived Germany and tightening their grip on Eastern Europe out of a sense of insecurity and conviction that the West was intent on cheating them out of the valuable territories and trading areas they regarded as their rightful fruits of victory. If the Russian rulers could be convinced that the United States and the Western democracies were not going to “disintegrate in a whirlpool of internal troubles”—the standard Marxist-Leninist critique of capitalism—but were instead strong, prosperous, and united, they might decide it was in their interest to remove the “sword of Damocles that now hangs over all industrialized nations.” As long as American and European leaders did not deviate from the goal of international control, Conant still believed they could rein in the nuclear arms race.

  Over the summer, he mounted a last-ditch effort to break the deadlocked negotiations with the Russians, advancing a bold, new plan for disarmament that removed the whole atomic energy enterprise from the equation. Appointed by General Frederick H. Osborn, the new US representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), to serve as one of a select group of consultants to the US atomic control negotiators, Conant began lobbying behind the scenes for a moratorium on all nuclear power development. For there to be any chance of enlisting Russian cooperation, he argued, the United States had to propose prohibiting all atomic power development for a period of time, until it could clearly specify exact stages for sharing all of its atomic information and disposing of its nuclear fuels, with the ultimate objective of eliminating its stockpile of atomic bombs.

  Not only did Conant’s idea flout the AEC’s latest public relations campaign, spearheaded by its chairman David Lilienthal, to sell the public on the peacetime promise of atomic energy, a number of his fellow atomic consultants doubted the wisdom of destroying the United States’ reserve of nuclear fuels, especially given the chronic uranium shortage. Oppenheimer, who was also a consultant to the UNAEC, warned that the Soviets were closed off to any cooperative venture and that to keep negotiating was “unwise” and “exceedingly dangerous to the American position.” He urged breaking off all negotiations.

  Undaunted by the negative reception, Conant stubbornly continued what historian James Hershberg calls his “against-the-wind battle to promote his own radical, alternative plan to save international control,” even though his closest nuclear collaborators, Bush and Oppenheimer, found his assertions increasingly hard to accept. Conant spent his August vacation in the Canadian Rockies strengthening his argument on long, rigorous eighteen-mile hikes. Patty did not find the pastime the least bit relaxing and arranged to turn an ankle so she could skip the forced marches.

  At the start of September, Conant departed for a speaking tour on the West Coast more determined than ever to do everything he could to avert the looming collision with the Soviets. Looking into his “crystal ball,” he told an audience at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that he could see a time when the division between the West and the Communists would be more or less complete, and they might reasonably look forward to a period of stability—not peace, exactly, but an “armed truce” for many years to come. This “balance of power” could be preserved as long as America remained courageous and firm in its resolve.

  “A divided world is now upon us,” he asserted. “It seems to me the height of folly to assum
e that the division is permanent or of a kind that precludes friendly intercourse across the line—and the height of foolishness to maintain that the division must lead to war.” Although he could not talk openly about his controversial moratorium plan, he emphasized that he remained committed to the possibility of a pact with Moscow.

  In his second annual appearance at the National War College on October 2, Conant, feeling less constrained in front of a military audience, went even further and suggested that it would be much better for the security of the United States if there were no nuclear weapons or their equivalent anywhere in the world. “I do not believe the benefits of atomic energy are worth the price,” he stated bluntly. “Atomic fuels can be too readily turned into atomic bombs to be safe for the civilized world to handle. A self-denying ordinance is needed . . . People who have a mania for suicide aren’t permitted to use razors,” he concluded with unaccustomed harshness. “If the human race has this mania, perhaps we had better put all this atomic fuel underground.”

  As news of his controversial War College remarks circulated in Washington, Conant discovered that his call for a moratorium on all atomic development was making waves. Lilienthal, already annoyed by Conant’s frequent comments discouraging hope of any substantial peacetime uses of atomic energy for decades to come, condemned his plan to eliminate nuclear power as counter to the basic premise of scientific progress and likened it to “trying to put the genie back in the bottle.” Over lunch, he tried to tactfully counsel Conant against publicly promoting such an idealistic—and unrealistic—idea. In the end, not wanting to be “written off as soft-headed,” Conant agreed to shelve his scheme, conceding that perhaps this was not the moment to be making such a generous offer to the Soviets.

  The coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 doomed Conant’s hopes for a nuclear alliance. The Russians installed a Kremlin puppet as prime minister, and hundreds of government leaders who had supported democracy were purged from the government and imprisoned. The last independent country in Eastern Europe had succumbed to Soviet pressure. If France or Italy were to fall next, all of Western Europe would be threatened. With their stricken economies close to collapse, it might be a matter of only weeks before the Communist parties were able to seize control. The contest between East and West had become “alarmingly clear and grim.” Any “lingering doubts” Conant had about the administration’s adversarial foreign policy were gone. Moscow’s brutal course of action converted him into “one of the first of the Cold Warriors.”

  The Prague coup, Truman told the country in a nationwide radio address on March 17, “sent a shock through the civilized world.” The president asked Congress to approve the Marshall Plan and introduce the draft again. Conant applauded the administration’s decision to come to the aid of Europe but did not see the sense in fanning the public’s war fears. While many of his contemporaries in Washington were in a state of near panic—Lippmann wrote a column predicting the “showdown” Truman had prophesied was upon them—Conant did not think the Soviets were about to march west. Speaking to the Boston Rotary Club a few days later, he tried to be deliberately upbeat, maintaining calmly that the Russians were not looking for a fight and the crisis would pass. “Conant Sees: No War, but Armed Truce,” reported the Boston Globe.

