American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Truman’s address to UN]: April 25, 1945, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961-66), vol. 1, pp. 20-23, quoted at pp. 20, 21.

  [Hopkins in Moscow]: Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (Harper, 1948), ch. 35; Herbert Feis, Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference (Princeton University Press, 1960), chs. 15-18.

  [End of European war]: John Toland, The Last 100 Days (Random House, 1965); Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (Simon and Schuster, 1966); William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Simon and Schuster, 1960), chs. 30-31.

  [Truman and FDR’s cabinet]: see Truman to Jonathan Daniels (unsent), February 26, 1950, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (Harper, 1980), p. 174.

  224 [Okinawa]: Roy E. Appleman, James M. Burns, Russell A. Gugeler, and John Stevens, Okinawa: The Last Battle (U.S. Department of the Army, 1948); John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945, (Random House, 1970), ch. 30.

  [Potsdam]: Feis, part 4; Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (Norton, 1977), chs. 8-9; Mastny, pp. 292-304; Truman, Decisions, chs. 21-25; Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929-1969 (Norton, 1973), ch. 13; Charles L. Mee*, Jr., Meeting at Potsdam (M. Evans & Co., 1975); Churchill, Triumph, book 2, chs. 19-20.

  [“Open the gates”]: quoted in Thomas, p. 252.

  [Debate over political role of atomic bomb and its use against Japan]: Toland, Rising Sun, chs. 31-32; Truman, Decisions, pp. 4, 14-20; Donovan, chs. 5, 7, 10; Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (Harper, 1948), chs. 22-23; Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950 (Knopf, 1980), ch. 1 and passim; Gardiner, Architects, ch. 7; Fleming, vol. 1, pp. 296-308; Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (Knopf, 1975), esp. part 3; Herbert Feis, Japan Subdued: The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War in the Pacific (Princeton University Press, 1961), parts 1, 4, and passim; Barton J. Bernstein, “Roosevelt, Truman, and the Atomic Bomb, 1941-1945: A Reinterpretation,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 90, no. 1 (Spring 1975), pp. 23-69; Maddox, ch. 3; Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (Simon and Schuster, 1965); Yergin, pp. 1 15-16, 120-22, and 433-34 n. 19; Stephen Harper, Miracle of Deliverance: The Case for the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985).

  [Bernstein on atomic bomb legacy]: “Roosevelt, Truman,” p. 24.

  [“Most terrible weapon”]: quoted in Stimson and Bundy, p. 635.

  [“Royal straight flush”]: quoted in Herken, p. 17.

  224-5 [“American cards”]: ibid.

  225 [Truman-Stalin exchange on bomb at Potsdam]: Mastny, pp. 297-98; Bohlen, p. 237; Donovan, p. 93; Churchill, Triumph, pp. 669-70; see also Feis, Potsdam, ch. 23; Yergin, p. 121.

  [U.S. bombing of Japanese cities]: Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (Free Press, 1985), pp. 487-93, 503-6; Toland, Rising Sun, pp. 670-77; Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (Oxford University Press, 1985), chs. 6-7; Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II (University of Chicago Press, 1948-58), vol. 5, chs. 17-18, 20-21.

  [Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and surrender]: Toland, Rising Sun, chs. 33-37; Craven and Cate, vol. 5, pp. 703-35; John Hersey, Hiroshima (Knopf, 1946); Robert J. C. Butow, Japan’s Decision to Surrender (Stanford University Press, 1954); Barton J. Bernstein, “The Perils and Politics of Surrender: Ending the War with Japan and Avoiding the Third Atomic Bomb,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 46 (1977), pp.1-27; Pacific War Research Society, Japan’s Longest Day (Kodansha International, 1980); Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain, trans. (Basic Books, 1981).

  226 [“Let them”]: quoted in Yergin, p. 121; see also Mastny, p. 298.

  [Truman on Stalin]: quoted in Yergin, p. 119.

  [Byrnes at London Foreign Ministers’ conference]: Robert L. Messer, The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 1982), ch. 7; Herken, ch. 3; Yergin, pp. 122-32; James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (Harper, 1947), ch. 5.

  [“Here’s to the atom bomb”]: quoted in Yergin, p. 123.

