The Iron Curtain
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The Iron Curtain CHURCHILL, AMERICA, and the ORIGINS of the COLD WAR
Fraser J. Harbutt
Oxford University Press New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petalingjaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Aukland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan
Copyright ® 1986 by Fraser J. Harbutt First published in 1986 by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1988 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harbutt, Fraser The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Great Britain—Foreign relations—1943-1946— 2. Churchill, Winston, Sir, 1874-1965. 3. United StatesForeign relations—1943-1946. 4. World politics—1943-1946 1955. I. Title. DA588.H27 1986 940.55'4 85-30972 ISBN 0-19-503817-7 ISBN 0-19-505422-9 (PBK.)
987654321 Printed in the United States of America
For Marysia
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Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to those who, at different times and in varying degrees, helped me to write this book. They include the American historians, Diane Shaver Clemens, Lawrence W. Levine, Robert L. Messer, Michael Paul Rogin, Martin J. Sherwin, and James Harvey Young. On the British side I owe thanks to Martin Gilbert and Sir Frank Roberts for encouragement and assistance. The responsibility for the interpretations and any errors remains, needless to say, with me alone. I record with appreciation financial grants from the Smith College faculty research fund and from the University Research Committee of Emory University. The patience and goodwill of individual librarians in numerous institutions, among them the National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the Roosevelt and Truman presidential libraries, and the Public Records Office in London, was immensely helpful. Patricia Stockbridge typed the manuscript and various amendments with cheerfulness and professionalism. My sincere thanks to all. I am especially beholden to two people. One is my agent, Gerard McCauley, who gave indispensable practical assistance. The other, to whom I feel a deep sense of gratitude, is Sheldon Meyer, Senior Vice President of Oxford University Press, who edited the book and was encouraging and constructive throughout. A first book on a controversial subject must be a somewhat speculative venture, even for an editor of this great experience and high distinction. No hint of this underlying truth, however, was ever conveyed to me. I must also thank all the other fine people at Oxford University Press for their contributions, with special mention of Leona Capeless, the considerate Man-
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aging Editor, and Otto Sonntag, whose excellent copyediting saved me from many errors. My deepest obligation is to my wife, Marysia, whose sustaining affection, generosity, and good nature have allowed me to realize a long ambition. In what cannot be more than a token recompense, I dedicate the book to her. Atlanta, Georgia June ip86
F.J.H.
Contents Introduction, vii 1 | Churchill and America, 3 2 | Churchill, Bolshevism, and the Grand Alliance, 23 3 | Churchill Faces Postwar Problems: Teheran to Yalta, 52 4 | Yalta to Potsdam, 81 5 | Anglo-Soviet Cold War, United States-Soviet Rapprochement, 117 6 | Churchill and Truman, 151 7 | The "Iron Curtain," 183 8 | The Making of a Showdown, 209 9 | Confrontation, 242 10 | Aftermath and Conclusion, 267 Notes Bibliography Index
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Introduction
This book is, in one sense, a biography of Winston Churchill in his role as the most active protagonist of a joint Anglo-American political front against the Soviet Union during and immediately after World War II. It is a subject of considerable interest, for it displays Churchill embroiled in the most consistent antagonism of his long career. It is also a story of repeated failure suddenly redeemed by a conclusive, dramatic triumph. My purpose is not, however, exclusively biographical. Indeed, the study of almost any aspect of Churchill's career seems to lead one inexorably toward questions of broad significance, so closely connected was he with the profound events of our century. This is certainly true of the origins of the Cold War. Here, as we explore his thought and action, we will find both a distinctive angle of vision and a personal impact that was, in certain respects, decisive. Surely the United States has never had a more persistent courtier than Churchill. He was active in the British effort to bring America into belligerency against Germany in World War I and again, as Prime Minister, in World War II. His initial efforts to create an Anglo-American front against the Soviet Union also go back to the first great conflagration. His reaction to the 1917 revolution was bitterly hostile. He quickly established himself as his country's leading anti-Bolshevik, defining the new regime in Russia as Britain's primary future antagonist and, even before the Armistice in November 1918, talking about the need to build up the defeated German army against this new menace. During 1919 he vigorously directed the British intervention in Russia and en-
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thusiastically defended the use of gas against revolutionaries he seems to have regarded as subhuman. Meanwhile, he tried to draw the United States more fully into the military confrontation with the Soviets. President Woodrow Wilson, however, proved unresponsive. Churchill, deeply disappointed, did not give up. As late as 1931 we find him touring the United States and warning audiences that "the two great opposing forces of the future will be the Englishspeaking peoples and Communism." Through most of the interwar period, Churchill conducted a personal campaign against the Soviet regime that included the approval of fascism as a necessary European antidote. The appearance of a renewed German menace in the mid-i93os, however, inspired second thoughts. He now accepted the Soviet state as a necesary fixture. There was then a considerable further mellowing with the responsibility of supreme leadership in Britain during the war that followed. He formed a personal bond of sorts with Joseph Stalin and even collaborated with him briefly in a plan to divide postwar Europe. But, as we will see, the old hostility remained just beneath the surface, and Churchill's postwar hopes, for the most part, centered on the notion of a dominant AngloAmerican military and economic combination confronting a petitionary Soviet Union. Here again, though, except briefly in 1945, he was successively rebuffed by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Only in the crisis of early 1946, when a sudden reorientation in American policy led to the Cold War, was he finally and completely successful. In that transformation Churchill took a leading part. The most obvious manifestation of this was his "iron curtain" speech on March 5, 1946, at Fulton, Missouri. There, for a moment, the twentieth century was reduced to the dimensions of Periclean Greece, as the famous orator brought together the two themes that had dominated his political outlook for nearly three decades—fear of Soviet Russia, belief in a countering Anglo-American mission—at precisely the moment when much of the world was poised receptively in uneasy, halfconscious transition to a new international system based on that very proposition. But Churchill's contribution to the transformation went far beyond the Fulton speech itself. Indeed, as we follow the course of events and try to understand the political relationships and perceptions involved in this crisis, we will find that he exerted considerable influence upon both the American reorientation and the Soviet response. So far as the origins of the Cold War are concerned, this focus on Churchill offers a valuable European perspective. The historical treatment of the Cold War, we do well to remember, has been an overwhelmingly American enterprise. There is nothing surprising in this. Diplomatic historians cleave instinctively to grandeur. Thus, for many years after World War II, when the power of the United States in the world rose so visibly and dramatically, scholars in this country clustered thickly around the germinating events of the early Cold War, unquestionably a moment of high American destiny. The study of
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American foreign policy in earlier periods languished by comparison. Precisely the opposite trend developed in Britain, a great power now in steep decline. Historians there, always less interested in recent history than their American colleagues anyway, explored the politics of the 1930s, Churchill's wartime leadership, and the exploits of the desert generals. But they seem to have drawn a kind of line for themselves around 1945. Certainly there was little interest in recording the grim adjustment to postwar reality and second-rank status presided over by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, a dynamic figure who has nevertheless had to wait nearly four decades for a full biography. The result is that, partly for lack of a British balance, partly because there were so few acceptable Soviet contributions, the study of Cold War origins rapidly acquired the excessively Americocentric cast that, despite heartening signs of change in recent years, it continues to exhibit. One consequence of this imbalance is that we know a great deal about the indigenous impulses that lie behind the making of American foreign policy. We know much less than is commonly supposed, however, about the international environment—the crises, the points of political connection, and the sometimes frantic diplomatic maneuvering—out of which the Cold War actually developed. It is symptomatic of this that we do not even know when the Cold War began, though opinions proliferate, and that the crisis of 1946, though long acknowledged to have been the occasion of an important reorientation in American policy toward the Soviet Union, has not yet, so far as I am aware, inspired a monographic treatment or been analyzed fully from the point of view of international diplomacy. We have, perhaps, elevated unduly the "new" diplomacy of popular opinion, mass ideology, and bureaucratic factionalism at the expense of the "old" state-oriented, political diplomacy of the international chessboard. Both perspectives, the one characteristically American, the other so often associated with European political struggle, are necessary if we are to understand the process that drew these two continental structures of power together in the postwar era. We need this broadening of vision to remind us of, among other things, the stake European leaders in the mid-1940s felt they had in American diplomacy. We will then be in a position to see that the final crisis of 1946, for example, was not only the product of a calculated initiative by the Truman administration but also the culmination of a long struggle between Churchill and Stalin over the future direction of American power, the one trying desperately to attach, the other to deflect, its potentially decisive weight. Reflections of this kind have led me to take a "structural" view of the origins of the Cold War. The use of this word, which has demonstrated an impressive capacity to provoke scenes of intellectual delirium in less robust disciplines than American diplomatic history, is amply justified here. It draws attention, for one thing, to the international system of the mid-19403, dominated as it was by three related, interacting great powers—Britain, the Soviet Union, and
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the United States—and also to the distinct stages and turning points through which this system, with its neglected geopolitical dimension, was transformed into the bilateral United States-Soviet order within which we still live. It is also appropriate in a different sense, suggested by modern French historical thought. There we find, in fields of study far removed from this one, a distinction drawn between long-term, underlying structures and the more easily recognizable, short-term conjonctures. The idea of structure here seems, at least by implication, to be associated with the notion of recurrence within very slowly changing historical patterns. It reminds us that, notwithstanding the substantial differences in context and detail that have led many scholars to give the origins of the Cold War the appearance of a unique phenomenon, the process that actually brought the United States into confrontation with the Soviet Union was, at least in its underlying features, strikingly similar to those that eventually precipitated American entry into each of the two world wars. The structural approach, therefore, can contribute to our understanding of Cold War origins both by enlarging the scope of the subject and by connecting it more firmly with its own past. Accordingly, as he follows Churchill through these events, the reader may find himself watching, within an increasingly unstable international framework, a strangely familiar three-stage process. First he will observe in operation the general system, governed by the three related states of the so-called Grand Alliance, that developed in the late stages of and just after World War II. Within this system, which corresponds in certain fundamental respects to that found before each world war, he will notice two distinct arenas: a politically active, tense European one characterized by agile diplomatic maneuvering and a widespread appreciation of the power realities, in which the Soviet Union, a rising continental power, seems to pose a threat to British security and interests; and, across the Atlantic, an observant and powerful but, despite many beguiling appearances to the contrary, firmly detached American political sphere. In the second stage, a condensed version of 1914-17 and 1939-41, he will see the Soviet Union, confident of continuing American detachment, launching a comprehensive political campaign—in effect, a first Cold War— against an increasingly isolated Britain and her various connections. Finally, in early 1946, he will encounter the transforming crisis that, as in 1917 and 1941, was necessary before American power could be brought into confrontation with Britain's enemy. It would certainly be a mistake to press these analogies too hard, especially as I have not elaborated them fully in this book. But they are clear enough, I hope, to leave the reader with, at the biographical level, a fuller appreciation of the ubiquity of Winston Churchill, here engaged for a third time in guiding the United States through the British corridor toward confrontation with the threatening European power, and, at the deeper level of world affairs where the play of power is so much more elusive, a renewed sense of the long-rooted character of modern diplomatic history.
The Iron Curtain
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Chapter One
Churchill and America
On the evening of March 15, 1946, Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, was driven through vast crowds of enthusiastic spectators and angry demonstrators in New York City toward a welcoming dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel given by Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and other notables. Ten day earlier, after an introduction from President Harry S. Truman, he had given his celebrated "iron curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri. There, only half a year after the successful conclusion of World War II, he had held up to Americans and the world the specter of a dangerous Soviet threat to peace and had urged the creation of a highly armed Anglo-American "fraternal association" to resist it. The speech, as Churchill had intended, provoked a worldwide reaction. Communist publications everywhere heaped abuse upon its author. The first Soviet response was calm. But Western correspondents soon saw signs of public anxiety and some political agitation in Moscow. And on March 13 Stalin showed his concern in a bitter personal attack on Churchill, comparing him to the Nazis. Meanwhile, the initiative had created an immediate sensation in the United States. A fog of ambiguous official rhetoric had long obscured the rising tensions between the victorious powers. Churchill's unprecedentedly blunt talk alarmed many and drove Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes to deny their actual complicity. But the deeper consequence, already evident by March 15, was the rapid polarization of American opinion into rival attitudes of hostility to and support for the Soviet Union.1
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It is surely a matter of historical curiosity that a speech by an individual who was neither American nor Russian, and whose leadership in his own country had recently been overwhelmingly repudiated, could so agitate the governments and peoples of the world's two most formidable powers. Much of the explanation will be found in that close examination of events in early 1946 toward which our discussion will steadily lead. But it derives also from two more deeply rooted causes—one structural, the other personal—which have a prior claim on our attention. The first is the pivotal position that Britain occupied between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout and immediately after the war, for Britain had with each of the stronger powers a much closer relationship and a wider range of historical and geopolitical connections than they had with each other. The comparative mutual detachment of the United States and the Soviet Union gave to each a sense of insulation during the immediate postwar period. But the persisting strength of AngloAmerican ties, despite some attrition after the Potsdam conference, meant that when the Soviets commenced their "war of nerves" against Britain in 1945 they risked eventual confrontation with the United States. By March 1946 their campaign had reached the point where a provocative speech in the United States by any British leader would have created a diplomatic furor. But the fact that it was Churchill greatly intensified the reaction, for Churchill personally, like Britain geopolitically, had a deeply etched association with both the United States and Russia. In each case he was the embodiment of certain central attitudes. In Soviet eyes he was still the leading European anti-Bolshevik of the postrevolutionary era. He had also been for nearly three decades the ardent and persistent promoter of a close Anglo-American combination that the Soviets could only view with suspicion. To some Americans he was the man who, above all others, stood for the preservation and perhaps expansion of the still-hated British Empire, who had somehow harnessed American power to British interests during the war and was now threatening to do so again; to others, by contrast, he was the brilliant world statesman and admired hero who had foreseen and successfully defied Hitler and whose warnings now about Stalinist Russia therefore carried the authority of a vindicated prophet's. These images of Churchill, at once sharp and profound, were the varied return on nearly five decades of passionate involvement at the heart of the world's concerns. They certainly sufficed to ensure a powerful response to the Fulton speech. And they argue irresistibly that, if we wish to understand Churchill's part in the making of the Cold War, we had best start by looking at his past associations with each of the great protagonists in turn. EARLY YEARS Churchill's interest in the United States developed slowly. His American mother, the former Jennie Jerome of New York, did little to stimulate it. She
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and her two sisters had married and settled in England or Ireland without much evident nostalgia. England, in its late Victorian heyday, seemed the center of the world; the United States, though rich and latently powerful, appeared remote and provincial. It was entirely representative of the family attitude that when Winston first visited the United States, as a young man of twenty in 1895, it was only en route to somewhere else and that even this glancing encounter aroused his mother to warn, with New York City specifically in mind, "You will be bored to death."2 In fact, Churchill was impressed by New York. This may have been due in part to his host, the colorful local politician Bourke Cockran, with whom he stayed while virtually ignoring his relations. His letters home were both enthusiastic and analytic. American hospitality, he told his mother, was "a revelation" to him. He described New York to his aunt as being "full of contradictions and contrasts." And he wrote to his brother, Jack, "This is a very great country my dear Jack. Not pretty or romantic but great and utilitarian. There seems to be no such thing as reverence or tradition. Everything is eminently practical and things are judged from a matter of fact standpoint."3 His concluding thought suggests that he prepared himself well for the visit. "Picture to yourself . . . if you can," Alexis de Tocqueville wrote to a friend in the 18305, "a society possessing no roots, no memories, no prejudices, no routine, no common ideas, no national character, yet with a happiness a hundred times greater than our own." Churchill wrote similarly to his brother, "Picture to yourself the American people as a great lusty youth—who treads on all your sensibilities, perpetrates every possible horror of ill-manners—whom neither age nor just tradition inspire with reverence—but who moves about his affairs with a good-hearted freshness which may well be the envy of older nations of the earth."* Churchill then traveled to his primary destination: the military front in Cuba, where Spanish forces were vainly trying to put down the long native rebellion. His vigorous support for Spain in an impromptu dockside press conference at New York on the return trip inspired some gentle ridicule in the American press.8 This and other experiences led him to brood on the apparent hypocrisies behind American diplomacy. In an 1896 article for the London Saturday Review, he wrote, "It seems strange indeed that the very nation which denied autonomy to the Confederacy should advocate it in the case of the Cuban rebels." When the United States intervened in 1898, Churchill, like most of the British establishment, approved. Still, in an article for the North American Review a few months later, his first American publication, he contrasted British fidelity to law in the recent confrontation with France over Fashoda with American conduct toward Spain. "Right of conquest," he observed, "was a convenient theory for a strong nation to adhere to and one which, after the recent war between Spain and America, we would not claim any originality in adopting."6
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Little in these early observations prepares us for Churchill's role as the expositor and the celebrant of a glowing Anglo-American "destiny." This came later, under the impetus of world war. But already visible is his ability to run in harness together, though not always comfortably or in sound balance, a high emotionalism and a gift for cool, detached analysis. It is easy to identify the dominating emotion in 1895. It was an immediate and heady sense of American power and vitality that remained with him thereafter. The cooler, analytic strain emerges in two representative European impressions to which he also remained faithful afterward: first of a diplomatic tradition that included a degree of moral hypocrisy and international irresponsibility; and, in domestic affairs, of a general materialism that he was inclined to admire in 1895 but that he viewed more critically on his second, longer visit to America, in 1900. By that time Churchill was a celebrity, having fought in India, the Sudan, and South Africa and dramatized each campaign with a widely read book. He now came on a lecture tour, which earned him a respectable sum of money. It took him beyond New York into the eastern hinterland. But his letters home on this occasion reflect little interest in the wider vista. At this point America was simply a dimly perceived backdrop against which Churchill tried, with limited success, to gather the financial wherewithal for a British political career. He now found American materialism and rough manners less appealing. He quarreled with his manager, "a vulgar Yankee impressario." He also encountered some unexpected pro-Boer sentiment. Finally, writing to his mother that he would "be glad to get back again onto British territory," he departed for the more congenial atmosphere of Government House in Ottawa.7 It was 1929 before Churchill, now fifty-six, again visited the United States. This long gap was not due to indifference. Indeed, he became increasingly preoccupied with the cause of Anglo-American association. His long absence was due primarily to the demands of an unusually active political career. He was in office almost continuously from 1906 to 1929; when out, he was totally absorbed with getting back. Meanwhile the course of events stimulated his interest in the transatlantic connection. This was already true in the years before World War I when, after a brief spell with the Conservative party, he was an increasingly influential member of successive Liberal governments between 1906 and 1915. Here he encountered the United States in a number of different contexts. The first was commerce. It was here that the British felt American competitive power most severely. The title of W. T. Stead's best-selling 1902 book, The Americanisation of the World, reflects a widespread British apprehension of the likely outcome. The struggle for markets was exacerbated by the high American tariff at a time when British Liberals, as opposed to the protectionist Conservatives, clung tenaciously to free trade. Churchill was therefore intensely concerned with the purely commercial aspects of what came to be known in Britain as "the American Peril," especially during his years as Presi-
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dent of the Board of Trade, 1908-10. But he was also an ardent reformer, and his main defense of free trade lay in the supposed social/political evils of protectionism. He frequently dramatized these with American illustrations. In a 1905 pamphlet, for example, he drew on American experience to argue thatv under free trade wages increased faster, hours and conditions of labor were better regulated, and poverty was more readily alleviated. In 1909 he argued that high unemployment in New York State was a direct result of the tariff. Another theme was that the introduction of an American-style tariff in Britain would bring with it ruthless trusts and political corruption on the transatlantic model. And he predicted, presumably with the Conservatives in mind, that a new party would emerge in Britain that would resemble the Republicans in being "rich, materialist and secular."8 But Churchill was fully alive to the reform impulse in the United States. The zenith of American progressivism coincided substantially with the Liberal domination of British politics, 1906-15.9 Churchill, unusually sensitive to American comparisons, often cited the United States as a reform model. He admired Henry George, Henry Demarest Lloyd, and the muckraking journalists. In 1906 he reviewed approvingly The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's famous exposure of the Chicago meat-packing industry. He wrote, "The issue between capital and labour is far more clearly cut today in the United States than in other communities or in any other age. It may be that in the next few years we shall be furnished with Trans-Atlantic answers to many of the outstanding questions of economics and sociology upon whose verge British political parties stand in perplexity and hesitation." He resembled the typical American Progressive in his fascination with the United States Constitution. Like many of them, he deployed its rigidity, only to change his mind when confronted with New Deal radicalism in the 19305. On the other hand he always admired American federalism, which he regarded as the best way to harness the strength of a vast, disparate community. He advocated it in 1911, to applause in the American press, as the best way to integrate both the Dominions and Ireland more closely and on a more coequal basis with Britain.10 But even in these early days, and especially after his appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Churchill's main interest lay in international politics. He, like others, was concerned to yoke American power to British interests. Here there were a number of favoring auguries. Nearly all the territorial and other long-standing nineteenth-century disputes had now been settled; and on the positive side there was both a common sense of imperial mission and a shared anxiety about German ambitions. The Anglo-American reconciliation at the beginning of the twentieth century was largely the work, on the British side at least, of an earlier generation: of men like Lord Bryce and Joseph Chamberlain.11 But Churchill was inspired by it and, with his characteristic flair for synthesis, tried to fortify it by underlining the interdependence of trade and politics. In the event of war, he argued in 1903, it was "very
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much better that the United States should be vitally interested in keeping the English market open, than that they should be utterly careless of what happens to their present principal customer." The same concern to strengthen the political bond can be seen in his frequent calls for a settlement of the Irish question—one of his few concessions to American ethnicity. The consolidation of a strong Anglo-American relationship, he wrote, should be "a guiding star" of British statesmanship. Ar,d a growing confidence in American goodwill can be seen in his suggestion that Britain drop the growing United States Navy from the traditional calculation that the Royal Navy should be at least as powerful as the sea forces of the next two strongest states. He was still justifying this American exclusion when World War I broke out in I9I4- 12
BLASTED HOPES, 1914-1929 Despite the cloak of United States neutrality, Anglo-American relations from August 1914 on steadily vindicated Churchill's prediction that political intimacy would come from increased trade. Churchill himself appealed immediately to American self-interest. Proclaiming, "I am half-American myself," he told an interviewer from the United Press Association of America on August 29, "If England were to be reduced in this war or another . . . the burden which we are bearing now would fall on to your shoulders."13 He was now, as First Lord of the Admiralty, responsible for enforcing the blockade of Germany and therefore especially sensitive to the problems of American neutrality. In recent years there has been a lively speculation that, to propel the United States into the war, he engineered the sinking of the Lusitania by a U-boat on May 15, 1915. But professional historians have found this unpersuasive. Indeed, one must not exaggerate Churchill's Americocentrism in the period before April 1917. His speeches contain few references to the United States and show little confidence in the prospect of American belligerency; and he was soon completely absorbed in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, whose failure forced him from the Admiralty in May 1915 and, rapidly thereafter, from any effective role in the conduct of the war.14 The significant change came in 1917. The United States declaration of war on April 2 coincided almost exactly with Churchill's return to government as Minister of Munitions in the Lloyd George Cabinet, Already in February he had urged the House of Commons to see "what a supreme event in human history the entry of the United States into the war would be," and rejoiced that "we have seen the United States drawn, not, as in the Napoleonic Wars, into quarrel with us, but to the very verge of war with those we are blockading."15 At the practical level he was now again engaged in direct negotiations with the Americans, this time over war materials, where his opposite number was the financier Bernard Baruch. But characteristically he ranged over the whole scene, often in ways that prefigure his approach to Anglo-American relations in World War II. He was sure, for example, that American power would
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be decisive. In May 1917 he wrote of America's "inexhaustible resources." The American armies, he told British workers on October 9, 1917, were "perhaps the most powerful of all." He wanted the United States to bear a fair share of the burden and was anxious not "to squander the remaining armies of France and Britain in precipitate offensives before the American power [began] to be felt on the battlefields." He also urged Lloyd George, unsuccessfully, to go to Washington and meet President Woodrow Wilson, foreshadowing the kind of codirectorate he later created with Roosevelt. He was equallv energetic, though unsuccessful, in urging a military integration both at the command level and through "the embodiment of American battalions in British brigades."16 Churchill's emotions were deeply stirred by this Anglo-American association in war, as they had never been by the community of interest between English Liberals and American progressives. Now it was a matter of blood and sentiment. He quickly made himself the foremost public protagonist of AngloAmerican confraternity. In 1918, especially, as American soldiers began to arrive, he became a frequent speaker at Anglo-American gatherings in London. In January, addressing the American Luncheon Club "in comradeship and kinship," he hailed Wilson's Fourteen Points as a "full, ennobling and inspiring programme." On May 20, in an article for the London Sunday Pictorial, he wrote, "The greatest of all the facts is the entry of the United States into the war. . . . Among the nations there is none more earnest, more virile, more capable of material sacrifices for ends conceived to be sublime, or more unafraid of death and wounds and tribulations if such must be." On July 4 he was the main speaker at the Anglo-Saxon Fellowship meeting in Westminster. "When I have seen during the past few weeks," he said in a speech widely reported in the United States, "the splendour of American manhood striding forward on all the roads of France and Flanders, I have experienced emotions that words cannot describe." This war-induced exultation, with its romantic conception of kinship, is a clear departure from Churchill's former coolheaded perception of an American power based on self-interested commercial materialism and expansionism. But private comments confirm his sincerity. Later in July, for instance, he assured the War Cabinet that the war experience would "draw the British and American peoples very closely together." And in the same spirit he wrote to a friend, "If all goes well England and the United States may act permanently together. We are living 50 years in one at this rate."17 But this euphoria was premature. The fraternal vision faded quickly in the disillusioning postwar years. The former reality of commercial rivalry, and of distinct American and European arenas, at least in politics, soon reasserted itself. Churchill found it hard to accept these trends. At first he had thought that the memory of shared sacrifice and common victory would sustain the wartime intimacy. Then he had advanced the notion that the settlement by Britain of remaining American historical grievances would revive and strengthen the bond. It was partly from this calculation that in the immediate postwar years
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he worked for the establishment of the Irish Free State and also endorsed, though with many misgivings, the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese treaty.18 These hopes also proved illusory. Yet Churchill clung tenaciously to the ideal of Anglo-American confraternity, even while he later fell out successively with Wilsonian peacemakers, Republican conservatives, and New Deal liberals. First came a personal confrontation with President Wilson in February 1919 that reawakened his old fear of American diplomatic irresponsibility. A few weeks earlier he had published a newspaper article warning that Britain and the United States, having rescued Europe from militarism, "cannot leave that continent in a welter of anarchy." At issue now was the future scope of Allied intervention in Russia, where the Bolsheviks held grimly to power against White reactionaries, assorted secessionist movements, and the small American, British, and other foreign detachments whose role was increasingly ambiguous and controversial. Churchill, now Secretary of War and directly responsible for British policy in Russia, was sent by Lloyd George to the Paris Peace Conference's Council of Ten to get a final decision on the scope of Allied intervention before the President's temporary departure for the United States. Wilson put the case against further intervention. It had not worked; the troops did not know what they were fighting for; it would be best to withdraw now. Churchill disagreed violently. Complete withdrawal meant "the destruction of all nonBolshevik armies in Russia," already totaling half a million men and still growing more numerous. It would produce "an interminable vista of violence and misery . . . for the whole of Russia." Wilson was unmoved. The existing forces "could not stop the Bolsheviks," and their leaders were incompetent. Churchill retreated a step. He would not advocate the use of conscript troops, a political impossibility in any case. But surely the Allies could send "volunteers, technical experts, arms, munitions, tanks, aeroplanes." Wilson was again discouraging. Such forces, he commented significantly, "would certainly be assisting reactionaries." This drove Churchill back to his last appeal. Let us at least, he urged, send arms to the Whites. Wilson, eager to leave Paris, unenthusiastically agreed to accept whatever the Council decided. But American reluctance, together with Lloyd George's disenchantment with intervention, consistently obstructed Churchill's active policy.19 This confrontation, though only a moment in the complex Western reaction to Bolshevik Russia, illuminates a crucial historiographical point. Some historians trace the origins of the Cold War to this early period, emphasizing a predominantly United States-Soviet context, and especially a "Lenin versus Wilson" ideological clash.20 Certainly, the more or less exclusive United States-Soviet dichotomy is more convincing if one stays at the level of ideas, though even here one could argue persuasively that the central conflict was between Bolshevik revolutionism and the various forms of European reaction. It is progressively less plausible in the degree to which the case is made to depend on the domestic phenomena of American anticommunism or general-
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ized visions of an "Open Door" world rather than on the details of American diplomacy.21 And it breaks down even further when we move to the more concrete level of international policies, where assessments of relative significance should surely be made. There we see that it was the Europeans, men like Churchill and Marshal Foch, who throughout this period consistently made the running against the Bolsheviks. It was the French and the British who, desperately anxious to revive the eastern front against Germany in 1918, pressed for intervention and the Americans who held back and acquiesced only reluctantly. After the war, while the British and French governments were divided on the issue of continued intervention, the Americans, as Wilson's answers to Churchill show, were more eager to withdraw, except perhaps during the short moment of optimism over the White cause that nearly everyone in authority shared in mid1919.22 The comparative detachment of the Americans is hardly remarkable. It derived naturally from the elemental facts of geography and of a separate historical experience that still dominated much American thinking. Nor was there any substantial concrete political connection or clash of real interest that might have encouraged a more forceful policy toward the Soviet Union. The British and French were more inclined to be active for equally logical reasons. For them geopolitical realities, as well as such distinct motives as the high level of French investment at stake in Russia, led naturally, had they been able to persuade their exhausted peoples to pay the price, toward further intervention in Russia. In this they understandably, but without much confidence, looked to the powerful United States for help. Churchill was more optimistic than most, inspired by the American Red Scare of 1919-2,0 and describing the deportation of radical aliens as "an uplifting spectacle which most normal people will regard with healthy pleasure." He tried, in three different eras, to encourage Americans to think in terms of an anti-Soviet crusade: in 1919, in 1931, and in 1945-46. Only in the last period was he successful, and even then, as we will see in later chapters, he found it an extremely difficult task. It therefore seems fanciful to suggest that there was, in any real sense, an American-Soviet framework to the international political arena in 1919. When Wilson rejected Churchill's call for the use of volunteer troops in Russia on the grounds that "they would certainly be helping reactionaries," he was unwittingly acknowledging that European reaction, not Wilsonian liberalism, was the real enemy of the Revolution. This was apparently Lenin's view too. He constantly attacked Britain and France. But his hostile references to the United States, which he failed even to list as an enemy power, were infrequent.23 Churchill's broader critique of Wilson's Paris statesmanship, which developed through 1919, further distinguishes European from American interests and attitudes in this postwar period and illustrates the gulf between them. Churchill broke with Wilson only slowly and reluctantly. A few days after the Paris confrontation he warned members of the English Speaking Union, "If
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THE IRON CURTAIN
we fall apart all that we have achieved will collapse in ruin to the ground." In June 1919 he was still asserting that the first principle of British foreign policy was "To keep firm friends with our kinsmen in the United States, and on no account lose the comradeship and sense of reunion which have sprung up during the war. This is not only first but paramount." In July he publicly praised Wilson as "a great President." But the adverse current strengthened as he watched with growing dismay the dubious conclusion of the Paris conference, the virtual collapse of Allied intervention in Russia during October, and the United States Senate's first repudiation of the peace treaty and the League of Nations in November.24 In November 1919 Churchill finally attacked Wilson openly in a London newspaper article entitled "Will America Fail Us?" Despite "immense services," Wilson had risked the peace by excluding the Republicans from his delegation and then, at Paris, by wasting too much time on the League of Nations, while "with every day that passed the power of the Peace Conference to make the best arrangements for Europe and to have its decisions respected, steadily declined." Furthermore, the "whole shape and character of the peace settlement was determined by American influence," including the forced breakup of the Austrian Empire and its replacement by a system of small, weak rival states. "To carry such a policy halfway and to carry it no further, to destroy the old organization without attempting to supply the new, to sweep away the imperial system without setting in its place a League of Nations system, would indeed be an act from which America should recoil. . . ." It needed only the similar, likely fate of the Turkish Empire ("suspended in a state of quasi-dissolution waiting American decision") and the looming abandonment of France to face Germany and Russia alone "to squander irretrievably the whole victory."25 Ten years later there was a postscript to this confrontation. This was the . publication in 1929 of one of the last volumes in Churchill's series of books on World War I, The World Crisis, 1918-1928: The Aftermath. Already in 1924 he had extended his critique of Wilson by blaming him for "a frigid neutrality" that had vastly increased the suffering of the war in its early stages. Now he attacked him more sharply and comprehensively. The "autocratic" President, he alleged, had pushed the Allies into accepting the Fourteen Points and the Armistice and then sacrificed "solid advantages" by attending the peace conference himself, and had gone on to show party pettiness and a lack of political skill in his dealings with the Senate. Churchill ridiculed the Wilsonian author Ray Stannard Baker's "absurd scenario picture" of Wilson in Paris as "a stainless Sir Galahad championing the superior ideals of the American people and brought to infinite distress by contact with the awful depravity of Europe and its statesmen." Several Wilsonian reviewers responded in kind. Raymond Leslie Buell, for example, the research director of the Foreign Policy Association,
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defended Wilson and rebuked Churchill for his indifference to serious fundamental political and social problems and his preoccupation with "the footnotes of history."26 Meanwhile, during the early 19205 Churchill had continued, despite growing disillusionment, to be the leading guest speaker for such Anglo-American institutions as the English Speaking Union. He invariably struck a positive note.27 But he soon judged the supposedly Anglophile Republicans to be as relentless in pursuit of the extensive British war debt as Wilson had been irresponsible in shaping the peace. As he wrote to his wife in February 1921, "It was uphill work to make an enthusiastic speech about the United States when so many hard things are said about us over there and when they are wringing the last penny out of their unfortunate allies." Yet, he continued, "there is only one road for us to tread, and that is to keep as friendly with them as possible, to be overwhelmingly patient and to work for the growth of better feelings which will certainly come."28 He therefore reluctantly supported the American naval disarmament proposals of the Washington conference in 1921-22, and even the abrogation, again at American insistence, of the AngloJapanese alliance. He told the Cabinet it would be "a ghastly state of affairs if we were to drift into direct naval rivalry with the United States." He hoped to replace the Japanese connection with an Anglo-American alliance that would be "overwhelmingly effective" in protecting British interests. Here again the Americans were disappointingly unresponsive. Yet, as late as July 1923, Churchill was telling the English Speaking Union, "We now have a new basis for Anglo-American friendship," and in mid-1924 he was still hailing "the wise policy of the Washington Treaty."29 But when Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924, a post he held in the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin until 1929, he assumed direct responsibility for the contentious war debts and reparations issues. He started with an apparent triumph, securing the agreement of Britain's former allies to a system whereby British repayments to the United States would be accompanied by simultaneous and proportionate payments to her from her own debtors. But in practice this did not work well. The American demands were insistent; the European payments were erratic and behind schedule. And, despite a reluctance to help "their selfish and extortionate policy," Churchill also felt American pressure pushing him toward his controversial 1925 decision, which he later regretted, to restore Britain to the gold standard. He nevertheless justified it to the House of Commons in May by saying, "Britain must always try to act with the United States . . . our chief shop and chief customer."30 Thus, in economic as well as political matters, he now found the United States an uncomfortable and inconsiderate associate. In October 1930 he told the German ambassador of his regret "that no one had adopted his suggestion made after the war, that the debtor and creditor nations,
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THE IRON CURTAIN
including Germany, should unite to form a common front against America." The opportunity was now "gone forever" because America, in her present state, "would never grant Britain any remission."31 In the late 19205 a political row compounded these economic tensions. The issue was naval disarmament. During 1927 and 1928 the Coolidge administration pressed Britain to reduce the Royal Navy beyond the Washington Treaty limits on capital ships to a position of overall parity with the United States. The British insisted that the needs of imperial defense on a world scale forced them to maintain a larger number of noncapital ships. In 1928, when Washington tried again, a friend reported Churchill as saying that the Americans "are arrogant, fundamentally hostile to us, and that they wish to dominate world politics. . . . He considers we ought to say firmly that we must decide for ourselves how large a navy we require, and that America must do the same." Once again Churchill found an American administration politically irresponsible—pursuing the "halfway" policy he had complained of earlier in Wilson. When Coolidge publicly criticized British policy in November 1928, Churchill wrote to his wife, "My blood boiled. . . . Why can't they let us alone? They . have exacted every penny owing from Europe, they say they are not going to help, surely they might leave us to manage our own affairs." He later defended France against American pressure to reduce its army, "which others find easy to criticize since they did not take part in France's grim experiences."32 The Coolidge speech led to some alarm in the Cabinet over the danger of ignoring American opinion. Churchill argued that nothing useful could be expected from Coolidge, who expressed "the viewpoint of a New England backwoodsman." Britain should wait for the inauguration of Herbert Hoover. Meanwhile, he circulated a memorandum opposing any naval disarmament negotiations and told his colleagues, "I deprecate a panic mood in our relations with the United States." Referring to the naval issue, he went on, We are told that this has wiped out all, or most of, the effects of such great events as the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the settlement of the Irish question, the Washington Treaty and the Anglo-American debt settlement. If so, it only shows how little advantage is to be gained by making such efforts to conciliate American opinion. Whatever may have been done at enormous cost and sacrifice to keep up friendship is apparently swept away by the smallest tiff or misunderstanding, and you have to start again and placate the Americans by another batch of substantial or even vital concessions. So far had Churchill now moved across the spectrum that, in March 1929, when there was speculation that he might transfer to the Foreign Office, his wife wrote to him, "But I am afraid your known hostility to America might stand in the way."83 Yet the impression of volatility is a little deceptive, for since 1919, despite
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these various tensions, Churchill had continued to organize his thoughts about the United States around the dominant impressions he had formed in 1895 and 1900. His critique of Wilson, and of the "halfway" policy that seemed at once intrusive and noncommittal, reflected his continuing distaste for American diplomatic unreliability and moral hypocrisy. Similarly, his resentment of the Coolidge economic policies can be traced to his persisting sense of an allpervasive, grasping American materialism. These were, of course, representative British attitudes of the period. What distinguished Churchill, whose reaction to American rebuffs and pressures usually took the form of spontaneous anger rather than the cynicism or resignation with which most British leaders responded, was his enduring faith in that American vitality which had always fascinated him and in the possibility that it might again be harnessed to some great Anglo-American purpose.
TOWARD A SETTLED VIEW, 19x9-1940 In late 1929 the election defeat of the Baldwin government removed Churchill from office. He now returned, accompanied by a small family party, for a leisurely tour of the United States and Canada, covering his expenses with twelve articles on his American impressions for the London Daily Telegraph. These essays reveal another apparent volte-face in his perception of the United States. Many of them are simply short, vivid sketches of his sometimes Pickwickian progress through such phenomena as Hollywood, Prohibition, and the Civil War battlefields.34 Others, dealing with contemporary Anglo-American issues, occasionally reflect Churchill's continuing bitterness and his persistent tendency to criticize American materialism and diplomatic hypocrisy. Thus, in discussing the war debt problem, he referred to the American tendency "perhaps unduly, to judge men and things in ordinary life by money values." And in defending the British stand against naval parity, he insisted that disarmament will not come "through nations who are quite safe lecturing nations who are in jeopardy, or think themselves in jeopardy, upon the evils of self-defence."33 But the really significant articles are the last two. Their theme was the vitality of American capitalism and the creativity of the corporate elite. Ironically, these essays appeared only weeks after the stock market crash, in which Churchill himself lost heavily. He described these events briefly but defended "the inherent probity and strength of the American speculative machine. It is not built to prevent crises, but to survive them." The crash, he concluded, was "only a passing episode in the march of a valiant and serviceable people who by fierce experiment are hewing new paths for man, and showing to all nations much that they should attempt, and much that they should avoid." Beneath the market mechanisms lay a solid base. "The structure of American industry," he continued, "has qualities of magnificence not to be seen elsewhere and never seen before." This was due partly to the use of science together with the principles of method, management, and organization and partly to the advan-
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THE IRON CURTAIN
tages accruing to a self-contained continent with great resources and to a large population cut off from foreign temptations by helpful tariffs. The consequence was a fabulously productive corporate system and an impressive degree of shared interest between capital and labor.36 Churchill's new faith was not shaken by the ensuing depression. As late as 1932 he was still buying Wall Street stocks because he was "very much afraid of missing the bus," and reassuring his anxious broker that "if the whole world except the United States sank under the ocean that community could get its living."37 Churchill especially admired the business leaders he met. These men had created "a new standard of values among successful men." It was a far cry now from the social crudities of the pioneering robber barons. The new leaders, he now saw, were highly sophisticated managers of vast enterprises. He found their life attractive. "After all," he wrote, "these enormous modern businesses offer a man in many ways more scope and authority than he could find in a ministerial office. The freedom of action, the sense of close contact with the practical, the elevating force of large propositions—all these are the elements of an interesting life—even if you do become a millionaire in the process." Moreover, these "effective leaders" of society had developed "a strong corporate life, carrying with it a stricter discipline and a continually rising standard of behavior." Churchill felt himself in contact with a "confraternity" that had a much higher sense of comradeship than existed in British business circles.38 It is unlikely that this celebration of the American managerial elite was the outcome of careful examination or sober thought. It was, in all probability, inspired very largely by the convivial hospitality with which William Randolph Hearst, Bernard Baruch, and other friendly plutocrats floated Churchill painlessly through the discomforts of Prohibition-era America. But it does dramatize Churchill's chronic susceptibility to power in its most impressive manifestations. He found it painful to contrast the grandeur and fraternity of American corporate life with "our present crowd of jostling small producers and carefully fostered political-labour antagonisms."39 It was much the same in politics. In 1932 he tried to persuade a friend to travel with him to the American presidential conventions. "It will certainly be a thing to see," he wrote. "Better than watching the Ramsay-Baldwin performance on the Westminster stage."40 These gravitations foreshadow, it is easy to see in retrospect, his later delight in Big Three diplomacy and almost continual summitry during World War II as well as his distaste for the Foreign Office tendency to cultivate the smaller European states. Once again the outstanding impression one gains is of Churchill's susceptibility to great power, in this case to an American manifestation, but also to power generally. Indeed, most of the qualities he increasingly missed in Britain and now admired in America—vitality, large-scale propositions, a united sense of purpose at the top, political drama—were precisely those that, together with the European interwar ideal of national regeneration, he had long admired in
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the Italian fascism of Benito Mussolini and would later approve, though only briefly, in Adolf Hitler.41 Churchill tended to romanticize power, often well beyond reason. His portrait of American industry and capitalists in 1929 is a case in point. Consider also the image of American society presented in these 1929 articles. It reveals the antithesis of the modern sociological imagination. Churchill was captivated by the American business elite, predominantly Anglo-Saxon in origin and Anglophile in outlook, its power on an imperial scale. But he was little interested in the middle-class American struggling entrepreneurially farther down the ladder, even less in the teeming ethnically variegated masses of the industrial states, not at all in the blacks and other dispossessed at the bottom of the heap. On the other hand he was very impressed to find in open prosperous California "the finest Anglo-Saxon stock to be found in the American Union." He compared their healthy farming existence not with the eastern industrial areas, of which he knew little, but with conditions in the crowded slums of Europe. It was, in essence, an almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon vision, complete with a responsible, disciplined aristocracy on top and an upstanding yeomanry beneath—a Greater Britain, free to develop the inherently constructive talents of the British race untrammeled by the out-of-date fashions and small-minded politics of the mother country. 42 Having identified and romanticized American power in this way, Churchill characteristically cast about for some profitable way to use it. He soon came out with an article in the Saturday Evening Post, entitled "The United States of Europe," advocating a continental-sized federation along American lines that would fill the dangerous vacuum left by the Versailles settlement and reduce the influence of smaller states.43 But his main concern was still to align the United States with Britain. Thus in 1931, when he returned to the United States for a lecture tour, he concentrated on the dramatization of a supposed common threat. "The two great opposing forces of the future . . . ," he told his audiences, "would be the English speaking peoples and Communism." It would be the duty of Britain and the United States to stand together to protect "the distracted peoples of Europe" from Communist tyranny. But in the 19305 this horse simply refused to run. By 1933, though he continued to view communism as a permanent threat to civilized society and to attack it as such, Churchill was confessing to his American readers, in one of several articles he wrote for Collier's magazine in this decade, that "Bolshevized Russia had now become a scarecrow" whose "astounding failure offers to the rulers of Europe and America a further breathing space in which to set their houses in order."44 By this time it was already clear that Nazi Germany was the immediate threat. Churchill had foreseen the emergence of a revisionist Germany as early as 1919. In March 1931 he described the recent Austro-German customs union as a "danger" to peace. Later he warned, "German youth mounting in its broad swelling flood will never accept the conditions and implications of
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THE IRON CURTAIN
the Treaty of Versailles." By May 1935 he was writing in Collier's about the deterioration of the European order; and in June he drew attention to the rapid German rearmament and asked his American readers how peace might be maintained. "Of course," he wrote, "the first and surest of all methods for maintaining the peace of the world would be an understanding between Great Britain and the United States whereby they would together maintain very powerful air forces and navies decisively stronger than those of other countries put together." These would be used to support any victim of unprovoked aggression. But, he admitted, it was "vain to expect such commanding foresight and prudence from modern governments."45 This resignation to American inactivity in the mid-19305 was partly due to Churchill's growing distaste for the spirit and leftward course of President Roosevelt's New Deal. At first he was, as he put it in November 1933, "an ardent admirer of the main drift and impulse which President Roosevelt has given to the economic and financial policy of the United States." But he deplored Roosevelt's subversion of the 1933 London Economic Conference as "a milestone on the downward march of human fortunes," then criticized "his policy of controlling all the businesses of the United States and regulating so minutely and in such a short time the delicate interplay between capital and labour." By 1935-36 he was lamenting "the extension of the activities of the Executive," the "pillorying by irresponsible agitators" of business leaders, and the erosion of American individualism. This disillusionment led him to reverse his attitude toward the United States Constitution, which he now saw as "a bulwark" of freedom, and to invoke Sinclair Lewis's then popular antitotalitarian jeremiad, It Can't Happen Here, as a plausible outcome of "this reversal of the American tradition."46 Churchill's response to the New Deal was similar to that of the conservative Democrats who, after the passing of the first cooperative planning phase, formed the anti-New Deal Liberty League, and it was somewhat like that of the old American Progressives who were alienated by the President's increasingly collectivist impulse. But it was perhaps also inspired by Churchill's increasing tendency, as the totalitarian nature of Nazism revealed itself, to assert the defense of freedom wherever it was threatened, even in formerly admired Italy.47 But this sense of disappointment with the New Deal did not shake Churchill's faith in eventual Anglo-American collaboration. His occasional criticisms were tempered by a growing confidence in American public opinion, which he recognized as the necessary foundation of any Anglo-American collaboration. Here he was increasingly philosophic and hopeful. In 1937, discussing American opinion, he wrote, "I understand something of their point of view. If I had an American father instead of an American mother, I have little doubt I should share it. I cannot now conceive any argument that could be addressed to them if the European war suddenly began again, which should lead them to seek to take part in it." Yet the faith remained. Here his periodic
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use of two key words is revealing, for, at least from 1937 on, Churchill's ardent Anglo-Americanism was increasingly concentrated into a simple faith that the "tide" of a united destiny was inevitable, tempered by a practical awareness that catalytic "events," which he confidently expected the predatory powers to produce, were needed to bring that tide in. These key words recur in various utterances. In a 1937 Collier's article, for example, he wrote that there was hope of eventual American involvement in world leadership because there were "tides and floods in human affairs" and that the issue would be decided "not by reason and debate but events." In September 1939 he suggested that Americans might soon be spectators of "grievous events," and concluded hopefully, "It sometimes happens that the audience becomes infuriated by a revolting exhibition." In 1940 we find him discouraging various Whitehall plans to publicize the British war effort in the United States with the expression "only force of events can govern them." And again, in November 1941, on the issue of American public opinion, he wrote, "We must have patience and trust to the tide which is flowing our way and to events."48 Meanwhile, Churchill did what he could to push things along by identifying and dramatizing such promising "events" as occurred. It is noticeable, for example, that he placed particular emphasis on the Far East, where the prospect of Anglo-American collaboration must have seemed more promising than in Europe. In the years before the war he wrote a number of articles in Collier's warning of the growth and menace of Japanese power and urging various forms of Anglo-American collaboration. But nothing substantial came of this, and Churchill's journalistic investment in the Far East never paid the political dividend in Europe for which he appears to have hoped.49 Europe itself seemed to offer a promising event in the rising Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938. Here Churchill played the American card in a number of ways. In July, for example, he privately warned a succession of German visitors to Britain that "the feeling in the United States against Germany is now far stronger than it was even in 1914" and that he expected early American participation on the anti-Nazi side. He also assured British readers of the Daily Telegraph in August that in the United States, despite isolationism, "a sombre antagonism to tyranny and aggression in all their various forms is steadily growing."50 But the disastrous Munich settlement, which even Roosevelt encouraged, exposed all this as mere whistling in the dark. Even Churchill was momentarily discouraged. In a broadcast to the United States, he warned that only rapid, vigorous rearmament Rnd immediate, intimate Anglo-American cooperation could redress the balance and asked, "We are left in no doubt where American conviction and sympathies lie; but will you wait until British freedom and independence have succumbed, and then take up the cause, when it is threequarters ruined, yourselves alone?"61 Britain finally declared war on Germany on September 2, 1939. From that time until he assumed the leadership, Churchill was fully absorbed in his
2,0
THE IRON CURTAIN
duties as First Lord of the Admiralty, the post to which the reluctant Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, under irresistible pressure, now recalled him. This meant the end of his decade-long journalistic relationship with the American public, though he made, on behalf of the government, two pugnacious worldwide broadcasts. He now enjoyed widespread American admiration as the man who, to quote the caption of Time's cover story on September 4, 1939, embodied "Vision, Vindication." He was henceforth generally regarded as the most impressive British political figure.62 Official contacts were now offered, notably by Roosevelt, who wrote on September 11, inviting a mutual personal correspondence. Churchill did not exploit the opportunity fully, and only a few comparatively inconsequential messages were exchanged in this early period. Still, the contact made for an easy transition to the more intimate relationship that began when the discredited Chamberlain stepped down in May 1940 and Churchill finally reached No. 10 Downing Street.53
CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT BEGIN The main conclusion to which our discussion has led thus far is perhaps obvious: that in 1940 Britain acquired a leader well equipped to forge, if opportunity offered, the essential association with the United States. This was all the more true because his understanding of America had developed through trial and error, though along lines already perceptible in 1895, in a variety of practical circumstances. It was, of course, an idiosyncratic view, relying too much on constitutional themes and historical presupposition, rather than on close political and social analysis, and frequently thrown off the rails by an overly romanticized, emotional Anglo-Americanism. But this did not matter much in 1940. What counted was his central sharp insight, gained in the very different contexts of 1917-18 and 1929, into the potentially decisive character of American power, and his conviction, which events vindicated, that it could be harnessed to the British interest. Yet this was not immediately apparent. Churchill's long cables to Roosevelt during the crisis of 1940 in France—brilliantly eloquent state papers, appealing urgently for assistance in the name of Western civilization—brought little in the way of practical help. And despite Roosevelt's heartening speech at Charlottesville, Virginia, on June 10, promising "the material resources of this nation," it took four months of delay and sustained haggling over a suitable quid pro quo before the United States government, in return for bases in the British Caribbean island, released the fifty World War I vintage escort destroyers that Churchill had urgently requested at the height of the crisis.64 Roosevelt has been taken to task by some historians for his tardy response. Indeed, it is events like these—especially the Lend-Lease negotiations and the later arguments over decolonization and international economics—with their connotation of Anglo-American competition and maneuvering for postwar advantage, that have led several recent historians to challenge the orthodox ver-
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sion of intimate "partnership" between the two nations. Churchill, however, seems not to have been unduly surprised at the time and was not unduly critical in his memoirs,55 This was consistent with his working philosophy that catalytic "events" were necessary to prompt American association. During 1940 three successive events transformed the situation. The first was the German conquest of France in June. This stripped the veil from American eyes and clarified the issue at stake. But in itself it was not enough. Intervention in a lost cause was futile. Hence the importance of the second event: the British determination to resist, proclaimed clearly by Churchill, and then given substance in the Battle of Britain. This inspired the small measure of actual support just mentioned. Then the third event, the reelection of Roosevelt, cleared the way for full practical support and the real beginning of the Anglo-American alliance. This relationship took firm shape in the first months of 1941. At its center lay Roosevelt's full-hearted response to Churchill's appeal on December 7, 1940, for credits to continue purchasing in the United States despite the near exhaustion of British financial resources. Roosevelt announced his Lend-Lease program in January 1941. At the same time he sent his closest associate, Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins, to London. Here Churchill recognized "an envoy of supreme importance to our national life."36 He pressed upon Hopkins his admiration for Roosevelt and the United States, the fighting spirit of the British, and the possibility of eventual victory. During long discussions, weekends at Chequers, the Prime Minister's country home, tours together of the bombed cities, and the ready disclosure of British secrets, the two men formed an intimate personal and political association. Churchill also cultivated Averell Harriman, who arrived in March with Roosevelt's introduction and instructions to expedite Lend-Lease to Britain. Fully aware of their importance as presidential agents, Churchill integrated the two Americans on a social as well as a business level with his own most intimate associates, Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Supply, and Brendan Bracken, Minister of Information, who became frequent escorts, weekend hosts, and guides to Whitehall. He took them to high-level meetings where secret matters wre discussed, encouraged them to criticize the British effort, and corresponded with each of them regularly throughout the war.37 Hopkins and Harriman also worked to establish this rather exclusive AngloAmerican inner core consisting of the two leaders and themselves as vital functionaries. They first made sure that Churchill understood their unique and powerful role as Roosevelt's agents, inspiring the Prime Minister to order that no account of Hopkins's London discussions be sent to British representatives in Washington because "Mr. Hopkins' relations are with the President alone and he does not want them complicated by an appearance of doing business on the Departmental level."58 They then encouraged Roosevelt to see Churchill as the exclusively important British figure. "Churchill is the Government," Hopkins reported. Harriman wrote, "There is no other man in sight to give the
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THE IRON CURTAIN
British the leadership that Churchill does." At the same time they sent deprecating assessments of other British leaders,59 The development of this personal and deinstitutionalized diplomacy, which Churchill accepted in principle from Roosevelt but soon turned effectively to his own purposes, led inevitably to the atrophy of conventional diplomacy. The most obvious victims of the increasingly detached Churchill-Roosevelt channel, which was consolidated at the leaders' famous Atlantic meeting in August 1941, were the ambassadors, and behind them the long-suffering State Department and even, though to a much lesser extent, the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister welcomed the replacement in early 1941 of the defeatist Joseph Kennedy by John G. Winant as United States ambassador in London. But by 1943 Winant was complaining, against Roosevelt rather than Churchill, saying, "I have been by-passed continuously." Lord Halifax, who became British ambassador in Washington in the same period and who had, like Winant, expected a central role between Churchill and Roosevelt, suffered a similar gradual disenchantment.60 The creation of this highly centralized codirectorate by Roosevelt and Churchill profoundly affected the course and conduct of the war. Until 1944, when old tendentious Anglo-American issues resurfaced, it effectively bridged the gulf between Churchill's romanticized Anglo-Americanism (tempered as it was by a shrewd assessment of the power realities) and the New Deal attitude of suspicion toward Britain, her empire, and her Tory establishment. Long before this, however, the Roosevelt-Churchill association was deeply influenced by the later adherence of the Soviet Union. Hitler's fateful invasion of Russia in June 1941 brought the Western leaders an enigmatic partner. For Churchill it would inevitably be a liaison of necessity rather than of sentiment, demanding the subordination of his deepest political antagonism and calling for skills of the kind demonstrated by his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, who had welded together a similarly unlikely coalition against an earlier European despot.
Chapter Two
Churchill, Bolshevism, and the Grand Alliance The year 1917, when Britain gained America and lost Russia, marks a watershed in Churchill's outlook. Henceforth, until his retirement in 1955, he viewed the United States as Britain's natural and finally indispensable ally, the Soviet Union as her natural antagonist. This is not to ignore the second German eruption of 1936-45 or, indeed, the high value he always placed on close association with France. It is simply to stress that, though usually preoccupied with European issues, Churchill habitually thought in wider geopolitical terms. This is the explanation of his rather surprising confidence during 1939-41 that the United States would eventually be drawn into the conflagration. It also urges the importance of examining his attitude toward the Soviet Union, as toward the United States, from its origins. CHURCHILL AND THE BOLSHEVIKS The October Revolution of 1917, and Russia's subsequent withdrawal from the war, outraged and alarmed British and French politicians, who now had to expect a greatly strengthened German assault on the western front in 1918. The Lloyd George government in London extended financial aid to antiBolshevik elements and sent troops to north Russia, the Caucasus, and Siberia in 1918 to encourage some revival of the eastern front. Then, with the crisis surmounted and Germany defeated, supervening political and ideological considerations led the British Cabinet to persist with the intervention. There were now fears of a Bolshevik threat to India and of the effect the revolution might
24
THE IRON CURTAIN
have on what Lloyd George called "Britain's great inflammable, industrial population." But these impulses quickly fell victim to intense public pressure for demobilization and to the unacceptable political and economic costs of continued involvement in a chaotic situation where, the Prime Minister soon concluded, "no one could say what was within a few yards of him." The Cabinet therefore reversed itself at the end of 1918. Lloyd George was authorized to negotiate an end to Allied intervention at the Paris Peace Conference while continuing to help the anti-Bolshevik cause in other, less direct ways.1 Meanwhile, as the practical politicians moved away, Churchill was advancing rapidly toward the center of the tempest. He had already emerged as the most militant anti-Bolshevik within the British government. He was one of the first to stress the revolutionary danger to Europe. In February 1918 he urged the publication of "graphic accounts of the Bolshevik outrages and ferocity" as valuable corrective propaganda with British workers. He enthusiastically approved the armed intervention, though, as Minister of Munitions, he was not directly responsible. On November 10, just before the armistice, he told the Cabinet, "We might have to build up the German Army as it [is] important to get Germany on her legs again for fear of the spread of Bolshevism." At the end of the year he publicly accused the Bolsheviks of "an animal form of barbarism" and drew lurid pictures of "bloody and wholesale butcheries and murders carried out to a large extent by Chinese executioners and armoured cars." He urged Lloyd George to augment rather than end intervention. But the Prime Minister's views were now much like Woodrow Wilson's. "The one thing to spread Bolshevism was to attempt to suppress it," he declared at the end of 1918. "To send our soldiers to shoot down the Bolsheviks would be to create Bolsheviks here."2 In January 1919, as a result of earlier decisions unrelated to Russia, Churchill became Secretary of State for War. In this capacity he assumed responsibility for the intervention. He immediately urged London journalists to support an active policy and cast about for other ways to enlarge the British commitment. He endorsed and publicly defended the use of gas against the Bolsheviks. He vigorously opposed Lloyd George's proposal for a peace conference of all the Russian factions at Prinkipo. Finally, knowing that Wilson had already declared himself against further intervention, the increasingly exasperated Prime Minister sent his impetuous colleague to Paris, where, as we have seen, the President effectively vetoed the more active policy Churchill wanted. In mid-March, reduced at last to winding down the Russian campaign, an aggrieved Churchill wrote to his leader, "You and President Wilson have, I fear, definitely closed your minds."8 Suddenly events began to run Churchill's way. First came the Communist coup and takeover in Budapest in March 1919. This frightened the Paris peacemakers. Then came reassurance and exaggerated hope, as the Russian counterrevolutionaries entered upon their brief season of military success: first
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
2J
under Admiral Kolchak, the self-styled "Supreme Ruler" in Siberia, then under General Denikin, who by September had advanced from the south to within two hundred miles of Moscow. The statesmen in Paris grasped eagerly at these straws. Churchill exulted, "Nothing can preserve either the Bolshevik system or the Bolshevik regime." He concentrated virtually all his energies on Russia. In August, Lloyd George had complained, "I get nothing but Russia." Now, in September, he urged Churchill "to throw off this obsession which, if you will forgive me for saying so, is upsetting your balance." None of this had any effect. On October 14 Churchill placed a memorandum before the Cabinet stating confidently, "The Bolshevik system was doomed to perish." On October 16 he told a friend that, if Denikin was successful, he wanted to go out and help him draw up a new Russian constitution. Then suddenly the tide turned again. The Bolsheviks advanced. By the end of October, Denikin was in full retreat and the White Russian cause virtually lost.4 Even now Churchill did not give up. He turned to public and ideological confrontation. In a January 1920 newspaper article, for example, he described communism as "a pestilence more destructive of life than the Black Death or the Spotted Typhus." The Polish-Soviet battles of 1920 briefly revived his hopes of a solution by force. But, in the event, these campaigns led to a de facto settlement in eastern Europe: the revolution intact, but contained by a cordon sanitaire dominated by an enlarged and fiercely anti-Bolshevik Poland. Churchill was unrepentant. He opposed the trade and other Anglo-Soviet contacts that soon developed, declaring defiantly in November 1920, "The policy I will always advocate is the overthrow and destruction of that criminal regime."5 Here again, just as Churchill's passionate advocacy of a close Anglo-American relationship in 1917-19 prefigured the one he eventually achieved in 1941-46, so in this first confrontation with Soviet Russia we can see certain basic patterns and tendencies that reappeared in the period that led to the Cold War. On each occasion, for instance, Churchill took the lead in raising the specter of a deadly Soviet threat. This menace invariably had a consistent geopolitical dimension in Churchill's vivid portrait of a traditionally expansionist Russia, now under incomparably more vicious management, threatening Western Europe and Britain's interests in the Mediterranean, in Iran, and in India. It also had an ideological character that, by exploiting postwar chaos and social divisions, endangered the stability of Western civilization. "If they do not for the moment overwhelm with armies, they can undermine with propaganda," he wrote in July 1920. "Not a shot may be fired along the whole front, not a bayonet may be fixed, not a battalion may move, and yet invasion may be proceeding swiftly and relentlessly." In his March 1946 "iron curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri, he was still emphasizing the dualistic menace of Soviet expansionism and Communist "fifth columns." Bolshevism presented a total threat. But would the West resist? Churchill persistently warned against
26
THE IRON CURTAIN
escapism and inaction. For example, he told the British Cabinet in March 1919 that the Allies had pursued "a policy of drift." He continued, "It was idle to think we should escape by sitting still and doing nothing. Bolshevism was not sitting still." And again, at Fulton in 1946, he said, "Do not let us take the course of letting events drift along till it is too late."6 There is a similar consistency in his belief that this Soviet political threat could be met effectively only by the great powers. The new small Versailles states were incapable of protecting themselves, let alone the peace of Europe. In this we see both Churchill's preference for the scope and power of largescale collectivities and his conviction that the security of Europe depended on an equipoise among the major states. Thus he twice tried to draw the United States in against the potentially commensurate Soviet Union: unsuccessfully in 1919, successfully in 1946. Meanwhile, as a second-best solution, he worked hard to set up the recently defeated Germans against Russia: privately then publicly in 1918-20; the same again in 1945-47, though more discreetly and, in the end, more successfully. This recurrent interest in pushing the Germans against the Soviet Union so soon after each war dramatizes the extraordinary depth of his hostility toward the revolutionary state. It is remarkable that even before the armistice in 1918 Churchill was talking to his Cabinet colleagues about building up the German army for this purpose. During 1919 the idea of German revival became increasingly central to his Russian policy. "Feed Germany; fight Bolshevism," he advised Lloyd George in April. "Make Germany fight Bolshevism." To a friend who asked him, "What is your Russian policy1?" he replied, "Kill the Bolshie, Kiss the Hun."T As the White Russians advanced, Churchill began to develop this delicate theme in public. In an April speech he declared, "A way of atonement is open to Germany. By combatting Bolshevism, by being the bulwark against it, Germany may take the first step toward ultimate reunion with the civilized world." In a July 1920 newspaper article entitled "The Poison Peril from the East," he wrote that German assistance might be needed if the Poles collapsed against the Soviets. He looked to Germany as "a dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the flood of red barbarism from the East." Germany, for all her sins, was apparently still part of the European family; Soviet Russia clearly was not. In 1945-46 it was not possible to argue along these lines in public. But Churchill's belief that Germany had an essential role in the anti-Soviet balance remained as strong as ever and, as we will see later, had some practical outcome.8 It is true that, despite all this belligerence, Churchill was prepared to negotiate with the Bolshevik regime in certain circumstances. In 1918-20, however, this was only under the impulsion of dire necessity. In the critical months of early 1918, for example, he was even prepared to offer an Anglo-American guarantee of the Bolshevik revolution if the new regime would reopen hostilities against Germany. And again in late 1919 he urged the defeated Whites to
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
27
make terms. By World War II, Churchill had accepted the Soviet Union as a member of the international community. He now negotiated with Stalin on fundamental issues. But only in the autumn and winter of 1944-45 was there anything remotely resembling mutual trust. By March 1945, Churchill was already laying out the basic Cold War doctrine that meaningful negotiations with Moscow should be conducted only from a position of superior AngloAmerican strength.9 What was the source of Churchill's remarkably intense hostility to the Bolshevik regime? He made sporadic attempts to explain it during 1918-20, invariably emphasizing his belief that the Bolsheviks were violent terrorists pressing a "criminal revolution." By dismissing them in this way, he avoided having to consider the revolution as proceeding in any sense from deep-seated social, economic, or political causes. As he told the House of Commons in May 1920, "Bolshevism is not a policy; it is a disease. It is not a creed; it is a pestilence. It presents all the characteristics of a pestilence. It breaks out with great suddenness; it is violently contagious; it throws people into a frenzy of excitement; it spreads with extraordinary rapidity; the mortality is terrible; so that after a while, like other pestilences, the disease tends to wear itself out."10 This is another illustration, in a very different context, of the change in Churchill's political character apparently brought about by the war and already noticed in his view of the United States. The former Liberal is now barely discernible. The former political insight survives in brilliant flashes. But, as in his view of the United States, intense emotion rather than rational analysis now dominates his outlook. There is little interest in socioeconomic causation. And, most notably, we see here Churchill's postwar penchant for the compendious unsubstantiated abstraction. This was especially pronounced in his response to the rapidly changing Russian situation. In July 1917 we find him singling out, amid the general chaos, "General Brusilov and his heroic soldiers, hearing in the tumult only the voice of honour and duty, seeing in the obscurity only the light of freedom." From this Arthurian scene, which he occasionally recomposed later around the even less plausible figures of Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin, Churchill flew unhesitatingly across the spectrum of postrevolutionary Russia to the Bolshevik "terrorists" and "criminal regime," never pausing to analyze the social complications in between. Churchill did later acknowledge that the "discontented," as well as the criminal element, were at war with "the contented and law-abiding." But this was about as far as his analysis went. Basically, a band of well-drilled gangsters, admittedly committed to a Utopian vision, had taken advantage of momentary chaos to seize and hold power.11 Churchill was comfortable with these superficial explanations of Bolshevism. At any rate, he never reexamined them in depth. In his 1929 book on the postwar period, The Aftermath, he was content to offer a "high politics" account of events built around vivid character sketches. Here he is on Lenin:
2.8
THE IRON CURTAIN
Implacable vengeance, rising from a frozen pity in a tranquil, sensible, matterof-fact, good-humoured integument! His weapon logic; his mood opportunistic. His sympathies cold and wide as the Arctic Ocean; his hatreds tight as the hangman's noose. His purpose to save the world: his method to blow it up. Absolute principles, but readiness to change them. Apt at once to kill or learn: dooms and afterthoughts: ruffianism and philanthropy: but a good husband; a gentle guest; happy, his biographers assure us, to wash up the dishes or dandle the baby; as mildly amused to stalk a capercailzie as to butcher an Emperor. In 1937 he was still publishing simplistic explanations of the revolution, writing of Trotsky, "He did not like the Czar, so he murdered him and his family. He did not like the Imperial Government, so he blew it up. He did not like the liberalism of Guchkov and Miliukov, so he overthrew them. . . ,"12 Where, then, should we look for the explanation? Churchill's official biographer, Martin Gilbert, sticking carefully to the high road, writes, "Churchill's hatred of Bolshevism sprang from his belief that the ultimate aim of the Communist philosophy was the complete destruction of Parliamentary democracy, personal liberty and free speech." Undoubtedly there is much truth in this. But the interpretation misses the essentially visceral nature of Churchill's response, for what is remarkable is not his hatred of Bolshevism—that, after all, was widespread—but the almost unique vehemence and bellicosity of it. Churchill's identification of Bolshevism as the main political enemy came from emotional rather than from philosophical sources. This emerges from the following list of his references to "Bolsheviks" recorded in the index of the official biography: "blood and wholesale butcheries"; the "enemies of the human race"; "foul baboonery"; "like the vampire"; "that foul combination of criminality and animism"; "this nest of vipers"; "this vile group of cosmopolitan fanatics"; "these Jew commissars"; "a league of the failures, the criminals, the unfit, the mutinous etc."13 This is something of a surprise for the historian, for there is really nothing in Churchill's earlier political life to prepare us for the heat of this reaction. He had, many years earlier, been mildly critical of the "fanaticism" of the insurgent natives he encountered during his youthful Indian and Sudanese campaigns. But he seems to have been confident that this would evaporate in the light of liberal imperialism. And he was frequently complimentary to the Afghan tribesmen and Mahdiists, defending their dignity against jingoistic imperialists and other critics. Even in World War I the "Huns" never attracted abuse of this kind.14 We are inexorably led toward a conclusion that is less flattering but perhaps more plausible than any purely philosophic explanation. It is that the driving force in Churchill's anti-Bolshevism came, in proportions that defy precise measurement, from the combined action upon his passionately romantic, ego-
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
2p
tistic, and sometimes obsessive personality of three powerful unacknowledged factors. The first was his perception of Bolshevism as a direct subversionary challenge to the united Burkean organic society that was perhaps his political ideal. "Our civilization," he wrote in January 1920, "is the object of a deliberate world-wide, profoundly-conceived conspiracy." This fear seems to be the explanation of his repeatedly adverse references to the Jews who were prominent in Bolshevik circles. Thus we read variously during the 19205 and 19305 of "the Jew commissars," of these "Semitic conspirators" who "are among the highest political intelligence of the world and implacably devoted to its destruction," of "the cold Semitic internationalists," and of "Trotsky, alias Bronstein." Throughout the interwar period, though Churchill was not in other respects anti-Semitic and, significantly, was a strong supporter of the indisputably organic Zionist vision, the image of the subversive, cosmopolitan, internationalist Jew was a staple of his campaign against the Soviets.'B We see the same instinctive defense of the organic society in Churchill's subsequent admiration for Mussolini and the other European Fascist movements that openly opposed communism. They characteristically proclaimed national regeneration, racial pride, patriotism, codes of behavior, and respect for order and historic tradition, all touched up with energetic politics and a certain romanticism. Churchill deeply valued or responded to these things, often, it is clear, at the expense of "Parliamentary democracy, personal liberty, and free speech." The second impelling factor was not in the least philosophic. It was the persistence in Churchill of a deep well of undigested bitterness and suppressed aggression left over from his forced departure from the War Cabinet after the Gallipoli fiasco of 1915. This had robbed him of his opportunity to direct the British war effort.18 But now, with the war over and most around him exhausted by labor and bloodshed, the energetic Churchill suddenly found himself returned unexpectedly to a position of power and presented with the chance to direct a second eastern expedition. It is hardly surprising that he seized the opportunity avidly or that, given his capacity for unconscious selfdramatization, he easily persuaded himself that this, even more than the Great War itself, was the profound confrontation of the age. Russia was, in short, an outlet for all the unexpended energy and frustrated ambition with which he, virtually alone among his colleagues, ended the war. Now, for a brief, glorious moment, he directed and supplied tiny British armies, devised complicated strategic plans, and, as the little flags whizzed excitedly across the large War Office maps of Russia, exhorted the remote White generals, prodded an increasingly irritated Cabinet, intrigued with French anti-Bolsheviks, and all the while kept up a vigorous public campaign for intensified intervention in Parliament, in the press, and on the weekend podium.17 It could not last. By the end of 1920 even Churchill could see the writing
30
THE IRON CURTAIN
on the wall. But at this point, when he might otherwise have begun to settle down, a third compelling factor must have encouraged him to prolong his antiBolshevik campaign. This was the political appeal of the issue, if not within the Cabinet, at least on the right wing of the Conservative party. Throughout this period, and especially after 1922, Churchill was making a delicate traverse back from the declining Liberal party toward the more robust Tories, from whom he had departed with mutual expressions of ill will two decades earlier. The coinage with which he eventually gained readmission to the Conservative party, and therefore to the center of British political life, was unabashed antiBolshevism. To this he shrewdly married an increasingly violent opposition to the pro-Soviet Labour party. This culminated in the 1924 election campaign, during which, in the historian Arno Mayer's apt phrase, "he set out to red-bait the Labour Party." This was a ploy. As he wrote to a friend, "The Russian issue is the one, and with good handling might be decisive." In public he proclaimed the Labour party, with whose leaders he had collaborated intimately in prewar Liberal days, as being "innately pledged to the fundamental subversion of the existing social and economic civilization and organized for that purpose alone." The Conservatives won, and Churchill was rewarded by the new Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, with appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer.18
SECOND THOUGHTS In due course the "Red" issue receded in British politics, and the existence of the Soviet Union was gradually accepted as a fact of life in Europe. But Churchill, though diverted by his official duties in the years 1924-29, continued to monitor the Bolshevik menace. He especially welcomed such counterrevolutionary portents as the emergence of Italian fascism. On a visit to Mussolini in 1927 he told journalists, If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism. . . . I will however say a word on an international aspect of Fascism. Externally, your movement has rendered a service to the whole world. The great fear that has always beset every democratic leader or working-class leader has been that of being undermined or overbid by someone more extreme than he. It seems that continued progression to the Left, a sort of inevitable landslide into the abyss, was the characteristic of all revolutions. Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces which can rally the mass of the people, properly led, to value and wish to defend the honour and stability of civilized society. She has provided the necessary antidote to the Russian poison. His admiration for Mussolini continued to the brink of World War II. In 1933 he called him "the greatest law-giver among living men" for his anti-
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
31
Communist stand. And in a Collier's article as late as September 1938, he was still issuing these encomiums. Mussolini had transformed Italy; he stood for patriotism against leftist internationalism and for resistance to Bolshevism.19 As the Soviet state became stronger, Churchill again began to emphasize the direct political threat it posed. In June 1931, for instance, he told the House of Commons he feared a threat from Stalin's Russia, "incalculable, aloof, malevolent," and actively preparing for war. Later in the year, during his lecture tour of the United States, as we have seen, he continued to press the theme of a Soviet menace. In May 1932 he criticized those who expected Finland and Poland to disarm. Both needed "to protect themselves from being submerged in a ferocious deluge from Russia." In February 1933, in a speech to the twenty-fifth anniversary meeting of the Anti-Soviet and Anti-Communist Union, he defended Japan against criticism that she had been slow to disarm. Japan could hardly disarm, he argued, when faced with "the dark menace of Soviet Russia."20 Clearly, there had been little change in Churchill's views since 1917. Fascist Italy, imperial Japan, authoritarian Poland—all received his strong support against the various forms of Soviet and Communist menace. In 1937 we find him damning "the Communist plot that has plunged Spain into the present hideous welter against the desires of the overwhelming majority of Spaniards on both sides." And as late as September 1937, referring to the violently anti-Communist Hitler, he expressed the hope that if Britain ever suffered defeat she would "find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations."21 Nevertheless, at some point between 1933 and 1936, Churchill came to recognize that the immediate threat to British and international security came not from the Soviet Union but from Hitler's Germany. The reemergence of a Germany bent on the destruction of the Versailles system, which he had foreseen since 1919, now began to dominate Churchill's thought. Geopolitical preoccupations increasingly superseded ideological concerns. Churchill thought instinctively in terms of a great-power response. But Britain herself was unprepared; France was insufficient by herself; the United States was clearly unavailable. The Soviet Union, according to this reasoning, was the essential partner. From 1936 on, therefore, Churchill subordinated his general and ideological distaste in an effort to re-create the pre-1914 Anglo-French Russian entente. The prospects for this seemed encouraging, for the Soviets obviously feared Hitler too. This was the era of the Popular Front in Europe. Churchill began to cultivate Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London. Maisky responded, and in April 1936 he sent Churchill a copy of a speech he had recently made emphasizing Russia's desire to participate in the upholding of peace in Europe. Churchill began to talk about sending a British fleet to the Baltic, to be based on a Russian port and to operate as a check on Germany. The important thing, he told a friend at this time, was to include Russia in an encircling ring
32,
THE IKON CURTAIN
round Germany.22 But these ideas were not attractive in ruling Conservative circles. They shared Churchill's hostility to communism but lacked his insight and tactical flexibility. Baldwin, speaking of Hitler, remarked, "If he should move east I should not break my heart . . . I'm not going to get this country into a war with anybody for the League of Nations or anybody else or for anything else."23 During 1937 we see two significant modifications in Churchill's political outlook that reflect a capacity for second thoughts in response to compelling events. First, in a Sunday Chronicle article entitled "The Creeds of the Devil," he equated nazism and communism as "similar in all essentials" and associated Italian fascism with them while still paying the usual personal tribute to Mussolini. All of these three ideologies were now seen as "totalitarian." We hear very little from Churchill after this on the virtues of fascism.24 Even more remarkably, with the rise of Nazi Germany we find a softer tone toward the Soviet state and Stalin personally. This interesting nuance can be traced to a 1934 Answers magazine article entitled "Open Letter to a Communist," in which Churchill attacked communism without attaching the usual critique of the Soviet Union and its leaders. It can be seen in his 1936 defense of Stalin's purge of the Red Army as "less a manifestation of world propaganda than an act of self-preservation by a community which fears and has reason to fear, the sharp German sword." It also emerged in the 1937 article just mentioned, where Stalin, compared with Hitler and Mussolini, is described as "a more enigmatic figure than either of the others. . . . He has brought to the Kremlin the shrewdness, the craft and the long memory of the peasant stock from which he sprang." It appeared even more plainly in Churchill's chapter on Trotsky in his 1937 book, Great Contemporaries. Here he was quite neutral, even complimentary, portraying Stalin as a brilliant party manager—an organization man rather than an ideological warrior. He also wrote, "Russia is regaining strength as the virulence of communism abates in her blood." The real enemy was international communism, and especially Trotsky, now conveniently amputated from Soviet society by Stalin and described by Churchill as "a skin of malice stranded for a time on the shores of the Black Sea and now washed up in the Gulf of Mexico." Trotsky expounded "the purest sect of Communism" and had gathered around his name "the new extremists and doctrinaires of world-revolution."25 Meanwhile, as he prepared himself for Anglo-Soviet collaboration in this way, Churchill continued to draw attention to the approaching danger. During the Munich crisis in September 1938, the Russians sought his support more actively. On September 2, Maisky drove down to Churchill's country home, Chartwell, to say that the Soviet government wanted to consult with Britain and France under the aegis of the League of Nations. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain ignored the initiative, writing to his sister later, "I had and have deep suspicions of Soviet aims."26
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
33
Churchill regarded the failure to bring Russia into an anti-German alignment as Chamberlain's "fundamental mistake." He himself called openly for an Anglo-Soviet alliance. In March 1939, after Hitler took over the rump of the Czechoslovak state, the British government began its halfhearted negotiations with the Soviets in Moscow. But nothing came of this. Chamberlain lacked conviction. As late as July, while Churchill was criticizing the government for the "unaccountable delay" in concluding "a full and solid alliance with Russia," Chamberlain was privately confessing himself "sceptical of the value of Russian help." At last, on August 23, the announcement came of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The door was now closed. Hitler's forces moved into Poland, and World War II began.27 Churchill responded to this supposedly bad news, to quote a perceptive observer, "in high fettle." This was characteristic. The crisis excited him and inspired optimism. He now returned to the more congenial coherence of all-out anti-Sovietism. Ideological hostility came to the fore again. In September, in one of his last Collier's articles, entitled "The Terrible Twins," he told Americans that both Bolshevism and Nazism were "creeds of hatred" and hailed their pact as "a grand advantage to mankind" in stripping the two totalitarian powers of their credentials.28 This mood persisted through the "phony war." Churchill was active in promoting Anglo-French schemes for action to curtail Soviet oil shipments to Germany by bombing Baku, on the Caspian, and by sending submarines to the Black Sea. He enthusiastically sponsored plans to help Finland during the short Russo-Finnish "winter war" of 1939-40. And he personally inspired plans for action in Norway to stop shipments of iron ore to Germany that might also have brought war between Britain and the Soviet Union. Fortunately, perhaps, events outran all these schemes.29 The German conquest of France in the summer of 1940, together with his appointment as Prime Minister in May, quickly returned Churchill to his more coolheaded 1936-39 approach. In July he sent a message to Stalin suggesting Anglo-Soviet consultations over the obvious threat of "German hegemony." Stalin did not bother to reply. Churchill then sent Stafford Cripps, a prominent pro-Soviet Labour politician, as ambassador to Moscow. Cripps courted the Russian leaders with hints that Britain might approve Stalin's recent annexation of the three Baltic states and even, though this was unauthorized, territorial acquisitions at Poland's expense. These gestures were also ignored in Moscow. In early 1941 Churchill turned to a policy of sober restraint. He vetoed a suggestion that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden visit Moscow, He told Eden, "A mere visit would do no good. They might simply trade it off to Germany. I would hardly trust them for your personal safety or liberty." He did warn Stalin of the impending German invasion. Again, no response. Churchill did not persist. "Now is the time for a sombre restraint on our part, and let them do the worrying."30 At last, on June 22, word came of the Nazi invasion. Churchill was exultant.
34
THE IRON CURTAIN
He later wrote, "I had not the slightest doubt where our duty and our policy lay. Nor indeed what to say." That night, without bothering to consult the War Cabinet, he broadcast to the British people and, at the same time, attempted a public explanation of his personal volte-face toward the Soviet Union: The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels all forms of human wickedness in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle that is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away. . . . His [Hitler's] invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted invasion of the British Isles. . . . The Russian danger is, therefore, our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.31 Clearly, this was to be an association of necessity rather than of sentiment. As Churchill told his secretary, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." Stalin's first letter to Churchill was in a practical spirit, referring immediately to the new international situation in terms of "our common enemy." He then proceeded to press Churchill for military assistance far beyond Britain's capacity and reacted resentfully when it was not forthcoming. Cripps relayed Soviet complaints that the British were "prepared to fight to the last drop of Russian blood." Churchill angrily noted, "This leaves me cold. . . ." He did not hesitate, when reproached by Maisky for inactivity, to remind the ambassador of his government's recent collaboration with Hitler.32 But there was, from the start, a warmer, more collaborative side to the relationship at other levels. The War Cabinet and British public opinion, glad to find a major ally again, responded enthusiastically. Maisky was told that Britain would intensify its war effort. An exchange of military missions was suggested. An Anglo-Soviet agreement on war cooperation was quickly completed; a similar treaty between the Soviet Union and the exiled Polish government now established in London shortly followed. Later the two powers together invaded Iran and occupied their traditional spheres to forestall pro-German elements there and to open a needed communications route. Meanwhile Roosevelt offered Lend-Lease help and sent Hopkins to Moscow on a mission of mixed reassurance and assessment.33 Churchill, too, was eager to improve the relationship. When, in November, Stalin hinted at negotiations on "war aims and on plans for the postwar or-
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
35
ganization of peace," Churchill seized the opportunity and sent Eden to Moscow. The Foreign Secretary set off in early December intending simply to promise the Soviet leaders that they would be included in Anglo-American postwar schemes and to conclude with them a general declaration of intended collaboration.34 By the time he got to Moscow, however, the United States was in the war. Henceforth it was the Americans who would be formulating the broad declarations from afar. The British, on the other hand, would be steadily drawn into a more concrete and complicated arena of strategic and political adjustment with the enigmatic Soviet leaders.
THE GRAND ALLIANCE The "Grand Alliance" is surely one of Churchill's most successful conceptualizations. It was inspired by his study, during the 19305, of the coalition warfare conducted by his famous eighteenth-century ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. It lives on today as a definition of the tripartite relationship in countless histories and textbooks, conveying a misleading image of wartime unity, common purpose, and high ideals. Churchill's allies were less vivid. Roosevelt, the practitioner of personal diplomacy, opened the Teheran conference with a characteristically ecumenical reference to "the new family." This also strikes a false note today. Perhaps the Russians have described it best. Their historians invest considerable emotion in the Russo-German "Great Patriotic War." The relationships with Britain and the United States they call, with austere and dismissive simplicity, "the anti-Hitler coalition."36 In retrospect the Grand Alliance was not really a tripartite unity. Nor indeed was it the mainly bilateral association between the United States (and a less significant Britain) on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other— which most historians have portrayed. Rather, it comprised three distinct associations. Two of them, the Anglo-American and the Anglo-Soviet, were alike in being consistently functioning political relationships, though they were very different in character. The third, that between the United States and the Soviet Union, was much less developed, springing to life only on the three occasions when Roosevelt fully asserted himself: the Soviet frontier and secondfront negotiations of early 1942 and the summit conferences at Teheran and at Yalta toward the end of the war. This divided framework, which we will look at more closely in a moment, obviously invited British initiative. Churchill, finding ample scope for his compulsive activism, quickly made himself the pivotal figure. He had been quick to support the Soviets in June 1941. Now, as soon as he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he telephoned Roosevelt and successfully proposed himself for an immediate visit to Washington, brushing aside Halifax's message that the President, taken by surprise, was having second thoughts about the meeting. Speaking of the United States, he said, "Now that she is in the harem, we talk to her quite differently." The results of the following
36
THE IRON CURTAIN
Arcadia conference, held in Washington in December-January 1941-42, seemed at the time to justify this boldness. Churchill consolidated his personal relationship with Roosevelt. He enjoyed a great public success. A satisfactory level of continuing aid to Britain was agreed, it was confirmed that Germany rather than Japan would be the main American priority, and a virtual AngloAmerican codirectorate was established in order to prosecute the war.36 For all this a price had in the end to be paid, though its full extent was for the moment obscured. The establishment in Washington of a range of combined boards and other formal institutions took many matters beyond the direct supervision of the inner core Churchill had developed with Roosevelt and Hopkins during 1941. It also signified an inevitable shift in political power from Britain to the United States. Active belligerence, moreover, stimulated an ominously critical American scrutiny of Britain's moral qualifications for partnership. Roosevelt wanted Churchill to pledge that Imperial Preference would be abandoned after the war, and also suggested a degree of immediate self-rule for India. Churchill resisted strongly, and the President, putting the war first, did not force either issue at this point. The war dominated. But even here there was an alarming challenge. Churchill's chief antagonist in this sphere was not Roosevelt but the United States Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. The immediate issue was whether, as Marshall desired, there should be a unified Anglo-American military command. The deeper issue was who would direct Anglo-American strategy. This was much more important to Churchill than premature speculation about Britain's postwar weakness. He accepted, under pressure, the Combined Chiefs of Staff mechanism. During the next two years he nevertheless managed, with Roosevelt's essential support, to dominate Anglo-American strategy against Germany.37 In these intimate Anglo-American deliberations the Russians played no part. Only at the end was Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet ambassador in Washington, invited in to discuss and sign Roosevelt's Declaration of the United Nations, a broad statement of unity committing the signatories not to make a separate peace but otherwise couched in wholesome liberal generalities. The Soviets acceded after making it clear that they accepted no restraint on their postwar plans.88 These plans were already beginning to emerge at the concurrent AngloSoviet negotiations in Moscow. Eden began by producing his proposal for a general declaration. Stalin surprised him by responding with precise draft agreements. "A declaration I regard as algebra," he said, "but an agreement as practical arithmetic. I do not wish to decry algebra, but I prefer practical arithmetic. . . ." He wanted a formal military alliance, and an Anglo-Soviet agreement to cooperate in the postwar reconstruction of Europe with a secret protocol attached. This last envisaged the partial dismemberment of Germany and wide-ranging changes elsewhere in Europe. Stalin also demanded British recognition of the Soviet Union's 1941 frontiers, including the three Baltic states
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
37
and some former parts of Finland and Rumania, all acquired in 1940. At the same time he suggested to Eden that Britain should acquire military bases in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium and even in France, all as security against a resurgent Germany. He offered, in effect, a postwar Europe divided into distinct British and Soviet spheres.89 Only the fact of British participation provides an element common to these two conferences. Otherwise they present an eerie contrast. In Washington, though the military news was bad, the British and Americans contemplated their options and planned their expeditionary forces in the unhurried calm customary to statesmen protected by stormy waters. There was, amid the administrative bustle, time for Christmas carols at the White House, even for some of Churchill's luncheon monologues. In Moscow, by contrast, the war was omnipresent. Here the background music had recently been provided by the Wehrmacht's artillery. There was even a German in the Kremlin with Stalin and Eden—-at least figuratively. This was Karl von Clausewitz, the early-nineteenth-century military strategist famous for the axiom that war is a continuation of politics by other means. For Stalin, unlike the Anglo-Americans, was already laying concrete plans for the political structure of postwar Europe. Here, moreover, the negotiations were hard. When Eden suggested that the Americans might object to his plans, Stalin threatened to refuse even a cooperative Anglo-Soviet declaration if his wishes were not immediately met. It was a lesson, repeated many times afterward, in the tenacity of the Communist politician. When Churchill and the War Cabinet refused, citing the American difficulties and considerations of honor, the Foreign Secretary reassured an irritated Stalin that he would try and secure a favorable decision upon his return to London. Once home, he urged his case with vigor, showing already the essentially European orientation of his policy that sometimes divided him from Churchill.40 Churchill reacted to Stalin's demands in terms our discussion so far would lead us to expect. On the one hand his persisting moral contempt for the Soviet leaders was still very much in evidence. Their 1941 frontiers, he pointed out, "were acquired by acts of aggression in shameful collusion with Hitler." Any acceptance of their claims "would be contrary to all the principles for which we are righting this war and would dishonour our cause." On the other side lay "our association with the U.S.A." At the end of the war, Britain and United States might be the most powerfully armed economic bloc the world had ever seen, and Russia would need their aid. He intended, therefore, to stand by "the principles of freedom and democracy in the Atlantic Charter." In this we catch a glimpse of the 1946 Fulton speech in embryo, and also of the Grand Alliance as Churchill would have liked it to develop: a solid, dominant Anglo-American combination confronting a petitionary Soviet Union.41 The illusion was short-lived. By the beginning of March 1942 Churchill had already been led to change his mind on the Russian frontier issue by a variety
38
THE IRON CURTAIN
of unforeseen and unwelcomed events: direct pressure from Eden, Beaverbrook, Bracken, and others in his own entourage; a marked degree of proSoviet public agitation in Britain for a second front; intimations from Washington that Roosevelt was not necessarily against the treaty and that he regarded it as "largely a matter of presentation"; and, above all, the rapidly worsening military situation confronting Britain in the Far East and North Africa. The Soviets were needed. Churchill therefore reversed himself. He cabled Roosevelt on March 7 asking that, "in view of the increasing gravity of the war," the principles of the Atlantic Charter "ought not to be construed so as to deny to Russia the frontiers which she occupied when Germany attacked her," He added, "I hope therefore that you will be able to give us a free hand to sign the treaty which Stalin desires as soon as possible. . . ." Two days later he informed Stalin that he had urged Roosevelt "to approve our signing the agreement with you about the frontiers of Russia at the end of the war." Meanwhile, Eden instructed Halifax to explain to the President t!:at, as a European power for whom postwar collaboration with Russia was essential, Britain could not neglect any opportunity to establish relations of confidence with Stalin.42 Roosevelt had watched all this with rising concern. Supremely confident in his ability to persuade, he. was already planning an independent approach to Stalin. On March 18 he assured Churchill that he could "personally handle Stalin better than your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better and I hope he will continue to do so." Meanwhile, he sent word to Stalin through Litvinov that confirmation of the 1941 frontiers before the end of t^e war would alienate American public opinion and thereby hurt Russia but that he was in full sympathy with and would later support "measures of legitimate securitv" for the Soviet Union. This did not impress Litvinov, who asked what would happen if Roosevelt was no longer President; it certainly had no effect on Stalin, who simply acknowledged the message without comment and continued to press the British to move toward the political agreement he wanted.43 This and other rebuffs led Roosevelt to play a much more dangerous card. Having first secured Churchill's agreement in principle to a European landing in 1943, and perhaps an emergency landing in 1942, he informed Stalin that he had "a very important military proposal" to relieve his western front. He suggested a visit from Molotov. This stratagem brought the desired response, for with the approach of spring, and the developing prospect of a renewed, even stronger German offensive, the second front had again replaced postwar . frontiers on the list of Soviet priorities. Molotov covered his diplomatic retreat adroitly during his ensuing visit to London and Washington in May. He presented Eden with new radical demands, including Soviet claims at Polish expense, which the British were bound to find unacceptable but which would at least get them thinking in the right direction. He then quickly settled for the innocuous Anglo-Soviet Twenty-Year Treaty of Cooperation, giving Eden the
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
3p
illusion of a diplomatic triumph. With this offering in place, Molotov departed for Washington to collect his reward.44 The President was, from the beginning, alarmingly vague. He expressed delight that the final treaty had omitted the frontier issue. Some general talk ensued. Finally, Molotov raised the second-front question. Roosevelt responded that, for 1942, he had in mind a diversionary operation involving the temporary landing of ten divisions in Europe. After more highly generalized talk with Roosevelt, and then with American military chiefs, all of which somewhat belied Roosevelt's lure of "a very important military proposal," Molotov did succeed in extracting authority from the President to tell Stalin to expect the formation of a second front in Europe in 1942, and he even got a public communique recording this objective and describing it as "an urgent task." Roosevelt also spoke expansively of his desire to end British colonialism and held out the prospect of the Soviet Union's becoming one of "the Four Policemen" (the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China) who would ensure postwar peace.46 But as Molotov returned home through London he was greeted by Churchill with a memorandum stating that the British government could promise no second front in 1942, though the Prime Minister did endorse the public commitment and promised to do his best. Molotov, Churchill recalled later, left London, "apparently well satisfied with the results of his mission." This seems highly improbable. It is more likely that Molotov, at this low point in Soviet fortunes, felt he had been effectively whipsawed by the two capitalist leaders. He had sacrificed his treaty with the British, only to receive payment from Roosevelt in apparently dubious currency that, Churchill now confirmed, was most unlikely to be redeemed. All he had to take back to the unforgiving arithmetician in the Kremlin was a vague declaration of intent, unmistakably algebraic in character, a gift to future Soviet propagandists, but certainly no present help in trouble.48
AMERICA AND RUSSIA In these opening passages between the three powers, we can already see the divided nature of the Grand Alliance and the establishment of two strong logical patterns that, resting solidly on historically founded perceptions and compelling national interest, persisted through the war. One was, of course, the high degree of Anglo-American intimacy and practical cooperation. Here mutual political interest was reinforced by sentiment and a unique community of shared philosophic and cultural beliefs. This "fraternal association" was the bedrock of Churchill's diplomacy, maintained even when Roosevelt was uncooperative and when others in the British establishment turned against it later in the war. The second was the much less familiar Anglo-Russian collaboration. This relationship was inspired at the beginning, as we have seen, by military and political necessity alone. It was never very intimate and seldom
40
THE IRON CURTAIN
cordial, and it ended in a confrontation that led directly to the Cold War era. During the war, however, the Anglo-Soviet relationship developed and was underpinned by a distinct community of interests and attitudes that the United States did not share. These included a common, more or less proprietary preoccupation with the future disposition of Europe, and a long-rooted involvement and rivalry in the politics of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, where Greece, Turke), and Iran formed the so-called Northern Tier of British concern. There was also a mutually shared experience in the substance and style of European diplomacy, including the habit of unembarrassed discourse upon such topics as the balance of power and spheres of influence. It is not surprising, then, that Churchill tried hard to develop a strong working relationship with Stalin or that Stalin was, on the whole, more receptive to him than to Roosevelt. The fact is that Britain had much more in common with each of her two stronger allies than they had with each other. It is important, if we are to understand Churchill's influence during the war, and then the way in which the Cold War developed later, to recognize that, by comparison with these two relationships, that between the United States and the Soviet Union was essentially spasmodic, underdeveloped, and fundamentally different in character. This is, admittedly, an unfamiliar perspective. Most books about the origins of the Cold War give much more attention to the United States-Soviet relationship than to the other two. Yet a superficial glance at the content of Anglo-Soviet and United States-Soviet diplomacy suggests that, at least for the wartime period, this emphasis is misplaced. Issues of war, of course, concerned all three powers, though even here the United States was less involved with the Russians than the British were—except in the Far East toward the end of the conflict. But Churchill's diplomacy with the Russians was more apt to be concerned with concrete political, Europe-oriented issues. These revolved around territorial disputes, client regimes, and spheres of influence that were of real interest to the Soviet ogovernment. Roosevelt's diplomacy, by contrast, tended to concentrate on issues inspired by the exigencies of domestic American politics: the degree of religious freedom in the Soviet Union; efforts to secure a Soviet signature to an attractive declaration, or membership in a universalistic postwar organization; the dispatch of complex missions whose real purpose was simply to facilitate a summit meeting with Stalin, essentially talks about talks. Even inescapable political issues, like those presented by the Polish predicament, were usually treated by Roosevelt from the point of view of domestic politics. And this, unlike the more tangible AngloRussian association, was not the kind of relationship that, except at the level of moral indignation, was likely to lead to postwar confrontation.47 This important distinction—between an Anglo-Soviet diplomacy of substance and a United States-Soviet diplomacy of tone—can be explained in a variety of ways. First, it is clear that in 1941 the United States and Russia, though their eventual confrontation had been predicted by political visionaries from
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
41
Alexis de Tocqueville to Henry Adams, still lacked those elemental connections of shared historical memory and experience, fear of direct attack, and common if competitive geopolitical concern which, despite many sharp mutual suspicions, made Anglo-Soviet collaboration easier and more logical.48 The United States and the Soviet Union, except marginally in the Far East, neither shared nor competed for any concrete state interest as that term is understood in diplomacy. Their respective politico-diplomatic traditions, which both Roosevelt and Stalin reflected in a rather extreme form, were thoroughly dissimilar: the American one tied to domestic public opinion in a degree unmatched elsewhere; the Soviet one presided over by a supposedly omnipotent figure assisted by a tiny elite of whom, when Harry Hopkins made his pioneering visit to Moscow in July 1941, very little was known in the United States. Almost the only thing the two states had in common, apart from the desire to defeat Germany, was a history of deep ideological suspicion.48 Roosevelt's policies substantially reduced American ideological (and other) hostility toward the Soviet Union. Otherwise they tended to preserve and even aggravate this preexisting political detachment. Indeed, the President's determination, during much of the war, to put off the specific political decisions in which Stalin was interested virtually assured its continuance. Yet this postponement of politics was, from Roosevelt's point of view, entirely logical. His basic, eminently practical objective was to keep together, for the purposes of war, the two fundamental sources of power he perceived in the tripartite alliance: American public opinion and the Soviet leadership. But he did this by means of a dualistic policy that made postwar collaboration unlikely. Thus, on the one hand, with varying degrees of assistance from Stalin and Churchill, he animated the American people with a steady stream of loosely phrased but highly principled public pronouncements that, from the Atlantic Charter in 1941 to the Declaration on Liberated Europe in 1945, cast a consistently harmonious glow upon the tripartite alliance. At the same time he cultivated Stalin with carefully vague assurances. But toward the end of the war, as the Soviets gained the military and political initiative in Europe and emerged as a highly desirable partner in the final confrontation with Japan, he felt obliged to transform these into specific private promises of support for Soviet postwar objectives that, he must have realized, controverted the public moralistic declarations. What began in 1942 with expressions of sympathetic interest in Russia's postwar security and cloudy vistas of "the Four Policemen" ended at Yalta with the President's conditional agreement to the Curzon line, the Lublin Communist core of a reconstituted Polish government, and promises of support for Far Eastern cessions to the Soviet Union at Japanese and Chinese expense. As a war policy, Roosevelt's parallelism was brilliantly effective. As a medium for the difficult transition from successful war to harmonious peace it was, by virtue of the dilemma at its heart, fraught with risk. Roosevelt has often been criticized for not educating the American people to the political realities be-
42
THE IRON CURTAIN
hind Soviet power. The fact is he preferred to educate Stalin to the realities of American politics. Perhaps it was the wrong choice. Yet one wonders whether even the most sophisticated wartime educative campaign could have reconciled the American people to the substantial degree of Soviet control that was probably inevitable in Eastern Europe without both impairing the war effort against Germany in a fundamental way and seriously jeopardizing the prospect of postwar internationalism. At least Roosevelt did erect, in the form of the United Nations, an institutional barrier to any resurgence of American isolationism, one that also developed, in early 1946, into the indispensable instrumentality through which his two fundamental forces—American opinion and an apparently expansionist Soviet leadership—were at last brought into full Cold War confrontation. None of this is to deny that Roosevelt was inclined to appease Stalin, notably at the expense of the Polish government in exile at London, or that he was far too optimistic in his assessment of the Soviet leader. We have already noticed his belief that he alone could handle Stalin at the personal level. On another occasion he told a friend, "I think if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace."50 Yet this kind of blithe remark reflects the style rather than the substance of Roosevelt's diplomacy. The fact is that in his rare moments of close negotiation with the Soviets the President was often quite shrewd. He made expansive promises but tried to avoid absolute commitments. When pressed, he was quick to secure an appropriate means of escape, usually in the form of that uplifting generalized public declaration which served as his principal medium of communication with the American people on foreign policy issues. The classic example of this, as will be seen shortly, was his reaction to Stalin's attempt at the Yalta conference to force the issue too fast on Poland and Eastern Europe. Roosevelt's thoughts about the postwar era seem to have been grounded in three sequential asumptions. The first was that American public opinion severely limited his freedom of action—a plausible proposition that, by not challenging, he rendered unprovable. The second, much more dubious, was that his allies could see this fundamental constraint clearly. The third was that, recognizing the indispensability of American political and economic support during and after the war—the great lesson of the interwar period—his allies would, under his helpful guidance, gradually adjust their conduct to these public expectations, even on matters of vital importance to themselves like the administration of the British Empire or the disposition of Eastern Europe. This last assumption worked well with the British, who had little choice and were in any event nudged along with additional pressures; it proved fallacious with the more independent and suspicious Russians. They were not attracted by Roosevelt's evolutionary notion of Soviet self-transformation. They had concrete objectives of their own and the will and power to achieve them. The
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
43
President seems to have realized this toward the end of 1944. By then it was far too late for a radical readjustment in American policy. At Yalta he made one last effort to win Stalin to a peace that bore some resemblance to the Atlantic Charter. When this failed, he immediately took steps to detach himself and the United States from any moral or political responsibility.51 But Stalin was just as responsible for the detached character of wartime United States-Soviet diplomacy, perhaps more so. After all, when Roosevelt was acting with considerable personal assertion in early 1942, Stalin made it very clear that he preferred to conduct his wartime political diplomacy with the more pragmatic, less moralistic, more vulnerable British. Moreover, it is unlikely that he wanted a close relationship with the United States in the postwar era—at least it was not the highest priority. Stalin was undoubtedly aware of the rising American power upon which the President relied as a prod to self-willed adjustment on the part of his allies. The spectacle of the unprepared American mass society suddenly addressing itself to the increasingly successful conduct of two simultaneous and widely separated wars, meanwhile supporting its two major allies with a vast flow of supply without a significant decline in living standards, was bound to raise questions in the mind of any realist, even a devout Marxist. In the later stages of the war, therefore, Stalin responded more cordially to the President's cultivation and took a more flattering interest in his postwar visions. But Stalin rebuffed all Roosevelt's attempts to arrange a meeting until the end of 1943 and was generally unresponsive thereafter to his repeated criticisms of Churchill and Britain, with their vague but unmistakable hint of an exclusive postwar United States-Soviet partnership. Stalin's war aims, so far as we can judge from conduct, were concrete and logical. Shortly stated, and without asking at this point whether security or expansion was the sharper spur, these aims involved the reincorporation into the Soviet Union of much former czarist territory in and around Eastern Europe, and the achievement of other mainly traditional Russian objectives as opportunity offered. In furtherance of these aims, which were doubtless inspired in some degree by fears of a postwar German revival, Stalin's diplomacy moved methodically through three overlapping but distinct stages that reflect the growth of Soviet power. First, from 1941 through 1943 he was content to seek British and later American recognition of his 1939-40 Baltic and Rumanian acquisitions and, more tentatively, of his territorial claims against Poland. This objective was substantially achieved by the conclusion of the Teheran conference in late 1943. In the second stage, between early 1944 and the Potsdam conference of July 1945, Stalin, emphasizing his security needs, sought Allied acceptance of some as yet only loosely defined Soviet domination over Poland and much of south-central Europe, and also of certain territorial accessions and politico-economic privileges in northeast Asia at Chinese and Japanese expense. Here, too, despite a brief setback in early 1945, he generally found his allies clearing the way. Except for the formal recognitions, he was largely successful.