  But privately, he was increasingly pessimistic about the chances of peacefully settling the quarrel with Moscow, especially if the Russians were intent on making Europe the heart of the struggle. After listening to the president’s speech, Conant dashed off an intemperate letter to Bush—“you being the only person in the administration I know well enough to blow off to”—venting his frustration at the “tremendous amount of fuzziness in the present planning.”

  “It is all very well to talk of being prepared, mobilizing, strong from a military point of view, et cetera,” he began his rant, “but just what does this add up to in terms of strategy?”

  But what annoys me more comes in your area as a planner from a scientific point of view. It is the failure to show the importance of our meeting on a manpower basis the Russian military potential in Europe. Our only chance of balancing their threat with an equal one is by means of an air offensive, including use of the atomic bomb . . .

  I think that knowledge on the part of the Russians that they would have to trade devastation in their own country for the privilege of marching to the channel would make them stop and think.

  Careful even in the heat of anger, Conant advised his longtime confidant to toss his tirade in the “wastebasket, or better, the incinerator” immediately after reading it.

  Galvanized by the frightening events in Czechoslovakia, Conant found himself returning to the role he had played on the eve of World War II: once again using his national stature to issue a clarion call for intervention, both economic and military. “The proper pattern for preventing the outbreak of another global war involves readiness to answer coercion by the use of force,” he declared, only slightly tempering his new tough line on defense by asserting that it should be “coupled with a willingness to negotiate at any time on matters of broad policy.” He now saw the need for mobilization; for maintaining conventional ground forces in Europe to match Russia’s vast army of three to four million men, for alliances and spheres of influence, and for “ideological and political thrusts supported by military.” When a blue-ribbon committee led by Karl Compton recommended universal military training, Conant supported it publicly despite its shortcomings and joined a citizens’ committee led by prominent university presidents urging Congress to pass the necessary legislation.

  By the spring of 1948, preparedness had become a matter of urgency, all the more so given the gravity of the situation in Berlin. At the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Berlin had been divided by the victorious Big Four into four separate zones of military occupation, and the Western sectors were now vulnerable to Russian attack. Over the past year, the fate of Germany had become a flash point in the increasingly tense postwar negotiations between the Soviets and the West, with the Russians demanding $10 billion in punitive reparations for the damage caused by the Nazi invasion and scorched-earth retreat of the Wehrmacht, as well as joint control over the iron and steel industries in the Ruhr.

  As the situation worsened, the United States, Britain, and France announced they were integrating their occupation zones. With frictions frighteningly high, the Western Allies issued a new currency. The Soviets immediately denounced the move as completing the split of Germany, and the same day imposed a land blockade around Berlin, cutting off all supplies to the American, British, and French sectors of the city, and leaving 2.3 million citizens and the Allied troops without food, coal, and other basic necessities. The Americans and British responded with a counterblockade, stopping all rail traffic from their zones into East Germany. They then began a huge airlift operation to supply the crucial Western outpost—an all-important symbol of democracy—inside the Communist East. But Truman stopped short of a military confrontation. It was an election year, a tight one, and he was never going to get the American public to back a war with Russia in order to rescue Berlin, the capital of a country they had defeated only three years ago.

  Conant, who was putting the finishing touches on a new book about the need to reform America’s public schools, entitled Education in a Divided World: The Function of the Public School in Our Unique Society, quickly added an introduction that amounted to a call to arms. Strengthening the defense of Europe to stop a Soviet advance had to be a top priority, he urged, acknowledging implicitly that the atomic bomb might not serve as a deterrent and that Stalin might be tempted to test America’s willingness to use the destructive weapon in Europe. He advocated the creation of a universal military training system, enrolling every boy of eighteen or high school graduate in a national militia for a period of ten years. “Since Russia might on short notice overrun Europe with her armies (which as far as we know may be mobilized to spring forward at any moment), our balanced strength must be equally ready to strike. H
ow? With what? From where?” he demanded, warning of the country’s diminished military capacity and urging the administration and Congress to begin preparing an “overall strategic plan” to offset the Russian challenge. “Once our military answer to a possible military thrust [from across the Iron Curtain] is definite and convincing, a real stalemate will be evident to all clear-minded men even in Soviet Russia.”

  Truman’s proposal for a universal military training bill was defeated, and Congress hastily reenacted the Selective Service Law in response to the war scare. To Conant, the stopgap measure gave little thought to the means of raising an army and awakened his old concerns about the fairness of granting certain college students deferments, worrying it would inevitably result in charges of favoritism and corruption. The most “scrupulously honest” method would be for all young men between eighteen and twenty-two to be obliged to serve, with a lottery system selecting the number required to keep the military up to strength. To his mind, the nation’s real defense depended on nuclear retaliation—atomic weapons delivered by B-29 Superfortresses—not on a large infantry. This threat had been made explicit at the peak of the Berlin crisis, when America dispatched a fleet of sixty B-29s to Britain, destined for permanent bases in Europe within range of the Soviet Union. It was a ruse—while described as “atomic-capable” in the government press, the planes actually carried no atomic weapons—but there was no mistaking the message it sent Moscow.