  227 [American ambivalence over Soviet intentions]: see Lynn E. Davis, The Cold War Begins: Soviet-American Conflict over Eastern Europe (Princeton University Press, 1974), ch. 11; Herken, ch. 2; John Lewis Caddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History (Wiley, 1978), ch. 7 passim; Caddis, Long Peace, ch. 2; Robert Daltek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (Knopf, 1983), ch. 6; William Zimmerman, “Rethinking Soviet Foreign Policy: Changing American Perspectives,” International Journal, vol. 25 (Summer 1980), pp. 548-62; see also William Welch, American Images of Soviet Foreign Policy: An Inquiry into Recent Appraisals from the Academic Community (Yale University Press, 1970); Thomas, book 2; Melvyn F. Leffler, “The American Conception of the National Security State and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1948,” American Historical Review, vol. 89, no. 2 (April 1984), pp. 346-81.

  [Poll on bomb secret and UN]: Dallek, p. 161; see also Paterson, On Every Front, pp. 113-29; Yergin, pp. 171-72.

  [Soviet cold war policy, sources and conflicts]: Werth, chs. 11, 14, and passim; Crankshaw, ch.5 and passim; Frederick C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Image of the United States (Harcourt, 1950); Thomas, book 1; Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (Pergamon Press, 1981), chs. 2-3; Marshall D. Shulman, Stalin’s Foreign Policy Reappraised (Harvard University Press, 1963); Anatol Rapoport, The Big Two: Soviet-American Perceptions of Foreign Policy (Pegasus, 1971), pp. 120-26; Paterson, On Every Front, ch. 7; William Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente to Detente to Cold War (Norton, 1982), esp. chs. 5-7; Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1967 (Praeger, 1968), pp. 408-55; Robert V. Daniels, Russia: The Roots of Confrontation (Harvard University Press, 1985), chs. 8-9; Genrikh Trofimenko, The U.S. Military Doctrine (Progress Publishers, Moscow, n.d.), esp. chs. 1-2.

  [“Leaving them in the lurch”]: quoted in Daniels, p. 220.

  [“Year of Cement”]: Yergin, p. 166.

  [Stalin’s Bolshoi Theater address]: February 9, 1946, in Walter LaFeber, ed., The Dynamics of World Power, A Documentary History of United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1973: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Chelsea House, 1973), pp. 191-99; see also Werth, ch. 5; Yergin, pp. 166-67, 177.

  [Douglas on Stalin’s speech]: quoted in Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (Viking, 1950), p. 134.

  [Kennan’s “long telegram”]: “Telegraphic Message from Moscow to the State Department on Soviet Policies,” February 22, 1946, in LaFeber, pp. 200-10, quoted at pp. 207, 208; see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford University Press, 1982), chs. 2-3; Rapoport, pp. 106-12; Yergin, pp. 168-71; Thomas G. Paterson, “The Search for Meaning: George F. Kennan and American Foreign Policy,” in Merli and Wilson, pp. 568-76; John Lewis Gaddis, “Containment: A Reassessment,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 55, no. 4 (July 1977), pp. 873-87; George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 (Atlantic Monthly/ Little, Brown, 1967), ch. it; Thomas, ch. 22.

  228 [“Complete power of disposition”]: “Telegraphic Message” in LaFeber, quoted at p. 208.

  [“An iron curtain”]: March 5, 1946, in ibid, pp. 210-17, quoted at pp. 214, 215; see also Terry H. Anderson, The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947 (University of Missouri Press, 1981), pp. 110-16; Fleming, vol. 1, pp. 348-57; Thomas, ch. 23.

  229 [“Call to war”]: March 13, 1946, in LaF
eber, pp. 217-21, quoted at p. 218; see also Werth, pp. 110-14.

  [“Putrid and baneful”]: quoted in Daniels, p. 227.

  [Forrestal’s anti-Sovietism]: see Gardner, Architects, ch. 10; Millis, passim. [Kennan’s “X” article and his concern about his influence]: “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 25, no. 4 (July 1947), pp. 566-82; Kennan, Memoirs, pp. 294-95, ch. 15; see also Gaddis, Russia, pp. 187-88.

  229-30 [Byrnes and Truman]: Messer, chs. 8-9; Truman, Decisions, pp. 545-52.

  230 [1946 Congressional elections]: Donovan, ch. 24.

  [“Greatest victory”]: quoted in Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1911-1962 (Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 141.

  [HUAC’s plans for 1947]: quoted in Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948 (Knopf, 1972), p. 132.

  [“Class of ’46”]: see David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (Free Press, 1983), p. 53; Ambrose, Nixon, p. 141.