44
THE IRON CURTAIN
At this point, however, tempted by apparent Anglo-American divergences, and anxious to strike while opportunity offered, Stalin moved opportunistically to a more dangerous third stage whose primary feature was an intensified and aggressive projection of Soviet power southward toward Iran, Turkey, and Greece—the states constituting Britain's so-called Northern Tier. Here at last he overstepped the mark, setting in motion the complex chain of events that, during early 1946, culminated in Cold War with the United States.52 All this will emerge more clearly as we proceed. Meanwhile, the gulf between Roosevelt's desire to postpone all serious postwar planning, except that leading to a United Nations, and Stalin's contrasting insistence on early political territorial commitments encouraged the latter to look upon Churchill as his working partner. This relationship would have developed anyway in the earlier part of the war, for until the end of 1943 Churchill—in large part because of Roosevelt's support or detachment—held the effective power to frustrate Stalin's desperate war effort, both by refusing a second front in Europe and by stopping the Arctic convoys. Later, as the military issues receded somewhat, Churchill was much less powerful. But then Poland and the other controversial European and Near Eastern issues came to the fore. And Stalin seems to have perceived that here, as in the 1941-42 negotiations, Churchill was more likely than Roosevelt to give him what he wanted. In the earlier part of the war, then, when the Soviets were weak, it was usually Churchill, not Roosevelt, who had the effective power to deny Stalin's demands; later, as Soviet power increased, it was again Churchill who had the greater incentive to grant them. Deeper calculations also led Stalin toward Churchill rather than toward Roosevelt. Since the Bolshevik revolution the primary task of Soviet diplomacy had been to break up the various hostile combinations set against it by international reaction. Given Stalin's capacity for long views, impressively displayed in the 1941 treaty negotiations with Eden, it can hardly be doubted that behind the immediate Fascist threat he-already saw the specter of that dominating Anglo-American postwar combination to which, as we have just seen, Churchill was already looking forward enthusiastically in December 1941. In that combination, essentially a marriage of American power and British worldwide connections, Britain would be the partner most vulnerable to Soviet pressure and influence. Her detachment from the United States was, therefore, a logical postwar objective in a well-established Soviet tradition. Considerations like these encouraged Stalin to tempt the British, as he occasionally did, with the prospect of mutually approved postwar spheres of interest in Europe: in the frontier negotiations of 1941-42; in Maisky's 1943 homilies to Eden in London upon the value of Anglo-Russian cooperation in the face of American imperialism; and in the famous "spheres" arrangements for southeastern Europe in 1944. In the absence of a satisfactory "inner history" of Stalin's purposes it is tempting, though doubtless unprofessional, to imagine
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
45
him explaining candidly to Churchill at some point in 1944, "You will feel impelled, in exchange for my promises of future support in Western Europe and the Mediterranean region, to ease my way now in Eastern and southeastern Europe. This will help legitimize my gains there, discourage any American revisionary impulse and discredit your chronically unsuccessful but still dangerous attempts to create a solid Anglo-American front against us. We can then turn without American interference to the progressive elimination of Britain as an obstacle to further Soviet aspirations in and around Europe,"53 Of course, we do not know Stalin's exact intentions, and one can scarcely compensate by posing as his confessor, an office that is in any case well beyond the spiritual resources of the present author, perhaps of any religious authority. What we can say is that the pattern of his diplomacy is unmistakable. Its foundation was practical collaboration with Churchill, though he obviously valued Roosevelt's cooperation as well. Its inspiration lay only partly in Stalin's awareness of Churchill's short-lived but real power to frustrate his military and strategic objectives in the first years of the war. It rested more enduringly on his perception of British geopolitical decline and vulnerability. And this in turn led him to expect a helpful diplomacy of appeasement from Churchill. An irony here is that Roosevelt, who plainly wanted the closer relationship with Stalin (though unwilling to pay his price, at least in public), unwittingly encouraged the Soviet leader's preference for partnership with Churchill by his ostentatious personal detachment from the British leader at the Teheran and the Yalta summit conferences. Roosevelt, as he subverted his friend in this way, never saw that it was precisely Churchill's weakness (combined with the Prime Minister's consuming desire to act and appear as an equal member of the Big Three) that rendered him highly susceptible to Stalin's manipulation and therefore attractive as a working partner. The results of this further undermining can be seen clearly enough in Churchill's generally poor performance at the summit conferences and in his tendency to appease Stalin later in the war when Roosevelt was less supportive.
CHURCHILL'S POSITION, 1941-1943 The scope and significance of these various patterns will emerge more simply as we go on. Clearly though, the comparatively detached character of United States-Soviet relations opened up opportunities for Churchill within the broader alliance and encouraged him, though this was hardly necessary, to act assertively. Churchill himself played a part in maintaining that detachment by consistently protesting Roosevelt's impulse to seek an exclusive summit meeting with Stalin.54 In the period up to mid-1943, however, Churchill would have received a more prominent place in Soviet calculations than Roosevelt even if the latter had been more active, for Britain possessed an effective veto over the two things the Russians then needed most: American supply and the second front. The chief problem with supply was transporting it to the north Russian
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THE IRON CURTAIN
ports through a witches' corridor of German air and sea harassment concentrated in northern Norway. This meant mainly British ships and British lives. In July 1942 and again in 1943, after terrible losses, Churchill decided, despite bitter complaints from Stalin, to suspend the convoys during the long light of the northern summer.55 It was much the same with the second front. Roosevelt made the expansive promises; it fell to Churchill to decide whether they should be kept. A substantial landing in Europe in 1942 or 1943 could come only from the British Isles and would probably be executed mainly by British troops. The recent experience at Dunkirk and the still-vivid memory of trench warfare in World War I strengthened Churchill's conviction, in which he was supported by most of the British establishment, that, given the military dispositions on each side of the English Channel, Britain should not mount such an expedition prematurely, if at all. Stalin protested constantly to Churchill. "The question . . . is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves," he wrote at one point, ". . . the Soviet Government cannot acquiesce in the postponement of a Second Front in Europe until 1943." In fact it had to wait till I944.56 Churchill seems not to have felt any guilt over these delays. "They certainly have no right to reproach us ... ," he wrote in October 1942. "If we had been invaded and destroyed in July 1940 or August 1940 . . . they would have remained entirely indifferent." The Soviet complaints therefore left him "quite cold." Afterward, in his memoirs, he wrote in a similar vein, "The Soviet Government had the impression that they were conferring a great favour on us by fighting in their own country for their own lives. The more they fought the heavier our debt became. This was not a balanced view."57 Churchill's underlying hostility to the Soviet state, moreover, persisted throughout the war. In 1941 he refused indignantly proposals that greetings be sent to Moscow on the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1942 we find him talking about the "measureless disaster" of Russian "barbarism" threatening to engulf Europe, and asking the Minister of Information "to consider what action was required to counter the present tendency of the British public to forget the dangers of communism in their enthusiasm over the resistance of Russia." In 1943 he personally complained to Maisky about the rudeness of Stalin's messages. His view throughout was that the Soviets pursued their own "coldblooded self-interest."58 But this is not the whole story. Churchill wanted above all to win the war against Germany and was fully aware that this required Soviet help. There were also more affective considerations as the war continued. Russian endurance and heroism aroused his sense of honor. Here, too, as with the United States, he was impressed by the scope of Russian power and increasingly fascinated with its personal embodiment in the figure of Stalin. It is thus not surprising that, having persuaded Roosevelt to let Harriman accompany him, he decided to go to Moscow in August 1942 to tell Stalin personally that there
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
47
would be no second front in France that year, an experience he likened to "carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole."69 The first meeting in the Kremlin started badly as Churchill conveyed his disappointing message. But he then developed a vivid portrait of future AngloAmerican military activity: planned landings in North Africa (TORCH), the anticipated victory in Egypt, the rapid clearance of Africa and the Mediterranean, the encouragement of Turkish belligerence, and in 1943 the promised invasion of France. Stalin was apparently impressed, just as Roosevelt had been when first exposed to Churchill's comprehensive strategic scenarios in August 1941. But in Moscow the spell was short-lived. At the second meeting, next evening, there was "a most unpleasant discussion." Stalin now charged that the British were afraid of fighting the Germans, and he complained of broken promises over supply and the second front. Churchill resisted stoutly. Casting about for an explanation of Stalin's volte-face he later cabled the War Cabinet, "I think the most probable is that his Council of Commissars did not take the news I brought as well as he did. They may have more power than we suppose, and less knowledge." He thus founded the principal tenet of wartime Sovietology: the notion that Stalin was an essentially constructive, businesslike figure whose unexpectedly human impulses were frequently frustrated by sinister unknown figures in the background. He was strengthened in this belief as Stalin subsequently thawed out, inviting Churchill for drinks and dinner to his private apartment in the Kremlin.60 A personal relationship of sorts was formed. Told that Churchill had "taken a liking" to Stalin, Molotov assured the British ambassador that this had'been reciprocated. Actually, Stalin's assessment was characteristically realistic. He later told the visiting Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas that he thought Churchill a farsighted and dangerous "bourgeois statesman." Churchill cabled Roosevelt, "I am sure the disappointing news I brought could not have been imparted except by me personally without leading to really serious drifting apart." This was probably an illusion. What impressed Stalin was less Churchill's personality or the drama of his mission than the evidence of his apparent power. And this power, as Averell Harriman's mostly silent but always supportive presence at the Prime Minister's side eloquently testified, resided above all in Churchill's apparent domination of Anglo-American strategy.61 This power had not been won without a struggle. Churchill's confrontations with Marshall and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff during 1942-43 are well known. The latter, always supported by Hopkins, consistently favored a direct assault on Germany after landing in France. They resented the Prime Minister's movement from apparent acceptance of this in April 1942 to insistence upon a Mediterranean strategy thereafter. They periodically threatened to divert American resources to the Pacific. But Churchill found he could appeal successfully to Roosevelt, whose tendency to procrastinate on strategic matters and to play Churchill off against his military chiefs offered abundant oppor-
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THE IRON CURTAIN
tunity for second thoughts if not second fronts. The two leaders shared a political need for a dramatic victory with minimal casualties. The successful North African campaign was the first result. It led logically, as Marshall had ruefully foreseen, to the decision by Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943 to invade Sicily. And that led inevitably to the abandonment, formalized in May, of any second front in France for 1943.62 Marshall fought back stubbornly. In May he persuaded the President to ensure a 1944 invasion of France by vetoing any substantial Mediterranean operation east of Sicily. Churchill's plunge toward the far Mediterranean was briefly arrested. Lord Moran, his doctor and wartime Boswell, noted in his diary, "The Prime Minister is, I think, puzzled; he had not expected the President to lay down the law like this." Hopkins exulted that the President could now "safely be left alone with the Prime Minister." But Churchill again went to work on Roosevelt, pressing anew the "corpses in the Channel" and "verdict of history" arguments that had served earlier, adding the political damage that might accrue from any failure to use the enormous resources now concentrated in the Mediterranean during 1943, stressing the gratification that might be felt in Moscow as a result of a vigorous Mediterranean campaign that might bring Turkey into the war, and, finally, exploiting the preference of American field officers in North Africa for an Italian campaign. Roosevelt was persuaded. Marshall again gave way, and the invasion of Italy followed in September. By the end of 1943 Churchill, emboldened as usual by success, was pressing hopefully for operations in the Aegean and the Dodecanese.63 It is a tribute to Churchill's skill that, just as he had successfully adapted to Roosevelt's system of personal diplomacy in 1941, so in 1942-43 he accepted another American system—Marshall's principle of unified command—and successfully outflanked its progenitor for nearly two years. Meanwhile, the old "inner core" continued to function well. Vital supply issues were handled sympathetically through Hopkins as before. The personal relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill was, on the whole, warm and close. In 1943, therefore, Churchill began to talk confidently, much as he had done in 1919-20, of a more permanent, postwar Anglo-American intimacy. While in Washington during May, he successfully urged upon administration leaders at a British embassy lunch the value of his cherished Anglo-American "fraternal association" with common passports and possibly eventual common citizenship, all protected by shared bases and a continuing military staff organization. Halifax noted, "All the American guests present said that they had been thinking on more or less the same lines." On September 6 Churchill repeated these themes in public in his well-known Harvard University speech. It was, in a sense, a preview of his 1946 Fulton speech without the provoking references to a Soviet threat. Once again he received a warm reception. He wrote home happily, "[T]his marks an immense step forward and one which I had no hopes could be taken at so early a stage."64
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Churchill's sense of achievement was premature. In fact, his influence within both the Anglo-American and the tripartite alliance was about to decline. His standing with the Soviets had indeed already fallen sharply in the spring of 1943. He had again angered Stalin by canceling the northern convoys, and in May had had to confirm Russian suspicions that there would be no second front that year. Now, moreover, the Soviets were less dependent on Churchill. They were getting most of their American supply through the Persian corridor. Even the second front, though still a fundamental objective, was less crucial than it had been before Stalingrad and, it was now clear, might be better settled with Roosevelt after all. Churchill, aware that his influence was ebbing, predicted in June that his correspondence with Stalin might end. He now encouraged Roosevelt to seek a bilateral meeting with Stalin, "if you can get him to come," and gloomily began to canvass the possibility that the Russians would come to terms with Hitler.65 In the event, Roosevelt and Stalin did come together at the Teheran conference on the central strategic issue at the expense of British views. But, despite Churchill's fears, the Anglo-Soviet relationship not only survived but even intensified. The focus simply shifted from strategy to the emerging political problems. There were several tokens of this in the months before Teheran. In April 1943 the Germans announced that they had uncovered the bodies of thousands of Polish officers allegedly murdered years earlier by the Soviets at Katyn, near Smolensk. The Polish government in London took up the German call for an international Red Cross investigation. Stalin immediately broke off relations with them. At the same time he sent a veiled plea to Churchill for support. Churchill, now thrust forward as the sole protector of the London Poles, reassured Stalin, though he was personally inclined to believe the German accusation. But he warned the Soviet leader not to establish a leftist Polish regime that neither he nor Roosevelt would support. Then, while the President remained carefully aloof, he began his long effort to settle the Russo-Polish issue.66 The prospect of postwar confederations among the smaller states of central and southeastern Europe was another mutual concern. The exiled governments, especially the Poles and Yugoslavs, justified the various confederation plans in terms of a German revival but were actually more worried about Soviet expansion. The British, keenly aware of the balance of power implications, looked on benevolently. Eden tried to hold Molotov to a quixotically named "gentlemen's agreement" binding the two powers not to seek bilateral treaties with the small states that might lead to a race for allies. But the determination of President Benes of Czechoslovakia to attach his country to the Soviet Union, rather than to the Western powers that had betrayed him at Munich, steadily subverted this policy.87 Turkey and Iran, traditional objects of British and Russian policy, also brought a degree of collaboration in 1941-43. Both powers wanted to bring
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THE IRON CURTAIN
Turkey into the war. To this end Britain, Turkey's ally and protector, tried vainly to remove Turkish apprehensions that a Soviet victory would be as bad as or worse than a German victory. In Iran the Anglo-Soviet collaboration that had begun with the joint military occupation in late 1941 was followed by a January 1942 treaty guaranteeing Iranian independence and the development of communications that eventually made Iran the main channel of aid to Russia. But the Soviets proved difficult partners, increasingly sealed off their northern sphere, and steadily revived old suspicions of their long-term intentions in the region.68 The variety of Anglo-Russian political interests therefore prolonged their association. But now the boot was on the other foot. Stalin worked from a position of increasing power and influence as the Red Army advanced toward the middle of Europe. Churchill, defending from a position of declining relative strength and influence, had now to try and negotiate with Stalin the limits of this new Soviet expansion. He was certainly aware of the problem. In October 1942 he told Eden, "It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient states of Europe." In April 1943 he warned his colleagues that "the overwhelming preponderance of Russia remains the dominant fact of the future" and predicted that "the immense weight of Russia will weigh heavily on the new Europe."69 The difficulty was that, in the absence of an American commitment, Churchill could not see any satisfactory balance. During 1943, though he discouraged "premature" Foreign Office speculation about the postwar order, he occasionally flirted with the notion of some vague West European grouping. More frequently he simply affirmed the need to find some way to cooperate with the Soviets after the war. But in general he preferred to wait for the Americans in the hope of a united front. As he warned Eden in October 1943, regarding Soviet territorial ambitions, "It would be well . . . to have the American attitude clearly developed before we adopt a new position in advance of the 20 Year Treaty."70 The flaw in this approach was that Roosevelt had no intention of forming a joint front with Churchill against the Russians. In fact, by the winter of 1943-44 the President, encouraged by Hopkins, was determined to settle the second-front issue with Stalin and, in return, secure a Soviet commitment to enter the Pacific war. During 1943, moreover, he moved steadily toward the notion of a postwar partnership, not with a Britain weighed down with unacceptable imperial and balance of power baggage but with the supposedly progressive Soviet Union. The transfer of Harriman from London to Moscow, where he became ambassador at the end of 1943, has been appropriately described by a recent historian as registering "a change in the scale of priorities of both Roosevelt and Harriman." But would Stalin respond? Roosevelt had tried repeatedly since 1942 to arrange a meeting with Stalin, either bilaterally or at a tripartite meeting. Stalin had continually rebuffed him. By August 1943
CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE
5!
Roosevelt was complaining to Churchill of a "runaround" and even thinking of reinforcing the Mediterranean theater at some risk to the projected invasion of France in 1944. But on August 24 Stalin did agree to a tripartite Foreign Ministers conference; and in September he at last promised to meet Roosevelt and Churchill at Teheran in November.71 This set the stage for what was to be, arguably, the most difficult period of the war for Churchill. It began with a sudden exposure of British weakness at Teheran and continued into 1944 with a succession of diplomatic tribulations, ironically counterpointed by great victories against Germany, as the two emerging superpowers prepared for the postwar era in ways that gravely threatened Britain but that—and this is of great importance—did not seriously threaten each other.
Chapter Three
Churchill Faces Postwar Problems: Teheran to Yalta The Teheran conference, at the end of 1943, was a turning point in the history of the tripartite alliance. The defeat of Germany, the cause that held the three powers together, now seemed much closer. Henceforth, therefore, politics began to overshadow strategy. At the same time there was a fundamental change within the Big Three. Roosevelt, asserting himself fully for the first time since May 1942, was determined to form a bilateral relationship with Stalin. Inevitably this diminished Churchill's influence. Indeed, it created in him a sudden sense of vulnerability that showed itself at Teheran and then intensified through 1944 as the two stronger powers began, separately and in different ways, to threaten fundamental British interests. He also had to adjust to domestic divisions and a declining authority over the Dominions and West Europeans. Consequently, while Britain herself disposed vast forces, won great victories, and achieved unprecedented levels of wartime production, the foundations of British power were rapidly eroding. It was therefore in a context as challenging in its way as those of 1940 and 1942 that Churchill, now in his seventieth year and often ill or exhausted, struggled to maintain Britain as a great power.1 The structural context between the Teheran meeting and the Yalta conference of February 1945 helps to explain Churchill's difficulties, for despite Roosevelt's very active participation at Teheran the earlier pattern of American detachment quickly reappeared. The President, while offering expansive assurances of support to Stalin, remained aloof from the increasingly complex and
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demanding political problems of Europe. The result was that Churchill, confronted now with the rapid western and southern projection of Soviet power, found himself drawn reluctantly but inevitably toward the bilateral AngloSoviet understanding over Europe that Stalin had held out since 1941 and that finally took shape at the end of 1944.
THE TEHERAN CONFERENCE Why did Stalin, after so much resistance, finally agree to a tripartite summit conference? One can only speculate. The decisive Soviet victory over the Germans at Kursk-Orel in the summer of 1943 certainly strengthened his hand. The prospect of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe now stretched more realistically before him. But the Russians were war-weary, the second front was still needed to secure victory and to that, it must now have been clear, Roosevelt rather than Churchill held the key. Fears of a separate Anglo-American peace with Germany and of ideological contamination among the westwardly moving Soviet soldiery may also have played a part. The one thing that is clear is Stalin's great caution, signified by the preliminary conference of Foreign Ministers that he organized at Moscow in late October.2 Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt took this October meeting very seriously, yet it saw the initiation of several diplomatic fashions. One was the vigorous but unsuccessful British effort to concert Anglo-American conference strategy in advance. Another was the determined American effort to show the Russians not only that there was no united Anglo-American front but that the two Western powers had widely divergent interests and ideals. A third, consequential feature, present at all the tripartite meetings but especially pronounced at Moscow, was the tendency of the conference to devolve into two distinctive negotiations: a higher level of mutual cordiality where the American and Soviet leaders encouraged each other in their main objectives without much inquiry as to detail; and a lower level of more practical and immediate concerns where, with the Americans watching impatiently, the British and Russians debated and negotiated contentious, mainly European issues.3 At Moscow, therefore, after general confirmation by the visitors of their intention to invade France in May 1944, we find Eden and Molotov discussing the possibilities of getting Turkey and Sweden into the war while Secretary of State Cordell Hull avoided comment and referred to Washington for instructions. Hull also declined to participate in the discussions over Allied policy toward the factions in Yugoslavia; and he resisted Eden's attempt to secure his support for a demonstration of "keen concern for Poland's future." Eden was also alone in raising the embarrassing matter of the looming Soviet-Czech treaty and the issue of "confederations," though he quickly retreated in exchange for Molotov's agreement to participate in a European Advisory Commission—a Foreign Office conception that soon fell victim to American indifference. And when Eden raised the issue of policy toward Iran the uninterested Secretary of
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THE IRON CURTAIN
State effectively chilled the initiative by saying that "it would save time to refer this question to a special committee."4 The Hull-Molotov exchanges were rather different. Hull did produce a proposal for postwar Germany that left the country decentralized but intact. Molotov delicately avoided this by saying that his government was "somewhat behind" in studying the problem. Hull was little concerned. His real objective was a four-power declaration envisaging a postwar peace organization. Molotov (with whom Hull several times met privately while avoiding Eden—thus introducing another fashion) agreed to this after some judicious deletions. He also accepted the Secretary's Wilsonian declaration on international trade. Then Stalin himself told Hull at a farewell banquet that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan after Germany had been defeated. Understandably elated by these developments, Hull returned home to tell Congress and the American people that, as the Four-Power Declaration came into effect, there would "no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power, or any other of the special arrangements through which in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests." Here he established yet another much-followed precedent, that of misleading American opinion by inflating the beneficent results of negotiations with the Soviets.5 The summit meeting at Teheran a month later was much less orderly. The venue, chosen to please Stalin, was extraordinary: a teeming remote city with a pro-German reputation and almost every kind of security hazard. There was little structure to the conference, and neither Roosevelt nor Churchill briefed himself effectively for it. The plenary discussions were often repetitious. The moral tone was unimpressive, memorable for the persistent note of disparagement gratuitously applied to the hapless London Poles and for Stalin's proposal, presumably on the Katyn model, to execute fifty thousand German officers out of hand upon the victory. In the social interludes flashes of warmth were interspersed with lugubrious exchanges that inspired one observer to wish "that people might know what piffle great men sometimes talk." And yet, beneath all this, there was both serious business and a high degree of system in the deliberations at Teheran.8 The conference was a reward for Roosevelt's persistence. His general objective was to establish a good personal relationship with Stalin; his specific purpose was to settle the 1944 strategic issues with him and to nail down Soviet participation both in the Pacific war and in a postwar United Nations.7 Each of his allies, uncertain of his intentions, offered a distinctive negotiating strategy. Churchill, after Stalingrad, was increasingly conscious of Russian power. On the way to Teheran he told an associate, "The real problem now is Russia. I can't get the Americans to see it." In fact, he seems to have made little effort to raise the alarm at this stage. He was intent above all on preserving the Mediterranean as a dynamic theater of Anglo-American strategic action. He
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nevertheless urged a prior conference at Cairo so that a united front could be presented to Stalin. Roosevelt agreed to the meeting. But he undermined Churchill's scheme by inviting the Russians, who did not come, and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, who did. Instead of getting an Anglo-American front, Churchill found himself committed to an unwanted campaign in Burma.8 Stalin offered Roosevelt a straightforward bargaining approach. At Moscow the Russians had clearly extended what was in essence an invitation to treat on the basis of their willingness to participate in the Pacific war and a postwar organization. The respective quid pro quos, Stalin gradually made clear at Teheran, were the second front in France (the operation now called OVERLORD) and some degree of political support in Eastern Europe. The record shows that, as the conference progressed, Roosevelt recognized Stalin's purpose and adapted to this system. The result, though obscured at the time by the informal character of the Teheran proceedings, and afterward by Roosevelt's characteristic dissimulation, was a loosely defined but identifiable AmericanSoviet bargain that governed their relationship for more than a year and then, when Roosevelt seemed to repudiate it after Yalta, remained the basis of Stalin's American policy up to the start of the Cold War in early 1946. At their first private meeting, on November 28, the President tried to establish a favorable atmosphere with Stalin by criticizing the British and French. But Stalin was not drawn. Roosevelt also addressed the military situation, responding to Stalin's gloomy analysis by declaring his desire to draw thirty to forty German divisions from the eastern front. He next described the forthcoming Burma operation, doubtless hoping that the Soviet leader would take the occasion to reaffirm his promise to enter the war against Japan. Stalin remained silent. He wanted a clearer American undertaking on the European second front first.9 This came at the immediately following plenary session. Roosevelt began by drawing Stalin's attention to the variety of Mediterranean options he and Churchill had been considering. But he stressed that they might delay OVERLORD, which he himself was unwilling to contemplate. What did Stalin think? Stalin, with perfect timing, now formally reaffirmed that he would join the Pacific war after the German defeat. He then elaborated a precise plan emphasizing the desirability of attacking Germany through northern France, with a supporting operation in the vicinity of Marseilles. He argued against wasting diversionary actions through Turkey and the Balkans and recommended the early abandonment of the Italian campaign. Churchill, suddenly confronted with the collapse of all his Mediterranean plans, vigorously debated the wisdom of all this. But Stalin refused to budge, and the meeting ended with Roosevelt, gratified by the Soviet Pacific decision, pronouncing himself against any delay in OVERLOAD "which might be necessary if any operations in the eastern Mediterranean were undertaken." The President then asked for an immediate staff plan for the supporting operation in southern France, sub-
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sequently known as ANVIL, which would inevitably draw most if not all its resources from the Italian theater.10 This was a profound shock for Churchill—in fact, two shocks. First because it was suddenly clear that between the Moscow and the Teheran conferences the Soviets, who had until now shown some enthusiasm for an Anglo-American thrust into central Europe from the Mediterranean, had changed their minds. And second because, despite warnings from Hopkins at Cairo that the Americans and Russians would be agreeing at Teheran on the absolute primacy of OVERLORD, the Prime Minister, in the words of his doctor and confidant, Lord Moran, "could not bring himself to believe that, face to face with Stalin, the democracies would take different courses. Now he sees that he cannot rely on the President's support. What matters more, he realizes that the Russians see this too."11 The sudden and humiliating exposure of British vulnerability produced in Churchill, during the remainder of the conference, a mixture of stubborn resistance and appeasement. Thus he fought back on the strategic decisions, pressing against Roosevelt and Stalin, now united, the case for a more active eastern Mediterranean campaign that would not, he insisted, endanger OVERLORD. He based his argument largely on the improbable assumption of Turkish belligerence. Here he succeeded only in further dramatizing Britain's isolation.12 At the same time, within hours of this setback, we find him energetically seeking a compensating political bond with Stalin over Poland. Thus after dinner on November 28, during which Stalin had declared that the Soviet Union would brook no interference in the Baltic states and that Poland's western border should be the river Oder, Churchill took the occasion of Roosevelt's early retirement for the night to broach the issue. A settlement should be reached by the great powers, he told Stalin, without the participation of the Poles, upon whom it would then be imposed. He then used three matchsticks to illustrate his plan to move Poland bodily to the west. This seems to have been done on impulse. As recently as October 6 Churchill had reiterated his desire to postpone territorial questions until the end of the war. His proposal, moveover, which seems to have accepted Soviet demands for the Curzon line with compensation for Poland at German expense, was only one side of preexisting British policy. The other side, which he failed to present to Stalin, was the obvious quid pro quo of a Soviet guarantee of Polish independence.13 On the last day of the conference Churchill did try to reclaim the Polish city of Lvov, on the eastern side of the Curzon line. But when Stalin refused, Churchill backed away, saying this "would not break my heart." He would present the territorial settlement to the London Poles as a reasonable solution and then wash his hands of it. They were, he added, the type of people who would never be satisfied anyway.1* Meanwhile, at a second private meeting, on November 2,9, Roosevelt and Stalin, having made their strategic deal, began to move toward their political
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bargain. The President raised the question, crucial for him, of Soviet participation in the postwar peacekeeping organization. In Washington, because of the irresistible evolution of public and political thought, the hegemonic "Four Policemen" structure with which Roosevelt had tempted Molotov in 1942 had been superseded by a more universalistic conception with considerable smallpower, participation. Stalin expressed a preference for a purely regional European Council. Unfortunately, Roosevelt explained, Congress was unlikely to authorize American participation on that basis. And in any event the American contribution to European problem solving, except in "a terrible crisis such as at present," would only be planes and ships—Russia and Britain would have to provide the troops. The meeting ended on this rather unsatisfactory note, with Stalin, as he had on the strategic issue, patiently waiting for the President to reveal his inducement more clearly.15 Roosevelt, like Churchill, had hoped to avoid territorial commitments until the end of the war. But, because he regarded the prospective world organization as the sine qua non of American postwar internationalism, he apparently decided to make the obvious gestures over Eastern Europe. He therefore invited the Soviet leader in for a third and final discussion just before the general departure. He now explained his" domestic political problems in the forthcoming election year, especially with Americans of Polish and Baltic descent. He told Stalin he agreed that the Polish eastern frontier should be moved to the west with compensation at German expense. But he could not publicly declare this. Stalin encouragingly said he understood. Roosevelt then addressed the issue of the Baltic states. Here, too, there were many interested American voters. He acknowledged Russia's historical ties with these states and jovially declared that he did not intend to go to war on the issue. But it would be helpful if Stalin could arrange some sort of expression of the popular will—perhaps a referendum? Stalin then tried to justify the Soviet position. The President, now playing the hard-boiled realist, showed no interest in this. The truth of the matter, he replied, was "that the public neither knew nor understood." Stalin made a penetrating response: "They should be informed and some propaganda work should be done." Nevertheless, he hinted that there would be occasion for some "expression of the will of the people." Roosevelt, clearly feeling that he had now gone far enough toward meeting Stalin's needs in Eastern Europe, at least for the moment, then brought the conversation around to his own quid pro quo, the universalistic peacekeeping organization. He reminded Stalin pointedly that he had already outlined to him his ideas on the world organization, though "he felt it was premature to consider them here with Mr. Churchill." Stalin quickly took the hint and, as the minutes record, "said that after thinking over the question of the world organization as outlined by the President^ he had come to agree with the President that it should be world-wide and not regional."16
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This famous discussion, for all its allusiveness, marks the creation of an understanding amounting to a tacit bargain. Its basis was the exchange of some as yet only partially defined American support for Stalin's aspirations in Eastern Europe in return for the Russian promise for participation in a postwar United Nations. It is important to realize, however, that the purpose of this accord was only to reconcile, not to break down, the basic distinction we have already identified between the European political arena and the detached American polity with its distinctive moral-legal diplomatic outlook. In Eastern Europe, for instance, no American executive role was envisaged. For that Stalin could rely on his more practical political association with Britain, whose value to the Soviet Union Churchill was now eagerly propounding. The last thing Stalin wanted was a full American political involvement in European affairs. He had made that clear in 1941-42. But he did value the promise of eventual American legitimation of Soviet actions in Eastern Europe. Roosevelt for his part, as he made clear, intended no active role in that region. He was content with Stalin's promise to join the prospective United Nations. In a sense, then, it is tempting to see the United States-Soviet bargain at Teheran as little more than simply a convenient holding medium in which the two statesmen, anxious to maintain their association, identified their preeminent concerns and, in fairly loose terms, pledged mutual support. In fact, it has a greater significance. First, as will appear, because it helps us to understand the Roosevelt-Stalin relationship between Teheran and Yalta, as well as Stalin's American policy well into 1945. And second because, at an even deeper level of historical significance, we see here the declaration of policy lines that later led to the United States-Soviet Cold War, whether one thinks in the conceptual terms that juxtapose American universalism with Soviet spheres of influence, or simply in those of central interests embodied in the United Nations organization and Eastern Europe respectively. Churchill saw nothing of this. He was on the wrong foot throughout the conference. He was taken by surprise and lost the strategic battle on the first day. His subsequent political offering on Poland was then, though he was unaware of it, devalued by Roosevelt's private deal with Stalin, for now the latter could, and later did, press a hard bargain with Churchill over Poland in the expectation of American backing. Only on some of the broader European issues, and only when the focus of Stalin's attention shifted farther west, do we find Churchill moving instinctively to assert some resistance to the threat of Russian expansion. It is an interesting reflection of his continuing preoccupation with military considerations that Stalin's strategic formulation, which effectively confined future Anglo-American operations to Western Europe, did not arouse his political suspicion at this point. It was instead the discussion on Germany, where Stalin and Roosevelt both seemed to favor radical dismemberment, that led Churchill to ask Stalin pointedly if he "contemplated a Europe
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composed of little states, disjoined, separated and weak." Roosevelt quickly said he agreed with Stalin, and the issue was diverted for further study. It is suggestive of the underlying sense of Anglo-Russian confrontation this issue produced, however, that Stalin repeatedly harassed and teased Churchill on the German question, suggesting at one stage that the Prime Minister "nursed a secret affection for Germany and a desire to see a soft peace."17 There was a similar lineup when Churchill sat gloomily while Stalin, to Roosevelt's delight, condemned the French ruling class as "rotten to the core" and predicted the breakup of France's empire.18 Churchill's difficulty at Teheran, precipitated in the British view by Roosevelt's defection on the great strategic issue, was the sudden shock of British isolation and the threat to her status as a coordinate member of the Big Three. This was exacerbated by the personal harassment to which Churchill was subjected by both Roosevelt and Stalin. Tough as he was, Churchill seems to have been disoriented by the experience. Occasionally, he responded with familiar flashes of robust resistance, notably on the strategic issue and the prospective fragmentation of east-central Europe. But his insecurity led him to try and ingratiate himself with Stalin. Thus on November 28, after Stalin had with Roosevelt's support effectively demolished his strategic plans, he took the first opportunity to initiate an appeasing discussion on the Polish issue. At dinner on November 29 Stalin was notably offensive to Churchill for his supposed softness toward the Germans. At lunch next day the Prime Minister came back with an unsolicited offer to revise the Dardanelles convention in Russia's favor.18 Thus Churchill began to scramble back to the summit at the expense of two smaller powers—Poland and Turkey—for whom Britain had accepted fiduciary and treaty obligations. This lack of solicitude for dependent powers was, as we will see, a recurrent pattern in Churchill's diplomacy. He justified it at Teheran by saying it was "important that the nations who would govern the world after the war . . . should be satisfied and have no territorial or other ambitions." He added that he "would like to see the leading nations of the world in the position of rich, happy men." Yet, in fact, Britain herself was already receiving similarly dismissive treatment from her own principal partner. At Cairo, Roosevelt had committed Churchill to a Burmese operation without prior agreement, even though it would be carried out by British forces. At Teheran he unilaterally told Stalin that after the war Russia should receive a large part of the Anglo-American merchant fleet. Meanwhile, again behind Churchill's back, he regaled Stalin with vast plans for the demolition of the British Empire. Thus, while Churchill traded off Polish and Turkish interests to Stalin, Roosevelt was trading off British interests to the dictator with even greater enthusiasm. It was perhaps this spectacle that inspired Stalin's contemptuous appraisal of the two Western leaders:
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Churchill is the kind who, if you don't watch him, will slip a kopeck out of your pocket! By God, a kopeck out of your pocket! And Roosevelt? Roosevelt is not like that. He dips in his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill—even for a kopeck.20 At Teheran, then, politics was as significant as strategy. In retrospect three features of the conference stand out. One is the systematic but patient way in which Stalin pursued his military and political bargains with Roosevelt. The second, also visible at Moscow earlier, is the ambivalence of American diplomacy: designed to establish good relations with the Soviets, yet determined not to jeopardize the evolution of internationalist sentiment in the United States by an open involvement in the substance of European affairs. The private Roosevelt-Stalin political bargain was the necessary compromise. The third is the sudden isolation of Britain, to which Churchill responded by offering to continue as Stalin's active partner in the crucial dimension of practical European affairs still left open by American detachment. The final political impression, therefore, notwithstanding the President's brief burst of activism, is of the persisting separation of the American and the European arenas and of the implications this suggested for the future as they were admirably summed up by Charles Bohlen, then head of the State Department's Soviet section: Germany is to be broken up and kept broken up. The states of eastern, southeastern and central Europe will riot be permitted to group themselves into any federations or association. France is to be stripped of her colonies and strategic bases beyond her borders and will not be permitted to maintain any appreciable military establishment. Poland and Italy will remain approximately their present territorial size, but it is doubtful if either will be permitted to maintain any appreciable armed force. The result would be that the Soviet Union would be the only important military and political force on the continent of Europe. The rest of Europe would be reduced to military and political impotence.21
DIFFICULTIES WITH ROOSEVELT Teheran was a chastening experience for Churchill. He left the meeting depressed and already sickening for the pneumonia that caught him on the homeward trip and led to a long North African recuperation. A further Cairo conference with Roosevelt brought a welcome cancellation of the Burmese operation. But Churchill was unable, in other talks, to persuade the Turkish leaders to enter the war. This was the death knell of his remaining eastern Mediterranean hopes. He now began to see the geopolitical implications of Stalin's strategic formulation more clearly. A few days later, now in Italy, he pointed to General Harold Alexander, commanding the British Eighth Army, and declared,
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"He may be our last hope. . . . We've got to do something with these bloody Russians."22 Meanwhile, as Roosevelt's reelection campaign began, Churchill found himself confronting an unexpected American economic challenge. The President was always reluctant to address postwar political questions or immerse himself in specific European issues. In this he conformed to American tradition. But he felt no such inhibition, especially in an election year, so far as the British Empire and its commercial arrangements were concerned. Ominous portents appeared in December, notably Halifax's warning that "FDR might want some form of repayment for Lend-Lease," and his suggestion that Britain anticipate the President's wishes by quickly ceding some strategic bases. Churchill was willing enough, or at least felt obliged, to deal with European issues. But he would have preferred to put off these potentially embarrassing economic issues with the Americans until the common victory, at which point he expected the experience of long Anglo-American comradeship in arms to work its harmonizing magic. He was therefore upset by the pressures that now appeared, and especially by a new, masterful note in Roosevelt's correspondence. At the beginning of the year Hull pressed Britain to reduce her ties to Argentina, the primary source of her very limited wartime meat supply. February brought three more shocks. Roosevelt proposed a Washington conference on the delicate subject of Middle Eastern oil—always a point of acute British sensitivity. This was followed by a message asking Churchill to reduce Britain's gold and dollar reserves in the United States to one billion dollars and by a request that Britain join a number of integrating conferences on commercial and financial issues that, in one way or another, seemed likely to draw Britain into an American-dominated economic system.23 Churchill responded to all this in three distinct ways. One was to reaffirm his fidelity to the crucial Anglo-American conception. In February an associate unwisely scoffed in public that the postwar world was unlikely to want "an Anglo-American governess." He received a crushing Churchillian rebuke (which also announced themes later developed in his 1946 Fulton speech), denouncing his dismissal of "a majestic question." Churchill continued, "I am sorry you should go out of your way to indicate differences from my publicly expressed views. . . . It is my deepest conviction that unless Britain and the United States are bound together in a special relationship, including Combined Staff organisation and a wide measure of reciprocity in the use of basesall within the ambit of a world organization—another destructive war will come to pass."21 His second and more practical response was to confront the Americans with a policy of passivity and judicious avoidance. He recommended delay to the British officials involved. He himself replied to Roosevelt only when necessary. On the Argentinian and dollar reserves questions, Roosevelt backed away tern-
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porarily after Churchill's protests. On the other issues, such as the oil conference, Churchill raised difficulties and agreed later only under great pressure. He took the view that these were simply election year antics. "All this frantic dancing to the American tune is silly," he told Eden. "They are only busy about their own affairs and the more immobile we remain the better." He believed that "political personages who are anxious to shove themselves into prominence," rather than Roosevelt himself, were behind the campaign. "It is evident to me," he minuted typically, "that these telegrams have been drafted by others and merely put before the President for him to father." On another occasion he remarked, "I cannot believe any of these telegrams came from the President. They are merely put before him when he is fatigued and pushed upon us by those who are pulling him about."25 But this impressive display of confidence is probably deceptive, for these American pressures must have disturbed Churchill deeply. They threatened, above all, to expose publicly the bleakness of a British future that his government had mortgaged to the United States in order to wage war as a great power. And they coincided, to cite an accompanying predicament, with the sudden collapse of that intimate, personalized system whereby he had dealt with the United States almost exclusively through Roosevelt, together with Hopkins and Harriman. Roosevelt withdrew himself from Churchill after Teheran and refused meetings. Hopkins, the crucial intermediary, fell ill in January and was absent until July. Harriman, who might have helped, was now anchored in Moscow. It was this development, indeed, that had opened the way for the undefined "personages." They were in fact resurgent departmental heads like Hull, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, all of whom Churchill had hitherto tended to neglect. It is significant that British institutional figures like Eden and Halifax, also victims of the informal Roosevelt system, urged Churchill to comply with the American wishes on most issues. And in April, Under Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., came to London to urge general compliance and to hold out the incentive of an interest-free reconstruction loan. Britain was being nudged, gently but firmly, toward second-rank status.26 Churchill was not the person to accept this kind of relegation without a struggle. He was fully aware of Britain's dependence on American support. He had relied on Roosevelt; now, in a difficult moment, he found the President unresponsive. But there was an alternative. For Roosevelt himself was surely beholden to the final arbiter—American public opinion. Here Churchill sensed an opportunity. He took a pride, based largely on his experience in 1940-41, in his ability to read and exploit American opinion.27 He was particularly sensitive, as we have seen, to its volatility and susceptibility to "events," especially military success. It was therefore partly for lack of an alternative, partly because it was a natural response to the felt slights of Teheran, partly because it fit in perfectly with his continuing passion to direct the war, but above all be-
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cause he saw it as the only way to restore British general influence, especially in the United States, that Churchill developed his third response to the postTeheran problem—a policy of military prestige. In this he was encouraged by the advice of his close friend Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper publisher and champion of empire. A sound relationship with the United States, Beaverbrook insisted, could come only "if we are able to build up our own prestige and safeguard our inherited interests in the economic as well as the political and military spheres." "Prestige," the inescapable preoccupation of a great power on the downhill slope, was the common concern of both men. But whereas Beaverbrook saw deliverance in a display of independent British entrepreneurial vitality, Churchill sought it in British military success. This, and not the desire to sabotage OVERLORD, or even the impulse to try and get into central Europe before the Russians, is the best explanation of Churchill's increasingly obsessive interest in the British-led Italian campaign through the first half of 1944. He sought victories there, at least in part, because he thought they were instantly convertible into American political capital. Yet he could not escape Roosevelt, for success depended on his ability to persuade the President to cancel the ANVIL campaign in southern France, which would inevitably draw men and vital resources from the Italian theater. Churchill therefore urged a strategy based exclusively on "two good campaigns"—OVERLORD and Italy. Roosevelt agreed in January to reconsider. But unexpected military reverses south of Rome, together with the insistence of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, led him to reaffirm his commitment to ANVIL.28 In the event, military considerations forced the postponement of ANVIL until after D day. The Prime Minister seized the chance to try again in late June. He employed a variety of arguments. The campaign was now unnecessary, he asserted. "Let us resolve not to wreck one great campaign [Italy] for the sake of winning the other. Both can be won." He now raised a reinforcing geopolitical consideration. Stalin might well prefer, Churchill cabled, "that east, middle and southern Europe should fall naturally into his control." He urged Roosevelt to think of the political advantages of a move from the Italian front toward Istria. ANVIL would foreclose that. Moreover, it "would no doubt make sure of de Gaulle having his talons deeply dug into France." Some sharp exchanges followed. Churchill criticized the "arbitrary" assumption of control by the American Chiefs of Staff and drafted cables referring to "an open breach." But Roosevelt, citing domestic political necessity, was insistent on the southern France campaign, and on July i Churchill finally capitulated.29 The full extent of Churchill's frustration and sense of grievance appears in a number of unsent and unpublished draft cables to Roosevelt and internal memoranda that he prepared at this time. On June 30, as he prepared to accept the President's decision, he wrote, "No one ever contemplated that everything that was hopeful in the Mediterranean should be flung to one side, like the rind of
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an orange, in order that some minor benefice might come to help the theater of your command." On July 4, after giving way, he expressed "very grave dissatisfaction" with the American Chiefs of Staff. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander in northern Europe, had received "every support from us." But on the other hand the opinions of the Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, being British, are completely brushed aside. General Alexander, who has a record not inferior to any Commander in the field in this war, is treated as a cipher. . . . We have as many troops and forces engaged on the whole in Europe, including both theaters, as you have yet brought into action. Our armies are intermingling in a sacred brotherhood. It is, I am sure, the duty of those who bear our responsibility, and of the High Commanders to place themselves in reasonable and equal relationship. Instead, he went on, the Teheran agreement over ANVIL had been interpreted against the British "as if it were a legal document," while the Americans themselves had departed from their commitment to concentrate on the defeat of Hitler while fighting a holding action in the Pacific, where, he insisted, "the supreme authority has always been allocated."30 More significant than any of this, however, is a final characteristic memorandum—a mixture of defiance and disgust—that he prepared for the British Chiefs of Staff after the final, adverse decision on ANVIL. In it we see not only the great frustration that dependence on the United States often engendered in Churchill but above all the passionate engagement with British prestige and honor that had been his main concern throughout: The one thing to fight for now is a clean cut because Alexander knows what he has and we know what we have a right to give him. Let them take their 7 divisions—3 American and 4 French. Let them monopolize all the landing craft they can reach. But let us at least have a chance to launch a decisive strategic stroke with what is entirely British and under British Command. I am not going to give way about this for anybody. Alexander is to have his campaign. If the Americans try to withdraw the two divisions still left with him, I shall ask you to send the 5 2nd Division from the United Kingdom to fill the gap. I hope you realize that an intense impression must be made upon the Americans that we have been ill-treated and are furious. Do not let any smoothings or smirchings cover up this fact. After a while we shall get together again; but if we take everything lying down there will be no end to what will be put upon us. The Arnold, King, Marshall combination is one of the stupidest strategic teams ever seen. They are good fellows and there is no need to tell them this.31 In these struggles to restore British prestige, Churchill often acted alone. Harry Hopkins observed at Teheran, "The provisions of the British constitu-
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tion and the powers of the War Cabinet are just whatever Winston Churchill wants them to be at any given moment." This was the conventional American view. In fact, it was not so simple. In early 1944 there was public discontent in Britain brought on by war-weariness, by the renewal of German bombing in February—the "Little Blitz"—and by the military disappointments in Italy at Anzio and Cassino. Churchill's leadership was questioned in public and in the Conservative party. A sympathetic friend wrote in February, "I fear Winston has become an electoral liability now rather than an asset."82 The real challenge, however, came from more specific sources. At issue, in most cases, was Churchill's policy of prestige, inspired by his vision of Britain as a great power, and his general commitment to the Anglo-American conception above all others. In early 1944, for example, he had a nasty though inconclusive dispute with the British Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to divert substantial British resources from southern Asia to the Pacific, where they would join the Americans. Churchill preferred an attack on Sumatra. "It is not a nice prospect for us to tail along at the heels of the American fleet," he told the Cabinet, "and when great victories have been won, to be told that all credit was due to United States forces."38 There were also arguments over foreign policy. Eden's fidelity was nourished by long-deferred hopes of the succession. But he and the Foreign Office tended to be much less pro-American and more pro-Soviet than Churchill. They were also much less captivated by the Big Three conception generally, valuing a close relation with France (Gaullist or otherwise) and carefully cultivating Britain's smaller allies, clients, and connections around the periphery of Europe from Norway to Iran. The great-power-small-power dichotomy came out, too, in the bitter internal debates over United Nations policy. Churchill was not an instinctive protagonist of the world organization. He had supported the League of Nations in the 19303 in order "to secure a measure of unity at home among all classes and all parties." So it was with the United Nations, which he valued mainly as the guarantor of American internationalism. At the same time he was determined, much as Stalin was, that it should be dominated by the Big Three. During 1944, however, he was gradually forced to give up his hegemonic, regional conception in favor of the more universalistic model favored by the Foreign Office and the increasingly assertive Dominions as well as by the United States. If the Dominions were becoming too independent, the smaller Western European states threatened to become too dependent, calling for a British-led Western bloc that, during most of 1944, Churchill judged to be both beyond Britain's means to defend and a threat to Anglo-Russian relations. Associated with this was the emerging reality of a liberated France led by de Gaulle, now nursing many resentments against Roosevelt and Churchill. His noncooperation inevitably reinforced Churchill's commitment to the Big Three conception.34
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PRESSURE FROM STALIN Churchill also faced increasing difficulties with the Russians after Teheran. There was a brief flourish of post-summit positive thinking. Churchill affirmed to Eden his "new confidence" in Stalin and noted "the deep-seated changes which have taken place in the character of the Russian state and government." As he had promised Stalin, he took up the Polish issue. But as the summit receded, the instinct to appease also faded, a pattern observable after Yalta as well. In late January, for example, he warned Stalin that the formation of a rival Polish regime would endanger good Anglo-Soviet relations. The Soviet government could extend or withhold recognition of a foreign government, but "the advocacy of changes within such a government came near to an unjustifiable interference with national sovereignty." Nevertheless, by the end of February, Churchill had bullied and cajoled the skeptical London Poles into both accepting the Curzon line as the basis for talks and offering assurances of government changes by the time Polish-Soviet relations were restored. To strengthen the initiative Churchill secured from Roosevelt a supporting note to Stalin and then told the House of Commons he supported the Curzon line as the future boundary.35 But Stalin, his expectations raised by Teheran, was far from satisfied. He now wanted a fully reconstructed government as well as the Curzon line. Otherwise, he threatened ominously, "a new government would emerge." Churchill persisted in his new blunt approach. "Force could achieve much," he pointed out to Stalin on March 7, "but force supported by the goodwill of the world could achieve more." He warned that he might soon have to make a policy statement in the House of Commons revealing the Soviet position, acknowledging failure, reaffirming recognition of the London Poles, and precluding British recognition of any forcible transference of territory. Stalin replied on March 23, accusing Churchill of "threats" and of repudiating the Teheran accords. If the Prime Minister made the proposed statement, Stalin cabled, "I shall consider that you have committed an unjust and unfriendly act."30 Churchill now reconsidered his Soviet policy. He told Eden, "I do not have the slightest wish to go back on our desire to establish friendly relations with the Russians, but our and especially my very courteous and even effusive approaches have had a bad effect." He proposed now to relapse into "a moody silence." Significantly, this firmer note came immediately after an informal but encouraging intimation of American support. It came in the form of a message from Hull noting that "the tide of Moscow and Teheran has ebbed" and suggesting that the United States and Britain should keep together and speak plainly to the Russians. Churchill welcomed Hull's initiative and told Eden, "Every effort must be made to reach complete understandings with the United States and Poland is an extremely good hook." Instinctively, as his hopes of joint Anglo-American action rose again, he began to worry about public reac-
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tion to their "weak departures from the Atlantic Charter" on behalf of Russia.87 Churchill's strong anticommunism, always close to the surface, now came surging back. "Although I have tried in every way to put myself in sympathy with these Communist leaders," he told Eden in April, "I cannot feel the slightest trust or confidence in them. Force and facts are their only realities." On the Polish negotiations he wrote, "I am anxious to save as many Poles as possible from being murdered," but "it is certainly clear that to argue with the Russians only infuriates them." Concurrent Soviet demands for a share of the Italian fleet inspired similar reflections. "We have scarred our own breasts to feed these hungry vultures," he wrote to the Admiralty in May, "and it is for them to show gratitude rather than for us to show deference. . . . They have wormed themselves into the Mediterranean without doing anything there except make mischief and push Communism." Speaking of the general situation a few weeks later, he declared, "I fear that very great evil may come upon the world . . . the Russians are drunk with victory and there is no length they may not go."38 Here, as with the Americans, Churchill pursued a policy of prestige, assuring Eden that "the only thing that will do any good is fighting hard and winning victories." But the most important thing was not to show fear. The Russians "should be given a feeling above all that we are not afraid of them." In May, referring to Communist intrigues in Italy, he told British representatives to assert "the rights and dignity of Britain," adding, "Do not take it all lying down. A good row with the Russians is sometimes a very healthy episode." Later he wrote, "Whenever the Bolsheviks think you are afraid of them they will do whatever suits their lust and cruelty." These are early expressions of Churchill's fundamental thesis, announced at Fulton two years later and still the basis of Western diplomacy today—that the Soviets could be dealt with only from a position of material and moral strength.39 He sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to put the Soviets in their place. In May 1944 a Soviet naval contingent arrived in Britain to take possession, in accordance with prior agreement, of some Royal Navy ships. The officers in command complained bitterly over the age and condition of the vessels being offered. This drove Churchill to compose a code of responding behavior for the Admiralty that reflects his close monitoring of Russian manners. Do not hesitate to be rough and blunt with these Russians when they become unduly truculent. This is better done by the manner and scowly attitude than by actual words, which can be reported, and also by neglect of certain civilities to the superior people when they have been intolerably offensive. They should be given a feeling above all that we are not afraid of them. . . . A row or two between senior officers will not do any harm to Anglo-Rusian relations; but it should avoid, wherever possible, fisticuffs and especially words. There are all sorts of ways of making people feel that you resent their insults.
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If however their conduct improves you should neglect nothing which will encourage amendment.40 The effort to enhance British prestige in Washington and Moscow naturally led Churchill to take the psychological dimension of politics seriously. But events in early 1944, notably the dual threat of further Soviet and Communist expansion, forced a more concrete response. At the end of March, for example, we find him repeatedly worrying about his complicity in helping the Soviets to seize the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Rumania. He now speculated anxiously about "a second series of demands" after further Red Army victories. Eden was also looking ahead pessimistically, "I confess to growing apprehension," he minuted, "that Russia has vast aims and that these may include the domination of Eastern Europe and even the Mediterranean and the 'communizing' of much that remains." So long as there was any realistic prospect of American support, Churchill was inclined to resist the Russians. "Any division between Britain and the United States will make us powerless in this matter," he minuted in late March. "Together we can probably control the situation." But by the beginning of May the shallow promise of Hull's remark, with which Roosevelt was not associated, had faded. On the other hand the Red Army was advancing into northern Rumania. Increasingly anxious, Churchill now asked Eden, "Are we going to acquiesce in the communization of the Balkans and perhaps of Italy? . . . If our conclusion is that we resist communist infusion and invasion we should put it to them pretty plainly." He talked belligerently of a "showdown." But he went along with Eden who, determined to avert this, then proposed to Moscow a three-month working agreement dividing responsibilities in Greece and Rumania.41 Already in the spring of 1944, then, the geopolitical realities of an advancing Soviet Union and a detached United States were forcing Churchill toward a general European understanding with Stalin, for the idea of Anglo-Soviet spheres of influence in Europe was implicit in this modest proposal. The Soviets had held it out openly to Britain in the form of an exclusively European system in 1941-42. In London thereafter Maisky periodically reminded Eden of mutual Anglo-Soviet interests not shared by the Americans, When in March 1943 The Times endorsed the concept of an Anglo-Soviet condominium in Europe, with respective borders on the Rhine and the Oder, the Soviets gave the initiative, which they probably interpreted as authoritative, enthusiastic approval and widespread publicity. At Teheran, Stalin encouraged Churchill to extend British power in the vicinity of Gibraltar. In March 1944 he recognized the British-sponsored pro-monarchical Badoglio government in Italy. The British never really responded until April 1944, when Churchill, having taken charge in the Foreign Office during Eden's brief absence, first suggested to Molotov informally that the two powers recognize each other's primary functional responsibilities in Greece and Rumania respectively.42
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But Churchill's tentative approach had found the Soviets strangely and ominously unenthusiastic. And now Eden's more formal initiative led Molotov to ask whether Washington had been consulted. What inspired this Soviet bearishness just when the British were at last showing interest? Was it out of a desire not to upset Washington on the eve of D day, and thus perhaps allow Churchill to sabotage the second front again? Perhaps Stalin simply desired to make mischief between the British and Americans. If so, he was abundantly successful. Churchill now had to tell Roosevelt about the plan, which he did in carefully uncontroversial terms that aroused no disquiet in the White House. But then Hull, ever suspicious of British deviousness, learned of the prior undisclosed Anglo-Russian discussions. He protested to the President, who felt obliged to complain to Churchill about the nonconsulation. The Prime Minister angrily drafted, but did not send, a threat to resign. Instead, emphasizing the Communist threat, he wrote, "It would be quite easy for me, on the general principle of slithering to the left which is so popular in foreign policy, to let things rip. . . ." Roosevelt then agreed to a three-month trial of the Anglo-Soviet proposal. It seems more likely, however, that Stalin's real purpose in suddenly raising the American connection was less to make mischief between the Western allies than to try and extend, or at least test, the limits of his Teheran bargain with Roosevelt, for in late June he again irritated the British by insisting on a direct Soviet approach to Washington over their proposed division of Balkan responsibilities. This produced a highly qualified State Department reply, leading Churchill to expostulate, "Does this mean that all we had settled with the Russians now goes down through the pedantic interference of the United States?"43 This outburst reflects the difficulties that Roosevelt's "halfway" diplomacy caused Churchill in his dealings with Stalin. He felt forced by American political detachment to pursue European adjustments unilaterally with the advancing Russians. His reward in the Balkans was a blast of moral censure from Washington; Stalin further confused British policy over the Balkans by trying to extend his understanding with Roosevelt to that region. Meanwhile, the President, in his eagerness to reassure Stalin over Poland, steadily subverted Churchill's post-Teheran efforts to settle that issue in a way that preserved some degree of Polish independence. In April, for example, Roosevelt encouraged the visits to Moscow of two Polish-Americans whom Stalin, while secretly conducting private insuring negotiations with the London government's Prime Minister, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, courted as potential Polish leaders. Then, in mid-June, Harriman indiscreetly received four Polish Communist leaders in Moscow and spoke well of them to Molotov. Within days the Soviets broke off serious negotiations with Mikolajczyk in London. Finally, Roosevelt cabled Stalin on June 17 that a recent visit to the United States by Mikolajczyk, to which he had only reluctantly agreed for domestic political reasons, "was not connected with any attempt on my part to inject myself into the
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merits of the differences which exist between the Polish and Soviet governments." This led to a cable of appreciation from Stalin and doubtless helped inspire the Moscow announcement on July 22 of the establishment of a Communist-led regime in Lublin to administer Poland.44 The first half of 1944 was therefore a period of some confusion in Big Three diplomacy. The difference between the American and the European arenas, so evident up to and through the Teheran conference, had become a little blurred. This was partly due to Roosevelt's casual but potent intercessions, most of which expressed his sense of the understanding with Stalin. But it was also caused by spasmodic European hopes of American support. Churchill, as we have seen, seized upon the slightest hint of American political support against Russia. And Stalin was similarly eager to encourage Roosevelt's support in Poland and the Balkans. In the second half of the year, however, as the influence of Teheran receded and the United States backed away a little more decisively, the two European powers finally came together to develop an unprecedented degree of political collaboration. The underlying distinction between the American and the European arenas consequently became more sharply visible.
THE ANGLO-SOVIET
UNDERSTANDING
The Allied invasion of France on June 6 brought a brief revival of AngloSoviet cordiality. Mutual fears of a double cross with the now doomed Germans were put to rest, at least for a time. In July, though, Stalin cast a shadow by establishing the Communist-led Committee of National Liberation at Lublin in Poland. Then, on August i, the Warsaw uprising began. The underground Home Army, about sixty thousand strong, rose up against the departing Germans. Its aim was to forestall the Russians by seizing the capital for the London government. The Soviet radio had encouraged the rising. But by mid-August Stalin was characterizing it as a "reckless gamble" by "a handful of power-seeking criminals." The Germans quickly returned to Warsaw in force while the Soviet forces remained passively on the far bank of the river Vistula. Churchill, with some lukewarm support from Roosevelt, began a series of appeals to Stalin, pointing out that world opinion was watching, urging him to assist, or at least to try "to help our planes in doing it very quickly." Stalin refused. He would not even allow Allied relief planes from Italy to land on Soviet-held territory; and he ordered Soviet forces to prevent any movement of Home Army detachments from the provinces to the capital. He finally permitted some minimal supportive action—just enough to help prolong resistance another month and virtually guarantee the complete destruction of the Home Army resistance, which, with Warsaw in ruins and a quarter of a million casualties, finally collapsed on October 4.45 Certain points stand out here. Stalin's ruthless conduct showed that he was determined to prevail in Poland (and probably elsewhere) even at risk of
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alienating his allies. Roosevelt averted his gaze as far as possible, intent on protecting his understandings with Stalin and on not rocking the boat before the election. Churchill pawed the ground somewhat more vigorously, again discharging his feelings in belligerent unsent drafts. But in this long-awaited period of Allied military success neither statesman—or, apparently, much of the British or American press—wanted trouble within the alliance.46 American opinion, in fact, was now absorbed in an issue as different from the Warsaw uprising as day from night. This was the conference at Dumbarton Oaks between August 21 and September 28, called by Roosevelt to plan the postwar peacekeeping organization. Here the Soviets, attending as promised, caused disappointment by demanding representation for all sixteen Soviet republics and also an absolute veto for the great powers rather than the veto limited to action favored by the British and Americans. The Russian position had been set out the preceding April in an authoritative article by Litvinov in the Leningrad Zvezda. It portrayed an organization in which all effective power was held by the great powers, and even they could act only after unanimous decision. The role envisaged for the smaller powers consisted mainly of impotent debate and the donation of naval and air bases and military rights of war to the great powers. The proceedings closed in amity and some compromises but with major issues unresolved.47 The coincidence of these two vastly different and morally contradictory events—the Soviet refusal to help the Poles and the inconclusive American attempt to form a universalistic United Nations at Dumbarton Oaks—is another illustration of the continuing gulf between the European and the American arenas. Yet they were inspired by fundamental forces that we have already noticed in juxtaposition at the heart of the Roosevelt-Stalin bargain at Teheran and that later converged to provoke a United States-Soviet confrontation and the Cold War: on the one hand Stalin's expansionism and on the other an American moralism that habitually concentrated on British lapses but that, institutionalized in a United Nations organization, might focus critically on that Russian expansionism at some future point. Their tough diplomacy at Dumbarton Oaks shows that the Soviets, at least, were already sharply aware of this dichotomy and of the potential power of a postwar United Nations to act against themselves as the agent of Anglo-American political mobilization, resistance, or retribution. None of this was obvious to British leaders in 1944. Churchill, indeed, was thinking increasingly in terms of a more traditional postwar system based on the more immediate prospect of rising Soviet power and likely American detachment. This eventually led him to his celebrated modus vivendi with Stalin in Moscow in October. The path to Moscow, however, lay through the Anglo-American conference at Quebec in September. Here the persisting American instinct for postwar detachment can be seen again in the fact that this was the only substantive
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Roosevelt-Churchill meeting after Teheran—that is, after politics began to dominate strategy. There were a number of important immediate issues: policy toward Italy; zonal arrangements for Germany; the British desire to participate fully in the Pacific campaign and, now that ANVIL was in the past, to secure American endorsement of a strategic push from Italy toward Vienna. These were all settled or compromised harmoniously.48 More important was Roosevelt's principal object: to set out for Churchill the terms of future American economic and political assistance to Britain. Churchill found the President generous in agreeing to extend Lend-Lease until the defeat of Japan and in permitting some diversion of Britain's scant resources to reconstruction and export building in the meantime. But Roosevelt had a broader plan whose significance was dramatically revealed by Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau at dinner on September 13. Morgenthau asked Churchill "how he could prevent Britain starving when her exports had fallen so low that she would be unable to pay for imports." To this brutal interrogatory, according to an observer, "the P.M. had no satisfactory answer." Morgenthau's proposal was that Germany "should not only be stripped of all presently existing industries but so weakened and controlled that it cannot in the foreseeable future become an industrial area." Britain would then succeed to Germany's export markets. This presumably appealed to Roosevelt on various grounds: it would punish the Germans, reassure the Russians, and permit the British to recover at German rather than American expense.49 Churchill's first reaction was violently hostile. The plan was "unnatural, unchristian and unnecessary." Britain would have no part in such a vindictive policy. Yet, within hours, partly through the intercession of a confidant, Lord Cherwell, who worked with Morgenthau to promote the plan, Churchill reemerged as an enthusiastic protagonist of the scheme. He later explained this volte-face rather superficially as a necessary gesture of gratitude to Morgenthau for past and future favors. In fact, we may well assume, Morgenthau's hard question in Roosevelt's silently approving presence had brought Churchill face to face with the real nature of the 1944 American economic campaign against Britain, whose depressing implications he had tried to avoid, and specifically with the limits of the postwar assistance Britain could expect from the United States. Thus, when Eden protested, Churchill declared that "he was going to prefer the interests of his own citizens to those of the enemy's." There suddenly seemed little choice.80 Churchill doubtless found the Morgenthau plan more palatable because of the sudden apparent congruence of Anglo-American politico-strategic views. He was particularly gratified by Roosevelt's agreement, formalized during a Hyde Park sojourn immediately after Quebec, to a full and exclusive sharing with Britain of all the atomic research and development information to emerge from the Manhattan Project, for this suggested the possibility of a future
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British defensive air-sea strategy against the Soviets in which an industrialized Germany would not be needed.51 The Hyde Park agreement reflected rising Anglo-American alarm about Russian intentions. Churchill now thought less of British prestige and more of the Soviet threat. Roosevelt was also concerned. He was receptive when Churchill talked about the "dangerous spread of Russian influence." He promised American planes to carry British troops to Athens to prevent the establishment of what Churchill called "a tyrannical Communist government"; he endorsed British plans, dependent on the success of Alexander's current offensive in Italy, to strike toward Istria and Vienna in order to forestall the Soviets there; and he accepted Churchill's preference for the northwest zone of Germany as a way of fortifying Britain's position in Europe. Hopkins explained Roosevelt's views to a British official a few weeks later: "He believes there is going to be another war, and he has made up his mind that in that war there will be a strong Britain on the side of the United States. He wants you strong and will help you to be so."52 But Churchill's melancholy mood on the voyage home suggests that he saw a familiar ambivalence in Roosevelt's diplomacy at Quebec and Hyde Park. And indeed the President's diplomacy was at least as consistent w.th the prospect of a return to American postwar political detachment from European problems as with the alternative scenario of the Anglo-American "fraternal association" and joint action that Churchill always championed. Thus the United States would help Britain economically in the short term; but Britain should seek her full reconstruction at the expense of Germany. The United States would also help Britain politically in Europe by sharing the atomic secrets; but then, presumably, she would be able to face the Soviets alone, perhaps with American help along 1940-41 lines in the event of a crisis—not a very attractive prospect. The historian Martin J. Sherwin has aptly characterized Roosevelt's view of Britain's postwar role at this juncture as "America's outpost on the European frontier, the sentinel for the New World." In this connection Hopkins's emphasis upon the American interest in British postwar strength should be seen in the sober light of Roosevelt's pointed reminder to Churchill, a few weeks after Quebec, that he would have to withdraw American troops rapidly from Europe at the end of hostilities. It is hardly surprising, then, that Churchill, his confidence somewhat fortified by the compensating Hyde Park agreement, began to think more positively about the Soviet offer of an exclusively European settlement.53 The Red Army's rapid advance into Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, as well as the precarious situation in Greece, quickly provided the spur to an independent British initiative. Within days of their return from Washington, therefore, and doubtless encouraged by signs of Soviet receptivity, Churchill and Eden set off for Moscow. Greece was the immediate concern, but Churchill was seeking
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a more comprehensive accommodation with Stalin. In tracing his actions during this period, historians have been overimpressed by Lord Moran's remark that Churchill pursued "conflicting and contradictory policies" and seemed "torn between two lines of action"—an Anglo-American common front against the Soviets or closer collaboration with Stalin. He would clearly have preferred the former. Even at Moscow he prepared an unsent memorandum for Stalin in which he warned of "the United States, which may go away for a long time and then come back again unexpectedly with gigantic strength." But this was now little more than an affirmation of hope, for effective American political collaboration in Anglo-American political collaboration against the Soviet Union in European affairs was not yet adequately an offer. Between Quebec and the Yalta conference in February 1945, therefore, Churchill steadily followed a policy of European collaboration with Stalin that was much more systematic than is generally understood and that stands out as the single period when he accepted and worked toward a postwar order based on the likelihood of separate postwar European and American arenas.54 Churchill was careful, of course, to keep his American fences in good repair. He cabled Roosevelt that Poland and the Pacific war would be discussed at Moscow, and he asked that Harriman might also attend. Roosevelt was initially agreeable. But then Hopkins, like Hull in May, intervened and persuaded the President to reserve his options by notifying Stalin that "the solution to still unsolved questions can be found only by the three of us together." This had little effect on the European leaders. Churchill immediately declared his independence by deciding to exclude Harriman from private meetings with Stalin. The Soviet leader also took an impeccably European line. He told Churchill he had noticed some "signs of alarm" in Roosevelt's message and on the whole did not like it. It seemed to demand too many rights for the United States, leaving too little for the Soviet Union and Britain, who, after all, had a treaty.55 From this promising Eurocentric beginning Churchill and Stalin, with Harriman absent, moved quickly to their famous division of the Balkans. The scene is well known. Churchill, judging the moment "apt for business," presented Stalin with a sheet of paper proposing certain percentages commensurate with the actual or projected degree of British or Soviet influence in each Balkan country: the Soviets to have 90 : 10 in Rumania and 75 : 2,5 in Bulgaria; Britain to have 90 : 10 in Greece; and Hungary and Yugoslavia to be shared 50 : 50. Stalin examined the document, paused for a moment, affixed a large blue tick, and returned it to Churchill. This casual demonstration of power aroused a sudden scrupulosity in the Prime Minister. "Let us burn the paper," he proposed. "No, you keep it," replied Stalin. Churchill eased his conscience by cabling the War Cabinet that these were only expedient wartime arrangements. But recent British records suggest otherwise. Churchill told Stalin, for instance, that "Britain must be the leading Mediterranean power." Stalin responded by asserting Russian primacy in the Black Sea, which, he
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now argued, justified a higher Soviet superiority in Bulgaria. This was the most contentious issue when Eden and Molotov haggled over the percentages in later sessions. In the end Molotov demanded 80 : 20 for the Soviets in Hungary instead of 50 : 50. In return he offered 20 : 80 in Bulgaria and a vague promise of British "participation" in the future Allied Control Council. At this point the bargaining over percentages ended inconclusively, but with Soviet intentions inescapably clear.68 Churchill realized that no wider settlement was likely to survive a failure over Poland. Once again he tried to bury his suspicions. When Stalin mentioned the Warsaw uprising and insisted that nothing could have been done, Churchill immediately replied that he accepted this "absolutely." Then he summoned Mikolajczyk to Moscow. In a succession of brutal meetings, with the menacing figure of Stalin hovering expectantly in the background, Churchill pressed the Polish leader to promise to recommend the Curzon line to his stubborn London colleagues. The main sticking point was still the Polish city of Lvov, which Stalin refused to yield. The distraught Mikolajczyk asked to be parachuted into occupied Poland to continue the struggle against the Nazis there. Finally, he agreed reluctantly to return to London and work for a settlement.57 Although this dominating issue remained unsettled, Churchill took a positive view of these Moscow proceedings. He felt he had secured, however precariously, British primacy in Greece and the Mediterranean. In return he had conceded what he could hardly prevent: Soviet control in Rumania, Bulgaria, and, implicitly, a central European state—Hungary. Unlike the less realistic Eden, he did this without compunction. He was never very sensitive to the rights of small, remote states. These states were, in any case, clearly destined for the Soviet sphere, for Churchill, it seems clear, was now thinking in terms of a division of Europe, not just of the Balkans. Thus he offered reassurances regarding postwar Germany by drawing the Soviet leaders' attention to the Morgenthau plan, in which they showed sharp interest. He secured from Stalin an undertaking to try and ensure the passivity of local Communists in Italy (without offering even a nominal Soviet percentage here). He also claimed later that Stalin had responded favorably to his promotion of a Danubian federation, presumably in the Western sphere. The general conception was not spelled out or even acknowledged at Moscow. Nor were the two "spheres," though envisioned as separate fields of action, yet viewed by either side as comprehensive, rigid, or enclosed. The Soviets, sincerely or not, had in August 1943 declared their preference for a system based on continuing Anglo-Russian collaboration throughout Europe. This suggested what Churchill called approvingly "a desire to play over the whole field." Such notions as the "iron curtain" and the exclusive "bloc" were not yet current. After all, the Polish and many other issues remained outstanding; the Soviets showed some consideration for the British desire to be associated with the Bulgarian armistice negotiations;
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and Churchill himself now repeated his Teheran offer to support a revision of the prewar Montreux Convention that would give Russia access to the Mediterranean.68 In these deliberations we see the outline of an emerging postwar order in Europe based on the likely political dissociation of the United States. Churchill appears to have felt at the time that this might be workable after all. Stalin had been unprecedentedly cordial. He dined at the British embassy, paraded ostentatiously with Churchill at the Bolshoi, and even waved a handkerchief when he saw him off at the airport. The pleased Prime Minister cabled Stalin upon his return home, "There are no matters that cannot be adjusted between us when we meet together in frank and intimate discussion." On November 6, the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin responded with an unusually friendly reference to Churchill's visit. Finally, to complete the Big Three circle, Roosevelt sent unmistakable intimations through October that he accepted and supported the Balkan-spheres deal.58 In the three and a half months between the Moscow and the Yalta conferences, Churchill worked to strengthen his new accommodation with Stalin. He certainly did not forget the rising Soviet threat. Indeed, his whole system was designed to contain it. For insurance, he placed his reliance on strategic and political conceptions that did not now depend on full American support. His main hope, which must be seen in the light of the Hyde Park atomic agreement, was British air and sea power. He did not expect Parliament to support a large peacetime army on the continent. "Even if they did," he told Eden, "I should think it wiser to put the bulk of the money into the air which must be our chief defence with the Navy as an important assist."60 Associated with this was a new politico-strategic formulation. Instead of hedging Russia in with a cordon sanitaire, he now wanted to purge her domestic political poisons by exposing her gradually and safely to the outside world. He told Eden, "I think it is like breeding pestilence to try to keep a nation like Russia from free access to the broad waters." He saw a strategic corollary to this: "At the same time we have no need to fear the movement of a Russian fleet through the Straits. Even if it were to join de Gaulle a British fleet and air bases in the Mediterranean will be capable of dealing with either or both." A few days later he made the same point to his Chief of Staff, General Ismay, this time with regard to future Soviet accessions in the north Pacific. He discounted any danger to Britain "from a fleet vastly inferior to that of either the United States or Great Britain having access to the sea. Would not the Russian ships and commerce be hostages to the stronger Naval Powers?"61 But what of the continent of Europe? Churchill continued until the end of the war to think about British-led thrusts toward Vienna. But after the autumn failure of Alexander's offensive in Italy, he had few illusions. As always, he favored the idea of postwar military collaboration with France. But he had little faith in de Gaulle, who "quite possibly may decide to work with Russia"
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and whom he described in January 1945 as "a great danger" to Britain. He did, as we will see, contemplate the "German option" in 1945. But at this point German power seemed destined for complete destruction, by Allied bombing if not by Morgenthau. Nor did Churchill encourage the notion of a British-led Western bloc favored by the increasingly anti-Soviet British military chiefs and by the Benelux exile governments. He had no intention of allowing them or Greece, or Turkey for that matter, to drag Britain into a damaging military confrontation with the Soviet Union. For the military insurance of an air-sea strategy that persuaded Churchill he could control Soviet expansion at peripheral points would be much less effective in Europe itself. Here he would have to rely on his personal relationship with Stalin alone. This, however, was dubious security. Upon his return to London, therefore, he did begin to work on the basis of a strictly divided Europe, pursuing two lines of policy that in fact left no room for mutual Anglo-Russian "playing over the whole field." The first was a posture of strict noninterference in the supposed Soviet sphere; the second a vigorous policy of anti-Communist consolidation in the West.62 Churchill devoted considerable energy to damping down any British impulse to challenge the Russians in their sphere. Over Rumania, for example, he repeatedly discouraged the assertiveness of British officials. He explained his thinking to Eden in December. "Considering the way the Russians have so far backed us up over what is happening in Greece, which must throw great strain on their sentiments and organisation, we really must not press our hand too far in Rumania." Gradually, a degree of moral endorsement crept in; by January he was defending the large-scale deportations of Rumanians to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria was more delicate because here Britain had retained a nominal interest that the Foreign Office wished to press. In December, Eden embarrassed Churchill by bringing this and the whole Balkan issue before the Cabinet. Until now the Prime Minister had justified noninterference in Bulgaria by referring to the need to support vital Soviet military operations. Now he put the case in political terms. "There could be little question under present circumstances," he acknowledged, "that communist influence, under Russian patronage, was in due course, even without specific actions by Russia, likely to establish itself throughout the Balkan peninsula, save possibly in Greece." In these circumstances Britain should try to avoid a clash with Russia in this region.83 Meanwhile, Churchill's inveterate anticommunism, given regional license by Stalin, came to full flood in Western Europe. Arguments in the British Cabinet about future relations with Franco's Spain led him to oppose intervention on familiar grounds that reflect the two-Europe conception on which he was now working: Already we are accused in many responsible quarters of handing over the Balkans and Central Europe to the Russians. . . . Should the Communists
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become masters of Spain we must expect the infection to spread very fast both through Italy and France. At this time every country that is liberated or converted by our victories is seething with communism. All are linked together and only our influence with Russia prevents their actively stimulating this movement, deadly as I conceive it to peace and also to the freedom of mankind.6* During November, in the same spirit of anti-Ccmmunist consolidation, Churchill acted to suppress Communist challenges in Belgium and Greece. In Belgium an ostentatious British military presence helped sustain the returning exile government against mass Communist-led demonstrations in Brussels. The Greek situation was much more difficult. The British had entered Athens in October. At the beginning of December the Communist elements left the shaky coalition government. This led to unrest and violence that Churchill, acting unilaterally, directed British troops to put down "with bloodshed if necessary." With order partially restored, he flew to Athens over Christmas to preside over a compromise political settlement.65 How did Stalin respond? As Vojtech Mastny has persuasively argued, the Soviet decision for empire in Eastern Europe seems to have already been "taken for granted," though it is impossible to describe its intended scope with precision. Stalin's object now was to integrate this empire into a postwar order that would avoid a collision course with the West. This meant, at least for the moment, a bilateral Anglo-Russian regulation of Europe, accompanied in all probability by the hope that, as the respected Canadian ambassador in Moscow put it, "the United States would not take too great an interest in European affairs." In any event, Stalin was on the whole faithful to his Moscow understanding with Churchill, in its European as well as its narrower Balkan sense. Here, as in the Roosevelt-Stalin bargain, we find confirmation of a somewhat elusive wartime understanding in action. Like Churchill, Stalin worked to consolidate his own exclusive "sphere" unilaterally, notably in Bulgaria, where the British were quickly frozen out, and in Poland, where he entrenched and then formally recognized the Lublin regime.66 On the other hand Stalin gave measured support to the British in Western Europe. He did not interfere in Greece, where the Prime Minister carefully characterized the Communist rebels as "Trotskyists" in his public statements. He was also, as promised, detached on the Italian issue. There was some Soviet media support for the Belgian Communists. But this ended after Churchill showed his determination to suppress their bid for power. Foreign Office reviews of Soviet media comment on West European affairs in this period confirmed the general British impression of careful Soviet restraint. And in December the authoritative journal Voina i rabochii klass scoffed at the idea that anyone could object to Britain, should she consider it necessary, making special agreements with Belgium and the Netherlands to secure her position in West-
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ern Europe. This was just one of several post-Moscow, pro-British statements in the Soviet press. There were also some unusual expressions of official warmth.67 It is true that Stalin, in his approach to West European politics, did not quite rise to the standard of self-restraint set by Churchill over Eastern Europe. He did, for example, exploit the French desire for a bilateral treaty during de Gaulle's visit to Moscow in December. But this was inspired mainly by his desire to extract a helpful French recognition of Lublin and may therefore be seen primarily as a move to strengthen his own sphere. In any case, he kept Churchill at least partially informed. Churchill in turn endorsed the FrancoSoviet treaty and was also careful to reassure Stalin that he was not orchestrating an anti-Soviet Western bloc. There were some more ominous portents: Molotov's claim in November for Bear Island and Spitsbergen from Norway and an expressed Soviet desire to administer one or more of Italy's Mediterranean colonies. But these initiatives seem to have been prompted, like many other Soviet moves toward the end of the year, by the temptations of the approaching summit conference.68 It is interesting to speculate how far this Anglo-Soviet European concert might have gone if left undisturbed. But in December, Churchill was distracted by a storm of American criticism, precipitated by his public attack on the likely liberal foreign minister in a reforming Italian government but inspired also by his unilateral, right-leaning, promonarchical policies in Greece and Belgium. Stettinius, who had now replaced Hull as Secretary of State, angered Churchill by issuing a statement that the Italians were entitled to solve their problems "without interference from the outside" and that "the composition of the Italian government is purely an Italian affair." In an obvious reference to Greece, he added that "this policy would apply to an even more pronounced degree with regard to the governments of the United Nations in their liberated territories." This provoked countering official and press resentment in Britain, Churchill immediately protested to Roosevelt, reminding him, "I have loyally tried to support any statements to which you were personally committed," and complaining that the Russians had never been subjected to such censure. Roosevelt was sympathetic but unrepentant. Public emotion, he pointed out, limited his ability to help.69 This damaging controversy, which did not burn out until mid-January, led Churchill to put an even higher value on his relationship with Stalin. He now began to stress common Anglo-Russian interests against the United States, notably in the Far East and over American plans for the United Nations. He contrasted the supportive silence of Pravda and Izvestia with American press hostility and expressed keen resentment over the Roosevelt administration's exploitative approach, as he saw it, to the delicate issues of trusteeship and postwar civil aviation. Yet this was deceptive, for the December crisis inevitably reminded Churchill that his freedom of action was limited, the more so be-
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cause the unexpected and expensive prolongation of the war in Europe further dramatized Britain's economic dependence on the United States. Stalin himself encouraged a similar reconsideration in the political field in December when, brushing aside protests from Churchill and Roosevelt, he announced full recognition of the Lublin regime. This profound development over Poland, which Churchill was not yet prepared to concede to the Soviet sphere without a negotiated settlement guaranteeing some expression of Polish independence, was a grave blow to the Anglo-Russian understanding.70 But the event that really upset this brief European understanding between Churchill and Stalin was the gravitational pull exerted upon each of them by the approach of the Yalta conference. As before Teheran, so before Yalta, Stalin was diverted from Anglo-Russian bilateralism by the tempting prospect of further fruitful negotiation with Roosevelt. On the very day Churchill left Moscow, eager to set the new, exclusively European concert in motion, Stalin cabled Roosevelt accepting the President's proposal for another summit. In midNovember the Soviet press vigorously celebrated the eleventh anniversary of the establishment of United States-Soviet diplomatic relations, significantly emphasizing that the Dumbarton Oaks conference on the United Nations was a "convincing proof" that Big Three military cooperation had "laid sound foundations for postwar cooperation."71 But these ingratiating gestures were exceptional. In fact, during these three months of Anglo-Soviet collaboration before the Yalta conference, Stalin was steadily bringing out a sweeping series of demands signifying his intention to force nearly all the great issues in which he was interested to the point of explicit and therefore potentially dangerous definition. The Grand Alliance, it became increasingly clear, was about to face a moment of truth.
Chapter Four
Yalta to Potsdam
In 1918 the British Foreign Office, preparing for the Paris Peace Conference, commissioned a scholarly analysis of the Congress of Vienna, an implied gesture of respect for a settlement that had contributed materially to the intervening century of peace.1 The Big Three, by contrast, looked back on their chaotic, multinational predecessor with contempt. Between the Yalta conference in February 1945 and the Potsdam meeting in July, they carefully maintained the exclusionary tripartite principle, and with it the facade of continuing unity. This is a fascinating period. The interest of the general reader is naturally engaged by the drama of the war's end and the two great conferences. The historian is additionally aware that he is crossing a minefield of sharp, unresolved historiographical disputes. The period embraces at least three moments widely viewed as the start of the Cold War: each of the two summits and the replacement of Roosevelt by Truman in the White House. The general argument made here is that any such characterization is premature. Instead of the Cold War, it will be suggested, we see the further elaboration of already familiar themes: the expansionary thrust of the Soviet Union, the continuing disposition to political detachment of the United States, and the increasing vulnerability of Great Britain. The main change lies in the Anglo-Soviet relationship. By the end of the Potsdam conference it had deteriorated to the point where a purely European Cold War, a logical enough outcome of the trends we have been following, was beginning to take shape. The immediate cause of that emerging contest also has a familiar ring. It was nothing less than the renewal,
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in a much more intense form, of the struggle between Churchill and Stalin for an elusive American political support: a struggle that Stalin seemed to win in the spring of 1945, only to lose it a year later.
