Only the most prescient foresaw that conflict. By the time the atomic bombs had fallen on Japan, the United States had lost 280,677 men in Europe, 41,322 in the Pacific, and 115,187 in training accidents and noncombat losses along with 10,650 deceased POWs (about one fourth of all American prisoners held by the Japanese) for a total of 447,836 dead and 971,801 wounded. The war drove the national debt up (constant dollars, as a share of GNP) to a level two and a half times larger than the $5 trillion national debt of the United States in the 1990s. Although the domestic economy recovered during the war, a complete rebound from the Great Depression may not have occurred until 1946.9
Dropping the atomic bombs had the unintended effect of showing the rest of the world the power of nuclear weapons and made clear that, at least until 1949, America had a monopoly over such weapons. The United States had successfully bluffed other nations into thinking it could deliver large numbers of atomic bombs, even deep into the Soviet Union. In reality, however, America’s nuclear arsenal remained a hollow threat until the early 1950s because of the limited range of strategic aircraft and the small number of available nuclear bombs.10 By the time of the Korean War, nuclear capability had caught up to the perception, and the United States never looked back. It “had a force…with potential to deliver a smashing blow against Soviet cities,” consisting of some hundred atomic bombs and two hundred aircraft capable of hitting Russia from mainland American bases through the use of aerial refueling.11 Despite a new threat that emerged when the USSR exploded its own atomic bomb in 1949, Truman and Eisenhower maintained American nuclear superiority.
Time Line
1945:
Harry Truman ascends to the U.S. presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt
1946:
Republicans capture both the House and Senate in midterm elections
1947:
Truman Doctrine implemented; cold war begins; Marshall Plan instituted; Taft-Hartley Act
1948:
Berlin airlift; Truman reelected
1949:
NATO formed; Communists take control of China
1950:
Alger Hiss convicted; Korean War begins
1952:
Dwight D. Eisenhower elected
1953:
Korean War ends
1954:
Brown v. Board of Education
1955:
SEATO formed
1956:
Soviets crush Hungarian uprising; Eisenhower reelected
1957:
Eisenhower orders federal troops to desegregate Little Rock High School; Soviets launch Sputnik
1959:
Castro captures Cuba
1960:
John F. Kennedy elected president
The Iron Curtain and the Cold War
Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, along with the potential for communist regimes in Greece, Italy, and even France posed a new communist version of the old Nazi threat. In key elements, communism and fascism looked remarkably similar: totalitarian control of the economy, communication, and information centers; a national identity based on a single characteristic (race with the Nazis, class with the communists); the obsession over existence of an enemy, whose very presence supposedly prevented the appearance of the ideological utopia; and all power relegated to a dangerous and ambitious dictator. It is true that the Soviets, who lost millions of lives in World War II, had good reason to strike a strong defensive posture after the war, but that does not justify their takeover of sovereign nations. Mistakenly, most of the Allies—again, Churchill was the lone exception—hoped the USSR really did not mean its rhetoric about international revolution and the destruction of the international bourgeoisie. When it became clear that the Soviets had no intention of leaving occupied areas, but rather planned to incorporate them into a new Soviet empire, a belated light went on in the heads of many in the State Department.
Churchill had been sounding the alarm about the communists for years. Roosevelt, however, naively expressed his confidence in his one-on-one ability to handle Stalin, eerily echoing the attitudes of Neville Chamberlain, who thought he could handle Hitler at Munich. Once again, FDR’s own prejudices had been amplified by rosy reports from the U.S. ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davies, who instructed the president that to “distrust Stalin was ‘bad Christianity, bad sportsmanship, bad sense.’”12 By 1945, Churchill was shrewdly trying to manipulate American power like a “great unwieldy barge,” steering it into the “right harbor,” lest it “wallow in the ocean.”13 Churchill remained clear eyed about the long-term threat posed by an expansionist, communist Soviet Union. His March 5, 1946, speech to Westminster College in Missouri proclaimed that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” placing the nations of Eastern Europe under a “high and in many cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.”14 Truman refused to endorse Churchill’s position, continuing to refer to the Soviets as “friends,” even offering Stalin a chance to deliver a rebuttal to the students at Westminster! Yet beneath the surface, Truman’s attitudes had started to change.
Harry Truman was born in Independence, Missouri, to a life of great contrasts. Raised in a Southern Baptist tradition, steeped in Victorian morality, he wrote in his diary in the 1930s that America needed a “reformation of the heart.” At the same time, he used profanity with staggering deftness, and in any company. One Roosevelt appointee, Chester Bowles, expressed his shock at the emotional discussions he had had with Truman in a half-hour conversation “punctuated by extraordinary profanity.”15
Truman’s World War I combat experience gave him what no president since Teddy Roosevelt had possessed—firsthand knowledge of the horrors of war. Perhaps that fact accounts for both men’s willingness to support a strong peacetime military force, when others, including Coolidge, had failed to see the need for such investments. After the war Truman moved to Kansas City, where he opened a haberdashery. That, like most of his other business attempts, failed.