  [Loyalty program]: Athan Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Quadrangle, 1971), pp. 103-6, quoted at p. 105; Alan D. Harper, The Politics of Loyalty: The White House and the Communist Issue, 1946-1952 (Greenwood Publishing, 1969), ch. 3; Truman, Trial and Hope, ch. 19; Donovan, ch. 31; Athan Theoharis, “The Escalation of the Loyalty Program,” in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (Quadrangle, 1970), pp. 242-68; Roger S. Abbott, “The Federal Loyalty Program,” in Edward E. Palmer, ed., The Communist Problem in America (Crowell, 1951), pp. 385-97; see, generally, Stanley I. Kutler, The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War (Hill and Wang, 1982); Herbert Mitgang, Dangerous Dossiers (Donald I. Fine, 1988); Diggins, Proud Decades, ch. 5 passim.

  [“Membership in, affiliation with”]: quoted in Abbott, p. 390.

  [Attorney General’s list]: Freeland, pp. 208-16; Palmer, Appendix.

  [Loyalty board proceedings]: Harper, pp. 47-53, executive order quoted at p. 39; David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 269-92.

  [“The man who fears”]: Seth W. Richardson, quoted in Richard M. Fried, Men Against McCarthy (Columbia University Press, 1976), p. 24.

  231 [HUAC in Hollywood, 1947]: Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of House Committee on Un-American Activities (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968), pp. 207-25; Victor Navasky, Naming Names (Viking, 1980); Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 (Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1980), esp. chs. 8, 10; Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (Harper, 1985), pp. 301-10; Gordon Kahn, Hollywood on Trial: The Story of the 10 Who Were Indicted (Boni & Gaer, 1948).

  [Menjou on communists]: quoted in Roger Burlingame, The Sixth Column (Lippincott, 1962), p. 127.

  [Cooper on communism]: quoted in Goodman, p. 209.

  [Hollywood and radio purge]: Pells, p. 310; see also John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting, 2 vols. (Fund for the Republic, 1956).

  [Ex-communists]: see Navasky; Herbert L. Packer, Ex-Communist Witnesses: Four Studies in Fact Finding (Stanford University Press, 1962).

  [Hiss case]: Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (Knopf, 1978); Alistair Cooke, Generation on Trial: U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss (Knopf, 1950); Ambrose, Nixon, ch. 10; Packer, ch. 2; Goodman, ch. 8 passim; Leslie A. Fiedler, “Hiss, Chambers, and the Age of Innocence,” in Fiedler, The Collected Essays of Leslie Fiedler (Stein & Day, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 3-24.

  232 [“We’ve been had!”]: quoted in Weinstein, p. 15.

  [Truman on the menace of communism]: Freeland, pp. 335-36.

  [“Red herring”]: Weinstein, p. 15.

  [Greek crisis and Administration response]: Freeland, ch. 2; Theoharis, Seeds, ch. 3; John Lewis Gaddis, “Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 52, no. 2 (January 1974), pp. 386-402; Yergin, pp. 279-83; Truman, Trial and Hope, ch. 8; Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks (February 21-June 5, 1947) (Viking, 1955); Michael Leigh, Mobilizing Consent: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, 1937-1947 (Greenwood Press, 1976), ch. 5; Fleming, vol. 1, pp. 438-61, 465-76.

  232 [“Ripe plum”]: Mark Ethridge, quoted in Yergin, pp. 279-80.

  [Truman’s address to Congress]: “The Truman Doctrine,” March 12, 1947, in LaFeber, pp. 309-13, quoted at p. 312.

  233 [Marshall’s Harvard address]: “Proposal of the Marshall Plan,” June 5, 1947, in ibid., pp. 320-22, quoted at pp. 320, 321.

  [Marshall Plan]: John Gimbel, The Origins of the Marshall Plan (Stanford University Press, 1976); Jones; Charles L. Mee, Jr., The Marshall Plan: The Launching of the Pax Americana (Simon and Schuster, 1984); Freeland, ch. 4; Werth, pp. 257-81; LaFeber, pp. 322-29; Thomas G. Paterson, “The Quest for Peace and Prosperity: International Trade, Communism, and the Marshall Plan,” in Bernstein, Politics and Policies, pp. 78-112; Michael J. Hogan, “Paths to Plenty; Marshall Planners and the Debate over European Integration, 1947-1948,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 53 (1984), pp. 337-66.

  [Cominform]: see Werth, ch. 14.

  234 [White on psychological tendencies in cold war]: see Ralph K. White, Fearful Warriors (Free Press, 1984), ch. 10; see also Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 1976); Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (Jason Aronson Inc., 1988).

  [Lippmann on “X” article]: Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (Harper, 1947); see also Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1980), pp. 443-46; Barton J. Bernstein, “Walter Lippmann and the Early Cold War,” in Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years (Quadrangle, 1971), pp. 18-53.