YALTA Like "Munich," the word "Yalta" still conjures up powerful images of failure and betrayal. Millions still believe that Eastern Europe and China were given away to communism there. Despite much detailed scholarship an air of mystery and suspense persists. A distinguished Czech writer recently wrote, "It's been forty years since Yalta, and still no one really understands what happened there." Other extraordinary features of Yalta have sustained the fascination: the unusual and remote location, of which Churchill remarked, "We could not have found a worse place for a meeting if we had spent ten years in looking for it"; the widespread impression that Roosevelt was dying or incompetent; the enigmatic presence of Alger Hiss in the American delegation; the euphoria at the end of the conference, almost immediately falsified by events; and then the passage of Yalta from diplomacy to a central, stormy place in American domestic politics.2 Yalta is best understood not simply as a conference but as a political process in three stages: a period of preparation, the meeting itself, and its aftermath. Most of the basic geopolitical issues, except the fate of Germany, had been sharply defined if not settled through the various understandings we have traced and by Soviet military success in east-central Europe. Stalin, exuding confidence, now made known his conference desiderata well in advance. In December he again rejected Roosevelt's United Nations voting formula; and, equally ominously, Litvinov published another article in Voina i rabochii klass advocating "regional" groupings within the United Nations in a way that implied the inevitability of blocs and spheres. At about the same time, over Anglo-American protests, Stalin recognized the Lublin regime. The message was clear enough: if Roosevelt wanted the United Nations, he should accept Lublin. Shortly afterward the Soviets set out for Harriman the territorial acquisitions they required before they would agree to enter the Far Eastern war. A detailed German reparations plan followed, accompanied by a rather condescending application for $6 billion in American postwar credits. The claim for Soviet administration of an Italian North African colony was again advanced; British suggestions for some form of international supervision of the Danube were studiously ignored. Before Teheran, Stalin had offered inducements; now he seemed to be setting forth tacit demands and hard bargains.3 His main focus at Yalta, as at Teheran, was Roosevelt. A renewed bargain with the President, if developed now with concrete specificity, offered Stalin the endorsement of his purposes in Eastern Europe and perhaps elsewhere by the only power able to frustrate them. The October deal with Churchill, though still valued, was not now his main concern. Churchill, so active and
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often effective in the periods between the summit conferences, was therefore again the odd man out, a fact masked by his assertive performance in debate but confirmed, as had been the case after Teheran, by a postconference situation that Stalin and Roosevelt created and to which Churchill had necessarily to adjust. There were, of course, a number of significant issues at Yalta. But the principal one, it seems clear in hindsight, was whether and in what way Roosevelt would respond to Stalin's pre-announced requirements for Poland. Stalin now seemed bent on transforming their loose arms-length bargain into an explicit prior American endorsement of Soviet purposes that, however glossed over, were likely to be seen as morally unpalatable in the United States. This would immediately discredit the vision of postwar United States-Soviet collaboration and shared values that Roosevelt, despite Stalin's Teheran warnings about public education, had continued to promote enthusiastically through 1944. It would also discredit Roosevelt himself. His whole system, designed both to consolidate Allied wartime unity and to nourish American postwar internationalism, depended on his ability to avoid a damaging public choice between Soviet reality and the visionary world of the Atlantic Charter, at least until the successful conclusion of the war and, it was hoped, thereafter. But now, by forcing the choice prematurely, Stalin created a fundamental dilemma for the President. The Yalta conference functioned at various levels. One, of which Vojtech Mastny has made us aware, was Stalin's careful restraint of Soviet military operations to avoid frightening the Americans and British into some lastminute deal with the desperate Germans. At another level we see the three statesmen grappling with specific, discrete issues in a fairly predictable way that another historian, Diane Shaver Clemens, has characterized as a "balanced diplomatic interaction." At that level Roosevelt was particularly concerned to secure Stalin's agreement to his United Nations plans and to the prospective Soviet military commitment to the Far East. At a deeper, less explored level, however, Roosevelt was preoccupied with the essentially political dilemma Stalin had set him. It is here, rather than in the issue-by-issue negotiations that have dominated scholarly discussion, that we find the key to Yalta, and also plausible answers to two enduring historical puzzles: Roosevelt's enigmatic conference conduct and the immediately following collapse of Big Three collaboration.4 This crucial third dimension will appear fully only when we examine the events immediately after Yalta. At first, indeed, we notice a continuum with Teheran. Roosevelt again agreed to and then effectively subverted Churchill's plans for a productive, preliminary Anglo-American conference. Once at Yalta, he avoided Churchill and cultivated Stalin with private complaints of British greed and guile.5 He also repeatedly reaffirmed American detachment from European affairs, announcing, to Churchill's dismay, that he would have to
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withdraw American troops from Europe within two years. On the crucial issue he stated, repeating the point on other occasions, that "coming from America he took a distant point of view of the Polish question,"6 When it came to substance, Roosevelt was necessarily less casual. For example, he joined Churchill in denying certain important Soviet requests: a commitment to'the western Neisse as Poland's western frontier, a specific plan for German dismemberment, and a precise reparations settlement. But here, too, Roosevelt was eager to please. Unlike Churchill, he hinted at postponement rather than at rejection. He approved radical German dismemberment in principle and accepted the Soviet figure of $10 billion reparations as "the basis for discussion." If we add to all this Roosevelt's initially robust opposition to Churchill's championship of French rehabilitation, we seem to see again the presidentially sponsored Teheran scenario of a powerful expansionary Soviet state looming over a dangerously devitalized, fragmented, and isolated Western Europe.7 All this obviously contrasts with Roosevelt's rising pre-Yalta criticism of Soviet policy and his increasing solicitude for postwar Britain. The explanation lies not in FDR's fecklessness or failing powers but in his attempt to resolve the dilemma Stalin had set him over Poland by addressing, without giving away anything concrete, the two most likely sources of Soviet postwar insecurity: the prospect of a hostile Anglo-American combination and the threat of a revived Germany. To this end he conspicuously dissociated himself from Churchill again and heartily approved, without agreeding to specific measures, the full destruction of German power. There was no need, he clearly meant to imply, for Stalin to lay a heavy hand on Poland or Eastern Europe. The shallow assumption behind this initial strategy—that Stalin could be diverted by vivid but insubstantial displays of Rooseveltian goodwill—was exposed in the great debates over Poland that followed. On February 6, FDR, in the spirit of the Teheran understanding, introduced the United Nations and Polish issues together. In a brief discussion of the voting-rights issue Stalin, playing for time, affected puzzlement over the American formula. Attention then turned to Poland. Roosevelt opened weakly. He reaffirmed his acceptance of the Curzon line but asked Stalin to reconsider the disposition of Lvov. However, he "would not insist on it." He suggested, "as one possibility," a Polish Presidential Council, charged to create a representative government. He insisted only "that Poland should maintain the most friendly and cooperative relations with the Soviet Union." It was left to Churchill to make the central point by announcing that he was "much more interested in the sovereignty and independence of Poland than in the frontier line." Stalin then replied. He could not give up Lvov without betraying the Ukrainians and White Russians. He valued the Lublin government because it secured the Red Army's rear. Moreover, the Presidential Council idea was flawed because it envisaged the creation of a Polish government without the Poles. He was sometimes called
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"a dictator," he acknowledged, but he had enough "democratic feeling" to insist that the Poles play a part. Perhaps, he concluded, we could ask the Warsaw Poles to come here.8 The following day it was Stalin's turn to reaffirm the bargain. Overnight Roosevelt had called his bluff by asking that both Lublin and other Polish figures be brought to Yalta. Stalin quickly deflected this surprising move by claiming late receipt of the message. His subsequent efforts to contact the Poles, he declared, had been fruitless. But Molotov would present a draft proposal on Poland, currently being translated, that would meet Roosevelt's requests. Meanwhile, he suggested, the conference might consider the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. He then told the delighted Americans that he accepted their United Nations voting formula. He would no longer insist, moreover, on membership for all the Soviet republics. Two or three would do. Shortly afterward, with perfect timing, Molotov brought forward the new Soviet proposal for Poland. This included minor deviations from the Curzon line in Poland's favor and a plan to "enlarge" Lublin with "democratic leaders from Polish emigre circles." Roosevelt acknowledged that progress had been made, Churchill raised no immediate objections, and the session adjourned. The bargain, Stalin must have felt, was still intact.9 We have noticed since they made their bargain at Teheran the persistence with which Stalin, especially, but also Roosevelt regularly juxtaposed the United Nations and Polish (or Eastern Europe) issues. Why, then, has it escaped scholarly attention? Various circumstances help to explain the neglect. One is that Roosevelt often played a lone, hidden hand in his relations with Stalin. He then died suddenly, leaving, instead of a clarifying memoir, the powerful impression of an excessively optimistic and misguided statesmanship. The sudden, unexpected onset of the Cold War inevitably strengthened this impression. Then, too, other important issues, notably Germany, reparations, and the Far East, received attention at Yalta. But, significantly, the absence of real agreement on these less pressing matters did not endanger the Roosevelt-Stalin relationship. This is because the two men decided to agree (though this was deceptive, as will appear) on the essentials over Poland and the United Nations. Third—and this perhaps explains the typical "issue by issue" treatment of Yalta—each of the two key agreements lends itself plausibly to portrayal by historians as an autonomous, self-enclosed deal, rather than as half of a mutually interdependent bargain. Each embodied within it an important concession: the United States apparently securing some recognition of its limited interests in Poland, the Soviets receiving a protective veto and multiple memberships in the projected United Nations. Yet this fragmented, excessively diplomatic approach obscures not only the central negotiating nexus at Yalta but also the coherent character of Roosevelt's overall Soviet policy. It also diverts us from the drama of the President's effort, first to preserve his understanding with Stalin and then, when the latter's ambitions for Poland became
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clearer, to pave the way for the introduction of American public opinion as a constraint on Soviet conduct and in a manner that would place the blame for any break upon the Russians.10 It is true that, when we turn to the deliberations on February 8, the third day of debate over Poland, we find that Stalin had offered his quid pro quo too soon. This was because Roosevelt now made a last effort to reach an acceptable understanding with Stalin over Poland. Just before the meeting he submitted a proposal turning down the western Neisse boundary and repeating his preference for a Presidential Council (made up equally of representatives from Lublin, London, and the Catholic church, as opposed to the "enlargement" of Lublin) directed to organize free elections. Churchill, when Molotov voiced Soviet opposition, remarked that the conference was now at its "crucial point." Stalin, suddenly on the defensive, concentrated his counterattack on Churchill, perhaps because he blamed him for Roosevelt's surprisingly prolonged resistance, perhaps because Anglo-Soviet relations offered so many more targets than the United States-Soviet connection. He had recognized de Gaulle's rule in France, he declared, though no election had been held there. He had no intention of interfering in Greece either, but he would ask for an account of events. He then criticized British conduct in Yugoslavia, asking why the formation of the new government had been delayed. Clearly, Roosevelt's Presidential Council was unacceptable. He would, however, agree to early elections in Poland, perhaps within the month.11 This unexpected promise of elections, in response to Roosevelt's inquiry, seemed to retrieve the situation for Stalin, for it precipitated a headlong American retreat on the whole Polish issue. In the foreign ministers' meeting next morning, Stettinius dropped the Presidential Council proposal and then accepted Molotov's formula for a "reorganized" provisional government, with its clear implication, steadily resisted until now, of a Lublin core. He justified this in terms of the prospective "free and unfettered" elections that the Big Three ambassadors would observe and report upon.12 The British were understandably alarmed at the sudden American volte-face. Eden, whose alternative formula envisaged "the establishment of a fully representative Provisional Polish government," stressed that the key issue was not the elections but the government that would conduct them. Churchill, however, sensing the erosion of the American position, himself retreated a step in the plenary session that afternoon. Instead of challenging the Soviet governmental formula, he sought only firm guarantees of election "observations" in Poland. But, when Stalin raised difficulties, the British were again undercut by the absence of American support. The differences, Roosevelt declared at the outset, were "largely a matter of the use of words." This drove Churchill back to his last redoubt: a request that Mikolajczyk be permitted to participate in the election and his Peasant party be represented in the "reorganized" government. When Stalin agreed to this, Churchill concluded dispiritedly, "We will
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have to leave it at that." It fell to Stettinius the following morning to complete the apparent rout by formally withdrawing his original insistence on ambassadorial "observing and reporting." When Eden protested the abandonment of this last Anglo-American toehold, Stettinius explained that it was necessary because Roosevelt was in a hurry to leave the conference.13 Thus an unusual display of confrontational spirit by Roosevelt on February 8 was suddenly followed by a dramatic slide into seemingly complete capitulation. No reliance on the promise of unobserved elections can fully explain this. Churchill, puzzled and anxious, sought a last-minute meeting with Stalin. How could he assure Parliament that the Polish elections would be fair, he asked, when he was unable to keep watch over events? Stalin's answer was simple: recognize the reorganized Lublin government and make your arrangements with them. Here, then, was a final formula to express the apparent Soviet triumph: recognition must precede "observation" rather than vice versa. Despite their bright post-Yalta public optimism, it seems very unlikely that Churchill or Eden was truly deceived about Soviet intentions.14 In fact, so far as Roosevelt was concerned, things were not what they seemed. Even as Stalin and Molotov capitalized on the apparent American retreat, Stettinius was stressing on February 9 the interdependence of the United Nations and the Polish issues "from the standpoint of psychology and public relations"; and on February 10 he pointed out gratuitously that the President would be perfectly free to make any statement to his own people regarding the receipt of information from the American ambassador at Warsaw. Here, we see in retrospect, were warnings of an American move from private to public diplomacy.15 Meanwhile, on February 9, Roosevelt had introduced the Declaration on Liberated Europe, a State Department creation promising the liberated peoples "democratic institutions of their own choice" and "free elections." As presented by Roosevelt, it also envisaged appropriate functional machinery for the carrying out of the responsibilities described. This was unacceptable to Stalin and Molotov. But they did finally sign on the basis of an innocuous obligation to "immediately consult together on the measures necessary to discharge the joint responsibilities set forth on this declaration."16 This Declaration, it was widely recognized, reflected Roosevelt's overriding concern to project in the United States a politically palatable image of Yalta. He had brought with him James F. Byrnes, a highly influential New Dealer with virtually no diplomatic experience, whom he later used to convey the desired version of the event to the American people.17 But the significance of the Declaration was not simply cosmetic. It was also the instrument with which, having failed to divert Stalin with generalized reassurances about postwar Soviet security, Roosevelt himself intended to respond by raising the stakes of their relationship. His method, as we will shortly see, was very simple. It was to ignore the actual diplomacy at Yalta, and especially the Soviet negotiating success over Poland. In its place, using the Declaration and other
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favorable language in the communique, he intended to create an attractive, self-promoting vision of Yalta. This would inspire a favorable opinion of his diplomacy at home, protect him from the political censure to which he was now immediately and dangerously exposed by Stalin's increasingly aggressive conduct in Eastern Europe, and, more important in the long run, set a clear standard by which future Soviet conduct would be monitored and judged by an expectant, moralistic American and perhaps world opinion. Roosevelt thus resolved his dilemma by flattering the American people rather than Stalin. He also created one for Stalin, who now could (as Roosevelt doubtless hoped) adjust to American public expectations or, as in fact occurred, bring on a confrontation for which he would in all probability be held responsible. Of course, one cannot prove conclusively that Roosevelt at Yalta was working with this degree of purpose and sophistication. The case rests partly on the political logic of his actions as a response to the predicament Stalin had created for him, which must have inspired sharp memories of Woodrow Wilson's treatment at the hands of outraged liberals upon his return from the dubious compromises at Paris in 1919. It is confirmed more substantively by the inferences we are steadily drawing from FDR's conduct. And it is reinforced by the presence in all these actions of certain characteristic Rooseveltian tendencies: his habit of working alone, even without Hopkins, in the highest summit diplomacy; the careful avoidance, where possible, of direct confrontation; and the masking of his real purposes behind diverging lines of action—on the one hand an ostensible appeasement of Stalin over Poland and, on the other, a hidden strategy envisaging the postconference introduction of American public opinion as a constraint on Soviet action. His quick recourse to the nearest expedient in a moment of crisis—in this case the Declaration on Liberated Europe—is reminiscent of the way he had fastened upon the Morgenthau plan to solve a range of problems months earlier and has many analogues in his improvisational style of leadership in domestic politics as well. Roosevelt may have been somewhat naive in international affairs, though this is often exaggerated. He was certainly not naive about American domestic politics. And in proportion as the international milieu began to trespass on the domestic, as was the case at Yalta, so Roosevelt's responses tended to become progressively more acvite and vigorous. His instinctive ranking of the domestic arena over the foreign political milieu was also habitual. Roosevelt, it is worth remembering, began his presidential statesmanship in 1933 by undercutting an important international negotiation, the London Economic Conference. He was now prepared to risk, by means of the Declaration on Liberated Europe, ending it in similar fashion by subverting the Yalta negotiation. The context and detail were wholly different in each case; the basic disinclination to accept an embarrassing European entanglement was the same—another illustration of the persistence of American detachment even in the midst of world war. Whatever judgment we may pass
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upon his political diplomacy at Yalta, and whatever 'Speculation we may indulge concerning his health, this is recognizably Roosevelt at work.18 The argument is further strengthened by the immediate Soviet recognition that the Declaration was a potentially revisionary political instrument. Molotov quickly pointed out that the whole Declaration "amounted to interference in the affairs of liberated Europe," an objection echoed later, though with Soviet rather than with American intrusions in mind, by several West European governments.19 Why, then, did Stalin accept it? No doubt he hoped Roosevelt would use it with restraint and not as a means of mobilizing opinion against the Soviet Union. For the moment, anyway, there was little point in putting a reasonably successful negotiation at serious and perhaps unnecessary risk by raising debate over the meaning of "democracy" and "free elections." But the real reason is that once Roosevelt had shown his desire Stalin had little choice but to accept it if he wished, as he undoubtedly did, to preserve the American collaboration. In all this we see the precariousness as well as the mutuality of the Roosevelt-Stalin bargain and relationship, for Stalin's dependence on Roosevelt's restraint in using the Declaration is simply a mirror image of Roosevelt's reliance (now shaken) on Stalin's restraint in Poland and Eastern Europe. At Yalta, Stalin confirmed Roosevelt's earlier fears that he intended to dominate Poland. Roosevelt was now making it clear to Stalin that he intended to prepare American opinion to react adversely, if Stalin went too far or too fast in implementing his purposes. An appreciation of this underlying maneuvering is fundamental to a full understanding of Yalta, The significance of the Declaration is that each leader now had the ability to bring the two powers into early confrontation: Stalin by ostentatiously antilibertarian conduct in Eastern Europe, Roosevelt by using the Declaration to misrepresent the true nature of Yalta. Roosevelt undoubtedly hoped to avoid a confrontation. He would surely have preferred to maintain relations with Stalin until the end of the war on the basis of his loose and comfortably evolutionary Teheran bargain. But the pre-Yalta intensity of Stalin's pressure on the Polish and other issues forced some tangible response. He now hoped to preserve the understanding by making Stalin see, without ever saying so directly, that he risked losing American support if he moved too fast. The same delicate menace can be seen in his conspicuous silence over the Soviet loan application and, perhaps, in his failure to mention the prospect of an American atomic weapon. At the same time Roosevelt offered a compensating inducement in the Far East. FDR promised Stalin the return of south Sakhalin and the cession of the Kurile Islands as well as, at Chinese expense, a lease at Port Arthur, preeminent interests at Dairen, joint Russo-Chinese operations on the Chinese East Manchurian Railway, and confirmation of the status quo (favoring the Soviet Union) in Outer Mongolia. These Russian gains, though nominally
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conditional on Chiang Kai-shek's concurrence, were pledged "unquestionably" by Roosevelt. He also traded British interests with hints of a vaguely defined Far Eastern partnership in the long arc from Korea to French Indochina. It seems likely that in these dealings, of which historians have been critical, he was anxious not only to propel the Soviets into the war with Japan (an event likely to occur anyway) but also to preserve his now threatened overall relationship with Stalin. Thus, as he found it necessary to lower the value of that relationship to the Soviets in Eastern Europe, he felt obliged to raise its Far Eastern appeal to Stalin in corresponding measure.20 One final piece of the Yalta puzzle falls neatly into this general interpretation. Roosevelt's sudden change of mind in agreeing on February 10 to full French participation in the governance of Germany has been described by a recent historian as "difficult to explain." Here, too, Roosevelt's dilemma provides the answer. Earlier, when he was trying to propitiate Stalin by dissociating himself clearly from Churchill and from Europe generally, Roosevelt had allowed his instinctive Francophobia full rein. But, just as the grim revelation of Soviet purpose in the Polish debates turned him toward a new post-Yalta strategy of public diplomacy founded on the Declaration, so it also returned him to the Quebec conference's "realistic" policy of shoring up Britain's position in Europe. And this, as Churchill constantly reminded him through the Yalta conference, required a strong France. Stalin, making a belated show of deference to the British sphere in Western Europe, now quickly agreed to this French restoration.21 The conference ended in an atmosphere of cordiality and mutual compliment that the lesser participants took at face value. Churchill, however, was depressed and perhaps confused. His final discussion with Stalin over Poland left little room for optimism on that issue, though the Anglo-Russian understanding in the Balkans was still intact. Unaware of Roosevelt's secret maneuvering, he again felt undermined by American indifference to the future geopolitics of Europe. His response here, as at Teheran, was to place his faith in the supposedly beneficent figure of Stalin. He told Moran at the end that he was deeply impressed with Stalin's "humour, understanding and moderation." By the time he had returned to London, he was ready to assure Cabinet colleagues and then Parliament of his personal confidence that the Soviet leader would carry out his obligations.22 Stalin seems to have read Roosevelt's tactics clearly enough in the early stages. Certainly, he had forced the President to accept reality in regard to Poland. He was fully alive to the subversionary possibilities inherent in FDR's second ploy, the introduction of the Declaration on Liberated Europe. This clearly put the whole Yalta negotiation in jeopardy. Everything would now depend on Roosevelt's implementation. For Stalin, then, Yalta must have ended on a note of uncertainty.23
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The euphoria lasted only a few days. On February 27, Andrei Vyshinsky, former purge prosecutor and now Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs, personally delivered to King Michael of Rumania a demand for the immediate replacement of the hitherto acceptable Radescu regime by a "democratic front" government. He then quit the royal presence in Jacobinical fashion, slamming the door so hard that the ceiling plaster crashed to the floor. The Soviet action was harsh, by contrast with the spirit of Yalta; it was aggressively unilateral, in a country where the unconsulted three-power Allied Control Council had formal authority; and it was ostentatious, where Red Army occupation rendered dramas of this kind unnecessary. Clearly a point was being made. There was a similarly ominous development over Poland on the same day. Molotov now suddenly withdrew an earlier invitation to Harriman and the British ambassador in Moscow, Clark Kerr, to send observers into Poland. The Yalta agreement, he now asserted, recognized Lublin as the basis of the projected reorganized government. The ambassadors must therefore apply for permission to that regime. Thus began the long battle over the composition of the provisional government.24 What had gone wrong? The men of Yalta were shocked and confused. They quickly assumed that the Soviets were violating the spirit and letter of the conference. Essentially cooperative himself, Stalin had apparently been converted to the harder line by background elements variously identified by Stettinius as the Politbureau, by Harriman as the Polish Communists, and by Churchill, after some uncertainty, as the Red Army generals. Historians tidied up the thesis later by putting the blame squarely on Stalin but continued to explain the Soviet eruption as an unprovoked break with Yalta, Here one might have expected some suspicious examination of Roosevelt's post-Yalta actions by revisionist scholars. But the revisionist credo, at least in some of its most representative forms, has developed around the notion of a constructive, peace-enhancing Roosevelt, played off against a belligerent, anti-Soviet Truman. The truth has consequently fallen unnoticed between the historiographical cracks.25 The immediate source of the post-Yalta crisis is to be found not in Eastern Europe but in the United States, and particularly in Roosevelt's careful presentation of the Yalta phenomenon. Here, as the historian Robert L. Messer has shown, James F. Byrnes played a key image-setting role. Roosevelt gave him a very selective view of the Yalta proceedings. He was then sent home early, arriving in Washington on February 13, a few hours after first publication of the conference communique', a document from which Roosevelt had already carefully excluded the sensitive Far Eastern agreement and his reluctant commitment to three Soviet General Assembly seats.26 Byrnes immediately called a press conference. He gave a glowing account of
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Roosevelt's two main triumphs. One, naturally, was the United Nations agreement. The other was the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which Byrnes proclaimed "of the greatest importance." It marked the elimination of spheres of influence. He then linked the Polish agreement to the Declaration as the first specific application of its general principle, announcing that "the three great powers are going to preserve order until the provisional government is established and elections held."27 All this was misleading. It went well beyond Roosevelt's actual achievement at Yalta. The Declaration did not purport to eliminate spheres of influence. It did not contemplate any Allied "action" in the areas concerned, merely possible "consultations," and then only if all, unanimously, thought it necessary. This was an important distinction. Furthermore, the Declaration had nothing to do with the Polish agreement, which was the most closely negotiated issue at Yalta, which was substantially settled before the Declaration was introduced, and which gave the Western powers no authority over the projected elections. Nevertheless these misrepresentations produced the desired effect. Press approval of Yalta ranged from that in the Daily Worker, on the far left, to that in the New York Herald Tribune and Time, on the moderate right. There was a chorus of bipartisan political approval, which Byrnes further stimulated by intensive proselytizing in Congress. The Senate majority leader, Alben Barkley, hailed Yalta as "a source of great gratification," while the Republican leader, Wallace White, exulted that "a great work has been done." This set the tone. Democratic and Republican leaders issued favorable statements. Herbert Hoover called Yalta "a strong foundation from which to rebuild the world," and there were similar effusions from other representative spokesmen. A February 20 poll showed only 9 percent of those participating inclined to think the Yalta results unfavorable to the United States.28 Roosevelt, monitoring Byrnes's performance across the Atlantic, cabled approvingly, "I think your press conferences have been grand." He finally went before Congress himself on March i to make his own report. It was, as the historian Daniel Yergin has remarked, "pure in its Wilsonianism." Despite the clear warning signals from Moscow, Roosevelt publicly endorsed Byrnes's presentation. Yalta, he claimed, had set the foundation for a lasting peace settlement based on the sound and just principles of the Atlantic Charter. The dangerous trend toward spheres of influence, which "if allowed to go unchecked . . . might have had tragic results," had been stopped by the Declaration on Liberated Europe. The Polish settlement, he declared, was "the most hopeful agreement possible for a free, independent and prosperous Polish state."29 The cumulative effect of all this stage-managing was to associate the idea of the United Nations as a global problem solver, a belief in continuing Big Three cooperation, and Roosevelt's moral authority in what we may conveniently call the "vision" of Yalta. The power of this vision in the United
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States lay in the promise it offered of peace, normalcy, and demobilization. No one dared attack it openly until Churchill did so at Fulton in March 1946, thus precipitating the crisis that finally did bring on the Cold War. Meanwhile, it greatly strengthened, by seeming to render active involvement unnecessary, the general American predisposition to postwar detachment from the detail of European politics. It is, however, the neglected European consequences of Roosevelt's Yalta imagery that are of special interest to us here and that help us understand the events that followed. Let us again try to understand Stalin's point of view. His one clear victory at Yalta had been the tacit Anglo-American acknowledgment of Soviet dominance in Poland. Now, in the President's conjuring hands, his negotiating achievement had simply vanished, a diplomatic Brigadoon, replaced suddenly with the illusory but nevertheless embarrassing prospect of a revived Anglo-American-supported cordon sanitaire, which he himself was supposed to have endorsed and which was now being praised to the skies by a deluded world opinion. It can hardly be doubted that the Soviets were angry. Moreover, this was not simply a victory deprived but a constraint on future Soviet action. It was therefore best removed immediately. Stalin consequently began to react to Roosevelt's initiative, though very moderately, as soon as Byrnes began his Washington campaign. Here a close attention to timing illuminates the whole process. The Soviets' anxiety about a self-serving American interpretation of the loose Yalta language can be seen in a front-page editorial in Voina i rabochii klass (now published in English as War and the Working Class~) that appeared immediately after the conference. It hailed "the fact that the stern and emphatic language of the Crimean decision is as far from the pompous and diffuse language of Wilson's Fourteen Points . . . as heaven is from earth." This certainly did nothing to head off Byrnes, whose thoroughly Wilsonian exposition of the communique began on February 13. The Soviet response to this was an article in Pravda on February 17 by the authoritative commentator David Zaslavskii. He applauded the conference results but pointedly stressed the different meanings attached to words like "democracy." Each of the three allies represented it in a different form, and the people of liberated Europe would "have the possibility of creating democratic institutions according to their own choice." But none of these careful hints were taken in the West. Then, on February 23, at the first meeting of the ambassadors' commission in Moscow a conciliatory Molotov softened his Yalta stance by sanctioning the entry of Anglo-American observers into Poland without application to Lublin. During the next few days, however, the Soviet line hardened, culminating in the harsh actions over Rumania and Poland on February 27. This is most plausibly seen as a response to the increasingly widespread effect of Byrnes's false image making, and above all to the now imminent March i report by Roosevelt to the American people. Hints
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and conciliation having thus far failed, Stalin now turned, while there was still time, to confront the Western leaders with his determination to be master in Eastern Europe.30 American and British leaders (apart, probably, from Roosevelt) did not grasp the connection. Yet already, as recently released British documents make clear, more detached observers outside the bemused Yalta circle were raising significant questions. On February 19, for example, a Dutch embassy official called at the Foreign Office to express his government's fears that Russia would use the Declaration on Liberated Europe to insist on Communist representation in his government. An admittedly "puzzled" Cadogan offered vague reassurances. On February 22 there was a similar inquiry from the Italian representative, also fearful of Communist pressure. Here, surely, is a perfect mirror image to the anxiety felt in Moscow about Anglo-American intentions. Then the French ambassador in London, M. Massigli, whose government included Communists, called at the Foreign Office on February 19 and asked the crucial question: Would the Declaration apply to Poland? No, came a reply that contradicted Byrnes, Poland was being dealt with as a special case.31 But was it? These perceptive European inquiries aroused some significant second thoughts in London. In particular, the British began to speculate about the potential uses of the Declaration in a way that helps us understand the Soviet concern. For instance, Sir Orme Sargent, Cadogan's deputy in the Foreign Office, discussing Poland in a February 19 minute, wrote, "In any case surely we can invoke the Declaration." The next day Cadogan commented, "In actual fact the arrangement over Poland was made separately and without reference to this Declaration. But if the Soviet government proves difficult in the matter of Poland and shows signs of going back on the arrangement it will, I think be possible to invoke the Declaration." Churchill was also, now, fully alive to the anti-Soviet potential of the Declaration. As he told the Cabinet on March 6, "It would be for consideration whether the Yalta Declaration on liberated territories could be construed as superseding previous arrangements such as that in respect of Rumania and Greece which had been made at a time when we could not rely on United States assistance."32 So much for fidelity to agreements! But could Britain count on American assistance now? Inquiries through the spring revealed that the State Department was also very uncertain about the scope of the Declaration and not as yet disposed to encourage its use on the Polish issue. The British therefore settled meantime to viewing it "as a means of putting the Russians in the wrong and giving us a grievance which may be of use in the course of future bargaining." It is surely astonishing that this early, unprompted West European and British recognition of the revisionary potential of the Declaration throughout Eastern Europe, which Stalin and Molotov had immediately seen at Yalta, was not accompanied by some understanding of the Soviet belligerence that greeted Byrnes's and Roosevelt's postconference image making, de-
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spite the unmistakable clues offered by the timing of events. Yet no such connection was made.33 THE POST-Y,4LT,4 CRISIS The crisis that now followed was the inevitable result of three things: Stalin's initial forcing of the Polish issue before and at Yalta, Roosevelt's countering image making in the United States, and Stalin's response to that in Eastern Europe. It was in essence a prolonged and eventually successful attempt by Stalin to force the United States to accept his conception of the Yalta agreement on Poland. Increasingly, though, he found himself confronting Churchill, who now seized the chance to create a strong Anglo-American front by pressing Roosevelt to live up to the vision of Yalta he had himself presented, rather than to the diplomatic reality. Churchill's conduct was not entirely opportunistic. Stalin's post-Yalta belligerence and unilateralism, mostly hidden from general view, raised for him, as for Roosevelt, the dangerous prospect of public criticism and disillusionment, because Churchill had also, in the House of Commons debate on Yalta that began on February 27, cast the conference in rosy hues, though he was much more realistic and direct than Roosevelt. Regarding the Poles, Churchill asked, "Are their sovereignty and their independence to be untrammelled or are they to become a mere projection of the Soviet state, forced against their will by an armed minority to adopt a Communist or totalitarian system? I am putting the case in all its bluntness." True, he then went on to declare his faith in Stalin's "solemn declarations" and in the Soviet government, "which stands to its obligations even in its own despite." But, just as Roosevelt had done less directly but perhaps more conclusively through the Declaration, he placed final responsibility on Stalin.34 The ensuing Soviet belligerence created a problem for Churchill. He was still anxious to work with Stalin but was worried about Poland and increasingly tantalized by the new opportunity to forge a common front with the Americans, whom, he reminded the Cabinet on March 6, "we must carry . . . with us." The delicate Balkan theater offers a register of his doubts. During March, Churchill tried unsuccessfully to push Roosevelt into taking a unilateral initiative over Rumania, where the Anglo-Russian Balkan deal was at stake. He continued to discourage most British anti-Soviet impulses in the region; and he even recommended the dismissal of the right-wing Greek Prime Minister, Plastiras, whom he was willing to "market" to the Soviets. On the other hand he directed, against Foreign Office advice, that the deposed Rumanian Premier, Radescu, should be defended by force of arms if he sought refuge in the British embassy in Bucharest; he urged that publicity be given to reports of Bulgarian leftist atrocities; and he expressed admiration for the assertive British representative in Sofia.35 It was the latter, more confrontational impulse that began to dominate as Churchill, already contemplating, as we have seen, the political use of the
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Declaration on Liberated Europe as an Anglo-American stick against the Soviets in Poland and the Balkans, commenced a six-week campaign to force an alignment with a reluctant Roosevelt. He began on February 28 by describing to the President the forced "deportations" and "liquidations" of anti-Lublin elements in Poland and by recording the general uneasiness in London. He continued to press through March for joint diplomatic action. Delay, he argued, only allowed the Soviets to consolidate Lublin, a process advanced by Molotov's continuing insistence on a veto of all Poles invited to Moscow and on an Anglo-American application to Lublin for permission to send in observers. Roosevelt, presumably anxious to avoid a public break and hoping for a Soviet reconsideration, raised increasingly unconvincing reasons for delay: the threat to the Red Army from right-wing Polish terrorists, the desirability of a civil truce before diplomatic action, and the danger of appearing to be against the Lublin regime's land reforms.30 These evasions, and the rising danger of public exposure, drove Churchill to confront Roosevelt with the central point on March 13: At Yalta also we agreed to take the Russian view of the frontier line. Poland has lost her frontier. Is she now to lose her freedom? That is the question which will undoubtedly have to be fought out in Parliament and in public here. I do not wish to reveal a divergence between the British and the United States governments, but it would certainly be necessary for me to make it clear that we are in presence of a great failure and an utter breakdown of what was agreed at Yalta, but that we British have not the necessary strength to carry the matter further and that the limits of our capacity to act have been reached.37 This blunt cable must have aroused Roosevelt's concern. He had won a great domestic triumph by creating a false and congenial vision of Yalta that, at the same time, celebrated an idealistic American internationalism and sanctioned a continuing American detachment from the detail of European politics. But in doing so he had alienated Stalin and brought on a harsh Soviet reaction that threatened to discredit this vision. He had, in short, overdone it. Now Churchill was seemingly taking advantage of the situation and proposing, in the hope of an Anglo-American alignment, to hasten the denouement. Ironically, then, FDR's attempt to detach himself from an unduly intimate European entanglement now seemed likely to draw him in much more closely. Roosevelt nevertheless reacted calmly. The President's health was indeed failing now, and his correspondence was mainly in the hands of his personal Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy and Charles Bohlen.38 Still, he apparently maintained a general oversight. On March 15 he cabled Churchill expressing concern over the Russian actions, denying any Anglo-American divergence, and promising official coordination in a stiff note to Moscow. Roosevelt
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still wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with Stalin. But then the Soviets forced the pace again, in a particularly painful way. While Molotov continued to frustrate the ambassadors, Stalin insisted that the Lublin regime be invited to the San Francisco United Nations conference. He then followed the predictable refusals from Washington and London by announcing on March 20 that Molotov would not attend the conference—a clear assertion of the now collapsing United Nations-East European nexus.30 This led Churchill to conclude that "we are being completely defrauded" and that a "showdown" was needed over Poland. He looked to a public statement in Parliament and also to a joint message with Roosevelt to Stalin for, as he constantly cautioned his colleagues, "We cannot press the case against Russia beyond where we can carry the United States." He urged all these thoughts upon Roosevelt on March 27, noting, "It is as plain as a pikestaff that his [Molotov's] tactics are to drag the business out while the Lublin Committee consolidate their power."40 The Soviets worked assiduously to avoid the suddenly looming AngloAmerican front. The familiar "splitting" technique is especially evident in Moscow Radio's broadcasts in this period. On March n, for example, we find a broadcast for British listeners attacking "the insatiable greed of former United States appeasers" and quoting selectively from Churchill's January 18 speech to the House of Commons implicitly criticizing American economic selfaggrandizement at British expense. On March 15, by contrast, Radio Moscow broadcast to its American listeners a critical review of a rece:nt book about the war by the well-known British strategic thinker Basil Liddell Hart. The reviewer used the book to attack the British military practice of avoiding dangerous actions and heavy losses in battle, operating only in remote and relatively safe theaters of war, and skillfully leaving their allies to carry the brunt of the fighting.41 Roosevelt meanwhile continued to give ground only very slowly. He reminded the Prime Minister on March 29, "We placed, as clearly shown in the agreement, somewhat more emphasis on the Lublin Poles than on the other two groups from which the new government is to be drawn." Nevertheless, he conceded, the Soviets had no right to determine unilaterally who should be invited for the consultations. He was now prepared also to make an issue of the desired Anglo-American observers in Poland. And he agreed to strong parallel, but not joint, messages to Stalin. These went to Stalin on April i: Churchill's protesting the Soviet obstructionism in Poland and threatening to report the failure of Yalta to Parliament unless a settlement was achieved by Easter; Roosevelt's conceding the Yalta bias in favor of Lublin but reminding Stalin that the end of the negotiation had to produce a "new" government and warning that American opinion would not accept "a thinly-disguised continuance of the present Warsaw regime." A few days later Stalin complained to Roosevelt that surrender negotiations in Bern, Switzerland, between Allied and German
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representatives in the Italian theater had led the latter to open that front in return for Anglo-American promises of eased peace terms. Roosevelt replied bitterly on April 4, expressing his resentment of "such vile representations" from Stalin's informants.42 Meanwhile, Churchill, pushing from the other side, was eager to exploit Eisenhower's rapid move into Germany following the unexpected seizure of a bridge across the Rhine on March 7. When Eisenhower, acting independently, notified Stalin on March 28 of his intention to drive toward central rather than north-central Germany, Churchill immediately protested that Berlin had "political significance." He then recommended to Roosevelt, unsuccessfully at first, an Allied advance "as far east into Germany as possible." In the meantime, he stirred the pot by characterizing Stalin's allegations over Bern as an insult "to the honour of the United States and also of Great Britain." "All this makes it the more important," he cabled on April 5, "that we should join hands with the Russian armies as far to the east as possible, and, if circumstances allow, enter Berlin." Roosevelt, now seemingly more responsive, enigmatically replied, "Our armies will in a very few days be in a position that will permit us to become tougher than has heretofore appeared advantageous to the war effort."43 In retrospect this should probably be seen as a last attempt to hold off the importunate Churchill, rather than as a token of fundamental change in American policy, though there is some evidence that Roosevelt was now disillusioned with Stalin. But the immediate situation was eased by Stalin's grudgingly amelioratory note to Roosevelt on the Bern incident and by his bending message to Churchill saying that he might try to persuade the Lublin Poles to accept Mikolajczyk as one of the outside representatives. Churchill, momentarily appeased, cabled Roosevelt, "They do not want to quarrel with us." This was probably true, at least so far as the United States was concerned. Stalin's purpose at this point seems to have been limited. He wanted to force the British and, especially, the Americans to accept his earlier success, as he saw it, in the Yalta negotiation over Poland. His method, like Hitler's before the war but from a much superior basis in power, was to outlast and divide the Western democracies with a display of will. To this end he deliberately obstructed the Western Allies over Poland and on other East European issues and hinted strongly at his intention to subvert the forthcoming United Nations conference. He also, apparently, authorized publication of the famous "Duclos letter" (which eventually appeared in late May), in which Jacques Duclos, a French Communist leader, condemned the "reformist" policy of the American Communist party and called for a more militant approach—an initiative that should surely be seen as a warning rather than as the declaration of Cold War some scholars have suggested. The last thing Stalin can have wanted now, or at any time, was to provoke the United States into permanent political confrontation. It was Churchill, not Stalin—and certainly not Roosevelt—who wanted that
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kind of situation and who saw the post-Yalta crisis as an opportunity to bring it about. This can be seen in Churchill's reluctance to let the Bern episode fade away. Accordingly, just after he had received Stalin's comparatively conciliatory cable, Churchill told Eden—with the wider implications clearly in mind—"I think the time has come for a showdown on these points and Britain and the United States are completely aligned. We may go far and long before finding an equally good occasion." And indeed Roosevelt, in these last days of his life, was at last beginning to make remarks charging Stalin with betrayal of the Yalta "treaties." Meanwhile, Churchill kept the pressure on by asking FDR for advice on a proposed parliamentary statement over Poland. This produced the President's last cable on April 11, from his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia: "I would minimize the general Soviet problem as much as possible because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out." His last message was therefore conciliatory and even optimistic. A few hours later he was dead.44
THE EMERGENCE OF TRUMAN This traumatic event brought to the White House Harry S. Truman, untutored in diplomacy and believing in Roosevelt's vision of Yalta. His genuine humility helped the difficult domestic transition. The more combative side of his temperament found immediate expression in the comparatively secluded arena of foreign policy. Two characteristics, each a contrast with FDR, quickly exacerbated the crisis: a pronounced respect for and a rather literal approach to the law, which led him to identify the Declaration on Liberated Europe as a solemn treaty that the Soviets were clearly violating; and a taste for forceful, sometimes rash action, of which the abrupt termination of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union on the German surrender is the best-known early example. His vigorous initial performance, therefore, was not simply a reasoned response to Soviet actions. It was also inspired by psychological predispositions, invited by the ineffectiveness of Roosevelt's post-Yalta policies in the face of Stalin's apparent violations and encouraged by powerful insiders like Churchill, Harriman, and Leahy who had long wanted a firmer line. Tensions with Moscow therefore continued to rise. It was not until late May that the underlying realities reasserted themselves.45 The immediate beneficiary of the change was Churchill. He had laboriously pushed a reluctant Roosevelt to accept Foreign Office-State Department coordination over Poland and then the dispatch of parallel messages to Stalin. Now he received an immediate suggestion from Truman that they make a joint demarche to Moscow. Their cable went off to Stalin on April 15. It called for a new Polish provisional government, to be formed after a meeting of seven Polish leaders: three from Lublin, three from the London government, and one neutral—a combination that would tilt the balance against Lublin.48 Meanwhile, there were other encouragements. Eden, visiting Washington en route
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to San Francisco, was warmly received amid assurances from Truman, Stettinius, Harriman, and others of the vital importance they attached to close Anglo-American collaboration. Truman, Churchill noted approvingly, "is not to be bullied by the Soviets."47 This new American spirit had a tonic effect on Churchill. On April 23 he approved a policy of firm resistance against Soviet pressure to reduce the scale of existing British representation in Bulgaria. Immediately after this we find some Soviet acknowledgment of the apparent new Anglo-American alignment, and of Churchill's enhanced leadership in this immediate post-Roosevelt moment, in a letter from Stalin to the Prime Minister appealing for some understanding of Soviet security needs as a factor in the Polish situation. Stalin reminded Churchill that the Soviets had not interfered in Belgium or Greece, because they realized how important they were to the security of Great Britain. At the same time he intimated that he would now accept Mikolajczyk, who had meanwhile accepted the Curzon line boundary with Russia, as a party to the consultations on the issue of the Polish government. This prompted a long reply from Churchill in which he reviewed the whole post-Yalta development, answered Stalin charge for charge, and concluded by warning him not to underrate "the divergencies which are opening about matters which you may think are small but which are symbolic of the way the English-speaking democracies look at life." Churchill's success in finally achieving an AngloAmerican joint initiative has received little attention from historians. Indeed, two of the most influential American studies of the origins of the Cold War in recent years ignore it completely. Yet this brief Anglo-American collaboration against the Soviets punctuated years of consistent effort by Roosevelt to differentiate the United States from Britain in Russian eyes, and it was itself terminated a few weeks later by Hopkins's reassurances to a skeptical Stalin that this Rooseveltian detachment was again in effect. The unexamined assumption seems to be that no real importance was attached to this dimension either by the Americans or by the Russians. It is another sign of the low value usually placed on Anglo-American relations as a causative factor in the origins of the Cold War, and indeed on the geopolitical approach generally.48 Truman did, of course, act boldly in ways that went beyond Anglo-American relations. The well-known Truman-Molotov meetings of April 22 and 23 established a new American tone. Molotov's visit to Washington, and later to San Francisco, was ostensibly a gesture of conciliation on Roosevelt's death. But Stalin was also interested in assessing the new leader and reviving the bargain of Teheran. When, at their first meeting, Truman emphasized the need to work out difficulties, Molotov pointedly replied "that there existed a good basis in the Dumbarton Oaks plan and the Crimean decisions." At their second, more acrimonious conference, Truman, perhaps still unaware of its use by Roosevelt, recognized but repudiated Molotov's implicit East EuropeUnited Nations nexus, warning that he was "determined" to go ahead with
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the United Nations "no matter what difficulties or differences may arise with regard to other matters." Moreover, the Russians should stick to their agreements, for the relationship could no longer be "on the basis of a one-way street." The authenticity of the conclusion to this famous confrontation—in which Molotov is said to have protested, "I have never been talked to like that in my life," and Truman to have rejoined, "Carry out your agreements and you won't get talked to like that"—seems to depend precariously upon Truman's uncorroborated account. But Molotov was unquestionably given a difficult time.49 The new militancy showed itself more substantively in the desire to apply economic leverage against the Soviets. It was increasingly believed that the Soviets needed American postwar aid and would make concessions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere to get it, an assumption time soon disproved. In January, Molotov had submitted an application for a $6 billion credit. Roosevelt studiously ignored it at Yalta and thereafter. Here, then, the Truman administration simply adhered to the existing policy of deferral. Reparations policy was tightened up. New, more abrasive personnel were appointed to the American delegation to the Reparations Commission, and its departure for Moscow was delayed. More restrictive guidelines appeared: the $20 billion figure was played down, and necessary German imports were given priority over reparations deliveries. Yet Truman seems from the start to have been more concerned to avoid paying the bill for European recovery than with coercing the Russians. Then Lend-Lease shipments were terminated upon the German surrender. But the provocative element here, as Stalin's later complaints showed, was the execution rather than the fact of the decision. With this Truman seems to have had nothing to do. And, in any case, it applied equally to Britain.60 The harder line can also be seen in spasmodic displays of majoritarian and therefore anti-Soviet diplomacy by the American delegation in San Francisco. But this was produced mainly by the exigencies of hemispheric and domestic politics rather than by the administration's calculation. Although Truman briefly showed a willingness to use American military power in the race for Trieste, this was in opposition to the Yugoslavs rather than to the Soviets and had very limited application. There was also a significant commitment to France, in Indochina, but here the Russians were an even more remote factor. Finally, there was the prospect of the atomic weapon, which undoubtedly increased Truman's self-confidence, but which was as yet a distant and incalculable form of power.81 Is there enough substance and coherence in all this to justify talk about the beginning of the Cold War? Here Churchill, as an informed and supremely interested party, is a good guide to the practical significance of these American impulses and attitudes. Only two of them, apart from the crucial matter of Anglo-American collaboration, seem to have caught his attention: the securing of Trieste, which, like Poland earlier, seemed a good European "hook" offering
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"joint action with the United States"; and the increasing American preoccupation with the United Nations, which, as Soviet participation began to seem less likely, he began to see as a politically attractive framework for the desired Anglo-American association. "Although I have never been at all keen on this conference," he wrote in mid-April, addressing the possible Soviet boycott of the San Francisco meeting, "I should in that event become very keen on it."62 Churchill's efforts to exploit the military situation in Europe against the Soviets offer an acid test of the Truman initiatives. On April 16 he again urged Eisenhower to capture Berlin, suddenly a prospect again after American troops had crossed the Elbe on April 11. The Soviets had not yet started their final offensive. But Eisenhower again refused, citing an insufficient military buildup. Churchill's attention then turned to the Baltic port of Liibeck. "Our arrival at Liibeck before our Russian friends," he wrote to Eden on April 18, "would save a lot of argument later on." At issue here was the liberation of Denmark and the capture of the half million German soldiers in Norway. Here Eisenhower cooperated, and the goal was achieved with a few hours to spare. Churchill also hoped to secure Prague and as much of Czechoslovakia as possible. But Marshall and Eisenhower, whom Truman upheld, once more refused to be distracted by what the former called "purely political purposes." Eisenhower again consulted the Russians, who undoubtedly were thinking politically, and agreed at their request not to move east. He then, to the consternation of the British, cooperated with the Soviets in their strenuous and successful effort to occupy the strategic Danish Baltic island of Bornholm just ahead of Allied troops. Later he again upset the British by proposing to the Soviets, without consulting London, a joint secretariat with his headquarters.53 Churchill made his strongest effort through May and into June to secure Truman's agreement not to withdraw from the existing positions finally attained by the Anglo-American forces in Europe, well inside the occupation zones designated for the Soviet Union. His purpose was that, in return for their withdrawal, at an early tripartite conference, Stalin should be urged to give satisfaction "about Poland, and also about the temporary character of the Russian occupation of Germany, and the conditions to be established in the Russianised or Russian-controlled countries in the Danube valley, particularly Austria and Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans." Churchill was further prepared "to please them about the exits from the Black Sea and the Baltic as part of a general settlement." But on June 12 Truman informed Churchill of his decision to withdraw to the prearranged zones.64 Meanwhile, as his confidence in American collaboration declined, Churchill apparently began to think again, as in 1918-19, of the German option. The race for Liibeck, inspired by geopolitical considerations, also ensured the surrender of German troops in Scandinavia, and of many more who fled from the eastern front toward the open British lines, to Montgomery's forces. Thereafter the Soviet media, with various degrees of dissimulation, began to charge
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that the British were preserving or setting up a secret German army. They also complained of slow German demobilization in the British zone.55 Two postwar statements by Churchill lend some credence to the accusations. At a private dinner party in 1948, he claimed that he had indeed been preparing the Germans for use against the advancing Russians. A shocked Lord Halifax, hearing of this, remarked in his diary, "I suppose this must never see the light of day." Then, in November 1954, Churchill stated in a public constituency speech, "I telegraphed to Lord Montgomery directing him to be careful in collecting the German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be issued again to the German soldiers whom we should have to work with if the Soviet advance continued. . . ." The ensuing public stir was intensified when Montgomery confirmed that he had indeed received such instructions. In the event, no confirming documentation was found, so Churchill's precise intentions remain unclear. His own explanation to Parliament was that the instructions had been "only of a precautionary nature."56 It is a significant illumination of our general theme that, as the war against Germany came to its violent conclusion and the movements of armies acquired much greater political significance, both of the leading European victors began to show signs of acute anxiety. For them, but much less for the comparatively calm and detached Americans, the stakes were obviously very high. Thus Stalin's panic over the Bern negotiations in April had its counterpart in Churchill's fevered activism at the beginning of May. The latter's messages to Eden in these last days of the war have an anguished character. He feared "a great catastrophe." As an event, the Russian advance was "one of the most melancholy in history." "What are we to do?" he responded impotently, when confronted with American plans to withdraw large numbers of troops rapidly from Europe. He began to refer more often to the urgent need for a showdown and settlement with the Russians before the American withdrawal. Meanwhile, he acted where he could with forceful decisiveness. We see this in his response to the Trieste crisis at the beginning of May. He prodded Field Marshal Alexander's Eighth Army into a rapid occupation of the city in order to forestall the Yugoslavs. He then wrote a scathing rebuke to Alexander for suggesting that his troops might not fight Tito with the same spirit and resolution they had shown against the Germans. Meanwhile, he drafted a tough cable to Tito warning that any attack on Allied troops would bring on "a trial of strength." But he quickly thought better of this initiative, discordant as it was with the atmosphere of victory, and ordered all copies of his draft destroyed.57 On May 18 Churchill took another significant step. He called in the Soviet ambassador, Gousev, and complained bitterly that his government had dropped "an iron screen across Europe from Liibeck to Trieste behind which we had no knowledge of what was going on." Churchill spoke of "puppet governments" and contrasted Soviet policy with Allied "decency" in allowing the Red Army to take Prague. He found the Soviet attitude "incomprehensible and intoler-
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able." The British government refused to be pushed about. Its determination not to let this happen had led it to postpone the demobilization of the Royal Air Force. "They were resolved to enter upon discussions about the future of Europe with all the strength they had." But here, too, he felt he had gone too far, and he scoured Whitehall to recover and destroy Clark Kerr's memorandum of the meeting.68 Churchill's vigorous activism helps put the early Truman militancy into true perspective, for here we see two very different conceptions of power generally and of the Soviet problem specifically. American statesmen tended to set considerable store by the influence supposedly generated by their ability to offer or withhold economic largess, just as several of them later believed that the appearance of the American atomic weapon (in expectation of which Truman delayed the Potsdam summit) would create, ipso facto, a more responsive Soviet attitude. Others believed that constant exposure to world opinion through the United Nations would have a beneficent effect on the Soviet leadership. The resultant strategies, though mildly coercive in intent, were essentially passive, arm's length, and evolutionary. They were also congenial because they offered the illusion of forceful action without violating the overriding American desire, which soon manifested itself at Potsdam, to avoid European entanglements. But they were ineffective because they did not address, as Churchill's blunt military forcefulness did, the immediate concrete reality of Soviet expansion and Communist consolidation in various parts of Europe and beyond. There were American impulses toward confrontation, as we have seen. But they were episodic and not sustained. The deeper reality is that, while officials in Washington debated over "leverage," American military policy actually eased Stalin's way into Eastern Europe; that Anglo-American collaboration was brief and soon abandoned; that no attempt was made to rally American public support for a new Soviet policy; and that Truman, within a month of his accession, was anxiously seeking a path toward rapprochement with Stalin. Truman's second thoughts can be traced to mid-May when Joseph Davies, the pro-Soviet former ambassador to Moscow, acquired a growing influence. There may have been some balancing calculations about the future salutary effect on the Russians of the atomic bomb, soon to appear. But the crucial point is that the various ad hoc coercive strategies we have discussed had quite obviously failed to impress Stalin, that the President was now being made aware of different interpretations of Soviet aspirations and of Yalta, and, perhaps most important, that he now confronted a break with the Soviet Union—which, thanks to the Roosevelt's glowing image making, he was in no position to explain satisfactorily to the American people.59 There were abundant warning signs. Polls in late May suggested that about three-quarters of the American people still favored cooperation with the Soviets. The British embassy in Washington reported "acute nervousness" in
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official circles and among the public over the accumulating signs of differences with the Soviets since Roosevelt's death. There was still much official and public suspicion of Britain and a widespread feeling that the United States should assume the mediator's role. The influential columnist Walter Lippmann asserted that "the conflict of interest is between the Russians and the British, not between the Russians and ourselves." The Soviet media astutely played on Truman's insecurity. While Izvestia noted "an impression that the foreign policy of Roosevelt no longer reflects the true tendencies of the United States," Pravda lamented, "If only Roosevelt had been alive everything would have been different."60 It is not surprising then that, through May, Truman began to distance himself from Churchill. Meanwhile, prompted by Harriman, he prepared to send the ailing but eager and conciliatory Harry Hopkins to Moscow for talks with Stalin. Hopkins told Halifax later that the President had kept him for a mere ten minutes, saying "that he could tell Harry nothing which he did not know much better already, that the Polish question was in a mess and he wanted Harry to put it right and that was all." This seems to reflect the shallow basis upon which the early Truman militancy rested. Hopkins, given a virtually free hand, was "to demonstrate the continuity of policy." Truman therefore did not consciously reverse Roosevelt's policy. For that we must wait until March 1946, when the new United States ambassador, General Bedell Smith, made the same journey to Moscow with instructions "to make clear the change in the American people's attitude."61 THE UNITED STATES-SOVIET RAPPROCHEMENT There was a familiar Rooseveltian touch to Hopkins's Moscow diplomacy: a sustained attempt to please at the personal level; a clear disclaimer of any association with Britain, and especially with Churchill; and a powerful emphasis on the administration's indispensable services as a guide to the variable temper of the real arbiter, American public opinion. Stalin, still angry over Roosevelt's use of the Declaration on Liberated Europe, refused to accept responsibility for American opinion. He would not, he told Hopkins, use Soviet opinion "as a screen," a remark for which he later apologized. It soon became clear, however, that Stalin's principal grievance, though he also complained bitterly of the American termination of Lend-Lease and the admission of Argentina to the United Nations, was the recent Anglo-American collaboration. At the first meeting he blamed Britain for the Polish impasse, accused her of working for a new cordon sanitaire, and charged that London had been seeking a secret peace with Japan. To all this Hopins offered no defense or qualification. It was, in fact, largely his concern that Churchill had become too influential in the counsels of the Truman administration that had inspired him to make this mission. He therefore tacitly endorsed Stalin's accur sations by simply insisting that American policies were different. Nor does he
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appear to have objected when Stalin, at a Kremlin dinner, insisted that Churchill was responsible for the recent post-Yalta crisis and had misled the Americans. Indeed, his subsequent comment to associates that Stalin's concessions in these talks had discredited Churchill's warnings about Soviet intentions, taken together with his pre-Moscow remarks, suggests that he shared this interpretation.62 On the main issue, Hopkins assured Stalin that "the question of Poland per se is not so important as the fact that it has become a symbol of our ability to work out problems with the Soviet Union." He continued, "We have no special interests in Poland and no special desire to see any particular kind of government." He then invited Stalin to "put his mind to the task of what diplomatic methods could be used to settle this question." Stalin immediately produced the necessary cosmetic solution. He would offer the various nonLublin Poles, providing they were individually approved by Moscow, four or five of the eighteen or twenty ministries. Without argument or comment Hopkins sent this remarkable proposal, which offered a non-Lublin component far below anything envisaged by the Americans or British up to this point, to Washington for consideration. Intense negotiations followed over a list of nonLublin Poles to be invited to Moscow.63 Meanwhile, Stalin insured against resistance by applying pressure in a familiar and sensitive place. In San Francisco the Soviet delegate, Andrei Gromyko, suddenly insisted that the Soviet Union must, after all, retain the veto over discussion as well as action in the proposed Security Council. On June i he characterized this clear departure from Yalta as his "final position." By June 6, however, Hopkins was able to tell Stalin that Truman had accepted his Polish formula. Stalin expressed appreciation. Hopkins then said that Truman had asked him to raise "the impasse which had come about at the San Francisco conference in regard to voting procedure in the Security Council." Stalin responded immediately and, after a charade of debate with Molotov, told Hopkins that he would, in effect, return to the Yalta decision, limiting the veto to action alone. He was satisfied. The former East European-United Nations bargain, which he had systematically tried to extend until Roosevelt had drawn the line after Yalta, must now again have seemed available as the effective basis of United States-Soviet relations. In fact, Stalin exaggerated the diplomatic insight of his adversaries, for Gromyko's maneuvers at San Francisco inspired in the Western leaders the same surprise and perplexity that had greeted the Soviet aggressiveness in Eastern Europe after Yalta. The Americans, delighted at Hopkins's success, looked back without analysis. The British also missed the obvious connection.64 The Stalin-Hopkins negotiation marks the end of the post-Yalta crisis, which arose, as we have seen, from Roosevelt's adverse response to Stalin's attempt to force their bargain beyond its natural political limits. The crisis itself, however, despite its familar surface character of American militancy,
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should also be seen as part of the continuing contest between Stalin and Churchill for American political favor. Their conceptions of the American role were of course very different. Stalin simply wanted Truman's endorsement of his aims and then, it seems reasonable to assume, an American withdrawal from European affairs. Churchill, by contrast, wanted an intimate, integrated, and permanent political and military Anglo-American alliance to resist the Soviets. Through March and April he seemed to be succeeding. But, by standing firm through the political tensions of the final German collapse and through the difficulties presented by Roosevelt's death, Stalin prevailed in the end. The outcome of these negotiations, which substantially settled the Polish issue and broke the Anglo-American alignment, was a striking Soviet diplomatic victory and a British defeat. Churchill had little choice but to accept this United States-Soviet rapprochement. He wrote to Truman on June 4 applauding Hopkins's success in breaking the deadlock but insisting that it was only "a milestone in a long hill we ought never to have been asked to climb." He went on, "I think we ought to guard against any newspaper assumptions that the Polish problem has been solved or that the difficulties between the Western democracies and the Soviet Government on this matter have been more than relieved." Meanwhile, in drafting an earlier, more discursive memorandum to the President, Churchill, aware of the impending change in American policy, developed themes that foreshadow his later efforts at Potsdam and in the Fulton speech. Thus, after arguing vehemently against Truman's plan to meet Stalin alone before the summit, he continued, It must be remembered that Britain and the United States are united at this time upon the same ideologies, namely, freedom, and the principles set out in the American Constitution and humbly reproduced with modern variations in the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Government have a different philosophy, namely, Communism, and use to the full the methods of police government, which they are applying in every State which has fallen a victim to their liberating arms. The Prime Minister cannot readily bring himself to accept the idea that the position of the United States is that Britain and Soviet Russia are just two foreign Powers, six of one and half a dozen of the other, with whom the troubles of the late war have to be adjusted. Except in so far as force is concerned, there is no equality between right and wrong. The great causes and principles for which Britain and the United States have suffered and triumphed are not mere matters of the balance of power. They in fact involve the salvation of the world. Churchill appears not to have sent this cable. He had nevei- stated his basic position so forcefully. He went on to emphasize his determination to persevere with the Russians. But after surveying each of the East European countries now dominated by the Soviets, and stressing the malign effects of Soviet and
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Communist rule, he concluded that it would not be wise "to dismiss all these topics in the desire to placate the imperialistic demands of Soviet Communist Russia."66 Meanwhile, the Hopkins mission had certain logical geopolitical consequences that, we can now see, foretold very clearly the configuration of Big Three diplomacy during the next nine months. Most notably, while it brought the United States and the Soviet Union together again, it led immediately, much as the Teheran summit had done, to pressure from both against an increasingly isolated Britain. Stalin, apparently convinced of Churchill's responsibility for the post-Yalta crisis, now decided to punish him with a succession of provocative moves, diplomatic snubs, and media attacks. This became especially evident after a series of cordial Stalin-Truman exchanges in the first part of June, which included a warm acknowledgment by Stalin of gratitude for American wartime aid. No such message was received in London. On June 21 the Soviet leader sent Churchill a rude message on the Trieste regional issue. Two days later he sent a condescending and tepid response to Churchill's suggestion that he meet King George VI at Potsdam. Already, on June 9, the Army newspaper, Red Star, had published a review attacking "governing circles in Britain which continue to support Polish reactionaries who are now setting up their own 'state' in Germany." It was, a Foreign Office minute declared at the end of June, "a bad period in Anglo-Soviet relations." Moreover, the Soviet assault was not confined to the international arena. The British wartime coalition had broken up in May, leaving Churchill to carry on at the head of an interim Conservative government pending general elections in July. As the campaign heated up, the Soviet press adopted a strong anti-Tory line, paying particular attention to "the men of Munich" and enthusiastically playing up the Labour party's criticisms.66 At the same time, the Russians began to move more vigorously across the European chessboard in ways that directly threatened British interests and signaled Stalin's abandonment of the Anglo-Soviet, two-Europe concert held out by the Russians with varying degrees of precision since 1941. On June 8 the prominent commentator Ermashev attacked the London Economist, which had been urging a union of Western countries. The substantive change appeared clearly in mid-June when the Soviets demanded from Britain a say in all decisions made regarding Norway. They then proclaimed their desire to share in the international control of Tangier opposite Gibraltar. British and French activities in the Levant now came under attack as well. Most strikingly, the Soviets also began, within days of Hopkins's departure from Moscow, to apply much greater pressure on Turkey. The escalated demands now included the cession of Kars and Ardahan provinces to Russia, the grant of a naval base to Russia at the Straits, and the revision of the 1936 Montreux Convention, which governed the Dardanelles Straits. The Turks refused to comply and turned to the British, who promised diplomatic support early in July. These
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events mark the beginning of the Soviet "war of nerves" against Britain. Its origins clearly lie in the various reaffirmations of American detachment by Truman and Hopkins.67 The British were now dangerously exposed. Churchill's persisting fear and dislike of the Bolsheviks emerged again in June in references to "Bolshevik lust and cruelty" in Bulgaria and to Tito's "great cruelties" against the Italians. On June 23 he drafted a cable to Stalin drawing attention to the looming division of Europe. "It seems to me," he wrote, "that a Russianised frontier running from Lubeck through Eisenach to Trieste and down to Albania is a matter which requires a very great deal of argument conducted between good friends." But he decided not to send this cable. There was, after all, little he could do to resist the increasing Soviet pressure, though he did send a strong protest on behalf of Turkey. He was able, after the usual bullying confrontation, to persuade a reluctant Mikolajczyk to go to Moscow to join the new government. There tfee former London Polish leader received a surprisingly warm reception from Stalin and Molotov, which Churchill found momentarily encouraging. His main hope, however, was for some restoration of the recent Anglo-American diplomatic front at the forthcoming Potsdam conference.68 But the Truman administration was now determined to resist this. On May 28, while Hopkins was still in Moscow, Stettinius proclaimed that the primary American objective was to continue and strengthen collaboration with the Soviet Union. Washington then rushed ahead on the Polish recognition, arranging telegraphic communications with the new, Lublin-dominated government despite promises to London not to do so. Truman embarrassed the British by allowing only one day's postponement before forcing through a synchronized Anglo-American recognition. This embarrassed Churchill, who had to consider not only the London Polish government but also the approximately 170,000 Polish soldiers under British command. The United States also brushed aside the British desire to force from Moscow a closer definition of the political elements the Soviets were planning to exclude from the eventual Polish elections. Meanwhile, there was shocking news on the scale of American troop withdrawals from Europe. In mid-May, Marshall had told Eden that a mere 50,000 would be withdrawn per month. In early June it became known that this estimate referred only to those to be sent home by air. In all, 2,30,000 were projected for return in June, the monthly rate rising to 400,000 in August. Then the President decided in early June to withdraw American troops from their forward positions in the east, thus sacrificing, as Churchill saw it, the most effective means of influencing Stalin. Truman also ignored Churchill's impassioned pleas at least to slow if not halt the departure of American troops from Europe and reassignment in the Pacific.69 Churchill also found himself, amid these major setbacks, protesting or painfully accepting a number of apparent American slights. These included Truman's refusal to have Hopkins stop over in London on the way back to
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Washington and the President's expressed intention, from which Churchill was finally able to dissuade him, to meet privately with Stalin before Potsdam and to visit Paris while refusing to go to London during his trip. Among other disturbing signs of declining collaboration were the cutbacks in Lend-Lease (from which, of course, the Soviets also suffered) and word from Halifax in July that the American government was planning to stop further disclosures to British representatives of technical information classified "confidential" or higher. This included work on guided missiles and other defense research.70 The weeks before Potsdam were therefore an anxious time for Churchill, especially as he was also embroiled in a bitter election campaign at home. His policies seemed to be in ruins. Indeed, he had apparently achieved the worst of both worlds. His collaboration with Stalin in Europe appeared at an end; the long-predicted Soviet pressure against Britain was now developing rapidly. American power, the only possible makeweight, was already being withdrawn. Worst of all, Anglo-American relations had also declined sharply. The only other option, some kind of West European bloc, was impossible in the face of de Gaulle's continuing bitterness over his treatment by Roosevelt and Churchill, now much intensified by the latter's forcible frustration of French attempts to recover their prewar position in the Levant.71 As he had during similarly difficult moments in 1944, Churchill now turned increasingly to the composition of unsent drafts to express his frustrations and again exhibited a preoccupation with the psychological side of great-power politics. For example, in the lead-up to the Potsdam conference, he asserted British independence and self-respect by telling Cadogan, "Let the Americans come to us if they want preliminary arrangements and not we to them." When the Chiefs of Staff complained that their American counterparts were refusing a prior meeting, Churchill responded calmly, "There will be plenty of time at Terminal." He approached Potsdam in an increasingly fatalistic and pessimistic frame of mind. "It is beyond the power of this country to prevent all kinds of things crashing at the present time," he minuted to the Foreign Office. "The responsibility lies with the United States and my desire is to give them all the support in our power. If they do not feel able to do anything then we must let matters take their course—indeed that is what they are doing." The trouble was, Churchill wrote later, that the "United States stood on the scene of victory, master of world fortunes, but without a true and coherent design."72 POTSDAM Actually, the United States did have "a true and coherent design" in its approach to Potsdam. But it was very different from Churchill's. It was masked by Truman's stubborn refusal, somewhat in the prewar Stimsonian spirit, to recognize the Soviet-sponsored Rumanian and Bulgarian regimes, by his generalized belief that the imminent appearance of the atomic bomb would in some unspecified way bring the Russians to heel, and also perhaps by the con-
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fusion attending the replacement of Stettinius with the more formidable figure of Byrnes as Secretary of State just before the conference. This design, which emerges clearly in the preparatory advice the President received from his White House intimates, from the State Department and congressional sources, as well as from the Chiefs of Staff, has been aptly summarized by the historian John Lewis Gaddis: "Truman and Byrnes had one overriding objective at Potsdam: they wanted to clear up remaining wartime problems so that the United States' military and economic responsibilities in Europe could be terminated as quickly as possible." It was, in other words, the policy of persisting American detachment from Europe that had been implicit in Roosevelt's diplomacy all along.73 Many historians, echoing his closest associates, present a critical assessment of Churchill's Potsdam performance. One receives the general impression of a tired statesman, unbriefed and wordy, once again under Stalin's spell, and hagridden with anxiety over the British election result, which was announced toward the end of the conference. Churchill himself, in his memoirs, insisted that he saw Stalin's intentions clearly but deliberately allowed issues to accumulate unresolved until the election result, whereupon, his mandate refreshed, he intended to have a "showdown" with the Soviets. As it was, the Labour party won the election, and Churchill was left to tell Lord Moran, "After I left Potsdam, Joe did what he liked."74 His general policy was still to confine and resist, so far as was possible, the growth and consolidation of Soviet and Communist power in Europe. The military option no longer available and American troops already withdrawing from Europe, he necessarily reverted to inducement, offering Stalin, as he had done tentatively at Teheran and at Yalta, the prospect of easier Russian access to the open seas. His reasoning came partly from the characteristically British nineteenth-century belief that every Russian statesman was driven above all by the lure of warm waters and partly, perhaps, from the liberal notion that broader access and exposure to the world would civilize the hemmed-in Goliath. Superior Anglo-American seapower offered some insurance against war here. In return for this he seems to have hoped Stalin would make unspecified concessions in eastern and central Europe. In his first private discussion with Stalin, on July 17, conducted without recriminations, Churchill declared, "Britain welcomed Russia as a Great Power and in particular as a Naval Power. The more ships that sailed the seas the greater chance there was for better relations." Stalin seemed to show interest. Churchill then met with Truman on July 18. His note of this first meeting suggests a cordial tone and a general meeting of minds, an impression belied by Truman's recently unearthed diary, which depicts Churchill as a rather clumsy political seducer.75 The Prime Minister apparently suggested an AngloAmerican bargaining approach toward Stalin, using their control of German shipping (of which the Soviets wanted one-third) and their willingness to assist Soviet egress from the Dardanelles, the Baltic, and the Far East as mat-
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ters that "should be handled in connection with the general layout in Central Europe." According to Churchill, Truman responded favorably, emphasizing his determination to press for true independence and free elections in the region. "He seemed to agree with my point," Churchill noted, "that everything should be settled as a whole and not piecemeal." There was, however, a difference in emphasis that reflected the distinctive national outlooks: Truman being more interested in the application of the Declaration on Liberated Europe to Eastern Europe, Churchill being more immediately concerned with the practical effects of the radical extension of Poland's western frontier. Having, as he thought, secured American support for his basic conference strategy, Churchill brought the discussion around to the grand postwar AngloAmerican design he had cherished throughout the war, had proclaimed at Harvard in 1943, and would justify to a startled world eight months later in the Fulton "iron curtain" speech as a necessary response to the Soviet threat: As to the airfields and other bases, President Roosevelt knew well that I wished to go much further, and would like to have a reciprocal arrangement, including Naval and air, all over the world between our two countries. Britain, though a smaller power than the United States, had much to give. Why should an American battleship calling at Gibraltar not find the torpedoes to fit her tubes, and the shells to fit her guns deposited there? Why should we not share facilities for defence all over the world? We could add 50% to the mobility of the American Fleet. At this point Truman interrupted to say that "all this language was very near his own heart." He had, however, one proviso: "Any plan would have to be fitted in, in some way, as a part of the method of carrying out the policy of the United Nations." By the time of his Fulton speech, Churchill had devised a way of integrating the desired Anglo-American alliance into the United Nations framework in order to carry American opinion. At Potsdam, however, he resisted this unwelcome dilution. His record continues, I said that was all right so long as the facilities were shared between Britain and the United States. There was nothing in it if they were made common to everybody. A man might make a proposal of marriage to a young lady, but it was not much use if he were told that she would always be a sister to him. I wanted, under whatever form or cloak, a continuation of the present war-time system of reciprocal facilities between Britain and the United States in regard to bases and fuelling points in their possession. The President appeared in full accord with this, if it could be presented in a suitable fashion, and did not appear to take crudely the form of a military alliance a deux. These last were not his words but are my impression of his mind. Encouraged by this, I went on with my long-cherished idea of keeping the organisation of the
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Combined Chiefs of Staff in being, at any rate until the world calmed down after the great storm and until there was a world structure of such proved strength and capacity that we could safely confide ourselves to it. The President was replying to this in an encouraging way, when we were interrupted by his officers reminding him that he must now start off to see Marshal Stalin.76 Churchill also had a second meeting with Stalin later that day. Having now achieved a satisfactory rapport with Truman on the naval issue, Churchill returned to his negotiating themes more expansively than he had earlier. His policy, he repeated, was to welcome Russia as a great sea power. "Russia," he told Stalin, "had been like a giant with his nostrils pinched." He assured Stalin, "This was not out of gratitude for anything Russia had done, but his settled policy." But Churchill was carefully enigmatic as to the political means by which all this could be achieved. Indeed, he pointedly stressed that recent events had left the Turks "very frightened." And he seems not to have responded at all when Stalin raised the issue of the German fleet, saying that "a share of it would be most useful for Russia who had suffered severe losses at sea," for Churchill expected, with Truman's support at the conference sessions, to secure reciprocal concessions from Stalin, especially on the Polish frontiers. The record concludes appropriately: "The Prime Minister hopes that agreement would be reached on European frontiers, Russia's access to seas, and German fleet before the Conference ended."77 Churchill persisted fitfully in this strategy through the conference. But Truman and Byrnes showed little interest, and Stalin was clearly unwilling to sacrifice anything concrete in Europe for "the freedom of tht: seas." He made his point by complaining to Churchill of Greek incursions into Bulgaria and Albania. This stirring of the embers of their 1944 Balkans deal, together with other Soviet demands at Potsdam, was doubtless calculated in part to remind Churchill that a sense of acute vulnerability in the Mediterranean, rather than self-confidence arising out of a supposed mastery of the outer seas, was the appropriate basis of Britain's Soviet policy. But here, as in his talk with Truman, Churchill was anxious to make a more profound point. Again the British interpreter records, The Prime Minister spoke of the anxiety felt hy some people with regard to Russia's intentions. He drew a line from the North Cape to Albania and named the capitals east of that line which were in Russian hands. It looked as if Russia were rolling on westwards. Marshal Stalin said that he had no such intention. On the contrary he was withdrawing troops from the West. Two million men would be demobilized and sent home within the next four months. Further demobilization was only a question of adequate railway transport.78
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In these interviews with Truman and Stalin, then, we see Churchill developing, in isolation from each other, the two great themes of his crystallizing postwar design: the identification of an apparently unlimited Soviet threat and the need for an intimate Anglo-American military and political collaboration. Eight months later, suitably embellished and woven tightly together as compelling cause and effect, they reappeared as the conceptual basis of his "iron curtain" speech. Meanwhile, the character of the Potsdam conference quickly revealed itself. It began with Stalin's reaffirmation to Truman on July 17 of the Soviet intention to enter the Japanese war in the near future, and with his agreement to a Council of Foreign Ministers including France and China that would draft peace treaties for Italy and Hitler's East European satellites. Truman was delighted. "Could go home now," the President cabled his mother. From this point on, only two issues really animated the American delegation. One was the news of the successful atomic test in New Mexico, which arrived during the conference. This immediately inspired some rethinking on the desirability of Soviet participation in the Far Eastern war. On July 23 Byrnes told Churchill that he had cabled the Chinese Foreign Minister, who, in accordance with the Yalta agreement, was still negotiating with Moscow on the political terms of Soviet belligerency, "not to give way on any point to the Russians, but to return to Moscow and keep on negotiating pending further developments."79 The other issue was the important German reparations problem. Truman and Byrnes refused a fixed-sum computation, even when the Russians brought their own share down from $10 billion to $4 billion. A possible deal involving the Polish western frontier began to evolve in the reparations subcommittee. At first British objections to the territorial change held this up. But when Churchill and Eden left for the election results in London, never to return, Byrnes began to stick together the compromise. Each power would take its reparations from its own zone. In addition the Russians and Poles would get 10 percent of the surplus capital equipment in the Western zones, after needed imports had been paid for, and another 15 percent in exchange for a like amount of food and raw materials from the more agricultural Soviet Eastern zone. In return the United States gave a kind of de facto, provisional recognition of the Oder-western Neisse frontier by acknowledging Polish administration there pending the peace conference. The new British leaders, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, felt themselves obliged to accept this and did so reluctantly.80 Some historians see in this settlement, which undoubtedly had profound long-term consequences, the beginnings of the Cold War. Can a war, even a cold one, start with a settlement between the supposed adversaries? This is perhaps a philosophical quibble. But the fact is that the Potsdam agreement, which envisaged the treatment of Germany as a single economic unit, was
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reasonably faithfully observed into 1946. Moreover, the central American purpose at Potsdam was simply to avoid indirect responsibility for European reparations, not to effect a permanent partition of Germany or to erect a barrier against Soviet expansion or communism. Germany was, of course, a fundamental issue but not a really contentious one until after the Cold War had begun, due to other causes, in early 1946. Meanwhile, there was a substantial degree of four-power collaboration. The Cold War could have started over Germany. In fact it did not.81 The most significant feature of Potsdam, at least so far as the immediate international situation was concerned, was the systematic way in which, as at the earlier summit meetings, the American leaders proclaimed their separation from Britain. This was true even regarding Eastern Europe, where, apart from the recognition issue, their passivity toward or acquiscence in Soviet plans contrasted sharply with Churchill's more concrete resistance. Thus they quickly agreed, against British wishes, to Stalin's request that the United States support Rumania and Bulgaria for United Nations membership. They also emphasized their lack of appetite in supervising any East European elections. No doubt the constitution of the Council of Foreign Ministers bred a certain passivity on issues that would be taken up later. But events later confirmed the impression of American indifference that Truman and Byrnes gave at Potsdam. As the historian Lisle A. Rose has aptly written, "The Americans would have their perfunctory consultative and advisory rights east of the Elbe as guaranteed by the Declaration on Liberated Europe fully respected. But Truman and Byrnes had first been careful to make their point: They were wholly averse to assuming an important role in the affairs of Eastern Europe." This seems to have been true also of Truman's celebrated proposal for the internationalization of the Danube. It was less an American wedge into Eastern Europe than a rather clumsy attempt to solve a complex problem along lines of pure economic reason.82 Churchill was left to fight several lonely battles with Stalin over Eastern Europe. He resisted the latter's assertion that Italy and the three Balkan states should be rehabilitated simultaneously, only to find Truman backing away and suggesting reference to the foreign ministers. He vehemently opposed the principle of Polish administration of the areas taken from Germany up to the western Neisse, but Truman and Byrnes remained passive and eventually accepted the Soviet position. Attlee and Bevin showed an even greater distrust of Soviet intentions after their postelection arrival on July 28.83 The American reluctance to discuss urgent concrete problems beyond what were considered central issues was pervasive. When, on July 16, the question of Yugoslavia arose and Stalin wanted to ask Tito to come to Potsdam, Churchill was agreeable, but Truman demurred, offering this classic expression of the American outlook:
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I have come here as the representative of the United States, and I have come here to discuss world problems with you. But I have not come here to judge each separate country in Europe or examine the disputes which should be settled by the world organization set up at San Francisco.84 This open divergence of Western interests extended beyond Eastern Europe to other areas of rising Soviet interest and prime British concern. When Stalin insisted that Franco's Spain be excluded from the United Nations and branded an outlaw nation, Truman supported him, over Churchill's vehement opposition. The Americans were very active in the discussions about Italy, but their clear concern was simply to forestall any development—such as a large Soviet reparations claim—that might delay the country's economic rehabilitation and their own withdrawal from responsibility. They showed little interest in the unsuccessful British effort to secure early Soviet and other Allied troop withdrawals from Iran. The discussion on July 22, of the Soviet claim for a revision of the Montreux Convention illustrates the differing approaches. Truman, silent at first, offered his somewhat vague and Utopian Danubian scheme as a solution, while Churchill confronted Stalin with the concrete point that the Turks felt threatened by the current concentration of Russian and Bulgarian troops on their border. When, in another intrusion into the British sphere, the Soviets asked for trusteeships of one or more of the Italian colonies in the Mediterranean, a bid already endorsed by Stettinius at San Francisco, Truman watched passively as Churchill stubbornly stonewalled until Stalin finally agreed to defer his claim.83 The significance of all this lies in the ostentatious demonstration by Truman and Byrnes of American detachment from Britain at a time when the Soviet expansionary thrust was moving beyond its original Eastern European focus into areas of fundamental British interest. The cumulative effect of this apparent American indifference, as represented by the Hopkins mission and the Potsdam conference, was to license the forward Soviet policy against the British that dominated the international arena until early 1946.
Chapter Five
Anglo-Soviet Cold War, United StatesSoviet Rapprochement The basic character of international diplomacy in the period after Potsdam, as distinct from the specific postwar issues that inevitably disturbed the three great powers, continued to move along the two lines we have noticed since the Hopkins mission to Moscow: a growing, multifaceted Russian challenge to Britain and an increasingly detached American political attitude toward both Britain and the Soviet Union. These two developments, the first largely a consequence of the second, were a logical evolution of the diplomacy we have been following until now. This is not the usual scholarly emphasis for the period. Historians have focused mainly on the diplomatic significance of the new atomic weapon, United States-Soviet tensions in the Far East, and Byrnes's hard line at the foreign ministers conference in London. But the revised American disposition to confront the Soviets, like the militancy shown in the preceding April, was sustained only very briefly. And it was scarcely connected with the political struggle in and around Europe between the Soviet Union and Britain that gathered force in the autumn and that had, by the turn of the year, reached a point of intensity that justifies our speaking of a first, Anglo-Soviet "Cold War." This liberty with a familiar conceptualization will seem provocative to some. It is always dangerous to change or extend a deeply rooted formulation that everyone understands. But historians know that there is both a diverse opinion and a dearth of hard conceptual analysis as to the meaning of the term "Cold War"—its characteristics, when it began, when it ended, and so on. But for
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that one might be content with the terms used to describe Soviet policies at the time: the "war of nerves" or the Foreign Office's phlegmatic "the Soviet campaign against this country." The trouble is that these terms do not convey, indeed they obscure, the vital historical connection between this preexisting Anglo-Russian confrontation—with its familiar "Cold War" characteristics of acute political tension not amounting to actual war, vast geopolitical theaters of contention, opposing systems of allies and clients, intense ideological and propaganda pressure from the Soviet Union, all without any notable loss of daily contact or diplomatic representation between the two powers concerned— and the "real" United States-Soviet Cold War, which, through processes we must now try to disentangle, grew out of it.1
THE SOVIET PRESSURE
INTENSIFIES
After a brief post-summit lull the Soviets quickly resumed the campaign against Britain and her connections that had first appeared in a systematic way after the Stalin-Hopkins discussions. Then, they had begun by launching a harsh political attack on Turkey. Now, having confirmed the United States-Soviet rapprochement, they again built up a vigorous press and radio campaign against Turkey, while stirring up leftist and autonomist elements in Russian-occupied northern Iran. This culminated, at the end of August, in a leftist bid for power in Tabriz, the northern provincial capital. Though unsuccessful, it was widely recognized as a "rehearsal." Then the Soviets began a sharp media campaign against the "Western bloc" supposedly being created in Europe by British and French socialists. This was another clear repudiation of the "two-Europe" notion held out by Stalin since 1941 and clarified in his understanding with Churchill in late 1944. The Soviets now had their sphere. Britain was no longer to be given hers. At the same time, after a month of restraint, the Soviets began to wage an ideological as well as a political struggle against the new Labour government.2 What, lay behind this evolving Soviet campaign against Britain? No dogmatic answer can be given. Soviet foreign policy is difficult to interpret. Archival evidence is lacking, and there is the problem of the proper weight due to traditional Russian aspirations, to Communist ideology, to Stalin's personality. We have been working so far on the hypothesis, which events seem to justify, that Stalin pursued logical expansionist aims in three stages, the third and boldest of which, directed beyond the existing grasp of the Red Army, is now coming more closely under our review. The precise definition of Stalin's view of his two great potential antagonists presents a rather more difficult problem. One cannot ignore the ideological dimension. The application of MarxistLeninist ideology to the contemporary situation taught that the "contradictions" of imperialist rivalry would shortly produce an Anglo-American war. It is possible, but unlikely, that Stalin expected this. He had made speeches in
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1928-30, now disinterred by anxious British officials, dogmatically predicting just such a struggle. The same prediction, in somewhat softened form, resurfaced in his famous election speech of February 9, 1946, in which he forecast further war between the capitalist powers. Yet one cannot rest content with these essentially abstract formulations, which seem, in any event, to have been designed for domestic rather than for foreign consumption. Despite all the talk about foreign "reactionary circles" in Soviet political discourse, Stalin was undoubtedly aware that power in the middle of the twentieth century was disposed by the "state." He himself, in Soviet history, was the great "statist," often at the expense of ideology. His experience of war and coalition diplomacy doubtless strengthened this way of thinking, at least for practical purposes. No doubt Stalin thought from time to time, when he pondered the origins of things, about the machinations of British and American capitalists. In practice he had to deal with the British and the American states and their leaders.3 Once this is accepted, it is possible for the diplomatic historian to introduce the familiar explanatory notion of the national interest. In the immediate postwar period two vital Soviet interests seem to stand out. One, universally recognized, was the need to secure Eastern Europe. The second, axiomatic for the distinctively separate state in a three-power system, was to ensure that the United States and Britain did not combine against her. This also was widely recognized at the time, and American leaders were extremely anxious to reassure the Soviets that they were not "ganging up" with the Biitish. Recent historians have tended to play down this structural consideration and to study the origins of the Cold War almost entirely in terms of AmericanSoviet relations. Adam Ulam, for example, has described the Soviet perspective within these limits; "The two main concerns of Soviet policy from 1945 on had to be the management of affairs in what has become the communist bloc of states, and the United States." This definition is persuasive, but as a statement of the position before the spring of 1946 it is incomplete because it ignores the nature of British power as the Soviets saw it. They did, of course, see the awesome dimensions and potential of American material power. But the political will to use it was much less evident. The United States had, after all, enjoyed material primacy since the 18705, but as late as the 19305 the European powers had conducted their diplomacy on the assumption of American indifference. In 1945-46 it was still unclear whether and to what extent World War II had really changed the American outlook.4 Three prominent political facts of the period, which we have already noted, must have impressed and reassured Soviet leaders. The first was the frequency with which American leaders affirmed their intention both to withdraw their military power from Europe and to limit carefully their commitment to its economic recovery. Their vital interest seemed confined to the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. The second was the fact of headlong demobilization. And the third was the
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seeming determination of the American people to complete this process and return to normalcy under the wing of Big Three harmony and the United Nations. It is in this context that we begin to understand the importance that Soviet leaders attached to British policy. Their fear, as Stalin expressed it both to the Americans and to comrades like the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas, was less of British military strength than of her diplomatic capacity.5 This in turn rested on two factors. One, emphasized persistently and with characteristic insight by Churchill from the time of the Potsdam conference to that of his Fulton speech, was Britain's possession of a worldwide system of bases and strategic interests, many of them, especially those in the Near East, close to Soviet security interests and a serious threat if held in association with a betterendowed, atomic power like the United States. The other factor, complementing the first, was Britain's traditionally successful role as a maker of great combinations against the dominant Continental power; and above all her apparent ability, demonstrated twice in the preceding thirty years, to entice the United States across the Atlantic in defense of her interests. Churchill himself was the living embodiment of this policy and its most successful exponent. The Fulton speech, which Khrushchev later identified as the beginning of the Cold War, lay directly in this tradition.6 But by August 1945 the Soviet leaders seem at last to have convinced themselves that no such hostile Anglo-American combination was in the offing. The impression of American detachment from British interests, given with remarkable consistency by Roosevelt, Hopkins, Truman, and Byrnes, strengthened through 1945 by many American actions and departed from only briefly in the extraordinary aftermath of Yalta, was now confirmed by American conduct at Potsdam and by the involuntary departure of Churchill from the scene. The result was inevitably to encourage in the Soviet leadership that growing sense of license which we can clearly identify as the great permissive cause of the Soviet Cold War against Britain. What were the positive causes? Here we can see at least three possibilities. One lies partly in the still-obscure compulsions of internal Soviet politics. This perspective gets us beyond exclusively diplomatic explanations, such as the Truman era orthodoxy that Stalin was bent on world conquest and the revisionist response that Soviet policy was essentially defensive, though not perhaps as far as the historian William McCagg, who portrays Soviet diplomacy as little more than a by-product of Stalin's obsessive manipulation of the party fanatics, industrial managers, and fraternal East European Communists with whom he was supposedly preoccupied.7 But we can see from a study of the Soviet press and radio in late 1945 and early 1946 that the notion of a British menace was put to work in two ways: at home, to spur the exhausted Soviet people to fulfill Stalin's new, draconian Five-Year Plan and armaments program; and throughout the world, but especially in areas of particular British
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vulnerability like the Middle East and Near East, the Mediterranean littoral, and India, to encourage revolt and discredit British authority.8 Thus, while the inhabitants of Great Britain contemplated national bankruptcy and continued, as they had during the war, to nourish their children on bread and dripping, the British Empire, actually in a state of incipient dissolution, enjoyed its second impressively theatrical incarnation of this era. The first, still a powerful factor in American thought and action, had been in the minds of Roosevelt and his New Dealers, who insisted on identifying it as the root of most of the world's ills and the likeliest source of postwar trouble. And now, even more dramatically, the empire came to life again in the Soviet media as a worldwide, octopus-like reactionary system deploying inexhaustible resources and directed by assorted Tory "Men of Munich" and Labour "Mensheviks" against the vital interests of ordinary people and their resolute "democratic" Soviet defenders.9 But the compelling motive in the campaign against Britain must have been the desire to achieve long-standing Russian geopolitical objectives at a uniquely favorable moment. As a British official aptly put it, "this is the opportunity for a power on the make to grab territory and stake out interests beyond the limits of war-time conquests." Stalin seems to have been working throughout with three stages of Soviet expansion in view: attachment of the: 1939-40 acquisitions and recognition of this by Britain and the United States; domination of Poland and various other parts of south-central Europe as well as accessions in the Far East; and, now, the first two stages having been substantially accomplished, domination of the regions to the south through the Balkans, the Dardanelles, and northern Iran. Here, as Bevin's secretary, Pierson Dixon, observed, the Soviets "found us in their way." This was, of course, an old antagonism, going back to czarist days. Britain had deep interests and long associations with Greece, Turkey, and Iran, where she was regarded by local elites as the main protector against Russian power and Communist subversion. And behind this threatened Northern Tier lay even more crucial British interests in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and India.10 The Soviets also found the British on their path in northern and Western Europe. Britain's wartime ties with the Scandinavian and West European governments in exile enhanced her natural position of leadership there. The persistent Russian intimations of a division of postwar Europe between the two powers was a tribute to this fact. But now the war was over, the British decline was becoming evident, and fresh opportunities invited Soviet interference. For one thing France under de Gaulle was resisting a British leadership that was, in any event, somewhat indecisive. Whenever the General seemed to change his mind, a loud agitation against the Western bloc began in the Soviet and Communist media. Another temptation for Moscow was that France and Italy, and other liberated countries in varying degrees, now had powerful Communist parties that suggested attractive alternative scenarios. Churchill's earlier offer
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of freer access from the Black Sea and the Baltic must now have appeared even less adequate. Consequently, through a variety of pressures and in different regions, the Soviets after Potsdam were on the move against Britain. This raised for Britain the vital question: What, if indeed they existed, were the limits of the Soviet appetite?11 It fell to Britain's new Labour government to try and define these limits. Here, in the sudden and unexpected appearance of a new political adversary, we find a third possible explanation of the Soviet campaign against Britain and also of that ideological confrontation that is needed to justify our characterization of this conflict as a "cold war." The Soviets, after a brief, watery welcome, soon moved to the offensive. Most members of the Labour party were slow to recognize this. At the Labour party conference in 1945 Bevin himself had expressed the common view that "Left would be able to speak to Left."12 But this soon proved illusory. The differences were partly rooted in the development of European socialism, in Soviet hostility or ambivalence toward Social Democratic regimes in general, and in the particular contempt they reserved for the distinctive mixture of Fabian, Christian, and trade-union socialism represented by the British Labour party. Furthermore, this traditional hostility now had a tactical dimension. With the eclipse of the European Right, the Attlee government was an obvious rallying point for all those in Europe who favored a libertarian left alternative to communism. Anything that undermined that government, anything that, for example, forced it into the unwanted role of defending the British Empire, must have been ideologically appealing to Moscow.13 The personality and policies of the new Labour Foreign Secretary fostered and dramatized these deep political divisions. In most of the talents traditionally associated with diplomacy, Bevin was singularly lacking. The classic diplomat was highly educated, polite, and dispassionate; Bevin was self-taught, often rude, and openly emotional. The burly, patriotic trade-union leader, one of the domestic strongmen Churchill's wartime coalition, began his diplomatic career inauspiciously. In just a few days of aggressive debating at Potsdam, he succeeded in both alienating Stalin and Molotov and making an unfavorable impression on Truman and Byrnes. Bevin then returned home and settled in to a long campaign of guerrilla warfare with substantial sections of his own party. Despite these unconventionalities, or more probably because of them, he won immediate respect and popularity in the Foreign Office and is fondly remembered by most historians. This is also because he possessed three great virtues: political courage, a blunt honesty in expression, and shrewd political insight. Their combined effect during the next few months was to expose many of the illusions about Big Three relations and to prepare the way for the realignment of the international system in early I946.1* Bevin immediately made the basis of his policy clear to the Russians. At Potsdam on July 31 he told Molotov that the "continuity of British foreign
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policy would be preserved." This was clearly intended to suggest a continuity with Churchill's defense of Britain's state interests. It obviously had little to do with the distinctive "Left to Left" foreign policy favored by the bulk of the Labour party, Bevin declared all this more openly in an important House of Commons speech on August 20. He surveyed British interests in traditional fashion and did not repudiate the imputation of "continuity," even when Churchill and Eden embarrassed him by pointing to their essential unity of views. "How fat Anthony has grown" a Labour backbencher was heard to murmur. Indeed, Bevin went out of his way to scoff at socialist Utopias, and, in a blunt reference that provoked the Soviets and led to descriptions of him in the Communist press as "a poor copy of Winston Churchill," he vigorously denounced the growing totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.15 Official records confirm Bevin's determination to project a robust British diplomacy. In late August, without waiting for Cabinet sanction for his Middle East policies, he told the Foreign Office that the British "would continue to assert their political dominance in that area and their overriding responsibility for its defence."18 There were a number of similarly assertive confirmations of British activism throughout the Mediterranean. Some significant departures from Churchill's policies were inevitable. For one thing, though events forced him to it, Bevin was at first much less inclined to cultivate the United States. He was lukewarm about political collaboration and highly sensitive to the threat of American economic competition. Thus, still referring to the Middle East, he instructed, "We should not make any concession that would assist American commercial penetration into a region which for generations has been an established British market." He was also concerned "to promote the socioeconomic development of the area." But this was soon justified as the most effective counter to "increasing signs of Russian political and economic penetration in almost all Middle Eastern territories." Thus power realities supervened. The Russian threat had to be resisted; Britain could not stand alone; American help, which was not yet on offer, was soon seen as a regrettable necessity. As the London conference of foreign ministers convened in early September, Bevin was already grappling with that problem.17 From this developing Anglo-Soviet geopolitical struggle, the 'United States remained carefully aloof. The Soviets were careful not to associate the United States with these Mediterranean or Middle Eastern issues or with the "Western bloc" agitation. Of course, the United States shared the occupation of Germany and Austria and a range of other important and sometimes exclusive relations with Moscow. But what is striking about these, especially in the crucial period after the Potsdam conference, is that, apart always from the Far East, they tended to be concerned with nonterritorial issues like the atomic bomb and economic relations or somewhat abstract questions like the United Nations and political formulas in Eastern Europe. By contrast, the Soviet Union shared a different set of exclusive relations with Britain that were concrete, territorial,
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traditional, and inflammable, notably across that vast, turbulent area where Greece, Turkey, and Iran—all British interests— separated the two powers. None of this is to forget the deterioration in United States-Soviet relations that followed the successful explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Yet, like the tension in April, it can be traced to a singular event: Roosevelt's public misrepresentation of Yalta earlier in the year; the explosion at Hiroshima followed by the Japanese surrender now. This latter event, perhaps inevitably, created in Truman and Byrnes a sense of enhanced confidence if not omnipotence. Its effect can be seen in a sharp exchange of letters between Truman and Stalin in which the President refused to allow a Soviet share in the Japanese surrender and insisted, notwithstanding Roosevelt's apparent promise at Yalta to hand over the islands, on American landing rights in the Kuriles. Byrnes, though he damped down this brushfire temporarily, was even more impressed by the American monopoly of the bomb and expected it to be a decisive diplomatic instrument at the forthcoming London conference.18 Meanwhile, cordiality was maintained. Eisenhower's visit to Russia was highly successful. Truman issued an invitation to the Soviet Marshal Zhukov. Stalin sent the President a signed photograph with "very best wishes from his friend." Moreover, the increasingly rapid exodus of American troops from Europe continued, accompanied by a decline of American public interest in European affairs as the congressional investigation of Pearl Harbor opened and peacetime interests reappeared.19 And while two problems continued to ruffle the surface of United States-Soviet relations—the inevitably destabilizing atom and the future of the Far East—neither of them encroached on the carefully separated Soviet campaign against Britain, which could therefore be pressed with little apparent danger of American intervention.