Business failure led Truman to his true calling in politics. Taken under the wing of Thomas J. Pendergast’s Kansas City Democratic machine, Truman won election as a judge on the Jackson County Court in 1922, with the unusual job (for a jurist) of overseeing the Kansas City road system and supervising its (largely corrupt) paymasters. This was akin to trying to stay sweet smelling in a fertilizer factory! Truman pulled it off, largely by throwing himself into the legitimate aspects of the road programs. Truman’s frugal lower-middle-class lifestyle testified to his fundamental honesty. When his mentor, Pendergast, was tagged with a $350,000 fine and fifteen months in Leavenworth Federal Prison for graft, Truman wrote Bess, “Looks like everyone got rich in Jackson County but me.”16
Voters rewarded his independence in 1934, electing him to a U.S. Senate seat, but six years later the association with Pendergast still threatened his reelection. Then, at the very moment when Truman might have fallen off the pages of history, an odd serendipity intervened. The county seized the Truman family farm, making it abundantly clear that he had not profited from his public service, and he was reelected. In his second term he headed the Truman Committee investigation of price gouging by defense contractors during the war. His turning up numerous examples of fraud and waste made him a national figure and put his name before the Democratic Party power brokers, who in turn urged him on Roosevelt in 1944. FDR’s death, of course, catapulted the humble Missourian into history.
President Harry Truman knew in 1946 that the American public would not tolerate another new conflict, especially over Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. On the other hand, he wished to avoid encouraging another Hitler to swallow up other European countries. When the Soviets failed to withdraw from Iran on deadline, as they had promised, Truman viewed it as the first test of Western resolve. “This may lead to war,” he told his commerce secretary.17 Subordinates pressed the matter strongly in the United Nations Security Council, at which time the Soviets reluctantly accepted the fact that they could no
t pull off a Munich. Negotiations between the Iranians and Soviets resulted in the Russians pulling out, but there is little question they did so because they realized Truman, although no Churchill, was no Chamberlain either. Whether he fully appreciated it or not, Truman had sided with those who viewed the Soviet Union as fundamentally different from other Russian empires. Stalin’s USSR was an ideological expansionist state, not just a traditional big power seeking to protect its borders.
A third group remained active in government, however—those who saw the USSR as a potential model for human development. Many of the New Dealers, including Rexford Tugwell and Roosevelt’s agriculture secretary (and later, vice president), Henry Wallace, profoundly admired Stalin, and most of these intellectuals favored complete pacifism and disarmament in the face of Soviet expansion. To a far greater extent than many Americans want to believe, communist agents had penetrated the Roosevelt administration and reached high levels: Harold Ware had staffed his AAA agency with communist sympathizers; Ware and his AAA colleagues John Abt, Lee Pressman, and Nathan Witt (all devout communists) worked with spy Alger Hiss. Other underground agents worked in the Office of Price Administration (Victor Perlo), the NRA (Henry Collins), and the Farm Security Administration (Nathan Silvermaster). There were communist agents in the Treasury, State, and Interior departments, and even in the nation’s spy agency, the OSS. Duncan Lee, the chief of staff for the OSS, was a KGB agent.18
Perhaps the most dangerous of these characters was Wallace, whom Roosevelt named as commerce secretary after he was dropped from the 1944 ticket to make room for Truman. Wallace pulled the department further to the left during the New Deal, when he expressed his admiration for Stalin’s economic achievements. By the time Truman replaced him, Wallace was leader of the progressive/socialist wing of the Democratic Party.19
It did not take long for the former veep to make waves. He wrote the president a long memo in July 1945, advocating unilateral disarmament, then leaked the contents to the press in a startling display of presumptuousness and contempt for the chain of command. Many in Roosevelt’s administration viewed Wallace as a mystic, a wild spender who would “give every Hottentot a pint of American milk every day.”20 Wallace seriously entertained notions that groups of generals were scheming to stage a coup against the president. Truman bluntly called Wallace a “cat bastard.”21 To have such an apologist for the Soviets in a cabinet-level position shocked Truman: “Wallace is a pacifist 100 per cent. He wants us to disband our armed forces, give Russia our atomic secrets and trust a bunch of adventurers in the Politburo.”22
Extremist New Dealers viewed Wallace as the genuine heir to the Roosevelt mantle; Truman was an unsatisfactory substitute. Truman’s unexpected ascension to the presidency dramatically altered the expected steady march of the New Deal. One historian called Wallace “the closest the Soviets ever came to choosing and nominating a candidate for the American presidency.”23 Recently released KGB archive material has revealed that at the time, Harry Dexter White, in the Treasury Department, and Lawrence Duggan were Soviet agents. Wallace later said that had he become president, White would have been his treasury secretary and Duggan his secretary of state.24 Furthermore, Wallace’s Progressive Party had active Soviet agents at every level of its organization, including platform committee chairman, recording secretary, and Wallace’s chief speechwriter. A Wallace presidency probably would have led to new rounds of Soviet expansionism, most likely in Europe. Given the determination of the French and British to remain independent, and the fact that they were both nuclear players by the mid-1950s, it is not unreasonable to conclude that nuclear weapons would have been used at some point against Soviet incursions. By naming the hard-line Truman, FDR may have prevented a nuclear war in more ways than one.