  [Wallace’s Madison Square Garden address]: September 12, 1946, in LaFeber, pp. 255-60, quoted at p. 258; Richard J. Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War (Viking, 1976), pp. 100-8; Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941-1948 (Free Press, 1973), pp. 178-82; Alonzo L. Hamby, “Henry A. Wallace, the Liberals, and Soviet-American Relations,” Review of Politics, vol. 30, no. 2 (April 1968), pp. 153-69,

  235 [Truman’s approval of Wallace’s speech]: see Walton, pp. 98-99; John Morton Blum, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946 (Houghton Mifflin, 1973), pp. 612-13; Truman, Decisions, p. 557.

  [Washington reaction to Wallace’s address]: Walton, pp. 108-12, Vandenberg quoted at p. 111; Blum, p. 613 n. 1, and pp. 613-32; Truman, Decisions, pp. 557-60; Byrnes, pp. 239-43; Donovan, ch. 23.

  [“You, yourself”]: Blum, p. 618.

  [“Pacifist one hundred per cent”]: quoted in Walton, pp. 113-14.

  [Eleanor Roosevelt and postwar world]: see Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone (Norton, 1972), chs. 1-6 passim; Tamara K. Hareven, Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience (Quadrangle, 1968), chs. 10-12.

  235-6 [Truman’s political position, early 1948]: see Richard S. Kirkendall, “Election of 1948,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1968 (Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 4, pp. 3100-4.

  236 [ADA]: Clifton Brock, Americans for Democratic Action: Its Role in National Politics (Public Affairs Press, 1962); Mary S. McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), pp. 5-10 and passim; Alonzo L. Hamby, “The Liberals, Truman, and FDR as Symbol and Myth,” Journal of American History, vol. 56, no. 4 (March 1970), pp. 859-67; Norman Markowitz, “From the Popular Front to Cold War Liberalism,” in Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis, eds., The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (New Viewpoints, 1974), pp. 90-115.

  [Truman’s civil rights message]: Fe
bruary 2, 1948, in Truman Public Papers, vol. 4, pp. 121-26; see also Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (University Press of Kansas, 1973), ch. 6; Donovan, ch. 35; William C. Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Ohio State University Press, 1973), ch. 2 and pp. 79-85; Barton J. Bernstein, “The Ambiguous Legacy: The Truman Administration and Civil Rights,” in Bernstein, Politics and Policies, pp. 269-314.

  236 [Dewey’s nomination]: Richard N. Smith, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times (Simon and Schuster, 1982), ch. 14; Kirkendall, pp. 3113-16; James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: Robert A. Taft (Houghton Mifflin, 1972), chs. 26-27.

  236-7 [Dixiecrat revolt]: Leonard Dinnerstein, “The Progressive and States’ Rights Parties of 1948,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), vol. 4, pp. 3314-19, 3324-28; V. O. Key, Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation (Knopf, 1949), pp. 329-44; Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950’s (Louisiana State University Press, 1969), pp. 28-37; McCoy and Ruetten, ch. 7; Truman, Trial and Hope, pp. 179-87.

  237 [Progressive convention]: Curtis D. MacDougall, Gideon’s Army (Marzani & Munsell, 1965), vol. 2, chs. 22-25; Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, ‘The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919-1957) (Beacon Press, 1957), pp. 469-77; David A. Shannon, The Decline of American Communism: A History of the Communist Party Since 194** (Harper, 959), pp. 164-75.

  [Democratic civil rights plank]: see Schlesinger, Elections, vol. 4, p. 3154; see also Kirkendall, pp. 3117-18; Truman, Trial and Hope, pp. 181-83.

  [1948 campaign]: Donovan, chs. 41-43; Smith, ch. 15; Kirkendall, pp. 3123-45; Dinnerstein, pp. 3321-27; MacDougall, vol. 3; Walton, chs. 5-9 passim: Berman, ch. 3 passim: Markowitz, Rise and Fall, ch. 8; Truman, Trial and Hope, ch. 15; Susan M. Hartmann, Truman and the 80th Congress (University of Missouri Press, 1971), ch. 8; Robert A. Divine, “The Cold War and the Election of 1948,” Journal of American History, vol. 59, no. 1 (June 1972), pp. 90-110; Harvard Silkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in American Politics,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 37, no. 4 (November 1971), pp. 597-616; Allen Yarnell, Democrats and Progressives: The 1948 Presidential Election as a Test of Postwar Liberalism (University of California Press, 1974); Irwin Ross, The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 (New American Library, 1968); Oral History of Henry Wallace, Columbia University, pp. 21-72.