THE LONDON CONFERENCE The London meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, where France and China joined the Big Three to make peace treaties for Italy and Hitler's East European satellites, opened in early September. This was intended to be, and was, to some extent, a more businesslike affair than the three great wartime summits, where contentious issues had rarely been pushed to conclusions. Yet, despite the active role played by Byrnes, and the briefly inescapable American involvement in European issues, much of this conference also resolved into the distinctive United States-Soviet and Anglo-Soviet negotiations with which we are now familiar. Byrnes arrived believing that the American atomic monopoly would be a decisive instrument. By the time the conference broke down, however, the diplomatic impotence of the bomb was clearly apparent. This was a victory for the Soviets. They had prepared the ground with an article in New Times (as War and the Working Class was now called) on September 6 stressing that the atomic weapon did not affect the main political issues and would not
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change the outcome. Molotov then arrived in London, determined to prove this point. He put on an elaborate display of cool confidence, delaying the opening of the conference with sightseeing, which irritated the Americans, and teasing Byrnes on several occasions about the bomb, whose influence he repeatedly ridiculed. He suggested at one social occasion in the House of Lords that Byrnes might pull an atom bomb out of his pocket. Byrnes rp-.ponded genially that he might indeed if Molotov would not get down to business. At another function the Russian, acting as if he had been drinking excessively, concluded a facetious toast to the atomic bomb by muttering enigmatically, "We've got it," whereupon he was quickly shepherded from the room by his associates.20 Having made his point, Molotov finally came to the table. Difficulties immediately arose. Molotov refused to agree to the Anglo-American draft treaty for Italy unless the Western powers accepted Soviet terms for the East European treaties. That necessarily involved recognition of the new governments in Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Britain and the United States refused to comply except on the basis of the Declaration on Liberated Europe's promise of representative government and "free and unfettered elections." The ensuing deadlock led Byrnes and Bevin to separate private meetings with Molotov. Byrnes reminded Molotov, in the manner of Roosevelt and Hopkins, of the sensitivity of American opinion. The United States, he stressed, wanted governments that were friendly to the Soviet Union as well as democratic and representative. Could not something be done on the Polish model, which, he asserted, had satisfied everyone?21 Meanwhile, in a much blunter Anglo-Soviet encounter, Bevin told Molotov that Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe was "the chief difficulty," thereby drawing upon himself an accusation that he was stirring up the Balkans. In all the exchanges over Eastern Europe, Bevin was much more forceful and down to earth than Byrnes. He worked hard, in the manner of Churchill, to form a joint front with the reluctant Secretary of State. When the conference deadlocked, he tried to enlist Byrnes's support for a joint Anglo-American public statement declaring their refusal to recognize the Rumanian and Bulgarian regimes. Byrnes refused, though continuing Soviet intransigence did lead him briefly to coordinate action with Bevin on important but secondary issues involving Austria and Yugoslavia, and eventually to consult with him more often. Unlike the British, however, Byrnes attributed the London setbacks to Molotov personally rather than to Stalin, telling an aide that there was "no hope of stopping Molotov except by appealing to Stalin." Thus he came to London with one illusion and left with another.22 Molotov appears to have been playing a difficult double game at London. On the one hand, he seems to have consistently provoked tension and confrontation with the United States in a determined effort to kill the atomic bomb as a diplomatic factor. Here he clearly succeeded. At the same time he
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continued to pursue familiar Soviet expansionary objectives, most obviously in Eastern Europe, but also through private discussions with Byrnes about the Far East and with Bevin about the Mediterranean. Here he was completely unsuccessful. His riposte came on September 22, when he demanded the exclusion of France and China from further discussion of the East European treaties. He seems to have seen this as a bargaining lever to induce more cooperation from Byrnes, either in Eastern Europe, where the issue was now in deadlock, or in regard to Japan, where he was now demanding a new overseeing Allied Control Council with Soviet representation, or perhaps on both issues. Whatever its precise objective, this move was a variant of the familiar Soviet bargaining stratagem of responding to American noncooperation in areas of concrete Soviet interest by attacking the most tempting expression of American universalism: a dichotomy in direct line of descent from the original bargain of Teheran. Hitherto the United Nations had been the obvious target. It was now in abeyance, but the American-inspired Council of Foreign Ministers, an expression of American majoritarianism if not universalism, was a logical alternative.23 One wonders whether this is an adequate explanation, given that a Soviet assault on the Council was likely to push the Americans and the British together in defense of the French and Chinese. There were, however, a number of other considerations that probably influenced the thinking of the Soviets: the overriding desire to show strength and self-confidence in the face of Byrnes's atomic diplomacy; the desire to dramatize their insistence on Big Three unity; and perhaps the belief, confirmed by success earlier in 1945, that when confronted with Soviet determination in this direct way the United States would back down. This last calculation, if indeed it existed, proved fallacious in the short term, as Byrnes, pressed by hard-line Republican members of his delegation, chose to terminate the conference rather than alienate France and China. It must have seemed more reassuringly prescient in the middle term, as the Secretary quickly moved after London to offer the Soviets acceptable compromises. But, as we will see later, it turned out to be incorrect in the long run as the Soviets overreached themselves and provoked the United States into the solid alignment with British interests in early 1946 that led to the Cold War.24 Meanwhile, the Soviets and British struggled over Western Europe and the Mediterranean. These issues came to the forefront in a meeting between Bevin and Molotov on September 23, Bevin, starting with Western Europe, said he was "most anxious to get into a position in which there was not the slightest room for suspicion about each other's motives." He then disclaimed any intention to forge a "Western bloc." But, he argued, "it would be best for everyone concerned, including the Soviet Union, if we had a treaty with France on the same lines as that with the Soviet Union." Had Molotov any objection to such a treaty? Molotov replied, acc&rding to the British record, "that he had not and
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never had had" and that the British "should not attach too much importance to what irresponsible Soviet newspapers said about this matter." This sounds constructive. And it does indeed suggest that, if the price was right, the Soviets were still open to the idea of a mutually respecting AngloSoviet division of Europe along the lines of the Moscow arrangements of October 1944. But Molotov's acquiescence in an Anglo-French treaty must be seen in the context of the moment, for it was on the preceding day that he had demanded the exclusion of France from most of the peace treaty discussions. The British could hardly accept this. Indeed, they interpreted Molotov's maneuver as designed not only to consolidate the regimes in Rumania and Bulgaria but, as Dixon put it, "primarily to drive a wedge between us and the French. The Russians can safely say that they do not object to a treaty between us and the French because the object of their manoeuvre is to make such a treaty impossible." But the Mediterranean seems to have been the main concern of both men. According to the British record, Bevin began by saying that "he had been told by Mr. Churchill that Marshal Stalin had said that Russia had no interest in the Mediterranean." Molotov, without refuting this directly, made it clear that it was not so. He then fell into a characteristic bargaining mode. The disposition of the Dodecanese, for example, a matter that had aroused London's anxiety because of various Soviet claims, "was an issue of no importance." Molotov felt sure "that there was room for agreement and that Greece would get the islands." But what about the bases at Constantinople that the Russians had mentioned earlier? When this question had been raised at Berlin, he complained, the Soviet proposals had been flatly rejected. The present British attitude was "far worse" than the treatment meted out to the Czar during the last war. Britain wanted the Turks to hold Russia by the throat, and when the Soviets had asked for one trusteeship in the Mediterranean, they were felt in London to be encroaching on British rights. But Britain could not go on holding a monopoly in the Mediterranean. Bevin promised "to study this problem afresh." But he resisted the Soviet claim of Tripolitania because, "as M. Molotov has described the position of the Straits as a strangling of the throat of the Soviet Union, the British Commonwealth had a tremendous fear of anything happening in the Mediterranean which might, so to speak, cut the Empire in half." Britain needed Cyrenaica to defend her interests in Egypt, and "if he had to deal with the question purely in the light of British interests he would give the trusteeship of Tripolitania to Italy." To all this Molotov responded encouragingly, "Let us agree." This suggests that the Soviets were now ready to give up virtually all their Mediterranean claims in return for the long-sought prize of a base at the Straits.26 In this important meeting, therefore, Molotov was intimating that, just as Britain might obtain a reversion to the Anglo-Russian two-Europe system upon which Stalin and Churchill had worked, but only at the expense of her rela-
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tionship with France in the Council of Foreign Ministers and elsewhere, so she might also retain without apparent Soviet harassment her paramountcy in the Mediterranean, but only at the expense of her relationship with Turkey. These offers were unattractive. Britain could hardly hope to lead a united Western Europe if she alienated France. And her dominance in the Mediterranean would not last long if Turkey fell, as a Russian base virtually ensured it would, into the Soviet orbit. British postmortems show a keen awareness of these power realities and structural challenges. Dixon, in a memorandum on this meeting that the Foreign Secretary read, concluded, "The main objective of the Russians is the access to and a base in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is therefore the real Russian challenge at this Conference." They were diplomatically aggressive now, he argued, "because the issues at stake in the present Conference are much more vital than those in the wartime conferences." The opportunity "to grab territory and stake out interests" will not recur without war. Moreover, the Russians can see, Dixon noted, that the war has left Britain financially and economically weak and dependent on the United States. "They also know the American phobia about the British Empire and calculate that we cannot count fully on American support when defending our imperial interests. The present conference is therefore a good forum, and the present a good time, to press their demands."26 This was a depressing conference for Bevin. He made a number of gaffes, most notably that of accusing Molotov of behaving like a Nazi, for which he had to apologize. And his new understanding, both of Russian designs in the Mediterranean and of the lack of American support there and in Western Europe, brought him face to face with Britain's acute vulnerability. The selfconfident sense of British independence with which he had started in July now began to decline. He consulted the Cabinet more regularly. He also tried, without much success, to forge closer Anglo-American links, seizing, for example, upon Byrnes's remark that he expected soon to have all American economic lending agencies under State Department control and upon his accompanying intimation that he might use the economic-aid weapon against the Soviets. Grasping at this straw, Bevin set up high-level discussions in the Foreign Office to investigate ways in which Britain could press or encourage an AngloAmerican policy of economic coercion along these lines. The humiliating conclusion was that Britain lacked the economic resources to initiate any such strategy and that any attempt to do so while Britain was herself seeking aid from the United States would both jeopardize British reconstruction and alienate the Americans. It was therefore in a more sober mood that Bevin sent "particularly secret" instructions to the British embassy in Washington to avoid polemics against the Soviet Union, if possible, thus "giving time for things to simmer down and for the Soviet government to show its hand more clearly."27
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THE SOVIET "WAR OF NERVES" In the immediate wake of the London breakup there was, apart from a broadside in Izvestia sharply criticizing the Western powers for the apparent failure, the usual brief postconference lull while the results were digested in Moscow and the new line formulated. The British charge d'affaires Frank Roberts reported from Moscow the general impression in diplomatic and foreign press circles that "the Soviet authorities, after the original Izvestia outburst, have been consciously reducing the tension." He added, "It looks as though they want to resume discussion which they had not expected to break down so completely." But both Roberts and George F. Kennan, the United States chargd d'affaires in Moscow, with whom he collaborated ciosely, agreed that "the Soviet Government regard this as an important test case of Anglo-Saxon firmness, and that they are confidently expecting us to weaken first in which event it will not be necessary for them to make any attempt to meet us halfway."28 Gradually, through October, the Soviet pressure built up again. It was soon clear that Britain was still the main target. Press and radio attacks against the "reactionary" regimes in Iran, Turkey, and Greece resumed with increasing vehemence. New Times on October i contained a number of articles suggesting to Roberts that Soviet writers "were going over to the offensive" and devoting increased attention to "imperialist" and "colonial" influences in the West. In the October 15 issue of New Times this implicit focus on Britain was much more openly proclaimed and was characterized by Roberts as "more consistently critical of British policies than any which has yet appeared, and there is not a single item which does not include at least one dig." The articles included attacks on British policy in India and the Far East, on the obstructionism of the British delegation to the international trade-union congress in Paris, and on the British-conducted Lunebiirg trial of high-ranking Germans in which "the brazenness of the defence passe[d] all bounds." These attacks were now representative of the general Soviet media line. American occupation policies in Europe were also criticized occasionally, but in a much softer tone. In Germany, meanwhile, the Soviets began to criticize the British formally in the Allied Control Council, claiming, for example, that they were maintaining large Luftwaffe units in their zone.29 By the end of October, Soviet hostility toward Britain had intensified. Roberts began to raise the alarm more insistently. He and Clark Kerr had since July been drawing attention to the rising Soviet threat to British interests in Europe and the Mediterranean, and also to signs that both the Russians and the Americans were increasingly inclined to regard Britain as of lesser account. Now Roberts's greatest concern, which Kennan shared, was the growing divergence in British and American policy. On October 23 he drew attention to the growing American habit of pressing ahead unilaterally in diplomatic submissions to the
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Soviets, even in cases where Washington had previously conceded an AngloAmerican joint interest and had sometimes planned joint action. British officials in Moscow also emphasized the rising Soviet pressure on Greece, Iran, and Turkey. Stalin, it was thought, was trying to break their special connection with Britain. At the same time and "above all," the Soviets were working hard in Europe to stop an Anglo-French alliance, briefly a realizable prospect in early September when de Gaulle and the French socialists spoke favorably of it. The issue of Germany shortly divided Britain and France once again. Meanwhile, Roberts pointed out, Anglo-Soviet relations were "passing through a difficult and in some respects a critical phase." Soviet "splitting" was hard at work trying to further divide Britain and the United States, an effort all the more alarming because of the deliberate American detachment he had just described. At the same time, Soviet publicists showed "none of the inhibitions clearly applied to the United States."30 A study of Soviet media in this period confirms the last point. We find, in addition to the fierce attacks on Britain and the Northern Tier countries, criticism of Spain and Portugal, with whom Britain was claimed to be retaining links, and of British policy in the Arab world. There were now mounting warnings for Soviet domestic consumption of "capitalist encirclement" at the hands of "imperialists" and "Mensheviks of the Second International." We see also revived complaints that British diplomacy was maneuvering to recreate the old "balance of power," trying with excessive zeal to restore the Ruhr and the western German economy (a good issue on which to disrupt Anglo-French relations) and at the same time meddling in southeastern Europe. Roberts's fears of British isolation were confirmed by a dispatch he forwarded from the visiting Oxford scholar Isaiah Berlin, recording his impressions of the Soviet scene for Bevin in late October. Berlin noted a widespread Soviet impression that "Anglo-American relations were very strained, not in the economic sphere alone. American-Soviet relations were better than AngloAmerican."31 The solution, as both Roberts and Kennan saw it, was to present a firm Anglo-American united front to the Soviets. This front already existed among the diplomats in Moscow. The stumbling block, it was increasingly assumed, was Secretary Byrnes in Washington. Roberts told Bevin that his American colleagues were "unhappy" about the situation and themselves believed firmly in prior Anglo-American coordination followed by simultaneous action. But the American embassy was unlikely to take this up in Washington, because of "the rather delicate relationship between Harriman and Byrnes." However, he wrote later, "My opposite number at the American Embassy, George Kennan, who is now in Washington, and is likely to stay there a little longer, would support any suggestion we might be able to make to the State Department on the above lines." It seems that this proposal was not taken up in London. But
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the identification of Byrnes as the problem was soon confirmed by Halifax, who wrote, "I have no doubt that moves of a unilateral flavour are the result of high-level decisions."32 It is true that Byrnes was now moving rapidly from the more assertive diplomacy that he pressed very briefly against the Soviets after Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the more characteristically accommodationist line he had shown at Potsdam and would reveal more clearly at Moscow in late 1945. Before leaving London, indeed, he declared that the United States was willing to recognize the Hungarian government, pending free elections, and would consider the Soviet request for an Allied Control Council in Japan. Once home he told Davies that having compromised with Moscow over Poland, Finland, and Hungary the United States would try and do the same over Bulgaria and Rumania. He then dispatched a delegation to the latter two countries headed by the Louisville publisher Mark Ethridge. He intended this to be a check on the accuracy of the generally anti-Soviet reports sent home by American diplomats. In fact, the Ethridge report, which came to Byrnes in early December, tended inconveniently to confirm these hostile diagnoses. The Secretary therefore restricted its circulation, and it did not reach Truman until the first week in January, when, in Byrnes's absence, Dean Acheson sent it to the White House. Meanwhile, Byrnes opposed Forrestal's call for a public presidential condemnation of Soviet policy, accepted completely Harriman's report that Stalin was genuinely upset about American policy in Japan, and moved quickly, after Truman's comparatively belligerent Navy Day speech in late October, to reassure Moscow publicly that the United States would never support anti-Soviet movements in Eastern Europe.33 It is important to realize, however, that Byrnes was not by any means a lone figure practicing an unpopular policy in late 1945. He still retained the full support of the President. In the State Department he was backed up by the ubiquitous Bohlen, now his special assistant. In the fall of 1945 Bohlen encouraged the Secretary to offer the Soviets a larger role in the Far East. He also coauthored an essentially accommodationist general plan for improving relations with the Soviets. Another such scheme came in October from Cloyce K. Huston, chief of the Division of Southern European Affairs, recommending a public declaration of United States support for the Soviet aspiration toward "friendly governments" in eastern Europe.34 Bohlen's most notable contribution at this time was a proposal distinguishing between "open" and "exclusive" spheres of influence. The former envisaged the exercise of a "legitimate influence" by a great power in its own region provided this did not extend to internal control of the subject state or exclude intercourse with foreign nations. This kind of Soviet "guidance," as Bohlen called it, would be acceptable in Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, in a lecture on October 12, Bohlen explained the basis of Byrnes's policy in a way that also illuminates our general theme:
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Between the Soviet Union and the United States there is no material concrete dispute of any character. There is no place where our material interests clash. There is no question of territorial dispute. There is no concrete economic dispute or difference between the Soviet Union and the United States. So that objectively there is absolutely no reason why the two nations should not work out any problems they have between them. There is no need of war between the United States and Russia. The geographical location of the two countries do[es] not provide places where the friction arises automatically.35 Byrnes, it seems, was still following the Potsdam design of a progressive American detachment from the politics of Europe. This meant settlements, if possible, with the Soviet Union and minimal political collaboration with Britain—an approach that seems to have reflected the desire of most Americans. Much of the press, led by Walter Lippmann, expounded the virtues of American "mediation." The United Nations, as yet untested, remained the principal focus of public hope for the future. Public opinion polls showed less interest in international problems than at any time in the past ten years. Regular reports from the British embassy in Washington confirmed these general tides of opinion and often observed that Britain was now widely considered a less desirable partner because she was clearly declining in power and influence. There was also widespread concern in the United States about the plans of Britain's Socialist government. This was not allayed by a responding charge from the chairman of the Labour party executive that "free enterprise" was "one of the most ingenious fallacies that American businessmen have ever advertized to the American public."30 It is hardly surprising, then, that Bevin and the Foreign Office responded sluggishly to the alarms from Moscow. Bevin vigorously refused, he told the House of Commons in the autumn, "to accept the contention, so often blared from Moscow radio, that Russia claims the right to have friendly relations with her near neighbours; but that I am to be regarded as a criminal if I ask to be on good relations with nations bordering on the British frontier. . . ." But he was increasingly aware of the primary need for an Anglo-American front. The conditions, however, were clearly not yet ripe. He therefore continued to present a low profile to the United States, in the hope that Soviet machinations would soon become more obvious. As the Soviet pressure rose, though, the Foreign Office did begin a modest educational campaign with key members of the United States embassy in London, stressing the Soviet tactic of dividing the British and the Americans in order to "gain for themselves a freer hand in Europe." Bevin himself sent word to the State Department that the Labour government agreed with the Tory view that bargaining with the Soviets should be from a joint Anglo-American position and on a strict quid pro quo basis. For the rest, British officials professed a philosophic resignation, marginally elevated by the hope of playing Greece to the American Rome. One official
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wrote, "We need not be discontented with the American conception of our role as a 'junior partner' . . . as long as we can continue to influence our senior." Another affirmed, "The Americans, without necessarily knowing it, are bound to continue to see the world through the British window." At the top, Cadogan saw some hope for the regeneration of British influence in the rising potentialities of the Dominions. His deputy, Sir Orme Sargent, ruminating over the difficulties of being in "the position of Lepidus in the triumvirate with Mark Anthony and Augustus," pressed the advantages of a closer association with Western Europe.37 In general, then, the early British reaction to the developing Soviet challenge was cooler than one might have expected. American detachment precluded a vigorous British response to the developing Soviet challenge. Beyond this lay the equally powerful constraint that came from the persisting hope in Labour circles—Cabinet, parliamentary, and party—that a "Left to Left," or at least mediatory diplomacy, was possible with Moscow. Associated with this was the fact that Bevin, though determined, as he had declared at Potsdam, not to have Britain "barged about" by the Soviets, was still suspiaous of American intentions. His general attitude to the United States in these early postwar ': days was equivocal. He had come to office disliking Soviet totalitarianism. But he also found American materialism distasteful. In 1926, on a visit to Detroit, he wrote in his notebook, "A hard, cruel city . . . No culture . . . No one talks to you except in dollars and mass production." This attitude underwent some modification in the postwar years. Meanwhile, he recognized the necessity of closer Anglo-American collaboration in the short run, but he inclined in the long term to prefer a European focus in his diplomacy, especially an alignment with France that might maintain Britain as a first-rank power.38 These political attitudes in the Labour party naturally affected the Foreign Office, already under suspicion as a surviving Tory bastion. Other impulses also encouraged the resulting passivity. One was the absence of clear leadership, aggravated by the transition at the end of 1945 from Cadogan to Sargent as permanent under secretary. Behind this lay the translation from wartime to peacetime diplomacy, and from Germany to the Soviet Union as the principal adversary. The Foreign Office did not respond very well to the new challenge. The internal records reveal few attempts to formulate an overall policy. Vital documents were continually held up or not circulated. Liaison between departments was lax and haphazard or nonexistent. War exhaustion and changes in key personnel doubtless explain much. But there were deeper flaws. Soviet policy was rarely subjected to close analysis in London. Too often variants of the thought "The Russian bear is clanking away on old lines" passed for interpretation. There was some acute criticism of Soviet conduct but also a degree of complacency. An internal survey of relevant departments in late 1945 revealed a general impression that, while there was abundant evidence of their caution, suspicion, and hard bargaining, the Soviets were in fact collaborating,
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however tentatively and selfishly, in the peacemaking. At the private level, moreover, Soviet officials were found to be quite amiable, a judgment that encouraged the assumption that the dangerous Soviet "total politics" campaign was rendered manageable by the continuing existence of working relationships with individual Russians at the official level.39 A brief moment of optimism occurred at the beginning of November. In late October, Byrnes had taken steps to improve the United States-Soviet relationship, which, though much less tense than the Anglo-Soviet, was still suffering from the post-London malaise. He sent Harriman to visit Stalin, then vacationing at a Black Sea resort. Their cordial meeting, at which the Soviet leader forcefully asserted the Soviet desire for a larger Far Eastern role, produced a conciliatory and moderate Molotov speech on November 6. This raised hopes in the Foreign Office. Then came Attlee's quick visit to Washington, where the declaration of November 15 by Truman, Attlee, and the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, appeared to signify closer Anglo-American cooperation on atomic policy. But it did not lead to any wider political collaboration. Indeed, a new contentious issue—the question of Jewish immigration into Palestine—was already carrying the two powers further apart. Moreover, it soon became clear that the Soviets' desire for improvement was confined to their relations with the United States, which were now described in the Soviet press as "the basis of the victorious pact of the three Allied Powers." The United States-Soviet rapprochement was again in place.40 Soviet pressure against Britain therefore continued to intensify. Bolshevik produced an article on November 17 entitled "Notes on England." The author provided an acid social commentary upon the conditions of life in Britain. He compared them unfavorably with those in the Soviet Union, drew a chilling portrait of the fear aroused in ordinary people by the oncoming winter, claimed that prices were rising catastrophically "hour by hour," and castigated the abuses of the "paid agitators" at Hyde Park Corner. The following day Pravda revived the "Western bloc" agitation. Meanwhile, as the United States continued to receive comparatively gentle treatment, the Soviet and worldwide Communist media played up the menace and reactionary character of British "imperialism." The increasingly comprehensive and uncompromising character of the Soviet critique can also be seen in the widely publicized criticisms of British life made by returning members of the Soviet delegation to a world youth conference in London, and in the sharp tone adopted in Literaturnaya gazeta toward such pro-Russian British intellectuals as J. B. Priestley and John Lehmann.41 Soviet pressure against the three Northern Tier states also escalated further toward the end of 1945. In Greece the armistice still held officially, but the country was increasingly savaged by left- and right-wing terrorists. The British effort to consolidate a moderate regime was handicapped by the infiltration of arms and hostile propaganda from the Communist-dominated regimes in Yugo-
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slavia, Albania, and Bulgaria. Though the actual degree of Soviet direction remains uncertain, the critical tone of Moscow propaganda suggested to British observers that it was decisive. By late November the internal situation was so bad that the planned elections were postponed to March 1946.42 The Soviets also raised to a new pitch of hostility their already vigorous press and radio campaign against the Turkish government, which was continually alarmed by the presence of substantial Soviet armies in neighboring Iran and Bulgaria. These pincer-like menaces led in December to anti-Soviet demonstrations in Istanbul and to an angry exchange of notes between the two governments. Radio Moscow now habitually called Turkey "a faithful copy of the democracy of Himmler and Goebbels." Molotov then aggravated the situation by laying claim not only to the provinces of Kars and Ardahan but to an additional substantial area that had been Georgian "in far antiquity." The British now found it necessary to supplement their existing military, economic, and financial aid to Turkey with diplomatic reassurances. Bevin worked to encourage both Greco-Turkish solidarity and the Turkish connection with the Arab world. This finally bore some fruit in a Turco-Iraqi treaty in March 1946. Meanwhile, Turkey, also striving to strengthen the anti-Soviet front, tried to persuade the Egyptian government, then locked in acrimonious negotiation with Britain over the letter's treaty rights in that country, to cooperate with London against the Soviet Union. But most Arab opinion, as in this case, was unreceptive. The Arabs had their own objectives and tended to be more concerned about British imperialism and the threat of Zionism than about the Russians. There was even talk among more militant Arabs of seeking Russian help to oust the British.43 In November the long-awaited left-wing coup took place successfully in Iranian Azerbaijan. Instead of standing by, as it had done in August, the Red Army now took a direct hand, surrounding Iranian army headquarters in Tabriz and inviting officers to chose between expulsion to Teheran and conscription into the Azerbaijani army. An Iranian relief column, sent to test Soviet intentions, was unceremoniously halted by the Red Army when it tried to enter the Soviet zone only a few miles north of Teheran. The Iranian government appealed for British and American support. Even Byrnes, though now clearly bent on accommodation with the Russians, could hardly ignore this appeal. Separate British and American protests were sent to Moscow. Molotov responded, reaffirming the Soviet government's commitment to treaty obligations and justifying its actions as necessary to restore order and protect the Red Army garrison. A contemporary observer, calculating the Soviet strength in Iran at between thirty and seventy thousand troops, found this claim "as flattering to the Persian soldiery as insulting to the intelligence of those who know the Red Army."44 Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani rebels consolidated their regime and on December 16 proclaimed a national government of Persian Azerbaijan. The re-
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gime enjoyed some local support. The province was poor, the economic and social structure was feudal, and its inhabitants spoke a Turkish dialect that was officially banned. Autonomy was an old cause, and provincial councils had in fact been promised in 1906, but nothing had been done. The new regime now introduced a range of popular economic, social, and cultural reforms.45 Almost simultaneously, Kurdish tribesmen in western Azerbaijan were setting up another separatist and "autonomous" regime under Soviet auspices. These tribes inhabited the strategic northwest frontier region Iran shared with Iraq and Turkey. This fact, together with their traditional independence and hostility toward the Iranian government, clearly lent them a certain value in Soviet calculations. The outcome was the proclamation of the Kurdish People's Republic on December 19, a few days after the similar announcement in Tabriz. The two separatist regimes quickly established contact, again under Soviet auspices, and later signed a mutual security treaty.46 It is thus hardly surprising that, by the end of November, there was both a much sharper awareness in London that Britain was under general attack and a rising desire for American collaboration. Clark Kerr, reviewing the situation for Bevin, wrote, "Since the failure of the London conference the Soviet press has stepped up its criticism of British international policy, social conditions in the United Kingdom, and the general attitude of His Majesty's Government." Soviet pressures on the Northern Tier and in Western Europe clearly bore this out. The former ambivalence toward the United States nonetheless persisted. Bevin continued to hope for and quietly encourage closer Anglo-American collaboration. Yet he discouraged the American interest in securing permanent bases in Iceland, for fear of provoking a similarly forward Soviet move in Western Europe. There were equivocal attitudes in the government too. This came out early in November when the Cabinet considered the completed Anglo-American financial agreement, which mandated a degree of economic subordination to American wishes. Bevin himself declared his dislike of "economic direction from the United States." Yet, in the end, a reluctant Cabinet adhered to the views of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, who pointed out that "in the wider sphere of international affairs a break with the United States at this juncture might be disastrous." Two days later the question of sharing knowledge of the atomic bomb with Russia came before the Cabinet. This Bevin successfully opposed. But again there was a wide diversity of opinion and a persisting Labour desire that Britain could adopt a mediatory role between the United States and the Soviet Union. This was also Bevin's hope for the future, for while he saw the immediate necessity for an AngloAmerican front, his real preference continued to be for a close Anglo-French relationship. But neither of these was a practical option. Indeed, as the historian Alan Bullock has remarked, "it seems plain that Bevin in November 1945 had no clear idea of where to find an answer to the external problems with which he now realized the Government was faced."47
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The general British reaction therefore shows, on the one hand, an official government and Foreign Office core, where diverse political impulses lent a certain ambivalence, and, on the other, a number of robust peripheral centers of resistance to Soviet pressures. These included most notably the British embassy in Moscow (strongly abetted by the like-minded American embassy), whence Clark Kerr and Roberts sent a stream of warnings and suggestions for counteraction. Others were the India Office, where concern over Soviet southern expansion toward Afghanistan and India inspired proposals for both firmer resistance and a more determined diplomatic effort to compose differences with Moscow; the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was eager to fight back by commencing regular broadcasts into the Soviet Union and its adjoining satellite states; important elements in the British press, not including The Times and the Labour Daily Herald but embracing most of the Conservative newspapers as well as the prestigious Economist and the liberal Manchester Guardian; the Catholic church, whose publications were sharply observant and critical of Soviet actions; and, finally, beginning once again to give strong leadership in this new effort to resist a threatening European totalitarian power, the reemerging and still influential figure of Winston Churchill.'18 Churchill had responded to his deposition by the Labour victory with a brief period of wounded public silence. But he was quickly active behind the scenes. He tried hard to maintain a grip on British foreign policy, giving Attlee his views on the Potsdam results and later seeking continued access to official British diplomatic correspondence. Attlee could hardly agree to that. Bevin, however, was more inclined to keep in touch with Churchill. When the two met in late October to discuss various issues just before an important foreign policy debate in the House of Commons, they found a large measure of agreement, which the ensuing debate confirmed.49 In mid-November, Bevin consulted Churchill on the American desire to create a system of air bases in the Pacific and elsewhere, mainly in territories owned or controlled by Britain. Churchill seized the opportunity to send Bevin a powerful argument, addressed to "Dear Ernest," in support of the basesharing proposals he had consistently urged upon the Americans since 1943. The great object of British policy, he insisted, should be to intertwine the affairs of the British Commonwealth and the United States in such a way and to such an extent that any notion of conflict between them was unthinkable. It followed that Britain should welcome the sharing of strategic bases as widely as possible, thus impelling the ever-closer association of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the two armed services. He stressed that an Anglo-American special relationship was more important than the United Nations, which would nevertheless be strengthened by it, and was also the best way to achieve friendship with the Soviet Union.60 In the late autumn Churchill again began to put himself before the public as the champion of Anglo-American unity against totalitarian communism. In
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his first major foreign policy speech as Leader of the Opposition, on November 7, he stressed "the supreme matter of our relations with the United States." He especially seized upon the robust declaration of American principles by Truman in a Navy Day speech on October 27, calling it "a momentous declaration" and "the dominant factor in the present world situation." He interpreted it, rather optimistically, as an assurance that "the United States would maintain its vast military power and potentialities . . . to prevent aggression no matter from what quarter it came." Truman had abandoned "old-fashioned isolationism" and would now "carry out those high purposes if necessary by the use of force carried to its extreme limits." He urged a closer Anglo-American association, a "fraternal association," and "a special relationship." We must, he said, "add our strength to their strength."51 These phrases, or variants of them, reappeared later in the Fulton speech. Addressing the Belgian Parliament on November 16, he declared confidently that British affairs were "becoming ever more closely interwoven with those of the United States and that an underlying unity of thought and conviction increasingly pervade [d] the English-speaking world." On December 6 he attacked the Labour government for allowing British relations with the United States to become "more distant." When the Anglo-American financial agreement was debated on December 13, he emphasized that economic divisions would be "utterly fatal." Cooperation was essential.52 It is noticeable, however, that in all these public statements Churchill was careful to justify his campaign for closer Anglo-American ties not in terms of the Soviet threat that was now his main concern but with vague references to "the world outlook" (which he found "less promising than in 1919") and to "deep uncontrollable anxieties." This self-restraint, which persisted until he shocked the world by indicting the Soviets publicly at Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, reflects a keen sensitivity to the political situation in late 1945. For in Britain, Bevin continued to prefer a "low profile" policy in the hope that aggressive Soviet conduct would create American support without British prompting, while many of his colleagues, perhaps most, still hoped to play a mediatory role between the two more formidable powers. And in Washington, despite evidence of rising public concern, Byrnes clearly had similar ambitions for his own country.53
THE CRISIS INTENSIFIES Byrnes's sudden early December proposal for a Big Three foreign ministers conference in Moscow, which he had cleared in advance with Molotov, now began to bring the Anglo-Soviet dispute to a head. Bevin, whom Byrnes had deliberately failed to consult beforehand, was personally and politically upset by this violation of long-standing Anglo-American convention. He suspected that Byrnes intended to offer further concessions that would encourage further
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Russian pressure against Britain. But as Byrnes made it unmistakably clear that he would go to Moscow alone if necessary, Bevin felt obliged to participate.64 The American Secretary of State's purpose, which he had declared to a close associate at the London conference months earlier, was to seek further progress with Stalin in Moscow by means of the compromising American diplomacy of mutual accommodation already practiced by the Hopkins mission and at the Potsdam conference. He had long since abandoned all hopes of using the atomic bomb as leverage. Thus, after the Truman-Attlee-King declaration on November 15 calling for international cooperation on atomic energy, Byrnes publicly denied the suggestion that the United States was "using the atomic bomb as a diplomatic or military threat against any country." He now sought Soviet approval of a United Nations commission on atomic energy. He also wanted to move the Far Eastern and Eastern European issues toward settlement by offering cosmetic solutions that would not, at least in the short term, challenge the respective primacy of American and Soviet power in each area. He planned in effect, to offer the Soviets something soothing in the Far East that would produce an appearance of movement toward liberalization in Eastern Europe. This would allow planning to go forward for the peace conferences. At the same time he intended to keep well away from the contentious and potentially destabilizing Anglo-Soviet struggles along the Northern Tier.55 To facilitate all this Byrnes carefully tried to create a good initial atmosphere in Moscow. He resurrected the Big Three rather than the five-member Council of Foreign Ministers format that had attracted Soviet wrath in London. In this way he flattered the Russian preference for great-power unity. More important, he clearly dissociated himself from the British. Here he applied the familiar "no ganging up" tactic in an extreme form. Having catapulted Bevin into an unwanted conference without prior consultation, Byrnes then tried to gather additional capital in Moscow by instructing Harriman to tell Molotov that certain delays in the organization of the meeting had been due to Bevin's reluctance to come to Moscow. Harriman flatly refused to do this. Instead, he told Clark Kerr of the subversionary instruction and of his refusal to carry it out. This further poisoned relations between Bevin and Byrnes. Undaunted by this, Byrnes made a point of reminding Stalin and Molotov during the conference that he had not consulted with Bevin beforehand.58 Seldom, if ever, though perhaps in a good cause, has an American Secretary of State engaged in a high-level negotiation been so assiduously undermined by his own officials as Byrnes was at the Moscow conference. Harriman's action, just cited, set the tone. After the opening sessions had revealed further Anglo-American differences, Bohlen invited Bevin's secretary, Pierson Dixon, to the United States embassy. He immediately acknowledged that "Mr. Byrnes had let the Secretary of State down once or twice rather badly" on several of the issues now under negotiation with the Russians. He attributed these prob-
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lems to Byrnes's misunderstanding and "inexperience." He invited Dixon to warn him if he saw "snags from the British angle" in any proposals Byrnes might be meditating. This was perhaps the act of a concerned loyalist. But as Dixon left the embassy Harriman drew him aside, commented on Byrnes's "impulsiveness" and "inexperience," and insisted that his "mistakes" did not reflect "any policy of the Administration." Byrnes, the ambassador added, "did not understand the need for caution and forethought." Despite the Secretary's unfortunate "mistake" over the origins of the conference, "the United States government was absolutely solid with us on essentials and wanted to go along with us on major problems." Isaiah Berlin, also in the British delegation, recorded a similar approach from another unnamed American who, seemingly acting independently, confessed himself "very troubled by the way things were going" and offered various explanations for Byrnes's unsatisfactory performance. Roberts received similar, concurrent approaches from Kennan and other American officials. "They have tried to influence Mr. Byrnes, but they have failed," he noted. "In Mr. Kennan's words They hope Mr. Bevin will fight his battle personally with Mr. Byrnes.' "57 Despite all this Byrnes achieved some apparent success at Moscow. Stalin accepted the proposed United Nations Commission on Atomic Energy, though it is hard to see what he had to lose here. He also agreed to resume the peace negotiations, but only on terms that, while leaving some role to the Big Five, left the final decisions and drafting to the Big Three alone. There was an exchange of face-saving formulas over Eastern Europe and Japan. Stalin agreed to "broaden" the Rumanian and Bulgarian governments in order to facilitate American recognition. There were familiar commitments to tripartite commissions, to "free and unfettered elections" in Rumania, and, more dubiously, to the admission to government of "really suitable" people who would "work loyally" with the government in Bulgaria. Conversely, in Japan, Byrnes conceded Soviet membership in a new, nominally important Far Eastern Advisory Commission that nevertheless left real power with General MacArthur. This American willingness to deal in "spheres" diplomacy must have gratified the Soviets. Yet, once again, execution would be the test, and here Byrnes left many hostages to the future. He did not properly address himself to the escalating Iran problem; and he resisted Bevin's attempts to interest him in the scarcely less inflammable problems of Turkey and Greece. Most important, though the consequences of this did not appear for several weeks, Byrnes was now losing President Truman's confidence. The President had gone along with accommodation so far and would continue to do so for a short time. But he resented the Secretary's increasing tendency to act autonomously, was apparently unimpressed with his Moscow accomplishments, and had indeed begun to complain about him even before Moscow. Not until early February, however, was he able to fix upon an alternative policy.58 All this lay in the future. Meanwhile, Bevin's performance at Moscow
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sharpens the distinction we have consistently noticed between the British and the American approaches to these conferences with the Soviets. Once again, where Byrnes was conciliatory and resourceful in papering over differences and finding common denominators, Bevin was blunt and more inclined to deal in fundamentals. Even before leaving for Moscow, he was thinking ahead to the division of Europe into two hostile blocs. Once there, he told Byrnes that the Soviets aimed to dominate an area "from the Baltic to the Adriatic on the west to Port Arthur or beyond on the east." But Byrnes continued to refuse a joint approach to the Soviets and remained impassive when Bevin surveyed Britain's Mediterranean and Near Eastern problems. In private meetings with the Russian leaders, Bevin was characteristically combative. He protested the Soviet pressure toward Greece. Molotov responded that "the Greeks were not masters in Greece." Bevin retorted that the same was true in Bulgaria, where the Russians were masters. He then charged that the Soviet government was conducting "a <war of nerves" against Turkey and reminded his hosts that Britain had an alliance with that country. Stalin replied that the Turkish fears were groundless and that the issues were best settled by negotiations. There was no apparent progress on any of these problems. At one of their meetings Stalin charged that while Britain and the United States had spheres of influence, "the U.S.S.R. had nothing." Bevin replied drily that the Soviet sphere extended from Liibeck to Port Arthur. Attention inevitably turned to Iran, the most explosive problem. Here Bevin asked when the Soviets planned to withdraw from northern Iran and again proposed a mutual early withdrawal of troops. Stalin refused, saying he needed to protect the oil wells at Baku. Bevin asked sardonically whether he feared an Iranian attack. No, said Stalin, but he did fear sabotage.89 At this point, and especially because the Iranian crisis was shortly to become a focal point in the transition from the Anglo-Soviet to the United StatesSoviet Cold War, we might well remind ourselves of the varying stakes the three powers had in that country. The political history of Iran during the nineteenth century can be summed up very roughly in two words: "despotism" and "imperialism." No progressive ideal animated the torpid absolutism of the Qajar dynasty. Iran was a backwater, and neither of the two great powers involved, Russia and Britain, felt obliged to proclaim a civilizing mission. Their interests were imperial and strategic. Russia, pressing down from the north and steadily absorbing territory at the expense of Iran and the neighboring khanates, dominated both the long and largely defenseless northern frontier and much of the political and economic life of the country. The British advanced from the south to confront this threat to India. They, too, developed political connections, making clients of the southern tribes and competing for influence in the capital, Teheran. The result was a rough equilibrium disturbed only by occasional Iranian attempts to play one power off against the other.80
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This was the pattern of relationships that reasserted itself in Iran in the early 19405. Meanwhile, however, some important changes had occurred. These included, around the turn of the century, the discovery and then the British exploitation of Iranian oil, and the development of an Iranian nationalism that went through several metamorphoses and even pushed the two imperial powers to the sidelines for a considerable period between the wars. Another feature was the gradual development of an unofficial but significant American presence in Iran. Missionaries and teachers were the first to appear. Then, in 1910, the Iranian government, looking to a disinterested power for assistance, requested and received an unofficial American economic advisory mission. It spent two years in Teheran before Russian intrigues forced its precipitate resignation. The mission's leader, a Treasury official called Morgan Shuster, conveyed his disgust in a memoir entitled The Strangling of Persia. But he had started a tradition and left a legacy of goodwill. Two longer-lived economic missions followed under A. C. Millspaugh, a State Department economic adviser. Oil companies also began to show interest in the interwar period; and during World War II, when the flow of Lend-Lease material to the Soviet Union through Iran assumed enormous proportions, nearly thirty thousand American troops served there. Meanwhile, new American military and internal security missions continued the advisory tradition.61 The point of this historical note can be quickly stated. It is to stress that, despite appearances, there was in 1945 no clearly conceived American national interest at stake in Iran. It remained essentially and almost exclusively an Anglo-Russian arena, for the numerous American missions were all unofficial, each one the result of an unprompted Iranian request. The oil companies did .not pursue their interests very vigorously, except for a short time at the end of 1944 when, in an episode we will look at later, the Soviets pressed the Iranian government for oil concessions in the north of the country. The Shah and others tried to encourage an American interest in their country, the monarch eventually sending his close adviser Hussein Ala to Washington as ambassador. But they had little to show for it in 1945, and Ala received little attention. It is true that the war, and particularly the holdirig of the first tripartite summit in Teheran, had inspired Roosevelt to think of Iran as a potential testing ground for progressive ways of building up backward countries—an outlook characterized by one senior State Department official as "messianic globaloney." But, despite the President's commitment to a tripartite declaration supposedly safeguarding Iran's future, this did not translate into a concrete political interest.62 The great concern, but one that preoccupied the British rather than the Americans, was whether the Russians would end their occupation of northern Iran after the war as they, like the British in the south, were obliged by their 1942 treaty with Iran to do within six months of the termination of hostilities. The anxious British first raised the issue at Yalta. They emphasized that they
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had no desire to prevent the Soviet Union from obtaining the oil concessions in northern Iran that the Iranian government had in late 1944 bravely refused to grant while the occupation lasted. But Britain now urged mutual early troop withdrawals. The United States supported this effort, but without any serious commitment. At Potsdam and at the London conference, the British tried again, once more with lukewarm American support. The Soviets, however, agreed only to the evacuation of Teheran itself.63 We find the same pattern at Moscow. By now the situation in Iran had deteriorated sharply, and Byrnes felt bound to place it on the original agenda submitted to Moscow. Molotov reacted violently to this intimation of apparent American interest in a more or less exclusive Anglo-Soviet cockpit that was also a country bordering the Soviet Union. He therefore responded to Byrnes, in a preview of the Security Council drama that followed in January, that the withdrawal of British troops from Greece and Indonesia and of American troops from Korea should also be discussed. Reassurance came quickly from Byrnes. He agreed to drop Iran from his agenda while reserving the: right to bring it up informally.8* As this suggests, the Secretary's interest in Iran was strictly limited. He resisted advice to press the withdrawal issue firmly. This came from concerned State Department officials who were steadily more inclined to see Russian actions in Iran as part of an unfolding plan to dominate the region and who wanted to support the British. Byrnes also refused to call to Moscow the American ambassador in Teheran, Wallace Murray, an advocate of firmer resistance, though he knew Bevin was bringing his even more Russophobe ambassador to Iran, Sir Reader Bullard, so that it would, "be difficult for the Russians to engage in evasions." All this threatened Byrnes's general diplomacy of accommodation. The last thing he wanted was a political showdown over Iran with angry ambassadors in the wings. He preferred to play a (-lose hand. When the British ambassador in Teheran asked him to comment on the Moscow agenda, Murray was embarrassed to acknowledge that he had received no copy. When he complained to Washington, the chief of his State Department division also had to confess, "We did not have the agenda."65 Byrnes's concern, as he explained to Stalin on December 19, was that Iran might complain to the Security Council, due to meet at London in January, and that as a signatory to the 1943 Declaration Regarding Iran, promising the country's postwar independence, the United States would feel obliged to support Iran's right to be heard. In reply, Stalin justified Soviet policy by reference to the danger of Iranian sabotage against the Baku oil fields. He also repeated Molotov's claim that the Red Army's interference with the Iranian relief force was necessary to prevent further disorders. In addition, he cited Soviet rights, under a 192,1 treaty, to enter northern Iran in the event of a threat by a third party. Stalin assured Byrnes, however, that he had no designs, territorial or otherwise, against Iran and would withdraw as soon as he felt secure about Baku. But he refused to confirm that he would leave by the due date,
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now fixed following the Japanese surrender as March 2, 1946, and simply said it would be necessary to reexamine the question then.06 During the meeting Byrnes did not challenge Stalin's explanation. Later, however, he apparently felt that Stalin had missed the main point, so he brought the Iran issue up again when he met the Soviet leader alone on December 23. In 1947 he recalled, Iran was the first thing I took up with him at our second meeting. I told him I was "seriously disturbed" at the prospect that the issue would be raised at the first meeting of the United Nations. It was exceedingly important, I added, that the great nations keep their pledges to the smaller powers. If Iran raised the issue at London it would be unfortunate . . . in view of our solemn pledge we would be forced to support the position of Iran. The United States would greatly regret having to oppose the Soviet Union at the very first meeting of the United Nations and I hoped, therefore, that we could take action at Moscow that would forestall this possibility. Byrnes records that Stalin responded to this by referring, in a noncommittal way, to a British proposal for a three-power commission. He then greeted Byrnes's comment that the American government "hoped no action would be taken in Iran that would cause a difference between us" with the remark, "We will do nothing that will make you blush."67 These exchanges offer important evidence of the perception of each other's intentions, which must have influenced both Stalin and Byrnes in their crucial confrontation over Iran three months later. It is difficult, unfortunately, to establish precisely what was said. Byrnes's memoir is the only source for the December 19 meeting. But there is an official American record of the December 23 meeting that suggests that the United States position on Iran was not put as clearly as Byrnes suggests. For example, the record does not substantiate Byrnes's claim to have told Stalin, "In view of our solemn pledge, we would be forced to support the position of Iran." It does contain, however, Stalin's claim that the people in Teheran were desperately looking around for support in making a case against the Soviet Union, and his assurance that "no one had any need to blush if this question was raised in the Assembly." This was a rather less sweeping undertaking than a promise to do nothing to make Byrnes blush.88 It is true that the Soviets were now put on notice, as they had not been before, of a definite American interest in the Iranian situation. The point is, however, that Byrnes defined this interest almost entirely in terms of the desire to head off any threat to good American-Soviet relations. At no time did he come to grips with Stalin on the points of substance or seek to challenge his dubious justifications of Soviet policy. He said nothing about practical American interests in Iran, with which, indeed, he was not concerned. He did not
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raise the question of oil concessions. He expressed no interest in Britain's position. He showed no concern for the Iranians themselves and made no effort to defend them against Stalin's repeated expressions of contempt. Apart from his obvious concern about the forthcoming Security Council meeting, which Stalin's reassurances were clearly designed to alleviate, Byrnes's approach to the Iranian question was little different from that which the Soviets had presumably learned to recognize and rely upon at: Yalta, Potsdam, and London. There, the serious opposition had always come from the British. So it was again at Moscow. While Byrnes talked abstractly about "sovereignty" and anxiously about the United Nations, Bevin in his meetings with Stalin and Molotov accused them, in effect, of trying to force the incorporation of Azerbaijan into the Soviet Union, or at least to reduce it to a Soviet dependency. He said he regarded this as a threat to British interests in southern Iran and in the region generally. And it was the British who made the practical proposal for a three-power commission to investigate the situation in Iran, advise the government on social reforms, and thus avoid the United Nations confrontation that no one seemed to want.69 In these circumstances the Soviet leaders were not unduly alarmed about the pending United Nations hearings. They did not expect the question to arise. None of the three main powers seemed to want it. They themselves, and Byrnes, clearly did not. And the British also showed a concern not to exacerbate existing Anglo-Soviet tensions. Against this united opposition it was unlikely that Iran would take the initiative by herself. Stalin's remarks reflect his confidence that, even if Iran did make a protest, her government would be unable to make a moral case before world opinion. It seems likely, therefore, that, far from being alarmed by Byrnes's warnings, the Soviets felt strengthened in the belief that events were moving their way in Iran. So confident were they that, though they leaned toward accepting Bevin's tripartite commission compromise during the conference, they felt safe in rejecting it at the end.70 In retrospect it is clear that the failure to settle the rising Iranian issue at Moscow had profound consequences. Both Byrnes, who told Bohlen in Moscow that he expected real trouble over Iran, and Bevin, who warned his two colleagues that the problem would make trouble for them all, were well aware of the danger.71 In the three weeks between the Moscow conference and the Security Council meeting, the British tried desperately and sincerely to avert a confrontation. Meanwhile, the Iranian government, which wanted neither the Big Three commission nor the Russians, attempted to line up British and American support for a complaint. In Teheran, Bullard worked to secure acceptance of Bevin's commission plan. The State Department gave lukewarm support, and on January 4 Henderson told Ala that the commission "would be advantageous for Iran." But these efforts failed. A coalition of nationalist opinion representing both left- and right-wing elements in the Majlis (parliament), united in
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opposition to what they clearly regarded as a diktat. This pressure forced the government, now led by the conservative Ebrahim Hakimi, to reject the proposal on January 10. The Iranians were bent on a United Nations strategy.72 Shortly after his return from Moscow, Byrnes told the British ambassador, Lord Halifax, that he would not support a behind-the-scenes British effort to dissuade Iran from bringing the issue before the Security Council. He also told the Iranian ambassador that the United States stuck by the Declaration Regarding Iran and the United Nations Charter and that any nation was "entirely free" to come to the United Nations. He could hardly do otherwise after his Moscow protestations, but this indirect, and perhaps unintended, suggestion of American support risked surrendering the initiative to the Iranians. Henderson, chief of the Near Eastern and African division, seems to have been aware of this danger, for in his January 4 discussion with Ala, during which he urged acceptance of the tripartite commission, he stressed that it was "important" for Iran to understand that the United States was not encouraging her to go to the United Nations. Iran should decide for herself, and this would be the consistent American position. But the United States would, of course, be glad if the matter could be settled outside, so that the United Nations would be spared a problem of this kind at its inception.73 The Iranians, terribly conscious of the presence of the Red Army only twenty miles from Teheran, still sought more explicit assurances. On the eve of the London meeting the head of the Iranian delegation, Said Taquizada, asked both Bevin and Byrnes whether he should lodge the complaint. Bevin was apparently discouraging but declined to advise him further. Byrnes records that he told the Iranian on January 18 that he, "too, hesitated to offer advice, that the Security Council was just being organized, that it had not even adopted rules of procedure, that only the most urgent matters should be placed before the Security Council while it was being organized." Byrnes did, however, say that he "would gladly listen to the facts of his case, give the matter consideration and advise him the following day." The Iranians did not wait for any further erosion of their already tenuous and implicit commitment from the United States. On January 19, 1946, they lodged a complaint in the Security Council, charging the Soviet Union with interference in Iran's internal affairs and calling for a United Nations investigation.74 The Soviets responded to this with shocked resentment. They immediately suspected a British intrigue. On January 21, therefore, the Soviet delegate, Vyshinsky, filed a complaint against the British, protesting the presence of their troops in Greece; and at the same time the Ukrainian delegate filed another, condemning British military measures in Indonesia.75 The logic of this immediate Soviet riposte can best be understood if three factors are kept in mind. The first is the suspicion that the Soviet Union always exhibited in arly situation that seemed likely to encourage the conjunction of American power and British interests. The second is the warning Byrnes had given at Moscow,
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that if Iran did complain to the Security Council the United States would be obliged to support her. And the third is the apparent British interest, given the first two factors and her vulnerable world situation, in promoting the Iranian complaint as a means of attaching the United States to her own interests in Iran and in the Mediterranean/Near Eastern region generally. The British, according to this view, had now abandoned their unprofitable attempt at an Iran compromise through the tripartite commission, in favor of the greater prize of American diplomatic support against the Soviet Union. If this was the Soviet interpretation, as seems likely, it was logical but incorrect. Bevin's diplomacy was not yet completely based on the two-world thesis that Churchill was to proclaim only six weeks later at Fulton. His Iranian commission idea had been genuine. The Labour government still had hopes of accommodation with the Soviets, and the Foreign Office had distinct reservations about the advent of American and United Nations influence in the Near East. From this Soviet miscalculation profound consequences flowed, for the countercharges against British conduct in Greece and Indonesia led directly to acrimonious clashes between Bevin and Vyshinskv, gave some impetus to anti-Soviet sentiment in the United States, and helped prepare the way for the Fulton speech and the general reorientation of United StatesSoviet policy.76 Meanwhile, the Soviets, who showed no sign of resentment toward the United States over these developments, attempted to gain the initiative both in the Security Council and in Iran itself. Following the countercharges against Britain, Vyshinsky filed, on January 24, a reply to the Iranian complaint. This blamed "reactionary forces" for the confrontation, defended Soviet conduct on the grounds that events in Azerbaijan reflected "the aspirations of the population," and argued that the question should be resolved by direct bilateral negotiations.77 At the same time the Soviet Union took revenge upon the conservative Prime Minister Hakimi, forcing his resignation on January 20. A contemporary observer in Teheran explained his fall as follows: "It was largely due to new Soviet pressure expressed by the severance of ail trade between Azerbaijan and the rest of the country. The economic strain thus created was intolerable." On January 36 an apparently chastened Majlis elected Qavam el Sultaneh Prime Minister by a vote of fifty-two to fifty-one. Qavam, a seventysix-year-old landowner with holdings in the north, had a record of political association with the pro-Soviet Tudeh party. His choice clearly signified Iran's acceptance of the Soviet demand for bilateral negotiations outside the United Nations. Qavam at once cabled Taquizada accordingly. At home he began to purge pro-British elements from the army and government, started a friendly correspondence with Stalin, and on February 18 left for Moscow at the head of a negotiating mission.78 The unexpected consequences of the Iranian complaint forced the American delegation to define its attitude more closely. Meeting without Byrnes on Jan-
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uary 24, the delegation decided to be guided by a memorandum that Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson had prepared on December 2,4. Acheson had described Iran as "a test case" for "a small state victim of large state aggression." But Byrnes was not yet prepared to go this far. On January 24 he instructed Stettinius, the formal head of the delegation, to support the diversion of the case toward bilateral negotiations, adding, however, the significant qualification that the Security Council should be kept "closely informed" of all developments.79 The dispute was now headed toward bilateral talks. But an argument arose over the continuing supervisory role of the Security Council. Vyshinsky denied that the council had any such right, but after some behind-the-scenes firmness from both Bevin and Stettinius he finally agreed, on January 30, that the Council could call for a progress report "if, unexpectedly, owing to other circumstances or to the interference of some hotheads, no results are obtained." The New York Times voiced a common reaction when it greeted the consequent resolution with the comment that the Security Council had "met successfully its first great test as the world's authority in international disputes."80 Meanwhile, the underlying reality of the Anglo-Russian Cold War continued to develop at an ever-increasing pace. Soviet media attacks on Britain and British policy in January and February were unprecedentedly sharp and hostile. By contrast there was very little criticism of the United States, whose mediatory role in London was clearly appreciated. As for the Security Council meeting, while most observers in the West were inclined to applaud Bevin's strong debating performance in defense of British interests, the Soviets gave every impression that they felt vindicated by, even triumphant at, the general outcome. Soviet pressure continued in the Mediterranean, where Bevin's position was further eroded at the beginning of the year by unexpected difficulties with Egypt over the treaty revision—another opportunity quickly seized upon by Soviet publicists.81 The propaganda "vilification" of Britain, a Foreign Office analyst commented, was intended to "discredit" British foreign policy at every possible point. Vyshinsky added a characteristically menacing touch to the "war of nerves" during his London sojourn. Justifying Soviet policy to a senior Labour minister, he said, "If they had really wanted to make trouble they would have done so in India, which was our Achilles heel, but they had strictly refrained from any such action." Meanwhile, Stalin complained to Clark Kerr of Bevin's mistrustful attitude and "rough" treatment of the Soviet Union at the Moscow conference. He claimed to have been personally "offended" by Bevin. But he had been "patient" and had let it pass. Nevertheless, he had not liked it, and CJark Kerr could tell the Foreign Secretary so if he wished. It was better that Bevin should know, Stalin concluded sanctimoniously.82 Here, perhaps, was some solid psychological satisfaction for the besieged Foreign Secretary. But there was no mistaking the force of the intensified So-
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viet campaign. A notable feature now was the sharpened attack on the West European democratic Left, which looked to Britain for leadership. The cutting thrust here was an article by Kalinin, President of the Soviet Union, in the Communist party's theoretical journal Bolshevik, attacking the various Social Democrats as "False Friends of the People." Meanwhile, a Soviet economics journal dismissed the Labour government's nationalization of the British coal industry as "state capitalism," not "socialism." And, despite a tactical solicitude for Labour's parliamentary left wing, harsh strictures were applied to such independent left-wing publications as the New Statesman and Tribune, an action akin to the criticism meted out also to British leftist intellectuals. Abuse was similarly heaped upon the French and other socialists, who now held political power in much of Western Europe. The general purpose, clearly enough, was to discredit and devitalize this dangerous ideological competitor, with whom, nevertheless, local Communists continued to collaborate in and out of government.83 By the beginning of February, then, Bevin confronted an increasingly grim reality. He had assumed office six months earlier full of optimism and selfconfidence. Three powerful, fundamental forces had consistently frustrated his hopes. The Soviet political war against Britain was one; the American policy of accommodation with Moscow and detachment from Britain, another. The third, and most depressing, was the rapidly accumulating evidence that Britain could not protect her interests on her own resources. Consequently, the Cabinet accepted hard conditions in return for the American loan agreement and then, in mid-February, eager to facilitate passage of the loan legislation through Congress, reluctantly agreed to the civil-aviation treaty the United States wanted. A week later the Cabinet endorsed a new defense policy assumption, basically on economic grounds, that Britain would have to liquidate much of her remaining overseas investment. Bevin, anxious to hide the truth, persuaded his colleagues to withhold a public announcement of this potentially demoralizing new policy, especially that part dealing with the substantial reductions proposed for British military strength in Europe.84 The political caution and economic constraint these developments imposed upon the normally ebullient Foreign Secretary are graphically illustrated in a meeting he held in London with the Turkish Foreign Minister on February 16. The latter, according to the British account, described the intense Soviet pressures to which his country was subject. Turkish public opinion was anxious about Soviet propaganda that the Anglo-Turkish treaty was "obsolete," and concerned over "the absence of any unambiguous public statement that [Britain] still regarded the Alliance as in force." He asked for "a precision" of the British attitude. Bevin replied that he "had already informed the Soviet government that we had a vital interest in Turkey and that we had an alliance with her." But he felt a statement in the House of Commons might be considered "provocative." From this discouraging political response Bevin quickly
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moved to the Turkish government's recent request for deferred payment terms regarding recent arms purchases from Britain. Citing their "relative financial positions," he explained that he must reject the petition. In fact, he insisted, Turkey must pay in gold.85 How, then, could Britain respond to the Soviet campaign? Two familiar lines of thought produced concrete proposals in the Foreign Office during this agitated period. One, drawn up by Nigel Ronald, a senior official, urged a revival of the old policy of closer alignment with Western Europe, a move in Britain's "vital interests" and desirable despite the likelihood of complaint from Moscow. This inspired debate and generally favorable comment. But, as Ronald had himself acknowledged in November, "The Foreign Secretary is very dubious about a Western group." Bevin still preferred, in early 1946, not to provoke unnecessarily either the Soviets or his backbenchers. Consequently, he was inclined now to work patiently toward a bilateral alliance with France, something Moscow might find less alarming than the wider Western bloc.86 But the immediate priority, it was generally appreciated, from an economic as well as a political viewpoint, was better relations with the United States. Like Churchill, Bevin was now thinking increasingly in terms of a United Nations strategy. Here, perhaps, he could hope to enlist American and world support against the Soviets. The largely favorable American and British public reaction to his strong performance in the January Security Council meetings was encouraging. The main source of this new policy seems to have been John Balfour, charge d'affaires at the British embassy in Washington. In late 1945 he had begun to pre^s the idea that the best way to enlist American support was through the United Nations. The principled refusal of Byrnes and Henderson to join Britain in pressing the Iranians not to bring their case before the Security Council seemed to confirm the wisdom of this. Neville Butler, head of the North American department, embraced the policy in early January. And now Bevin, casting about for a new approach in Britain's straitened circumstances, began to take it up more seriously. On February 18, for example, he suggested to the Cabinet a review of the United Nations veto, a tactic sure to alarm Moscow and inspire thoughts of Anglo-American collaboration.87 This was a promising line of action. It was, indeed, as we will see, a determined prosecution of the United Nations strategy, though by Byrnes rather than by Bevin, that eventually brought the United States and the Soviet Union into full political confrontation. For this to occur, however, a certain amount of necessary groundwork had still to be laid. And this was done through the medium of a more traditional political initiative involving the dramatic reemergence on the world scene of Winston Churchill, the decisive intervention of President Truman, and the transformation of American policy by Byrnes from accommodation to confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Chapter Six
Churchill and Truman
We now approach a great divide in early postwar history. So far we have been tracing the emergence of a postwar situation that, by the beginning of 1946, clearly revolved around two fundamental facts: first, the intensifying Soviet pressure on a declining Great Britain and her anxious connections that Churchill had long foreseen and, second, an American detachment from that confrontation, obscured though it was by an impressive array of tripartite conferences and commissions, by the still considerable American military presence in Europe, and by the apparent victory of internationalism over isolationism at home. But this initial postwar order never established itself, and by the middle of 1946 the constituent elements of a different order—the United States-Cold War system we know—were already clearly visible. It is to the crucial transitional period in the first months of that year, therefore, that we must turn for some answer to the question, When did the Cold War begin? The transition commenced with a sudden American challenge to the Soviet Union in mid-February, a challenge that evolved rapidly into a general reorientation of the Truman administration's policy from accommodation to a state described at the time as "firmness." This reorientation was in fact a unilateral American act, or rather series of acts. But, at least in its formative stages, it was carefully shaped to appear to the Soviets as the expression of an AngloAmerican joint design—one that seemed to portend that coming together of American power and British worldwide connections which was believed in Washington to be the particular Soviet nightmare. In the creation of this
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image a crucial and doubtless congenial role was played by Winston Churchill, who now returned dramatically to the center of events by virtue of his "iron curtain" speech on March 5 at Fulton, Missouri. There, in Truman's presence, he advocated an Anglo-American "fraternal association" to resist Soviet expansion. As we will see later, this was taken in Moscow, and was intended by American leaders to be taken, as an authoritative definition of the new American militancy.
THE CHANGING AMERICAN
CONTEXT
With the Japanese surrender, public opinion, no longer diverted by official secrecy, Allied propaganda, and the glittering set piece summitry of Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam, was once again the dynamic force in American political life. Yet it is notoriously hard to read with precision. At first glance we seem to see a consistent anti-Soviet trend. One can cite respected American Institute of Public Opinion polls indicating that, at the end of the war, about 54 percent of the American people trusted the Russians to cooperate in the postwar era; this figure dropped to 44 percent with the failure of the London foreign ministers conference, and to 35 percent by the end of February 1946. One can also point to Byrnes's surprise that his firmness in London in September drew widespread public applause, whereas accommodation at Moscow in December proved less popular. And one may well conclude with the observation that Byrnes's accommodationist policies failed because he practiced Rooseveltian diplomacy while ignoring Rooseveltian politics or, from a left-liberal perspective, that as the domestic atmosphere became increasingly reactionary and moralistic, Byrnes, the flexible practitioner of conciliation, became an easy target for opponents like the influential Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg and Admiral Leahy, whose more ponderous intellects and dogmatic temperaments were better attuned to the times.1 There is obviously much truth in this. Yet, as the persistence of accommodationist diplomacy into February 1946 suggests, it is a distorted portrait of reality. Other polls reflect a much higher degree of ambivalence about the Soviet Union. A survey by Fortune magazine in December 1945, for instance, found that 50 percent of the respondents thought there was a good chance of avoiding a major war in the next twenty-five to thirty years, and only one in six thought the Soviet Union would start such a war. A Gallup poll in early 1946 found that only 26 percent believed the Russians sought world domination and that 13 percent still attributed this ambition to the British. Thus, while some surveys show a clear anti-Soviet trend, others show persisting faith, or at least hope, in the congeries of cooperative attitudes we have called the vision of Yalta.2 There was, of course, a growing anti-Soviet sentiment in the American political and press establishment. But it found diplomatic expression during 1945 only in the traditional preference (in European affairs) for moral censure over
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political pressure, except to the extent that the latter was generated by withholding, in the tradition of the Stimson Doctrine, recognition of certain Sovietinstalled regimes in Eastern Europe, or by shelving the Soviet request for a loan, or by denying Moscow the full secrets of the atom—all significant as guides to changing official attitudes, but all essentially negative diplomatic strategies. They implied American detachment, not the willingness to contemplate confrontation with the Russians that might have been evident, say, in closer collaboration with Britain, an option the Americans consistently rejected. The same spirit of detachment, in anticipation at least, informed the more collaborative side of American diplomacy. Byrnes's vigorous attempts to make deals with the Soviet leaders late in the year looked less to the construction of a mutually supported Churchillian world order, founded on a careful appraisal of the realities of power, than to quick compromises that would facilitate American withdrawal from Europe and a transfer of responsibility to the basically judicial United Nations. At the beginning of 1946 there was thus still no Cold War. In fact the two great arenas, Europe and the United States, were drifting farther apart. As we are about to see, all this began to change with remarkable suddenness in February 1946, the United States moving from accommodation to something we may reasonably call confrontation with the Soviet Union. But this was not because the Truman administration was swept into Cold War by a powerful gust of public opinion. Instead we see, in early 1946, a more complex process: first a phase in which strong but not necessarily compelling external and domestic pressures nudged the Truman administration toward a reorientation; then a decisive but unacknowledged change of policy in the second week of February leading immediately to new tougher American actions that, for fear of public disapproval, were revealed slowly and incompletely; and, finally, a sustained effort in the weeks after this sudden bustle of dangerous innovation to consolidate public support for this new hard line, a campaign that may be said to have ended a year later with the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine. The anxiety about public acceptance that marked the second stage of the process, as well as the energy invested in the vital consensus-building third phase, shows the limits of any interpretation of the origins of the Cold War based too firmly on the notion of an alert, demanding American public opinion. The fact is that the Truman administration had, and felt itself to have, a hard battle to win on the home front. Let us now look a little more closely at the American scene on this threshold of change. Portents can certainly be found within the increasingly polarized American political establishment in the fall and winter of 1945—46. Here the rising anti-Soviet impulse seems to have been sharper and the opposition to it more alert than among the general public. In the White House, for example, the militant spirit of April 1945 began to reemerge at the end of the year. Leahy had already characterized Stalin at Potsdam as "a liar and a crook." In
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November he began attacking the State Department's "communistically inclined advisers," and then Byrnes personally. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, worried over demobilization, urged in October that the President "acquaint the people with the details of our dealings with the Russians and with the attitude which the Russians have manifested throughout." He was critical of Byrnes's advocacy of international control of the atom. Harriman and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy also urged a firmer policy. For the moment, however, Truman did nothing. He remained attentive to comparatively pro-Soviet liberal New Dealers like Joseph Davies and Henry Wallace. In mid-October he told Wallace that "Stalin was a fine man who wanted to do the right thing."3 In the State Department there was a wider range of opinion. But here, too, we see increasing polarization between those who thought Stalin was bent on unlimited expansion and those who saw the Russians concerned mainly about their security. Officials with experience in Moscow advocated firmer resistance. They included George Kennan, Elbridge Durbrow, head of Eastern European Affairs, and Loy Henderson, director of Near Eastern Affairs, as well as American diplomats in Eastern Europe and the Northern Tier. They were often identified with "conservatives" like Assistant Secretary of State James C. Dunn.4 On the other side support for accommodation was also strongly expressed. Here we find anti-Chiang, "Chinese" officials like John Carter Vincent and John Service. The "left-wing clique," as the Hearst press called it, also included Benjamin Cohen (a former Roosevelt aide and now Counselor), Alger Hiss, and Leo Pasvolsky, the latter two both concerned with the United Nations and other international institutions. Above both groups, Under Secretary Acheson and Charles Bohlen maintained an uneasy neutrality. At the top Byrnes continued to rely upon a handful of advisers—Cohen especially, for daily diplomacy—while he made vague, homiletic speeches about postwar problems.5 In late 1945 the much more cohesive and anti-Soviet military departments sought foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Two differing responses illustrate the department's inability to forge a working consensus. On November 17 the important Secretary's Staff Committee, under the influence of Cohen, Hiss, and Pasvolsky, criticized the narrow anti-Soviet line taken in the documents submitted by the military. They produced recommendations emphasizing the importance of the United Nations and the need for more attention to the military enforcement of peace terms in Germany and Japan.6 But a very different document, entitled "Foreign Policy of the United States," was prepared in December and submitted to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee in January. It was very critical of Soviet conduct generally, justified nonrecognition in Eastern Europe, envisaged only very limited United StatesSoviet economic transactions, and rejected any compromise with fundamental American principles.7 The latter document breathes fire. But it did not reflect a change in Ameri-
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can policy, for Byrnes, as we will see, continued to practice pure accommodationist diplomacy with the Soviet government right into February 1946. And this helps to make an important point. We should not emphasize unduly the role played by these State Department officials in high-level policy-making. Later, certainly, the diplomats were more influential. But under Byrnes, who had the politician's characteristic contempt for the institution, this was not so. No bureaucratic focus, therefore, will explain the American reorientation in early 1946. For that we have to search mainly through the more shadowy sphere where, buffeted by confusing domestic political winds, undermined by administration colleagues, and persistently embarrassed by the Soviet leaders he was trying desperately to accommodate, Byrnes plodded on toward the decisive moment of change for which we are now looking.8 Congress was now increasingly assertive and critical of Soviet conduct. It seriously restricted the possibility of economic or atomic leverage against the Russians. Roosevelt had never played these cards, either to induce or to coerce. Truman had played them coercively and unsuccessfully in 1945. Henceforth he would have little option but to do so again. In the late fall of 1945 William M. Colmer's House committee on postwar planning stressed the necessity "of stiffening our collective backbone in dealing with the Soviet Republic." In atomic policy Vandenberg's suspicion of Byrnes erupted when the Secretary left for Moscow in December without adequately clarifying the atomic-control proposal he intended to show Stalin. The Michigan Republican led a deputation to the White House to protest.9 There was further embarrassment in December when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee forced Byrnes to appear and address rising Republican suspicions about a secret agreement with the Russians at Yalta regarding the Far East. Meanwhile, like a kind of malevolent Greek chorus, the House Committee on Un-American Activities reappeared with broad investigative powers. It embarked on a campaign of unbridled anti-left harassment with the support of a vociferous right-wing press. Yet here, too, though the trend is clear, it would be dangerous to exaggerate the degree to which these pressures influenced President Truman. For they seemed inspired, very often, by Republican and right-wing partisanship and were offset in some degree by the powerful New Deal and liberal bloc that continued to support cooperation with the Soviet Union through the United Nations.10 The press also was increasingly critical. Scholars have noted the strong antiSoviet trend in particular areas. Isolationist and Catholic publications were persistently hostile, but this was not new.11 More significantly, what we may, with purely descriptive intent, call a "realist" critique of Byrnes's foreign policy now emerged. The realists, mostly right of center politically, spoke of American power, the need for firm leadership, and the protection of Christian civilization. They shared the isolationists' concern about premature demobilization but were resolutely internationalist. Deeply suspicious of Soviet intentions,
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they had a strong sense of affinity with, and inheritance from, the British, with whom they desired some kind of practical political or military association. They looked to Churchill for moral leadership and as the vindicator of their belief that only military strength and firm diplomacy could check Soviet expansionist tendencies. The New York Times was a leading proponent of these views. For a time the newspaper expressed the post-Potsdam optimism, but by late September it was calling for "real" American policies in Europe, warning that by demobilization "we can lose the peace," blaming the Soviets for the failure at London, and approving Churchill's dictum "The West didn't fight one totalitarianism . . . to yield to another."12 The Republican Henry R. Luce pressed the anti-Soviet line even more robustly in Time, Life, and Fortune. Toward the end of 1945 these periodicals became increasingly critical of Truman and Byrnes, while they cast Churchill and Bevin in a heroic mold. Time approved British resistance to Soviet pressures in the Mediterranean and Near East, endorsed a European Western bloc, and began to represent the Germans in a more sympathetic light.13 The Reader's Digest published in this period articles under such titles as "Keep British-American Teamwork," "The Soviets' Iron Fist in Rumania" (taken from another anti-Soviet mass magazine, Saturday Evening Post), "I Saw the Soviets Take Over Bulgaria," "Churchill—Greatness in Our Time," and (reproduced from Life) "The Lives of Winston Churchill: The Last Truly Great Man of the Western World." In September, Harper's magazine, anticipating Churchill's Fulton speech, called for a division of the world into two spheres, advocated an Anglo-American strategic alliance, and, accurately predicting trouble with the Soviets in Iran, insisted, "We must back Britain."14 Diaries and private archives offer a tantalizing glimpse of the vital connections between these various groups. Leahy collaborated with Constantine Brown, a syndicated columnist on the Washington Star, and such devout hardliners as the former ambassador to Italy Alexander Kirk and the former ambassador to the Soviet Union William Bullitt.15 Forrestal was particularly active in cultivating the press. By early 1946 he was meeting regularly with publishers like A. H. Sulzberger of the New York Times, Roy Howard of the Scripps-Howard chain, Palmer Hoyt of the Denver Post, and other influential communicators like Robert McLean, head of the Associated Press. He also worked very closely with columnists like Joseph Alsop (with whom he met at least eight times between January and May 1946), Walter Lippmann, Arthur Krock, David Lawrence, and Hanson Baldwin. His themes never varied: the gravity of the Soviet threat, the perils of demobilization, and the urgent need to arouse the American people to support firmer policies.16 The same process was at work on the other side. Joseph E. Davies tended to confide in and be sought out by sympathetic liberals—journalists like Drew Pearson, publishers like Ogden Reid of the New York Herald Tribune, and diplomats like Ben Cohen. Sim-
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ilarly, Wallace met often with the independent progressive columnist Marquis Childs and with a host of left-liberal political figures. Both were courted by Soviet officials and diplomats. Their private diaries, journals, and correspondence show Davies and Wallace to have been acutely aware of the adverse trend.17 It was therefore against an increasingly critical and polarized domestic background, though much more in the political establishment than in the country at large, that Byrnes conducted his diplomacy of accommodation. At Moscow he established a new range of commissions and conferences for the next round of debates, but he failed to produce a concrete achievement to disarm the critics. He now faced his first serious confrontation with Truman, for, after an exhausting and hazardous return journey of sixty hours, he was directed upon arrival at the airport in Washington to report immediately to the President, then vacationing on his yacht off Quantico, Virginia. Truman took him to a stateroom and complained that Byrnes had failed to keep in touch and that he had received the communique an hour after it had been released to the press. Byrnes explained the various difficulties involved and, according to the watchful Leahy, "satisfied" the President that he bore no personal responsibility for these lapses. But the incident ushered in a period of unease for Byrnes. Press reaction to his Moscow communique' was quite favorable. But by January I the Washington Post, citing administration divisions, saw him "on the defensive." A radio report to the nation on January 2 was well received, and Halifax reported that Byrnes had "blunted the edge of the severest criticism." But on January 8 Truman, while publicly endorsing the Secretary's work at Moscow, added ominously that he, as President, retained the final decision on the Balkan recognitions.18 Meanwhile, the President, according to his own memoir account, had met with Byrnes on January 5 and read him the famous letter-memorandum of rebuke that many historians view as a crucial turning point in the administration's Soviet policy. He began, Truman recalled later, by reading Byrnes a list of complaints about the latter's conduct as Secretary, starting with administrative and reporting procedures. He again asserted his intention to retain the right to make final decisions. He then indicted the Soviets for expansionist policies that, combining military aggression and subversion, violated their wartime agreements. He said he had read Ethridge's reports, which criticized Soviet conduct in Bulgaria and Rumania, that morning. Recognition would not be extended to either government until its composition was changed "radically." Russian actions in Iran were, he said, an "outrage if ever I saw one." He called for a vigorous American protest there. The Soviets planned to invade Turkey and take over the Black Sea Straits. He went on, "Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand—'how many divisions have you?'" The United States should no longer "play compromise." And he concluded, "I'm tired of babying the Soviets."19
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This famous memorandum, like the Truman memoirs generally, has had an excellent historiographical run. But it seems very unlikely that the confrontation ever took place. Byrnes always denied it and plausibly insisted that he would have resigned if it had occurred. Now it seems clear that he was right. The historian Robert L. Messer has shown persuasively that, given the state of mutually shared knowledge between the two men, there was no reasonable basis for Truman's complaints on either procedure or substance. Messer concludes that "Truman could not have read this document to Byrnes on January 5, 1946."*° The best evidence against the January 5 confrontation, however, is the simple fact that, until well into February, American policy did not change. Here the British archives are helpful. They contain an account given to a British embassy official in Washington by both Raymond G. Swing, the radio commentator, and Joseph C. Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor. It records remarks made by Byrnes at a lunch with six trusted reporters on February 4. Here, a month after Truman's alleged rebuke and insistence on a harder policy, Byrnes talked enthusiastically about accommodation with the Soviets, acknowledged "the complete change in policy" after the London foreign ministers conference, and attributed it to his recognition "that the main motivating force in Russia was fear of the capitalist bloc." To break the deadlock he had gone to Moscow, and the trip had been "a complete success." And now, Byrnes continued, with "Russian fears dissipated, it was no longer necessary to be so strict with her in the Balkans and the Middle East. . . . Obviously now that her fear of the capitalist bloc had been dissipated she would not be so demanding in these areas." He still seems to have regarded Britain as the main problem, confiding privately to Swing later that it was "most regrettable that Britain had urged Iran to bring her case before U.N."21 Byrnes's actions through January, moreover, were entirely consistent with this remarkably pure expression of Rooseveltian acconimodationism, despite numerous opportunities to change course. He was, as we have seen, carefully detached on the Iran issue at London, he deferred to Soviet wishes on the choice of a United Nations Secretary-General, and he maintained a conciliatory approach in the Balkans. Nor was there any change in late January and early February, despite the series of shocks that, coming on top of the disappointing London Security Council experience, placed a sudden additional strain on United States-Soviet relations. One was the embarrassing Soviet disclosure of the secret Yalta agreement on the Far East. Byrnes, personally vulnerable as the leading expositor of Yalta, disclaimed any awareness. The consequent impression of administration incompetence further irritated Truman, who claimed full knowledge of the "wartime understanding" and issued yet another gratuitous public reminder that the President "lays down the foreign policy of the United States." Byrnes's immediate denial of any breach with the President brought no answering reassurance from the White House.22 Then,
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while Byrnes twisted anxiously in the wind, came Drew Pearson's dramatic revelation on February 3, later confirmed, of a Soviet atomic spy ring in Canada. And all this was capped by Stalin's election address on February 9, asserting, in line with prewar Marxist-Leninist tenets, that communism and capitalism were "incompatible." Stalin's purpose was probably to justify the inevitable rigors of the new Five-Year Plan to his exhausted people. But the speech, which we will examine more closely later, was widely received in the United States—and by informed observers like Harriman, Acheson, and Kennan—as a declaration of postwar noncooperation.23 Up to this point, despite the provoking Soviet behavior, the administration's policy remained, apart from a few ad hoc gestures, essentially unchanged. Truman was stuck. He undoubtedly wanted a tougher approach. He probably saw, as we can see in hindsight, powerful elements of potential support in the political establishment. But much of this came from political enemies whose motives were suspect and who were enthusiastically pushing him toward a repudiation of Roosevelt and much of his own party. And when he looked to the country at large, where general opinion was increasingly critical of the Russians but still confused rather than polarized, he must have hesitated to challenge the still dangerously incalculable public sentiment for peace and great-power cooperation associated with Rooseveltian legitimacy and, above all, the United Nations. There were other inhibitions of a practical nature: the continuing erosion of American military power through a headlong demobilization that precluded any conventional military option and also discouraged any gesture such as a tough speech that the Russians might expose as a bluff; and the absence, given the scrupulous detachment from Britain, of tense points of direct political contact with the Soviet Union that might have allowed him to mobilize American opinion quickly for the credible firmer line he now wanted.24 It was thus at an auspicious moment, when there was a sharp desire for some kind of change but great: uncertainty as to the form it should take, that Winston Churchill arrived at the White House to discuss his forthcoming Fulton speech with the President.
THE ORIGINS OF THE FULTON SPEECH The Fulton speech was born in political innocence. In August 1945 the president of Westminster College, a quiet campus at Fulton, Missouri, wrote to Churchill inviting him to speak there during his forthcoming American vacation. As an inducement President Truman, whose support had meanwhile been solicited by Missourian intermediaries in the White House, added a note saying, "This is a fine old college out in my state. If you'll come out and make them a speech I'll take you out and introduce you." Churchill accepted six weeks later, noting it would be his only public appearance on the visit.25 During the autumn, as we have seen, Churchill gradually conquered his postelection depression. He seems to have approached his American trip with
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two main political objectives. One was to stimulate public and congressional support for the indispensable British loan. The other, profounder purpose was to campaign more explicitly than he had yet done in Europe for intimate Anglo-American collaboration against a Soviet menace that the Labour government, despite Bevin's dynamism, seemed unable to resist effectively. Churchill made his preparations amid depressing auguries of British economic and political decline. A Punch writer commented, "It should be understood in Washington that Mr. Churchill's forthcoming visit to America must be regarded as coming under reverse lease-lend." Another bad joke came with a letter from No. 10 Downing Street, conveying austere socialist best wishes for the trip in the form of currency facilities of ten pounds per day. Meanwhile, Byrnes's diplomacy of accommodation, seemingly at British expense, led to the depressing Moscow conference. And on January 7 Churchill had a premonitory encounter with American liberalism in the person of Eleanor Roosevelt, then in London as a United Nations delegate. At an official lunch, according to an observer, "Winston and Mrs. Roosevelt got into an argument about the causes of war which she said were economic. He denied this and said they were mostly due to personalities with a thirst for power."26 Nevertheless, this observer found Churchill "in great form and much looking forward to his trip." He was already concentrating on the idea of a dramatic speech, preferably an address to Congress. He wrote to Halifax on December 18, "I propose to go into purdah completely till March 5 at Missouri . . . ," but added hopefully, "Of course I would address Congress if they paid me the compliment of inviting me. . . ." Halifax encouraged the hope, replying that "it was very probable that they would want you to speak to Congress. . . ." This cheered Churchill, who confided to Lord Moran on January 4, I think I can be of some use over there: they will take things from me. It may be that Congress will ask me. to address them. I'd like that. Our Parliament can't. I'm a controversial figure, but they might. It's a funny position. I feel I could do things and there's nothing to be done. Moran noted that this, not sitting in the Florida sun, was "what he really wanted."27 It is likely, then, that Churchill settled down in Florida in mid-January in a state of considerable expectation and with a definite purpose. Disillusionment quickly followed. The only invitation to visit Congress came from a group of latently hostile Republican congressmen who wanted to cross-examine him at the Pearl Harbor committee hearings. This left the President and the Fulton opportunity. Churchill wrote to Truman on January 29, "I have a message to deliver to your country and to the world and I think it likely that we shall be in agreement about it. Under your auspices anything I say will command some
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attention." Truman replied cordially that he knew the Englishman had "an important message to deliver." Elaborate arrangements were made for the two to meet in Florida to discuss it. When a sudden rash of strikes forced Truman to cancel his trip, Churchill flew to Cuba for a few days and then, on February 10, traveled to Washington, where he visited the President at the White House that evening.28 The little direct evidence we have about this meeting comes from four sources. In a 1962 interview Truman told an inquiring historian that Churchill had wanted him to help write the speech but that he had replied, "It's your own speech, you write it." A more informative source is Admiral Leahy, who recorded in his diary on February 10, From 8:30 until 10:00 p.m. Mr. Churchill talked with the President in the White House principally in regard to an address that Churchill will make on 5th March at Westminster College in Missouri. The subject of the address will be the necessity for full military collaboration between Great Britain and the United States in order to preserve peace in the world until the U.N. is fully able to keep the peace which will be at some time in the distant future. Mr. Churchill believes it to be necessary to our safety that the combined British-American Staff be continued in operation. I can foresee forceful objections by the Soviet to our having a bilateral military association. I returned with Mr. Churchill to the British Embassy where, together with the Ambassador, we talked until midnight on the same subject. Leahy also recorded that during the late-night embassy discussion of Churchill's speech the three men "talked a good deal about how he [Churchill] should present it from the point of view of the Russians, which he thinks he can manage." Meanwhile, Churchill told Halifax that Truman "was quite happy, and more than happy, about his making the kind of fraternal association speech that he has in mind to deliver."29 Some further clue to the Truman-Churchill meeting comes from remarks that Churchill made to the American minister in Havana, which the latter, who privately believed the British statesman was "suffering from a Messiah complex," forwarded directly to Truman on February 7 with the comment "He gave me a strong impression that he wanted these thoughts passed on to you." Churchill, in this preview of his Fulton themes, pronounced himself "apprehensive" about the United Nations. In reality everything depended "upon the political relations between the three great powers." The report continued, "Churchill's great fear, as he expressed it, is that Russia will not only master the secret of atomic warfare, but will not hesitate to employ it for her own ends in this atmosphere of postwar friction and confusion." Then the United Nations would perish with the epitaph "U.N. Orphan." The only escape, and hope, was "the development over the years of some definite working agreement
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between the American and British Governments." Churchill "fully understands" that a formal merger or alliance was "impracticable," the report concluded, and would be "untimely and unpopular on both sides of the Atlantic." But "the sheer pressure of events will force our two great commonwealths together in some workable manner if the peace and order of the world are to be preserved from chaos."30 Churchill came away from the meeting with Truman greatly buoyed by the prospect now opening up. He began to act with his wartime zest, calling in the Canadian ambassador with a view of getting Prime Minister Mackenzie King down from Ottawa for consultations on the speech. Halifax noted on February 10, "I can see that it is the one thing on which all Winston's thought and willpower and dynamic nature are concentrated." During the next two days, while staying at the embassy, Churchill discussed the speech again with Halifax, who recorded on February 11, "He wants to speak very frankly about the importance of maintaining very close Anglo-American cooperation . . . and thinks he can do this without upsetting Uncle Joe who will, however, read, and it is hoped read to his profit, between the lines." By February 12 the ambassador was beginning to feel the strain. "He rehearsed to me a great deal of the speech that he has in mind to deliver," Halifax wrote, "with tears almost rolling down his cheeks as he thought of the great strategical concept of the future which was the cottage home of happy humble people, and quoted 'Childe Harold' to reinforce his eloquence. He really is a most astonishing creature but Dorothy and I agreed that we had never seen him so benign." Churchill then departed for Miami to resume his vacation.31 Churchill's excitement is understandable, for the evidence makes it clear that Truman had licensed him to advocate publicly, in the legitimizing presidential presence, an intimate and exclusive world-girdling Anglo-American military combination whose purpose could only be the containment, if not the eventual elimination, of Soviet power. And this was, of course, a radical departure from existing American policy and principle. Both men must have been aware of this. Had Truman been embarrassed by Churchill's proposal, he could easily have vetoed it; or he could have accepted it and maintained a careful detachment until March 5. In fact, as we will see, both Truman and Byrnes worked hard to show the Russians, if not the American people, that they supported and were directly party to Churchill's design. Truman certainly knew what he was doing. He was well aware of the Rooseveltian dogma that good relations with the Soviet Union depended very largely on an ostentatious diplomatic detachment from Britain. He had himself, after all, rebuffed Churchill's vigorous Anglo-Americanism in the late spring of 1945 and again at Potsdam. He was not caught unawares now, as the February 7 message from Cuba shows. Moreover, he can hardly be credited with having less political perception than Leahy, who was quick to foresee "forceful objections by the Soviet"; or than Halifax, whose first reaction
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was that it would "certainly start up a very violent argument here"; or than Joseph Davies and Postmaster-General Robert Hannegan, who immediately warned him "that Churchill would pull a fast one" so that "he might be held to endorse all Churchill might advance and be committed"; or, indeed, than the reporter who told Byrnes at a February 15 news conference, in a statement that must have interested the Soviet embassy, "There has been considerable published speculation that Mr. Churchill . . . on March 5, will advocate a strong Anglo-American military alliance and development of a western bloc to balance the Russian power. . . ,"32 Truman covered up his complicity with Churchill at the time. Thus he reassured Davies and Hannegan that "it was all right." Churchill would simply produce "the usual 'hands across the sea' stuff." This deceit is hardly surprising. Churchill, though already widely revered by Americans, was a controversial foreigner and a symbol of empire. Neither Truman nor Byrnes can have wished to give the impression of surrendering the initiative to him, certainly not in advance of the Fulton speech itself. It is somewhat more remarkable, at first sight, that Truman did not discuss this crucial encounter with Churchill, or the transformation in American policy that immediately followed it, in his memoirs. Byrnes was similarly reticent. Yet this, too, is readily explainable. For one thing, it was now rather late to admit the earlier covert enterprise with the British statesman. More important, there was glory enough, and probably a greater glory, in the standard explanation of the origins of the Cold War that was already established when Truman and Byrnes came to write their post1952 memoirs. It portrayed a sincere and persevering United States going to the limit of accommodation before rising heroically to the Soviet challenge in March 1947, when Britain openly acknowledged her inability to pursue a fully independent policy in the Mediterranean. This explanation was especially complimentary to Truman but was also kind to Byrnes, whose mistakes, if any, had been in the well-meaning pursuit of peace. It left no room, as a significant factor, for Churchill's intrusion a year earlier, except rather vaguely at the level of opinion shaping. One further speculation will conclude this digression. In statements and interviews in later years Truman referred to what he repeatedly called an "ultimatum" or "blunt letter" that he claimed to have sent Stalin during the Iran crisis that immediately followed the events we are now reviewing. What is the significance of this? It seems reasonable to assume that, as he brooded in retirement, Truman, notwithstanding the favorable estimates of his conduct by historians, wanted to clarify his record and particularly the fact that he had effectively resisted Soviet ambition long before the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine of March 1947. Consequently his mind kept returning to the reorientation of American policy in February and March of 1946, when he obviously felt that he had exercised strong and successful leadership before the American people had awakened to their real danger. Thus he talked about ultimatums O
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over Iran. No one believed him, because researchers could find no document bearing that character. What has apparently escaped notice is the possibility that the ultimatum was not a document but a speech—the Fulton speech— which Stalin himself described as "something in the nature of an ultimatum: accept our rule voluntarily, and then all will be well; otherwise war is inevitable."33 In any event, to return to the narrative, it seems clear that the real question is not the degree of Truman's foreknowledge or complicity with Churchill—for that was clearly substantial—but why he made this radical departure from American diplomatic doctrine. One way to answer this question is to suggest that, though Truman was willing to follow up the Fulton initiative with a general reorientation of policy if it proved successful, he was moved mainly by short-term considerations. He wanted to act. But, for good reason, he shrank from a dramatic personal initiative. Suddenly, here was Churchill offering to do the job for him, only a day after Stalin's "hostile" election speech, which must have stirred thoughts of a response in kind. Churchill's speech would presumably frighten Stalin, especially if given in a context that suggested American endorsement. If domestic opinion was receptive, which must have seemed possible in the increasingly anti-Soviet atmosphere, then all well and good. If not, the American involvement could be disavowed and any momentary embarrassment given the appearance of virtue by simply asserting Churchill's right to free speech. In short, it was an excellent gamble. It involved no dangerous commitment of presidential power. At the very least, it would reveal the state of public opinion. No doubt these calculations were in Truman's mind. Yet it is a superficial and incomplete explanation, for in the course of our discussion it will become clear that the President saw his sponsorship of Churchill's proposal as the first step in a basic commitment to general and radical change. And this was logical, because, as we have already seen, Truman, like Roosevelt, Hopkins, Byrnes, and other American leaders, attached fundamental importance to the principle of "no ganging up" with Britain against the Soviet Union. He thought instinctively in tripartite terms. This first serious departure from the principle, though masked by the fiction of Churchill's individual responsibility, therefore led Truman to decide, with perfect logic, to go all the way and establish immediately a new basis for his Soviet policy, even while Churchill was still preparing his speech. The proof of this lies only partly in contemporary documents, for the conversion was managed with considerable political discretion; and it does not lie in any later acknowledgment in the memoirs, for Truman and Byrnes preferred to develop a different scenario of the origins of the Cold War. It lies instead in the simple fact that, two days after the Truman-Churchill meeting, we see the beginning of a remarkably comprehensive transformation of policy that, by the time Churchill mounted the stage at Fulton, had already changed the fundamental direction of American diplomacy.
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That claim has now to be established. But, if it proves persuasive, the February 10 meeting surely deserves recognition as the decisive point of departure so far as Truman is concerned. The January 5 letter to Byrnes, assuming that it was indeed written then, is best seen as a private burst of exasperation, communicated to no one and without any discernible practical outcome. The February 10 meeting is evidentially superior in a number of respects: it definitely occurred; we know a good deal, though not enough, of what was said and decided; it produced a concrete plan for a direct challenge to the Russians in which the President lent his sponsorship to a repudiation of one of the most basic doctrines in American foreign policy; and, most striking, the actual reversals of the administration's Soviet policy began two days later, on February 12—an event that eliminates from contention another tenacious and popular candidate, George F. Kennan's famous "long cable" of February 22.34 At issue here is a vital point bearing on the Soviet perception of the American volte-face: whether the American reorientation, which was completely autonomous in fact, took place with the appearance of an exclusively unilateral action, as the usual focus on January 5 and February 22 has always suggested; or whether, coming so quickly on the heels of the Truman-Churchill meeting, it was stamped from the start, at least in Soviet minds, with the appearance of intimate Anglo-American collaboration. THE REORIENTATION BEGINS: MID-FEBRUARY The reorientation began on February 12 and was executed almost entirely by Byrnes. This immediately raises the difficult question of the secretary's conversion. Did it come, as seems probable, at the hands of the President in one of their now daily meetings or telephone conversations? Certainly Davies complained to Byrnes on February 12 that Churchill's visit and the forthcoming Fulton speech "had committed us to a policy which Churchill had imposed upon us by a stratagem." Or did Byrnes, perhaps learning something of the Truman-Churchill meeting, decide on his own that this was the right moment to change course? Here again the lack of an inner history defeats us. What we can say, however, is that the sudden American militancy began on February 12 with three firm actions in Eastern Europe.35 The Bulgarian problem reflects this sharp transition vividly. At Moscow in December, Byrnes, as we have seen, ignored the warnings of Barnes, the American representative in Sofia, and agreed to recognize the Bulgarian government, provided it took in two opposition members and gave assurances of full, free elections. But in January the opposition members, scenting a Soviet trap, refused to join the government. Vyshinsky urged Byrnes to bestow recognition anyway; Barnes, however, warned that "further compromise" would "constitute complete capitulation." On January 31 the Secretary, still resolutely accommodationist, was ready to accept the Soviet view, provided only he received the assurances of free elections from the Communist-led government. On February
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2 he cabled Barnes, "It is of primary importance that we avoid any appearance of bad faith towards our allies." An hour later a cable arrived from Cohen in London warning that the proposed elections "would be conducted along the same lines as the previous election" and that the United States "would then be committed to recognition irrespective of the results of the new election." But Byrnes remained unconvinced. On February 5 he sent Cohen a defense of his election proposal. The rather contradictory character of his reasoning is revealing. On the one hand he argued, "Progress has been made toward the achievement of freedom of expression for the opposition. . . ." At the same time the situation in Bulgaria, he remarked, is "deteriorating" and "if matters are allowed to drift it will be even more difficult at a later date to achieve a satisfactory basis for recognition than it is now." Clearly, Byrnes was not earnestly searching out the truth in Bulgaria. Rather, he was still looking for a quick formal solution on the Polish model that would consummate the Moscow deal and allow the United States to detach itself from this political gluepot.38 Then, on February 12, there was a sudden change. Byrnes turned away from his compromise and sent word to Vyshinsky that the United States believed the opposition should not, after all, be pressured to join the government. Instead, the contending parties should be urged to find "a mutually acceptable basis" for the new government. He now added a new complaint. The Soviets were told that the Bulgarian government's failure to settle reparations arrangements with Greece was "a nonfulfillment of the armistice conditions." Recognition was deferred.37 There was a similarly sudden change in Byrnes's views on the Rumanian issue. Here, too, it had been agreed at Moscow that after a reorganization of the Rumanian government and assurances of free elections American recognition would be granted. Here, too, Byrnes received warnings of Soviet bad faith from those on the spot. But here, again, he put overall American-Soviet relations first. He told Vyshinsky in London on January 23 that he thought the ambassadorial commission "had made an honest and genuine attempt to carry out the Moscow decision." On February 5 the United States gave the Rumanians a note of the conditions upon which it was prepared to grant recognition. In its reply the Rumanian government completely ignored these conditions. Nevertheless, recognition was granted on February j, for, despite protests from Berry, the American representative, Byrnes accepted this reply as constituting recognition. But on February 12, as his policy changed, the Secretary declared his intention to assume that the Rumanians, by not taking issue with the conditions, had made "satisfactory formal undertakings," and assured Berry that he intended to monitor the situation and protest violations. His change of heart is again visible on February 13 when he told a meeting attended by Truman, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, Forrestal, Leahy, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff what American representatives had been reporting in the weeks before recognition was granted but what he had initially ignored—namely, that
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the Rumanian government was not complying with the Moscow agreement. Now, Byrnes said, the United States should adopt a strong attitude.88 The same change may be briefly noted in American positions on Austrian and Albanian problems. The United States, but not the Soviet Union, regarded Austria as a liberated country. It wanted a general treaty of Austrian independence along the lines of the peace treaties. But when the Soviets put up obstacles, Byrnes had maintained a show of Big Four solidarity and kept the Austrians at arm's length. On February 12, for the first: time, Byrnes instructed the American political representative in Vienna to make it clear to the Austrian government that the necessary four-power agreement was "made extremely difficult" by the Soviet attitude. In Albania, American relations with the Communist Hoxha government had been satisfactory during 1945, but American officials reported in January 1946 that the regime was increasingly unfriendly, that their movements were increasingly restricted, and that a marked increase in Soviet activity and prestige was evident. On February 12 Byrnes changed tack here, too, and sent a formal complaint to the Hoxha government. At the same time he threatened to withhold the recognition the Albanians had been seeking.39 During the next two weeks Byrnes kept up the pressure in Eastern Europe. On February 15, to the delight of American representatives in Bulgaria, he at last protested the Soviet failure to implement the Potsdam agreement to revise Allied Control Council procedures for Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary. He now demanded "prompt measures to ensure future compliance." The Secretary's evolving policy on the issue of navigation rights on the Danube also illuminates this sharp transition in American policy. In January, .Byrnes, while favoring a reference to free navigation in the relevant peace treaties, which he conceded would "not of itself carry assurance of adequate implementation," had been mainly concerned to avoid taking a stand between the British and French position (favoring non-riparian representation on any Danube control administration) on the one hand and the Soviet position (exclusively riparian representation) on the other. By late February, however, he was insisting on full American rights of navigation and setting out a comprehensive riparian policy "to promote principles of freedom of commerce and navigation in EastCentral Europe and to support political independence of peoples of this region." By the middle of March he was seeking American representation on a proposed provisional Danube commission.40 On March 2 Molotov was handed an American note accusing the Soviet Union of holding up the economic recovery of Hungary by "over-burdening" it with reparations, requisitions, the maintenance of "very large occupying forces," and "the interference of the occupying authorities in economic matters." The note called for a meeting on March 15 to facilitate the rehabilitation of Hungary and "its early reintegration with the general economy of Europe." On March 4 Byrnes instructed that a similar complaint was to be made in the
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Allied Control Council for Austria, where the Soviets, by taking available arable land for their exclusive use, were held to be undermining the relief efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (UNRRA). Byrnes now sent word to the Soviets that unless satisfaction was given, the United States would "make it clear in UNRRA Council and to Austrian Govt. and people, as well as in U.S., that UNRRA relief throughout Austria has been made impossible by Soviet action."41 On February 21 he offered nonCommunist Hungary a $10 million credit, but in early March he refused to resume trade with Communist-dominated Bulgaria. Also on February 21 he at last offered talks with Moscow on the $i billion credit requested in August 1945 (and since "lost"), but insisted they include the settlement of American claims, navigation of rivers, the liberalization of commerce of Eastern Europe, and measures to assist East Europeans "to solve by democratic means" their economic problems.42 Meanwhile, the reorientation began to move into an Anglo-American phase as Byrnes traveled to Miami on February 17 for a meeting with Churchill. He brought with him the influential financier Bernard Baruch, in order, Churchill reported to Attlee, that he "could have a talk with him about the loan." Churchill added, somewhat disingenuously, "I was surprised that so much importance should be attached to Mr. Baruch's attitude as to make the Secretary of State fly one thousand miles one day and go back the same distance the next merely for this." Churchill admitted they had discussed the Fulton speech, but he passed it off misleadingly to Attlee as a repeat of his comparatively innocuous Harvard address of I943.43 Byrnes was similarly evasive. He explained his trip to suspicious reporters as simply "a friendly social call," though he, too, admitted later that the speech had been discussed. The New York Daily Worker, citing press speculation that the speech was the main topic, understandably found this "strangest pilgrimage" to Florida "a very peculiar business." In fact, it was Truman who had begun the pattern of deception over the Fulton speech by reassuring Davies and Hannegan a week earlier that it would simply be "the usual 'hands across the sea' stuff." None of the leading protagonists wanted to set off alarm bells prematurely. But Byrnes was now planning several diplomatic moves with a supportively Anglo-American coloration, as well as a major pre-Fulton speech. He therefore visited Churchill, we may assume, to achieve some degree of coordination.44 The active Anglo-American phase can be dated from February 22, when Byrnes made a fundamental change in his policy toward Iran. He cabled Kennan authorizing him to inform Qavam, then negotiating under great personal pressure from Stalin and Molotov, of the American view that ample opportunity is afforded to the Iranian Government to return the question to the Council, either on its own initiative, or through a third party in the event that the negotiations take a turn which the Iranian Government regards as threatening the integrity of Iran. This Government has publicly
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made clear its expectation that the results of the present negotiations agreed to by the Council will be in full conformity with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations.45 The importance of this initiative lies both in the statement itself and in the unsolicited communication of it to the Iranian Prime Minister. Hitherto the initiative had always been taken by Iranian leaders, anxious to involve a reluctant United States in their disputes. Now, if only in a tentative way, the United States took the initiative, encouraging Iran to resist the Soviet Union in the confidence of American support. This was a very significant change. It meant that Byrnes was now prepared to have a confrontation with the Soviets. More than that, he was working actively to bring it about. At bottom, therefore, this obscure February 22 cable is much more than an expression of intensified interest in the evolving Iran crisis. It reflects the beginnings of a profound geopolitical change that would rapidly take the United States, for the first time, into the heart of the Anglo-Soviet confrontation in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. And it signifies an equally basic change in United Nations policy. Truman and Bevin had already shown a desire to adapt the United Nations to Western purposes. Now Byrnes, with the Iranian opportunity tantalizingly before him, began to think of converting the Security Council into a potential instrument of political coercion against the Soviet Union, using the United Nations Charter as the legal and moral foundation of a public indictment that would either force a Soviet retreat or at least arouse American and world opinion to support firmer policies. We can also recognize now, for the first time, some central elements in the new two-world international system that was already, though still hidden from public view, beginning to replace the post-Potsdam order. Our story from this point will revolve largely around three things. The first is Churchill's Fulton speech, with its Manichaean vision and dramatic consequences. The second is the steady convergence of the two new lines of American policy heralded in Byrnes's February 22 cable—political intervention in the British-supported Northern Tier, and the conversion of the United Nations into a political weapon capable of rallying resistance to Soviet expansion there and elsewhere—until they finally met in the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in late March. And the third is the very understandable Soviet perception of these and associated American initiatives as manifestations of an emerging Anglo-American alliance. During the next few weeks these various elements came together to usher in the Cold War. In late February no one could have predicted this with any precision. Still, the pace of the American reorientation was quickening. Byrnes was careful, for the moment, to keep his hand in the dangerous Iranian crisis well hidden. But elsewhere along the Northern Tier he now made the American presence publicly felt. By February 25 it was already known in Washington that the
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Secretary was planning to return the body of the Turkish ambassador, who had died in 1944, to Istanbul aboard the USS Missouri, the world's most powerful warship. This tangible signal of a vague but unmistakable American commitment to Turkey was officially announced on March 6, just after Churchill's speech. Meanwhile, Byrnes had already accepted Forrestal's proposal for a permanent Mediterranean naval task force and was formulating a plan to send it with the Missouri. Thus, in the space of a few days, Byrnes took practical and unprecedented steps to shore up Iran (covertly) and Turkey (openly), thereby strengthening Britain at her two major points of vulnerability in the area where the Soviet expansionary thrust was most keenly felt.48 At this point an important question demands attention: What practical part was played in this rapidly changing situation by the British Labour government? So far as the Truman administration is concerned, the short answer is: none at all. This was not for lack of initiative on the part of the British. In late February and early March they tried on several occasions to encourage and associate with the new American militancy in Eastern Europe, though without as yet much confidence in its durability. They were especially aroused by the new American interest in the eastern Mediterranean. On February 28, for example, the sudden news of the Missouri mission brought Halifax to the State Department to suggest that Loy Henderson, director of Near Eastern Affairs, might usefully go to London for joint consultations. This was followed by Royal Navy plans to add British ships to the Mediterranean phase of the deceased Turkish ambassador's memorial convoy, which was now beginning to assume Pharaonic proportions. But Byrnes put Halifax off. Henderson, he said, was needed in Washington. Truman and Byrnes were eager to worry the Russians with the appearance of Anglo-American association. But they did not want to jeopardize the delicate transformation, with its balance of private and public diplomacy as well as its politically risky connection with Churchill, by an ostentatious and premature collaboration with the British government that would arouse criticism at home. They wanted, it seems clear in retrospect, to set up the basis of theu new policy before Churchill's speech. Then, if Fulton was well received, consultation and coordination with the British would doubtless follow.47 For Churchill, however, the situation was more complicated. He could hardly ignore his own government. Nor did he wish to. He was still eager to nourish "continuity" in a British diplomacy he no longer controlled but had, since July, consistently tried to shape: first through his personal associations with Attlee and Bevin, more recently by championing the idea of American partnership. But now he faced a dilemma. The Labour party at large was unlikely to approve the harsh attack he was planning on the Soviet Union. Yet any American support he could generate, official or public, was unlikely to survive a cold response from London. He therefore tried to attach the more sympathetic Labour leaders without acquainting them with his full intentions.