Attacking Communism with a Two-Edged Sword…and a Saxophone!
Most American policy analysts agreed that the United States, even with the full support of the European allies, was not militarily capable of pushing the Soviets out of their occupied areas. Therefore, the United States needed another strategy of resistance. Truman had kept his eye on British efforts to support the Greek government against communist guerrillas since March 1946, but by early 1947, England was running out of money. Her own economy had suffered, the empire was in disarray, and the war had simply sapped the will of the British citizenry in such matters.
In February 1947, Truman, George Marshall (army chief of staff and now secretary of state), George Kennan (head of the Policy Planning Staff), and Dean Acheson (undersecretary of state) met with leaders from the newly elected Republican-dominated Congress, whose support would be essential. In the past they had resisted overseas involvement. Senator Arthur Vandenberg assured Truman that the Republicans would support him, but that the president would have to take his case directly to the American people too. Consequently, Truman laid out the Truman Doctrine, establishing as American policy the support of “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” The cold war had begun.
Aid to Greece and Turkey solved the immediate problem, but the whole dam threatened to break unless extensive support was extended to the rest of Western Europe. Communists gained ground in the 1947 French and Italian elections as both nations struggled to recover from the ravages of war. Stopping Soviet expansionism would require the United States to inject capital, expertise, and economic support of every type into Europe in order to revive the free economies there. The Marshall Plan, outlined in June 1947, proved exactly the right remedy. European nations requested $17 billion over a four-year period. It joined the Truman Doctrine as a basis for America’s cold war strategy.
The coup in Czechoslovakia and the near collapse of Greece led Kennan to conceive a framework for resisting communism that involved neither appeasement nor full-scale conflict. Kennan had trod a remarkable intellectual journey since the prewar years. Four years of war against fascist troops had given Kennan a keen knowledge of the grave threat posed by totalitarian dictatorships, especially the USSR.25 In July 1947, Kennan wrote an article under the pseudonym Mr. X for Foreign Affairs entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which outlined a strategy for dealing with an aggressive Soviet Union.26 The key to winning the cold war, Kennan wrote, lay in a strategy of “containment,” in which the United States did not seek to roll back Soviet gains as much as to build a giant economic/military/political fence around the communist state so that it could not expand farther. America should respond to Soviet advances with “the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points,” Kennan wrote.27
Curiously, containment introduced a diametric inversion of V. I. Lenin’s own Marxist hypotheses from the turn of the century, when European nations still engaged in creating overseas empires. Lenin’s Imperialism sought to explain why there were no communist revolutions in capitalist nations, as predicted by Marx. According to Marx, the overproduction of the capitalist’s boom-and-bust business cycle would lead to a wide depression, yet no such revolutions had occurred. Why? Lenin reasoned that imperialism explained this glitch—that capitalist countries exported their surpluses to the underdeveloped sections of the globe through the process of acquiring empires. Without this expansion, capitalism would die.
Kennan’s containment doctrine stood Lenin’s thesis on its head. It was the Soviet Union—not the capitalist countries—that needed to expand to survive. Without expansion to justify totalitarian controls, a huge secret police, and massive expenditures on the military, the USSR and its leaders would have to explain to the people why they had virtually no cars, little good food, and a staggering lack of basic items such as soap and toilet paper. Containing the Soviets and stifling their expansionist ventures would focus Russian attention on their sad domestic economy, which was accelerating the collapse of communism through its own dead weight. Containment would make the communists, not the capitalists, their own grave diggers. The second edge of the
sword, then, became a military alliance with the free countries of Europe. Several European countries—England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg—had signed a collective defense pact in 1948. Now Truman sought to join and expand and strengthen it. Norway and Italy were invited to join along with Canada. On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established, linking America directly to European entanglements for the first time since the Revolution. Under the agreement, an “armed attack against one” would be considered an attack upon all. Since the United States already had established the fact that any attack on American assets was an act of war, to which the response could be atomic bombing, the NATO treaty effectively linked the Western European powers to the U.S. atomic umbrella. To more firmly cement this relationship, Truman ordered four U.S. divisions to Europe for permanent duty there—with the Allies’ consent—in essence, putting American bodies in the line of fire to ensure full participation by the United States.
Leftist scholars have sought to paint the Soviets as victims and NATO as the villain. One mainstream text argues that “there was no evidence of any Russian plan to invade Western Europe, and in the face of the American atomic bomb, none was likely.”28 This is simply fantasy, as recent documents from the former Soviet states have revealed. The Warsaw Pact had a plan in place for an invasion of the West that included a barrage of tactical nuclear weapons just ahead of the Soviet advance. More important, the Soviets’ espionage network informed them fully that American atomic bombs could not be delivered in sufficient numbers against targets in the USSR—and certainly could not be dropped on Western European soil without a massive backlash that probably would split the alliance. Pro-Soviet historians ignore the incredible buildup of offensive forces by the USSR, giving the lie to the notion that the massive Soviet arms expansion was defensive. Almost immediately, Stalin, in June 1948, probed into the Allied belly at Berlin.
A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror Page 105