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Thus he wrote to Attlee on February 2.1 that his speech would be "in the same direction as the one I made at Harvard two years ago. . . ." But he carefully omitted any mention of the new and highly provocative anti-Soviet dimension he was planning. Meanwhile, he tried to anticipate criticism by stressing his close collaboration with the American leaders, cabling Attlee on February 16 that Truman "had welcomed the outline I gave him of my speech"; later he reported, "I tried this on both the President and Byrnes who seemed to like it very well." He also described his successful high-level lobbying on behalf of the loan. He probably wished to discourage any suspicious pre-Fulton inquiries from London. Undoubtedly, he wanted to lay the ground lor a post-Fulton endorsement in which any personal recriminations on the grounds of deception would be swept away by the overriding importance of encouraging the new and welcome American support.48 Halifax went even further in the same cause. The Tory ambassador, now serving a socialist government, was nearing the end of an acclaimed wartime mission whose success no objective observer would have predicted in 1941. A patriarchal, High Church Anglican, of cadaverous appearance and fox-hunting tastes, Halifax obliged his daughter-in-law to address him by his title—"in case I have to speak to her for her own good." He was old-fashioned, too, in being that rare phenomenon—a skilled politician who was not, in the ultimate sense, ambitious. Of this his self-removal from the 1940 contest for the premiership in favor of Churchill is the most famous example. Yet, as his sobriquet "the Holy Fox" suggests, he enjoyed power and political intrigue, A. J. P. Taylor has written perceptively, "Halifax had a unique gift: he was always at the center of events, yet managed somehow to leave the impression that he was not connected with them."49 This seems to be a perfect description of his role in the Fulton affair. A recent historian has suggested that, by not informing Bevin of Churchill's intentions, Halifax was in breach of his ambassadorial obligation. In fact, he went much further. Knowing that Bevin was planning a major policy speech in the House of Commons on February 21, he tried twice to push his unbriefed Foreign Secretary into stating first the themes that Churchill would thunder forth on March 5: the central importance of Anglo-American relations and the legitimacy of a closer Anglo-American relationship within the United Nations. Bevin should also emphasize the "wide ground we have been able to cover with the American government in the last two or three months." The Russians would read between the lines "to general advantage." Similarly, in late February, Halifax tried to rush Bevin into endorsing immediate publication of an as yet incomplete atomic energy agreement between the United States, Britain, and Canada as "it would be wholesome for the United States to commit itself publicly to this specially intimate collaboration." Halifax was trying to lead Bevin, without telling him anything of the crucial anti-Soviet component in Churchill's speech, from the official British commitment to
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great-power-cooperation with the United Nations toward Churchill's central emphasis on the Anglo-American relationship, and from officially sanctioned internationalization toward exclusive collaboration with the Americans in atomic energy. In essence he was setting Bevin up for an anticipatory endorsement of Fulton, for which, he must have realized, the uninformed Labour leader would be severely criticized by his party colleagues after Churchill had spoken but from which he would find it hard to retreat. The fact that Churchill and Halifax were prepared to risk weakening Bevin, whom both admired and supported, demonstrates the importance they attached to the Fulton initiative.50 Modest stuff, no doubt, as Tory plots go. It did not come off. Attlee blandly responded to Churchill's February message, "I am sure your Fulton speech will do good." Bevin rejected the proposed Anglo-American focus for his February 21 speech. Instead, he stuck to the official line, stressing the importance of the United Nations and of cordial Anglo-Soviet relations. He also rejected publication of the tripartite atomic energy agreement "as we should be giving the Russians the impression that we did not mean business when we invited them in Moscow to sponsor the creation of the Atomic Commission." He would doubtless have welcomed solid and unequivocal gestures of American support. But his suspicions of Byrnes persisted and probably prevented him from seeing the full significance of what was happening. He may well have guessed at Churchill's intentions and wished him well, But he was not going to commit his government, already under strong left-wing attack, to any advance endorsement. "We were never consulted," he said afterward, and "did not want to be."51 THE WIDENING REORIENTATION: LATE FEBRUARY The first clear public sign of change came in Byrnes's speech to the Overseas Press Club in New York on February 28. There, Byrnes announced a new approach toward the Soviet Union based on "patience and firmness." The United States wanted friendship but would not accept "unilateralism," and intended "to defend the Charter." The Secretary called for universal military training and a "trained citizenry." The United States would resist "aggression" (broadly defined to include political subversion), by force if necessary, and it would not be inhibited by the Security Council veto—for, he added, "if we are to be a great power we must act as a great power not only in order to secure our own security but in order to preserve the peace of the world."62 This was immediately recognized as a significant major statement. The New York Times, voicing a common reaction, called it "a warning to Russia" and hailed "a new reorientation in America's international relations." It was widely ascribed to domestic political pressures: some regarded it as an unavoidable adjustment to Senator Vandenberg's implied attack on American policy the
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previous day, some interpreted it as a reflection of Byrnes's sensitivity to the changing political mood in Washington, and others saw in it the direct intervention of the President. There may well be an element of truth in all these explanations. We do know that Truman read and approved the speech beforehand.53 The origins and purposes of Byrnes's speech appear in clearer perspective when we examine it, as contemporary observers could not, in its relation to the forthcoming Fulton speech. For one thing, it had an obvious precautionary function. Public reaction to Fulton could not be accurately predicted. Byrnes's speech was sound insurance. If Churchill's demarche was well received, any charge of timidity or submission to British leadership could be refuted by reference to the Secretary's prior declaration of "firmness." If it was not, then "patience" and the cordialities in the February 2.8 speech could be stressed and American associations with Churchill played down. There was also a positive but neglected dimension here, for the diplomatic essence of the speech was an important threat that was in several respects a prior endorsement of Fulton. The threat was to the Soviet conception of the United Nations, and specifically to the veto. The Soviets consistently regarded the veto as fundamental and had fought for it at Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta, and San Francisco. It represented legal security against any American attempt to use the United Nations as an instrument of majoritarian (and therefore universalist) diplomacy, or any de facto Anglo-American alliance founded on the vague declarations of the organization's Charter. At the beginning of 1946 this security was suddenly threatened. On January 18 Bevin talked publicly of revising the Charter and abolishing the veto; and on January 26 Truman issued a statement declaring that the United States intended "to begin now to develop the United Nations as the representative of the world as one society." These initiatives, prompted by Soviet actions at the London Security Council meeting, induced a strong Soviet reaction. First, Gromyko, a Soviet delegate, began lobbying for a stronger not weaker veto and warned of "grave consequences" if the great powers did not support the institution. Second, the Soviets vetoed the apparently unexceptional American resolution simply recording the voluntary withdrawal of British and French troops from Syria and Lebanon. This seemed capricious and provocative. Actually it reflected Soviet insecurity. On February 28 Byrnes moved to exploit these anxieties further.54 He did this by an unnoticed thread of reasoning that, much more than the generalities and virile rhetoric that captured public attention, reflects the committed reorientation of American policy away from the Rooseveltian vision of Yalta and toward confrontation with Soviet power. Byrnes began by turning the tables on the Soviets, elevating the voluntary action of Britain and France, who had responded to the Soviet veto in London by announcing that they
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would withdraw from the Levant states anyway, into a precedent creating a "moral obligation" to obey the Charter, whether the veto was used or not. He stated, This indicates that the mere legal veto by one of the permanent members of the Council does not, in fact, relieve any state, large or small, of its moral obligation to act in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter. Having escaped in one sentence the constraints of "the mere legal veto," whose precise definition had absorbed Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and many others during 1944-45, Byrnes then took another giant step by raising the "moral obligation" with which he had replaced it to the status of a higher law, which the United States would enforce: We have covenanted not to use force except in the defense of law as embodied in the purposes and principles of the Charter. We intend to live up to that covenant. But as a great power and as a permanent member of the Security Council we have a responsibility to use our influence to see that other powers live up to their covenant. And that responsibility we also intend to meet. Much of the menace here lies in the speaker's loose definition of "law," especially its association with the generalizations rather than the precise constraints of the Charter. He equates "law" not with the articles arduously hammered out with the Soviets but with "the purposes and principles" of the Charter, which, being vague and universal, were more susceptible to autonomous definition. Byrnes, a former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, thus substituted unilaterally defined moral norms (American in origin) for more legal restraints (international in origin) as the basis for United Nations action. It will immediately be seen that we are again in the presence of the technique employed after the Yalta conference, when the specific agreement on Poland was subordinated by the Truman administration to the vaguer, moral generalities of the Declaration on Liberated Europe. Byrnes now began to hit his stride. Having already casually subordinated legal to moral obligations, he now gave the latter that strict legal construction he had denied the former, isolating the ban on "aggression" and giving it an extended definition precise enough to threaten contemporary Soviet policy: We do intend to act to prevent aggression, making it clear at the same time that we will not use force for any other purpose. . . . The Charter forbids aggression and we cannot allow aggression to be accomplished by coercion or pressure or by subterfuges such as political infiltrations.
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Here, a year in advance of the Truman Doctrine, Byrnes threatened forceful American resistance to Communist takeovers by overt or covert means. He made this even more explicit: We will not and we cannot stand aloof if force or the threat of force is used contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter. We have no right to hold our troops in the territories of other sovereign states without their approval or consent freely given. We must not unduly prolong the making of peace and continue to impose our troops upon small and impoverished states. . . . We must not conduct a war of nerves to achieve strategic ends. Finally, and this is very important in relation to Fulton, the United States will not have to act alone in enforcing the Charter: The present power relationships of the great states preclude fhe domination of the world by any one of them. Those power relationships cannot be substantially altered by the unilateral action of any one great state without profoundly disturbing the whole structure of the United Nations. Therefore if we are going to do our part to maintain peace in the world, we must maintain our power to do so, and we must make it clear that we will stand united with other great states in defense of the Charter. This must have suggested to the Russians not only an attempt to convert the United Nations into the militant instrument of a new American diplomacy, and a call for the maintenance and revival of American military power, but also the embryo of an Anglo-American alliance to counter Soviet power. Since Byrnes already knew the substance of what Churchill was going to say at Fulton, this was surely the most supportive stage setting possible without risking charges of truckling to British interests. Seen from this point of view, the Byrnes speech emerges both as the declaration of a new, firmer policy and as part of an ultimatum, which the Fulton speech would amplify and complete, warning Stalin to abandon unilateral action and cooperate with the Western powers or face Western "force," the dimensions of which \vere spelled out more dramatically by Churchill five days later. Clearly, then, we are looking at a rapidly developing and systematic American reorientation: Eastern Europe, the Northern Tier, and the United Nations. To these we must now add, this time in a defensive mode, a stronger effort to bolster Western Europe. This emerges with Byrnes's increased solicitude for Italy. On February 21 he instructed American officials to consult with their British and French colleagues, but not the Russians, with a view to preserving German assets in Italy for the Italian government's sole disposition—a move that had political as well as economic ramifications, for it affected the
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reparations prospects of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Albania, On February 28 he notified the Soviets, who opposed the notion, that the Italians had a right to be consulted over the peace treaty negotiations, and he declared the American intention to honor the obligation unilaterally if necessary.55 There was a fifth front, of rather different character. It comprised a number of American actions that seem, at first sight, to be persisting manifestations of accommodation (perhaps explaining why the systematically militant character of the American reorientation has gone so long unnoticed) but that appear, on closer examination, to constitute a grand though unacknowledged exercise in political ground clearing. Byrnes's subtle conversion of the United Nations is an obvious case in point. Another was the March 4 declaration against Franco, recording American disapproval but foreclosing any use of force to depose the Spanish dictator. Here it was a matter of making the minimum gesture necessary to satisfy American opinion while denying the Russians the real prize they had long demanded.56 The February 21 offer of a $i billion credit was ostensibly conciliatory. But Byrnes subverted it by attaching several of the Colmer committee's unacceptable conditions. These included, as we saw earlier, the opening up of Eastern Europe to American commerce and complementary measures to assist the people of the region to solve their problems "by democratic means." A leading historian of the issue has written, with reference to the previous policy of deferral, "The State Department documents do not show clearly why at this moment Washington reversed its policy." The answer seems to be that it was part of the general reorientation. Byrnes, unable to satisfy Congress and the Soviets, had earlier shelved the Russian request. But now, fundamental policy having changed, he brought it out in Representative Colmer's form. He knew it would be unacceptable, because as recently as January 23 Stalin had told Harriman, with reference to Colmer and his associates, "The Soviet government was prepared to enter into negotiations, but not on the conditions put forward by the Congressmen who had visited Moscow. Some of these conditions were offensive and could not be even accepted for discussion. If these conditions were precluded the Soviet government was ready to enter into negotiations." The February 21 initiative is properly seen, therefore, as an offensive rather than as a conciliatory move. Byrnes seized the opportunity to get rid of an embarrassing quasi-commitment in a way that might, by provoking a Soviet refusal, educate the American public and pay a propaganda bonus.57 Much the same shrewd rationalizing impulse was now at work in atomic energy policy. In late December, Byrnes had regarded Soviet acceptance of international control under the United Nations as his greatest achievement at the Moscow conference. In January he traveled to the United Nations conference in London with his "primary concern" the establishment of the new United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). By mid-February, however, we find Halifax noting that, on the atomic issue, the Americans
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were "increasingly embarrassed by their obligation to UNO." Byrnes himself was suddenly so careless of Soviet reactions that he contemplated publication of the new atomic agreement with Britain and Canada with which Halifax was now tempting Bevin. And this was shortly followed by Truman's ostentatious applause when Churchill launched a savage attack on internationalization at Fulton on March j.58 But the most significant sign of change was the decision in late February to appoint Bernard Baruch, on Byrnes's recommendation, United States delegate to the UNAEC. The announcement of this appointment in mid-March shocked the diplomats and scientists of the "Acheson-Lilienthal" group who had been planning the American proposals. As David Lilienthal, the scientist most closely involved, observed: "We need a man who is young, vigorous, not vain, and whom the Russians would feel isn't out simply to put them in a hole, not really caring about international cooperation. Baruch has none of these qualifications." But that seems to have been precisely the point, for this appointment, so incongruous in terms of the old accommodationist policy, was entirely logical in the context of the advancing reorientation. It is likely, therefore, that it was designed not simply, as historians have generally assumed, to placate a skeptical Congress so that international control in some necessarily modified form could then go forward, but rather to scrap it altogether. Churchill, the most forceful protagonist of Western monopoly, seems to have seen this, for he wrote to Attlee on March 19, Baruch's appointment "is of the utmost importance and it is in my opinion an effective assurance that these matters will be handled in a way friendly to us." Churchill's influence with Baruch; and also a foreshadowing of his performance as UNAEC delegate, may be seen in a speech the latter made seven days after their February 17 meeting in Miami urging, "Don't let us be the first to disarm! Don't let us scuttle and run militarily, economically or spiritually! . . . We must be strong." Baruch could be relied upon to produce a plan that, like the Colmer conditions in the economic sphere, would seem reasonable to Americans but prove completely unacceptable to the Russians, thus permitting Truman and Byrnes to withdraw from an embarrassing commitment to the general applause of an increasingly anti-Soviet public. The fact that this is exactly what happened adds a degree of plausibility to the argument that all this was intentional. It is true that the vain and far from perspicacious Baruch was unaware of any such calculations. But that does not invalidate this interpretation of his appointment. And it is strengthened by the wide discretion he was given and the vigor with which Truman and Byrnes insisted that he, and not the Acheson-Lilienthal group, would be responsible for the American proposals.59 Baruch certainly played his part well. He introduced in June a plan that preserved the American monopoly during the vital transition period. Meanwhile, Truman continued to make his own attitude clear by authorizing atomic test explosions during the United Nations deliberations. Pravda seized the op-
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portunity to point out that this "fundamentally undermined the belief in the seriousness of American talk about atomic disarmament." After months of bitter debate a predictable Russian dissent on enforcement procedures led to the plan's demise.60 It is fascinating to see this concerted reappearance, in a carefully veiled arid modified form, of the majoritarian, economic, and atomic coercive strategies briefly employed by the Truman administration after Roosevelt's death in the spring of 1945. Then, without the underpinning of a coherent general policy against the Soviet Union, these short ad hoc campaigns had failed to make any significant impact upon the Russians. But now, in the space of a few days at the end of February, they were suddenly revived, sharpened, and put to work within the much more cohesive and supportive framework of a fundamental reorientation that was rapidly creating new points of American political confrontation with the Soviet Union. The loose majoritarianism of the San Francisco United Nations conference now returned in the more pointed form of an attack on the veto; the unprofitable three-pronged economic coercion of April 1945 now came back in the leaner shape of an unacceptable loan offer from which at least some propaganda benefit was expected; and the flight from internationalization in atomic energy must have raised in Moscow the alarming prospect of a return to the belligerent American diplomacy that had appeared briefly after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each of these revivified strategies, moreover, must have confirmed the Soviet impression of an American policy whose focus was rapidly moving away from any kind of collaboration with them and toward intimate combination with Britain. As the United Nations became less susceptible to Soviet control, it became, as Byrnes had implied on February 28, as Churchill proclaimed at Fulton on March 5, and as the Iran crisis soon amply confirmed, the logical political instrument through which the Western powers would seek to protect Britain's friends and connections around the Soviet heartland. As the administration buried the Soviet credit, it intensified, in early March, its congressional campaign for the much larger loan to Great Britain. And while the move away from internationalization of the atom did not, in the event, bring a return to the Roosevelt-Churchill Quebec agreement of fully shared Anglo-American atomic resources and expertise, first appearances argued that it might. The new policy on Franco, too, was an unmistakable American alignment with the established British policy of nonintervention in Spain.01 The initial Soviet reaction to all these ominous developments was cautious and watchful. The Russians studiously ignored, for the most part, Byrnes's mid-February diplomatic assault on their position in Eastern Europe. But the Secretary's visit to Churchill and the subsequent move to an Anglo-American phase, to the extent that it was visible, seems to have smoked them out. As late as February 23, Roberts reported to the Foreign Office from Moscow that the United States was "being handled with great care."82 In the last week of
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February, however, the BBC monitors recorded a sudden flurry of anti-American comment. This included critical references in press and radio to corporate war profiteering, harsh domestic treatment of blacks, and harassment of the Left in the United States, and to American interference in Italy, encouragement of Fascists in Germany, and support for Franco and Turkey in foreign policy. By March 13, therefore, we find a Foreign Office minute recording "the recent tendency of the Soviet press to become increasingly critical of the U.S.A." Here was some tribute to Byrnes's efforts. And already there were signs that the new hard line might produce results. From London, where Western deputies of the Council of Foreign Ministers had found the Soviets uncooperative in the preliminary peace treaty negotiations, came word on March 4 that things seemed "to be moving a bit" and a Soviet statement that it was "very important" to expedite the treaty process.63 At the same time there was an equally revealing change in Soviet attitudes toward British officials, which reflects the Kremlin's classic "splitting" technique and tactical agility. The propaganda dimension of the "war of nerves" against Britain continued unabated. But as the American militancy developed, there were significantly warmer vibrations for British diplomats on the highly sensitive social circuit in Moscow. On February 23 Roberts cited some recent and unexpectedly pleasant encounters with Molotov, Vyshinsky, and Maisky. Similarly, the Canadian charge1 d'affaires had been "pleasantly surprised" to find that, despite the atom spy scare, all his official guests had turned up at his embassy reception.64 A few days later Roberts reported a further "very cordial" discussion with Molotov. On February 28 he described a Red Army Day reception where General Antonov "was obviously out to be friendly" to the attending British military attache and had referred warmly "to the fact that we had stood alone against the Germans for so long." Meanwhile, he himself had talked with Vyshinsky, "who could not have been more friendly and showed no trace of ill-feeling in connection with his London visit." These effusions were accompanied by a substantive gesture on March i, when the Soviet government reassured Britain that, despite the obstructionism of the Sofia regime, Bulgaria would be made to honor its armistice commitment to supply needed food to Greece. Not since the Churchill-Stalin cordiality before Yalta had there been such Anglo-Soviet warmth at the official level. It lasted right up to Churchill's speech on March 5.65
TOWARD FULTON At the begining of March there was an increasing press awareness that Churchill was, in some sense, at the center of the emerging American reorientation. A New York Post columnist wrote from Washington on March i, "A stiffening American attitude towards Russia is in prospect . . . the evidence will soon be forthcoming. In Mr. Truman's conversation with Winston Churchill here and Churchill's subsequent talks in Florida with Secretary Byrnes and Ber-
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nard M. Baruch the new program began to take shape." Certainly, the Fulton part of the program now came to a head, as Churchill reappeared in Washington and Byrnes executed a cluster of American diplomatic initiatives that were clearly designed to lend his demarche conviction in Moscow. Ensconced again at the British embassy on March 2, and augmented familially by wife, son, and daughter, Churchill again had Pearson in for consultations on the speech, and he listened receptively to Halifax's suggestions that he tone down the antiSoviet theme by inserting "something showing that we recognize the propriety of Russia's desire for security on her frontiers and also her desire to be interested in all parts of the world as we were and the United States." Halifax described it as "quite a forthright declaration," which would "certainly make a bell ring here at the present moment." He had "never seen him so mellow," Halifax said, adding, "He has been completely immersed in his speech with which he is very pleased."68 Churchill's American sponsors were also pleased. Byrnes and Leahy came separately to the embassy on March 3. Byrnes, as he later acknowledged, "read the address in full." Churchill noted, "He was excited about it and did not suggest any alterations. Admiral Leahy to whom I showed it first of all was enthusiastic." Leahy himself recorded in his diary that he "could find no fault in his proposed address to the people of America, which will be of high interest also to the people of the world." Churchill then briefed Truman at the White House that afternoon. The following day the President received a r&ume of the speech from Byrnes but decided not to read it, so that if the Soviets charged the British and Americans with "ganging up" on them "he could truthfully say he had not read the speech prior to its delivery." Truman did read it as the party traveled by train to Missouri the next evening. He told Churchill that he thought it "admirable" and that "it would do nothing but good, though it would make a stir."67 On March 5, while Churchill was giving his speech in Missouri, Byrnes sent three separate geopolitical messages to Moscow. Each can be explained in terms of its own regional configuration. But the decision to send them together on that day is consistent only with the administration's firm determination to convey an impression of complete solidarity with Churchill. The first March 5 cable was a direction to Kennan to ask the Soviets to provide copies of all economic agreements they had made with the East European governments, as enjoined by the Yalta accords but never invoked by the United States until now. The era of ambiguity in United States-Soviet relations was coming to an end. At the same time Byrnes sent a critical aide-memoire to the Bulgarian representative in Washington. This was immediately characterized by the Washington Star, which noted the simultaneous initiatives in other areas, as "obviously part of a general policy." Indeed it was, as the flurry of other American complaints about Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe that, as we saw earlier, erupted at the beginning of March eloquently testifies.68
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The second March 5 initiative, the rekindling of an old front rather than the opening of a new one, was a protest to Molotov against Soviet economic demands upon China. These, it was said, were not only unwarranted by the Sino-Soviet treaty but were also a threat to American commercial interests in Manchuria. In this sphere, too, Byrnes took two associated steps on the same day to dramatize the change in policy. One was his release to the press of a number of diplomatic documents on the Manchurian issue that had been collected in preceding weeks. These tended to confirm rumors, already appearing in the Western press, that the Soviets were pursuing a policy of selective looting, destruction, and confiscation of industrial materials in Manchuria. The other was a statement claiming that General MacArthur's authority as Supreme Allied Commander in Japan extended to all areas where there were Japanese forces, including Russian-controlled Manchuria.69 Third, the United States sent a strong protest to the Soviet Union on the Iranian issue. Hitherto the problem had been Soviet interference with Iran's efforts to assert some jurisdiction in the Soviet-occupied north. Now the Russians were caught by the Anglo-Soviet treaty of 1942, which bound them to withdraw their troops within six months of the end of hostilities. This date fell on March 2. It had long been anticipated, correctly, that the Soviets would not withdraw. Byrnes now sent a note to Molotov asking for explanations, calling for immediate withdrawal, and, very much in the spirit of the new militancy, stressing that the Soviet Union had "created a situation with regard to which the Government of the United States . . . [could] not remain indifferent."70 What is significant here is that the Secretary again chose March 5 to send his protest. The purpose was clearly to link up with the other messages and especially the Fulton attack. The impressive coincidence of all these diplomatic moves did not go unnoticed. The New York Times, which picked up the Manchurian and Iranian protests but apparently missed the East European notes that worked to similar effect, editorialized, "One would have to go back far ... to find two United States' protest notes to one power on two different issues on the same day."71 Even this was not quite the end, for the Senate Banking and Currency Committee opened its hearings on the British loan on March 5. No doubt this was coincidental. But it drew from Truman and other senior administration and public notables warm endorsements, which can only have added to Soviet suspicion, Byrnes also sent one further significant and revealing message on this remarkable day. This was a cable to London sending word to Bevin of his intention to propose to Molotov a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers at Paris on April 15, somewhat in advance of the next scheduled conference. But now, by contrast with his approach to the Moscow conference, Byrnes informed Bevin before rather than after consulting Molotov, looked to the Big Five rather than to the Big Three format with which he had lured the Russians in December, and promised to drop the whole idea if Bevin
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demurred. Finally, perhaps to make it perfectly clear in Moscow that there was real substance behind all this diplomatic activity, Byrnes made the official announcement of the Missouri mission on March 6.72 Much had occurred in the three weeks since the Truman-Churchill meeting on February 10. Before that, despite rising political pressure and spasmodic presidential irritation, it is hard to find a militant note. Byrnes continued to search for accommodation with the Soviets, proclaiming its virtues with enthusiasm as late as February 4. The Rumanian recognition of February 7 was perhaps its last concrete expression. After February 10 the firmer policy developed rapidly and systematically, in Eastern and later Western Europe, then into the Anglo-Russian arena along the Northern Tier, finally toward the more familiar Far East. And these geopolitical thrusts were accompanied by the first serious attempt to convert the United Nations into a more self-serving medium for American and Anglo-American diplomacy, by the revival, in modified form, of the coercive strategies of 1945, and by a final burst of clustered diplomacy to support Churchill's dramatic speech. The clear evidence of system in all this, as well as the comprehensive scope of the general reorientation, which had in the space of about three weeks touched almost all aspects of United StatesSoviet relations, leaves the unavoidable impression of a commitment to fundamental change. It did not necessarily foreclose the possibility of settlement with the Soviets; and it was a change that still had to find convincing support in public opinion. But the Truman administration had now set its course. Finally, we can identify, within this multidimensional reorientation, the two cutting edges of the new Truman-Byrnes policy. The first was the sudden and novel American political intrusion into the Anglo-Soviet eastern Mediterranean and Near East. The second was the attempt, by an assertion of the supremacy of the Charter, to convert the United Nations into an instrument not simply of American diplomacy but inevitably, given the persistent Soviet pressure on Britain and her worldwide connections, of Anglo-American interests as well. This leads us again to Churchill, who now, with the ostensible approval and support of the United States government, defined the whole reorientation in terms of the Anglo-American alliance against Russia that American leaders had always, up to this point, vigorously repudiated.
Chapter Seven
The "Iron Curtain
The present author recalls from his school days a teacher who suddenly electrified a sleepy class with a striking idea. A true understanding of medieval European history was best gained, the teacher asserted, not through the grinding effort to master Latin in which his pupils were supposedly engaged, but rather from the prolonged individual contemplation of paintings and other artistic expressions. This notion—an early encounter with the charms of revisionism—seemed to offer an agreeably subjective alternative that, urgent inquiries quickly confirmed, left little opportunity for the accurate measurement of student diligence. It was, alas, a false dawn. The 19605 still glimmered inscrutably just below the horizon. Still, as one searches laboriously and expensively through the diplomatic undergrowth for the origins of the Cold War, the boyhood memory returns as an attractive fantasy. How pleasant it would be to lift the weary head and find, not another thousand feet of unsorted and unavoidable paper deposited in a distant archive by some superannuated statesman, but the true and instant illumination of a creative work of art! Perhaps the nearest thing to it is Winston Churchill's "iron curtain" speech, which on March 5, 1946, gave first authoritative public utterance to many of the leading political and ideological themes of the coming Cold War: a precise catalog of the Soviet actions that, to many, seemed to be bringing it about; the enduring image of a brutal, totalitarian Soviet polity, whose "expansionist tendencies" could be checked only by Anglo-American strength and will; and
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the invocation of a new Manichaean world order based on a confrontation of the two superpowers.1 The Fulton address was a brilliant exercise in political prophecy. Like some master architect, Churchill laid out, in a necessarily general but easily recognizable form, much of the future shape and character of the Cold War. He anticipated the formation of an anti-Soviet Western security system based on the Anglo-American nucleus. He outlined the role that Britain would play as a junior partner, though he missed, or refused to face, the imminent devolution of European empire that later led to new problems. He envisioned the appearance of a democratic West Germany tied to the West. He clearly foresaw the course of the arms race in atomic weapons and urged further American development to maintain the lead. He set forward many of the philosophic, geopolitical, and strategic foundations of both "containment" and "confrontationliberation," the two leading American national security doctrines of the early Cold War. He formulated a crusading Anglo-American ideology of libertarian constitutionalism embodying the central idea of freedom and embellished it with appealing images of Christian virtue opposing amoral totalitarianism. He also predicted the appearance of a postwar economic "age of plenty," a forecast vindicated, at least for the developed world, in the 19505 and 19605. And he bequeathed to posterity a rummage bag of striking political terms whose familiarity reflects his continuing relevance: the "iron curtain," which he popularized but did not invent; the nuclear "deterrent," and the Anglo-American "special relationship," which he seems to have coined; the United Nations as "a Tower of Babel"; and, perhaps most influential of all, an instant working credo for future Cold Warriors, the assessment of the Soviets that finally begat the $300 billion defense budget: "There is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness."2 It is a tribute to the quality of Churchill's mind that this remarkable forecast of the future was at the same time a very present-minded political demarche that also had deep roots in the past. At the farthest remove, for example, it was a chance to realize the two central elements in Churchill's political outlook that go back to the World War I era: his deep longing for some form of transcendent Anglo-American intimacy and his persistent hostility toward Soviet communism. Somewhat closer to the event, he must have seen himself facing a situation closely resembling the 1930$: a- menace to peace by a wound-up European totalitarian power, an escapist British government (Bevin apart), and reigning neo-isolationist tendencies in the United States associated with the accommodationist "vision" of Yalta. In this sense the Fulton speech may be viewed as a highly compressed repetition, in response to a unique opportunity, of his great prewar anti-appeasement campaign. And, most recently, it was clearly inspired by his post-Yalta perception of the Soviet threat to world security in general and to British interests in particular, and by the concurrent
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decline of his remaining faith in Stalin. At Potsdam he had pressed upon Truman his case for Anglo-American unity and military collaboration; and he had told Stalin of his anxiety over Soviet expansionism. But he had not linked the two. Now, in the more combustible context of March 1946, with Britain under Soviet pressure but with the reorientation of American policy already launched and a supportive Truman beside him, Churchill advanced publicly his provocative thesis: that Soviet expansionism was a dangerous threat to peace and that a fully militarized Anglo-American "fraternal association" was needed to resist it.
ALARMING THE AMERICANS Fulton was really two closely interrelated speeches: one a call to arms addressed to the American people on the basis of a Soviet threat, the other a multidimensional threat to the Soviet leadership that depended for its credibility partly on the success of the first and partly on Churchill's evident association with Truman and Byrnes. The speech was prepared with great care. It is remarkable, for example, that the two main points—the premise of a Soviet menace and the conclusion that an Anglo-American response was necessaryare never brought together with an open acknowledgment of cause and effect, though the relationship was manifest, but are developed along strictly parallel lines of thought and with the use of abstractions to make the desired connections. In much the same cautious way Churchill felt his way to the provocative points with dense preliminary imagery. Thus, before openly calling for an Anglo-American combination, Churchill prepared the ground with a long, Bunyanesque invocation of glowing American youth and its "awe-inspiring accountability to the future," which contrasts sharply with the invariably dark images he used to depict Soviet reality. The latter, indeed, he first approached through the somewhat Victorian abstraction "Tyranny," described as a "gaunt marauder" that "threatens the cottage home and ordinary people." Not until he was two-thirds through the speech did the cottagers of Fulton hear a direct critical reference to the Soviet Union. By that time, however, they must have grasped the point, for "Tyranny" was found in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. In these states, control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments, to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. The power of the state is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police. This is one of several passages playing up Nazi associations. In giving thanks for the temporary Western monopoly of the atomic bomb, for example, Chur-
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chill suggested that many would have slept less soundly "had the positions been reversed and some Communist or neo-Fascist state monopolized, for the time being, these dread agencies." "The fear of them alone," he went on, "might easily have been used to enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world, with consequences appalling to the human imagination." The Communists were untrustworthy and ruthless. They were also inhumane, as was shown by the mass expulsion of Germans now taking place in Eastern Europe under "the Russian-dominated Polish government," and greedy and dangerous in seeking, not war, but "the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines." But when Churchill finally came to examine the Soviet threat in detail, it was in unmistakably concrete terms. After the introductory warning "Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive or proselytizing tendencies," he started by drawing attention to alarming portents in Eastern Europe: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow. . . . The Communist parties, which were very small in all these eastern states of Europe, have been raised to preeminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Here was a precise bill of particulars to amplify the more generalized charges Byrnes had made on February 28. This malign power, moreover, was still on the move throughout the world. The next area Churchill singled out was the British sphere in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, where "Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are made upon them." He then turned to Germany, where "an attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of Left-Wing German leaders." Churchill viewed this as the prelude to possible Communist domination in Germany. He then described the vulnerability of Western Europe, where "the future of Italy hangs in the balance" and where France, similarly encumbered with a powerful Communist party, was also in danger. "The outlook is also anxious in the Far East," he continued, "and especially in Manchuria." It was not just a matter of the Red Army and formal, visible Communist
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parties, for, "in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist center." In his zeal to expose the dangers of domestic subversion, Churchill resurrected "the Communist international organization"—the Comintern—which Stalin had ostentatiously dismantled in 1943. "Except in the British Commonwealth and in this United States," he stressed, "where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization." With these charges Churchill shattered the convention, hitherto observed by virtually all Western leaders, of softening their mild public criticisms of Soviet conduct with cordial references and pious hopes of future collaboration. Even Byrnes, for all the implied menace in his February 28 speech, had emphasized common interests. This note was not wholly missing at Fulton. Churchill made a complimentary reference to Stalin, acknowledged the understandable Soviet desire for security in the west, and called for negotiations and a settlement. But he emphasized the differences between the two systems, fortifying his case with various anti-Soviet images: the mechanistic expansionism of a totalitarian Communist system also portrayed by Kennan, the primitive and greedy "Bear" of traditional Foreign Office stereotype, and the analogy with Nazi Germany suggesting a renewed threat to "Christian civilization." The identification and dramatization of the Soviet threat was only one-half of Churchill's appeal to American opinion. Meanwhile, again moving carefully behind soft introductory images, he came to "the crux" of what he had traveled to Fulton to say: Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. This is no time for generalities. . . . Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society but the continuance of the intimate relationships between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, similarity of weapons and manuals of instruction and interchange of officers and cadets at colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all naval and air-force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. This would perhaps double the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force. It would greatly expand that of the British Empire forces and it might well lead, if and as the world calms down, to important financial savings. Already we use together a large number of islands; many more will be intrusted to our joint care in the near future.
Thus, nine months after Truman and Hopkins had apparently locked it in
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the closet, the specter of an intimate anti-Soviet Anglo-American combination was again brought unambiguously forward by its most persistent champion. It was not in any sense new. It had been, as we have seen, a great if enigmatic question in United States-Soviet relations since 1943, and it is not surprising that this passage in the speech is usually given primary emphasis by Soviet historians.3 Churchill himself, during the war, had advocated Anglo-American collaboration before approving American audiences, but always on general grounds. By making the Soviet Union the explicit focus of his combination, Churchill now risked reviving the traditional American suspicion of British manipulation. He was later much criticized for exaggerating the potential appeal of AngloAmerican sentiment. There is clearly something in this. But his numerous characteristic references to "kindred systems" and possible "common citizenship" were now habitual: still deeply believed in and always eloquently expressed but, close examination suggests, not really intended to carry the weight of the Fulton thesis. The substance of his case was built instead on the more basic emotions of fear and reassurance. He carefully stimulated fear of the Soviet Union, as we have seen, but also of war itself. Indeed, the Fulton speech is dominated by the nightmare of "War," which, with "Tyranny," Churchill pronounced one of "the two gaunt marauders." He declared that he felt less confident of peace now than he had after World War I; and he filled his speech with melancholy references to, for example, "these anxious and baffling times," the "still agitated and ununited world," and "this sad and breathless moment." Any explanation of the speech, and the American response to it, needs to take into account the nervous atmosphere of the immediate postwar period. Truman himself sounded an apocalyptic note when he introduced Churchill at Fulton. "We are either headed for complete destruction," he said, "or we are facing the greatest age in history." A few days later the former Secretary of State Cordell Hull raised the possibility of "the suicide of the human race."4 And the atomic bomb, of course, lent a nightmare quality to all ordinary international anxieties. Associated with this was a widespread fear of war with the Soviet Union, as the journalism and diaries of the day amply testify. As early as the spring of 1945 the columnist Kenneth Crawford noted, "War with Russia is unthinkable, yet it is being thought about constantly. It is, in fact, America's great preoccupying fear." A year later this was no longer an exaggeration. The possibility of war was discussed across the political spectrum and at the highest level. Truman himself told Harriman in the spring of 1946, that the Iranian situation "may lead to war." In PM Max Lerner referred to "the conflict everyone says is irrepressible" and described the Russians as "a people preparing for a struggle." And in his diary the former Vice-President Henry Wallace kept a kind of gravedigger's record of the many statesmen and journalists who shared his similar anxieties.5
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In this context Churchill pursued two complementary objectives. The first was to destroy the accommodationist policies and attitudes associated with Yalta. These, he insisted, would lead directly to war, just as they had done in the 19305. Here he was able to speak with unique authority. "Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them," he insisted. "They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; ior will they be relieved by a policy of appeasement." He concluded, "Last time I saw it all coming, and cried aloud to my fellow countrymen and lo the world, but no one paid any attention." He also carefully subverted the three pillars of the vision of Yalta: Big Three cooperation, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the existing United Nations. His direct indictment of Soviet policy simply left no room for the first in the absence of some unmistakable retreat by Stalin. Roosevelt, the object of so many Churchillian tributes while alive, was now cast aside by conspicuous omission. He went completely unremarked in his friend's first postwar speech in the United States and, as a symbol of accommodationism, was now abandoned to the Left. For the United Nations, however, an integrative strategy was employed. This institution was, after all, the essential condition of American internationalism; and the object, as Byrnes and Bevin had shown, was not to destroy it but to convert it into a useful instrument of Western purpose. Churchill carefully linked up with Byrnes by asserting the importance of the Charter, citing it on three occasions as the only standard of acceptable international behavior. But he went further, stressing that the world is moved by power rather than by ideals, that the United Nations must therefore be "a force for action" and not merely "a frothing of words," and that "before we cast away the solid assurances of national armaments for self preservation, we must be certain that our temple is built not upon shifting sands or quagmires, but upon the rock." The "rock" shortly reappeared as the proposed AngloAmerican combination, which Churchill then attempted to legitimize as the necessary foundation of a functional United Nations. Then he asked, Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our overriding loyalties to the world organization? I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that organization will achieve its full stature and strength. . . . Why cannot they work together at the common task as friends and partner;.? Why cannot they share their tools and thus increase each other's working powers? Indeed they must do so or else the temple may not be built, or, being built, it may collapse, and we shall all be proved unteachable and have to go and try to learn again for a third time, in a school of war, incomparably more rigorous than that from which we have just been released. As he extirpated the Yalta heresy in this way, Churchill worked on his second objective: the Fulton thesis of peace through intimate Anglo-American
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combination. The British connection, he asserted, would help the United States set a limit to. Soviet expansion and give "an overwhelming assurance of security." This would be possible only "if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association." The British "moral" contribution lay in the inherited principles of libertarian constitutionalism, which "through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the habeas corpus, trial by jury and the English common law, find their most famous expression in the Declaration of Independence," and in the "constancy of mind, persistency of purpose and the grand simplicity of decision" that had guided both countries to victory in the war. The "material" forces were the various elements that made up the political and strategic logic of the anti-Soviet association: the substantial forces still under British command, Britain's worldwide connections, her global system of bases, her industrial expertise, and her contribution to scientific cooperation. But was this sufficient inducement? There is a hint of insecurity in Churchill's anxious word-picture magnification of the contribution that an apparently declining Britain could make. The simple descriptions "Britain" and "Great Britain" appear only once, "England" not at all. Denser and more impressive images abound. The "British Empire" is used twice, "British Commonwealth and Empire" and "British Commonwealth" appear three times each, the "English-speaking people" or slight variants six times, and "kindred" twice more. Churchill spoke confidently for all. He must have been aware that millions of Americans believed the British Empire to be in a state of incipient dissolution and were, in any case, disinclined to salvage it. Yet he could not, or at least did not, face this issue squarely. He ignored controversial imperial issues altogether, presenting the empire simply as a British system of available power against the suddenly all-dominating Soviet threat, apparently hoping that his advocacy would convert most Americans to a more realistic set of priorities. But Churchill's efforts to make the British connection more palatable in other respects confirm that he did not underestimate his difficulties with American opinion. To those who remembered British appeasement in the 19305, he gave implicit assurances that Britain would not sink back into the comfortable mediatory role that he was now asking the United States to forgo. To Wilsonian moralists he offered the demise of "the balance of power," long associated in the United States with the worst features of British diplomacy. To American nationalists in the aggressive tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Luce he implicitly offered a decisive world leadership: stressing the United States's "primacy in power," acknowledging that the Declaration of Independence was "the most famous expression" of the joint constitutional inheritance, and emphasizing British loyalty and solidarity, the distinctive virtues of the obliging junior partner. And to unilaterally inclined materialists iji the Coolidge mold he offered the "important financial savings" of shared mili-
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tary facilities, and an "age of plenty" that would bring "an expansion of material well-being beyond anything that has yet occurred in human experience," providing only that the world was stabilized on the basis of the Anglo-American association. In much the same spirit Churchill reached out to embrace the concrete issues or campaigns in contemporary American politics that, in one way or another, fortified his case. His proposal for an Anglo-American working relationship in the United Nations, building on and then substantially extending Byrnes's more restrained campaign, is an obvious example. By urging the need for renewed military strength, he doubtless hoped to give some impetus to the Truman administration's continuing attempt in Congress to extend Selective Service and install universal military training. His call for the joint sharing of "all bases," like the United Nations proposal, built on preexisting official impulses only to advance them far beyond the stage of current Anglo-American negotiations. He also expressed passionate opposition to the internationalization of the atom, challenging official policy but conforming, as he must have known, to the preferences of the President and probably to most congressional sentiment. His references to "fifth columns" and "subversion" were bound to encourage the several congressional investigations already afloat. And his various strong expressions of confidence in British vitality and his reminders of "the passionate war effort" that had caused "difficulty in restarting our industries and export trade" were doubtless intended, at least, in part, to rally support for the British loan. All these causes, in various ways, worked in favor of Churchill's case and against the Soviet interest. Many were issues he had pressed before, so that it is impossible to measure the element of calculated opportunism with any precision. But the significant point is that, whether by design or happy coincidence, he was linking up with and vigorously trying to advance, often well beyond their existing levels, virtually all the potentially supportive impulses in contemporary American politics.
THREATENING
THE SOVIETS
We must now examine Churchill's speech in its second dimension. While on the surface Churchill appealed only to Americans, in fact he also conveyed serious threats to Stalin, and perhaps to Molotov and the shadowy Politburo figures whose influence was still a matter of anxious speculation. Both these American and Soviet audiences need to be kept in mind, for, as we will see later, their distinctive reactions to Churchill's initiative set up a dynamic that, though propelled and modified by intervening causes, did much to bring them into their first serious confrontation only three weeks later. Can we be sure of Churchill's precise purpose here? On the one hand he twice called on Stalin for a settlement, declaring, "What is wanted is a settlement and the longer this is delayed the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become," and again, talking of peace, "This can only be
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achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia." On this view his threats might be seen simply as a necessary but incidental, perhaps even regrettable, condition of his American call to arms. On the other hand his unprecedentedly hostile critique and his pointed references to Soviet vulnerabilities suggest a desire to intimidate. And while his eventual success in this respect might depend on the receptivity of American opinion, his speech must have carried immediate conviction in Moscow as a definition of the new American militancy, which, especially in its increasingly AngloAmerican manifestations, must now have been Stalin's main concern. What was the nature of that definition? We can get at it best, perhaps, by adopting the perspective of a cold-eyed senior official in the Soviet Foreign Ministry. This relieves us of any need to repeat Churchill's hostile portraiture of Soviet realities and intentions, which was doubtless deeply alarming and formed the general context, so that we can concentrate analytically on the underlying power realities. And here it must have been clear in Moscow that Churchill was, in a very systematic if rhetorically veiled fashion, calling into being the basic elements of an aggressive world system that posed a fundamental threat. There was first the matter of political willpower. Churchill's speech, with the preceding Vandenberg and Byrnes addresses, signified an unwelcome move from private to public diplomacy. The Soviets had never accepted the Roosevelt line that American foreign policy was dependent upon public opinion. But, as their propaganda shows, they were acutely sensitive to any reactionary effort to turn the masses, still viewed with Leninist skepticism and mistrust, against the leading socialist state. The apparent absence of such efforts by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations had been one solid assurance of the American detachment upon which they had relied since the Potsdam conference. This phase was now apparently over, and the reactionaries were busy stoking an anti-Bolshevik crusade. To inspire it Churchill also provided a loose but subversive "ideology" of libertarian constitutionalism, emphasizing "freedom" and therefore dramatizing the central liability of Soviet communism more sharply than either Rooseveltian liberal utopianism, with its evolutionary optimistic assumptions, or European democratic socialism, with its semi-authoritarian central planning component, were able to do. This was, moreover, a dangerously proselytizing and messianic ideology devoted finally to ensuring that "the title deeds of freedom . . . should be in every cottage home" and threatening "the establishment of the conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries." This coherent and seductively simple philosophy was then given material shape in the creation of a suitable political framework. Until now the Sovietswhile substantially enlarging their own domain, consolidating their hold on Eastern Europe, and threatening other adjacent areas—had been able to lull American doubts with talk of "collaboration" and "great power unanimity"
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under the aegis of the United Nations and also, partly through their effective "splitting" technique, to frustrate or reduce to impotence such potentially dangerous countercombinations as the Polish-inspired East European "confederation" idea of 1942-43, the Western bloc, the notion of intimate Anglo-French collaboration, and the idea of a closely linked social democratic Western Europe. Even Churchill had indulged his fancy of a Danubian federation presided over by a reanimated Habsburg prince. But this was Churchill in his dreamy "vanished glories" mood. In general he regarded all such schemes as futile barriers against determined Soviet or Communist expansion. Only the United States and Britain together, he had always believed, could form the necessary response. And now suddenly, out of an almost clear western sky, as it must have seemed in Moscow, here it was: the nucleus of a vast hostile system into which the various confused fragments around the Soviet Union were to be progressively integrated. For this combination was to extend far beyond the United States and the United Kingdom. The British Empire was, of course, one component. Referring approvingly to the United States-Canadian Permanent Defense Agreement, Churchill said, "This principle should be extended to all the British Commonwealths with full reciprocity." Thus Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and all the numerous British political and strategic possessions and bases around the world were, in relation to the Soviet Union, to be welded into a kind of outer perimeter. Next came the immediate periphery of Western Europe, the British-protected Northern Tier of Greece, Turkey, and Iran, and then China in the Far East—all with "cottage homes" to be protected, all with links to the Anglo-American side, all vulnerable to Soviet attack or subversion, but all, from the Soviet viewpoint, key elements in a new encircling cordon sanitaire. Finally, there was the now very immediate threat, feared in Moscow since the conference at Dumbarton Oaks, to convert the United Nations into precisely the kind of institutional vehicle that might consolidate these elements under Anglo-American leadership for an anti Soviet crusade in the name of the libertarian constitutional ideals of the Charter. We can imagine our Soviet official ticking off these building blocks with some professional appreciation: first the idea, then the political organization. Now came the power to back them up. Here Churchill was ominously precise. The natural geopolitical advantages of an Anglo-American global system, guided by the continuing Combined Chiefs of Staff, led logically, he implied, to an effective air-sea strategic system resting on the atomic monopoly and bases around the world—including, he did not need to emphasize, many British bases in the Mediterranean and Near East, the areas where Soviet pressure was then most sharply felt. Churchill did not call explicitly for army remobilization. This kind of appeal had been futile in 1919; it would have been politically suicidal in the existing American context. On the other hand his call for "strength" was clearly designed to help bring about some substantial military
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refurbishment. But Churchill was still wedded to the air-sea conception. Less costly politically, it could also establish the basis of victory on the Eurasian landmass. During the war he had fought an ultimately unsuccessful battle with the American military chiefs on this issue. But now the advent of the atomic bomb, the increasing assertiveness of the United States Navy and Air Force chiefs, and contrasting signs that the United States Army was beginning to recede into its habitual postwar eclipse combined to revive Churchill's idee fixe about the efficacy of strategic bombing, augmented by the control of the seas, which, as he had told Eden earlier, would hold any Soviet expansion through the Straits, the Baltic, or the China Seas "hostage" to the West. Churchill did not, of course, openly threaten a nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union. But he bluntly repudiated, despite the contrasting official American commitment, any form of United Nations or other international control. It would be "wrong and imprudent," he insisted in a statement Truman was observed to applaud, to entrust "the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb" to the infant United Nations, and "criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and ununited world." Fortunately, the monopoly of knowledge and materials was in American hands rather than in those of "some Communist or neo-Fascist state," which might easily have used it to enforce totalitarian systems upon the world. However, Churchill continued, God has willed that this shall not be, and we have at least a breathing space before this peril has to be encountered, and even then, if no effort is spared, we should still possess so formidable superiority as to oppose effective deterrents upon its employment or threat of employment by others. Ultimately, when the essential brotherhood of man is truly embodied and expressed in a world organization, these powers may be confided to it. It is not likely that the Soviets saw any of this as defensive. From their perspective Churchill was formulating a carefully calculated multidimensional offensive threat: a crusading libertarian ideology to rally mass support; a vast hostile political combination working toward them from the Anglo-American nucleus in a variety of menacing institutions, including the United Nations; and a military power with air-sea superiority and the decisive world weapon. It only remained for Churchill to suggest a concrete focus for the possible use of this power against the Soviet Union to complete his aggressive world system, And this he was careful to do, in a necessarily veiled way, by drawing attention to the two areas of greatest Soviet sensitivity: Germany and Eastern Europe. In his references to Germany, Churchill conceded that the Russians needed to be secure on their western frontiers "from all renewal of German aggression." But the harsh, brutal image he drew of Soviet activities in Eastern Eu-
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rope contrasts sharply with the sympathetic references to Germany. Berlin, for example, was one of "the famous cities" and "capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe"; and World War II was an event that not Germany but "Hitler let loose upon mankind," abetted only by Western timidity. But for this, "Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today." Churchill threatened Stalin with a hostile German government in the Western zones: An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasiCommunist party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of Left-Wing German leaders. . . . If now the Soviet government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the Soviets and the western democracies. Although this seems reasonable, the implied warning given here of a rightwing German government in control of the Ruhr and most of Germany less than a year after V-E Day—a government, moreover, whose defining principle was bound to be hostility to Russia—was really a threatening gesture, however real the provocation. He was also careful to challenge the Soviets in their own sphere, making a number of general references to Eastern Europe that looked to its detachment from Soviet control at a moment of Western choosing. Thus, he declared, there was required "a new unity in Europe from which no nation should be permanently outcast." He went on, It is not our duty at this time, -when difficulties are so numerous, to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries whom we have not conquered in war, but we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man. . . . All this means that the people of any country have the right and should have the power by constitutional action, by free, unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell. . . . Here are the title deeds of freedom, which should lie in every cottage home. The first italicized phrase has rightly been placed among the origins of the policy of "liberation" later associated with the Eisenhower administration.8 It was a serious implied threat that, from a Soviet perspective, repudiated both the "spheres" arrangement Churchill had made with Stalin in October 1944 and what Moscow undoubtedly believed to be the bargain of Yalta, tacitly conceding the Soviets some degree of hegemony in eastern and south-central Europe. The second emphasis is a reproduction of the famous phrase in the Dec-
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laration on Liberated Europe and was doubtless intended to encourage the rising notions of Soviet betrayal and of the illegitimacy of their satellite governments. An important question remains. Was Churchill working, if not for war, then for a permanent break with the Soviet Union? Stalin and his associates probably thought so. Churchill had been one of the most passionate anti-Bolsheviks in Europe for two decades. The speech itself, relentlessly dualistic in character, may have seemed to invoke a reactionary threat potentially more dangerous than the one they had just defeated. This view is lent some credibility by a statement attributed to Churchill in 1948 (which caused great concern to some of his listeners), declaring to members of his old regiment, regarding the Soviets in 1945, "I might even have turned the Germans on to them."7 But this seems too extreme. Churchill's early postrevolutionary belligerence had, after all, been accompanied by a willingness to negotiate with the Bolsheviks in certain circumstances.8 His wartime conduct was obviously in this more conciliatory tradition. And, though overshadowed in the Fulton speech, his calls for a settlement there were not necessarily insincere. In this view his apparent bellicosity now was simply the minimum needed, as Churchill saw it, to rally the free world against the Soviet threat and inaugurate a policy of peace through strength. He told Harriman on March 10 that he "was very gloomy about coming to any accommodation with Russia unless and until it became clear to the Russians that they would be met with force if they continued their expansion." One can also cite his well-known remark about the Soviets to Harriman and Forrestal: "They will try every door in the house, enter all the rooms which are not locked, and when they come to one which is barred, if they are unsuccessful in breaking through it, they will withdraw. . . ."9 This view is close to the truth, but it is a little too bland. It obscures the revival of Churchill's political tenacity—what Clementine Churchill once called, in the context of 1915, her husband's preeminent possession of "the power, the imagination, the deadliness to fight Germany."10 It had formerly been, and was suddenly now again, much the same with Soviet communism. We can see this by the particularity in which Churchill confronted Stalin with the threat of an aggressive world system that in its constituent political elements would meet the Communist one at all key points and finally prevail over it. He talked of settlement and the Soviet need for security, but he offered nothing concrete and made it clear to them that they should withdraw from their occupied areas. Indeed, we know now that the speech would have been even less conciliatory but for Halifax's last-minute intervention. The likelihood is that, terribly aware of British weakness and of the tenuous basis upon which the new militancy of the Truman administration rested, Churchill did not want a settlement at this stage. It might be another Yalta or Moscow. Better to raise American consciousness first and establish a superior Anglo-Ameri-
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can political and strategic system. Then, perhaps, one could again do business with Stalin.
THE AMERICAN RESPONSE The Fulton speech inspired immediate dramatic headlines throughout the world. It was almost universally recognized as a portent of change. In Britain and Western Europe opinion divided on predictable lines: widespread approval on the right and in the center, criticism on the democratic left, bitter resentment in Communist ranks. In the Soviet Union the demarche was played down, but Pravda finally published the speech in full, and diplomats noticed signs of public anxiety in the Soviet capital itself.11 The sharpest reaction was in the United States, and it is here, and later in the reaction of the Soviet government—Churchill's two chosen targets—that we shall concentrate our analysis. There is a widespread belief among historians that, because he pressed the Anglo-American "alliance" too hard, Churchill's appeal to American opinion was essentially a failure, interesting mainly as a revelation of the changing attitudes inside the Truman administration.12 Fortunately, because the Soviet reaction took about a week to reveal itself clearly, we can test this view with a close examination of the immediate American public response, which was unaffected by concurrent external consequences. What we find is that opinion immediately crystallized into four groups, which, entirely for descriptive convenience and without any pretension to scientific precision, we will call "realist," "left-liberal," "isolationist," and "moderate." A brief survey of the first realist reaction shows a general distrust of the Soviet Union and an acceptance of the Fulton thesis that peace could be achieved only through strength and some form of Anglo-American association. The New York Times, for instance, hailed Churchill as "the towering leader" of "our whole civilization" throughout its darkest hours. It shared both his anxieties about the future and "the essence of his argument that if the western democracies headed by Anglo-American fraternity pool their strength they can reach a good understanding with Russia on all points." Once this was achieved, the newspaper continued the following day, the two great world systems could "coexist" without conflict.13 Similar sentiments were expressed in Time. Churchill's most wholehearted postwar supporter, this periodical devoted four columns to direct quotations from the speech and many more to its background and implications. It contended that Truman had prior knowledge of the speech and perceptively linked the address with the surrounding American diplomacy.14 Other supporters included conservative and business newspapers: the journal of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, which seized the chance to attack the New Deal and "the criminal decision of Yalta", the New York World Telegram,
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which emphasized that "a strong policy must be backed by military strength," and the two leading Philadelphia newspapers. Also appreciative was the more liberal Christian Science Monitor, which expressed alarm at Soviet expansion and found the Munich analogy "suggestive." Unqualified press enthusiasm was sparse in other regions of the country, though the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat found Fulton, in the latter's words, "as common sense as it is necessary."15 Several influential columnists, including W. H. Chamberlain, Mark Sullivan, and David Lawrence reacted enthusiastically, and there were political endorsements from Senators Connally of Texas and Robertson of Wyoming and from a handful of southern congressmen.16 This was formidable support, and subsequent public discussion suggests that it would have been much stronger if Churchill had concentrated more on the Soviet menace and much less on the British association, which most critics insisted upon regarding as an "alliance," despite Churchill's protest, which was technically if not morally correct, that he had not used the term and had something more profound in mind. Even his strongest supporters were alive to this. The Wall Street journal tried to pass it off by suggesting that "the wisdom of the proposed alliance could be debated later"; and the New York Times insisted, "Whether all of Mr. Churchill's proposals are acceptable to the United States or not is not the main point now." The most realistic comment came from the Christian Science Monitor: "We fear it will require drastic events to remove the political objections that will be raised to his proposal. . . ." These newspapers tried to repair the error by concentrating on the Soviet menace and redefining the Anglo-American association in terms of an organic, natural, and spontaneous relationship governed by "a common destiny," a looser version of the combination that would shortly prove to be a generally acceptable gloss on the Fulton initiative.17 On the left there was general hostility. Here, Fulton was seen not as a constructive initiative but as a dangerous threat—to Russia, to the United Nations, to peace. Press criticism came from the Daily Worker, from the Chicago Sun, which found Churchill "reactionary" and "out of date," and from the crusading leftist New York daily PM, which responded with the front-page proclamation "Churchill calls for a new anti-Russian Axis."18 Among the first to speak out against Fulton was Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, an outspoken liberal New Dealer, who accused Churchill of acting in "the Marlboro manner in support of British imperialism" and of "aligning himself with the old Chamberlain Tories who strengthened the Nazis as part of their anti-Soviet crusade."19 Senators Taylor of Idaho and Kilgore of West Virginia alleged that the proposed British alliance woould "cut the throat of UNO" and "destroy the unity of the Big Three." Pearl Buck, a Nobel Prize winner and president of the Fourth People's Congress of the East and West Association, called Fulton "a catastrophe," which was "turning our destiny a
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dangerous way," so that "we are nearer war tonight than we were last night." Henry Wallace, Secretary of Commerce, former Vice-President, and the persisting hope of the liberal Left, issued a statement declaring, "Churchill undoubtedly is not speaking either for the American people or their government or for the British people or their government."20 Behind these counterattacks a powerful left-wing front began to emerge. Eventually, this extended from the Communists on the far left, through the industrial labor organizations to the left-liberal press, the intellectual weekly magazines and the political action committees that had backed Roosevelt in 1944, and finally to senior legitimizing New Dealers like Harold Ickes and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. But in these first reactions the prevailing note was one of anxiety. Max Lerner in PM called Fulton "a savage ideological attack," the New Republic described it as "a devastating political attack," and the Nation deemed it "altogether a bad day's work."21 There was concern over Churchill's immense personal prestige with Americans generally, and that, as Max Lerner commented in PM, "President Truman has put the whole prestige of his Administration behind Churchill's words."22 Most significantly, there was also the inhibiting fact that several influential left-wing spokesmen, including Norman Thomas, Lerner, and the Nation, had themselves been critical of recent Soviet policies.23 Finally, solidarity was impaired by the knowledge that the American Federation of Labor, the Catholic hierarchy, and other influential New Deal groups were hostile to Soviet aspirations and more likely to support than repudiate the Fulton initiative. 24 Put on the defensive, uncertain of their strength, and unable to defend the Soviet Union wholeheartedly, the Left concentrated on the weak point in Churchill's argument, the Anglo-American alliance, while stressing on the positive side the values of peace, the United Nations, and the Rooseveltian vision of Yalta. Fulton had a divisive effect on isolationist sentiment. It seemed to demand a choice between an Anglophobia and a Russophobia that had both been long enjoyed without any discernible sense of inconsistency. One wing, the more traditional, deeply rooted and substantially midwestern strain, whose spokesman was the Chicago Tribune, continued to denounce both impartially. As if to prove that nothing had changed, a candidate for a Cook County judgeship began to campaign vigorously against Winston Churchill.25 Something had changed, however. The other side of American isolationism, the more volatile, urban, and opportunistic tradition represented by the Hearst and Patterson newspapers, took a different line. Here the British alliance was generally ignored, but Fulton was enthusiastically received for its advocacy of military rearmament and insights into Soviet behavior. The New York Mirror exclaimed, "Winnie said it! Churchill voiced the feeling in the ears and minds of many Americans. The shadow of Russia has fallen across the Allied victory." The San Francisco Examiner found it "a great speech" and applauded the "forthright appraisal of the political and moral character of Soviet Russia."28
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The greatest diversity appeared, as one would expect, in the "moderate" category. Here the reaction against the supposed British alliance was widespread, clear-cut, and politically irresistible. Powerful New Deal supporters like the Atlanta Constitution, which gave "a definite no," and the St. Louis PostDispatch, which found Churchill's case "not convincing," were joined by the Boston Globe, the Charlotte News, and Newsweek, which all preferred to place their faith in the Uniled Nations.27 Congressional criticism also focused on the alliance. In the brief House debate we find Savage of New York and May of Kentucky warning of a return to power politics and defending the Soviet Union. Smith of Ohio anticipated a third world war, "with the U.S. carrying the burden as it did in the last war." Ball of Minnesota thought it was all part of a deliberate buildup for the British loan. Two Californians spoke out, Patterson branding Fulton as "a bid to retrogress by lining up one group against another" and Jerry Voorhis attacking Churchill's implication that "the United States and Britain are the only civilized nations in the world."28 Several important moderate newspapers, however, hovered on the edge of assent. The New York Sun, for instance, hoped it would stimulate "a reasoned discussion of the grave issues of a peace which at times seems harder to cope with than a war." The Washington Star questioned whether Britain and the United States were prepared to make the necessary effort to sustain an alliance. The confusion of others is best illustrated by the New York Herald Tribune, which, after a guarded endorsement of Churchill on March 6, sharply reversed itself the following morning in an editorial headed "Off Target."29 Moreover, there was little disposition to question the value of some other, looser association with Britain. As one senator put it, "an unwritten alliance" already existed; and the New York Herald Tribune commented that America and the British Commonwealth would "always, because of the similarity of their ideas, institutions and interests be found basically united."30 This interpretation was little different from the organic and natural conception of the relationship advanced by the New York Times and other realists, and suggested its easy continuation once the uncomfortably specific Churchillian version was purged. Furthermore, this criticism did not obscure, though it undoubtedly masked for a few days, the most important domestic consequence of the Fulton speech: the acceleration of a widespread hostility to the Soviet Union and its recent policies. We have already seen evidence of this in realist, isolationist, and even left-wing comment, and it was prominent in moderate reaction. A representative response was that of the Salt Lake Tribune, which opposed the British alliance but, despite a record of understanding sympathy for Soviet actions in the past, concluded, "To almost every other sentiment expressed there will be agreement." Other newspapers with a similar background, among them the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and the Phoenix Republican, emphasized the menace of Soviet totalitarianism and the threat to Western
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Europe. In the Senate, Taft of Ohio and Maybank of South Carolina, leaders of northern and southern conservatism respectively, rejected the alliance but agreed that Russia was embarked on a program of "indefinite expansion." A New York Times survey of Senate opinion on March 7 found general support for Churchill's proposal to keep atomic secrets from the United Nations. And a survey by the left-wing PM on March 6 concluded, "Members of Congress generally agreed with Churchill's remarks about Russia. . . ." In this crucial sense Fulton was already a success.31 We can reasonably sum up this first reaction as follows: a widespread and understandable distortion of Churchill's overembroidered thesis, so that his premise of a Soviet threat was overshadowed by his provocative conclusion that an Anglo-American alliance was needed; a crystallization of opinion marked by strong coherent reactions in the two polar groups, the realists and left-liberals, and a more varied response among moderates and isolationists; and a struggle between the two polar groups to define the central issue with the left-liberals initially successful in stressing the preeminent dangers of the alliance (though anxious from the outset that they might be displaced) as well as a concurrent realist attempt to capture the initiative by replacing the notion of a formal alliance with a looser, more organic association, which would place the emphasis on the Soviet threat as Churchill had intended. On March 8 a sudden epidemic of public statements by Churchill, Truman, Byrnes, and Attlee cleared the way for precisely the change of focus desired by the realists. Churchill addressed the Virginia Joint Assembly at Richmond. He adopted a calm, sentimental tone, ignored the Soviet Union, and simply reaffirmed the need for Britain and the United States "to stand together . . . in defense of those causes which we hold dear."32 Truman and Byrnes, at their press conferences, bent more visibly before the wind. The President denied that he had seen an advance copy of the address, but he refused to disavow it. He saw no reason why Churchill should not say anything he wanted in this free country. He restated the American commitment to the United Nations and said he did not think the Soviet Union was going down a one-way international street. He also announced that he was recommending congressional passage of the stalled $i billion Export-Import Bank credit to the Soviet Union but did not modify the political and other conditions that, as we have seen, rendered Soviet acceptance unlikely. On the other hand, keeping the Soviets off balance on the Fulton speech, he not only refused to repudiate the "alliance" but even went on to state that the existing Anglo-American collaboration through the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington would continue until he declared the war to be officially ended. He enigmatically refused to say when this would be.33 Meanwhile, Byrnes stated that he had not been consulted on the Fulton speech and claimed that all he and Churchill had talked about at Miami was "the cottage house." Asked whether the United States "associated itself" with
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the address, he said this country "had nothing to do with it." But, like Truman, he was careful to balance this with an unusual indication that the new firmness would continue, disclosing the detail of the protest note he had sent to Moscow on March 5, protesting the illegal retention of troops in Iran.34 And on the same day he was, as we will see later, taking steps to develop a strategy designed to bring about a confrontation with the Soviet Union in the United Nations Security Council over their continued occupation of northern Iran. These official statements had a reassuring effect on the American Left. The New Re-public judged that Churchill had been "overwhelmingly rejected," and the Nation stressed that "the sober and reassuring truth is that there is a vast gulf between the Churchill and the Byrnes-Vandenberg positions." PM filled its front page with the question "Did Churchill catch Truman napping?" and concluded that he had. The newspaper's Washington correspondent claimed that sources close to Truman and Byrnes felt they "had been led down the garden path." The alliance proposal had come as "a shattering surprise" and unfortunately "represented the incredible creation of a world-wide false impression of US foreign policy." The real policy was "at complete variance with the Churchill theses."35 This renewed confidence on the left after March 8 seemed justified by the restraint with which the Soviet government first reacted to Fulton. On March 7 the event was briefly mentioned on Radio Moscow, the commentator drawing attention to some of the unfavorable reaction in the United States and Britain. On March 8 similarly brief reports and comments appeared in the Moscow newspapers. It seemed clear that the Soviet leaders were not rattled. An American correspondent reported from Moscow on March 9 there appeared "to be no intention to magnify the importance of the issue or to stir up excitement."36 The British Labour government also showed restraint, refusing to disavow Churchill explicitly but making it clear that they preferred the traditionally informal ties to a formal alliance with the United States and also that they still hoped for accommodation with tho Soviet Union. Attlee pointed out in the House of Commons that policy was expressed only by government ministers, not by private individuals.37 All these reassurances were illusory. The new consolidating policy of American firmness and strength, of which Churchill's Fulton demarche and Byrnes's developing United Nations strategy were essentially alternative executive strategies, continued as before. Byrnes was committed to it by political necessity, if not by conviction, and still worked within the limits "firmness" imposed. Yet the main source of leftist illusions was the Left's faith in Byrnes himself. He was consistently portrayed as a man of patience and goodwill surrounded by enemies in the White House, in the State Department, and in the press. I. F. Stone referred to "the savage undercover campaign against Secretary Byrnes as an appeaser" and blamed "the career clique" in the State Department. A
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sign of tension within the department came on March 12 when the strongly anti-Communist ambassador to Italy, Alexander Kirk, described in glowing terms as "a capable career diplomat" by the New York Times, resigned in disappointment over recent American foreign policy. PM correspondents singled out Admiral Leahy as Byrnes's White House antagonist and blamed him for a series of leaks that embarrassed the secretary. Time was another constant critic in the post-Fulton period, comparing Byrnes's February 28 speech (the "voice of the turtle") unfavorably with Churchill's forthright courage ("the voice of the lion"). Diverted by these attacks and judging Byrnes by his enemies rather than his actions, the liberal Left was constantly surprised and alarmed by American actions through March and April.38 The impression of calm Soviet and British detachment was also, as we shall see, completely false. Churchill's threats alarmed the Kremlin. They led, after a week of introspection, to an intense campaign of disparagement against Churchill and Britain in which Stalin himself took the lead, and to a course of belligerence over Iran that forced this issue toward the trap Byrnes was now carefully laying in the Security Council. These Soviet actions embarrassed the American left-liberals through March by tending to vindicate the Fulton thesis. They also, by seeming to justify a firm American response, prolonged wishful thinking on the left (and perhaps diverted historians too) by further obscuring the preexisting and continuing confrontational militancy of the administration. Reaction in Britain, especially in official and press circles, was also much less phlegmatic than it appeared and generally much more supportive of Churchill than the bland Labour official disclaimers indicated. And we will see through March a sophisticated British effort to encourage the new American militancy without chilling it by excessive zeal.39 These illusions on the left are understandable in view of the veiled way in which the diplomatic situation was being transformed. More surprising is the left-liberal failure to see that Truman and Byrnes, by somewhat ambivalently dissociating themselves from the formal "alliance" idea, had substantially defused it as a public issue, thereby bringing the Churchill premise—the assertion of a Soviet threat—to come unobscured to the center of the stage, where it could more easily inspire people to endorse the logical conclusion that an Anglo-American combination was necessary. It was for this reason that those realists who had immediately recognized Churchill's miscalculation on the British connection and who had promptly tried to retrieve the mistake by advocating a concentration on "natural" ties of interest, regarded the March 8 statements not as a repudiation but as a necessary clarification. The New York Times remained confident that if the Soviet Union persisted in unilateral action, the American people would "turn eagerly to an Anglo-American alliance."40 Similarly, the Christian Science Monitor saw improving prospects for Anglo-American "teamwork" and dismissed its enemies as "narrow nationalism, clerical fascism or party-line Stalinism."41 Another disturbing feature for the
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Left, had it been more alert, would have been the increasing number of columnists, mostly from the realist school, who were already discovering plausible patterns of the administration's association with the Fulton philosophy. David Lawrence of L7.S. News, stressing Churchill's influence, traced the change from the appeasement of the London Security Council gathering; Ernest K. Lindley, in Newsweek, saw that "Fulton was the key" to a concerted administration attack on the Soviet Union; and Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor, writing on March 9, four days before the Iranian war scare, perceptively predicted that the administration was planning "a full test of Russia's inclinations" by pressing the Iran issue in the United Nations, even at the risk of Soviet withdrawal from the organization.*2 Churchill's unequivocal and harsh analysis of Soviet intentions, moreover, exposed a widespread sense that it was time for a debate on American policy toward the Soviet Union. Walter Lippmann authoritatively predicted "one of the great debates of modern times." This inevitably placed the Soviet Union (and the liberal Left) on the defensive, for, whatever the justification, the fact of Soviet expansionism was undeniable. As the New Ydrk Times pointed out, since the end of the war the Soviet Union had annexed 273,947 square miles and 24,355,500 million people, quite apart from its control of Eastern Europe. These points were driven home by the widespread publication of large-scale maps inevitably emphasizing the awesome geographical and strategic Soviet dominance over the Eurasian landmass and frequently illustrated, in the style of prewar geopolitics, with aggressive arrows or mailed fists radiating from Moscow, iron gates guarding Eastern Europe, and other symbols of aggressive totalitarianism and imperialism.43 The decline of the alliance issue after March 8 and its replacement by concern over Soviet conduct can be seen through public opinion polls. It is clear that American opinion was now rapidly hardening. A poll taken shortly after Fulton showed that, of those who had heard Churchill's speech, 40 percent were opposed to his call for an Anglo-American alliance and that only 18 percent favored it. But another poll taken by the same organization a month later showed 85 percent approving the idea.44 Between these two, a different group took a poll on March 13 that confirmed the hardening trend. Asked whether they approved of current Russian policy in world affairs, 71 percent of the respondents disapproved and only 7 percent registered approval. At the same time, 60 percent of the sample believed that American policy toward the Soviet Union was "too soft" and only 3 percent thought it "too tough."45 Shortly after the March 8 statements, L7.S. News asked fifteen people, representing influential political, military, and academic groups, whether the United States should enter Churchill's proposed alliance with Britain. Four of the five military men endorsed it, while most of the politicians and academics were against it, though four of the dissenters endorsed the "natural" Anglo-Ameri-j can relationship and association. These results seem to conform roughly to
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general reactions. All the participants agreed on the existence of a Soviet threat, and only one justified it in terms of "insecurities." Only five, one-third of the sample, showed any faith at all in the United Nations as an alternative to Anglo-American cooperation, and if we add the five who supported Fulton without qualification to the four who accepted the value of a "natural" British connection, we get some idea of the hardening sentiment in these influential quarters. As one of the political dissenters, Senator Hart, admitted, "I do think that the continued intransigence of the Russians in postwar adjustment is causing a decided trend towards Mr. Churchill's point of view."48 With this trend came an increasing degree of polarization. On March 8 Charles Eaton, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and a new adherent of the realist school, now spoke out stressing the need for both countries to face "the common menace of Russian policy," and he concluded, "For our own safety we cannot permit Russia to weaken and finally destroy Britain as a world power." On the other side left-liberals were encouraged by the adherence of American Slavic Congress leaders and the former Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes.47 Yet they continued to be misled by their faith in Byrnes, in the Hullian United Nations, and in Churchill's "alliance" as an enduring focus for the mobilization of dissent, and they remained on the wrong foot after March 8 and especially after the Iran "war scare" and Stalin's attack on Churchill on March 13. At the same time Churchill's critics completely ignored disturbing signs in the American press that must have been noted with great concern in Moscow: the fact that Truman's announcement that the Combined Chiefs of Staff would continue passed without significant criticism; the absence of any counterattack on Churchill by moderate press or political opinion in the name of Roosevelt, whose omission from the speech also passed unnoticed: the failure of anyone to pick Churchill up for twice invoking as a threat the supposedly dead Comintern; and, perhaps most alarming of all, the almost complete absence of any vigorous defense, except on the Communist left, of Soviet policy in general, left-liberals preferring to think positively by supporting the Yalta vision of a peace-bringing United Nations, which, they failed to see, was already slipping away from them. And in the country at large there were signs that the center was beginning to give way. In domestic affairs the rash of strikes and anti-Communist agitations at home encouraged people to link the Soviet Union with their local problems. Arguments over demobilization and the draft raised similar issues. Even the commitment to peace was no longer an all-sufficient attitude, for there were increasing doubts about the ability of the United Nations, the symbol of "Peace," to guarantee it. And what if peace depended not simply on goodwill but also on rearmament and strength, as Churchill had suggested? The point is that once American opinion began to examine Churchill's thesis in the manner he intended, as a premise that there was a Soviet menace
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leading to the conclusion that an Anglo-American combination was needed, instead of concentrating on the historically provocative conclusion alone, it rapidly gained adherents. And this process was well advanced, thanks largely to the clarifying statements of March 8, before Soviet actions in Iran or Stalin's personal attack on Churchill. Moreover, we need not rely on statements, newspapers, and polls alone to substantiate the point. We can get some measure of his success, while acknowledging that here many other factors were involved, by showing the increased vitality through March of certain causes Churchill personally pressed in the speech. One was the administration's campaign for a renewed military. In midMarch, Byrnes, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, and the military chiefs appeared before a number of closed congressional committee hearings pressing their case. In a March 16 speech Byrnes justified a draft extension and urged, in unmistakably Churchillian terms, the institution "at once" of universal military training. "Weakness invites aggression, weakness causes others to act as they would not act, if they thought that our words were backed by strength."48 Vigorous support for this policy of "strength" came from influential public figures and columnists, including the Senate Majority Leader Connally, the former ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, Walter Lippmann, Arthur Krock, and Drew Pearson. There was virtually monolithic endorsement from the realist and isolationist press and much also from moderate newspapers like the New York Herald Tribune. Much of the supportive comment cited Churchill approvingly.49 The same post-Fulton hardening can be seen in atomic energy policy. Churchill's passionate attack on international control was one token of this. Another sign was the March 19 official appointment of Bernard Baruch as United States delegate to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, which we have already characterized as a significant indication of the reorientation of general policy. Yet another was the administration's persistence through most of March, despite rising criticism on the left, in authorizing the United States Navy's active preparations for further atomic bomb tests in the Pacific, all consistent with Churchill's advocacy.50 Churchill's general thesis, and particularly his references to Communist "subversion" and "fifth columns," must have encouraged the anti-Red campaign that flared up sharply in early March. On March 6, Chairman Rankin of the House Un-American Activities Committee, claimed publicly that James Roosevelt, the former President's son, was a Communist and announced a pending investigation of the anti-Franco refugee organization he headed.51 On March 10, Congressman Hamilton Fish, a leading former isolationist, judged the new climate sufficiently favorable to announce that he had been approached to form a new political party to fight the Communists.52 On March 14, Representative Cox expressed his hopes for a debate on Communist influences in the State Department and proclaimed, "The Reds are on the way out in Washington."53
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On the same day, Chairman May of the House Military Affairs Committee urged Byrnes to remove pro-Soviet sympathizers from the State Department Intelligence Service.54 There were also signs of increasing anti-Communist sentiment outside Congress. When Harriman addressed a meeting of the Business Advisory Council in Washington on March 20 and referred to "the commies in the CIO," he drew enthusiastic applause.55 Growing hostility to the Soviet Union during March was accompanied by a corresponding decline in anti-Fascist sentiment. Attitudes to Franco's Spain reflect both this and the polarizing process mentioned earlier. There was, after the administration foreclosed military intervention in late February, a widespread softening. The Wall Street Journal on March 6 insisted, "Other states have a right to work out their own destiny in their own way. . . ." The New York State legislature on March 3 responded favorably to a pro-Franco speech, and the orator's cry "Rather anarchy than any form of Sovietism!" reportedly "brought down the house." At the same time anti-Franco sentiment among leftliberals sharpened considerably.56 We also see growing sympathy for the hardships of the Germans, another subject Churchill had publicized. The Luce publications, and most artfully the Life articles of John Dos Passes, had long been engaged in rehabilitating the German image. The political implications were more openly stated by the Chicago Tribune, itself relatively pro-German, with the comment "Germany may be needed." This theme was constantly monitored by anxious observers on the left. 57 The prospects of the British loan also improved through March, despite some initial erosion after the address. The administration case was scrupulously based on economic grounds. But as the crisis grew, politics increasingly dominated. The main purpose was not economic, Ernest K. Lindley wrote: "It is political and strategic to help Britain to recover her strength.":i8 Soviet belligerence in Iran later in March strengthened this tendency. A student of the isstie has concluded persuasively, "In the end Congress approved the loan chiefly because the Administration said it was necessary to fight communism."59 Our survey of American opinion after March 5, and mostly before March 13, leads to a firm conclusion: that Churchill succeeded in his attempt to direct the attention of the American people to the supposed Soviet menace and that he was substantially successful in persuading most of them that it could be resisted only in some kind of close association with Britain, so long as it was not a formal alliance, a conclusion fortified rather than invalidated by the increasingly shrill hostile reactions on the left. And this occurred notwithstanding the sharp initial setback that has etched itself upon posterity as the conclusive judgment on this affair but that was in fact largely overcome within days in the manner described. The passage from an anti-British to an antiSoviet phase is registered in Churchill's own response. On March 6 Halifax found him "fairly content" with public reaction; on March 10 he said he was "very pleased" with it. By then public opinion was indeed coming his way,
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and this before any post-Fulton Soviet action likely to influence opinion further in his favor. Meanwhile, the brilliant "iron curtain" metaphor first publicly used to describe the Soviet threat by Dr. Goebbels a year before, was already entering the language. Max Lerner wrote on March 12, "I predict for it a great currency in America. . . . It more than hints at terrorism. It rolls up into a single image all the fears that the Soviet state has invoked since the Russian Revolution almost thirty years ago."60 All this is important in terms of the developing diplomatic crisis, to which we will now turn and which led three weeks later to the first United StatesSoviet confrontation of the Cold War. First, it told Truman, Byrnes, and other influential Americans that public opinion in the United States might well support the tougher policy that had begun covertly on February 12 but was now emerging openly in association with Churchill's initiative in the form of official statements, published protest notes, and inspired press stories. Second, we may reasonably assume, the widespread public acceptance of the Fulton thesis, together with Churchill's evidently close association with Truman and Byrnes, gave Soviet leaders a clear definition of the new American militancy. They were now likely to see it in terms of the Anglo-American combination that Churchill had long, publicly, and now apparently successfully championed and that Bevin, however covertly, would no doubt endorse.
Chapter Eight
The Making of a Showdown
Churchill's Fulton speech set up a dynamic that helped bring his two audiences—American opinion and the Soviet leadership—into their first serious confrontation only three weeks later. Even as Churchill led Americans to look more critically at Soviet conduct, his White House-sponsored initiative, together with the coincidental eruption of the Iranian crisis, induced Stalin to react in a way that could only confirm and strengthen that tendency, for it encouraged an excessively psychological and geopolitical view of the Iranian situation that persuaded the Soviets to persist in a policy of illegality, intimidation, and apparent expansionism there. It diverted Stalin's attention, though not entirely, from the more serious danger this crisis presented to the Soviet Union of an aroused American public opinion of sufficient strength to encourage Truman and Byrnes to continue and develop their as yet unconsolidated militancy long after the confrontation over Iran had passed its most tense phase. The final result, as we will see in the next three chapters, was the joining, through the medium of the United Nations, of the Anglo-Russian Cold War and the detached United States—or, to put it in terms we have used before to bring out the reality of the Grand Alliance, the coming together of the European geopolitical and the American moral-legal arenas.
STALIN REACTS Historians have often acknowledged, though without close analysis, the powerful impact of Churchill's Fulton speech on American opinion. They have
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tended to discount or even ignore its impact on the course of United StatesSoviet relations. It is, of coursp, extremely difficult to measure the impact of a speech on events or policy. But, orice again, the pervasive Americocentrism or bilateralism in Cold War historiography has distracted attention. Here the early orthodox interpreters set the tone. They assumed a mechanistic rather than an opportunistic Soviet expansionism. The Truman Doctrine was seen as the decisive and exclusive turning point. There was little room here for earlier American, much less British, initiatives. Thus, American actions in Iran and Turkey in 1946, for example, were dismissed by one historian as "merely swift reactions to immediate crises. They were not the product of an over-all American strategy." And Churchill's speech, though widely approved as a brave individual effort, was deemed ahead of its time, noteworthy as prophecy certainly, but without significant political impact.1 It was revisionists who, with their greater sensitivity to Soviet insecurities, first began to think of the Fulton speech as a causative agent in diplomatic terms. Here one finds it variously described as "the primary document" in explaining the origins of the Cold War and as the Western "Declaration of Cold War." But no searching analysis of the vital political connection has yet come from this school.2 It is only when we get to the historians of Soviet policy, or to Soviet memoirists like Khrushchev, that we find not, indeed, a sustained examination of the question but a sharper awareness of the impact of Churchill's speech upon the Soviet leadership. Khrushchev suggested that Stalin saw it as the beginning of the Cold War. Isaac Deutscher wrote, "Stalin, playing from terrible weakness, decided to bluff his way out by a show of calm, self-assurance and power." Adam Ulam, perhaps most perceptive of all, suggested that Stalin's decision to withdraw from Iran three weeks later was a direct response to Churchill's demarche. In general, seemingly, the greater the scholarly awareness of the Soviet perception, the more respect we find for the diplomatic, as opposed to the merely opinion-shaping, significance of the Fulton speech.3 In fact, the Soviets were bound to be deeply concerned over Churchill's initiative. This was partly because it created a sensation not just in the United States but throughout the world, setting up new, potentially dangerous currents of thought. In Britain, as we will see in a moment, the reaction was generally favorable, except on the left. In many places, notably in Iran and Turkey, where government leaders professed themselves encouraged, Churchill's demarche had a direct impact. Everywhere, it was acknowledged, he had simplified issues in an effective way and had polarized opinion. He thus created problems for the Soviets.4 But the real cause for alarm in Moscow lay elsewhere. From the beginning of the Grand Alliance the Soviets had feared the marriage of American power and British interests. This was entirely logical and fully understood in the West. It was only when, in the middle of 1945, they felt confident that the American preference for postwar detachment from London was genuine and
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not a pose that the Soviet leaders commenced their campaign of further expansion at British expense. This was a calculated risk, especially as the British could be relied on to try and draw the United States to their side and because British policy was directed until July 1945, and seemingly guided indirectly through Bevin afterward, by Churchill, the adversary they had most reason to respect, above all when it came to the creation of an Anglo-American front. What was particularly disturbing about the Fulton speech was that Churchill seemed to have already accomplished this Anglo-American front. If, as the conventional view long had it, Churchill's speech was a unilateral act, there was much less cause for concern. But having now traced the change in American policy to February 12, as well as the unmistakably Anglo-American character it was given later to show the Truman administration's support for the Fulton address, we are in a position to understand Stalin's shock und concern and also the character of his diplomacy during March. What he saw, after all, was that Churchill's speech urging an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviet Union was not a sudden speculative break with existing policy by an influential though unsponsored statesman but the authoritative definition of an American reorientation that was already well under way, and perhaps irreversible. But we do not have to rely on plausible inference here. There is clear evidence that the Soviet leaders believed themselves to have been the victims of a fait accompli. Stalin, meeting at the beginning of April with General Bedell Smith, the new United States ambassador, complained bitterly. Smith recalled, He expressed strong resentment over the Iron Curtain speech trade at Fulton, Missouri, by former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This speech, Stalin said, was an unfriendly act; it was an unwarranted attack upon the USSR. Such a speech, if directed against the United States, never would have been permitted in Russia. Stalin then went on to attack Churchill as the instigator of war against the Soviet Union in 1919 and again now. The ambassador thereupon asked him whether he really believed that the United States and Britain were united in an alliance to thwart Russia. Stalin replied affirmatively. He also told a new British ambassador, Sir Maurice Peterson, late in May, that Churchill had been speaking for the British government, which had not "repudiated" the Fulton speech. When Peterson tried to explain, "Stalin continued to dispute this." Peterson wrote, "When I insisted that Mr. Churchill had spoken as a private individual he said. 'There are no such private individuals in this country.'"6 Molotov also showed personal resentment when, at a private dinner with Byrnes at Paris in April, he complained, according to the American interpreter, about the unfriendly attitude of the United States in the Iranian case . . . also denounced Winston Churchill's speech at Fulton, Missouri, a few weeks
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earlier, in which the British leader had referred to the Soviet Iron Curtain. Molotov said that Churchill's call to action to contain the Soviet Union was resented by the Soviets.8 Meanwhile, as if to corroborate the intensity of these reactions, Soviet officials told British diplomats that Stalin had been shocked by the speech, had recalled the former cordon sanitaire, and "knew for a fact" that Churchill was speaking for the British government, a point that was also made by the historian who led the Soviet press attack on Churchill. In Washington, a leading Soviet diplomat, apparently "aghast," warned Davies that an Anglo-American alliance "meant the liquidation of the coalition of the three powers.."7 To these first responses we might add Khrushchev's suggestion, many years later, that Stalin saw the Fulton speech as the beginning of the Cold War: One reason for Stalin's obsession with Eastern Europe was that the Cold War had already set in. Churchill had given his famous speech in Fulton urging the imperialistic forces of the world to mobilize against the Soviet Union. Our relations with England, France, the USA, and the other countries who had cooperated with us in crushing Hitlerite Germany were, for all intents and purposes, ruined. He noted more briefly later, Ever since Churchill gave his speech in Fulton calling for the capitalist countries of the world to encircle the Soviet Union, our relations with the West had been strained.8 It is, of course, highly likely that these immediate reactions were calculated and/or officially inspired. Stalin and Molotov were undoubtedly fishing hopefully for some residual Anglophobia on the part of the Truman administration and playing upon Labour mistrust of Churchill. But it would reduce diplomacy to the level of a nursery intrigue to rely on such an explanation of the Soviet response, and to dismiss as of little or no account the direct threat that the Fulton speech, with its convincing background of prospective AngloAmerican association, presented to the fundamental interests of the Soviet Union. Certainly contemporary British and American observers tended to take Soviet alarm and resentment at face value. As a leading Foreign Office Soviet analyst suggested, "The one British quality which most disquiets the Soviet government is the ability which they attribute to us to get other countries to do our fighting for us. ... This, at all costs, is what the Soviets must prevent."9 The proof of this lies not only in political logic and individual reactions but
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also in the course of the Russian diplomatic response as it developed during the next three weeks. It was dominated throughout by Stalin himself and, in purpose, by the desire to frustrate or break down the emerging Anglo-American front. To accomplish this Stalin employed a variety of strategies and "splitting" techniques. Thus, from the beginning, and especially as it became clear that there was no broad enthusiasm in the United States for Churchill's form of alliance, all the Soviet media began to attack the speech as an exclusively British initiative. Pravda observed on March n, "Churchill convulsively grabs for the coattails of Uncle Sam," so that Britain could continue "the policy of imperialist expansion." Academics were brought up, the economist Varga warning Americans that there was no chance of Britain's repaying her loan, the historian Tarle insisting, with technical justice, that Russian friendship for the United States antedated Anglo-American unity.10 These attacks were clearly calculated to exploit the one positive factor the Soviets now saw, namely, the unwillingness of the American people to join a formal military alliance with Britain. The importance that Stalin attached to this may also be seen in the significant appearance, immediately after Fulton, of a series of conciliatory moves clearly intended to appeal to American opinion. The first to appear was the revelation, on March 10, thai: notwithstanding her refusal to ratify the Bretton Woods agreements or to reply to the invitation, representatives of the Soviet Union were to attend, as observers, the conference of the International Monetary Fund at Savannah, Georgia.11 At the same time Stalin began to appease the Truman administration in the geopolitical arena, notably in the Far East and in Western Europe. Thus, on March 10, American correspondents reported that the Soviets, were evacuating the large Manchurian industrial center of Mukden, in what promised to be the start of a general withdrawal. This came after months of reports that the Soviets were planning to stay in Manchuria, where, as in Iran, they remained entrenched after the date by which they had pledged to withdraw. One of Byrnes's protest notes of March 5, it will be recalled, had addressed this question. On March 16 came word of another troop withdrawal. After months of unsuccessful efforts by Denmark to regain possession of her Baltic island of Bornholm, the Soviets suddenly announced that they had decided to evacuate the island as soon as the Danes could take over and that they expected to be out by April i.12 Meanwhile, amid these hints of general withdrawal in contested areas, the Soviets showed their determination to remain and consolidate in two other regions. On March 7, for instance, they finally responded to Byrnes's earlier proopposition interpretation of the Moscow agreement on Bulgaria. They rejected his argument and reproached him for acting "without any attempt at preliminary coordination."13 At the same time they continued to ignore the American inquiries about their intentions in Iran, persisted in their illegal occupation
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there, and increased the pressure on the Teheran government through intimidating troop movements outside and political agitation inside the capital. An authoritative Izvestia article on March 11 drew attention to "a dangerous deadlock" on the Soviet southern frontier and declared pointedly that the Soviet Union would "proceed on her security plans regardless of opposition."14 Here, too, varying explanations can be given, at least of the Soviet withdrawals. That from Bornholm, for example, may be seen as the fulfillment of a local commitment; that from Manchuria, as an attempt to strengthen the Chinese Communists.15 But, as with the Soviet-prompted coup in Rumania after the Yalta conference, it is the timing that is significant. Stalin found it politic, in the inflamed post-Fulton atmosphere, to offer some reassurance in Western Europe, where, since the breakdown of his two-Europe understanding with Churchill a year before, rising Soviet and Communist pressures had caused increasing anxiety; and also in the Far East, where the risk of further alienating the United States was highest. In return he reaffirmed his determination to remain in Eastern Europe. And he made clear his intention to oppose any American intervention on Britain's side in the Near East, where such a development threatened not only to arrest the third phase of Soviet postwar expansionism but also to subvert the whole basis of Soviet foreign policy. The conjunction of these four interrelated Soviet gestures between March 7 and 16—one in each of the four main spheres of great-power activity—suggests a deeper purpose. They seem to have constituted an attempt to persuade the Americans (and perhaps the British too) to consider again a postwar order somewhat on the lines formulated by Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill in late 1944 and early 1945. Yet, like many of Stalin's diplomatic initiatives, including his frequent assertion of the bargain of Teheran through 1944-45, this offer went completely unremarked, its meaning unnoticed. The individual moves were recognized, of course. But each was assessed in the ad hoc, issue-by-issue, autonomous manner so characteristic of British and American diplomatic perceptions in this era. Soviet diplomacy, especially in execution, was often clumsy, in Iran fatally so. But Stalin, mixing realism, opportunism, and bluff judiciously, often presented his unseeing and unperceptive wartime allies with these logical and systematic strategies. His virtuosity, however, was scarcely noticed. The initial Soviet response to Fulton—public and diplomatic—was therefore more systematic and sophisticated than is generally recognized. There was, though, as we can see now, a fatal flaw. This was Stalin's tough, unyielding stand on Iran. Here he stubbornly refused to withdraw Soviet troops except in return for oil and other concessions. He persisted in this even after March 12, when Byrnes drew the world's attention to increased Soviet military activity in Iran and created a brief but alarming "war scare," and even as it became increasingly clear (though never certain) that Byrnes, rather than the British, was promoting the return of the Iranian case to the Security Council, where
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the danger of a direct United States-Soviet confrontation, with all that this implied, was most obvious. Why, then, did Stalin, seemingly anxious to conciliate and appease the Americans, make this dangerous qualification? One cannot exclude the possibility of some compelling domestic political reason. But this seems unlikely. So does the explanation advanced by Christopher Warner, head of the Foreign Office's Northern department, that the Russians, "once definitely embarked on a course, seem unable to modify it and crash on relentlessly, regardless of effects elsewhere." In fact, the Soviets showed considerable tactical agility during this crisis, confirming the serious view Stalin took of it. A more plausible motive was the undoubted Soviet desire to exploit the oil resources of northern Iran. Yet there seems little doubt that Stalin could have withdrawn his troops, thereby diminishing the threat of American political intrusion and avoiding a dangerous Security Council confrontation, without losing the oil. He must still have retained great if not dominant influence in Teheran; and both Britain and the United States had already clearly indicated their willingness to see Soviet oil concessions in the north.16 The best answer seems to lie in some combination of the psychological and geopolitical dimensions of international politics. As to the former, Churchill's speech, by casting a hard, searching light on Soviet policy, inevitably directed the world's attention to the Soviets' persisting illegal occupation of northern Iran, and their campaign of intimidation in Teheran (which was being stepped up just as Churchill spoke and which burst into public view a few days later) and along the Northern Tier generally. Thus, so far as Iran was concerned, Churchill's speech came, as Roberts pointed out, at "an awkward moment" for Stalin. Kennan similarly spoke later of Churchill as having finessed the Soviet leader there. Stalin must undoubtedly have felt he was being "tested." If he had withdrawn from Iran in this glare of unwanted publicity, he would have vindicated Churchill's Fulton thesis that he was susceptible only to the fact or threat of united Anglo-American action. He can hardly have wished that. Stalin, after all, was as close a student of "Munich" as any democratic statesman. Moreover, he had twice faced down belligerent American impulses in 1945— after Roosevelt's death and after Hiroshima—by standing firm. Therefore, while he insured carefully by making compensatingly conciliatory gestures elsewhere, he once again stood firm at the point of maximum vulnerability.17 But the geopolitical considerations were probably decisive. Through most of 1945, and especially since Potsdam, Stalin had been conducting a "war of nerves" for very tangible aims along the Northern Tier against Britain and her regional clients. He was not yet ready to give this up. The vital precondition of this forward policy, as we have seen, was American indifference, or at least absence. This was especially true of Iran, where Byrnes had indeed earlier gone out of his way to disclaim any direct American interest. But now, in ostentatious association with Churchill's speech, the American leaders seemed
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to be changing their policy toward this region. It must have been clear to a man like Stalin that if he withdrew his forces from Iran at this moment, American influence and power were likely to flow in to strengthen the existing British presence or, more likely, to supplant it. In either case the result would be the establishment of American air and sea power along the southern border of the Soviet Union. He must have seen himself presented with the threat perceptively forecast in late 1944 by the Canadian ambassador to Moscow, who suggested, rather prematurely, "British policy has been to bring the United States into Iran as a counter-weight to the Soviet Union," a fact that "has been resented by the Soviet government who fear the possibility of future clashes with the North American colossus if the latter become embroiled in any of the countries bordering on the Soviet Union." The subject matter of Radio Moscow's broadcasts to Britain and the United States, right up to the eve of their Security Council confrontation with the United States in late March, suggests that the Soviets continued to see British intrigue as the source of the new American militancy. Whereas their broadcasts to virtually all other countries continued to vilify Britain and British policy, those to British audiences pressed a defensive theme of conciliation and reassurance: that the Soviet Union was peaceful and concerned only with reconstruction and socioeconomic progress. American audiences, on the other hand, were regaled with a dense litany of British colonial, social, and other sins, all clearly designed to discourage further fraternization.18 Because of this preoccupying geopolitical anxiety, Stalin was apparently prepared to run the risk of public confrontation with the United States in the Security Council. In the end, because of that dependency of American policy upon public sentiment of which he had been repeatedly warned but perhaps never really understood, this turned out to be a fatal miscalculation. Yet it was not a blind policy. Stalin was aware that such a confrontation might alienate American opinion, and he worked assiduously through March to disarm American criticism. The source of his confidence seems to have been his belief that he would be able to avoid a second Security Council hearing either by effectively conciliating or facing down Truman and Byrnes or, more simply, by intimidating the Iranian government of Sultaneh el Qavam into the desired settlement over oil and Azerbaijani autonomy. This would fulfill his immediate objectives there and permit a face-saving troop withdrawal without any real loss of influence in the region. But here, too, Stalin miscalculated, for Byrnes, still perhaps a rather enigmatic figure to the Soviets, was now as much alive to the opportunities as Stalin was to the dangers presented by the Iranian imbroglio. And it was the American Secretary of State who, by assiduous encouragement of Qavam and careful stage setting at home, was able to seize and then, despite momentary reversals, hold the initiative on this issue as he guided it steadily toward a "showdown" with the Soviets in the United Nations.
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THE EMERGENCE OF BYRNES'S IRANIAN STRATEGY The initially mixed reception given to Churchill's speech briefly arrested the momentum of the Truman administration's reorientation toward the Soviet Union. The March 8 disclaimers were a token of this. But the rapid convergence thereafter of a predominantly anti-Soviet note in public comment, together with the new opportunities that Soviet actions provided in Iran, quickly revived it. Byrnes, though he had loyally supported Truman and Churchill in the Fulton strategy, was now eager to work within the presumably hospitable context of the United Nations. The prospective American championship of the integrity of a small besieged state offered him a chance to establish the new policy of "firmness," against the Soviet Union, not on the basis of AngloAmerican power politics that Churchill had suggested at Fulton but on a moral basis that the American people would recognize and support. The elements of this new and more promising strategy appeared on March 7, as news arrived in the State Department of large-scale Soviet military moves in northern Iran. The precise size of the Soviet garrison in Iran had never been known in Washington. It was assumed that there might be ES many as sixty thousand troops there. But the authorizing treaty prescribed no limit; and during the whole period between 1941 and 1946, no Anglo-American inspection was invited, and there was no supervisory control of any kind by the small detachments of Iranian army and security forces in the north. They had no access to the large Soviet bases, from which signs of aggressive intent now came. The first intimation of this was the arrival on March 6 of a cable from Robert Rossow, United States consul in Tabriz, the headquarters of Soviet forces in northern Iran and the capital of the rebel leftist regime established in late 1945. Rossow reported "exceptionally heavy Soviet troop movements" proceeding toward Teheran and also toward the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Forced to rely largely on reports from agents in the countryside because! Soviet authorities had restricted his movements, Rossow also cited reports that the Kurds in northern Iran were making military preparations to force an old claim to Turkish Kurdistan.19 Henderson prepared a large map of the area and took it to the Secretary on March 7. Byrnes familiarized himself with the map, discussed the size and direction of each thrust, and noted the threat to Turkey, Iraq, Teheran, and the southern oilfields. One of Henderson's assistants later recalled the scene: Mr. Byrnes, having gone over the telegram and verified the place names with the map, remarked that it now seemed clear the USSR was adding military invasion to political subversion in Iran and, beating one fist into the other hand, he dismissed us with the remark "Now we'll give it to them with both barrels." He told us to be ready to present it at a meeting the next morning, March 8.20 Before this next meeting could assemble, two further detailed and alarming cables arrived from Tabriz. These cited Russian preparations "for major mili-
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tary operations including troop reinforcements coming into Tabriz day and night and apparently from the Soviet frontier." The consul saw forty-six new tanks and reported that General Bagramian, a celebrated combat hero, had replaced the relatively junior and inexperienced General Glinsky as commander of Soviet forces in Azerbaijan. Rossow also reported that the new Soviet troops were equipped for combat and were not carrying normal garrison supplies. They were still believed to be moving in the three directions he had described earlier, and there were fresh reports of Kurdish movements. The consul remarked that he expected communications to be cut at any moment and concluded, "I cannot overstress the seriousness and magnitude of current Soviet troop movements here. This is no ordinary reshuffling of troops but a full-scale combat deployment."21 The State Department meeting on the morning of March 8, convening without Byrnes but attended by Acheson, Hiss, Cohen, Bohlen, Henderson, and others seems, in the notes of a contemporary account, to have deliberated cooly: We explained—the map and the telegrams—discussion telegram March 5— Soviet ignored it. Soviets ignoring all agreements. Only one conclusion— Soviets presenting Iran and world with fait accompli. How strongly U.S. reaction. No info U.K. yet—Acheson—let U.S.S.R. know we are aware of its moves but leave graceful way out if they did not want showdown. Hiss draft, and teleg. sent later that afternoon.22
Byrnes quickly grasped the opportunity that these significant events, hidden from the public until March 12, offered to American policy. In the afternoon of March 8 he acted decisively. He issued his statement dissociating the United States from the Fulton speech. This was a repudiation of any formal British alliance, but not of "firmness." Then, acting again in the coordinated manner of February 12 and March 5, he sent cables to London, Moscow, and Teheran. These three messages mark the beginning of a new, sustained American strategy designed to bring the Iranian issue into the Security Council. The first and for our purposes most interesting of the three, because it sets out Byrnes's new direction, was a message to Bevin informing him that if the Soviet government failed to make satisfactory reply to the American note protesting its retention of troops in Iran and did in fact retain them there, the United States intended "to place the matter without delay before the U.N. Security Council." Byrnes then inquired hopefully "whether the United Kingdom, as the third signatory of the Declaration Regarding Iran, desirefd] to join the US in placing the Iranian question before the Security Council." Byrnes was now anxious to collaborate with British diplomacy.23 The second note, reflecting the decision taken at the meeting that morning, notified Molotov of the reports that the United States had received of "considerable movements of Soviet combat forces and materials of war" in the areas described. It then concluded,
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The Govt. of the US. desires to learn whether the Soviet Govt., instead of withdrawing Soviet troops from Iran as urged in the Embassy's note of Mar. 6 is bringing additional forces into Iran. In case Soviet forces in Iran are being increased, this Govt. would welcome information at once regarding the purposes therefore.24 The third cable went to the United States ambassador in Teheran, Wallace Murray. It is not clear whether Byrnes's February 22 message to Qavam in Moscow had produced the desired stiffening effect. But word was received in Washington on March 6 that the Iranian Prime Minister had successfully resisted the three main Soviet demands: an oil concession, autonomy for Azerbaijan, and the continued Soviet military presence in the north (subject to possible withdrawal if the other demands were granted). He left Moscow on March 7. This cleared the way for a renewed American effort to encourage the Iranians. Byrnes's March 8 cable consequently authorized Murray to show Qavam a copy of his contemporaneous message to Bevin. Above all, the ambassador was instructed to reassure the Iranians of "the seriousness with which this Government regards the assurances given by the late President Roosevelt when he signed the Declaration Regarding Iran."25 These three letters of March 8 contain the essence of Byrnes's general diplomatic strategy during the Iranian crisis. The main object was, to bring about a successful confrontation with the Soviet Union in the Security Council (though a Soviet withdrawal under American pressure was always a satisfactory alternative). The United States was prepared to act by itself if necessary. But Byrnes preferred to act jointly with the British. This was a clear departure from his previous attitudes, and a striking affirmation of the political value now attached to that Anglo-American solidarity for which Churchill had contended at Fulton. The Secretary also wanted to forestall any Soviet charge of warmongering by having the Iranian government appear to make the complaint, by itself and unsolicited. This consideration dictated a certain restraint.28 The vital condition upon which this strategy depended was the willingness of the Iranian government, especially Qavam, to take advantage of the promised but not yet announced American support. It was not entirely clear that Qavam wanted to be saved or, if he did, whether he was prepared, in the absence of a clear American guarantee, to risk Soviet retribution by lodging a new complaint. Consequently, between March 8 and March 18, we see a sustained American effort to persuade Qavam to resist the competing Soviet political and military pressure to sign the agreement he had stubbornly refused in Moscow and instead to bring the issue back to the Security Council. It entered a vigorous phase as Qavam, after a brief rest in the Russian Caucasus, returned to Iran on March to. Murray saw him later that day, showed him a copy of the American protest note of March 5, and pressed him to protest formally to the Security Council against the illegal Soviet incursions, declaring at the same
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time that the United States intended to "parallel" Iran's actions in the Council. Qavam responded with two pointed questions. Would the United States act on its own initiative if Iran failed to do so? And what would or could the United States and Britain do if the Soviet government ignored the protests and proceeded to enforce its will? Murray could reply only with an exhortation against any "weakening or haziness" and by reminding the anxious Iranian of three positive indicators: Byrnes's February 28 speech and its "important pronouncements," Roosevelt's assurances in the Declaration Regarding Iran, and the promised support of the United States in the Security Council.27 It is not surprising to find a certain reserve and mutual lack of confidence in these discussions. The Iranian government was in a very difficult situation. At home the various political factions were badly split over land and social reform. The three great powers stirred the pot, with the Shah and some officials favoring the American influence, the British having power in army and other official circles and among right-wing politicians, the Soviet-supported Tudeh party threatening revolution or at least a coup, and the nationalists suspicious of all foreign influences.28 Most dangerous of all was the intensifying Soviet political, diplomatic, and, just outside Teheran, military pressure. Qavam apparently had every reason to fear swift Soviet retribution and had to consider whether he should risk sacrificing everything for the sake of a principle. He naturally preferred to have the United States or Britain take the decisive step. But Byrnes was determined to avoid this if possible. One consideration was the fear that Qavam would exploit a unilateral American initiative and simply use it to secure better terms from the Soviets, make his deal, and leave the United States open to the charge of disrupting Big Three harmony and endangering world peace simply to increase the oil revenues of an oligarchy of corrupt feudal chieftains. 2D Byrnes wanted the United States to appear as the champion, but not the promoter, of the small, beleaguered independent state. The United States would take the initiative if it had to but preferred to have Iran move first. This motive controlled the American diplomatic effort in Teheran until its success on March 18. Meanwhile, Byrnes raised the tempo of the escalating crisis by having the State Department announce at 8 P.M. on March 12, reports that, Additional Soviet armed forces and heavy military combat equipment have been moving southward from the direction of the Soviet frontier through Tabriz toward Teheran and toward the western border of Iran. This government has enquired of the Soviet government whether such movements have taken place and, if so, the reason therefor.30 This declaration caused a brief but dramatic "war scare." Coming only a week after the Fulton sensation, it immediately produced headlines reminiscent
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of the war. The New York Times's full-page banners read "Heavy Russian Columns Move West in Iran; Turkey or Iraq May Be Goal; U.S. Sends Note." The Chicago Tribune carried the large black full-page heading "U.S. to Reds; Explain Iran," and there was similar reaction in other newspapers. Walter Lippmann termed the situation "exceedingly serious" and warned, "All the signs indicate that there is in the making a very great crisis in the Middle East."31 The heat of the public response later led to some sharp questioning of American motives. The fact is, however, that Byrnes had no alternative but to release the news. Between March 6 and March 12,, thirty cables were received from Rossow in Tabriz, all attesting to the Soviet buildup. There was confirmation of part of it from the United States air attache in Teheran, who had seen fresh Russian tank columns within twenty miles of the capital. The Soviet Union had been given four days to explain their action, and no reply had been received. Moreover, the news was already beginning to leak out and had been disclosed in a radio broadcast by the columnist Drew Pearson on March io.32 After the announcement Byrnes was also increasingly vindicated by fresh and independent reports from various sources confirming the Soviet military buildup. These included a United Press report from Teheran on March 14 that the Soviet military establishment in Iran had increased from thirty to sixty thousand and dispatches from the New York Times correspondent in the capital describing the measures being taken for its military defense and quoting heroic "fight to the last" statements issued by the Iranian military commander. Continuing Soviet press attacks on "Iranian reactionaries" increased fears of a coup. From Cairo came reports that a full-scale Kurdish revolt was under way, while a dispatch from Ankara, where the American ambassador described the population as "jittery," cited unconfirmed reports that Bulgaria had closed its border and that Soviet troops were moving toward the Turkish border.33 Yet suspicions of State Department fabrication or exaggeration persisted. For this the British seem, improbably, to have been responsible, for United Press and other reports emanating from London on March 13 quoted "well-informed sources" (clearly the Foreign Office) as saying that the Soviet troop movements were "not now believed to be as comprehensive as originally reported from Washington." It was suggested that the new arms were destined for the Azerbaijani government and that the Soviet troops observed moving northwest were in fact returning home. Because it was recognized that British sources in this area were at least as reliable as the American, Byrnes, though he was able to satisfy himself that Rossow and his British counterpart shared the same information and views, received embarrassing criticism not only from the left but also from more friendly quarters.84 It has recently been suggested that the Foreign Office misperception was due to the frugality of the British representative in Tabriz, who insisted on sending his reports by the King's Messenger rather than by more modern means. In
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fact, however, the Foreign Office was receiving an abundant flow of information about the Soviet movements at the same time as the State Department from a variety of sources, including Teheran. The apparent explanation of this seemingly illogical foot-dragging, confirmed by an internal inquiry set up by Bevin, is that the Foreign Office Information Service, in briefing the journalists, had responded not to the restrained March 12, State Department announcement but to the sensational embellishments of it that appeared in the New York press the next day.35 Yet the American impression of British halfheartedness was accurate. To understand this we must return briefly to the perspective of a British political establishment still self-consciously resisting a Soviet Cold War seemingly directed against themselves. Churchill's speech pleased most Britons but did not arouse universal enthusiasm. Most of the British press, led by the Manchester Guardian and the many Conservative-supporting London dailies, was unreservedly approving. Tory and, more discreetly, most official opinion seems also to have been supportive. On the left, however, there was a storm of criticism, especially from Labour backbenchers and the left-wing press. The Tribune editorial headline on March 8 echoed a widespread sentiment: "49th State? No Thank You, Mr. Churchill!"38 Attlee and Bevin, embarrassed, tried to sit on the fence. They refused, despite party pressure, to repudiate Churchill. They got by with a statement in the House of Commons pointing out that British policy was contained only in the statements of His Majesty's ministers. Thus, without endorsing Churchill's initiative they maintained the impression of "continuity" before the Soviets. In part, perhaps, they were reassured by a private letter from Churchill on March 7 telling them that he had been supported by Truman and Byrnes and detailing some of the forthcoming measures of American "firmness," including the dispatch of the Mediterranean task force. But Bevin was not mollified. On March n he told Waldemar Gallman, the United States charge d'affaires in London, that Churchill's speech had caused him "a lot of work," apparently a reference to backbench protest, and commented that Churchill had shown "poor judgement" and "invariably said the right thing at the wrong time." At about the same time Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton described finding Bevin "in a great state." Bevin told him that "the Russians were advancing in full force on Teheran, that 'this means war,' and that the United States was going to send a battle fleet to the Mediterranean." Dalton noted of his harassed colleague that he "seemed sometimes much less self-confident and self-sufficient than he used to be." The truth seems to be that Bevin still nursed a profound distrust of American diplomacy and especially of Byrnes's tendency to veer from unsympathetic detachment to impulsive activism of a kind that left Britain to pick up the pieces—the old American habit of "halfway" diplomacy. This helps explain why the Foreign Secretary was, at least until the Iranians launched their Security Council complaint against the Soviet Union on
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March 18, extremely cautious and restrained in support of Byrnes's new activism over Iran. This is not difficult to understand. In the period up to and beyond the United Nations session in January 1946, Bevin had carried the burden of official resistance to Soviet pressure. He had alienated not only the Soviets but also important elements in his own party. Churchill's Fulton bombshell inevitably intensified these criticisms. And now the unreliable Byrnes, who had humiliated him in December 1945, was stirring up the delicate Iranian business, from which he might well retreat suddenly, leaving Britain, which had fundamental interests at stake, facing increased Soviet pressure and an exacerbated problem. Had he foreseen the eventual outcome of the Iran crisis, which was an enhanced Anglo-American solidarity and a high degree of American commitment to "firmness," Bevin would doubtless have been more supportive. But the Foreign Secretary was still hoping for a settlement there with the Russians. He now persuaded himself that the primary Soviet object was not unlimited expansion but oil. Acutely conscious of the precarious British hold in the south, he was perfectly willing to make oil concessions to the Russians in north Iran if they were granted by the Teheran government without duress.87 Meanwhile, the "war scare" subsided almost as quickly as it had arisen. On March 15, much to the general relief, there were signs that both the Soviet Union and the United States were anxious to avoid any further escalation in the tension. The exposure of their military gestures in Iran, after the American statement of March 12, embarrassed the Soviet government, which, stung by the publicity, accepted a check in its effort to frighten the politicians in Teheran and issued a statement through Tass denying that its troops were moving toward Teheran or Turkey. Truman, in his press conference on March 14, was also conciliatory and calm. Opening with a firm statement that there was no rift, and never had been, between Byrnes and himself, the President declined to comment on Stalin's attack on Churchill and avoided hard questioning on the Iran issue by saying that he had not seen any official reports on Soviet actions (in itself an indication that the United States was now eager to play down the military aspect of the crisis), but a State Department spokesman voiced the basic American concern that, instead of withdrawing its troops by March 2, the Soviet government was actually reinforcing them. He stressed that no reply had yet been received to the American inquiry on this matter.38
FROM PRIVATE TO PUBLIC DIPLOMACY The war scare of March 12, and 13 marks a transition in the character of the now rapidly developing crisis. Now, for the first time, public anxiety in the United States, already aroused and partially shaped by Winston Churchill, was clearly focused on a precise problem—the Soviet threat to Iran, and perhaps to the Middle East. It was also increasingly directed toward a precise solution— the adjudication of the matter in the Security Council. Public diplomacy began
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ON CURTAIN
to predominate over private. And, despite Stalin's efforts, American opinion now clearly saw the Soviet Union rather than Britain as the leading troublemaker.39 In what Time later called "one of the bitterest peacetime attacks by one statesman on another," Stalin, in a Pravda interview that appeared in American newspapers on March 13, accused Churchill of sounding "a call to war with the Soviet Union." He reminded the world that "this firebrand" had "raised the alarm and organized the 1918-20 Allied intervention in Russia." He compared Churchill to Hitler and accused him of "race theories" and a desire for Anglo-Saxon domination. Fulton, he stated, was "a dangerous act" designed to sow discord and impede collaboration among the wartime allies. He defended Soviet policy in Eastern Europe. Russia, having lost seven million dead in the last war, needed security there. Moreover, there was more democracy in that region than in Britain, and if these countries were now led by Communists it was because they had shown themselves "trustworthy, fearless, self-sacrificing fighters for liberty."40 Like Churchill at Fulton, Stalin doubtless had a domestic as well as an international audience in mind. A Foreign Office Soviet specialist, Thomas Brimelow, pointed out that Churchill had become popular in Russia during the war despite the persistent anti-British undercurrent of Soviet propaganda: Mr. Churchill was therefore able to retain his position in the hearts of the Russian people in spite of the fact that he was the arch interventionist, the self-avowed enemy of Communism, and the Englishman with the greatest capacity of rallying other nations round the British flag. And when peace came, and it became possible to attack the British Government directly, Mr. Churchill was already in opposition. At the time when he made his Fulton speech, his words were therefore still those of a man who carried weight in the Soviet Union; and if the confidence of the Soviet public in the foreign policy of its leaders was not to be undermined, Mr. Churchill's reputation had to be destroyed. It is a tribute to Mr. Churchill's standing in the U.S.S.R. that M. Stalin himself had to be called in to do the job. The Foreign Office conclusion was that Stalin had performed this task effectively. He had also turned Churchill's speech to some advantage, as the Soviet media did through March and afterward, by using it to justify his election warning of the dangers of "capitalist encirclement" and his call for an enhanced armaments program.41 As an appeal to American opinion, however, Stalin's effort misfired, for it coincided with the startling revelations of apparent Soviet military belligerence in Iran. The contradiction was obvious. Here was Stalin alleging British "domination" and "new slavery" at the very moment his armies seemed poised to invade Turkey, Iraq, and the rest of Iran. The New York Times neatly empha-
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sized the paradox in two more large headlines on March 14: "Stalin Says Churchill Stirs War and Flouts Anglo-Russian Pact"; "Soviet Tanks Approach Teheran."42 The effect of Stalin's initiative, therefore, was to polarize rather than convince world opinion. This tendency was increased by Byrnes, who, while trying to line up a strong anti-Soviet political front for the forthcoming Security Council session, was also working behind the scenes to shape a supportive American opinion. This new public diplomacy began with the Secretary's vigorous effort to ensure world radio and press coverage for his February 28 speech. It continued now in the publication of diplomatic notes, in speeches, and through inspired articles in the press.43 An early example of this tendency is a statement issued by the former Secretary of State Cordell Hull on March u. Urging Americans to show patience and understanding toward the Soviet Union but warning the Russian leaders not to try American patience too far, Hull reaffirmed his faith in the United Nations. The following day, Senator Connally reported to the Senate on the United Nations meeting in London. Though "an outstanding success," it had been marred by evidence of "nationalism, power politics, sectionalism and pressure group activities." With the Soviets clearly in mind, he added, "Those who want peace must not commit acts that tend to provoke war." Connally also called for a stronger American defense to resist "any aggressor who may threaten our security . . . or plan for world conquest," and specifically for an "adequate" army and a "superlative air force."44 Two points can be made here. One is the contrast between Vandenberg's speech on February 27 and Connally's two weeks later. The former, which in retrospect seems rather mild, was interpreted everywhere as an attack on the Soviet Union, while Connally, speaking two weeks later in a tone at least as critical, was given a standing ovation, was hailed as a peacemaker, and even had his speech reported in the Soviet press. This reflects the heightened tension the Fulton speech and Soviet actions in Iran had produced in the meantime. The second is the clear suggestion of Byrnes's influence. Hull and Byrnes were personally close, and copies of the former's statement were made available at the State Department. Connally, ostentatiously praised the Secretary's performance at London (contradicting Vandenberg in this respect) and announced that he had discussed his speech with him beforehand. The central United Nations emphasis in each statement and the reaffirmations of faith in it were now central to Byrnes's strategy.45 A March 13 memorandum by Bohlen gives us a glimpse into the Secretary's thinking. It endorsed Kennan's February 22 analysis of Soviet conduct, affirmed that the United States was confronted with "an expanding totalitarian state," and acknowledged the possibility of coexistence, providing neither state attempted "to extend the area of its system by aggressive and ultimately forecable [sic] means at the expense of the other." Meanwhile, American military em-
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ciency should be improved. Until Soviet expansionism reached areas where it could be effectively balanced by existing Western military power, "the Charter of the United Nations afford [ed] the best and most unassailable platform on which the United States [could] base its policy in opposition to this physical expansion." Association with this "positive program" was needed to persuade the world that the non-Soviet system was preferable to Communism. Byrnes's new approach, then, had two focal points: the United Nations and public mobilization.46 We can clearly see Byrnes's hand at work in the American press. On March 15 Joseph and Stewart Alsop, syndicated columnists with well-known State Department connections, published a column defending Byrnes's earlier record and predicting that when the Security Council met on March 25, the United States would join Britain in demanding "a final showdown" with Russia on the Iranian and Manchurian questions. It is now assumed in the State Department, they claimed, that the desired change in Russian policy "can only be accomplished by the most violent kind of crisis, which will convince the Russian leaders that the rest of the world means business. It is further assumed that the present crisis will put the theory to the test." Similarly, on March 22, Cyrus Sulzberger, another well-connected journalist, reported in the New York Times that American diplomats in Germany were suggesting that the Iranian crisis was being "deliberately seized upon" and that "a campaign" was being worked up to take advantage of it. A leading columnist of the ScrippsHoward newspaper chain, William Philip Sims, similarly wrote an article on March 15 entitled "Time for a Showdown."47 The "showdown" talk also appeared in the lead headline of the New York Times on March 15, "U.S. Plans U.N.O. Showdown on Iran." Here two other columnists with close State Department ties, Arthur Krock and James Reston, had on the preceding day published articles discussing, for the first time, a vital argument in Byrnes's February 28 speech that they and seemingly everyone else had overlooked. This was the Secretary's warning that the United States and other nations would take united action in defense of the purposes and principles of the Charter, despite a veto in the Security Council, and justifying itself by the Anglo-French precedent at London and by Article 51. Krock, praising the administration for facing the future with "realism," now discussed this as a practical possibility and speculated that inaction because of the veto might kill the United Nations.48 Reston was more specific, noting that the Iranian question had "aroused interest in the fundamental question here of the obligation of the United States in defense of the principles and purposes of the United Nations' Charter." He then described a hypothetical case in which the Security Council favored sanctions against the Soviet Union in the Iranian controversy, but the Soviet delegate used the veto. According to Reston, there was "general agreement
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among the experts," whom he did not identify, that in such a case, "there would be a moral obligation on the United States to support any combined action by other principals against the USSR." Byrnes's February 28 speech was cited as the source of this option, which was "being discussed in the State Department."49 Byrnes's influence is also seen in Winston Churchill's speech in response to a welcome dinner given by New York City on March 15 and attended by Governer Dewey and other diplomatic and local notables. Churchill had said very little in public since Fulton. But he had continued to press his thesis behind the scenes, stressing in appropriate places the "continuity" of Bcitish policy under Bevin and urging a strong American resistance to Soviet expansionism. Returning to Washington after the speech, he told the new ambassador to Moscow, Bedell Smith, "Mark my words—in a year or two years, many of the very people who are now denouncing me will say, 'How right Churchill was.' " He then talked to Forrestal, who informed him that the proposed naval task force would not, after all, accompany the Missouri to Istanbul. Churchill, acutely disappointed, remarked that "a gesture of power not fully implemented was almost less effective than no gesture at all. He said that to make the gesture effective the entire task force should sail into the Sea of Mamara." He also visited the State Department and talked with Byrnes, who in all likelihood sought his cooperation in helping to prepare American opinion for the expected Security Council confrontation over Iran.60 Since Churchill had scarcely spoken publicly since Stalin's personal attack on him, his New York speech was eagerly anticipated. A reply in kind was widely expected. The New York Times looked forward to the coming "Great Debate." Expectations were further stimulated by the hostile demonstrations organized by the Greater New York City CIO Council to harass him as he moved in crowded processions about the city. In addition to his new enemies on the left, Churchill's more ancient tormentors appeared in various groups, including the Irish Republican Army, the Stuyvesant Mothers Association, and the Armenian Progressive League. Given this intense provocation, the well-known spirit of its object, and the tension to which Churchill himself contributed by refusing any preview beyond hinting that the speech would be "a major contribution," it is not surprising that even his friends began to take cover. This is part of the explanation—the other, more important part being Byrnes's desire to emphasize American dissociation from the British alliance proposed at Fulton—of Under Secretary Acheson's sudden replacement as the administration's welcoming speaker by the lesser figure of a former ambassador to Britain, Jock Whitney.61 In the event, the speech was an anticlimax, at least as public entertainment. Churchill again stressed the "fraternal association" between Britain and the United States and then claimed,
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The only question of world affairs still open is whether the United States and British peoples will reach the necessary harmony of thought and action for which I pleaded at Fulton in time to prevent a new world struggle or would attain it, as in the past, in the course of that struggle.
The main point, however, was now the critical issue in Iran. Churchill took advantage of the recent Soviet belligerence to absolve his Fulton demarche from any "prompting" agency in the current crisis: In the last ten days the situation has greatly changed as the result of decisions which must have been taken some time ago. Instead of a calm discussion of broad and long-telm tendencies we now find ourselves in the presence of swiftly moving events which no one can measure at the present.
Churchill now proposed a United Nations solution. Stalin should either evacuate Iran or let the matter be "threshed out" in the United Nations. If this were done, respect should "be shown even by the greatest or the most deeply interested powers to the conclusions of the Security Council." He then went on to advocate that not just Iran but the broader regional crisis implicit in the Dardanelles controversy, the focus of Soviet pressure on Turkey, should now be dealt with by the Security Council. His last public statement as he left the United States on the Queen Mary on March 21 was along similar lines, together with a caution that it would be "dangerous" for the Security Council to delay a hearing.52 On March 16 Byrnes himself made a speech in New York to the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. He reaffirmed to this receptive audience what was now quite clear, that the United States intended no formal alliance with Britain or the Soviet Union. The Fulton strategy (though not the assumptions on which it was based) thus rejected, he emphasized that the United States sought its security now in the United Nations, but also in the revival of her military strength and especially an extension of the draft and the institution "at once" of universal military training. The Secretary described United States foreign policy in a clear line of descent from his February 2.8 speech and confirmed the Krock and Reston speculations by hinting at the consequences of Soviet refusal to accept a Security Council decision on Iran. He summarized, "The answer is simple. The United States is committed to the support of the Charter of the United Nations. Should the occasion arise our military strength will be used to support the purposes and principles of the Charter."53 Here then was an emerging, widely agreed-on basis for further action. We certainly cannot yet talk of a consensus, though the trend in support of the firmer policy is clear enough. Moreover, the impulse toward coordination of policy within the administration was already much stronger. Bohlen, so often the author of the transformed policy statements that mark Byrnes's progress from
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accommodation to confrontation, provided the appropriate policy memorandum on March 22. A revised, enlarged version of his March 13 paper, now urging military support for Britain if necessary, it circulated among leading State Department officials and was forwarded in April to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee. Byrnes meantime received a gratifying token of his rising status in the administration. On March 18 Admiral Leahy found it politic to call on him at the State Department and deny what was commonly reported in the press—that he was the leading figure in a high-level, anti-Byrnes campaign. On the same day Leahy's favorite reporter, Constantine Brown of the Washington Star, a harsh critic of Byrnes recently, published an article praising the Secretary's surprising but apparently real "determination."54 Meanwhile, the post-Fulton tendency to political polamation intensified through March. The liberal-left front, called into being by Churchill's speech, seems in hindsight to have reached its highest point of consolidation and political respectability in a show of strength at two dinners in New York on March 14. One of them was given by the ICCASP for one thousand guests. The speakers, several of them openly critical of Churchill and the general agitation against the Soviet Union, included James Roosevelt, Senator Taylor, and Fiorello La Guardia. But the key speech was given by Harold Ickes, the new chairman of the committee, who told the administration, from which he had resigned only weeks before, to "stop sniping at Russia" and called on Truman to support the Rooseveltian international policies, including that of working toward an understanding with the Soviets. The American people wanted peace with Russia. They did not wish to truckle to the Soviets, but they wanted agreements based firmly upon mutual concessions and a willingness to give and take.35 A few blocks away, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was being given a dinner by the women's joint congressional committee. Among the one thousand guests here were the former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and members of Truman's cabinet. Henry Wallace, in the course of his tribute, predicted that Mrs. Roosevelt would use all her influence as a United Nations delegate "to see that the United States mediates between the British and the Russians instead of ganging up." The guest of honor warned, "We should not have our vision clouded by thinking the English-speaking peoples, in spite of their strength, can get along without the far greater number of people who are not English-speaking." With these two functions on March 14, the old New Dealers, Ickes, Wallace, Morgenthau, and Mrs. Roosevelt, brought a vigorous leadership and a clear principle of legitimacy into the liberal-left camp. They were not yet ready to cut their ties with the administration, but they were in fact presenting Truman and Byrnes with the increasingly clear choice between "patience" and "firmness." Yet even here there was genuine concern about Soviet policy. Wallace, Churchill's leading American critic, speaking again a few days later, stressed that America would gain nothing "by beating the torn-
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toms against Russia" but also insisted, "Russia can't ride roughshod over eastern Europe and get away with it."36 British observations confirm the hardening trend in American opinion. Halifax's long cables traced, through March, the increasing influence of Churchill's thesis of a dangerous Soviet threat, and rapidly growing support for the United Nations approach through which, he noted, the "principle of open diplomacy so dear to American hearts is seen to be in active operation." By March 30, to leap ahead for a moment, he was reporting, "It is now commonly felt that the Soviet Union rather than the UNO is on trial." Meanwhile, Foreign Office analysts wrote variously that American opinion was now "much less escapist" and was "in an entirely new phase" and that one could "be well satisfied with the all-round advance now registered in the sense of responsibility felt by American public opinion." The British missed one development: the extent to which the administration, especially Byrnes, was shaping the American public support needed to sustain the new firmness. The source of this British misperception is easily traced. It was the persisting suspicion of Byrnes, still deeply felt by Bevin himself and indulged freely in the Foreign Office minutes. Meanwhile, Byrnes continued unsuccessfully to seek full British support for the looming confrontation with the Soviets, an event that would in its consequences do more than anything else to create the Anglo-American solidarity that could alone free Britain from Moscow's increasingly malign attentions.67 The American scenario for the forthcoming Security Council confrontation was now taking a clear shape. There remained, however, the vital question whether Iran could be persuaded to add conclusive legitimacy to the American approach by making the protest itself. On March 13 it began to appear that Qavam had conquered his earlier doubts and was ready to move. He gave Murray "his definite promise" that within two or three days he would send instructions to the Iranian ambassador in Washington to present the complaint against the Soviet Union and assured the American that he had already ordered instructions to be drafted. A discussion of various procedures ensued, and Qavam revealed his intention to try and propitiate the Soviets by notifying them that he was bound to act in this manner because of the Majlis decree and that it was not to be regarded as an unfriendly move. Murray found all this "highly satisfactory" but was careful to reemphasize the "utter importance" of Iran's speaking out for herself so long as she was able to do so.58 This was reassuring, but Murray remained cautious, for Qavam still expressed fears that Soviet troops might occupy Teheran. This was an almost universal fear in the city at the time, which also marked the beginning of the war scare in the United States. The fears seemed justified when the Soviets, apparently finding out about the proposed Iranian complaint, sent their charge d'affaires to the Prime Minister on March 14. Qavam was now told that such a step would have unfortunate results for Iran. He should at least refrain
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from taking the initiative himself and await a request from the Security Council for a report.59 Despite his apparent brave front, Qavarn's nerve was again unsettled by this new Soviet pressure, which gained added force from the proximity of Soviet troops and the Tudeh agitation in the city. He was increasingly inclined to leave it to the Security Council—which meant, in effect, the United States and/or Britain—to raise the issue. Murray reported the Iranian's doubts to Byrnes, commenting that though he still favored an immediate Iranian appeal to the Security Council, the "direct and ominous threat by the Soviet Charge [made] the immediate situation so grave that [he] hesitate[d] to say anything further to Qavam without definite word from the Department."60 But Byrnes was in no mood to compromise. Truman and Byrnes had already agreed, and they made known to the press on March 15 their intention to raise the Iranian issue themselves if necessary. But they preferred to have Iran act with the appearance of independence if possible. The American intention behind the March 15 statement, Lord Halifax was told, was "to put an escalator under the feet of Persia." The Secretary accordingly directed Murray to tell Qavam that there was "nothing in the circumstances for Iran to do but immediately to file an appeal with the Security Council." He added, "You should remind him that we have already given him assurances of our full support to such an appeal." The British now firmed up their approach to this problem, and with Bevin's agreement the two Western ambassadors, on March 17, conveyed these views to the Prime Minister, who appeared to agree and now undertook to send off the necessary instructions to Ala that same day.61 But Murray left the discussion still doubtful. A new element now was a discussion with the Soviet charge d'affaires, who had informed Qavam of the imminent arrival of a new Soviet ambassador, Ivan Sadchikov, upon whose arrival difficulties between the two countries would be removed and an approach to the Security Council rendered unnecessary. The charge had emphasized that any refusal to talk with the new ambassador would seriously worsen Irano-Soviet relations. Qavam had also drawn Murray's attention to the attacks on his government in the Soviet press and repeated his concern for definite American support. He had then flourished a New York Herald Tribune editorial pointing out the great need for reform in Iran and saying it was unthinkable for America to go to war over "the desert wastes of Iran." Murray had countered by offering to show Qavam a number of more favorable press clippings he had received from Washington and by insisting that whatever unpleasantness might result from an immediate appeal would be less than what would appear later.62 This last consideration was probably the decisive agent in the action that Qavam now took. Only a few hours before Sadchikov's scheduled arrival on March 18, he at last sent off the letter of instructions to his ambassador in
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Washington. The latter wasted no time and formally communicated the Iranian protest to the United Nations Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, that evening. The complaint cited a dispute between Iran and the Soviet Union that was likely to endanger "the maintenance of international peace and security." A brief description of the new developments since January followed, along with a reference to the various treaty infringements, especially the continuing military occupation, by the Soviet Union. The letter asked the Secretary-General to bring the matter before the Security Council as soon as possible, and it was immediately placed on the agenda for the opening session, on March 25, only a week away.63 This was a considerable success for Byrnes. He had managed to bring the promising Iranian issue before the Security Council on the best possible terms, and without any secret commitments to Iran other than the undertaking to support them in the Council. It was also a considerable setback for Stalin, who had clearly hoped to settle the issues with Iran by military and political threats. Confrontation between the two powers now loomed clearly ahead. STALIN ATTEMPTS TO AVOID CONFRONTATION Stalin and Molotov continued to pursue their strategy of avoidance, but in a more flexible way. They seized upon such opportunities as the suggestion by Senator Connally, and later by Senator Pepper, that a Big Three Conference be called. And they began to campaign among the Security Council delegates for an amendment to the Charter of the United Nations extending the veto power to cover even the discussion, and not just the disposition, of issues like Iran. At the same time, behind a firm and unyielding public front on Iran itself, they pursued two forms of orthodox diplomacy: the first an effort by Andrei Gromyko, Soviet delegate to the Security Council, to secure a postponement; the second a resumption of negotiations with Qavam in Teheran with a view to getting an agreement before the Council opening, on March 25, or within such extended time as Gromyko could obtain. Meanwhile, they stepped up the campaign of public conciliation, presumably in the hope of winning American and world support and perhaps of inducing Byrnes not to press the issue.64 On March 19 these hopes were put to their first test, as Gromyko formally asked Secretary-General Lie for a postponement of the Iran hearing until April 10, on the grounds that the negotiations the Council had ordered in January were still proceeding. This assertion drew an immediate denial from Ala, acting as the Iranian delegate, and Byrnes himself wrote to Lie, not only opposing the Soviet request but also announcing that he intended to ask the Council to place the issue first on the agenda. On March 21 President Truman publicly endorsed this stand, opposed the delay, and emphasized that the United States would press the case. This strong line was favorably received, the New York Times noting that it was an "application of the policy of 'firm-
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ness' in Russian relations." Even the Russophile New York Herald Tribune commented that to accede to Gromyko's request would be "to abdicate whatever pretensions to authority the U.N. now has." Churchill, in a final American news conference, also warned against a delay, predicting it might lead to "the creating of a Quisling regime" in Iran. Bevin cabled encouragement to Byrnes on March 21, noting that "Gromyko's game" was delay so that the Soviets "could fix things in Persia as they want." Diplomatic opinion in New York was reportedly convinced that the United States would insist on an early hearing. This proved to be true. Thus the Soviet application, which was now deferred for decision of the Council itself, had succeeded only in revealing the American determination to proceed.65 In Teheran, however, the Soviets found the going easier. They now recognized that the policy of holding their ambassador at Baku, while pursuing a strategy of military menace and political agitation, had failed. The menace and the Tudeh agitation remained, but were much subdued, as Ambassador Sadchikov arrived in Teheran on March 20 with a new Soviet proposal. After a brief expression of Stalin's resentment at Qavam's return to the Security Council, Sadchikov outlined the Soviet offer: the withdrawal ol: Soviet troops in exchange for a letter from Qavam and the Shah promising arrangements, as yet unspecified, for joint Soviet-Iranian exploitation of the northern oil.88 This offer, which they did not publicize, was clearly an important Soviet retreat from their earlier Moscow refusal to set a departure date for their troops and from their insistence upon a substantial autonomy for Azerbaijan. Qavam had already shown that he was also in a mood to compromise, by arresting the leading pro-British and anti-Tudeh politician, Seyid Zia-ed-Din. And on March 22 he told Murray that he was thinking about various oil arrangements that might be made with the Soviets without infringing the legislative prohibitions. He pointed out that notwithstanding the censure of the Security Council, there were many ways Stalin could vent his wrath against Iran. What protection could Iran expect then? Anyway, he went on, as a matter of practical politics some understanding with the Soviet Union over northern oil was long overdue and inevitable. Murray did not contest these arguments but drew attention to Truman's strong stand against postponement ia New York and warned against Soviet duplicity. Qavam assured him that he would make troop withdrawal a precondition of any settlement.87 But Qavam seemed disposed to settle, and after overnight reflection Murray, whose whole effort so far had been to encourage Qavam's resistance to Soviet pressures, endorsed the new proposal. He was partly influenced by the apparent willingness of the Shah to accept the Soviet terms in principle. On March 23 he wrote to Byrnes that he was impressed with the "fundamental importance" of securing the Soviet troop withdrawal while at the same time creating conditions under which Iran and the Soviet Union could live together amicably. Then, showing a complete misunderstanding of Byrnes's political neces-
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sities, he recommended the convenience of a settlement at this moment, when it could help restore the "extremely delicate international situation." Murray continued, From my necessarily limited vantage point here I can see little utility in winning a resounding victory over USSR in SC meeting if it either a) fails to result in evacuation of Iran o:; b) leaves Russians smarting under humiliating defeat and determined to revenge themselves on Iran. Both Qavam and Ebtehaj have pointed out that Iran has long common frontier with Russia and latter would have unlimited opportunities to make trouble . . . Ebtehaj pointed out, possibly reflecting Pri Mins. thoughts, that Iran could not keep appealing time after time to SC for protection against her powerful neighbor.
It seems that Murray was not entirely unaware of the broader dimensions of Byrnes's strategy, for his cable suggested, somewhat apologetically, that the contemplated agreement gave at least "partial victory" to the United States government and the United Nations, since he was "absolutely certain" the Russians would have forced their demands to the limit if it had not been for Byrnes's firm stand. Then, in an ironic reversal of roles, he echoed the argument Byrnes himself had pressed on everyone the preceding December and January, namely, that encouraging Iranian intransigence would make the task of the United Nations more difficult in its formative stage. Behind these changed views lay the obvious fact that the ambassador now found local considerations decisive.68 We may well imagine Byrnes's reflections upon receiving this cable in Washington the day before the formal opening of the Security Council session. The Secretary, unlike Murray, was not particularly interested in Iran per se (any more than Hopkins had been interested in Poland per se during his talks with Stalin). He consistently subordinated it to high politics. In January 1946 Iran had still been a nuisance—a threat to Big Three cooperation and, specifically, to the world organization. The United Nations was then seen as a sickly infant to be protected from the Iranian virus. A few weeks later the picture was very different. "I intend to insist on serious consideration of the Iran question," he cabled Bevin on March 2,1, adding that the future of the United Nations was at stake. The coming session, he told the Chinese delegate, would test whether the world organization could be "an effective instrumentality." The infant, after a rather abbreviated childhood, was now to prove itself by passing through the Iranian initiation rites. In January, Byrnes had feared that the United Nations might collapse if it heard this matter; by March he was saying it would die if it did not.88 American policy had changed. Byrnes now saw the Iranian issue, where Soviet clumsiness required a robust response anyway, as one he could exploit, both to establish the new firmer policy and to rehabilitate his own reputation.
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It offered an appealing opportunity to achieve various domestic as well as diplomatic objectives in a dramatic, but nonviolent, confrontation with the Soviet Union; and it had the added attraction that it could be used to convert the Security Council into an instrument of American policy and an expression of American ideals. But Byrnes's strategy, as we have seen it developing, especially in his March 8 letters to Teheran, London, Paris, and Moscow, had always depended on three conditions: the will of the Iranian government to resist Soviet pressure; the diplomatic support of Britain and France; and, implicitly, a certain willingness on the part of the Soviets through miscalculation, greed, or obstinacy to let themselves be led into the trap. By March 18 success seemed likely. The Iranian complaint had been filed; British and French support was still anticipated; the Soviet insistence on maintaining their troops in Iran suggested that they would cooperate. By March 24, however, this suddenly seemed to be a house of cards. Murray's cables showed that the Iranians were on the verge of settling with the Soviets, whereupon they would undoubtedly withdraw their complaint. Furthermore, the British and French were backing away. The French, at least, had a good alibi. Their government was an unstable coalition that included substantial Communist representation. They could hardly be expected to excoriate the Soviets. Prime Minister Felix Gouin was greatly perturbed by Byrnes's March 8 request for support, and he told his Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault, "If you go to New York now all the masks will fall to the ground and who knows what will happen to our Government." Elections were only months away, and it was unclear what role the Communists would play. Bidault told the American ambassador, "If there really is to be a showdown I will do my part, and do it openly and courageously, even though it involves, and it would involve, a rupture with the Communists here with all the consequences that might bring to France."70 The British position was also complicated. Left-wing pressure was still a factor. Bevin, as we have seen, had been cautious and unresponsive to Byrnes's earlier requests for support. He had also rejected a suggestion from Roberts on March 13 that Britain declare openly its refusal to accept a settlement made under duress. The Foreign Office had publicly cast doubt on Byrnes's declarations during the "war scare." And it was not until March 21 that Bevin replied to Byrnes's original cable. But the lodging of the Iranian complaint on March 18 brought a change. Bevin now instructed, presumably with Iran and the United States in mind, "We must now daily stiffen up our support." A Foreign Office official reported "constant meetings" on the subject. Bevin cabled Byrnes, "We have got to face this situation squarely. Any weakening or inconsistency on this fundamental Persian issue would put UNO on a slippery slope. I believe that the whole future of the United Nations is at stake." At the same time he told Roberts that the Soviets were making "a direct challenge
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to United Nations authority and must be faced squarely," and he sent off instructions to Cadogan in New York to "keep in close touch with Byrnes."71 Yet, even now, there was a marked degree of restraint. The British still hoped for a settlement in Iran. Bevin's caution can be seen in essentially pacific remarks that he made in the House of Commons on March 20 approving the recent Soviet conciliatory moves. An observant reporter noted that, over the past two weeks, roughly since the Fulton speech, Bevin had made the British lion "roar as gently as any sucking dove." Warner abetted this view by suggesting to Gallman that if the Soviets refused to participate, the Security Council should establish a commission of inquiry and disseminate the facts for world opinion—an evocation of the League of Nations' ineffective response to the Manchurian crisis of 1931. Bullard in Teheran also came up with a lastminute compromise suggestion for United Nations supervision of the allocation of Iranian oil resources. The softening British line, coinciding with the firmer stand Bevin was privately taking in his assurances to Byrnes and in Security Council instructions to Cadogan, was quickly picked up in Moscow, where the Soviets showed appreciation and a sudden cordiality to the British, just as they had done a few weeks earlier. Molotov unexpectedly received Roberts on the Iranian issue and promised an early reply on London's protest over the persisting Soviet occupation. No such gesture was extended to the Americans. There was also a discernibly softer tone toward Britain in the Soviet press.72 Worst of all, from the American viewpoint, the Foreign Secretary still refused to attend personally, on grounds of urgent business at home. In his disappointment Byrnes, his hopes of an impressive united Western front almost gone, wrote Bevin a reply on March 21 that suggests something of the investment he had in this matter: Much disturbed by your recent note. I intend to insist on serious consideration of Iran question at forthcoming meeting. . . . I will attend meeting on behalf of our Govt. I regret you do not plan to come because issue is necessarily critical and may affect whole future of United Nation. . . . I intend to insist on fina] disposition now.73 But by March 24 it must have seemed unlikely that he would get the chance, for not only were Iran, Britain, and France backing away but the Soviets now showed themselves to be more aware of the danger. Apparently on the verge of a successful compromise in Teheran, they were also making headway in their insurance campaign of conciliation. Concessions now fell from; the Soviets in abundance. On March 20 Radio Moscow followed up earlier reports of garrison reductions in Germany by announcing that six further agegroup classes of the Red Army were to be demobilized between May and September. On March 22, having evacuated Mukden, the Soviets informed the
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Chinese government that their troops would be withdrawn from Manchuria by the end of April. And on March 23 it was announced that the Allies had reached an accord on the level of German industry, a clear sign of Soviet accommodation.74 Most significant of all was a benevolent intervention by Stalin himself on March 21, in the form of written answers to questions submitted by the Associated Press. Both tone and content were very different from those expressed in his attack on Churchill a week earlier. Asserting that no nation wanted war, Stalin proclaimed his continuing faith in the United Nations, notwithstanding the machinations of "certain political groups," which were "sowing seeds of discord." Addressing the world at large, he called for steady counterpropaganda to "expose the warmongers."76 This new Soviet warmth produced a more harmonious atmosphere, one nonetheless tinged with some skepticism. For example, Paul-Henri Spaak, President of the United Nations General Assembly, the Iraqi and Indian governments, and most of the British press all welcomed Stalin's statement but stressed the need for cooperative actions. The Vatican newspaper Osservatore thawed slightly, calling Stalin's support for the United Nations "Christian," while repeating that his methods were "less Christian."78 American politicians also reacted with a mixture of approval and reserve. Senator Connally thought Stalin was renouncing "militaristic ambitions." Representative Sol Bloom prayed that he was sincere. Others who volunteered opinions included Senator Capper ("a valuable contribution to the cause of peace"), Senator Morse ("we must look to UNO settlement of Iran and other disputes"), and Representative Andrews of the House Military Affairs Committee ("a lot of words"). The New York Times, noting that the test would be events not words, reflected a widespread caution, with which was associated a growing recognition that the Iran issue transcended its local and regional importance and was a welcome test of the United Nations. Stalin's strategy of avoidance, it seems, came up against the definite mood of expectancy that Byrnes and Truman had fostered and that was perhaps best expressed by Eric Johnston, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, when he said at a dinner on March 20 that Iran was "a test of Russian word-keeping" which "might not come again" and that Iran today had "become a symbol to the American people."77 Nevertheless, despite these mixed emotions, the apparent change in Soviet attitudes was bound to receive some acknowledgment in American official action. On March 22, therefore, President Truman, further boxed in by a sudden courtesy call that Gromyko paid him in Washington, stated publicly that he knew Stalin would support the United Nations, and also announced the postponement of the forthcoming atomic bomb tests in the Pacific. In Paris the Communist L'Humcmit6 hailed this as "proof that reports of American intransigence [were] without foundation" and predicted that the scheduled
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Security Council meeting on Iran would be adjourned and "sometime later the USSR and Iran [would] be able to report the satisfactory development of their negotiations."78 There was also a calmer emotion in London, where the Labour party's Daily Herald described Stalin's tribute to the United Nations as "suggesting the thought that it might be foolish to endanger the whole future of the organization for the sake of a remote Persian province and of some oil fields which nobody else wants." This thought must indeed have influenced many, and even those who were prepared to take the risk of a Soviet withdrawal felt the moment had passed. On March 24 the New York Times published the succinct headline "UNO Tension Wanes. Council Test Fades." Byrnes seems to have agreed, for on the same day he sent off a "fully approve" cable to Murray in Teheran.79 Then, quite suddenly, the Russians changed cours" again and the crisis flared back to life. George Kennan in Moscow appears to have foreseen it. His warning is worth quoting for its insight and accurate prophecy: Both Roberts and I have impression that during last two or three days Soviet government, without yielding anything in its position on Middle East, has made efforts to ease general situation between Russia and Western Powers (withdrawal from Bjornholm, announcement of further demobilization, et cetera). We both see in this added evidence that Russians do not want complete break with UNO and Western Powers at this time but we feel that the greatest danger lies in possibility that Russians may miscalculate how far they may go without bringing this about.80
This is now what happened. The Soviets overplayed their hand. On the eve of the Security Council, having as yet received no formal reply from Qavam in response to their comparatively "liberal" March 20 proposal, they suddenly asserted a firmer line in Teheran. On March 24, only hours before the Council met, Sadchikov handed Qavam a new proposal in the form of three separate notes. The first promised troop withdrawals within six weeks, "if nothing further happened." The second proposed the formation of an Irano-Soviet company to develop the northern oil reserves, shareholding to be 51 percent Soviet, 49 percent Iranian. The third offered Soviet intercession to adjust the Azerbaijani situation. This was clearly a much harder line for Iran than the relatively simple "troops for oil" bargain offered on March 20. The troop withdrawal was now governed by a comprehensive qualifying clause and was also clearly conditional on acceptance of the other two proposals, one of which, the oil agreement, was now defined in terms that favored the Soviets, while the other, Soviet arbitrament of the Azerbaijani problem, was new and unwelcome. The separation of the three proposals was, only too obviously, a rather clumsy
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device to give a semblance of reality to the Soviet assertion that they were separate understandings and, perhaps, to allow Qavam to save face.81 Having made their decision, the Soviets acted quickly to impose it. On March 25 Tass announced, "By agreement with the Iranian government the evacuation of the remaining Soviet troops began March 24," and stated that complete withdrawal was expected within five or six weeks, "if nothing unforeseen should take place." At the same time wide publicity was given to an account of a public statement Qavam had made on March 23 that favored a delay of the hearing and took a generally pro-Soviet line. And, also on March 25, Stalin again intervened to set his own imprimatur upon this gigantic bluff. He told a United Press interviewer that an "understanding" had been reached with Iran, and made it clear that he saw no need for further United Nations action.82 How does one explain this abrupt departure from a policy that had seemed on the verge of success? We cannot be certain, for we know virtually nothing about the contacts and discussions, if any, between Sadchikov and Qavam during the period March 21-24, But one fact stands out. The Soviets had returned to Teheran on March 20 in need of a quick agreement. Their new proposal, though apparently not precise, was a substantial retreat from their Moscow position of January, and close observers like Murray had expected a settlement with which the Soviets would be able to head off the Security Council confrontation. But by March 24 Iran had not responded. Qavam seems to have been the stumbling block. He was outwardly cordial to the Soviets, imprisoning the pro-British Seyid, openly showing confidence in his pro-Soviet adviser Firouz, and generally supporting their policy in his press conference of March 23. And the Prime Minister, like his confidant Ebtehaj and the Shah, had indicated to Murray that he approved the bargain in principle. On the other hand, the Soviet troop withdrawal was still not made unconditional, Qavam was keenly aware of the United States desire to have the matter go to the Security Council, and he was also accountable to the highly nationalistic Majlis if he concluded what it had earlier expressly forbidden—an oil deal while Soviet troops remained. He was therefore dilatory in his response, and when the complaint was lodged in the Council, he must have been tempted to use it both as an escape from his dilemma and, more constructively, as a means of forcing an unconditional Soviet withdrawal and a separate oil agreement on terms favorable to Iran. By March 24 it must have been clear to the Soviets that Qavam intended to let the issue go to the Council.83 Stalin's reaction to this tactic is understandable only in terms of his general policy. As Kennan and Roberts had foreseen, he had gotten himself into a trap. Since mid-March he had responded to the Churchill-Byrnes challenges by an increasingly refined two-edged strategy designed to avoid a confrontation,
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but without showing any weakness that might vindicate Churchill's thesis. The result was a general softening around the edges of Soviet policy and ostentatious gestures of respect for Western spheres of influence, but firm resistance to the American challenge on the central and symbolic test of Iran. Yet even here there was an element of bluff, for Stalin was backing away over Iran too. This is the significance of the suddenly liberalized offer of March 20. This offer had to be made discreetly, if the appearance of strength and self-assurance was to be maintained. The Soviets undoubtedly knew that Qavam was talking to the British and American ambassadors and that the terms of their offer would leak out. This was bad enough. They would not show further weakness and anxiety by pressuring or lobbying Qavam for what they may now have considered a certain deal. When Qavam called this bluff and, by playing for time, ensured that the issue would come up in New York, Stalin could only revert to a show of force and determination in the hope that the Prime Minister would come to heel. Seen against this necessity, forced upon them by Qavam, the Soviet volteface of March 24 is more easily understood. Some kind of "agreement" was needed for Gromyko to take to the Security Council. Qavam had been uncooperative, so Stalin now produced one of his own. This change proceeded partly from necessity and partly, no doubt, from acute resentment toward Qavam and a strong feeling that the Soviet Union had an equity in northern Iran. It may have seemed a reasonable gamble, too, for it was based on two possibilities, either one of which by itself would ensure success. The first was that Qavam, perched precariously in Teheran with the Red Army forty miles away and Tudeh mobs at the door, would cave in when he saw how determined the Soviets were. Associated with this in Stalin's mind, in all probability, was a fatal contempt for the Iranian politicians, somewhat akin to Bullard's mid-March assessment that being "untruthful back-biters, undisciplined, incapable of unity, without a plan," they were "ideal Stalin-fodder." The second was that, impressed by recent Soviet accommodations in other matters and conscious of their impact on public opinion, the United States government would content itself with its "partial victory" of March 18 and accept a compromise.84 In any event, the Soviets, especially after Stalin's affirmation, were now committed to the existence of their "agreement." Still, their lack of confidence may be seen in a warning Gromyko gave Stettinius on March 25, to the effect that "he could not participate further if [the United States] pressed the Council to deal with the Iranian question before April 10." In other words, the Soviets were still seeking a postponement so that they could nail down the agreement, and were hinting that they might leave the United Nations if pressured over Iran. If there had really been an agreement, none of this would have been necessary. Gromyko had given the game away, though this was not important, for by the next morning Byrnes had already received confirmation
THE MAKING OF A SHOWDOWN
2^1
of the Soviet bluff from Teheran. Yet Gromyko opened the Security Council debate with "an official declaration on behalf of the Soviet Government." He said that negotiations between the Soviet and Iranian governments had resulted in an agreement regarding the withdrawal of Soviet troops, which would "probably end within five or six weeks unless unforeseen circumstances [arose]." He asked, therefore, that the Iranian matter be immediately dropped from the Council's agenda.86 The only question now was whether Iran or the United States would back down or, by questioning the authenticity and detail of the "agreement," press on to a confrontation. In fact, Byrnes was determined to proceed. He told Stettinius on March 25 that he was not going to "nurse" the suddenly vulnerable Soviets. On the same day, as the delegates gathered in New York, Davies wrote in his diary, "Notice is being served that the United States will stand by and support the United Nations determination, even though the Soviet withdraws. It is a showdown."86
Chapter Nine
Confrontation
We now reach the crucial moment of United States-Soviet confrontation—the "showdown" to which Byrnes's policy had been directed during nearly three weeks of intense preparation. Now, at last, the essentially geopolitical AngloRussian arena, whose primary focus had become a struggle for mastery in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, was joined to the hitherto detached American sphere through the medium of the United Nations. The precise issue was the apparent Soviet intention to dominate the life and politics of Iran, a state that, unlike the East European countries, was able to appeal to the world organization. The Truman administration began the crisis, ostensibly at least, as the champion of the wholesome moral values embodied in the United Nations Charter; it emerged from it as the apparent protector of Iran, and of much else of interest to the besieged British, against further Soviet expansionism. For the confrontation revealed that the American people would support the firmer policy, even where it might occasionally pay a dividend to British imperialism. The result was to reassure Truman and Byrnes that there was a sound basis for the rapidly evolving transformation of American policy, as it continued to move from detachment to the active political resistance to Soviet pressure that Churchill had defined and called for at Fulton three weeks earlier.
THE FIRST PHASE Stalin, it is clear in retrospect, had walked into Byrnes's trap. His strategy of avoidance, which was quite logical and sophisticated, suggests that he did so
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with some awareness of the possible outcome. Up to the last minute he appears to have believed, however, that Qavam would bend before Soviet intimidation. This was a miscalculation. He seems also to have been unaware of the degree to which Byrnes had been secretly encouraging Qavam's resistance; and he can hardly have anticipated the air of intense public excitement that the New York debut of the Security Council created in the United States. It was estimated that the event attracted nearly two hundred journalists for each delegate, a phenomenon in those days. The delegates themselves were treated as celebrities. In these circumstances the American delegation was not likely to commit any act capable of being interpreted as appeasement.1 Certain other elements began to influence the course of the crisis. It now had two focal points: New York as well as Teheran. Each took on a certain life of its own and each reflected a different dimension of the crisis. In Teheran the politics was essentially local, practical, and potentially explosive. In New York it was worldwide and self-consciously principled. In Teheran real power lay in military dispositions and in the streets. Here the Soviets with their impressive local resources enjoyed the advantage. In New York, on the other hand, power resided in Western notions of political morality and in votes at the Security Council. Here the United States was superior and could exercise better control. The extension to New York, the reward for Byrnes's success in securing the Iranian complaint of March 18, ensured that the confrontation would now take place on favorable ground. It also helps explain the rising frustration of the Soviets, as well as the diplomatic clumsiness with which they labored to detach themselves.2 At the same time the United States secured another advantage. It suited Qavam's negotiating tactics with the Soviets to use his ardently anti-Communist delegate, Ala, as a foil. Ala was thus given considerable freedom and naturally gravitated toward the Americans. Now, by contrast with his cool reception in Washington in late 1945, all doors were opened for him. Instructions were forwarded to him from Teheran in the American diplomatic pouch and rushed to New York; he retained the services of a leading Washington law firm for the case; and he maintained close and frequent contact with Byrnes, Stettinius, and the American delegation, making no significant move without prior consultations. The Americanization of Ala gave the United States a useful element of control over the hearings and ensured that there would be no surprises.3 The Security Council debate opened on March 26 with Gromyko's announcement of the supposed Soviet-Iranian agreement and of his demand that Iran's complaint be removed from the agenda. When he rose to reply, Byrnes knew perfectly well that there was no such agreement. He traversed the history of the case, emphasizing both the original interference, which had been cited in January and still continued, and the subsequent violation of the 1942 treaty. He then challenged Gromyko's assertion that there was an agreement
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and said he should have produced a joint Irano-Soviet statement affirming it. But this had not been done. The Iranian government had not withdrawn its complaint and had a right "to say whether or not there ha[d] been an agreement, to say whether or not it wishefd] to withdraw its complaints." After brief debate the removal question was voted and rejected by nine votes to two, the Soviet Union and Poland dissenting.4 This did not exhaust the Soviet procedural challenge. Gromyko then revived his earlier proposal for a postponement of the Iranian issue to April 10. A more general debate ensued in which the smaller powers participated. Egypt proposed calling on Ala, who was present and waiting his chance, to give his views on postponement, while the Australian suggested that the Security Council ask for a documentary as well as an oral presentation. But Byrnes, with support from the British delegate, Cadogan, insisted that postponement could not be countenanced if Iran was in a desperate situation and stressed that Iran, as a pledge to other small nations, should at least be heard by the Council. When the debate became heated, the delegates responded to a French proposal that a three-man committee, comprising delegates from the United States, the Soviet Union, and France, be appointed to thrash out the various proposals and present its conclusions the next day.5 Byrnes's reflections at this juncture are contained in a report he sent to Washington that evening. Earlier, as the session began, he had felt "there was a distinct possibility that Russia would withdraw from these Security Council meetings and possibly from the UN as a whole." But by the end of the day "the situation was completely in the open but apparently was not as serious as feared." The source of this confidence was not so much the tone of debate in the Council as a remark Gromyko had made to Stettinius the preceding day, that if Iran were discussed he "could not participate and could not attend." Byrnes and others interpreted this to mean that the Soviet delegation would not withdraw completely from the United Nations.8 By the next morning, March 27, the three-man committee had predictably failed to agree. The French sounded out the Americans on the chance of a private, closed session as a means of "saving Russia's face," fearing that a public Iranian refutation would force the Soviets "to more extreme action." But the Americans wanted nothing of this. The attention of the French was drawn to the adverse effect secrecy would have on American public opinion and also on the Soviets, who would take it as proof "that they could with complete impunity continue the present tactics which involve certain use of threats."7 The denouement quickly followed. There was a two-hour debate, during which the delegates solemnly repeated their points of the preceding day. Byrnes struck a rather apocalyptic note, which stood out. He insisted that all confidence in the Security Council would disappear if Ala was not heard on the postponement issue, and he concluded that the United Nations would "die in its infancy of inefficiency and ineffectiveness." When the vote was taken, it
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was again nine to two against the Soviet Union. Gromyko stood up and made a brief statement, pointing out that he had made it clear that for reasons he had expressed, he could not participate further in the meeting. He then gathered his papers and, with his advisers behind him, dramatically stalked out of the chamber.8 The Council pretended to see out the day as if nothing had happened and, on an Egyptian motion, finally invited Ala to the table to express his views. The Iranian immediately refuted Gromyko's claims, declaring that he knew of no agreement, secret or otherwise, on the matter. He then pointed out that the previous negotiations had broken down because of Russian demands and because Russian troops were still illegally in Iran and that he was prepared to proceed immediately with the case. Once Ala had brought out these main points, Byrnes asked him to confine his remarks for the moment to the postponement issue. Ala said he had no instructions to agree to a postponement, described the situation as "explosive," and asked for immediate Council action.9 The walkout created a worldwide stir. One editor called it "a moment of climax in international history"; the Secretary-General of the United Nations recalled later that "this was a sensation."10 The American reaction vindicated Byrnes's strategy. The general impression was that Stalin had put American principles and values to the test and that the Secretary had stood firm, an achievement that gained much from having taken place in the open arena of the Security Council. The New York Times hailed the event as "a victory for the UNO" and commented, Russia has served notice on the UNO that unless she gets her way she will paralyze it even at the risk of wrecking it ... therewith the perhaps inevitable and in any case long-pending showdown between the UNO and Russia has come, and the form which that showdown has taken is a strange commentary upon the value of Mr. Stalin's assurances.11 This widespread notion of a "showdown" is significant. It was again heralded on the morning of the Gromyko walkout by the well-connected Alsop brothers. Claiming that the Soviet policy of threatened aggression had been modified before the hearings as a consequence of "the western strong front," they stated, "In fact there was a showdown, the implications of which are not diminished because the showdown took place before the Security Council meeting." Further diplomatic clashes were expected by the British and Americans, they suggested, noting the recently formulated Anglo-American decision to maintain their forces in Italy, and especially Trieste, until that contentious issue was settled at the peace conference.12 The Sciipps-Howard New York World-Telegram also welcomed "a great moral victory for the UN" and continued that "if the UN refused to hear the
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THE IRON CURTAIN
victims of oppression it would betray the world . . . better no UN than an ally of aggression." The New York Sun similarly believed that the "showdown" with the Russians had been inevitable, for the United Nations "must be free."13 Reactions like these were perhaps to be expected from newspapers that had generally supported Churchill at Fulton or, at the very least, a firmer policy toward the Soviets. But the real measure of Byrnes's success, and at the same time of Soviet failure, may be taken from the reaction of two groups that had been chary of, or had rejected, the Fulton theses three weeks earlier. The New York Herald Tribune, a waverer earlier, produced an editorial entitled "An Unnecessary Crisis," pointing out that the confrontation had its roots in longbrewing, fundamentally divergent Soviet and Western views of the United Nations's role that Gromyko's action had dramatized. It blamed statesmen on both sides for blundering into the crisis at this delicate moment.14 Newsweek was another leadingo voice amongo those uncommitted moderates who had preI ferred to trust in the United Nations. Now it moved toward endorsing the "firmer" policy, remarking that anything was better than "permitting UNO to suffer the fate of the League of Nations after the Ethiopian debacle." The periodical thought that an effort should be made to keep the Soviets in but that in any case the United Nations should be preserved as a rallying point for other nations. This appears to have been a clear hint to the Soviets that, in their absence, the organization might well transform itself into Churchill's alliance, an impression reinforced by a report in Newsweek that Anglo-American relations were now closer than at any time since the days just after Pearl Harbor.15 On the left there was evidence of shock and disappointment. After Fulton an impressive unity had developed on the basis of a commonly preceived threat to the policies of Roosevelt and his legatee Byrnes. Stalin's campaign of conciliation had induced further confidence. But now there was a sense of letdown as Byrnes and Gromyko appeared to risk everything on a trivial issue. The PM writers criticized both. Thomas F. Reynolds, recalling the prewar Japanese departure from the League of Nations, found the delegates speculating gloomily about a "slow death for the world organization." Ralph Ingersoll found the debate "disappointing" and some of it "literally childish"; Gromyko had been "inflexible" and Byrnes "almost bullyish." I. F. Stone also blamed the Soviet Union for being "unfair to itself and to the world" and for offering reminders of the Japanese and the German walkouts at Geneva. He was complimentary to Byrnes, however, chiding him for not agreeing to the postponement but declaring he had shown goodwill "against terrific political pressure at home."18 Byrnes's troubles within the administration now began to resolve themselves as he demonstrated "firmness" in action. Relations with Leahy had already improved after the "war scare." Now, on March 28, the President told a news conference that he had full confidence in and supported his Secretary of State.
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Moreover, Truman was still against a Big Three summit, preferring to work through the United Nations and the Council of Foreign Ministers. He said he had no intention of communicating directly with Stalin over the Iran matter. Newsweek noted that in the aftermath of the Soviet walkout the administration's judgment on Byrnes's firmer policy was "so far so good."17 Reaction in British government and press circles was also favorable. Here there had been another, not dissimilar confrontation. The long-developing leftwing attack on Bevin's foreign policy, which had restrained the British until now, came to a head on March 27 in a debate within the parliamentary Labour party. Bevin, after lashing the British Communists as fellow travelers and roundly abusing his critics, won an overwhelming endorsement of his policy, which he described as accommodation with the Soviet Union, but not at the expense of vital interests.18 A more supportive British policy attitude on the Iranian issue soon became apparent. Bevin proceeded cautiously. He cabled Cadogan on March 29 to "stand firmly on our principles" and to insist on further information from the Soviets, but to give them every reasonable chance to return to the fold, and "to find some way of softening the point." But reassurances from Cadogan on Byrnes's "resolution" and Halifax's optimistic assessments of an apparently supportive American public reaction that was placing "the Soviet Union not the United Nations on trial," together with a number of other encouraging portents between March 30 and April .1, led the Foreign Secretary to instruct his delegate, It would be better for tactical reasons to let Mr. Byrnes take the lead, if, when the time comes, he is still as resolute as described in your 43. We have up to now borne the main burden of resisting Russian penetration of Persia and it is obviously in the interests both of ourselves and of the United Nations as a whole, that the United States Government should now bring her full influence to bear in defence of the Charter. Cadogan, accordingly, should continue "to back up Mr. Byrnes and to fill in any gaps in his argument.19 Meanwhile, the press applauded the American stand. One American correspondent in London, recalling earlier British criticism of Byrnes, especially for his appeasement at Moscow, reported that all that was "forgotten today" and that one heard "nothing but praise" for his courage. He went on, There is great satisfaction here that the Americans for the first time are being put face to face with the greatest issue in the world. It is felt that there will be ... more sympathy with the British, who have been the chief target of the Russian war of nerves and political expansion.20 In similar spirit the Sunday Times reported that London diplomatic circles were "particularly impressed by the strong leadership that ha[d] been shown
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by Mr Byrnes" and termed it "the most heartening development in international politics since the San Francisco Charter."21 The Turks were also pleased. Their Foreign Minister told the American ambassador that "Secretary Byrnes' attitude in the Supreme Council yesterday was most encouraging to small nations and to all those who see in UNO hope for world peace." He endorsed the Fulton concept that if other countries stood firm, the Soviets might modify their oppressive policies.22 Here, then, was a firm basis for further action, for a full hearing of the Iranian side of the case, and for additional embarrassment in Moscow. But Byrnes turned away. With an eye to the forthcoming peace conference, and encouraged by the clear signs that the Soviet Union did not intend to leave the United Nations, the Secretary devised a face-saving formula that directed the Secretary-General to ask both governments to report fully by April 3 the existing status of the negotiations. This plan was approved by the Security Council, including the Polish delegate, on March 2<).23
THE SOVIET REACTION These events undoubtedly inspired bitter reflections in Moscow. The attempt to head off the Iranian complaint of March 18 had misfired. Now Stalin's strategy of avoidance had also failed. The confrontation had occurred, and already the predictable consequences were appearing. These included, most conspicuously, the consolidation of the American political leadership and public opinion behind a now clearly visible get-tough policy of which Byrnes, the architect of accommodation at Moscow only three months before, was now the enthusiastic executor. This inevitably signified the increasing tendency of American and British interests to converge in common confrontation against the Soviet Union— the fulfillment already of Churchill's Fulton vision. The Soviets appear to have been caught between their anxieties and their resentment. Stalin persisted in his dual policy of general conciliation tempered by a firm stand on the increasingly inappropriate issue of Iran. We see ample evidence of the former. On March 28, for example, came first reports of progress in the London talks of the Foreign Ministers deputies, a signal to Byrnes that the Soviets were ready to begin serious plans for the peace conference. On April 6, American officials in Austria noticed a "markedly" conciliatory Soviet attitude in that tense area.24 Similarly, it was made very clear in New York that the walkout did not portend any decision to leave the United Nations. Gromyko had carefully confined his declaration of nonparticipation to the Iranian issue alone; and within hours of his walkout the Polish delegate, Dr. Lange, assured reporters it was "an absence not a withdrawal." On March 28, amid further hints that Gromyko might rejoin the Council if Iran was not discussed, Soviet delegates made ostentatious appearances at sessions of other United Nations bodies: the Com-
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mittee of Experts and the Military Staff Committee. On March 31 Pravda pointedly cited Stalin's statement to the Associated Press on March 25 as refuting "accusations" that the Soviet Union did not intend to cooperate in the United Nations. Finally, on March 31, as if to lay all capitalist doubts to rest, the Soviet Union paid its full dues for the coming year to the SecretaryGeneral.26 This new Soviet concern to convince the world of its firm commitment to the United Nations is interesting and significant. Hitherto, from the Dumbarton Oaks conference to the London Security Council sessions at the beginning of 1946, their attitude had been lukewarm at best. Though Stalin had, in return for the Polish quid pro quo, indulged the Americans on this subject at Yalta and San Francisco, the Soviets had consistently taken the view that greatpower agreement, and preferably unanimity, was the only acceptable basis of postwar order. It is likely that the Gromyko walkout was the result not simply of embarrassment but also of a desire to dramatize this fundamental divergence. But American and British leaders (apart from Churchill in his period of collaboration with Stalin before Yalta) had continued to see the United Nations as an open peacekeeping institution available, at least for the airing of grievances, to all member states. As we have seen, the two sides had sparred with each other over the central point—the scope of the veto power—for months before the Iranian crisis: the Americans and British seeing the narrow Soviet conception as an irritating restraint, the Russians regarding it as a necessary guarantee against Anglo-American majoritarian diplomacy and hostile action under the legitimizing cloak of the world organization. It was undoubtedly the emerging threat of a United Nations converted into a de facto Anglo-American alliance—along lines envisioned by Churchill—that now led to the new and otherwise inexplicable Soviet affirmation of loyalty to the United Nations. At the same time there was a positive side, for American power was in a sense contained and trapped within the restraining framework of the Charter. Byrnes's February 2,8 attempt to escape the arbitrary use of the veto, as employed by the Soviet delegation in London, showed some awareness of this. Both necessity and advantage therefore dictated continuing membership despite current embarrassments. They also encouraged continued Soviet efforts to extend the veto power and to regain the initiative in the Iranian dispute. Meanwhile, these apparent reassurances masked considerable resentment over the American attitude. Pravda, blaming the United States and Britain, claimed that the Iranian problem "was artificially turned into a stumbling block to the successful and fruitful activity of the Security Council."26 Stalin himself, in his first interview with Ambassador Bedell Smith on April 4, spoke "bitterly" of the matter. Smith had touched briefly on Iran. Stalin in his reply took it up:
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He discussed in detail the Iranian oil question including a history of SovietIranian relations from the time of the Treaty of Versailles. He commented rather bitterly on the fact that the United States had pressed for debate on Iran's complaint before the United Nations, and had opposed Gromyko's request for postponement. Stalin went on to claim that Britain and, "later," the United States had placed obstacles in the way of the Soviet Union's search for oil concessions. He then moved to condemn Churchill and, especially, his Fulton speech. He asserted that there was an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviet Union. He ended, however, by reaffirming Soviet support for the United Nations Charter and claiming that the American press and statesmen had given an entirely incorrect idea of the Soviet Union's actions in the Security Council hearings.27 Yet this was deceptive. Stalin, far from resigned to his diplomatic defeat, was already preparing a counterblow, for Byrnes's grant of more time offered him a further chance to extract an agreement from Qavam that would allow Gromyko to return to the Security Council and argue that he had been right all along. Byrnes, aware of the danger, urged Qavam immediately after the Council decision on March 29 to insist on undertakings from the Soviet government that no conditions were now attached to their troop withdrawals.28 The focus now turns again to Teheran. Qavam had informed Murray of the various Soviet proposals of March 24 and of his intention to decline some and to make counterproposals on others. He had continued blunt discussions with Sadchikov since then. When Qavam asked the Soviet ambassador for a letter affirming unconditional troop withdrawal, Sadchikov had blandly expressed confidence that his government would comply as soon as the other agreements were concluded. On March 27 the Prime Minister handed his counterproposals to Sadchikov. He expressed appreciation of the Soviet decision to withdraw their troops and asked that the Security Council be so notified and that the qualifying phrase "unless something unforseen happens" be dropped. In reply to the second Soviet note, on the oil issue, Qavam now asked that the participation be equal and that Iran's share be only in land. The duration of the agreement would be thirty years—not fifty, as the Soviets had proposed. Areas of Azerbaijan contiguous to the Turkish and Iraqi borders would be omitted to avoid international friction, and any necessary security forces would be solely Iranian. Finally, on Azerbaijan, Qavam, insisting that it was an internal matter, made no reply, though he told Sadchikov that he was prepared to talk with the Tabriz regime.29 These terms were an Iranian refinement of the former Soviet proposal of March 20. Qavam now held the leading card in the negotiations, for Stalin needed an agreement to flourish before the Security Council and the world.
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To get it he would now have to meet Qavam more than halfway. Qavam, careful not to press the Soviets too far, was now ready to settle, provided he could extract a prior undertaking that the troop withdrawal was unconditional.80 Indeed, Qavam's main problem now, apart from the haggling with Sadchikov, was to avoid alienating the United States government. Some American realists had immediately predicted that the main consequence of the postponement would be that, as the New York Times remarked, Iran could "now negotiate with the feeling the Council [was] behind them."81 But Byrnes obviously could not take so casual a view. He naturally feared the shadow that would appear over his successful confrontation of March 27—8 confrontation involving principle and international morality—if it later appeared that the Iranian government, on whose behalf this morality had been responsibly invoked by the United States, was using it simply as a mode of extracting better terms for Iranian oil. Byrnes had no particular interest in Iran's true national interest. Thinking first of American opinion, he encouraged Qavam to hold out.32 Qavam saw everything the other way around. He showed no enthusiasm for the United Nations, except as a lever against the Soviets. He was a patriotic statesman trying to secure advantages that, given Iran's situation, could never be more than marginal and temporary, by exploiting opportunities and differences between the powers, History and instinct, which suggested the uncertainty of consistent American support, told him that Soviet pressure would be a persistent, latently hostile presence. This was simply a regional expression of representative European and British opinion. Qavam was therefore disposed to settle at this opportune moment when he could both obtain his desired terms and restore himself with Stalin. At the same time, just as he had made propitiatory gestures toward Moscow when he was forcing them to the Security Council, so he now tried to placate the Americans by offering oil concessions. This served only to dramatize the gap between the Prime Minister and Byrnes, who, declining immediately, expressed alarm that American motives might be misconstrued if such deals were discussed.33 Qavam and Sadchikov finally reached agreement on April 4, and the communique1 was issued the following day. By now Gromyko had assured the Security Council that the troop withdrawal was unconditional, and Qavam himself had received like assurances from Moscow. On the second issue, the oil arrangements, Qavam's proposal of March 27 was substantially agreed, though he conceded the Soviets a 51 percent shareholding for the first twentyfive years. The striking feature here was the undertaking that the whole agreement be presented to the new Iranian Majlis for approval within seven months. With regard to Azerbaijan, the Soviets conceded that it was a purely internal Iranian problem, to be settled directly with the inhabitants of the province.8* Stalin now had his agreement. Ala in New York, like the Americans at this stage, was as yet unaware of the exact status of these negotiations. He had therefore, in his letter to the President of the Security Council on April 2,
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denied any "positive results" in the negotiations and claimed continuing Soviet interference in Iran's internal affairs. However, when the Council met the next day, and having now seen Gromyko's letter on the withdrawal issue, he agreed not to press further, provided that the Soviets kept to their unconditional undertaking and that the matter remained on the agenda.35 This apparent amelioration offered Byrnes the chance to seal his success and wrap up the affair in a satisfactory way. Accordingly, on April 4 he proposed to the Council that it accept the two replies and, taking particular note of and relying upon the Soviet assurances, defer further action on the Iranian issue totil May 6, when the two governments would be asked to report whether the evacuation had been completed. After a brief debate this was agreed. Ala made a final statement, praising the Council for its firmness and courage and saying that Iran had received something from the Council "which it could not have obtained alone." Now, he concluded, the people of Iran were prepared to accept the Soviet pledge.36
THE SECOND CONFRONTATION
However, appearances to the contrary, the American-Soviet confrontation in the Security Council was not yet finished. The first phase was over; a second was about to begin. But in this case the roles were reversed. It was the Soviets who were now the active party, as they sought to regain the initiative and restore the prestige they had lost earlier. On April 5 the Soviet-Iranian agreement was announced. On April 6 Gromyko wrote again to the President of the Council, reviewing the history of the case, describing the new agreement as vindicating his earlier statements and attitudes, and attacking the Byrnes resolution of April 4 that continued the matter until May 6. It was now "obvious," he declared, that there was no threat to international peace and security, and so the Iranian question should be removed from the agenda.87 Behind these political concerns of the moment, which must still have been underpinned by the deep Soviet desire to break up the growing Anglo-American collaboration and to keep the United States out of the Near East, lay an associated practical issue. The Security Council, like the United Nations generally, was still in its infancy, and many of its powers were substantially undefined. In this fluid situation, when every action was a precedent, an interested power with a distinctive conception of the Council was bound to try and impose it. The Soviets had a very narrow and limited conception of it and now, while continuing their effort to extend the veto, they attempted to have the Iranian complaint withdrawn from the agenda, invoking a narrow interpretation of Article 34 of the Charter, the provision authorizing the Council to investigate any dispute or situation that might endanger peace. Gromyko insisted, with some plausibility, that the undeniable existence of the Irano-Soviet agreement made it obvious that such a situation did not in fact exist.38
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Byrnes moved quickly to oppose this initiative. Instructing Stettinius on April 8, the day Gromyko's letter became known, he pointed out that Soviet troops remained in Iran without consent and that it clearly was "not permissible for the Council to take the position that the continuation of the conditions complained about would not endanger international peace and security." Justifying this view with reference to the Charter, he concluded, "The Council must satisfy itself that the Soviet troops . . . have been withdrawn." On April 9 Ala also wrote to the President of the Council asking that the Soviet request be refused.39 There were also sound practical reasons for Byrnes's opposition. Given the insistence of the Soviets that the new agreement proved they had been right all along, thus discrediting the earlier proceedings, the Secretary was bound to resist. He was also concerned with United Nations precedents. The thrust of the American interpretation was to enlarge, not reduce, the power of the Security Council. Moreover, there appears to have been increasing concern that, despite the agreement and their assurances to the Council, the Soviets were not in fact intending to fully withdraw their troops. This was the view pressed by Rossow, whose disturbing reports from Tabriz tended to confirm it. American observers in other areas were more reassuring, but the general State Department view was that Iran had agreed to a dubious joint oil venture and, as Acheson later recalled, "to arrangements which seemed to permit consolidation of the autonomous Azerbaijan regime." Concern about this question dragged out the Security Council phase of the Iran crisis until the end of May, when it was clearly established that all Soviet troops had left. 40 Another strong motive for resistance was the fact that Byrnes was continuing to draw domestic dividends from his firm actions in the Council. This can be seen in the press endorsements that continued through April and in a growing recognition of the effect that the American attitude was having in strengthening the United Nations. The New York Times, especially, drew attention to this constructive feature in an editorial headlined "This Was the Purpose."41 Politicians continued to show support. Senator Connally, who on March 28 had expressed hopes that the Soviet Union would not withdraw, but who had insisted that the United Nations would go on anyway, now praised Byrnes in the Senate and hailed the victory of United Nations principles. Prominent Republicans like Senator Warren Austin spoke in similar terms, and Senator Pepper remained an isolated voice at this time, declaring that the United States was becoming the guarantor of British imperialism.42 Once again, then, the issue was joined. Once again there was a hiatus between the first initiative and the Council hearings on April 15, during which the United States and Soviet Union competed for Iranian collaboration. Qavam knew what to expect. Confiding in John Jernegan, second secretary of the American embassy, now temporarily deputizing for the ill Murray, he said he
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wanted the matter to stay on the agenda but feared the Soviets might "soon demand that he join in their request for its withdrawal." After Ala's unauthorized letter of April 9 opposing Gromyko, this was virtually certain.43 Byrnes tried to head this off by warning Qavam that if he requested a withdrawal now, he might find it difficult to get a prompt hearing for any subsequent complaint. He also pointed out, "It might appear that Iran had been using Council merely to bargain for better terms rather than to obtain assistance in upholding principles." This was a reproach to Qavam for negotiating his agreement under cover of his complaint to the Security Council. Hitherto Iranian and American interests had coincided. But now Qavam had his agreement, and to protect it he was reluctantly inclined to assist the Soviets in saving face.44 On April 11 the Soviets made the anticipated move. Jernegan found Qavam "dejected" and still upset after a brutal confrontation with Sadchikov an hour earlier. Ala's letter of April 9 was deeply resented in Moscow, the Russian had said, and Iranian insistence on continuing the case was an insult to the Soviet Union that would not be tolerated and would, if maintained, lead to strained relations. Under this pressure the Prime Minister had caved in and promised to cable Ala to withdraw the case, Jernegan drew his attention to Byrnes's arguments. But Qavam said if he antagonized the Soviets now, he might lose all he had gained. When you are dealing with a lion, he pointed out, you must cajole it and feed it, not attempt to match your claws against his. He pleaded for American understanding.4' Byrnes, who was not unsympathetic, suggested a compromise. Reminding Qavam that the Council could not be expected to go through "protracted and at times acrimonious discussions . . . to uphold the integrity and independence of a country which is unwilling to maintain a firm stand on its own behalf," he asked him to take the attitude, which the United States was now going to promote, that the agenda issue was one that the Security Council itself, and not the parties, should decide.48 Qavam wavered. He clearly found the prospect of an outraged world opinion less disturbing than the massive Soviet presence in and around Teheran. Given the changed circumstances since March, this was bound in the end to govern his decision. As he told Jernegan on April 13, he depended upon Societ "moral support" in Azerbaijan, where Moscow could easily stir up trouble again and find a new excuse to intervene. Nevertheless, on April 14, he adopted Byrnes's suggestion and instructed Ala to state that while remaining confident that the Irano-Soviet agreement would be carried out, Iran did not have the right to fix the Council's course of action.'*7 But news of this equivocation leaked out in Teheran within hours. The Soviet ambassador thundered in again and insisted even more strongly upon full Iranian support. Qavam changed his mind once more and agreed to a formula stating that, since the Soviet ambassador had given assurances that the evacua-
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tion would be completed unconditionally by May 6, Iran wished to withdraw her complaint. Fresh instructions to Ala followed.48 Meanwhile, there was a significant change in the Soviet media. Criticism of British policy continued as before. But after March 27 a somewhat sharper anti-American note was again introduced. United States policy in Japan and Korea came under fire and there were fresh expressions of resentment over the March 12 "war scare." The United States-Soviet confrontation in the Security Council, however, was little mentioned during the first week, except in selfserving broadcasts to Iran. Tass put out a skeletal summary of events. And on March 30 Pravda published a brief complaining article.49 The successful conclusion of the Soviet-Iranian agreement, however, brought two significant changes. First, all the Soviet media were orchestrated to celebrate the event, which was characterized as "a Blow to Troublemakers." Then there followed a cordial exchange of congratulatory letters between Stalin and Qavam. Stalin's accompanying reaffirmations of faith in the United Nations, and a declaration in Pravda that the Iranian issue was now settled, suggest a desire to return to cordial relations with the United States. A Radio Moscow commentator pronounced, "Iran is no longer a dominant preoccupation of the Soviet Press. . . . What has been called 'the Iranian affair' was considered by the Soviet public as 'a stumbling block purposely thrown on the road of international cooperation" as Pravda put it. The stumbling block has been removed by Soviet diplomacy."50 But Byrnes refused to allow the removal of the issue from the Security Council's agenda. The tone of the Soviet media, therefore, quickly changed again. The United States now came under much heavier attack. Particular prominence was given to the persisting American military presence in Iceland, said to be illegal and causing the local inhabitants "anxiety." Comparisons were invited with the Soviet evacuation of Iran, where garlanded Red Army soldiers were seemingly marching home through dense crowds of grateful citizens, and with the similar Soviet withdrawals from Manchuria and Bornholm. American policy in Latin America, in Germany, and elsewhere was portrayed in an unflattering manner, and domestic blemishes such as racial segregation, the continuing rash of strikes, and the witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee were played up. There were simultaneous efforts to discredit the emerging Anglo-American front: discussions of the Western powers' long rivalries in the Middle East and Iran; references to American public criticism of the recently concluded Anglo-Jordanian treaty; and, for British audiences, quotations from a long Izvestia article exposing the American "economic compulsion" at work in "the attack on Imperial Preference."51 The anniversary of Roosevelt's death, on April 12, gave the Soviet media another opportunity. Pravda set the tone with the lead article "Roosevelt—and the Recent Rise of Reaction in USA." The line taken here, and then carried in other publications and by Radio Moscow throughout the world, was that the
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constructive policies of Roosevelt, a "friend" of the Soviet people and the steadfast opponent of those who believe American policy "must be a policy of force and the domination of United States interests over the world," had been cast aside by his successors. Thus the appropriation of Roosevelt by the Left, already noticeable in the United States after Churchill's speech, received a strong international impetus.62 One thing had not changed since Roosevelt's death. This was Stalin's tendency to force issues in his relations with American leaders. At Yalta, Roosevelt had responded by simply backing out of the relationship, though in a way that seriously affected the whole course of tripartite diplomacy in 1945. At that point, given the gap between Soviet reality and American public expectations, there was perhaps little choice. But now, a year later, the political background in the United States was quite different. Churchill's speech had already revealed a widespread suspicion of the Russians, which subsequent events had intensified. Byrnes was therefore in a position to continue the "showdown" if he wished. Byrnes must have been tempted to do so. His views on relations with the Soviet Union were now, after two months of assiduous "firmness," virtually indistinguishable from those of other administration hard-liners. He had the full support of the President, whose Army Day speech at the beginning of April emphasized the need for the United States to remain powerful and received the tribute of wide reportage in the Soviet press.53 At the beginning of April, Byrnes authorized H. Freeman Matthews, the director of the Office of European Affairs, to send to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, in response to yet another inquiry from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a remarkable State Department document entitled "Policy Estimate of Soviet Policy for Use in Connection with Military Studies." This was in fact a slightly refined version of Bohlen's March 22 memorandum. Bohlen, referring to Kennan's February 22 dispatch as "the most probable explanation of present Soviet policies and attitudes," denounced the widespread "misapprehension" that Soviet policies were inspired primarily by "a legitimate desire to obtain security" against the threat of "capitalist encirclement," In reality, he insisted, Soviet expansionist aims were "unlimited and not confined to areas of immediate concern to the Soviet Union." The Soviets were employing a number of techniques, including "the use or threat of armed force" as well as "political and psychological attack" in less accessible areas through the medium of Communist parties and affiliated organizations. Peaceful coexistence was possible. But to achieve it the United States had to "demonstrate to the Soviet Government in the first instance by diplomatic means, and in the last analysis by military force if necessary, that the present course of its foreign policy can only lead to disaster for the Soviet Union." This analysis, so clearly derived from the principles advanced by Churchill and Kennan a few weeks earlier, emphasized the importance of a firm diplo-
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macy. It further exposed the basis of Byrnes's strategy in the Security Council hearings on Iran by stressing, The Charter of the United Nations affords the best and most unassailable means through which the U.S. can implement its opposition to Soviet physical expansion. It not only offers the basis upon which the greatest degree of popular support can be obtained in the U.S., but it will also ensure the support and even assistance of other members of the United Nations. If, as may occur, the United Nations breaks down under the test of opposition to Soviet aggression it will have served the purpose of clarifying before American and world public opinion, and thus make easier whatever future steps may be required by the U.S. and other like-minded nations in the face of a new threat of world aggression. At the same time, like Churchill, Bohlen urged the special importance of American collaboration with Britain and other non-Soviet countries: If Soviet Russia is to be denied the hegemony of Europe the United Kingdom must continue in existence as the principal power in Western Europe economically and militarily. The U.S. should, therefore, explore its relationship with Great Britain and give all feasible political, economic and if necessary military support within the framework of the United Nations, to the United Kingdom and the communications of the British Commonwealth. This does not imply a blank check of American support throughout the world for every interest of the British Empire, but only in respect of areas and interests which are in the opinion of the U.S. vital to the maintenance of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth of nations as a great power. Finally, the State Department made two precise recommendations: In support of the American foreign policy it was essential that: O Steps be taken in the immediate future to reconstitute our military establishment so that it can resist Soviet expansion by force of arms in areas of our own choosing should such action prove necessary, and to protect, during the period of diplomatic action, areas which would be strategically essential in any armed conflict with the Soviet Union: and 2) To create as soon as possible an informed public opinion concerning the issues involved. This statement, given very limited distribution and characterized three and a half months later by one insider as "potential dynamite," was another founding document in the development, and certainly in the coordination, of the new American policy toward the Soviet Union. The Joint Chiefs of Staff registered
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"full agreement" with the analysis, though they declined the State Department's invitation to collaborate in "informing" American public opinion.54 In the sphere of public education, however—what Bohlen had called "the positive program"—Byrnes was still performing effectively on his own. During April he began a policy of personally thanking newspaper columnists for favorable comments on his new policy. By the middle of the month he had already communicated with Arthur Krock, Ray Moley, Roscoe Drummond, Joseph Alsop, Cyrus Sulzberger, and Dorothy Thompson. He drew the line only at former tormentors like Constantine Brown, Leahy's favorite columnist and press outlet. Byrnes also spoke, presumably about the need for firmness, in a closed session to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, inspiring the influential publisher Roy Howard to congratulate him and to predict, "Every intelligent and discerning editor present can and will, through his editorial column, and without in any way accrediting his views to you, get across to his reader audience the essence of your story."85 Yet, even while he worked away vigorously to promote the new policy—with the public, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the press, and others—Byrnes took care not to overplay his hand. He was already looking ahead to the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers that, at his urging, the other members had agreed to attend in Paris on April 25. He would still have to negotiate with the Russians. He therefore made a last-minute effort to dissuade them from a second confrontation by instructing Stettinius to approach Gromyko to see if he could not "persuade him to allow his letter of April 6 to be passed over without discussion by the Council." Stettinius was told to point out that "this would avoid additional controversy as we will oppose his proposal that the matter be dropped now." Whether this approach was made is unclear. There seems to be no record of it.58 By the morning of April 15 it was evident that the American effort had failed. A group of delegates, those of the United States, Britain, China, and Iran, anxiously canvassed ways of heading off the joint Irano-Soviet application. Byrnes's suggestion, telephoned from Washington, was that they "play for time." Stettinius took this up and asked whether they could not find a way not to have a meeting that day. Ala and his American lawyers were inclined to violate Qavam's instructions and inform the Security Council that they had been given under duress and that the matter should be retained. Stettinius thought this would be too dangerous. It was eventually decided that Ala should write to the Secretary-General and quote three letters: his own of April 9, opposing the original Soviet request; Qavam's first letter of April 14, leaving the issue to the Council; and the latest instruction to join the Soviet application. Finally, they decided to let the Soviets make the resolution and attempt the hopeless task of finding the seven votes necessary.57 These deliberations offer a brief glimpse into the way things were managed in the Security Council. No doubt the procedural maneuvering is more or less
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what one might expect. Yet it shows the kind of problem the Soviets were up against in the United Nations. It must have been clear to them that their nominal antagonist, Ala, was working closely with their real antagonist, the United States, though they may not have known that Washington's assistance extended to cable facilities and constant political and legal advice. Ala also violated his instructions by writing the omnibus letter just mentioned after he had been told by Qavam to "request the Security Council that the matter be dropped from the agenda and . . . not to add one word or any interpretation to this fact." We also find the American delegation trying to arrange a postponement, though they had denied one to the Soviet Union earlier, and then using their majority to force the Soviets to make the resolution themselves and face certain defeat. The point is that the Security Council was less the town meeting of the world than a fairly efficient instrument of American diplomacy.68 The differing conceptions were soon evident in the Council debate that opened on the afternoon of April 15. Gromyko, insisting that the issue be removed from the agenda, said only a person without "any sense of reality" could argue that the situation constituted a threat to the peace. Stettinius replied, in terms of Byrnes's instructions, that while the Soviet troops remained, this was an "interim phase" of the matter and that reconsideration now would raise "many difficult and grave questions." Once these positions had been openly stated, the debate grew more acrimonious, with Gromyko bluntly doubting whether the United States and Britain were really eager for a quick peaceful solution of the Iranian case.59 Heated argument continued the next day, as Gromyko acknowledged that he had called "things by their names" the preceding day and did not expect Stettinius to agree with him. The smaller powers now took a larger part, with a number of them, led by the Netherlands, stressing that the real issue was "who is master of the Council's agenda: the Council, or States who are parties to a dispute or situation."80 It was soon clear that most delegates favored the Security Council. The Poles loyally supported the Soviets. Their agreement was now assumed by observers to be axiomatic; their respective press agencies were already known as "Tass and demi-Tass." But now new support appeared. The French recommended that the whole matter be resolved by asking the Secretary General to collect the information necessary to complete the Security Council's report to the General Assembly, a move that would achieve the main Soviet purpose of taking the issue out of the Council's hands.61 Even more welcome was an unsolicited letter of advice to the Council from Secretary-General Trygve Lie. He drew attention to the two basic arguments before the Council: the Soviet view that after the Iranians withdrew their complaint, and in the absence of further action by the Council, the question should be automatically removed from the agenda; and the American and majority view, that once a matter was before the Council it was no longer solely a mat-
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ter between the original parties but one in which the Council collectively had an interest as representing the whole United Nations. Lie's exegesis tended to favor the Soviet view. The United States and its allies were not impressed, and the Chinese chairman ignored it in calling for a vote on the matter at the end of the day. But the Polish and French delegates objected strenuously that Lie's letter had raised a number of important legal and procedural points that should first be referred to the Committee of Experts. This was shortly agreed, and the question was again adjourned to await the Committee's reply.62
REACTIONS TO THE SECOND PHASE By raising the basic issue again in this vigorous way, the Soviets risked a further polarizing of governments and opinion in regions beyond their control. The ensuing intermission showed that, in the Security Council at least, they were no longer quite so isolated. On the other hand their assertive behavior continued to upset American opinion and also strengthened the solidarity of the pro-Western majority in the Security Council. Let us quickly review the diplomatic scene. Britain and her threatened clients were increasingly encouraged by and responsive to the new American lead. Since Bevin's victory over the Labour left wing on March 27, the British attitude seems to have firmed. By the beginning of April the Foreign Office was coming to grips with the new post-Fulton situation, though many of its members remained unconvinced that the American firmness would last. We now see, most notably, a coordinating impulse rather like that already rippling through Washington. The intellectual catalyst was a paper by Warner on April 2—a day after Matthews's similar memorandum—entitled "The Soviet Campaign against This Country and Our Response to It." Developed under the aegis of Sargent, it became the basis of an increasingly cohesive, institutional outlook. The Soviet Union, Warner argued, "was practising the most vicious power politics in the political, economic and propaganda spheres and seems determined to stick at nothing, short of war, to obtain her objectives." He acknowledged, "We have apparently been selected as the weaker of the two protagonists of the liberal democratic and Western conceptions which have been proclaimed by the Soviet leaders as the rivals of Marx-Leninism." There followed a recital of the countering actions Britain could take on her own. These included more intensive propaganda, a determined effort to expose the myths disseminated by the Soviets, and an attempt to cultivate and provide judicious practical help for friends in other countries who were fighting communism. But the greatest hope lay in collaboration with the United States. Here Warner cautioned, with the Iranian crisis doubtless in mind, that the Soviets "must have realized already that their clumsiness [was] alarming the whole non-Communist world, and in particular American opinion, and [was] thus consolidating opposition to them and support for His Majesty's Government." He anticipated that Moscow would press "more subtle tactics" to try
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and allay these suspicions. Nevertheless, Britain should try and bring the United States into the projected "general, world-wide, anti-Communist campaign." He referred to the heartening recent evidence of a change in American policy but ended on the cautious note, representative of Foreign Office thinking still, that Britain could not yet rely on the Americans and must prepare for a renewed Soviet assault against herself alone.63 This analysis, which circulated through the Foreign Office, became the basic document for a new high-level coordinating group within the Foreign Office that became known as "The Committee on Policy Towards Russia." From the beginning of April it began to meet weekly. .It also inspired the North American department to produce another early April paper, which also received wide circulation and general approval, contemplating further Russian attempts to infiltrate the British position in the Middle East and concluding that American help was especially essential there. There was, indeed, a growing sense of the need to get the Americans to accept a material Stake of some sort, most obviously an oil concession, in Iran. The Cabinet, too, overcoming earlier hesitations, now took the same view. In mid-April, Bevin warned his officials not to let British oil companies work against any American attempt to gain an oil right in Iran. A high-level Foreign Office meeting on April 15 reaffirmed all these themes and stressed the importance of working through the United Nations, a tactic now made fashionable by Churchill's recommendations, as well as the need to give the United States a greater material stake in the Near Eastern region.84 Meanwhile, discreet proselytizing continued. On April 17 senior Foreign Office officials told an American diplomat in London that the British now believed that the Soviets were not looking for a settlement and were motivated instead by ambitions of world domination, currently aimed at the British and designed to drive a wedge between Britain and the United States. The Foreign Office was now putting out the pure Churchillian line that only stiff AngloAmerican resistance could deflect Stalin from his expansionist aims and return him to an acceptable policy of security and internal development. Compromise now, the British felt, would only make the situation worse.6" Inside the anxious Northern Tier the Turks were especially impressed by Byrnes's continuing resolution. They were also encouraged by the arrival of the Missouri in Istanbul, amid great public excitement, by Truman's firm Army Day speech, and by President Inonu's announcement on April 9 that Turkey was seeking a $500 million loan from the United States. At the same time hostility toward the Soviet Union was intensified by news that von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister, had testified at Nuremberg that the Soviets in their 1939 negotiations with Germany had laid claim to the Dardanelles. On April 18, not surprisingly, the Turkish government urged Byrnes not to concede the Soviet demand to drop the Iranian case.66 In this gravitation of old and would-be allies toward the United States, one
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already senses the approach of the full Cold War. But the real test, of course, still lay with American public opinion. Here we see immediately that Stalin's second Security Council effort strengthened the trend toward polarization that developed after Churchill's Fulton speech. The Soviets received some support on the left: from the Daily Worker, the Chicago Sun, and PM, which judged Stettinius's argument "foolish." Similar views were expressed in the Louisville Courier-Journal and in a statement by the National Lawyers Guild.87 Significantly, however, the middle ground, so crowded only six weeks before, had now thinned out considerably. The New York Herald Tribune was still the leading waverer. On April 16 it called Lie's memorandum "a masterpiece of technical reasoning" and found "a hard core of logic" in the Soviet case in contrast to the "cant" of the Security Council majority. This was doubtless the note Stalin had most hoped to strike. But on April 17 the Tribune was acknowledging the poor moral appearance of the Soviet case and simply maintaining that it was "arguable." Meanwhile, William Shirer, one of its many columnists, drew attention to the suspicious pattern of antecedent events: the State Department's late-night announcement of the supposedly aggressive Soviet troop movements in Iran on March 12; the Alsops' March 15 column predicting an American-engendered "violent crisis"; and Sulzberger's subsequent article asserting the existence of an American "campaign" against Russia over Iran. Clearly, Shirer argued, the stage had been set well in advance for these diplomatic victories at Soviet expense.68 But the main effect of Stalin's effort to regain the initiative was to further strengthen the preexisting majority of newspapers that had earlier been critical of the Soviets and still favored Byrnes's firm response. Public support increased, despite a note of disappointment over the Iranian agreement with Moscow. The New York Times said the Lie memorandum should not shake the confidence of the Security Council in its power to keep the case on its agenda. The Washington Post called the Secretary-General's intervention "an exercise in casuistry," which opened the way for "abuses" that could "easily wreck the U.N." The Washington Star and the Scripps-Howard newspapers expressed similar views. Several commentators, including the Alsops and Joseph Harsch, pointed out that the Iranian about-face seemed to be the result of Soviet pressure. Byrnes's firmness was endorsed by Sumner Welles and, on the left, by the Nation, which commented that acceptance of this Soviet demand would be a confession that the Council's decision "had been a mistake from the beginning." The Christian Science Monitor stated that Lie had "stepped outside the role of Secretary General." The New York Mirror called the Russian case "outrageous" and complimented the eight-power Council majority on favoring "the spirit rather than the letter of the Charter." Representative regional publications like the Hartford Cowant, the Abilene Morning Reporter News (Texas), the Lansing State Journal, and the Charlotte Observer echoed these views.80 A State Department survey of press and radio comment on the Iranian issue
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since the Security Council's action of April 4 now reached three major conclusions: 1. The U.S. position before the Security Council continues to receive general support. 2. Iran is generally thought to be acting "under pressure"--not as a "free agent"—in withdrawing her complaint, 3. It is frequently stressed that Russia's earlier pledge to withdraw her troops is too recent to be forgotten.
"Dissent from these generally held views," the review continued, "remains confined to the influential minority which has from the beginning questioned the wisdom of Council action in the Iranian dispute. . . ." Despite Lie's letter most press and radio commentators were continuing to support Secretary Byrnes's policy.70 Two related characteristics of this second phase bear on our general theme. First, the tendency to blame Britain (or Churchill) for the uncooperative nature of Soviet policy, or for difficulties in United States-Soviet relations, was now in sharp decline. The Chicago Sun referred darkly to Britain's Iranian oil monopoly as the root of the trouble; the Birmingham Age Herald found Stettinius far too susceptible to British influence. But these were not representative reactions. Indeed, as the two more formidable antagonists found themselves locked in mutual antagonism, the British, still practicing a careful self-effacement for fear of jeopardizing so providential a deliverance, were already beginning to slip without protest into a secondary role as America's junior partner.71 One sign of the gathering transformation in American policy, in fact, was the increasing optimism of the British. The weekly and sometimes daily reports from the Washington embassy were now more upbeat. They portrayed not only the initial public support for Byrnes but also the subsequent persistence of this new "realistic" attitude toward the Soviets. They did note the general disappointment and frustration over the Security Council quarreling. But Halifax reported on April 20, "At the same time opinion has hardened. In all but leftwing quarters there is no deviation from the view that the United States must maintain a firm stand in international disputes. . . ." He saw very little disposition to appeasement or expediency. Reaction in London was also buoyant, tempered by continuing suspicion of Byrnes himself. "The main thing," one official minuted, "is that the Administration's new found foreign policy is popular—so Mr. Byrnes is unlikely to look back." Other optimistic comment scattered through the minutes is revealing: "For the moment public opinion on external questions is unusually cohesive"; "Failing some unexpected turn the Loan looks pretty well in the bag"; and "That American opinion is maturing rapidly on international affairs is indicated clearly by its sober reaction in the Persian affair."72
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A second symptom of the gathering transformation from a tripartite to a bilateral international system was the increasing Soviet tendency to criticize the United States. Several articles in the April edition of New Times, for example struck an unprecedently strong anti-American note, attacking the AngloAmerican bloc, of course, but playing up the prevalence of racial discrimination in the United States and condemning Washington's practice of "atomic diplomacy." A variety of other anti-American themes now emanated consistently from Radio Moscow, together with a battery of commentaries to British and American listeners stressing, inter alia, that "the raising of the Iranian question in the Security Council was quite in defiance of the United Nations Charter," tracing the problem to the work of "various reactionaries" who had been trying to revise the Charter, and warning against "the attempts of certain circles to make the organization a vehicle for the domination of some Powers over others." Particular emphasis was also given to Shirer's argument that the United States government was working up "the Iranian question" in order to promote American public hostility toward the Soviet Union.73 All these developments, taken together, go far to explain the continuing improvement in Byrnes's standing in the administration. Harriman remarked to C. L. Sulzberger at about this time that Byrnes had increased in stature and was "a much stronger man now." Congratulations from Bernard Baruch were now added to those already received from the President and Leahy. Correspondents like Reston and Krock commented on his enhanced reputation. Even Joseph E. Davies, who was very disturbed by all these events, conceded, "The Secretary has piloted us through a very dangerous situation arising out of the Azerbaijani controversy. He did it with skill and wisdom."74 Meanwhile, after five meetings, the Committee of Experts decided in favor of the American view, namely, that the Security Council alone should itself determine the matters of which it was "seized." The decision by the same eightto-three margin found in the Council, was no surprise, for the word "experts" here was little more than a literary flourish. When the Council met again on April 23, Gromyko made some capital cut of this "coincidence" but had to accept defeat. He reaffirmed, however, that the Soviet government would take no further part in Council discussions on the Iranian question. After the eightto-three vote favoring the American interpretation, Stettinius characterized Lie's concept of the council's functions as "a rather limited one," which, if accepted, would have serious consequences for the future of this body.75
FINALE This was not quite the end of the Iranian crisis. While the Security Council remained seized of the problem, the Soviet government continued to withdraw its troops under the suspicious eyes of Western observers. At the beginning of May, Ala informed the Council that the Soviets had withdrawn from all of northern Iran except Azerbaijan, from which there was inadequate informa-
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tion. In these circumstances Stettinius persuaded the Council to continue the case until May 20, when the Iran government could again be asked for a full report.76 The question now was whether the Soviets would withdraw completely by May 20. By May 17 it was clear that all uniformed Soviet troops had departed. But now there was another worry. It was feared that many Soviet soldiers had remained behind in plainclothes to direct and assist the Azerbaijani police and security forces. Particular suspicion fell upon the new chief of police in Tabriz, whose fluent Russian was as impressive as his inability to converse in Persian. It was also known that the Soviets had left extensive military supplies behind, either to strengthen the Azerbaijani forces or perhaps to facilitate an early return by the Red Army.77 This led to some new thinking in Washington, where Acheson and Stettinius were now concerting strategy. The focus of United States-Soviet tensions had long since moved to Paris, where Byrnes, now much less yielding, debated other, more pressing issues with an equally stubborn Molotov. In New York the Security Council was now preoccupied with Spain and other matters. The value of the Iranian problem, for American purposes, had diminished sharply. On May 18, for example, Acheson wrote to Stettinius predicting that the Iran government would indicate on May 20 that it had been unable to ascertain the full facts. In these circumstances, notwithstanding the natural disappointment of the Shah and his circle, Acheson thought that "to continue retention of the case on the Security Council agenda would in any event tend to lose efficacy in this country and might place the Council in a rather ridiculous position. Further continuation . . . would appear to be based on technical considerations of no great importance." Stettinius agreed, and, despite passionate protest from Ala, the issue was allowed to die quietly, though it remained on the agenda.78 Yet, by stimulating the consciousness of American opinion, the Byrnes policy during the Iranian crisis had fulfilled its main purpose. This was not universally apparent. The New Yorker, for example, referring to the Soviet-Iran agreement, scoffed that the result of the Secretary's "courageous" policy was that "the Russians have got nothing except all they ever wanted." Many Turks, according to the United States ambassador in Ankara, were also disappointed at the outcome. The Security Council, they thought, had discussed procedure while the Soviets had been able to sustain the pressure in northern Iran. Azerbaijan was now a "little Bulgaria" and the future of Iran generally gloomy. Many British officials, for all the rising optimism, continued to doubt Byrnes's staying power. As the Paris conference neared, they began to prepare themselves for a possible repeat of their unhappy experience at Moscow.79 All these concerns missed the real point—that the American people, or a practical sufficiency of them, now seemed to support the firmer policy. From March 8 Byrnes had seen the Iranian question as the issue with which he could enlarge and consolidate that public will to resist Soviet expansionism that
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Churchill had uncovered with his Fulton speech. Stalin, fatally preoccupied with the prospect of an Anglo-American geopolitical threat rather than with the transformation of American opinion that was always its essential precondition, rendered indispensable involuntary assistance. Europeans saw the miscalculation. As Churchill cabled Attlee in mid-March, "Soviet aggressiveness has helped us in many directions." The New York Times Paris correspondent described French observers as believing that Stalin was "effectively persuading" Americans that the British Empire was an American interest.80 As a result Byrnes was able to haul the Soviets before the Security Council, conducting a successful confrontation with Grornyko on March 27 and directing another in mid-April. In all this he received rising and widespread public support. His own standing with the administration continued to improve dramatically. He therefore departed for the beginning of the 1946 round of peace conferences in late April, carried along by a new current of American official and public assertiveness and cohesion that, it seems clear in hindsight, marks the beginning of the Cold War.
Chapter Ten
Aftermath and Conclusion
THE AFTERMATH The United States-Soviet confrontation over Iran in the Security Council brought to some fulfillment the reorientation of American policy we have traced to the Truman-Churchill meeting on February 10 or, if we think in terms of actions, to Byrnes's initiatives on February 12. It is reasonably seen as the beginning of the Cold War, for its principal effect was to introduce into the international equation the element whose absence until now had made the Anglo-Soviet Cold War possible and a United States-Soviet Cold War highly improbable: an American public opinion that was now for the first time, thanks in considerable measure to the interplay of Churchill's provocative polarizing rhetoric and Stalin's miscalculated diplomacy, substantially consolidated in support of the policy of "firmness" toward the Soviet Union. Hitherto the Truman administration had pursued a general policy of accommodation and detachment with the Soviets. This had been interrupted, as we have seen, by the two brief spasms of forceful assertiveness in April and August 1945. But each episode was the consequence of an extraordinary event, not a calculated change in policy. Moreover, in each case the administration had acted within the confines of official diplomacy, a fact that permitted a rapid and comparatively unembarrassed return to accommodationism when the Soviets proved immovable. But now, with this third, more deliberate, and much more comprehensive change, the American leaders had committed themselves to the harder line, did not deviate significantly from it thereafter, and perhaps, given
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the public character of their reorientation, could not have done so even if they had wanted to. This new American fixity of purpose became evident to the Soviets and also, despite some continuing skepticism, to the British, during the first session of the resurrected Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris, which quickly followed the Security Council confrontation. Byrnes and Molotov now faced each other without compromise. Bevin loyally supported the American. The essential condition that we have looked for throughout as marking the beginning of the Cold War—the alignment of the United States with Britain's worldwide interests—now came clearly into view. With it came supporting tendencies that confirm the new underlying reality: the open practice by the United States and the Soviet Union of a hostile diplomacy, each against the other; the encouragement by each power of its public opinion to recognize the other as the principal adversary; the purging or isolation in each country of dissenters, though this was a more drawn-out process; and the growing consolidation of separate American and Soviet spheres of influence and prospective allies in what was now a rapidly bifurcating international system. This process begins to emerge clearly as we follow Byrnes to Paris in late April. He had arranged this meeting earlier in the hope of settling the deadlocked European peace treaties and thus clearing a path to the full peace conference in the summer. But the deterioration in United States-Soviet relations was immediately apparent. Byrnes, hoping that the recent American firmness would make Molotov more amenable, invited him to a private dinner, shortly after their arrival in Paris. He was quickly disabused. As the Secretary later recalled, "Before we reached the dining room, Mr. Molotov began to complain bitterly about the attitude of the United States in the Iranian case. . . . He charged that our actions were not those of a friend and that his government was the victim of an 'anti-Soviet' campaign in which the Iranian case and the Security Council were being used to advance an offensive." Byrnes did not deny this charge. Indeed, he could hardly have done so. But his aide Ben Cohen, who was also present, "stressed that, once Soviet troops had remained in Iran beyond the treaty date, it was no longer possible to arrange matters privately; the issue then had to be met in the light of public opinion." Molotov, unappeased, went on to denounce Churchill and the Fulton speech, which, he stated, the Soviets had resented.1 The conference opened on April 25. Weeks of fruitless negotiation followed. The flexible accommodationist Byrnes of Potsdam and Moscow was no longer in evidence. Vandenberg and Connally, "the senatorial heavy-weights," stood prominently in the wings at Paris watching suspiciously for the reappearance of this dangerous apparition, ready at a moment's notice to infuse ample doses of starch into the Secretarial backbone. But this was not needed. Even before the conference Harriman had noted, "Byrnes has increased in stature. . . . We are not going to yield at Paris." Indeed, it was Byrnes himself who insisted that Vandenberg and Connally be included in the delegation.2
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The fact is that Byrnes, fully aware of the real significance of his recent achievement, intended from the start to practice public rather than private diplomacy. He told Georges Bidault, the French Foreign Minister, that he had been very impressed with the way "opinion had rallied behind the American position" at the Security Council hearings over Iran. If the Paris conference did not progress satisfactorily, he intended to have the meetings "thrown open to the public so that world opinion [could] see just what the situation [was] and just where the stumbling blocks [lay]." He explained that he himself had been subjected to considerable criticism for "appeasing" the Russians and for yielding too much. This period, however, had passed, and American opinion was no longer disposed to make concessions on important questions."8 This encounter helps to explain Byrnes's conduct at Paris in this session, which one historian has aptly called "a propaganda war." He began on April 29 by offering the Soviets a four-power treaty guaranteeing the disarmament of Germany for twenty-five years. This was intended to expedite the withdrawal of Soviet troops; it was also conceived as a test of Soviet good faith. As Vandenberg wrote, "If and when Molotov finally refuses this offer, he will confess that he wants expansion and not security. . . . Then moral conscience all around the globe can face and assess the realities—and prepare for the consequences." But Byrnes immediately subverted his own proposal by authorizing General Lucius Clay, the United States military governor in Germany, to suspend, as he did on May 3, all further reparations shipments to the Soviets pending the establishment of unified institutions.4 Just before this he had another remarkable interview, this time with Bevin, which throws further light on his intentions and attitudes in this conference. Byrnes began by informing Bevin, according to the latter's account, that a few days earlier he had told Molotov "he could not look with favor upon Russia in an individual capacity coming anywhere into Africa or the Middle East. The United States could not regard that with favor or stand idly by." Here was precisely the radical geopolitical extension of American power that Stalin had suspected since the Fulton speech and had tried to head off during March, only to find himself under assault on the United Nations front. Now he had apparently consolidated a hostile American opinion behind the new confrontational policy and brought about the geopolitical extension of American power as well. But this was only the start. Byrnes now turned to India. He asked, "If the United States were to take their place in the Middle East and in India, could they not retain on a rental basis the facilities that they now had in Calcutta and Karachi?" He hoped the British would pay special heed to this "because the United States felt they could provide the greatest aid in case of trouble to us in the Indian Ocean by having the necessary facilities." Bevin, who must have been surprised at this unprecedented expression of American globalism, then asked what the American view was of northwest India. Byrnes, thinking no
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doubt of the supposed Soviet southward push, replied that the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff "had been waiting for that magic word to be mentioned." Bevin explained the difficulties Britain expected in Africa, especially if she withdrew from Egypt, and also in the Indian Ocean. Bevin's record continues, "In all these places we felt that collaboration with the United States was absolutely essential. Then Mr. Byrnes said that their Chiefs of Staff felt the same. I asked whether there was a chance of a very private exchange of views about the whole thing. He said he would consider it." It is hard to know what to make of this exchange. Here is Byrnes, formerly the leading exponent of ostentatious detachment from Britain, suddenly courting Bevin with Kiplingesque visions of an Anglo-American armed display on the North-West Frontier. In fact, of course, the "great game" with Russia was now being played out elsewhere. But there, too, Byrnes was now in an uncharacteristically belligerent mood. Thus, when the discussion turned to the Italian treaty and the problem of Trieste he said that "he had met the whole of the publishers and principal editors of the United States, off the record, and had told them that he did not expect any settlement and that he would have to consider separate treaties." The United States could not give way over Trieste, though it was ready to agree to the Soviets' receiving $100 million in reparations from Italy—a concession it withheld, however, until the next conference. Byrnes intimated a general willingness to help Greece resist a Communist takeover. Then he told Bevin that he was planning two "showdowns" with the Russians. The first would be over Germany. He showed Bevin General Clay's memorandum on reparations and said that he "had authorized Clay to take the line that there was to be no more delivery of reparations until the problem of Germany as a whole was settled and a system arrived at which provided for exports to pay for imports. . . . the United States were going to have a showdown." Byrnes also referred to Manchurian reparations. "He was hoping that, as a result of the action which might be taken, in the next twenty-four hours by General Clay, this question would come up; he intended to have a showdown on the Manchurian question by relating it to what Molotov was claiming for Germany."5 In all these circumstances it is not surprising that this conference made virtually no progress. It is also significant that in the whole of their long discussion Byrnes did not even mention, and Bevin did not bother to raise, the supposedly conciliatory four-power treaty proposal over Germany that he had introduced with great fanfare a few days before. Obviously, this was not put forward as a serious proposal. In the formal deliberations Byrnes, with Bevin's support, pressed unsuccessfully for full access to Eastern Europe. The main issue was the Italian peace treaty. Molotov again demanded $100 million reparations, insisted that Trieste be given to Yugoslavia, and repeated the Soviet claim to the Dodecanese Islands and the administration of Tripolitania. Byrnes and Bevin resisted stubbornly.6
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The deadlocked conference recessed on May 16 for a month. Returning home, Byrnes told the American people that, if the peace conference could not be called that summer, as all the foreign ministers but Molotov had now agreed, then the United States would seek action in the United Nations General Assembly, since it was bound "to take the offensive for peace just as we took the offensive for war." He added, "There is no iron curtain that the aggregate sentiments of mankind cannot penetrate." Byrnes's use of the already pervasive Fulton metaphor and his eagerness to return to the more hospitable United Nations forum reflect his increasing commitment to aggressive public diplomacy. He now made frequent frank radio reports to the American people, briefed the press more regularly, and carefully cultivated Vandenberg, who was now taken to every conference and given the larger role he had coveted.7 The Soviets seem now to have concluded, understandably, that the American reorientation they had been observing since mid-February was settled policy. At the end of May they adjusted their own policy to confront the apparent new reality of a Washington-led Anglo-American bloc. The change appeared in a Pravda interview with Molotov on May 27. Molotov blamed both the United States and Britain for the conference failure, portraying them as working together against the Soviet delegation, but he unmistakably emphasized the primary American responsibility. Meanwhile, the familiar "splitting" technique reappeared, but with Britain rather than the United States as the focus. In a May 26 interview with the new British ambassador, Sir Maurice Peterson, Stalin criticized certain British policies and complained that Churchill had not been repudiated. But he was otherwise unexpectedly conciliatory, assuring Peterson that he did not blame Bevin personally for the deterioration, affirming his respect for British interests in the Middle East, and inviting a wider trade relationship. A more explicit gesture followed a few days later. Novikov, head of the British Empire office in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, suggested to Peterson that, in the latter's words, "we should be making a mistake if we relied too much upon the Americans, who were in an expansionist frame of mind, and neglected the Russians who could be equally useful in helping us to defend our interests."8 As this suggests, the United States now began to replace Britain permanently as the primary villain in the Soviet media. Through March the Truman administration had been alternately criticized and appeased, with frequent tactical changes. A harsh note appeared in references to American policy in the weeks after the first Security Council confrontation. Then Britain again became the primary target. In mid-April, when the second Security Council confrontation took place, the British embassy in Moscow found the United States under sharp attack while the British were "mildly treated." Then the targets were once more reversed with the approach of the first Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Paris. But criticism of American policy again intensified in response to Byrnes's hard-nosed diplomacy there. The principal theme was the existence
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of an Anglo-American "team" at the conference, seemingly under American leadership.9 The change in focus from Britain to the United States can be seen best, though with a slight delay because of longer publication schedules, in the pages of New Times, recognized by the State Department and Foreign Office alike as the most valuable guide to Soviet political thinking. Through May this journal concentrated almost exclusively, in its articles and carefully scrutinized "International Notes," on the reactionary character of British and American politics. At this time the emphasis was still tilted somewhat against the British, though a growing proportion of the invective was directed against the United States. It included, inter alia, criticism of American occupation policies in various places, and of the apparently insatiable American appetite for bases, and unfriendly descriptions of the chronic labor troubles at home. Through June and into July we see abundant references to the machinations of "the Anglo-Saxon bloc," whose Germanic connotation provided a conveniently sinister foil to Moscow's concurrent public campaign in Eastern Europe to encourage "the unity of the Slavic peoples." But the most significant feature was now a growing tendency to concentrate the critique on the United States. By July, in contrast, there was virtually no direct criticism of British policy, and, though this soon picked up again, the tone was less violent than that projected toward the Americans.10 The British, meanwhile, were encouraged by reports from Washington stressing the solidarity of American opinion and the general determination to stand up to the Russians. In the Foreign Office one official acknowledged in midMay that the British "did underestimate the capacity of the Americans to interest themselves in Europe" and he called the thought "an encouraging one"; another noted "the new attitude of realism" in the United States. Balfour wrote on May 19, for example, that in the United States the existence of two worlds was now "accepted as a grim reality." These cables strengthened a growing British feeling that the Soviets had been fatally clumsy in the United Nations. Gromyko, according to Halifax, had "shown up Soviet tactics in their true colours to large sections of American opinion." Similarly, Paul Mason, the intellectual leader in the Foreign Office's North American department, replied to those who feared the effect of subsequent Soviet "explanations" upon a supposedly gullible American public that the Russians had "already overplayed their hand in that direction."11 Bevin and his officials were also encouraged by Byrnes's new firmness, though still skeptical as to its durability. The Foreign Secretary supported the United States in the United Nations, and he fortified American diplomatic initiatives in Europe and elsewhere with parallel action. But in all this he continued to be carefully restrained and discreet. He was anxious to keep the new American firmness alive by presenting as small a target as possible to those Russian publicists and American Anglophobes who, from different points of view, desired
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to break down the emerging Anglo-American front. He also saw in the burgeoning United States-Soviet confrontation another opportunity to placate his noisy and influential critics in the Labour movement by quietly conciliating the Russians and attempting to assume the mediatory role now being vacated by the United States. Here Bevin again risked antagonizing both the Truman administration and the growing majority of Americans who now supported the firmer policy and expected British support. He had already attracted American criticism in March for his opportunism just before the Security Council confrontation over Iran. At the end of May and into June there were renewed fears in Washington that he would again exploit the situation.12 These fears were not entirely groundless. Even before the changing tenor of Soviet publicity, and the Kremlin's olive branches of late May, we find Bevin changing the emphasis in Peterson's brief for the forthcoming interview with Stalin, giving it a more pacific character. He also rejected, at least for the moment, carefully developed Foreign Office proposals for an anti-Soviet publicity campaign. Bevin probably derived some gratification from this opportunity to pay Byrnes back in his own coin. But there was a deeper consideration at work, for while Bevin saw Anglo-American collaboration against the Soviets as necessary, he still believed in the possibility of British independence. He placed his deepest long-term hopes in a prospective alliance with France, a combination that might preserve Britain as a first-rank power. At an emotional Paris dinner with Bidault, who responded enthusiastically, he expressed his love for France and his belief in a great Anglo-French destiny, though both accepted that the time was not yet ripe. Confirmation of this sobering truth came only a few days later when the two men fell into an acrimonious argument over both German and Mediterranean issues.13 But these complicated European maneuvers in late May—the Soviet bid to draw Britain away from the United States and Bevin's delicate attempt to encourage this tendency without in any way jeopardizing his necessary commitment to Anglo-American collaboration—should be seen as a consequence of, and very much subordinate in importance to, the primary new development: the rapidly maturing confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. We seem here to stand at the close of the drawn-out crisis that began in mid-February with the Truman-Churchill meeting and the subsequent American intrusion into an international arena formerly dominated by Anglo-Soviet contention, and now ends some two months later with the two principals facing each other in mutual unobscured recognition of their fundamental antagonism. The Cold War was now clearly under way. At no point thereafter was there a serious, sustained attempt, American or Russian, to reverse this new international situation. Instead, we see a process of gathering consolidation on both sides. The new alignment became even clearer during the second Foreign Ministers meeting in Paris between June 15 and July 12,. This conference was more productive. Economic clauses were agreed to in the various treaties. The Italian
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CURTAIN
logjam broke. Byrnes conceded the $100 million reparations for the Soviet Union (though on a long-term basis), and the Trieste dispute was compromised, though in favor of the West, by its being placed under United Nations jurisdiction. The Soviets made the main concessions, abandoning their Mediterranean claims to the Dodecanese and to Tripolitania. This cleared the way for the general peace conference that finally convened in Paris on July 29 and ended, after weeks of wearying and largely procedural wrangling, by endorsing the draft treaties. Final ratification by the great powers followed later in the year. By this time the Western powers had granted the Soviets the desired consideration by recognizing the Rumanian and Bulgarian governments and giving up the Allied Control Councils in Eastern Europe. A recent historian has suggested that in these conferences Byrnes's "public posturing as a no-nonsense hard-liner was accompanied by his private willingness to engage in quid -pro quo trading with Molotov" and that this produced "a set of remarkably realistic peace treaties for Italy, Finland and the Balkan satellites." But the point is that this was all in the context of a division of Europe that was now mutually accepted.14 The steady evolution of this new bilateral world system was the underlying reality of the 1946 conferences throughout. In the first meeting of April-May the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets had each defended their own threatened sphere of influence (the Mediterranean/Western European region and Eastern Europe respectively) while trying vainly to penetrate their opponent's sphere. This produced stalemate. In the second June-July meeting, however, and steadily thereafter, each side began to accept the other's sphere, the Soviets abandoning most of their claims to the Mediterranean and Western Europe (to which Trieste was a significant key), the Americans and British giving up their last tenuous positions in Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, as they retreated from their exposed positions, the Soviets strengthened their hold on their new empire. Khrushchev writes of Stalin's "obsession" with Eastern Europe at this time. The Communists extended their control over the Bulgarian government in late March, and the Soviets intervened in Hungary in early July. A powerfully integrative Soviet media campaign developed during this period, asserting that "Anglo-Saxon reactionaries" and "imperialist circles" were reviving Germany, and warning Poles and Hungarians against financial dealings with the predatory West. A strident campaign to instill Slav consciousness also appeared, stressing both Soviet leadership and the "linguistic, cultural and historical" affinities of the Slavs. At the same time Soviet radio broadcasts to North America and Western Europe discouraged intervention by the Western powers by emphasizing both the strength of the Red Army and the growing contentment of the East Europeans. Meanwhile, Russian "Westerners" like Maisky and Litvinov (who had warned an American journalist on January 18 that "the wrong people" now made Soviet policy) languished in obscurity or worse; and the bitterly anti-Western cultural campaign known as the
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Zhdanovshchina appeared and quickly gathered momentum in the second part of the year.15 The Truman administration's consolidating instinct was scarcely less zealous. There was above all a growing enthusiasm for, or at least acceptance of, a solid Anglo-American collaboration as the basis of resistance to the Soviets. But this was only the start. Once committed, the Truman administration began to act with considerable vitality. As early as May, Truman had been prepared to face war rather than accept a threatened Communist coup in France. He was not deterred by State Department advice that this might constitute "interference in the affairs of another country." In the event, no coup was attempted.16 Also in early May, at Paris, Byrnes told the professional head of the Turkish foreign service that he did not want the Turkish government to think the Mzssouri visit to Istanbul was an isolated gesture. In fact, it was part of "a determined policy." The American government was now fully alive to the importance of Turkey's position. Its interest in the country was real and would be maintained. This was confirmed in August when the Truman administration again accepted the risk of war while responding to new Soviet pressures on Turkey. This crisis inspired the diplomatic and military recommendation that "the time has come when we must decide that we shall resist with all means at our disposal any Soviet aggression." A squadron of American ships was sent to the eastern Mediterranean, and the Russians backed down. There were also a number of American gestures in support of Greece and a growing involvement with that country through the year.17 Stalin's renewed Iranian gambit later in 1946 produced a similarly robust show of American diplomatic support for Qavam. The British still assumed the primary responsibility on the ground there. They prompted the southern tribes to rebel against the rising left-wing influences in the Teheran government. This emboldened Qavam to dismiss some of his Tudeh ministers and announce plans to send troops into Azerbaijan to supervise pending general elections. The Azerbaijani regime protested, and ominous hints of reentry emanated from Moscow. Byrnes then intervened decisively, authorizing the American ambassador to endorse publicly Qavam's intended action. Iranian troops entered Tabriz on December 11. The Azerbaijani regime collapsed after token resistance, its leaders slipping away to safety in the Soviet Union. The Kurdish People's Republic also fell without serious resistance. Its less fortunate leaders were hanged. The Soviet Union took no action. In 1947, after the United States ambassador had publicly affirmed, "The American people will support fully your freedom to make your own choice," the new Majlis voted overwhelmingly to reject the Soviet oil concession. This also brought no retribution.18 These crises were only the most spectacular expressions of a general forward move by the United States. This was true even in the Far East, where relations with the Soviets were for the moment comparatively stable. General MacArthur brooked no Soviet interference in the governance of Japan, ensuring that this
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situation remained a principal focus of Moscow's media animosity toward the United States, which was now maintained at a high level. In China, General Marshall persisted patiently on behalf of President Truman with a mission to mediate the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. Elsewhere American policy was increasingly confrontational. Throughout 1946 West European, Greek, Turkish, and Iranian leaders courted Byrnes, seeking political support against the international and domestic Left as well as economic aid. The Secretary, who ostentatiously began to refuse economic assistance to the Communist states in mid-1946, was invariably supportive and often helpful. Meanwhile, Anglo-American collaboration grew more intimate, despite Bevin's occasional attempts to assume a mediatory role between the two great powers. The British especially encouraged the growing American involvement along the Northern Tier. They accepted Byrnes's proposals for the maintenance of Greece and Turkey envisaging continued British military support while the United States began to pay the bills.19 Congress also approved the British loan, despite persisting currents of Anglophobia, pro-Zionist sentiment, and antipathy to socialism. The decisive argument was the need to build a strong front, in which British participation was indispensable, against communism.20 There was, in addition, an increasing range of Anglo-American consultation and practical cooperation in Western Europe. This was especially noticeable in German affairs. Here the Soviet problem had both political and economic dimensions. In May, Bevin warned the Cabinet about "the danger of Russia." Byrnes was also concerned, as we have seen. The Soviets continued to deprecate his four-power treaty proposal, saying they wanted to see real disarmament and denazification in Germany before making arrangements for the future. In July, Byrnes suggested to Bevin an arrangement for cooperation between the American and British zones to the exclusion of the Soviets. Bevin felt this was premature. But then came Byrnes's Stuttgart speech of September 6 quieting fears of a possible Soviet or Communist takeover in the country by committing the United States to participate in the occupation of Germany so long as other powers remained. The merging of the American and British zones into Bizonia followed in the autumn, publicly justified on economic grounds alone but carrying with it the prospect of full East-West political partition.21 Political consolidation also accelerated in the United States itself after the spring crisis with Russia. A remarkable manifestation of this was the effort in various quarters to formulate a justificatory anti-Communist ideology. At Fulton, Churchill had provided two foundations of this ideology: a persuasive diagnosis of the Soviet Union's threat to freedom, and the invocation of an armed Anglo-American alliance to confront it. Kennan's cable of February 2,2, worked to similar effect, as did Bohlen's various synthesizing efforts. But Truman still sought a comprehensive statement of United States-Soviet relations that would give an authoritative cast to the Churchill-Kennan insights. In June 1946, therefore, he directed his aide Clark Clifford to prepare such a statement. This
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project was taken very seriously. Reports, assessments, and data were solicited from virtually all leading officials: the Secretaries of State, Navy, and War, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, and the intelligence heads among them.22 The will of Peter the Great, in which the Czar had predicted the course of Russian expansion, was closely scrutinized, together with the diplomatic words of the British historian Harold Nicolson (submitted by the head of the British staff at the Combined Chiefs of Staff) and numerous reports from diplomats and journalists. On September 13 a final draft was submitted to Kennan. His suggestions further toughened an already hard line report, and his assertion that there was no foreseeable hope of achieving any basic change in the Soviet outlook was given central emphasis.23 The final document, containing 100,000 words, went to Truman on September 24. It expressed a widely shared belief that the Soviets were "increasing their military power and the sphere of Soviet influence in preparation for the inevitable conflict." The Fulton thesis, born of Munich, was affirmed in the assertion that concessions would only have the effect of "raising Soviet hopes and increasing Soviet demands." For this reason, the report noted, "we should be prepared to join with the British and other Western countries in an attempt to build up a world of our own. . . ." This necessitated a strong American military establishment, for "the language of military power is the only language which disciples of power politics understand." It might ei'en be necessary "to wage atomic and biological war." The report concluded with the recommendation, again in line with Churchill's thesis that peace could only come through strength, that the principal American objective should be to persuade the Soviet leaders that war between capitalism and communism was not inevitable. Meanwhile, others besides Truman were trying to formulate a comprehensive ideological basis for action. Forrestal energetically collected antiCommunist literature and passed it around in his circle of political, military, and press intimates. He also solicited appraisals from officials and university professors, notably, a long paper entitled "Dialectical Materialism and Russian Objectives," by Professor E. F. Willett of Smith College, which offered conclusions similar to those of the Clifford report. The same rationalizing impulse was at work in Congress. The Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen prepared a lengthy hostile analysis entitled "Communism in Action," which the House of Representatives resolved on July 26 to print as a House document.24 Public opinion polls between March 1946 and March 1947 show that the public was increasingly critical of Soviet policy and receptive to suggestions that the Kremlin was bent on world conquest. A State Department survey presented in November showed "an overwhelming majority" (76 percent) continuing to favor the "firmer" policy toward Russia or believing the existing policy "about right," and the largest majority yet (70 percent) believing that the Soviets sought "world control." Earlier, in September 1946, another poll had shown 62 percent of the American people recording themselves as "less friendly"
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toward the Soviets than a year before. Press commentators were also increasingly aware of the ideological dimension of United States-Soviet relations, and of the Truman administration's effort to emphasize it.25 Earlier we measured the impact of the Fulton speech by showing the marked impetus it gave to four significant contemporary causes: atomic exclusivism, the arrest of American demobilization, closer Anglo-American relations, and domestic anticommunism. These continued to prosper in the increasingly tense atmosphere of 1946. The triumph of atomic exclusivism in the United Nations has already been noted. The administration's campaign to slow down demobilization achieved a significant success when, in June, Congress extended the draft for a further year.26 As the administration came to base its case for the British loan less on the need to revive liberal world trade, and more on the need to build a strong front against communism, sentiment changed and Congress finally approved it. It was on this basis that Vandenberg, hitherto dubious, committed his decisive weight to the bill on April 22. As the American historian Richard Gardner has remarked, "After the Iranian episode the importance of the Soviet factor could no longer be ignored."27 Attacks on the American Left also became more frequent after March 1946 and spread from the HearstPaterson-McCormick press to more moderate newspapers. Their main theme was the subversion of American life by communism.28 The American Left was progressively isolated. As we have seen, the Fulton speech had aroused the left-liberal New Dealers. Despite notable abstentions, they had then presented a strong front against what they took to be the main danger: a formal Anglo-American military alliance against the Soviet Union. Here they were briefly successful. But the apparently unilateral American resistance to the clear-cut violation of treaty by the Soviets in Iran, and the bending of the United Nations to this purpose, took the wind out of their sails. Subsequent efforts to arouse American opinion against Francoist Spain and Argentina were met with indifference or opposition.29 The fall of Henry Wallace in September 1946 dramatized the declining influence of the Left. On September 12, Wallace had virtually forced a confrontation with the existing policy of "firmness," by telling a left-wing audience in New York that the United States and the Soviet Union should recognize and respect each other's main sphere of influence. This reminder of "accommodation" embarrassed Byrnes, who was then practicing confrontation diplomacy in Paris. Urged on by Vandenberg, Byrnes protested to Truman, threatening resignation if nothing was done. This forced Truman to choose between the new hard policy and the loss of left-liberal support in the imminent congressional elections. Choosing the former, he dismissed Wallace as Secretary of Commerce on September 20.30 A significant token of the changing international order through 1946 was rising American concern about British fidelity. Until the spring the great ques-
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tion had been whether Britain could somehow attach the United States. Now, as is suggested by the suspicions of Bevin we have seen emanating from Washington between March and June, some Americans wondered whether the Labour government, currently given some freedom of movement by the American activism, could be held for the desired common front. These suspicions flared up again in late September when Stalin executed what one American diplomat called "a maneuver expected for some time in some quarters to detach Britain from USA." Stalin's medium was another newspaper interview. He disclaimed any belief in the inevitability of war and made various other pacific and reassuring statements seemingly designed to please the British people and their government. This undoubtedly encouraged the Labour left-wing "revolt" that appeared in November calling for a more pro-Soviet or, at least, a more evenhanded British policy. Then the "Europeanist" option reappeared in the Foreign Office with Ronald's renewed advocacy of the "Western bloc" scheme. And Bevin himself, still hoping for better relations with Moscow, began to talk seriously with Attlee in late December about a possible bilateral, Anglo-Soviet deal in the eastern Mediterranean.31 In the event, these impulses against the general trend toward closer AngloAmerican collaboration soon sputtered out. Stalin's motives were not, for the most part, taken at face value in London, especially as Soviet policy did not seem to change appreciably and the propaganda attacks on Britain continued. The Labour insurgency petered out against Attlee's rock-like resistance on behalf of an absent Bevin. The "Western bloc" revival foundered on the objection that such an approach risked chilling the indispensable new American involvement. As for Bevin, his periodic hopes of better relations with the Russians based on straight talk and open understandings still came to grief regularly as he confronted what he called "the Molotov mentality." Two acrimonious private meetings with Molotov in New York at the end of 1946 brought further disappointment. Finally, the devastating winter economic crisis of 1946-47 revealed the flimsy basis upon which visions of an independent policy rested. By March, Attlee and Bevin were ready to turn Greece and Turkey over to the Americans and concentrate on a policy of transatlantic collaboration.32 This evolution seems logical and even inevitable in retrospect. Britain, as Labour policy was already making clear, was a world power in self-willed retreat, led by a Prime Minister who seemed determined to dismantle the British Empire, at least in its traditional form, and who also wished, until Bevin persuaded him otherwise, to withdraw from the Mediterranean and Middle East. The United States, on the other hand, was a rapidly expanding world power, its reach already beginning to assume global proportions. The two countries were organizing for very different futures. Nowhere is this clearer than in the crucial sphere of national defense organization. During 1946 Attlee took up the reorganization of the British defense establishment. The whole thrust of his policy favored the winding up of expensive bases and world commitments
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and the decentralization of the armed services and their subordination to popular, parliamentary control. In the United States, allowing for the inevitable early postwar demobilization that affected both countries, the exact reverse was now occurring. Far-flung bases were being acquired or sought, and a great effort was being made to centralize and tighten up the defense establishment— a move that naturally tended to augment executive power at the expense of legislative control. Britain was beginning to turn inward. The United States was now self-consciously gearing up for Cold War.33
CONCLUSION It remains only to bring this study a little more sharply into focus by summarizing the author's conclusions about the origins of the Cold War. The reader will recall that the argument in earlier chapters proceeded, with support from the historical record, from three initial premises: first, that United States-Soviet political relations during the war were superficial, at least by comparison with the other two combinations within the victorious Grand Alliance; second, that the American tendency to detachment from European politics, which explains that superficiality and which was derived from both historical and contemporary impulses, intensified through the second half of 1945 and into 1946, however masked this was by enthusiastic commitments to the postwar United Nations and to the wholesome "vision" of Yalta, with the result that a declining and vulnerable Britain was left alone to face the reality of an expanding, hostile Soviet Union; and, third, that this increasingly evident divergence between the United States and Britain did in fact encourage Stalin, who had already accomplished or made substantial progress toward his basic objectives in Eastern Europe and the Far East, to move on now to challenge Britain in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Western Europe, thereby launching an Anglo-Soviet Cold War that proceeded gradually to a high pitch of political confrontation in the winter of 1945—46. The great question, of course, is how this Anglo-Soviet Cold War, in which the United States did not participate, was suddenly converted into a United States—Soviet Cold War in which Britain was still active but only as America's junior partner. Clearly, any satisfactory answer must come not only from the study of events and changes of sentiment in the United States but also from the identification and explanation of those sudden new tense points of American connection with the Soviet Union that appeared in early 1946, and whose absence until then had encouraged mutual hopes of accommodation. With this structural or geopolitical precept in mind, we have traced a process that, while it defies easy analysis, seemingly involved three fundamental, interacting developments. The first was the decision of the Truman administration in February to reorient its Soviet policy from accommodation to confrontation. The second was a campaign to explain and justify this reorientation to the
AFTERMATH AND CONCLUSION
2.81
American people in terms of a Soviet menace. And the third was a Soviet political response that was sufficiently impolitic to authenticate that campaign and consolidate the change in American policy. Winston Churchill influenced substantially the evolution of each of these vital developments. There can be no doubt that he played a part, if only as a focus but probably more than that, in the reorientation of United States policy that we have traced to February 12, 1946. His February 10 White House meeting with President Truman was a turning point. Before this Truman, harassed by domestic political pressures and a rising disquiet over Soviet conduct, which he shared, had been eager to stiffen his Soviet policy but reluctant to confront a supposedly confused public opinion. After discussion he endorsed Churchill's plan to urge, in his forthcoming Fulton speech, the necessity of "full AngloAmerican military collaboration" in a context that could only threaten the Soviet Union. He thus reversed the American dogma that there should be no "ganging up" with the British against Russia. The actual transformation, under the direction of a suddenly converted Byrnes, presumably inspired by Churchill's intervention with Truman, began two days later. It was much more comprehensive and systematic than has been generally understood, suddenly projecting a new anti-Soviet American diplomacy into virtually every region, including most notably the Mediterranean and Near East. The calculated impression of Anglo-American collaboration (though, in fact, the British government was not directly involved) was particularly evident in a battery of American gestures clearly intended to convey solidarity with Churchill at the time of his sensational speech. This, it was plainly hoped, would both intimidate the Russians and rally American public support for the harder lino. Churchill's "iron curtain" speech on March 5 was the centerpiece of the Truman administration's campaign to bring this new militancy from the shadows of diplomacy into the open arena of American public politics. That Truman and Byrnes saw it in this light can easily be seen from the calculated stage setting of Anglo-American solidarity with which—to impress American opinion as well as the Soviets—they vigorously surrounded it. And indeed Churchill's thesis, that Soviet expansionism represented a danger to peace and freedom requiring a countering Anglo-American "fraternal association," immediately crystallized and then polarized a hitherto unclear American opinion, at the same time clarifying the issues at stake and providing a plausible basis for the rising public indictment of Soviet conduct. The Fulton speech had an immense practical effect on the whole crisis. Indeed, despite a somewhat disappointing immediate response and some briefly distracting public suspicion, which rapidly diminished in significance as the increasing isolation of the American Left through March and April suggests, Churchill's demarche was the pivot on which the whole transformation eventually turned. It created a context of heightened American public sensitivity to Soviet conduct and of considerable Soviet anxiety, expressed in Stalin's deter-
2§2
THE IRON CURTAIN
mination to resist the new Anglo-American front by standing firm while also trying to split it through selective appeasement. All that was lacking to bring these fundamental forces into direct confrontation was a suitably concrete issue. And this now presented itself in a form that played perfectly into the moral-legal sensibilities of American opinion, namely, the occupation of northern Iran that Moscow persisted in illegally after the March 2, deadline for withdrawal. Byrnes skillfully exploited this further opportunity, covertly urging the Iranian Prime Minister to bring his case before the United Nations Security Council, while encouraging American opinion to view the looming confrontation as a test of American principle. Stalin fell into this trap. In this third, "Soviet" phase, too, Churchill played a major role, for Stalin, impressed by Churchill's apparent diplomatic coup in Washington, reacted throughout to the first, Fulton-oriented phase of the Truman administration's reorientation with its clear Anglo-American geopolitical emphasis and did not adjust sufficiently or in time to the second, and more dangerous, United Nations phase. He believed, understandably, that Churchill was defining the scope of an already functioning Anglo-American alliance. His decision, in consequence, was to stand firm in Iran despite the illegality. Certainly the Soviets had their own interests there. But Stalin's main concern now was not to validate Churchill's proclamation to the world that Soviet policy responded only to the threat of united Anglo-American pressure, or to encourage the intrusion of American power into this almost exclusive and traditional Anglo-Russian arena. He seems to have calculated that if he reacted firmly the Americans might back down, as they had a year earlier. After the Fulton shock, however, he decided both to appease the Americans with a remarkable series of conciliatory gestures and to intimidate the Iranian government into making various major concessions that would permit a formal Soviet withdrawal, or at least the promise of it, before the Security Council hearing. But the Iranians, prompted by Byrnes, summoned up the courage to bring their case before the Council; and American opinion, upset by the harsh Soviet actions in Iran, which only fortified Churchill's Fulton thesis, was now ready to applaud the drama of the Secretary's fight to protect Iranian independence. As the trap began to close, Stalin panicked or, at least, lost control of the situation. Soviet diplomacy moved from sophisticated resistance to obtuse displays that further alienated American opinion. Truman and Byrnes won a diplomatic triumph, as the American-led Security Council majority finally extracted an unconditional Soviet promise to withdraw from Iran. Much more significant was the confirmation this success offered to the American leaders that they could rely on public support for the harder line in other contexts. They systematically consolidated it through 1946. Only Stalin, bitter over a crisis he clearly regarded as contrived, could have made the adjustments necessary to reverse the new trend. Instead, he initiated the fateful spiral of mutual escalation by responding with increasingly obdurate Soviet policies. By May O
J
O
AFTERMATH AND CONCLUSION
283
both the American and the Soviet governments clearly recognized that they were now locked in a deep mutual antagonism. Detachment was over. The Cold War had begun. Who was responsible? The Soviets trace the Cold War at the deepest level to the machinations of "international reaction." To the extent that they personalize this apparition, they have, of course, heaped abuse upon the Truman administration and American "militarists." They have also followed Stalin's own judgment, so far as we can identify it, in attributing much of the responsibility to Churchill. Yet it was really Stalin who brought on the Cold War. He did not do this, as is often claimed, by his seemingly immoral actions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. These were certainly indispensable as spurs to the mobilization of public opinion in the West behind policies of resistance and containment—as the Iranian crisis shows. But an interpretation that emphazies the structural characteristics of the international order cannot be seen to turn on public attitudes or ideological preferences alone. The better answer, from this point of view, is that the Cold War began because Stalin stepped outside the East European theater. There, despite growing Western criticism of Russian conduct, the Soviets were still protected by a widespread public acceptance of their moral and national security claims, by a number of AngloAmerican quasi-commitments, and finally by the inability of the British and/or Americans to change the situation, either by force or through a United Nations that was responsive only to the petitions of sovereign states. By moving beyond this protected sphere, however, Stalin exposed the Soviet Union to the danger of Anglo-American political and public mobilization through the retributive mechanism of a now functioning United Nations. This was the setting in which the 1946 crisis occurred and the Cold War began. Ironically, this brings back into prominence, as a causative influence in the American response to Soviet expansionism, the enigmatic figure of Franklin Roosevelt. Whatever his precise intensions, FDR, long upheld by American revisionist scholars, and even for a time by the Soviets, as a well-meaning statesman whose sudden death ushered in a more reactionary and anti-Soviet climate, had set Stalin a number of traps. He always recognized the need, if the United States was ever to be in a position to wield effective political influence after the war, for some bridge between European power politics and American moralism. One attempt to develop this vital connection, standing in line of descent from the Atlantic Charter, was his Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe. This did create a tenuous connection, but in itself, as we have seen, it was not enough to inspire an American public willingness to play an active, committed, political role in Europe, even in the face of apparent Soviet transgressions. With the United Nations, however, Roosevelt was more successful. And it was here that, once Stalin had moved beyond his protected sphere, the trap was successfully sprung and that the two fundamental forces—American opinion and the Soviet leadership—were brought into final confrontation. But this
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could not have happened without the intercession of the Soviet Cold War against Britain, of which the situation in Iran was an integral part, for it was this combination of an Anglo-Soviet concrete issue on the one hand and the American moral-legal and judicatory forum on the other that made the transformation to United States-Soviet Cold War possible. It fell to the next administration to preside over that transformation. President Truman's initiative in directing the change in United States policy is reasonably seen as the decisive factor in the whole process. Until February 10 he had supported, though with increasing impatience, Byrnes's accommodationist diplomacy. This changed almost overnight. Byrnes immediately began to practice confrontation politics with the Soviets as energetically as he had offered accommodation earlier. In this brief transitional moment the trilateral international system suddenly dissolved, and the new bilateral order came rapidly into view. One's respect for Truman's political acumen is enhanced by another reflection. He had, after all, to work through a period of confusion in which two rival conceptions of American policy contended with increasing passion for supremacy. This was the problem that faced Woodrow Wilson before and after World War I. Significantly, he found the postwar transition more difficult; indeed, it destroyed him. Much the same difficulty confronted Roosevelt before World War II and Truman immediately after it. Unlike Wilson, Truman did not try to turn the tide. He apparently saw his problem as one of judging the currents correctly and changing ships at the opportune moment. Churchill and then Stalin and Byrnes all helped, in different ways and with varying degrees of self-awareness, to make it easy for him during February and March 1946. Once he had made the jump and found acceptable support, he was hardly likely, and Stalin gave him no sufficient incentive, to make the hazardous trip back. Truman, then, did not act alone. Indeed, he and Byrnes were successful in moving the United States forward at this time only because they were able to bring into play against the Soviets the two interacting political entities developed by the preceding generation of leadership: the Anglo-American conception promoted by Churchill as a necessary counter to Soviet power, and the United Nations forum of Roosevelt in which that controversial conception was finally able to take root. Thus the two Allied wartime leaders, so often portrayed as Stalin's dupes, in fact created the instruments that finally confounded him. In this final transformation Churchill's part was unique and indispensable to the outcome. He seems to have inspired the timing and much of the substance of the Truman administration's reorientation. He stimulated American public scrutiny and criticism of Soviet conduct and influenced materially, so far as we can tell, the fateful course of Stalin's response. He was therefore, in a sense, the pivot on which the whole process turned, acting successively on the three crucial forces: Truman, American public opinion, and Stalin. He aptly
AFTERMATH AND CONCLUSION
285
entitled his account of the last phase of the Grand Alliance Triumph and Tragedy. Yet he must also have felt, as he watched the Anglo-American combination grow in opposition to the Soviet Union, a strong sense of fulfillment, perhaps of having left a worthwhile legacy. He certainly observed the postFulton developments with a growing sense of vindication. Bevin's secretary records a discussion with him six weeks after the speech. After remarking that he had seen a film of President Truman applauding his Fulton speech "in all the most controversial places," Churchill continued, "The great American eagle stood immobile, poised, with sharp beak and ready talons; the Russians put a dart in under a wing, another under the tail, and still the bird remained immobile. But there is movement in the breast of the bird!" In May we find him pushing things along in a speech at The Hague drawing attention to "a vast and fundamental synthesis" between Britain and the United States and to the underlying "unity of thought" between the two peoples. In Paris during the peace conference he conferred harmoniously with Byrnes, who was already urging Bevin to accept "the common user of ports" and other Fulton proposals. In October he felt able to comment, "What I said at Fulton has been outpaced and overpassed by movements of events and by the movement of American opinion. If I were to make that speech at the present time and in the same place, it would attract no particular attention."34 Churchill also remarked in April 1946 upon the Soviet response to his Fulton demarche, characterizing it as "incredibly clumsy" and declaring his intention to tell Stalin so if he saw him. It seems unlikely that Churchill can now have believed in the possibility of any further personal meeting with Stalin, for he more than anyone had provoked that Soviet clumsiness which, in the dangerous aftermath of the Fulton speech, had consolidated the American public support that in turn converted the Truman-Byrnes initiatives from a necessarily speculative enterprise into a settled policy of resistance to further Soviet expansion.35 Churchill's achievement in this transitional postwar phase can perhaps be summed up finally in two central propositions. The first is that, in a season of danger, ideological confusion, exhaustion, and doubt, he clarified for the world the distinction between Soviet totalitarianism and a Western democratic outlook that he defined in terms of "freedom" and "Peace through Strength." The second is that he played the pioneering part in invoking and in helping materially to create that geopolitical combination of American power and British connections which alone in this period offered the West the prospect of security and general democratic renewal. The most eloquent political tribute to his success in this respect came from an old adversary. In a late 1946 discussion with Ernest Bevin about British politics, Molotov remarked that he "did not wish Mr. Churchill to return to power." It seems only reasonable to account this among the Soviet official's more sincere utterances.36
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Notes
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES BBC Digest British Broadcasting Corporation, Daily Digest of World Broadcasts CAB Cabinet Papers (United Kingdom) CM Cabinet Minutes (United Kingdom, Labour Government, I945-5O CP Cabinet Papers (United Kingdom, Labour Government, 1945-51) FO Foreign Office Foreign Relations of the United States Foreign Relations PREM Prime Minister's Papers SCCA Stalin's Correspondence with Churchill and Attlee United Nations Security Council SC SORT Stalin's Correspondence with Roosevelt and Truman SD State Department Manuscript Collection Secretaries of State, War, and Navy Coordinating Committee SWNCC War Cabinet Minutes (United Kingdom) WM WP War Cabinet Papers (United Kingdom) CHAPTER i: CHURCHILL AND AMERICA 1. For a full discussion of reaction to the Fulton speech, see below, Chapter 7. 2. See editor's comment in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, ed. Michael Wolff, 4 vols. (London, 1976), i:xxiii (hereafter cited as Churchill, Essays with volume and page); Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 2 vols. (Boston, 1966-69), vol. i, Youth, 1874-1900 (Boston, 1966), 254.
2.88
NOTES
3. Winston Churchill to Jack Churchill, Nov. 15, 1895, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. i, pt. i, 1874-1896 (Boston, 1967), 599-600. 4. Ibid.; Jacob P. Mayer, Prophet of the Mass Age: A Study of Alexis de Tocqueville (London, 1939), 30. 5. New York World, Dec. 15, 1895; New York Herald, Dec. 18, 1895. 6. Saturday Review, March 7, 1896; Morning Post, July 15, 1898; Winston Churchill, "The Fashoda Incident," North American Review 167 (July-Dec. 1898): 736. 7. Randolph Churchill, Churchill, 1:523-28; and Winston Churchill to Lady Randolph Churchill, Dec. 21, 1900, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. i, pt. 2, 1896-1900 (Boston, 1967), 1223-25. 8. R. PI. Heindel, The American Impact on Great Britain, 1898-1914 (Philadelphia, 1940), 138, 159—60, 173; Manchester Guardian, June 17, 1904; Winston Churchill, "Why I Am a Free Trader," pamphlet in Churchill, Essays, 2:18-36; Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 4th ser., vol. 123 (1903): 194. See Winston S. Churchill, His Complete Speeches, ed. Robert Rhodes James, 13 vols. (London, 1974), 2:1147, 1176-77, 1179-81, 1432, 1484-86. 9. See Robert Kelley, Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone (New York, 1969), xiii-xvii; and Henry Felling, America and the British Left from Bright to Bevan (London, 1956), 66—107. 10. Churchill, Speeches, 2:1456-58, 1948; PTO, June 16, 23, 1906; Churchill, Essays, 2:40-42. See also Otis Graham, An Encore for Reform: The Old Progressives and the Ne\v Deal (New York, 1967). n. Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895-1914 (New York, 1968). See also C. S. Campbell, Jr., Anglo-American Understanding, 1898-1903 (Baltimore, 1957). 12. Winston Churchill to Moore Bayley, May 20, 1903, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. 2, pt. 2, 1908-1914 (Boston, 1969), 55; Heindel, American Impact, 122—23, 134, 158; Churchill, Essays, 2:40—42. See also Churchill, Speeches, 2:1444, 1901. 13. Churchill, Speeches, 3:2326. 14. Colin Simpson, Lusitania (Boston, 1973), 95-96, 130; cf. T. A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster: An Episode in Modern Warfare and Diplomacy (New York, 1975), 176-191. The official biographer, Martin Gilbert, ignores the incident completely. For Churchill's own comment see News of the World, June 6, 1937. 15. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 90 (1917): 1385-86. 16. Sunday Pictorial, May 20, 1917; Martin Gilbert, Winston S, Churchill, 6 vols. (Boston, 1971-83), vol. 4, The Stricken World, 1916-1922 (Boston, 1975), 16—17, 34> 5°> 9°> IO2 " 17. Churchill, Speeches, 3:2587, 2613; Sunday Pictorial, May 20, 1917; Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. 4, pt. i (Boston, 1975), 339; Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 124. 18. Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 669-83, 704-89; Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, 1922—1939 (London, 1976), 123, 308. 19. Sunday Pictorial, Jan. 12, 1919; Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 244—46.
NOTES
289
20. See, e.g., Arno J. Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (Cleveland and New York, 1964, paperback ed.); and N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (New York, 1968). 21. For the leading explication of the "Open Door" concept, see William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1959). 22. The two outstanding studies of American and British diplomacy with postrevolutionary Russia are George F. Kennan, The Decision to Intervene: SovietAmerican Relations, 1917-1920 (Princeton, N.J., 1958); and Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917—1921, 3 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1961). 23. Illustrated Sunday Herald, Jan. 25, 1920. See Kennan, Decision to Intervene, I I 3 > !33> 454—55> Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, ed. Jane Degras, 3 vols. (London, 1951—53), vol. i, 1917-1924 (London, 1951). 15-1724. Weekly Dispatch, June 22, 29, 1919. Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. 4, pt- 2> 545, 585, 614. 25. Author's italics. Illustrated Sunday Herald, Nov. 30, 1919. 26. Daily Mail, Aug. 24, 1924; Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 4, 1918-1928: The Aftermath (New York, 1929), 98-115, 118-19, and passim; Raymond Buell, "Winston Churchill's Criticism of President Wilson," Current History 30 (June 1929): 375-80. See also Oswald G. Villard, "Winston Churchill," Nation 128 (April 24, 1929): 498. 27. Churchill, Speeches, 3:3063. 28. Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 122 n. i. 29. Ibid., 123, 607; Weekly Dispatch, June 15, 1924. 30. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922—1939, 79—81, 93, 119. 31. Ibid., 407. 32. Churchill, Speeches, 4:4324, 4668; Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 301, 307-8. 33. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 307-8, 315 n. i. 34. Daily Telegraph, Dec. 2, 16, 29, 1929. 35. Ibid., Nov. 18, 25, 1929, Jan. 20, 1930. 36. Ibid., Jan. 27, 1930. 37. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 435. 38. Daily Telegraph, Feb. 3, 1930. 39. Ibid.; Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 426. 40. Ibid., 425-26. 41. See below, Chapter 2, n. 21. 42. Daily Telegraph, Dec. 23, 1929. See also Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 348. 43. Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 15, 1930; Gilbert, Churchill, 1922—1939, 424. 44. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922—1939, 424. For Churchill's similar stimulation of fears of communism in Britain during the 19205, see Gilbert, Churchill, 1922'939, 54, 313-15; and Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 (New York, 1970), 134, 170-71. See also Collier's, Feb. 23, 1933, June 27, 1937, Sept. 24, 1938. For an interpretation of Churchill's general views during the 19305, see James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 199-385. 45. Collier's, May 4, June 29, 1935, Oct. 2, 1937.
2<po
NOTES
46. Ibid., Nov. 4, 1933, Aug. 22, 1935; Daily Mail, April 24, 1935; Aug. 22, 1936. For Churchill's campaign, on similar grounds, for constitutional reform in Britain in the 19305, see his 1930 Romanes Lectures at Oxford University, described in Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 361; and Churchill, Speeches, ;: 4670. 47. Graham, Encore for Reform; Collier's, June 27, 1937. 48. Collier's, Oct. 2, 1937; Winston Churchill to Lothian, June 28, 1940, Prime Minister's Papers, 3.476/10 (hereafter cited as PREM and file classification numbers); Winston Churchill to Smuts, Nov. 8, 1941, PREM 3.476/3. 49. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 700; Collier's, Feb. 20, Oct. 2, 1937, July 30, 1938. 50. Daily Telegraph, Aug. 4, 1938; Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 955-58, 963-65. 51. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 1009. 52. Henry Felling, Winston Churchill (New York, 1974), 419—33; Time, Sept. 4, 1939. See also Saturday Evening-Post, Oct. 21, 1939; Reader's Digest, Feb. 1940; American Mercury, Feb. 1940, 53. Felling, Churchill, 428; Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York, 1975), 79-94. 54. Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 94-114. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel Rosenman, 13 vols. (New York, 1938-50), vol. 9, 1940 (New York, 1941), 260-64. 55. Robert A. Divine, Roosevelt and World War II (Baltimore, 1969), 33-37; Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (Boston, 1949), 398—416. For an excellent historiographical review, see David Reynolds, "Competitive Co-operation: Anglo-American Relations in World War Two," Historical journal 23 (March, 1980): 233-45. 56. Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 122—26, 124 n. 4; Joseph Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939—1941: The Partnership That Saved the West (New York, 1976), 276. 57. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York, 1948), 235-63; W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946 (New York, 1975), 11-14, 56-79; Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 275-85; Harriman to Churchill, July 2, 1941, PREM 3.217/2. 58. Churchill to Bridges, Jan. 13, 1941, PREM 4.25/3. 59. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 243; Harriman to Roosevelt, March 7, 1941, President's Secretary's File, Box 50, Roosevelt MSS; Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War against Japan, 1941-1945 (New York, 1978), 116, 119. 60. Churchilll to Halifax, March 16, 1941, PREM 4.17/1; Winant to Hopkins, Oct. 16, 1943, Dec. 19, 1944, Map Room, Box 13, Roosevelt MSS; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 311; Thorne, Allies of a Kind, 113—15, 119.
NOTES
2p I
CHAPTER z: CHURCHILL, BOLSHEVISM, AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 1. Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 219, 220, 226-27, 229-30. 2. Ibid., 220, 226-27, 257' 3. Ibid., 234, 251, 268. Churchill, Speeches, 3:2798. 4. Lloyd George letters, cited in Frank Owen, Tempestuous Journal: Lloyd George, His Life and Times (London, 1954), 517-22; Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 346, 348. 5. Illustrated Sunday Herald, Jan. 25, 1920; The Times, Nov. 10, 1920. 6. Evening News, July 28, 1920; Vital Speeches 12 (March l y , 1946): 329-32; Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 269. See also Martin Gilbert, Churchill's Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1981), 70-81. 7. Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 277; Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921, vol. 2, Britain and the Russian Civil War, November if>i8-February 1920 (Princeton, N.J., 1968), 153. 8. The Times, April 12, 1919; Evening Neivs, July 28, 1920. See also Arthur L. Smith, Churchill's German Army: Wartime Strategy and Cold War Politics, 1943-1947 (Beverly Hills and London, 1975). 9. Gilbert, Churchill's Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1981), 78; Ullman, AngloSoviet Relations, 2:301, 221-22. For Churchill in 1945 see below, Chapter 4. 10. Churchill, Speeches, 3:2798. 11. Sunday Pictorial, July 8, 1917; Weekly Dispatch, June 22, 1919. 12. Churchill, Aftermath, 65, 60-77; Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (1937; American ed., Chicago, 1973), 197-98. 13. Gilbert, Churchill's Political Philosophy, 76; Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 941. 14. See Daily Telegraph, Oct. 7, Nov. 6, 1897; Morning Post Sept. 29, Oct. 6, 1898. See also Frederick Woods, ed., Young Winston's Wars: The Original Dispatches of Winston Churchill, War Correspondent, 1897-1900 (New York, 1972), 3-30, 98-129. 15. Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 941, 782-83; Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 128, 197. For Churchill's views of Zionism see Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, 568-69, 584, 588. 16. For Gallipoli see Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 3, The Challenge of War, pt. i (Boston, 1971). chaps. 10-14. 17. For Churchill's role in the Russian intervention, see Gilbert, Churchill, Stricken World, chaps. 12-20. 18. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 28, 62. See also Arno Mayer, "The Power Politician and Counter-Revolutionary," in Peter Stansky, ed., Churchill: A Profile (New York, 1973), 173-87. 19. Mayer, "Power Politician," 182; Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 226, 457; Collier's, Sept. 3, 1938. 20. Churchill, Speeches, 5:5056. Daily Mail, May 26, 1932; The Times, Feb. 18, 1933. 21. Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 200; Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step, 1936-1939 (London, 1939), 170. 22. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 720, 723, 740.
2p2 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
NOTES
Ibid., 777. Sunday Chronicle, June 27, 1937. Ibid. Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 197—208; Answers, Aug. 24, 1934. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 961-95, 968, 1010. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930—1939, ed. Nigel Nicolson (London, 1966), 984; Gilbert, Churchill, 1922-1939, 1044-115; Daily Telegraph, June 8, 1939; Daily Mirror, July 3, 193928. Gilbert, Churchill, 1922—1939, 1104; Collier's, Sept. 3, 1939. 29. E. L. Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, 5 vols. (London, 1970-76), 1:48, 50, 60, 104. See also Elisabeth Barker, Churchill and Eden at War (New York: 1978), 225. 30. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 1:465—68, 491; Churchill to Eden, Feb. 22, 1941; Churchill minute, April 22, 1941, PREM 3.395/16. 31. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance (Boston, 1950), 369-73. 32. Felling, Churchill, 470; Stalin to Churchill, July 18, i94r, Stalin's Correspondence with Churchill and Attlee (American ed., New York, 1965), 12-13 (hereafter cited as SCCA and page); Cripps to Eden, Oct. 26, 1941; Churchill to Cripps, Oct. 28, 1941, PREM 3.395/17. 33. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 227; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:11—14, 23-27, 612-13; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York, 1979), 279. 34. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 234-35. 35. First Plenary Meeting, Nov. 28, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (Washington, D.C., 1961), 4876°; B. Ponomaryov, A. Gromyko, and V. Kvostov, History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1945 (Moscow, 1969), 421, 427. 36. Dallek, Roosevelt, 317-24; Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide (Garden City, N.Y., 1957), 225. For favorable British reaction see Beaverbrook to Attlee, Dec. 31, 1941, PREM 3.458/8. 37. Loewenheim et al., Churchill and Roosevelt, 175-79, 202-5; Lord Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940—1965: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston, 1966), 21-22. For the thesis that Churchill consistently paid too high a price for "American charity" during the war, see Corelli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York, 1972), 581-93. 38. Dallek, Roosevelt, 319-20. 39. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:220-36. 40. Churchill, Grand Alliance, 662-81; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:22936; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 235—37. 41. Churchill to Eden, Jan. 8, 1942, PREM 3.399/7. 42. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 236-39; Churchill to Roosevelt, March 7, 1942, PREM 3.470; Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (Boston, 1950), 326—38. 43. Roosevelt to Churchill, March 18, 1942, cited in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 194—96; Dallek, Roosevelt, 338—40. 44. Dallek, Roosevelt, 340-41; Roosevelt to Stalin, April n, 1942, Foreign Rela-
NOTES
293
tions of the United States, 1942, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., 1961), 542-43. It is unclear whether, if the British had accepted the new demands, Molotov would have completed the treaty. Churchill was by this time having second thoughts about the original proposals because of Conservative opposition. See Barker, Churchill and Eden, 239-41. 45. Dallek, Roosevelt, 341—44. 46. Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 341-42. A recent historian of Soviet policy has concluded, "Roosevelt had treated the Russians shabbily in the matter of the Second Front." Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945 (New York, 1979), 47-48. Molotov was clearly given to understand by Churchill and Eden that a second front was problematic in 1942. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:258—60. 47. For examples of Roosevelt's diplomatic style, see Dallek, Roosevelt, 319, 320, 434-35. 401, 5°3' 48. See Theodore Draper, "The Idea of the Cold War and Its Prophets," Encounter, Feb. 10, 1979, 34-45. 49. For Hopkins's visit see Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 323—48. 50. Life, Aug. 30, 1948. 51. Robert Divine's 1969 judgment on Rooseveltian historiography still seems apt: "The composite portrait that emerges is that of a skillful domestic politician who was simply out of his element in international affairs.' Divine, Roosevelt and World War 11 (Baltimore, 1969), 4. But see, for a more favorable and uniquely comprehensive recent study, Robert Dallek's Bancroft Prize-winning Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945, 529-38. 52. For recent discussions of Stalin's diplomacy, see Adam Ulam, The Rivals: America and Russia since World War 11 (New York, 1971), 3-27, and William Taubman, Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Detente to Cold War (New York, 1982). 53. For Maisky see, e.g., Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 1941-1947 (London, 1982), 104. On other occasions Maisky stated a Soviet preference for mutual Anglo-Soviet interests in all parts of Europe. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:597. 54. Dallek, Roosevelt, 403—5. 55. For Lend-Lease problems in production and convoy, see George C. Herring, Jr., Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War (New York, 1973), 63-77. 56. Stalin to Churchill July 23, 1942, cited in Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 271. See also ibid., 271, 322-25, 490-92; Dallek, Roosevelt, 339-50; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:257-64, 267-75. 57. Churchill to Cripps, Oct. 28, 1941, PREM 3.395/17; Churchill, Grand Alliance, 385. 58. Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 90, 104; Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945-1955 (London, 1969), 701; Churchill to Clark Kerr, June 16, 1943, FO 954/26/93. F. S. Northedge and Audrey Wells, Britain and Soviet Communism: The Impact of a Revolution (London, 1982), 152. 59. Dallek, Roosevelt, 351; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 149-64.
294
NOTES
60. Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 472-502; Woodward, British foreign Policy, 2:26572; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 224, 242; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 149-64. 61. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 224; Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York, 1962), 70, 106; Churchill to Roosevelt, Aug. 28, 1942, PREM 3-472"
62. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 607-10; Dallek, Roosevelt, 345-82. For a recent study of the issue, see Mark A. Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941-1943 (Westport, Conn., 1977). 63. Moran, Churchill, 102—3, 250; Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945 (New York, 1977), 6, 193-225, 296; Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 370-71, 386-89; Dallek, Roosevelt, 409-14; cf. Stoler, Second Front, 79-111. 64. Lord Halifax, "Record of Conversation at Lunch at British Embassy," May 22, 1943, PREM 4.30/3; John M. Blum, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diaries of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946 (Boston, 1973), 202, 208; New York Times, Sept. 7, 1943; Churchill to Attlee and Eden, Sept. 7, 1943, PREM 3.465/4. For Churchill's collaboration with Hopkins, see Fraser J. Harbutt, "Churchill, Hopkins and the Other Americans: An Alternative Perspective on AngloAmerican Relations, 1941-1945," International History Review (forthcoming May 1986). 65. Dallek, Roosevelt, 380-82, 403-5; Herring, Aid to Russia, 115, 116; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 2:553-70. 66. Dallek, Roosevelt, 401; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 248-51. 67. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 263-65. See also Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, Poland's Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1939-1943 (Princeton, N.J., 1983). 68. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 4:81—140, 412—41. 69. Churchill to Eden, Oct. 21, 1942, PREM 4.100/7; Memorandum by Prime Minister, n.d., on WP (43) 130, PREM 4.30/3. 70. John Colville, "Churchill as Prime Minister," in Stansky, Churchill, 133; Churchill to Eden, Oct. 6, 1943, PREM 3.399/6. 71. Dallek, Roosevelt, 410-11, 418; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 130.
CHAPTER 3: CHURCHILL FACES POSTWAR PROBLEMS 1. For an analysis of British decline in this period, see Barnett, Collapse of British Power, 581—93. 2. See Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1967 (New York, 1968), 350; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, i n ; Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring (Boston, 1951), 380. 3. For Churchill and Roosevelt on Moscow, respectively, see David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (London, 1981), 225-29; and Dallek, Roosevelt, 419. 4. Record of 2nd meeting of Tripartite conference, Oct. 20, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, vol. i (Washington, D.C., 1963), 583-86,
NOTES
5.
6.
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14. 15. 16.
17.
295
627; Summary of Proceedings of 5th meeting of Tripartite conference, Oct. 23, 1943, ibid., 617-18; Summary of Proceedings of 6th meeting of Tripartite conference, Oct. 24, 1943, ibid., 624—27; Eden to Foreign Office, Oct. 24, 1943, 012467/525/12, and Cadogan to Churchill, Oct. 25, 1943, Ci25o5/ 525/12, FO 371.34340. United States Proposal with Regard to the Treatment of Germany, n.d., Foreign Relations, 1943, 1:720-23; Summary of Proceedings of 6th meeting of Tripartite conference, Oct. 24, 1943, ibid., 631-32; Hull to Roosevelt, Nov. 2, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 147; Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York, 1948), 2:1314-15. For the genesis, course, and character of the Teheran conference, see Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton, N.J., 1957), 237-79. P°r more recent accounts stressing American, Soviet, and British views, respectively, see Dallek, Roosevelt, 430— 41; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 122-33; an<^ Jl>hn W. WheelerBennett and Anthony Nicholls, The Semblance of Peace: The Political Settlement after the Second World War (New York, 1974), 143-73. For Stalin's proposal see Bohlen minutes, dinner meeting, Nov. 29, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 553-54. For observer's comment see Moran, Churchill, 153. Dallek, Roosevelt, 417-18, 422-24, 430. Churchill Minute, April 1943, PREM 4.30/3; Wheeler-Bennett and Nicholls, Semblance of Peace, 134—42, 290. Bohlen minutes, Roosevelt-Stalin meeting, Nov. 28, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 482-86. Bohlen minutes, First plenary meeting, Nov. 28, 1943, ibid., 487-97. Moran, Churchill, 151. For a recent discussion see also Masrny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 112—14, 124—25. Wheeler-Bennett and Nicholls, Semblance of Peace, 152, 154. Minutes of Churchill-Stalin conversation, Nov. 28, 1943, WP (44), 8. Jan. 7, 1944, CAB 66/45. F°r a somewhat different version see Bohlen minutes, Tripartite dinner meeting, Nov. 28, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 512. For Churchill's earlier insistence that there was "therefore the greatest need to reserve territorial questions for the general settlement," see Churchill to Eden, Oct. 6, 1943, PREM 3.399/6. See also Zbigniew Brzezinski, "The Future of Yalta," Foreign Affairs 63 (Winter 1984-85): 280. Minutes of meeting, Dec. i, 1943, WP (44), 8, Jan. 7, 1944, CAB 66/45. For a more truncated account see Bohlen minutes, Meeting of Dec. I, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 596—604. Bohlen minutes, Roosevelt-Stalin meeting, Nov. 29, 1943, ibid., 529—33. Bohlen minutes, Roosevelt-Stalin meeting, Dec. i, 1943, ibid., 594-96. For the opinion that Roosevelt here gave "implied although unstated acquiescence" to the Churchill-Stalin agreement on Polish frontiers, see Charles Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929-1969 (New York, 1973), 151-52. Bohlen minutes, Tripartite dinner meeting, Nov. 29, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 552—54; Bohlen minutes, Tripartite political meeting, Dec. i, 1943, ibid., 603.
296
NOTES
18. Bohlen minutes, dinner meeting, Nov. 28, 1943, ibid., 509-10. 19. For Stalin's charges see above, n. 17. For Churchill see Bohlen minutes, Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin luncheon meeting, Nov. 30, 1944, Foreign Relations, Cairo and Tehran, 565-68. 20. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 73. For a Foreign Office critique of Churchill's diplomacy at Teheran, see Dixon MS Diary, Feb. 7, 1944. See also Carlton, Eden, 230—33. 21. Memorandum by Bohlen, Dec. 15, 1943, Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 846. 22. Roger Parkinson, A Day's March Nearer Home (New York, 1974), 226-33; Moran, Churchill, 155-57. 23. Halifax to Churchill and Eden, Dec. 13, 1943, PREM 4.17/16. For Argentina see Churchill to Roosevelt, Jan. 23, 1944, in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 417 n. i. For oil see Churchill to Roosevelt, Feb. 20, 1944, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., 1965), 100-103; and for a full examination of the issue see Michael B. Stoff, Oil, War, and American Security: The Search for a National Policy on Foreign Oil, 1941—1947 (New Haven, 1980), i z i f f . For the reserves issue see Roosevelt to Churchill, Feb. 22, 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, 3:45. On the conferences see Roosevelt to Churchill, Feb. 23, 1944, PREM 4.17/11. 24. Daily Express, Feb. 16, 1944; Churchill to Law, Feb. 16, 1944, PREM 4.27/10. 25. Churchill minute, Dec. 26, 1943, PREM 4.17/16; on Argentina see Churchill to Roosevelt, Jan. 23, 1944, cited in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 417—18. For reserves see Churchill to Roosevelt, March 9, 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, 3:45-46; Roosevelt to Churchill, March 24, 1944, ibid., 4748; Anderson to Churchill, April 17, 1944, PREM 4.17/5. For oil see Beaverbrook to Churchill, Feb. 24, 1944, PREM 4.17/10; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 200—202; and Churchill to Roosevelt, March 6, 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, 3:104-5. For Churchill's comments see Churchill to Bridges, Feb. 24, 1944, and Churchill to Eden, March 4, 1944, PREM 4.17/11. 26. For Britain's economic deterioration during the war, see W. K. Hancock and M. M. Cowing, British War Economy (London, 1953). For Hopkins's role see Harbutt, "Churchill, Hopkins and the Other Americans." For the identity of "political personalities," see Anderson to Churchill, Feb. 24, 1944, PREM 4.17/5; Halifax to Eden, March 2, 1944, PREM 4.17/11. For British figures see Eden to Churchill, March 6, 1944, and Cherwell to Churchill, March 17, 1944, ibid. For Stettinius's visit see Anderson to Churchill, April 26, 1944, PREM 4.17/6. 27. For Churchill's active promotion of British publicity in the United States during 1940, see Churchill to Duff Cooper, June 26, July 14, Aug. 19, 1940, PREM 4.25/7. In 1941 he turned for advice on American opinion to two close friends who like himself had North American antecedents: Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian-born press magnate, and Ronald Tree, grandson of Marshall Field, the Chicago business leader. For Churchill's views see Churchill to Beaverbrook, May 25, 1941, and Tree to Churchill, June 3, 1941, ibid.
NOTES
2p7
28. Beaverbrook to Churchill, Feb. 24, 1944, PREM 4.17/10; Beaverbrook to Churchill, April 20, 1944, PREM 4.17/6; Dallek, Roosevelt, 449-50. 29. Churchill to Roosevelt, June 28, 29, 30, July i, 1944; Roosevelt to Churchill, June 28, July 2, 1944, PREM 3.271/8. For the full issue see John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol. 5 of History of the Second World War, ed. J. R. M. Butler (London, 1956), 345ff. 30. Churchill to Roosevelt (draft), June 30, 1944, PREM 3.271/8; Churchill to Roosevelt (draft), "July" 1944, PREM 3.279/1. For similar unsent drafts to Hopkins upon the latter's sudden reappearance at the beginning of July, see Churchill to Hopkins (draft), "July" 1944, ibid. 31. Churchill to Ismay, July 6, 1944, PREM 3.271/9. 32. Churchill, Closing the Ring, 385—86; Parkinson, Day's March Nearer Home, 234-63, 293, 296. Churchill to Amery, April 13, 18, 1944, PREM 4.17/12; Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, ed. Nigel Nicolson, vol. 2, The War Years, 1939-1945 (New York, 1967), 347, 356. 33. Parkinson, Day's March Nearer Home, 267-78; David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1928-1945 (London, 1971), 612 and passim. 34. Recent studies of the Churchill-Eden relationship are Barker, Churchill and Eden, 15-28 and following; and Carlton, Eden. For discussion of the Foreign Office outlook see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 74-150. For Churchill's views on the United Nations, see E. J. Hughes, "Winston Churchill and the Formation of the United Nations Organization," Journal of Contemporary History 9, no. 4 (Oct. 1974): 177-94; and Mayer, "Power Politician," 185. For the Dominions' assertiveness see Cranborne to Churchill, May n, 1944, Churchill to Cranborne, May 22, 1944, PREM 4.30/7; and Prime Ministers' Meeting (44), I2th meeting, May n, 1944, PREM 4.30/7; and Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941—1945 (New York, 1978), 337—50. For Churchill-Eden differences over France, see Carlton, Eden, 207, 218—21, 225, 238—39; and for Churchill's French policies and Anglo-French relations generally, see Francois Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle (New York, 1982). 35. Churchill to Eden, Jan. i, 1944, PREM 3.399/6; Churchill to Stalin, Jan. 28, 1944, cited in Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 3:164-65; Churchill to Stalin, Feb. 18, 1944, PREM 3.355/8; Roosevelt to Stalin, Feb. 22, 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, 3:1264; Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 397 (1944): 697-99. See also Roy Douglas, From War to Cold War, 1942-1948 (New York, 1981), 27-30. 36. Stalin to Churchill, March 3, 1944; Churchill to Stalin, March 7, 1944; Stalin to Churchill, March 23, 1944, SCCA, 207—8, 212—13; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 3:178-83. In early April, Roosevelt refused Churchill's request to permit Mikolajczyk, the Polish Prime Minister, to visit the United States to show Stalin "that Poland was not entirely without friends." Dallek, Roosevelt, 45337. Churchill to Eden, April i, 1944; Halifax to Eden, March 29, 1944, PREM 3.396/14; Churchill to Eden, April i, 1944, PREM 3.485/8. 38. Churchill to Eden, April i, 1944, PREM 3.396/14; Churchill to Alexander,
2p8
39.
40. 41.
42.
43.
44. 45.
46.
47.
48. 49.
NOTES May 26, 1944, PREM 3.240/2; Churchill minute, May 8, 1944, PREM 3-537/4Churchill to Charles, June i, 1944, cited in Barker, Churchill and Eden, 174; Churchill minute, June 2, 1944, FO 954/1; Churchill to Eden, Oct. 27, 1942, PREM 4.27/1. For rather similar attitudes toward the United States in 1944, see Churchill to Ismay, July 6, 1944, PREM 3.271/8. Churchill to Alexander (draft), May 26, 1944, PREM 3.240/2. Churchill to Eden, March 31, 1944, PREM 3.485/8; Carlton, Eden, 233; Lord Avon, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (London, 1965), 439. Churchill to Eden, May 4, 1944 (two memoranda), PREM 3.66/7. Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 98; Bohlen minutes, luncheon meeting, Nov. 30, 1944. Foreign Relations: Cairo and Tehran, 565-68; William H. McNeill, America, Britain and Russia: Their Cooperation and Conflict, 1941-1946 (New York, 1953), 417-18; Churchill to Molotov (draft), April 16, 23, 1944, PREM 3.211/6; The Times, March 10, 1943. See also David J. Dallin, Russia and Postwar Europe (New Haven, 1943), 188. Molotov to Churchill, April 22, 29, 1944, PREM 3.211/16; Churchill to Roosevelt, May 19, June 23, 1944; Churchill to Roosevelt, June 23, 1944, PREM 3.472; Roosevelt to Churchill, June 27, 1944; Churchill minute, July 9, 1944, PREM 3.66/7. Dallek, Roosevelt, 453-55; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 175-77. Dallek, Roosevelt, 463—65; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 3:212—21; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 128-45; see also Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 184-86. Cf. Douglas, From War to Cold War, 27-36. For British press passivity see Churchill to Bracken, Aug. 23, 1944, Bracken to Churchill, Aug. 24, 1944, PREM 3.352/12. The degree of public indifference in the United States may be gauged from the omission of this episode from a recent study, Ralph Levering, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, '939-1945 (Chapel Hill, 1976). Dallek, Roosevelt, 466-67; Zvezda (Leningrad), April 1944; for identification of the author as Litvinov, see Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 219. For the evolution of American opinion, see Robert Divine, Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America during World War II (New York, 1967), 6-213. See also Levering, American Public Opinion, 160. Dallek, Roosevelt, 467-78; for the full record see Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference at Quebec, 1944 (Washington, D.C., 1972). Halifax to Churchill, Aug. 21, 1944, PREM 3.329/1. For preconference intimations see Hopkins to Churchill, Aug. 24, 1944, ibid. On Lend-Lease see Churchill to Roosevelt, Sept. 21, 1944, Foreign Relations: Quebec, 194.4, 43For the Morgenthau plan see Editorial Note, Roosevelt-Morgenthau Conversation, Sept. 13, 1944, and Roosevelt-Churchill dinner meeting, Sept. 13, 1944, ibid., 323-28; Moran, Churchill, 190-91; John Blum, ed., From the Morgenthau Diaries, 1941-1945 (Boston, 1967), 327-69; Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., MS Diary, Sept. 21, 1944; and Warren Kimball, Swords or Ploughshares? The Morgenthau Plan for Defeated Nazi Germany, 1943-1946 (Philadelphia, 1976).
NOTES
299
50. Moran, Churchill, 191-93; Dallek, Roosevelt, 468-69, 472-78. See also Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 156-57; and Carlton, Eden, 243. 51. Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York, 1973), 111-14; Dallek, Roosevelt, 470-72. 52. Dallek, Roosevelt, 469-72; Wright to Broadhead, Nov. 14, 1944, PREM 4-27/753. Roosevelt to Churchill, Nov. 18, 1944, cited in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 601-2; Sherwin, World Destroyed, 113. 54. Churchill explained his purpose as concern for Greece and Poland and a desire to solve the problem of "the upsurge of communism." Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 208-9. P°r British historians' interpretations see Barker, Churchill and Eden, 282 ("setting a limit to Soviet expansion"); Carlton, Eden, 243 ("to clinch with Stalin a bilateral arrangement for the future of as much of east-central Europe as possible"); and Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 129 (to conclude an agreement on Poland). For the memorandum see Churchill to Stalin, Oct. 11, 1944, cited in Triumph and Tragedy, 231-33. 55. Dallek, Roosevelt, 478-80; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 832-34; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 283. 56. Anglo-Russian Political Conversations at Moscow, Oct. 9--I7, 1944, PREM 4.434/4; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 226-35; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 207-12. See also Albert Resis, "The Churchill-Stalin 'Percentages' Agreement on the Balkans, Moscow, October 1944," American Historical Review 83 (April 1978): 368-87. 57. Eden to Sargent, Oct. 12, 1944, PREM 3.355/13; Dixon MS Diary, Oct. 14, 1944; Barker, Churchill and Eden, 258; Carlton, Eden, 25, 245—46. 58. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 208; Churchill to Roosevelt, Oct. 22, 1944, ibid., 240-42; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 134-35; Kimball Swords or Ploughshares? 47-48. For a criticism of the British indifference to Hungary, and the persuasive identification of an Anglo-Soviet "understanding," see Matsny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 210-11. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 287. 59. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 229, 236-43; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 134-35; Dallek, Roosevelt, 479 n. 41, 480. 60. Churchill to Eden, Nov. 25, 1944, PREM 4.30/8. 61. Churchill minute on Eden to Churchill, Oct. 10, 1944, PREM 3.4I2A. Churchill to Ismay, Oct. 23, 1944, PREM 3.397/3. 62. Churchill to Eden, Nov. 25, 1944, PREM 4.30/8. In December, Churchill wrote, "We must be careful not to involve ourselves in liabilities which we cannot discharge and in engagements to others for which there is no corresponding return." Churchill to Eden, Dec. 31, 1944, ibid. 63. For Rumania see Churchill to Eden, Nov. 4, 7, Dec. n, 1944, Jan. 18, 19, r945, PREM 3-374/I3A. For Bulgaria see Churchill to Eden, Oct. 14, 1944, PREM 3.79/5; Churchill minute, n.d., attached to Foreign Office to Moscow, Oct. 13, 1944, PREM 3.512/9. For Balkans see WM (44), 164, Conclusions, Minutes and CA, Dec. n, 1944, CAB 65/64, For Yugoslavia, where the situation was papered over by the Tito-Subasic agreement of November 1944, see McNeil], America, Britain and Russia, 496.
300
NOTES
64. Churchill to Eden, Nov. 10, 1944, PREM 8.106. 65. For Belgium see Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 230—31; for Greece see John O. latrides, Revolt in Athens: The Greek Communist "Second Round," 1944-1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1972.), 276-80. For Churchill's belligerent and "bloodthirsty" demeanor on this issue at the height of the Greek crisis, see Dixon MS Diary, Dec. 4, 1944. Cf. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 287-92, 307-25. 66. Mastny, Russia's Road to Cold War, 223; Willgress to Secretary of State (Ottawa), Nov. 9, 1944, cited N2O/2O/38, FO 371.47860; Oxley to Anderson, Dec. 30, 1944, PREM 3.79/5. 67. Barker, Churchill and Eden, 285. For Foreign Office assessment of Soviet comment on Greece, Italy, and Belgium, see ^8/78/38, FO 371.47863; Voina i rahochii klass, Dec. 15, 1944; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 135-36. 68. Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 229-32. Mastny suggests there that Stalin also wanted a pact with France to keep that country out of a Western bloc. But Churchill had no such design at this juncture, partly because he did not trust de Gaulle, mainly because he considered France a weak power at this point. As he wrote to Eden in December, "The French have practically no army and all other nations concerned are prostrate or still enslaved. . . . Anyhow the first thing to do is to set up the World Organisation, on which all depends." This confirms the point made earlier that without the United States Churchill saw no realistic military defense (except possibly with the atomic bomb) of Western Europe against a Soviet attack. Thus he relied on his personal relationship with Stalin. He still hoped for an Anglo-American alliance. In November he had told de Gaulle that if he had to choose between France and the United States, it would be the latter every time. Hence the reference above to "the World Organisation" even while Churchill was working to keep up the European deal with Stalin. For citation and a comment see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 407-8. 69. Department of State Bulletin n (Dec. 1944): 722; Churchill to Roosevelt, Dec. 6, 1944, in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 619-21. A full account of this affair is in Robert Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944-1947 (New York, 1981), 89-111. For a representative British riposte, which also criticized Churchill's "appeasement" of the United States, see the Economist, Dec. 30, 1944. 70. Churchill to Eden and Ismay, Oct. 23, 1944, PREM 3.397/3; Churchill to Eden, Dec. 6, 1944, PREM 4.30/10; Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, 98; Dallek, Roosevelt, 503—4. 71. Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 225; Pravda, Nov. 16, 1944.
CHAPTER 4: YALTA TO POTSDAM
1. See Charles K. Webster, The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 (London, 1920), 148. 2. The Czech writer is Milan Kundera, in New York Times, April 29, 1984. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 342. For studies of Yalta see Diane Shaver Clemens, Yalta (New York, 1970); John Snell, ed., The Meaning of Yalta:
NOTES
301
Big Three Diplomacy and the New Balance of Power (Baton Rouge, 1956); and Dallek, Roosevelt, 506-22. For an analysis of the domestic repercussions, see Athan Theoharis, The Yalta Myths: An Issue in United States Politics, 1945-1955 (Columbia, Mo., 1970). 3. Voina i rabochii klass, Dec. 15, 1944; Harriman to Stettinius, Jan. 3, 1945, SD 711.41/1-345; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 232(1.; Le Rougetel to Eden, April 6, 1945, PREM 3.116; Dallek, Roosevelt, 503-4; Clemens, Yalta, 41, 42, 62. 4. Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, chap. 7; Clemens, Yalta, 287. 5. Wheeler-Bennett and Nicholls, Semblance of Peace, 220-21, 224-25; Moran, Churchill, 247; Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington, D.C., 1955), 570-73. 6. Record of ist plenary meeting, Feb. 5, 1945; Record of 2nd plenary meeting, Feb. 6, 1945, WP (45) 157, CAB 66/63. Similarly, on Feb. 8, Roosevelt declared that Americans saw the Polish problem "as inhabitants of another hemisphere." Record of 4th plenary meeting, Feb. 8, 1945, ibid. Yugoslavia was "really an Anglo-Russian question," and he looked on the Montreux convention "as one who came from 3,000 miles away." Record of 7th plenary meeting, Feb. 10, 1945, ibid. 7. Bohlen minutes of 2d plenary meeting, Feb. 5, 1945, Foreign Relations: Yalta, 611-16, 619-23; Bohlen minutes of 4th plenary meeting, Feb. 7, 1945, ibid., 716—17. Clemens, Yalta, 140—50, 158—72, 212—15; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 388-417; Dallek, Roosevelt, 509-10. 8. Bohlen minutes of 3d plenary meeting, Feb. 6, 1945, Foreign Relations: Yalta, 660—71. 9. Roosevelt to Stalin, Feb. 6, 1945, ibid., 727-28; Bohlen and Matthews minutes of 4th plenary meeting, Feb. 7, 1945, ibid., 711-21. 10. Several historians have drawn attention to Stalin's linkage of Poland and the United Nations on February 7 but have interpreted it as a tactical ploy rather than as the manifestation of a wider general bargain. See, for example, Clemens, Yalta, 190; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 246. 11. Bohlen minutes of 5th plenary meeting, Feb. 8, 1945, Foreign Relations: Yalta, 776-82, 792-93. On Feb. 8, Roosevelt referred to a "Committee," not a "Council," but this was simply a matter of nomenclature. 12. Page minutes of foreign ministers meeting, Feb. 9, 1945, ibid., 802-7. 13. Record of foreign secretaries meeting, Feb. 9, 1945; Record of 5th plenary meeting, Feb. 9, 1945; Record of foreign secretaries meeting, Feb. 10, 1945, WP (45) 157, CAB 66/63. Clemens, Yalta, 210-11. 14. Record of Conversation between Churchill and Stalin, Feb. 10, 1945, WP (45) 157, CAB 66/63; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 385. Clemens points out (Yalta, 212) that the inclusion of a reference to ambassadors' observation in the communique was really a Russian victory because it presupposed recognition of Lublin. 15. Page minutes of foreign ministers meeting, Feb. 9, 1945, Foreign Relations: Yalta, 803; Page minutes of foreign ministers meeting, Feb. 10, 1945, ibid., 872. 16. For the declaration see ibid., 971-73. For introduction and discussion see ibid.,
302
NOTES
848—49, 852—54, 862—63, 899. See also comment in Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference (Garden City, N.Y., 1949), 249. The Declaration was sufficiently ambiguous to arouse varying fears and ambitions. Churchill thought it was aimed at the British Empire and had to be reassured. Stalin and Molotov saw it as a threat, but also as a potential instrument against "fascism" in Europe, and tried unsuccessfully to modify its terms accordingly. For the State Department preference for a European high commission, see ibid., 88-89. On the origins of the declaration and Roosevelt's interest, see Bohlen, Witness to History, 193; and John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941—1947 (New York, 1972), 159-60, 163-64. For a British perception of it as potentially useful, see Law and Sargent to Eden, Jan. 31, 1945, PREM 4.30/9. 17. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 163-64. For the significance of Byrnes's presence, see Robert L. Messer, The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 1982), 3i-7°18. For Roosevelt and the London Economic Conference, see Dallek, Roosevelt, 52-58. The notion that the Declaration on Liberated Europe manifested deeper and not just cosmetic purposes is slowly entering the literature. Robert Dallek, for example, writes that Roosevelt also intended to place "a moral burden on the Soviets to act with restraint in their sphere." Ibid., 516. Mastny also suggests a wider significance. Russia's Road to the Cold War, 250-51. Similarly, Daniel Yergin characterizes the Declaration as an "ill-defined lever for Western intervention in Eastern Europe." Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston, 1977), 63. But in no case is the theme fully explored or developed. The question of Roosevelt's health at Yalta is a continuing problem. The British records contain a report by Halifax, after an April talk with Hopkins, that noted, "At Yalta Harry doubted if he [Roosevelt] had heard more than half of what went on round the table." Halifax to Churchill, April 15, 1945, PREM 4.27/10. On the other hand nearly all British and American observers who have commented felt that Roosevelt's performance at the conference was unaffected. 19. Record of foreign secretaries meeting, Feb. 8, 1945, WP (45) 157, CAB 66/63. 20. Bohlen minutes of Roosevelt-Stalin meeting, Feb. 8, 1945, Foreign Relations: Yalta, 768-70; Harriman memorandum of conversations, Feb. 10, 1945, ibid., 894-97; Dallek, Roosevelt, 516-19; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 249. 21. Tony Sharp, The Wartime Alliance and the Zonal Division of Germany (London, 1975), 117; Bohlen minutes of 7th plenary meeting, Feb. 10, 1945, Foreign Relations: Yalta, 889-900. 22. Moran, Churchill, 250; Dalton MS Diary, Feb. 23, 1945; Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 408 (1944—45): 1283—84. For optimistic dispatches from Yalta see Churchill to Attlee, Feb. 10, 1945, and Dixon to Ridsdale, Feb. 12, 1945, PREM 3.356/3. 23. See Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 249, 251; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 65.
NOTES
3°3
24. Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 255-58; Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 378-80. The internal Rumanian crisis had been developing for some time. See, for example, Eden to Halifax, Jan. 29, 1945, and Stevenson to Eden, Feb. 23, 1945, PREM 3.374/I3A. But the significant point is the timing of the direct Soviet intervention in relation to the international developments. 25. Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 309—11; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 444-45; Minute by Churchill, May jo, 1945, N5OI7/G, FO 371.47882; Bohlen, Witness to History, 217; Eden, Reckoning, 604. Most orthodox and post revisionist historians and specialists in Soviet history attribute responsibility to Stalin without considering the possibility of some external provocation. For the revisionist tendency to brush over the period between Yalta and Roosevelt's death on April 12 and/or to explain its significance almost entirely in terms of German development, see Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943— 1945 (New York, 1968), 370-80, and Yergin, Shattered Peace, 67-68. 26. Messer, End of an Alliance, 39-52. For the communique see: Foreign Relations: Yalta, 968-83. 27. Messer, End of an Alliance, 54—60. 28. Roosevelt did describe the proposed Polish elections as the first example of the implementation of the declaration. Foreign Relations: Yalta, 848, 853. Matthews minutes of 6th plenary meeting, Feb. 9, 1945, ibid., 853. But this hardly constitutes a supercession of the hard-fought negotiations over the Polish issue generally. For public reaction see Daily Worker, Feb. 14, 1945; New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 14, 1945; Time, Feb. 19, 1945. See also New York Times, Feb. 14, 1945; Nation 175 (Feb. 17, 1945): 169-70; Newsweek, Feb. 19, 1945, 37-38; New Republic 112 (Feb. 19, 1945): 243-44; U.S. News, Feb. 23, 1945. For Byrnes's congressional lobbying and Hoover's statement, see Messer, End of an Alliance, 61-64. For Barkley and White see Congressional Record, 79th Cong, ist sess., 1945, 91:1026. For the poll see American Institute of Public Opinion poll, Feb. 20, 1945, cited in Hadley Cantril and Mildred Strunk, eds., Public Opinion, 1935—1946 (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 1084. 29. FDR, Public Papers, 13:570-86. Privately, Roosevelt was much less sanguine. Yergin, Shattered Peace, 66. 30. War and the Working Class, Feb. 15, 1945; Pravda, Feb. 17, 1945; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 258. Another probable prompting factor was that Churchill was also engaged in debate on Yalta in the House of Commons between Feb. 27 and March i. See above, n. 22. For the significance attached by British officials to War and the Working Class, see Clark Kerr to Eden, March 13, 1945, ^930/599/38, FO 371.47919. 31. Memorandum by Ward, Feb. 19, 1945, 01331/764/70; Cadogan minute, Feb. 22, 1945, 01396/764/70; Harvey minute, Feb. 19, 1945, Ui332/G, allFO 371.50835. 32. Sargent minute, Feb. 19, 1945; Cadogan minute, Feb. 20, 1945, both Ui332/G, FO 371,50835; Eden to Churchill, March 5, 1945, PREM 3.374/9; WM (45) 26th Conclusions, Minute No. 5, March 6, 1945, CAB
304
33. 34. 35.
36.
37. 38. 39.
40. 41. 42.
43.
44.
45.
NOTES 65/51. In an unsent draft cable to Roosevelt on March 8, Churchill cited the danger that the Declaration would be publicly seen as "a fraudulent prospectus" by world opinion. Churchill to Roosevelt (draft), March 8, ,1945, PREM 3.374/9. Eden also wanted to invoke the Declaration against the Soviets over Rumania. Eden to Churchill March 5, 1945, PREM 3.374/9- The Soviets, too, began to make use of it in the fashion predicted by the Dutch and Italians. See Pravda, May 26, 1945. Sargent minute, May i, 1945, 03076/764/70, FO 371.50835. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 408 (1944-45): 1283-84. WM (45) 26th Conclusions, Minute No. 5, March 6, 1945, CAB 65/51. Churchill to Roosevelt, March 8, 1945, in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 660-65; Churchill to Eden, March 5, 1945, PREM 3.374/9; Churchill to Eden, March 17, 1945, PREM 3.374/11. Eden to Churchill, March 8, 1945; Eden to Stevenson, March 8, 1945, PREM 3.374/9. Churchill to Eden, March 18, 1945, PREM 3.374/11. Churchill to Roosevelt, Feb. 28, 1945, cited in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 657—59; Roosevelt to Churchill, March n, 1945 (2 cables), ibid., 666-69. Churchill to Roosevelt, March 13, 1945, ibid., 670-72. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 429. Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and. Churchill, 678 n. i. Roosevelt to Churchill, March 15, 1945, ibid., 674-75. Roosevelt to Stalin, March 24, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. i (Washington, D.C., 1967), 156. Stalin to Roosevelt, March 27, 1945, ibid., 165. Churchill to Eden, March 24, 1945, PREM 3.356/9. Churchill to Roosevelt, March 27, 1945, in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 684—87. Radio Moscow, March 13, 16, BBC Digest, Files 2065, 2068, respectively. Roosevelt to Churchill, March 29, 1945, ibid., 689-90. Churchill to Stalin, April i, 1945, cited in Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 435-37. Roosevelt to Stalin, April i, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, volume 5 (Washington, D.C., 1967), 194-95. Stalin to Roosevelt, April 3, 1945; Roosevelt to Stalin, April 4, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., 1968), 731-46. William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York, 1950). Churchill to Eisenhower, March 31, 1945, PREM 3.341/5. Churchill to Roosevelt, April i, 1945; Churchill to Roosevelt, April 5, 19451 Roosevelt to Churchill, April 6, 1945, all in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 696-99, 704-5. Stalin to Roosevelt, April 7, 1945, SCRT, 208-10; Stalin to Churchill, April 7, 1945 (2 cables), SCCA, 313-14, 316-17; Daily Worker (New York), May 24, 1945; Churchill to Roosevelt, April n, 1945 (2 cables); Roosevelt to Churchill, April n, 1945, in Loewenheim et al., Roosevelt and Churchill, 708-9; Churchill to Eden, April 1945, PREM 3.356/14. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 198-200; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 87-88. For Hopkins's assessment of Truman for the British, see Halifax to Churchill, April 15, 1945, PREM 4.27/10.
NOTES
305
46. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 486-88. Truman and Churchill to Stalin, April 15, 1945. Foreign Relations, 1945, 5:219. 47. Terry H. Anderson, The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947 (Columbia, Mo., and London, 1981)1 56-60; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 492. 48. Churchill minute, n.d., on Sargent to Churchill, April 23, 1945, PREM 3-79/5J Stalin to Churchill, April 24, Churchill to Stalin, April 28, 1945, SCCA, 330-31, 338-44. The two studies are Gaddis, United States and the Origins, and Yergin, Shattered Peace. 49. Yergin, Shattered Peace, 81-83; the documentary record is in Foreign Relations, 1945, 5:253-59; Harry S. Truman, Memoirs: Year of Decisions (Garden City, N.Y., 1955), 81-82. 50. For an excellent short survey of the economic dimension, see Gaddis, United States and the Origins, chap. 6. See also Herring, Aid to Russia, 143—78; and Yergin, Shattered Peace, 93, 95. 51. Robert Divine, Second Chance, 279-98; Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 224-30; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 88-90, 224. Walter LeFeber, "Roosevelt, Churchill, and Indochina, 1942-1945," American Historical Review 80 (Dec. 1975): 1277-95; Sherwin, World Destroyed, chaps. 7, 8. 52. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 551-62; Churchill to Eden, March n, April 18, 20, 1945, PREM 3.495/1; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 72-73; Churchill to Cranborne, April 23, 1945, PREM 3.356/14; Churchill to Roosevelt (draft only), April 4, 1945, ibid. At the same time Churchill was concerned about the distractions from the European crisis offered by the United Nations. Churchill to Eden, May n, 1945, ibid. Truman's early militancy coincided with some Soviet conciliatory gestures toward the United States, including Molotov's trip and an authoritative repudiation of recent Soviet media criticism. Pravda, April 14, 1945. 53. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (Garden City, N.Y., 1967), 84-98; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 515-16. Chiefs of Staff to Joint Staff Mission (Washington), May 30, 1945, PREM 3.398/10. Sargent to Churchill, May 9, 1945, PREM 3.123/2. 54. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 601-9; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 65-66. 55. See, e.g., Moscow Radio, July 18, Aug. 3, 1945, BBC Digest, Files 2192, 2208, respectively. 56. Halifax MS Diary, Sept. 15, 1952; Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 535 (1954-55): 170-71. For Churchill's plans to establish a Polish "Foreign Legion" in Germany, see Churchill minute, April 5, 1945; and Churchill to Grigg, May 31, 1945, PREM 3.352/13. Smith, Churchill's German Army, 11-24 and passim. 57. Churchill to Eden, May 4, n, 1945; Churchill to Alexander, May 6, 7, 14, 1945; Rowan to Churchill, May 10, 1945, PREM 3.495/1. 58. Memorandum by Clark Kerr, May 18, 1945, Minute by Churchill, June 4, 1945, PREM 3.396/12. 59. Davies MS Diary, May 21, 1945; Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 230-32; Sherwin, World Destroyed, chaps. 7 and 8 and pp. 291-94.
306
NOTES
60. Memorandum by MacLeish, May 23, 1945, SD 711.61/5-2345:; MacLeish to Grew, May 24, 1945, SD 711.61/5-2445; Halifax to Eden, May 23, 1945, N6i89/G, FO 371.47882; Izvestia, May 25, 1945; Pravda, May 26, 1945. 61. Halifax to Churchill, June 30, 1945, PREM 4.27/9; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 92, 100-102; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 64-66; Bohlen, Witness to History, 215; Truman, Year of Decisions, 12; New York Times, March 28, 1945. Truman wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt on May 10, "The difficulties with Churchill are very nearly as exasperating as they are with the Russians." Truman to Eleanor Roosevelt, May 10, 1945, cited in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1980), 20-22. For similar criticism of Churchill, see Truman Appointment Sheet, May 19, 1945, ibid., 31-32. Truman refused to meet Churchill alone before Potsdam because, Truman wrote, "Stalin already has an opinion we are ganging up on him." Truman Diary, May 22, 1945, ibid., 35. 62. For the full record of the Hopkins-Stalin discussions, see Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference'), 1945, vol. i (Washington, D.C., 1960), 21-62. See also Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 887—912; Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 231—36; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 67-68. For Hopkins's determination, announced before these meetings, that "we not be maneuvered into a position where Great Britain had us lined up with them as a bloc against Russia," see Forrestal Diary, May 20, 1945, Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York, 1951), 58. 63. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 887-912. 64. Ibid., 910—11; Divine, Second Chance, 294—96. For the new optimism now felt in Washington, not only by Truman but also by Stimson and the hardliner Joseph Grew, see Yergin, Shattered Peace, 104-5. For British perplexity at the United Nations, see Law to Churchill, June 4, 1945; Churchill to Halifax, June 6, 1945, PREM 4.31/7. 65. Churchill to Truman, June 4, 1945, cited in Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 582; Churchill to Truman, May 27, 1945, ibid., 578-81. But see Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 3:583. 66. Stalin to Truman, June n, 1945, SCRT, 244; Stalin to Churchill, June 21, 1945; Churchill to Stalin, June 22, 1945; Stalin to Churchill, June 23, 1945; Churchill to Stalin, July i, 1945, SCCA, 368-71; Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 288; Red Star International Review, June 9, 1945, PREM 3.352/13. Minute by Hill, June 27, 1945, ^823/78/35, FO 371.47866; Pravda, May 26, July 3, 5, 1945; Trud, July 3, 1945. The Soviet media blamed Churchill directly for the delay in American troop withdrawals to the agreed zones. Pravda, June 11, 1945. 67. Radio Moscow, June 5, 1945, BBC Digest, File 2149. Eisenhower to United States Military Mission, Moscow, June 16, 1945, cited in Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 288. Novikov to Grew, June i, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. 8 (Washington, D.C., 1969), 1128-29. For these issues and the Turkish matter, see Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, J 289. The British responded promptly to Turkey's appeals for diplomatic support and determined to sustain it even without American support. But Churchill
NOTES
68.
69.
70.
71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.
307
hoped to form an Anglo-American front here too. Now that the Trieste and Polish "hooks" had failed to fulfill their earlier promise, he pressed the notion of joint responsibility deriving from the principles of the United Nations cited to him by Truman on May 12. Churchill to Peterson, June 17, 1945; Churchill to Halifax, June 7, 1945, PREM 3.447/4A. Churchill to Eden, June 2, 1945, PREM 3.79/5. In this letter Churchill urged full publication of the Bulgarian leftists' oppression of opposing elements. Churchill to Stalin (draft only), June 23, 1945, PREM 3.495/10. For Mikolajczyk see Memorandum by Law, June 18, 1945; Clark Kerr to Churchill, June 22, Churchill to Mikolajczyk, June 26, 1945, PREM 3.356/13. For Stettinius's statement see Department of State Bulletin 12 (June 3, 1945): 1007-13. Churchill to Truman, July 3, 1945, PREM 3.356/15; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 601-9; Ismay to Churchill, May 17, 1945; Churchill to Ismay, June 9, 1945, PREM 3.484; Warner minute, July 4, 1945; Halifax to Eden, July 3, 1945, cited in Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 206-7 "• 42; and see> f°r a general overview, ibid., 72-74. See also Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 384. Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 74. Halifax to Eden, July 14, 1945, PREM 4.17/16. Churchill judged the research decision "of high importance" and took it up at Potsdam with Marshall, who disclaimed knowledge. Churchill to Marshall, July 17, 1945, ibid. Foi an authoritative late-May Foreign Office assessment of the character of American policy, suggesting that it was now returning to what had "always fundamentally been America's European policy" and identifying this as a determination not "to be dragged into a quarrel between Great Britain and the Soviet Union," but to be "an independent mediator," see Minute by Sargent, May 31, 1945, N6645/G, FO 371.47882. For Anglo-French differences over the Levant, see Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 561-68. Churchill to Cadogan, July 4, 1945, PREM 3.430/3. Churchill to Ismay, June 23, 1945, PREM 3.430/11. Churchill minute, June 18, 1945, cited in Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 3:592; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 455-56. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 239 and, generally, 238-43; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 111-21; Sherwin, World Destroyed, 186-92. Eden, Reckoning, 632; Cadogan Diary, July 18, 1945, Dilks, Cadogan Diaries, 765. For Churchill's postmortem on Potsdam, see Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 672; Moran, Churchill, 310. Memorandum of Churchill-Stalin talk, July 17, 1945, PREM 3.430/7; Memorandum of Churchill-Truman talk, July 18, 1945, PREM 3.430/8; Truman Diary, July 16, 1945, Ferrell, Off the Record, 51—52. Memorandum of Churchill-Truman talk, July 18, 1945, PREM 3.430/8. Memorandum of Churchill-Stalin talk, July 18, 1945, PREM 3.430/6. Ibid. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 239-43; Churchill to Eden, July 23, 1945, PREM 3.395/5. For the Truman comment see Davies MS Diary, July 18, 1945. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 239-41; Davies MS Journal, July 28,
308
81.
82.
83. 84.
85.
NOTES 1945. For a documentary record of United States discussions and recommendations, see Foreign Relations: Potsdam 1:510-54. For Potsdam negotiations and discussions see ibid., 2:274-75, 279-81, 295-98, 438-43, 450-52, 471-76, 500-501. See also Potsdam Briefing Book Paper, "Policy Towards Germany," ibid., 1:440-41. Lisle Rose, After Yalta (New York, 1973), 175; John Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military 1945-1940 (Stanford, 1968), 16-19, 52; Foreign Relations, 1945 3:843-919 and passim. Historians who see Potsdam as the crucial turning point in United States-Soviet relations include Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, 305; Bruce Kuklick, American Policy and the Division of Germany (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972); Lynn Etheridge Davis, The Cold War Begins (Princeton, N.J., 1974); and Charles L. Mee, Meeting at Potsdam (New York, 1975). Foreign Relations: Potsdam 2:462-65, 207, 228-31. Lisle A. Rose, Dubious Victory: The United States and the End of World War II (Kent, Ohio, 1973), 279-282. For Truman's Danube proposal see ibid., 300-01, and Truman, Year of Decisions, 377-85. Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 258, attaches more importance to this proposal. Foreign Relations: Potsdam, 2:172-75, 384, 389, 462-65. The Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences: Documents (Moscow, 1969), 183. This, Churchill replied, "is a question which is also of interest to the United States, because it involves the fulfillment of the decisions which had been adopted at the Crimea conference. It's a question of principle." Ibid. For the various topics see Foreign Relations: Potsdam 2:123—27, 464, 309—10; 252-256, 312-313, 357-372. See also Truman, Year of Decisions, 378-79, 415. For reference to the expanding Soviet interest in the Mediterranean, see Yergin, Shattered Peace, 118. For a discussion emphasizing the theme of American detachment, see Rose, Dubious Victory, 270—304.
CHAPTER 5: ANGLO-SOVIET COLD WAR, UNITED STATES-SOVIET RAPPROCHEMENT 1. The "war of nerves" was commonly used to describe a number of Soviet expansionary pressures in this period. "The Soviet Campaign Against This Country" was the title of a widely circulated memorandum by C. F. A. Warner, head of the northern department in the Foreign Office. See Memorandum by Warner, April 2, 1946, N9927/G, 371.55581. 2. New Times, Aug. 8, 1945; cf. Izvestia International Review, Aug. 30, 1945. 3. For representative British and American analyses of Stalin's 1928-30 speeches, see Minute by Brimelow, Feb. 14, 1946, ^965/140/38, FO 371.56780; and Memorandum by Durbrow, May 28, 1945, SD 711.61/5—2845. 4. Ulam, Rivals, 4. See also Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 408. 5. See, e.g., Stalin's warnings to Harry Hopkins in May, 1945, cited in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 909. See also Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 8, 7374, 82; and Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers (Boston, 1970), 223. In December 1945 Britain still had nearly four million people under arms but
NOTES
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14.
15.
:6. 17.
18.
309
was handicapped by colonial problems and demobilization pressures. The Times, Oct. 23, 1945. Khrushchev Remembers, 361, 393. For a comment on Churchill's diplomatic creativity, see Kolko, Politics of War, 142-143. William McCagg, Stalin Embattled, 1943-1948 (Detroit, 1978). Soviet media patterns are best studied in the 1945-46 files of BBC Digest. See, for example, Radio Moscow, Sept. 2, Oct. n, 28, Nov. 6, 26, Dec. 3, 1945; BBC Digest, Files 2239, 2277, 2294, 2302, 2323, 2330, respectively. Memorandum by Dixon, Sept. 24, 1945, N i 3 i o i / G , FO 371.47861. For the European dimension see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 236-46. The Times, May 24, 1945. For inside accounts of the stresses within the Labour party on relations with the Soviets at this time, see Roy Jenkins, Nine Men of Power (London, 1974), 78; and Emanuel Shinwell, I've Lived Through It All (London, 1973), 185; and Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951 (London, '983), 59-80. On March 17, 1945, Michael Foot, a left-wing MP, accused Moscow of treating British socialism as "a possible rival." New York Times, March 18, 1945. See also Clark Kerr to Bevin, Sept. 6, 1945, ^2165/165/38, FO 371.47883. It is noticeable that after the defeat of Churchill, Stalin's correspondence with the British government virtually ended. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 407-8. For the outstanding recent biography of Bevin, see Alan Bullock, Bevin. For Truman's and Byrnes's dislike see Halifax MS Diary, Aug. 10, 1945; for Bevin's combative negotiating approach to Stalin and Molotov, see Bullock, Bevin, 24-29. For a Soviet perspective see V. L. Israelian, Diplomatic History of the Great Patriotic War (Moscow, 1959), 338. For a Bevin policy argument with Attlee, see Memorandum by the Prime Minister, Sept. i, 1945, CP (45) 144, CAB 129/1. Minutes of Bevin-Molotov meeting, July 31, 1945, 1^10154/165/38, FO 371.47883; Bullock, Bevin, 71—72; Radio Moscow, Sept. i, 1945, BBC Digest, File 2238; Red Star, Aug. 24, 1945; Pravda, Aug. 26, 1945. For a preelection exchange affirming "continuity," see Churchill to Attlee, May 31, 1945; and Attlee to Churchill, June 8, 1945, PREM 8.309. Dixon MS Diary, Aug. 20, 1945. Memorandum by Foreign Secretary, Sept. 17, 1945, CP (45) 174 CAB 129/1. For continuity with the coalition policy in the Middle East, see Memorandum by Minister of State, July 12, 1943, WP (43) 302, PREM 3.296/8. Memorandum by Foreign Secretary for Defence Committee, Aug. 8, 1945, PREM 8.49; Memorandum by Foreign Secretary, Aug. 28, 1945, CP (45) 130, CAB 129/1, CM (45) 32nd Conclusions, Sept. 15, 1945, CAB 128/1. For Bevin's and Cabinet's ambivalence concerning the United States, see proceedings in CM (45) 25th Conclusions, Aug. 23, 1945; and CM (45) 3oth Conclusions, Sept. n, 1945, CAB 128/1. Truman to Stalin, Aug. 18, 1945, SD 74o.ooi9/PW/8-ig45; Stalin to Truman, Aug. 22, 1945, SD 740.0019 PW/8-2345; Messer, End of an Alliance, 120—21.
19. Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 87-88.
310
NOTES
20. Stimson MS Diary, Sept. 4, 1945; New Times, Sept. 6, 1945; Messer, End of an Alliance, 128-30. 21. For the documentary record see Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:192—202, 243—47, 263—67, 291—98, 300—310. 22. Minutes of Bevin-Molotov meetings, Sept. 23, 1945, Ni3784/G, FO 371.47883; Bullock, Bevin, 129-37; for Anglo-American aspects see Bevin to Byrnes, Aug. 24, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:ior~4; Minute by Campbell, Sept. 23, 1945, AN238oi/35/45, FO 371.50920; Brown MS Diary, Sept. 21, 1945. 23. Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:313-15. Byrnes thought Japan, and not Eastern Europe, was the primary Soviet concern here. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 102. See also Herbert Feis, Contest over Japan (New York, 1967), 15-17, 19-21, 42. 24. For an analysis of the London breakdown, see Messer, End of an Alliance, 134-36. 25. Clark Kerr Minutes of Bevin-Molotov meeting, Sept. 23, 1945, Ni3784/G, FO 371.47883. 26. Memorandum by Dixon, Sept. 24, 1945, Ni3ioi/G, FO 371.47861. For a somewhat different view see attached minute by Sargent, n.d., ibid. 27. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 507; CM (45) Conclusions, Confidential Annexe, Sept. 15, 1945, CAB 128/3; Memorandum by Foreign Secretary, Sept. 19, 1945, CP (45) 182 CAB 129/2; CM (45) 35th Conclusions, Minute i, Confidential Annexe, Sept. 25, 1945, CAB 128/3; Minute by Dixon, Sept. 16, 1945, and "Meeting on Joint Anglo-American Policy towards Russia," Oct. 6, 1945, both in Ni4o65/G, FO 371.47883; Minute by J. Galsworthy, Sept. 25, 1945, 1X112728/20/38, FO 371.47860; Foreign Office to British Embassy, Oct. 6, 1945, N7784/G, FO 371.50826. 28. Roberts to Bevin, Oct. 8, 1945, Ni4i32/G, FO 371.47876; hvestia, Oct. 5, 194529. New Times, Oct. i, 15, 1945; Roberts to Bevin, Oct. 31, 1945, Ni5702/ 165/6, FO 371.47883; Sholto Douglas, Years of Command (London, 1966), 302. For Soviet media attacks see Radio Moscow, Oct. 2-31, 1945, BBC Digest, Files 2268-97. 30. Roberts to Bevin, Oct. 23, 1945, Ni4346/G, Roberts to Bevin, Oct. 31, 1945, Ni 5702/165/6, both FO 371.47883. Soviet criticism of Britain took various forms. In August, for example, Bolshevik attacked the teaching of "reactionary" anti-Soviet history in British schools. Press Reading Bureau, 212083/78/38, FO 371.47868. In September Izvestia attacked the Labour Daily Herald for its "anti-Soviet" campaign, allegedly designed to divert attention from British imperialist policies. Izvestia, Sept. 27, 1945; Daily Herald, Sept. 28, 1945. And in October, Zaslavskii "exposed" the hyprocrisies of British "democracy." Moscow Radio, Oct. 8, 1945, cited in 1X13736/78/38, FO 371.47869. 31. Berlin to Bevin, enclosed in Roberts to Bevin, Oct. 30, 1945, 1X15507/17/38, FO 371.47858. For revived anti-"Western bloc" agitation, see New Times, Oct. i, Nov. i, 15, 1945. Izvestia, Sept. 21, 27, 1945. So far as the outpourings of Moscow Radio are concerned, a full tabulation would tend to prolixity. Criticisms reappeared in varying forms and were transmitted to different audi-
NOTES
32. 33. 34.
35. 36.
37.
38.
39.
40. 41.
42.
311
ences every few days. For the technique and content see Radio Moscow, Oct. i to Nov. 30, 1945, BBC Digest, Files 2267-327, Roberts to Bevin, Oct. 23, 1945, Ni4346/G, FO 371.47883; Halifax to Bevin, Nov. 13, 1945, Ri9243/G, FO 371.47883. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 275—76. Robert K. Messer, "Paths Not Taken: The United States Department of State and Alternatives to Containment, 1945-1946," Diplomatic History i (Fall 1977): 297-319; and Eduard Mark, "Charles E. Bohlen and the Acceptable Limits of Soviet Hegemony in Eastern Europe: A Memorandum of 18 October, 1945," ibid., 3 (Spring 1979): 201-13. Memorandum by Bohlen, Oct. 18, 1945, Bohlen MSS, Box 3; Bohlen Lecture, Oct. 12, 1945, ibid., Box 5. See Collier's, Jan. 26, 1946, and Lippmann's regular columns in late 1945 in the New York Herald Tribune. Balfour to Bevin, July 28, 1945, AN230I/ 22/45; Halifax to Bevin, Aug. 9, 1945, AN256o/22/4J; Script of LaskiMurrow interview mentioned, AN256o/22/38 45, all in FO 371.44557. Bullock, Bevin, 192; Gallman to Byrnes, Oct. 18, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 5:897; Halifax to State Department, Oct. 19, 1945, ibid., 2:565-66; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 240; Memorandum on Soviet Foreign Policy, Oct. 29, 1945, Ni5345/G, FO 371.47861; Warner to Cadogan, Nov. 2, 1945, ibid. Minute by Gage, Jan. 4, 1946, AN3853/;-S5/45; Minutes by Donnelly, Sept. 5, 1945, Cadogan, Sept. 16, 1945, and Sargent, Oct. i, 1945, all in AN256o/35/45, FO 371.44557. Bullock, Bevin, 144; Hastings Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (New York, 1960), 403. Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 415. Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance: European-American Relations since 1945 (New York, 1980), 10. For a glimpse of the problems, see Foreign Office Northern department files; Clark Kerr to Warner, Aug. 9, 1945, ^0664/78/38, FO 371.47867; Roberts to Warner, Feb. 24, 1946, N3044/7I/38, FO 371.56743. For a general study concentrating on the Foreign Office perspective, see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War. Minute by Brimelow, Oct. 29, 1945; Warner to Cadogan, Nov. 2, 1945, both Ni5345/G, FO 371.47861. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 275—76; Bullock, Bevin, 174—83; Radio Moscow, Nov. 1.6, 1945, BBC Digest, File 2314. Bolshevik, Nov. 17, 1945; Pravda, Nov. 18, 1945; Radio Moscow, Nov. 2, 3, 4, 6, BBC Digest, Files 2299, 2300, 2301, 2303; Literaturnaya Gazeta, Dec. 22, 1945. For contrastingly cordial references to the United States and its policies after Nov.-i, see, for example, Radio Moscow, Nov. i, 17, 19, 26, 1945, BBC Digest, Files 2298, 2314, 2316, 2323. For the general situation in Greece, 1945-46, see Stephen G. Xydis, Greece and the Great Powers, 1944-1947 (Thessaloniki, 1963), pts. 2 and 3. For the period between Potsdam and Fulton, see ibid., 119-75. For Soviet propaganda see Gabriel and Joyce Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York, 1972), 222, 741. The British were able to attract some American interest here. On Aug. 20, 1945, the United States announced it would participate in supervising the pending
312
43.
44.
45. 46. 47.
48.
49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.
NOTES
elections; in November, Byrnes accepted the principle of aiding the Greek economy, though leaving military responsibilities to Britain. See ibid., 222—23, and New York Times, Aug. 21, 1945. Kolko, Limits of Power, 222-23. For the election postponement see The Times, Nov. 24, 1945. For Bevin's comment, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 416 (1945): 767. George Kirk, The Middle East, 1945—1950, Survey of International Affairs, 1939—1946, ed. Arnold Toynbee (London, 1954), 21—30; Necmeddin Sadak, "Turkey Faces the Soviets," Foreign Affairs 27 (April 1949): 458; New York Times, Dec. 17, 21, 1945. Forrestal MS Diary, June 24, 1945, Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 71. George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, 1918-1948 (New York, 1949), 287-88. Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs (London, 1964), 347. Hassan was the pro-British Chief of Staff in the Iranian army. Memorandum of Conversation by Henderson, Nov. 20, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 8:435. Byrnes to Harriman, Nov. 23, 1945, ibid., 7:448-50. Harriman to Byrnes, Nov. 30, 1945, ibid., 468-69. The Times, Jan. 26, 1945. The Times, Jan. 26, 1945. See Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 286—91. Kirk, Middle East, 61-62. There is no comprehensive study of the national government of Persian Azerbaijan. See William Eagleton, Jr., The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London, 1963); and Archie Roosevelt, Jr., "The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad," Middle East Journal i (July 1947): 247-57. Clark Kerr to Bevin, Nov. 23, 1945; Ni6io9/i8/38, FO 371.47858; CM (45) 5oth Conclusions, Nov. 6, 1945; CM (45) 5151 Conclusions, Nov. 8, 1945; CM (45) 59th Conclusions, Dec. 5, 1945, CAB 128/4; Bullock, Bevin, 194. Caroe to Warner, Oct. 17, 1945, referred to in Minute by Baxter, Dec. 21, 1945, Ni6o25/i8/38, FO 371.47858; Roberts to Warner, Nov. 27, 1945, Ni78o7/i8/38, FO 371.47858; Minute by Jones, Nov. 10, 1945, N2869/ 140/38, FO 371.47881; Minute by Brimelow, Dec. 8, 1945, ^6757/18/38, FO 371.47858; Catholic Times, Feb. 1946. Churchill to Attlee, Aug. 3, 1945, PREM 3.430/14; Attlee to Churchill, Aug. 16, 1945, PREM 8/56; Memorandum by Dixon on Bevin-Churchill meeting, Oct. 31, 1945, PREM 8/491; Bullock, Bevin, 190. Churchill to Bevin, Nov. 13, 1945, FO 800/5r 2. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser. vol. 415 (1945): 1290-99. For the President's speech see Truman, Public Papers: 194.5, 437The Times, Nov. 17, Dec. 14, 1945. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 416 (1945): 2533. Ibid., 720. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 415 (1945): 1291, 1294. Byrnes to Bevin, Nov. 29, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:582-83, 588-89. For Bevin's upset see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 245. For an interpretation of Byrnes's purposes, see Messer, End of an Alliance, 137—49; and Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 276. Clark Kerr to Bevin, Dec. 8, 1945, FO 800/446; Memorandum of Conversation, Dec. 23, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:750—52, 756. Dixon, "Note of Conversation with Mr. Bohlen and Mr. Harriman on Dec. 20,
NOTES
58.
59. 60.
61. 62.
63.
64. 65.
66. 67. 68. 69. 70.
71.
313
1945"; Memorandum by Berlin, Dec. 21, 1945; Minute by Roberts, Dec. 21, 1945, all in FO 800/501. For a discussion of atomic energy see Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:663-66, 73677, 740-47, 762-73. For a discussion of Japan and the Far East see ibid., 672-80, 687-88, 692-96, 717-18, 725-27, 760. For Eastern Europe see Department of State Bulletin 14 (Dec. 30, 1945): 1031- Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 286-87. Minutes of Bevin-Stalin-Molotov meetings, Dec. 18, 19, 1945, SD 740.0019 Council/12-2645. For nineteenth-century Iran and Russian imperialism, see Sir Percy Sykes, A History of Persia, 3d ed. (London, 1958); John Marlowe, Iran: A Snort Political Guide (New York, 1963), 27-32. For British policy see G. M. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Corridor (London, 1892). Marlowe, Iran, 47-67; Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (New York, 1912); T. H. Vail Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia (Washington, D.C., 1952), 251; Lenczowski, Russia and the West. For the Declaration Regarding Teheran see United Nations, Security Council, Official Records, ist yr., ist sess., suppl. no. i, pp. 49—50 (hereafter cited as SC Official Records and relevant reference). For the Roosevelt-Millspaugh discussions, see Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington, D.C., 1946), 206. Roosevelt to Hull, Jan. 12, 1944, SD 891.00/3037. Acheson to Stettinius, Jan. 28, 1944, ibid., 891.00/1.2844. For the Yalta discussion see Foreign Relations: Yalta, 715, 738-41, 744-45, 810. For Potsdam see Foreign Relations: Potsdam, 2:237, 3°9- F°r London see Foreign Relations, 1945, 8:413—15. For an assessment of British officials' "vital concern" regarding Iran, see Winant to Byrnes, Aug. 1945, SD 861.24591/8.3045. Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:616. Henderson to Byrnes, Dec. n, 1945, SD 891.00/12-1145. For his design for Moscow, see James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), 109. Henderson to Byrnes, Dec. 10, 1945, SD 891.00/12.1045 (attached). Minor to Henderson, Dec. u, 1945,80891.00/12.1145. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 118-19. Ibid., 119-20. Memorandum of a Conversation, Dec. 23, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:750-52. See also Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941—1949, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1970), 213. For Bevin's initiatives on Iran at Moscow, see Foreign Relations, 1945, 2:68990, 808, 814. Molotov showed interest in Bevin's plan for an investigatory commission and proposed several amendments to it, all of which Bevin accepted, except one that left in doubt the final date for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Bevin refused to accept anything that might be construed as a modification of the 1942 treaty. See ibid., 808, 814. See also Bevin's speech in House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 419 (1946): 1357-58; and Sir Reader Bullard, The Camels Must Go (London, 1961), 267. Bohlen, Witness to History, 250.
314
NOTES
72. For Bullard's efforts see Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 294. Memorandum of Conversation by Henderson, Jan. 4, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:295— 97. For the attempts of the Hakimi government to make a settlement with the Soviet Union in December 1945, see Kirk, Middle East, 64. The Soviets ignored these overtures but took advantage of them to suggest, inaccurately, Iranian satisfaction with Soviet activities in the north. See Vyshinsky's comments on Jan. 28, 29, 1946, recorded in SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. i, pp. 39-40, 49-51. 73. Memorandum of Conversation by Acheson, Jan. 3, 1946, SD 891.00/1.346. The formal British view was similar to Byrnes's, namely, that an Iranian complaint would endanger the Security Council opening. See British Embassy, Aide Memoire, Jan. 7, 1946, SD 761.91/1.746. The real British motive in discouraging the Iranians is a matter of controversy. Murray believed it to be the avoidance of a threat to their plan for a British-supported autonomous Khuzistan, then a province in southern Iran. See Murray to Byrnes, Jan. 3, 1946, SD 891.00/1-346; Murray to Byrnes, Jan. 10, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:299-301. See also the assertion that the British were "not anxious for an airing of their own policy" in Iran, in John C. Campbell, The United States in World Affairs, 1945-1947, (New York, 1948), 89; but for a contrary British view, Kirk, Middle East, 65. Byrnes to Murray, Jan. 2, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:292-93. Memorandum of Conversation by Henderson, Jan. 4, 1946, ibid., 295—97. 74. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 123. Kirk, Middle East, 64-65. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist sess., suppl. no. i, pp. 16-17. 75. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist sess., suppl. no. i, pp. 17-19. 76. Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 107-8. 77. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist sess., suppl. no. i, p. 19. 78. Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 295-96. For a description of these events, see ibid., 295-97. See also Kirk, Middle East, 66-67. 79. Acheson to Harriman, Dec. 24, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, 8:512-13. The delegation also used, as "the basic document," a departmental memorandum entitled "Soviet-Iranian Relations," dated Dec. 27, 1945, and referred to in Memorandum by Hare, Jan. 23, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:307-9. Memorandum by Stevenson, Jan. 24, 1946, ibid., 309. 80. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist sess., p. 24. For the suggestion that the initiative to keep the issue on the agenda came from Bevin, who inspired Vyshinsky's epithet "hotheads," see Kirk, Middle East, 65. For the view that Stettinius played the leading role, see Gary Hess, "The Iranian Crisis of 1945-1946 and the Cold War," Political Science Quarterly 89 (March 1974): 133. In this connection see Stettinius to Byrnes, Jan. 28, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1046, 7:316-17. See also the Byrnes-Vyshinsky discussion in Memorandum of Conversation, Jan. 23, 1946, SD 740.0019 Council/1-2346. New York Times, Feb. i, 1946. 81. New Times, Jan. 15, Feb. 15, 1946; Bolshevik, Jan. 1946, cited in Roberts to Bevin, Feb. 9, 1946, ^087/71/38, FO 371.56742; Pravda, Feb. 21, 1946. For a mid-February memo observing the Soviets on the political offensive
NOTES
82. 83.
84.
85. 86. 87.
315
against Britain in an unprecedentedly comprehensive way, see Roberts to Bevin, Feb. 12, 1946, Ni968/i4o/38, FO 371.56783. Minute by Brimelow, Feb. 14, 1946, N19687140/38; Memorandum by Cripps, Feb. 13, 1946, ^300/140/38, both FO 371.56780; Clark Kerr to Bevin, Jan. 29, 1946, ^977/140/38, FO 371.56783. Roberts to Bevin, Feb. 12, 1946, ^087/71/38, FO 371.56743; Moscow Chancery to Foreign Office, Feb. 18, 1946, ^051/140/38, FO 371.56780; Izvestia, Sept. 27, 1945; Radio Moscow, Oct. 12, 1945, BBC Digest, File 2278. For attacks on The Times, also inclined to be sympathetic to the Soviets in this period, see ibid., Oct. 30, Nov. i, 1945, BBC Digest, Files 2296, 2298. CM (46) nth Conclusions Feb. 4, 1946; CM (46) i4th Conclusions, Feb. n, 1946; CM (46) 16, Feb. 18, 1946, all CAB 128/5; Memorandum by Lord President of Council, CP (46) 32, Jan. 30, 1946, CAB 129/6; Memorandum by Prime Minister, CP (46) 65, CAB 129/7. Bevin to British Embassy (Ankara), Feb. 16, 1946, FO 800/507. Memorandum by Ronald, Jan. 4, 1946; Minute by Ronald, March u, 1946, and other minutes attached, ^2410/120/38, all in FO 371.59911; Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 424. Balfour to Mason, Jan. n, 1946, AN205/5/45, FO 371,51627; Minute by Butler, Jan. 4, 1946, UN/46/3, FO 800/508; CM (46) 16, Feb. 18, 1946, CAB 128/5.
CHAPTER 6: CHURCHILL AND TRUMAN
1. American Institute of Public Opinion polls, Aug. 8, Oct. 17, 1945, and Feb. 27, 1946, cited in Cantril and Strunk, Public Opinion, 371. For Byrnes see Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 266, 282-83. 2. "The Fortune Survey," Fortune, Dec. 1945; George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971 (New York, 1972), 1:564. 3. Davies MS Journal, Aug. i, 1945; Davies MS Diary, Dec. 8, 1945; Leahy MS Diary, Nov. 28, Dec. n, 1945; Wallace Diary, June 18, Oct. 15, 1945, in Blum, Price of Vision, 462-63, 489-91; Forrestal MS Diary, Oct. 16, Nov. 5, 1945. See Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 503-66. 4. For the common effect on American diplomats of long appointments to Moscow, see Bohlen, Witness to History, 17-18. For Kennan's views see his memorandum "Russia—Seven Years Later," Sept. 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, 4: 908-9. For Durbrow's vehement anti-Sovietism in this period, see "Notes from J. D. Stamm," Nov. 15, 1945, Davies MSS, Box 22; and Wallace MS Diary, March 13, 1946. For Henderson see above, Chapter 5. For Dunn's antiSovietism and conservatism, see Wallace MS Diary, Dec. 28, 1944. For public awareness of growing anti-Soviet sentiment in the State Department during this period, see New York Times, Sept. 30, 1945, Oct. 14, 1945. See also Hugh De Santis, The Diplomacy of Silence: The American Foreign Service, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947 (Chicago, 1980), 155-97. 5. For Vincent's views see Wallace MS Diary, Nov. 28, 1945. For charges of procommunism against Vincent, Service, and others, see Russell D. Buhite, Patrick /. Hurley and American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, 1973), 273, 253-81.
316
6.
7.
8. 9.
10.
n.
12. 13. 14. 15.
16.
NOTES
San Francisco Examiner, Dec. i, 1945. For Cohen, Hiss, and Pasvolsky see the following paragraph. For Acheson's "neutrality" see Wallace MS Diary, Nov. 28, 1945. For Bohlen see Mark, "Bohlen and the Acceptable Limits," 201-13. Memorandum by the Secretary of War to the Secretary of State, Nov. i, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1946, 1:1111-12. See also Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of State, Nov. 7, 1945, SD, SWNCC 38/25; Minutes of the i67th meeting of the Secretary of State's Staff Committee, Nov. 13, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1946, 1:1116-21; Memorandum Prepared for Secretary's Staff Committee, Nov. 16, 1945, SD, SC-i69b. The full document is filed in SD, Policy Planning Staff Files, Lot 640 563. It is unsigned and bears the title "Memorandum Prepared in the State Department." It is filed in the above-named lot, although the Policy Planning Staff did not come into existence until May 7, 1947. Messer, End of an Alliance, 6-8, 136, 200. See also, for a study of the State Department outlook, De Santis, Diplomacy of Silence. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 260. For illustrations of Vandenberg's anti-Soviet views and protest, see Vandenberg Diary, April 27, June 7, Dec. n, 1945, Arthur Vandenberg, Jr., ed., The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (Boston, 1952), 180-82, 206-8, 229-30. United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on the Investigation of Far Eastern Policy, 79th cong. ist sess., 1945, 123-24, 231-33. For Byrnes's private concern about this matter, see Byrnes to Hackworth, Dec. 7, 1945, SD 120/1/2-745. For the Hurley resignation crisis see Buhite, Hurley, 253-81. For the revival and temper of HUAC, see Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (New York, 1968), 167-70, 176. See, e.g., Martin Kreisberg, "Soviet News in the New York Times," Public Opinion Quarterly ip (Winter 1946—47): 543. See also Milton and Hortense Cabel, "Texas Newspaper Opinion II," ibid. (Summer 1946): 202, which shows that, of 232 editorials dealing with the Soviet Union between September and December 1945, 60 percent were unfavorable and 15 percent favorable. Catholic World. 162 (Nov. 1945): 101. See, e.g., San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 20, 1945, Jan. 16, 1946. For Sulzberger's views and activities see Wallace MS Diary, Dec. 19, 1944; and Forrestal MS Diary, Dec. 14, 1945. New York Times, Sept. 23, 25, 26, 30, 1945Time, Sept. 17, 24, Oct. 8, 29, Nov. 5, 19, 1945. See also Fortune, Aug. and Sept. 1945. For Reader's Digest circulation see Time, Dec. 10, 1945. For various articles cited see Reader's Digest, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., 1945; Harper's, Sept. 1945. See also Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 10, 1945. For Brown see Leahy MS Diary, April 12, 17, Oct. 9, Nov. 7, 1945. For contemporary comment on the Leahy-Brown connection, see PM, Jan. 16, 1945. For Kirk see Leahy MS Diary, Nov. 13, 1945. For Bullitt, ibid., Aug. 16, Oct. !5> i945> Jan. 8, 1946. For a description of his work with this group, see Forrestal to Byrnes, March 8, 1946, April 25, 1946; Forrestal MSS, Box 68. An extensive correspondence
NOTES
17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
317
with these men is in Forrestal MSS, Boxes 24, 68, 69, 70, 71. For sample discussions with Alsop see Forrestal MS Diary, Jan. 8, 15, 23, 31, Feb. 28, March 22, April 3, 18, 1946. For meetings with other journalists see ibid., Jan. I to April 30. Several journalists enjoyed close relations with the State Department—notably, Joseph Alsop, Arthur Krock, and James Reston. See Wallace MS Diary, June 13, 1945, May 21, July 16, 1946, and below, Chapter 7. For a sample meeting with Pearson see Davies MS Diary, Nov. 25, 1945; for Reid, ibid., March 25, 1946; for Cohen, ibid., Jan. 6, 1946. For Molotov's and Vyshinsky's discussions with Davies at Potsdam, see ibid., July 28, 1945, and Davies MS Journal, Aug. i, 1945, For discussion with Gromyko, see Davies MS Diary, Jan. 18, 1946. For meetings with Childs, see Wallace MS Diary, April 12, 1944, Oct. 15, Dec. 18, 1945. For Wallace's continuous contacts with other liberals, see ibid., passim. For a meeting with Soviet diplomats in Washington, see ibid., Oct. 24, 1945. Messer, End of an Alliance, 156-57; Washington Post, Jan. i, 1946; Halifax to Bevin, Jan. 6, 1946, AN52/I/45, FO 371.50606; New York Times, Jan. 9, 1946. Truman, Year of Decisions, 551-52. But see for only draft extant, with somewhat different content, Messer, End of an Alliance, 157-58. Messer, End of an Alliance, 157-65; for contrasting judgments in recent studies, see Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 288-89 (confrontation); and Yergin, Shattered Peace 160 (no confrontation). Balfour to Bevin, Feb. 20, 1946, FO 800/513. For Secretary-General see Minute by Bevin, Jan. 11, 1946, FO 800/508. Messer, End of an Alliance, 168-76. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 299-301; De Santis, Diplomacy of Silence, 172-75. Secretary of War Patterson told the House Military Affairs Committee on March 13, 1946, that in the absence of a draft the army would decline to 570,000 men by July i, 1947. New York Times, March 14, 1946. The details are recorded in oral history Interviews with General Harry Vaughan, Alexandria, Virginia, Jan. 14 and 16, 1963, Oral History Interview, No. 11, Truman MSS. Punch, Jan. 2, 1946; Rowan to Churchill, Nov. 2, 1945, Attlee MSS, Box 4; Viscount Cunningham of Hyndthorpe, Diary, Jan. 7, 1946, Cunningham MSS, File 52579. Cunningham MS Diary, Jan. 7, 1946; Churchill to Halifax, Dec. 18, 1945, FO 800/512; Halifax to Churchill, Dec. 14, 1945, ibid.; Moran, Churchill, 310. New York Times, Jan. 18, 1946. Churchill to Truman, Jan. 29, 1946, Truman MSS, Confidential file. H. Druks, Harry S. Truman and the Russians, 1945-1953 (New York, 1966), 97; Leahy MS Diary, Feb. 10, 1946; Halifax MS Diary, Feb. 10, 1946. After the Fulton speech Constantino Brown, universally recognized as very close to Leahy, reported that Truman, at the Feb. 10 meeting, endorsed Churchill's critique of the Soviet Union, the fraternal association, and the principle of worldwide Anglo-American base sharing. Washington Star, March 7, 1946.
318
NOTES
30. Norweb to Matthews (for Truman), Feb. 7, 1946, SD 711.41/2-746. 31. Halifax MS Diary, Feb. 10, n, 12, 1946. 32. Leahy MS Diary, Feb. 10, 1946; Halifax MS Diary, Feb. 10, 1946; Davies MS Diary, Feb. 11, 1946; Memorandum of Press and Radio News Conference, Feb. i;, 1946, Byrnes MSS, File 557. 33. Herbert Feis, From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War (New York, I 97°)> i°, 84; Harry S. Truman, Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope (New York, 1956), 95; Druks, Truman and the Russians, 125; New York Times, April 25, 1952; Pravda, March 13, 1946. 34. Kennan to Byrnes, Feb. 22, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 11:696-709. The influence of the "long cable" in consolidating attitudes is universally recognized. For an expression of gratitude see Byrnes to Kennan, Feb. 27, 1946, SD 861.00/2.2746. It is clear, however, that it played no part in prompting the basic decisions to reorient policy, though it undoubtedly contributed to the character of the change and the self-confidence of its proponents. 35. See Files of Matthew J. Connelly, Presidential Appointments 1945-1946, Truman MSS, Box 4. Truman recalled that after the Moscow conference Byrnes "would call daily if telephone connections were available." Truman, Year of Decisions, 552. Davies MS Diary, Feb. 12, 1946. See, however, for Kennan's possible influence, Matthews to Byrnes, Feb. u, 1946, SD MatthewsHickerson Files, Box 9. 36. Barnes to Byrnes, Jan. 30, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:62-63; Byrnes to Cohen, Jan. 31, 1946, ibid., 64-65; Cohen to Byrnes, Feb. 2, 1946, ibid., 66-68; Byrnes to Barnes, Feb. 2, 1946, ibid., 65-66; Byrnes to Cohen, Feb. 5, 1946, ibid., 71-72. 37. Byrnes to Cohen, Feb. 12, 1946, SD 874.00/2-946. 38. See above, Chapter 5, for a discussion of the Moscow agreement. For warnings on Rumania see Harriman to Byrnes, Jan. 6, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:557-60. Berry to Byrnes, Jan. 12, 1946, ibid., 568-69. For the ByrnesVyshinsky meeting see Memorandum of Conversation, Jan. 23, 1946, ibid., 572-73. Berry to Byrnes, Feb. 8, 1946, ibid., 574-76; Byrnes to Berry, Feb. 12, 1946, ibid., 576. For the United States note of Feb. 5, see Department of State Bulletin 14 (Feb. 17, 1946): 256-57. For the United States-Rumanian exchange of notes confirming recognition on February 7 and 14, see ibid., 15 (Feb. 24, 1946): 298. Leahy MS Diary, Feb. 13, 1946. 39. For a brief recitation of American objectives in Austria, see Memorandum by Dunn, Jan. 18, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1046, 5:296-97. Byrnes to Ehrhardt, Feb. 12, 1946, ibid., 307. For Albania see Jacobs to Byrnes, Jan. 29, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:1-3; Kennan to Byrnes, Feb. i, 1946, ibid., 3-4; Byrnes to Jacobs, Feb. 12, 1946, ibid., 9-11. 40. Byrnes to Kennan, Feb. 15, 1946, ibid., 74-75; Barnes to Byrnes, Feb. 18, 1946, ibid., 77; Byrnes to Winant, Jan. 26, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 5:224-25; Byrnes to Winant, Feb. 26, 1946, ibid., 229. 41. Kennan to Molotov, March 2, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:265-67; Byrnes to Ehrhardt,, March 4, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 5:315-17. 42. Schoenfeld to Byrnes, Feb. 27, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:263-64;
NOTES
43. 44. 45.
46.
47.
48. 49.
50.
51. 52. 53.
3Ip
Byrnes to Barnes, March 8, 1946, SD 611.7431/2.2646; Byrnes to Orekhov, Feb. 21, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:828-29. See also Thomas G. Paterson, Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore, 1973), 51-52. Churchill to Attlee, Feb. 21, 1946, PREM 8.197. New York Times, Feb. 18, 1946, Daily Worker, Feb. 20, 1946. Byrnes later recalled Churchill "outlining the speech he proposed to deliver." James F. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (New York, 1958), 349. Byrnes to Kennan, Feb. 22, 1946, foreign Relations, 1946, 7:334-35. The direct prompt to this initiative may have been a cable from the United States consul in Tabriz expressing skepticism that the Soviets would leave Azerbaijan by the March ^ deadline. Rossow to Byrnes, Feb. 20, 1946, SD 861.245917 2-2046. Byrnes later acknowledged the aim of the Missouri initiative and admitted the diplomatic motive that was widely recognized at the time. Byrnes, Ml in One Lifetime, 351; New York Times, March 7, 1946; Forrestal Diary, Feb. 28, 1946, in Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 141. See also Walter Lippmann, in New York Herald Tribune, March 8, 1946; Xydis, Greece and the Great Powers, 168; Bruce Robellet Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton, N.J., 1980), 335-37Memorandum by Matthews, Feb. 28, 1946, Matthews-Hickerson Papers, Box 9; San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 1946. On Feb. 22 the British suggested American participation in a quadrilateral provisional Danubian commission. Byrnes accepted this on March 15. Foreign Relations, 1946, 5:230. For a British attempt to develop Anglo-American collaboration over Bulgaria, see Sa« Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 1946. Churchill to Attlee, Feb. 21, 1946, PREM 8.197; Wright to Dixon, Feb. 16, 1946, Attlee MSS, Box 4. For loan correspondence see Dalton to Churchill, Feb. 28, 1946, PREM 8.197. Earl of Birkenhead, Halifax (London, 1965), 501; A. ]. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1964), 174. Halifax had recently been under attack in the London Labour press for public statements that "most blatantly misinterpret the attitude of the British nation." Daily Herald, Feb. 15, 1946. Henry B. Ryan, "A New Look at Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' Speech," Historical Journal 22 (Dec. 1979): 906; Halifax to Bevin, Feb. 15, (946, ANlO43/G, FO 371.51627. Bevin to Attlee, Feb. 27, 1946, FO 800/438. For Labour hostility to Halifax see Daily Herald, Feb. 15, 1946. Attlee to Churchill, Feb. 28, 1946, PREM 8.197; The Times, Feb. 22, 1946; Bevin to Attlee, Feb. 27, 1946, FO 800/438; Ryan, "New Look," 905. Department of State Bulletin 14 (March 10, 1946): 355-58. Caddis, United States and the Origins, 306; New York Times, March i, 1946. See also Washington Post, March i, 1946, and Chicago Tribune, March i, 1946. For Truman's prior endorsement see George Curry, James F. Byrnes (New York, 1965), 201, 368.
320
NOTES
54. New York Times, Jan. 19, 27, 1946. See above, Chapter 4. 55. Byrnes to Winant, Feb. 21, 1946, SD 740.00119 Council/2-2i46; Byrnes to Winant, Feb. 28, 1946, SD 740.00119 Council/2-2846. 56. New York Times, March 5, 1946. 57. Paterson, Soviet-American Confrontation, 51. For British awareness of "a concealed threat of economic pressure" being applied against the Soviet Union, see Halifax to Bevin, April 27, 1946, ANi269/G, FO 371.51607. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 533-34. 58. Byrnes, Speaking frankly, 123, 266; Halifax MS Diary, Feb. 14, 15, 1946; Bevin to Attlee, Feb. 27, 1946, FO 800/438; New York Herald Tribune, March 6, 1946. 59. David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, 2 vols., 1939-1950 (New York, 1964), 2:30; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969), 212; Bernard M. Baruch, Baruch: The Public Years (New York, 1962), 338-48; Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York, 1982), 160; Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 20-24. Churchill to Attlee, Mar. 19, 1946, PREM 8.197; "Address," Feb. 24, 1946, Baruch MSS, Box 16, Unit 8. There are a number of important studies bearing on the Baruch plan. These include Herken, Winning Weapon; Barton J. Bernstein, "The Quest for Security: American Foreign Policy and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1942-1946," Journal of American History 60 (March 1974): 1003-45; ar"d Larry G. Gerber, "The Baruch Plan and the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History 6 (Winter 1982): 65-69. It is interesting to note that both Colmer and Baruch visited Churchill in Miami. Halifax to Bevin, April 15, 1946, ANi246/7/54, FO 371.51633. 60. Pravda cited in Herken, Winning Weapon, 176. For general observation see ibid., 172—91. 61. For atomic issue see ibid., 144—47. 62. Roberts to Bevin, Feb. 23, 1946, ^466/140/38, FO 371.56780. 63. Radio Moscow, Feb. 22 to March 4, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2411 to 2421; Minute by Brimelow, March 13, 1946, ^33/140/38, FO 371.56781. 64. Roberts to Sargent, Feb. 23, 1946, ^039/140/38, FO 371.56780. 65. Roberts to Sargent, Feb. 25, 1946, ^040/140/38, FO 371.56780; Roberts to Bevin, Feb. 27, 1946, ^829/140/38, FO 371.56780; Kennan to Byrnes, March 7, 1946, SD 740.00119 EW/3-746. 66. Doris Fleeson, in New York Post, March i, 1946; Halifax MS Diary, March 3, 4, 1946. 67. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime, 349; Leahy MS Diary, March 3, 1946; Churchill to Attlee, March 7, 1946, FO 800/513. 68. Byrnes to Kennan, March 5, 1946, foreign Relations, 1946, 6:269-70; Washington Star, March 7, 1946. 69. Department of State Bulletin 14 (March 17, 1946): 448-49; San Francisco Chronicle, March 6, 1946. Observers also noticed in early March a stiffer attitude in United States policy affecting Korea, another growing arena of confrontation with the Soviet Union and communism. Ibid., March 9, 1946. 70. Byrnes to Kennan, March 5, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:340—42. Byrnes
NOTES
.
32.1
explained the delay by pointing out that the United States was not signatory to the 1942 treaty and that he wanted to make sure the Iranian government had not licensed an extension. Byrnes to Murray, March 3, 1946, ibid., 336. But the United States had standing under the 1943 Declaration Regarding Teheran. And, in any event, why March 5? 71. New York Times, March 5, 1946. 72. Byrnes to Dunn, March 5, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 2:22-23; Memorandum of Byrnes-Halifax Conversation, March 6, 1946, SD 740.00119 Council/2-646; New York Times, March 7, 1946. CHAPTER 7: THE "IRON CURTAIN" 1. Vital Speeches 12 (March 15, 1946): 329-32. 2. For a note on the prior history of the term "iron curtain" as applied to the Soviet Union by the Germans during the war and by Churchill himself in a letter to Truman on June 4, 1945, see Wheeler-Bennett and Nicholls, Semblance of Peace, 294n. Some accounts ascribe the first use to a disillusioned English socialist visitor to the Soviet Union soon after the 1917 revolution. 3. See, e.g., V. G. Trukhanovsky, Winston Churchill (Moscow, 1978), 337-38. 4. New York Times, March 6, 12, 1946. 5. Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph (New York, 1973), 424; Feis, From Trust to Terror, 83. The source is an undated Harriman memorandum made about this time when Truman was persuading Harriman to take the ambassadorship in London. PM, March 11, 1946; Wallace MS Diary, Jan. 2, 1946 (Alsop), Feb. 2, 1946 (Bullitt), March 5, 1946 (Acheson, Bohlen), March 13, 1946 (Harriman). Blum, Price of Vision, 536, 546-49, 556-57, 560-61. For Child's remark, see ibid., Dec. 18, 1946, 533-35. 6. James P. Warburg, Germany: Key to Peace (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 377. Halifax note, Sept. 15, 1952, Halifax MSS, File 410:18:3. 8. Gilbert, Churchill's Political Philosophy, Bo. 9. Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, 549; Forrestal Diary, March 10, 1946, in Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 145. 10. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. 3, pt. i, p. 588. 11. See American diplomatic reports in SD File 741.61, Box 3978. 12. See, e.g., Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 309; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 176; Theoharis, Yalta Myths, 49-50; and Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade and After: America, 1945-1960, 2d ed. (New York, 1961), 38, 40, 71. 13. New York Times, March 6, 7, 1946. 14. Time, March 18, 1946. 15. Journal of Commerce, March 14, 1946; Wall Street Journal, March 8, 1946; New York World Telegram, March 6, 1946; Christian Science Monitor, March 6, 1946. The Memphis Commercial Appeal is cited in D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, 1917-1960, 2 vols. (New York, 1961), 1:351, who also quotes similar views in the Newark Star-Ledger. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Philadelphia newspapers are cited in U.S. News, March 15, 1946, which also cites similar views in the Hartford Courant. 16. Mark Sullivan, in New York Herald Tribune, March 8, 1946, called Churchill "the greatest leader in the modern world." G. F. Elliot, ibid., approved the call
322
NOTES
for "unified effort." David Lawrence, in U.S. News, March 15, 1946, applauded Churchill for "clearing the air" and driving home "the great necessity of American and British cooperation." William Stringer, in Christian Science Monitor, March 7, 1946; Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1946, 92:1901, 1970, 1974. New York Times, March 6, 7, 1946. See also the similar opinions of Dorothy Thompson, in Washington Star, March 8, 1946; and of the Scripps-Howard chain's leading columnist, William Philip Sims, in New York World Telegram, March 6, 1946. 17. Wall Street Journal, March 8, 1946; New York Times, March 6, 1946; Christian Science Monitor, March 6, 1946. 18. Daily Worker, March 6, 1946; Chicago Sun, cited in U.S. News, March 22, 1946; PM, March 6, 1946. 19. New York Times, March 7, 1946. 20. Ibid., March 7, 8, 1946. 21. PM, March 6, 1946; New Republic 114 (March 18, 1946): 383; Nation 162 (March 16, 1946): 316. 22. PM, March 6, 1946. For a comment on the effectiveness of the "iron curtain" metaphor, see Max Lerner, ibid., March 12, 1946. 23. Norman Thomas had praised Byrnes's February 28 speech as an "obvious and well-deserved warning" to the Soviet Union. New York Times, March 7, 1946. See also Max Lerner's critical article in PM, Feb. 28, 1946, in which he indirectly accused the Soviet Union of "imperialism." See also Nation 162 (March 16, 1946): 316. 24. The American Federation of Labor's anti-Sovietism and anticommunism was common knowledge. For an example of Catholic displeasure with Byrnes's "appeasement" of the Soviet Union, see American Mercury, March 1946, 315. See also statement by Representative John McCormick after Fulton calling upon the Soviet Union to cooperate for peace "or be charged with responsibility for failure." New York Times, March 7, 1946. For a reference to anti-Soviet attacks by Catholics immediately before Fulton, see PM, March 4, 1946. 25. Chicago Tribune, March 8, 1946; New York Times, March 10, 1946. 26. New York Mirror, March 7, 1946; San Francisco Examiner, March 8, 1946. See also New York Journal American, March 8, 1946 ("a great speech"); Hearst's campaign for a paramilitary American state and persistent "Red Scare" journalism can be traced through the San Francisco Examiner for 1945. See also National Republic, April 1946, 28. This journal of self-proclaimed "fundamental Americanism" thanked Churchill for drawing attention to "fifth columnists." It is always useful to recall the widespread influence of the HearstMcCormick-Paterson isolationist press. Their daily readership, together with the consistently and openly anti-Soviet Gannett and Scripps-Howard chains, has been estimated at some seventy million. See Anne T. Golden, "Attitudes to the Soviet Union as Reflected in the American Press, 1944-1948" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1970), 112—22. 27. The Atlanta Constitution and St. Louis Post-Dispatch are cited in New York Times, March 10, 1946. The Boston Globe, the Charlotte News, and the similarly inclined Detroit Free Press ("UNO or anarchy") are cited in U.S. News, March 15, 1946. Newsweek, March 18, 1946. See also Washington
NOTES
28. 29.
30. 31.
32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
39. 40. 41. 42.
43. 44. 45.
323
Star, March 6, 1946, and San Francisco Chronicle, March 7, 1946, for similar views. Congressional Record, 79th Cong. 2d sess., 1946, 92:1970, 1971, 1972, 1974. New York Sun, March 6, 1946; Washington Star, March 7, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 6, 7, 1946. This last newspaper was a house divided, with the editorialists and Walter Lippmann critical of Fulton, while the columnists G. F. Elliot and Mark Sullivan and the cartoonist endorsed it. PM, March 7, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 6, 1946; the Hartford Courant made the same point, cited in U.S. News, March 15, 1946. Salt Lake Tribune, March 7, 1946; Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1946; San Francisco Chronicle, March 7, 1946; Phoenix Republican, March 8, 1946. For the statements by Senators Taft and Maybank, see PM, March 7, 1946. For the Senate atomic survey see New York Times, March 7, 1946. For the congressional survey see PM, March 7, 1946. One influential newspaper, unsure whether an Anglo-American alliance was justified, continued, "But to Russia and many other countries it must seem as if in essence that condition already exists." Chicago Daily News, March 7, 1946. New York Times, March 9, 1946. Ibid. Ibid. New Republic 114 (March 18, 1946): 382; Nation 162 (March 16, 1946): 307; PM, March 10, 1946. New York Times, March 8, March 12, 1946, i; Christian Science Monitor, March 9, 1946. Parliamentary Debates (Lords), 4th ser., vol. 139 (1945-46): 1246-47. Ibid. (Commons), 4th ser., vol. 139 (1945-46): 760-61. Nation 162 (March 16, 1946): 306. The correspondent wrote, "The Secretary proposes but the career clique disposes." New York Times, March 12, 1946. For the Leahy-Byrnes dispute, see PM, Feb. 24, March 6, 1946. See also, for further background on the Leahy-Byrnes tension, Byrnes, All in One Lifetime, 342—43; Truman, Year of Decision, 590; and Leahy MS Diary 1945-46. Time, March 25, 1946. See below, Chapter 8. New York Times, March 9, 1946. Christian Science Monitor, March n, 1946. David Lawrence, in U.S. News, March 15, 1946; Ernest K. Lindley, in Newsweek, March 18, 1946; Joseph Harsch, in Christian Science Monitor, March 9, 1946. See also Newsweefe's March 18, 1946, comment "Churchill's speech is the key in a pattern of omens." New York Times, March 14, 1946. Public Opinion Quarterly 10 (Winter 1946-47): 24, 265. Cantril and Strunk, Public Opinion, 963, 1060. See also Gabriel Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (New York, 1960), xxii. Almond points out, "The Gallup survey's series of questions on the most important problems confronting the United States for the period 1935-49 showed gross variations of 20 to 30 percent in response to shifts in the international situation."
324 46. 47. 48. 49.
50. 51. 52. 53. 54.
55. 56. 57. 58.
59. 60.
NOTES U.S. News, March 15, 1946. New York Times, March 10, n, 1946. Ibid., March 14, 15, 17, 20, 1946. New York World Telegram, March 6, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 9, 13, 1946. For Krock see Neiv York Times, March 7, 1946; for Pearson see New York Mirror, March 13, 1946; for Connally's speech see New York Times, March 13, 1946. For Kennedy's article see Life, March 18, 1946. See PM, March 12, 22, 1946. New York Herald Tribune, March 7, 1946. PM, March n, 1946. Fish opposed alliance with Britain, but, significantly representative of much isolationist opinion in this transitional period, he favored intelligence and military staff cooperation on the existing basis. New York Times, March 15, 1946. Ibid. Congressional anti-Communist pressure was also felt by the Army, which announced within days of Fulton, on March 14, that it was taking steps to bar Communists and other "subversives." Wallace Diary, March 13, 1946, Blum, Price of Vision, 560-61. Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1946; PM, March 13, 1946; New Republic 114 (March 18, 1946): 364-65. Life, March n, 1946. See Lindley column in Washington Post, Feb. 17, 1946. For the Kennedy statement "The British people and their way of life form the last barrier in Europe against communism, and we must help them to hold that line," see New York Times, March 4, 1946. For the survey see ibid., March 4, 1946; Wall Street Journal, March 7, 1946. Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 343. See also Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy: Anglo-American Collaboration in the Reconstruction of Mutilateral Trade (New York, 1956), 249. Halifax MS Diary, March 6, 1946; Forrestal MS Diary, March 10, 1946, Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 146. PM, March 12, 1946.
CHAPTER 8: THE MAKING OF A SHOWDOWN 1. John Spanier, American Foreign Policy since World War 11 2d rev. ed. (New York, 1965), 26; Goldman, Crucial Decade, 37—40. 2. Fleming, Cold War and Its Origins, 350; Walter La Feber, America, Russia and the ColdWar, 1945-1960 (New York, 1976), 30-31. 3. Talbott, Khrushchev Remembers, 361, 393; Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, rev. ed. (Middlesex, England, 1966), 565; Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 425. See also, to like effect, though with very different conclusions, McCagg, Stalin Embattled, 235-37; and, for a contemporary Soviet view, Trukhanovsky, Churchill, 336—41. 4. For world reaction see SD 741.61, Box 3978 and SD 711.41, Box 3395; for British reaction see Jeremy K. Ward, "Winston Churchill and the 'Iron Curtain' Speech," History Teacher i (Jan. 1968): 5ff. 5. Bedell Smith, My Three Years in Moscow (New York, 1950), 52-53. Peterson to Bevin, May 28, 1946, PREM 8/349.
NOTES
325
6. Bohlen, Witness to History, 253. 7. Lord Gladwyn, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn (London, 1972), 185; Roberts to Bevin, March 26, N43io/G, FO 371.56782; Davies MS Diary, March 15, 1946. 8. Talbott, Khrushchev Remembers, 361, 393. 9. Minute by Brimelow, March 13, 1946,^333/140/38^0371.56781. 10. Pravda, March n, 1946. On March 13 the New York Times commented, "The entire Russian propaganda apparatus has opened up a barrage on Mr. Churchill as a warmonger." For criticism of the speech in the Supreme Soviet and in Poland, see ibid., March 10, 12, 1946. 11. New York Times, March 11, 1946. 12. Ibid., March 10, 1946. As recently as February 26 Radio Moscow had intimated that Soviet troops would remain in Manchuria as long as American troops remained in China. Ibid., Feb. 27, 1946. On February 27, reports were received that the Mukden garrison had been enlarged and was believed to be settling down for a long stay. Ibid., Feb. 28, 1946. Another factor was the evident Soviet desire to assist the Chinese Communists, but the timing of the withdrawal seems linked to Fulton. Ibid., March 7, 1946. The report on Bornholm noted that the Soviet move "put an end to rumors about alleged Soviet intentions to convert Bornholm into the Malta of the Baltic," ibid., Mar. 17, 1946. All these Soviet conciliatory gestures were noticed and approved. See, e.g., ibid., March n, 1946. 13. Novikov to Byrnes, March 7, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:82-85. 14. Izvestia, March n, 1946. 15. See, e.g., Bevin's statement of March 18, 1946, in CM (46) 25th Conclusions, PREM8.I78. 16. Gallman to Byrnes, March 16, 1946, SD 761.00/3-1546. For the argument that internal affairs were decisive, see McCagg, Stalin Embattled, 235-37. For the oil question see above, Chapter 5. 17. Roberts to Bevin, March 14, 1946, N4io6/G, FO 371.56781; Kennan to Byrnes, March 14, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:716-17. 18. Willgress to Secretary of State (Ottawa), Nov. 9, 1944, N20/20/38, FO 371.47860. For British audiences see Radio Moscow, March 15, 17, 18, 25, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2432, 2434, 2435, 2442. For other audiences see Radio Moscow, March i to 25, 1946, ibid., Files 2418-42. 19. Rossow to Byrnes, March 5, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:340. Rossow had predicted that Soviet troops would remain past the March 2 deadline. See, e.g., Rossow to Byrnes, Feb. 20, 1946, SD 861.2459/2-2046. For the immediate origins of the Iran crisis, see also Robert Rossow, Jr., "The Battle of Azerbaijan 1946," Middle East Journal 10 (Oct. 1957): 17—32; and Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 263-315. The involvement of Kurdish nationalism complicates the description of the Iranian crisis. Most Iranian Kurds lived in northern Iran under Soviet occupation, and especially near the crucial northwestern frontier, where the borders of Iran, Tukey, and Iraq meet. All countries possessed large Kurdish minorities. Kurdish nationalism was therefore a divisive factor in each country. During World War II the Soviets cultivated the Iranian Kurds with arms and military supplies. This aroused regional suspicions that
326
NOTES
were intensified in northern Iran under Soviet auspices in December 1945. This and other alarming events lent credence to the rumors of Kurdish and/or Soviet invasion that flared up in adjacent countries in March 1946. For a useful account of these events, see Archie Roosevelt, "Kurdish Republic of Mahabad," 247-57. F°r a discussion of Kurdish nationalism generally, see W. G. Elphinston, "The Kurdish Question," International A/fairs 22 (Jan. 1946): 91-103. 20. Memorandum by Edwin M. Wright, "Events Relative to the Azerbaijan Issue, March, 1946," Aug. 16, 1965, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:346—48. 21. Rossow to Byrnes, March 6, 1946, ibid., 342-43. Rossow to Byrnes, March 7, 1946, ibid., 344-45. 22. Memorandum by Edwin M. Wright, ibid., 347-48 for literary form. 23. New York Times, March 9, 1946. Byrnes to Gallman, March 8, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:345-46. The British had protested the Soviet treaty infringement immediately on March 2 and had on the same day encouraged the United States government "to make a similar demarche to the Soviet Government as soon as possible." "Aide-Memoire," British embassy to State Department, March 2, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-246. But, while they wanted to enlist American diplomatic support in the area, they were not, as will be seen, enthusiastic about Byrnes's United Nations strategy. Bevin did not give any early response to Byrnes's inquiry. 24. Byrnes to Kennan, March 8, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:348. 25. Murray, described by Herbert Feis as "a splenetic individual," nevertheless enjoyed the great respect of his colleagues in the State Department. See Feis, From Trust to Terror, 65. Byrnes to Kennan, Feb. 22, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:334-35. Kennan was ill at the time, and the records do not disclose whether this message was delivered before the negotiations broke down on March 4. For further description of these Moscow negotiations and the Soviet pressures, see Kennan to Byrnes, March 2, 1946, SD 761.91/3-246, and Kennan to Byrnes, March 4, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:337—39' Kennan to Byrnes, March 6, 1946, ibid., 343—44. Byrnes to Murray, March 8, 1946, ibid., 346. 26. The most obvious example of Byrnes's post-Fulton restraint was his change of mind over the plan to send a strong naval task force to escort the Missouri to Turkey. On March 6 the State Department announced that the ship would travel alone. New York Times, March 7, 1946. For Forrestal's and Churchill's disappointment, see Forrestal Diary, March 10, 1946, Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 144—45. Other instances of post-Fulton restraint were the decision to give Moscow time to explain the troop movement in Iran, and the cancellation by Under Secretary of State Acheson of his engagement to speak at the New York City welcome to Churchill on March 15. 27. Murray to Byrnes, March n, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:350-54. 28. The Iran background and various political alignments are more fully treated above, Chapter 5. 29. Suspicions of Qavam sprang from his wartime associations with the leftist Tudeh party and from his extensive land holdings in Soviet-occupied Iran. On March 12 the Shah expressed "great mental anguish torn by doubt of Qavam's
NOTES
327
loyalty." Murray to Byrnes, March 13, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-1346. When questioned by Murray, Qavam denied any personal deal with the Soviets. Murray to Byrnes, March n, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:350-54. For a scholarly assessment of this complex figure, see Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 230—31. 30. New York Times, March 13, 1946. These cables are in foreign Relations, 1946, vol. 7, and in Department of State National Archives. See Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 297-98. 31. New York Times, March 13, 1946; Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1946; New York Herald. Tribune, March 13, 1946; Christian Science Monitor, March 13, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 14, 1946. For similar views see Joeseph and Stewart Alsop, ibid. 32. PM, March 1946. The Pearson statement was made over Station WJXC, New York. Pearson described the moves as a prelude to a Soviet attack on Turkey. 33.. PM, March 15, 1946; New York Times, March 16, 1946; fzvestia quoted in New York Times, March 17, 1946. 34. See I. F. Stone's criticism in PM, March 14, 1946. Other non-left critics included James Reston, who on March 10 charged the department .with exaggerating the Soviet moves. New York Times, March 20, 1946. C. L. Sulzberger, ibid., March 24, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 18, 1946. 35. Kuniholm, Origins of Cold War, 324 n. 50; Halifax to Beviri, March 6, 1946, £2060/5/34; Bullard to Bevin, March 6, 1946, £2075/5/34; Bullard to Bevin, March 8, 1946, £2114/5/34, aU FO 371.52666. Pddsdale to Dixon, March 18, 1946, £2586/5/34, FO 371.52669. See also Murray to Byrnes, March 18, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:360, advising, 'British here deny sending anything to London belittling Soviet troop movements in Azerbaijan and they state they fail to understand FonOff official." 36. Manchester Guardian, March 6, 1946; Daily Mail, March 6, 1946; News Chronicle, March 6, 1946; cf. Daily Herald, March 8, 1946; and Tribune, March 12, 1946. For a press review see Ward, "Churchill and the 'Iron Curtain' Speech," 5ff. See also Dixon MS Diary, March 6, 1946, for Bevin's secretary's comment "I must say Winston's speech echoes the sentiments of all"; and Cunningham MS Diary, March 20, 1946. 37. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 420 (1946): 761—63; Churchill to Attlee and Bevin, March 7, 1946, FO 800/513; Gallman to Byrnes, March n, 1946, SD 741.61/3-1146; Dalton MS Diary, March 22, 1946; Bevin to Seymour, March 28, 1946, 03064/0, FO 371.57239. For Foreign Office restraint and skepticism regarding Byrnes, see Minute by Pyman, March 8, 1946, £2114/5/34; and Bevin to Halifax, March 13, 1946, £2188/5/34, both FO 371.52667. Foreign Office coolness to Byrnes's United Nations strategy is most evident in the long delay in replying to his note of March 8 seeking British assistance. Later Bevin refused to come over for the session despite Byrnes's strong appeal. The authoritative trade-union Daily Herald pointed out that reports of Soviet troop movements were incomplete and claimed, "[N]o report suggests that troops have been moved beyond the boundary of the old zone of occupation." Gallman to Byrnes, March 14, 1946, SD 861.24591/31446. Bevin, a trade-union leader, regarded the Daily Herald as his "own
328
38. 39.
40. 41. 42. 43.
44. 45.
46. 47.
48.
49. 50.
NOTES
paper." Francis Williams, Ernest Eevin (London, 1952), 264. Byrnes must have been particularly irritated by a report from London that the British were hoping he would give them stouter support in resisting Soviet pressures on Iran in the New York meeting than he had in London. New York Times, March 15, 1946. See also Byrnes to Rossow, March 15, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:359-60. New York Times, March 15, 1946. Truman had conferred with Byrnes on March 14 and must have been aware of the latest intelligence on Soviet movements. See, e.g., an American Institute of Public Opinion poll of March 13, 1946. Asked to assess American policy toward Russia, 60 percent of those polled found it "too soft," 3 percent too tough, and 21 percent all right. Cited in Cantril and Strunk, Public Opinion, 963, 1060. Time, March 25, 1946. For the full text see New York Times, March 14, 1946. Minute by Brimelow, March 16, ^442/140/38, FO 371.56781. New York Times, March 14, 1946. For other adverse reaction see Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 1946, See also PM, March 15, 1946. Benton to Byrnes, March 28, 1946, SD i n - n J. F. Byrnes/3-2846. Byrnes could have justified public diplomacy toward Moscow by citing the recent failure of private diplomacy evident in the Soviet failure to respond to United States and British notes on Iran, Manchuria, and other matters. See also Walter Lippmann's criticism of the diplomatic breakdown between the two countries in this period. New York Herald Tribune, March 28, 1946. For an interpretation of Byrnes's policy stressing his public diplomacy, see Gardner, Architects of Illusion, 84. New York Times, March 12, 1946. Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess,, 1946, 92:2136—40. Moscow's positive reaction was probably partly inspired by Connally's call for a Big Three meeting. Byrnes clearly did not inspire this. See Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 238, 160. Hull, Memoirs, 2:1720. Tom Connally, My Name Is Tom Connolly (New York, 1954), 289—90, Memorandum by Bohlen, March 13, 1946, Bohlen MSS, Box 6. New York Herald Tribune, March 15, 1946; New York Times, March 22, 1946; New York World Telegram, March 15, 1946. See also, for detection of the State Department's influence in these cases, the column by William Shirer, in New York Herald Tribune, April 14, 1946. i New York Times, March 14, 15, 1946. For reference to Krock's State Department sources, see Wallace Diary, May 15, 1942, Blum, Price of Vision, 80. The best proof of Reston's intimacy with the State Department lies in his daily commentary on the private diplomacy of the Iranian crisis in the United Nations phase. See below, Chapter 9. New York Times, March 14, 1946. Circular, Information Office, British Embassy, Washington, March u, 1946; Evans to McKenzie, March 21, 1946, AN246/7/4J, FO 371.51633; Smith, Three Years in Moscow, 28—31, 47; Forrestal Diary, March 10, 1946, Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 144—46.
NOTES
51. 52. 53. 54. 55.
56. 57.
58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.
66.
329
PM, March 14, 1946; New York Times, Match 15, 1946. New York Times, March 16, 21, 1946. Ibid., March 17, 1946. Bohlen memorandum, "Political Estimate of Soviet Policy for Use in Military Studies," March 22, 1946, Bohlen MSS, Box 8; Leahy MS Diary, March 18, 1946; Washington Star, March 18, 1946. New York Times, March 15, 1946. Ickes also attacked the military claim to control the atom bomb and the Truman administration's domestic policies, and he discussed the possibility of a third party, though he "did not agree with this at the moment." This was the first time Ickes had criticized American foreign policy in public. James Roosevelt, like Ickes, criticized Truman and Byrnes for abandoning the role of mediator between Russia and Britain. Two days later Roosevelt suggested sending Henry Wallace on a goodwill mission to the Soviet Union. New York Times, March 17, 1946. Ibid., March 15, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1946. Halifax to Bevin, March 16, 1946, AN742/I/45, FO 371.51633; Halifax to Bevin, March 23, 1946, AN84O/I/45; Halifax to Bevin, March 30, 1946, ANg6o/i/45, both FO 371.51607; Minute by Donnelly, March 21, Minute by Gage, March 22, both AN742/I/45, FO 371.51607. For Bevin's persisting effort to avoid a confrontation with the Soviets, see Bevin to Bullard, March 21, 1946, £2477/5/34, FO 371.52668. Murray to Byrnes, March 14, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:354-56. Murray to Byrnes, March 15, 1946, ibid., 356-58. Ibid. Qavam's view was shared by Kennan. See Kennan to Byrnes, March 17, 1946, ibid., 362. Byrnes to Murray, March 15, 1946, ibid., 360; Halifax to Bevin, March 15, 1946, £2348/5/34, FO 371.52668. Murray to Byrnes, March 17, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1046, 7:361-62. See copy in Byrnes to Murray, March 19, 1946, ibid., 365-66. The Soviet press and radio media emphasized the Big Three summit idea, see New York Times, March 14, 1946. For Gromyko's lobbying on behalf of the extended veto, see ibid. Gromyko to Lie, March 19, 1946, SC Official Records, ist year, ist ser., supp. no. 2, p. 41. Ala to Lie, March ib, 1946, ibid., 46. Truman Press Conference, March 21, 1946, Truman, Public Papers, 162-63. New York Times, March 22, 1946; New York Herald Tribune, March 22, 1946. For the Churchill report see ibid. Bevin to Byrnes, March 21, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:368. For a report on diplomatic opinion, see New York Times, March 22, 1946. See Izvestia, March 21, 1946, for pointed comment that a change of government in Iran was "overdue." Murray to Secretary of State, March 22, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:369. Murray never learned the precise details of the Soviet proposal, but from discussions with Qavam and others he felt confident this description was "substantially correct." His record of discussions with Iranian leaders seems to confirm this judgment. See also Murray to Secretary of State, March 22, 1946, ibid., 369-70.
33°
NOTBS
67. Kirk, Middle East, 69. Murray to Byrnes, March 22, 1946, Foreign Relations, '946, 7:369-71. 68. Murray to Byrnes, March 23, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-2346. Murray to Byrnes, March 23, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:373-75, 375-76; Murray to Byrnes, March 24, 1946, ibid., 376-77. 69. Byrnes to Winant, March 21, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 2:3. Memorandum of Conversation, March 19, 1956, SD 711.93/3-1946. 70. Byrnes to Caffery, March 21, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-2146. Caffery to Byrnes, March 22, 1946, ibid., 861.24591/3-2246. Caffery to Byrnes, March 25, 1946, ibid., 861.24591/3-2546. 71. Minute by Bevin, March 20, 1946, £2538/5/34; Minute by Ward, March 20, 1946, £2551/5/34, FO 371.52669; Extract of Telegram from the British Foreign Office to the British Embassy in Washington, March 21, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:368-69. 72. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 420 (1946): 1859—60, 1875-80. Neiv York Times, March 21, 1946; Gallman to Byrnes, March 20, 1946, SD 961.24591/3-2046; Faquahar to Bevin, March 23, 1946, Ez67i/ 5/34, FO 371.52669; Roberts to Bevin, March 21, 1946, £2559/5/34; Roberts to Bevin, March 23, 1946, £2619/5/34, both FO 371,52669. 73. Byrnes to Winant, March 21, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:33. 74. New York Times, March 21, 22, 24, 1946. 75. Ibid., March 23, 1946. 76. Ibid., March 24, 26, 1946. 77. Ibid., March 21, 23, 1946. 78. Ibid., March 22, 23, 1946. L'Humanite, March 22, 1946, cited in Caffery to Secretary of State, March 22, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-2246. 79. Cited in Gallman to Secretary of State, March 25, 1946, SD 861.24591/32456. New York Times, March 24, 1946. Byrnes to Murray, March 24, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:378. 80. Kennan to Byrnes, March 22, 1946, SD 961.24591/3-2246. Kennan repeated his warning of "the principal danger" of miscalculation and stressed "that Russians by misestimating our seriousness may advance into positions from which they cannot withdraw and which we cannot accept." 81. Murray to Byrnes, March 25, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:379-80. 82. Tass and Qavam statement, cited in Kennan to Byrnes, March 25, 1946, ibid., 778. 83. There is no detailed study of Qavam's strategy and tactics, but historians have been impressed by his skillful manipulation of the various forces involved. See Kuniholm, Origins of Cold War, chap. 5; Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 298; Feis, From Trust to Terror, 82—84. 84. Bullard to Bevin, March 15, 1946, £2813/5/34, FO 371.52670. 85. Byrnes to Acheson, March 26, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:383-85. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, p. n. See also Department of State Bulletin 14 (April 7, 1946}: 568. 86. Stettinius MS Calendar Notes, March 25, 1946; Davies MS Diary, March 25, 1946.
NOTES
331
CHAPTER 9: CONFRONTATION 1. Halifax to Bevin, March 30, 1946, AN()6o/i/45, FO 371.51607. See also New York Herald Tribune, March 29, 1946. For a recent reconstruction of the Security Council proceedings after March 25, see Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War, 326-42; and, for legal and procedural aspects, Richard von Wagenen, The Iranian Case, 1946 (New York, 1952). 2. There were eleven members of the Security Council: the Big Five plus Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, and Poland. Decisions were taken by majority vote. The Soviet Union could rely only on Poland. France, because of internal politics already discussed, preferred not to offend Stalin, if possible. Australia, self-consciously representing independent small powers, took occasional unilateral initiatives but on fundamental questions joined the other seven against the Soviets. A survey of voting and attitudes on the Iran issue between March 26 and May 20 shows that the United States could generally rely on a comfortable majority of nine to two. See SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 27-292. 3. For the State Department's arrangements for the Iranian instructions, see memorandum by Harold B. Minor (chief of Middle Eastern division), March 21, 1946, SD 50160/3.1846. The Washington firm was Covington, Rublee & Co. For Ala's consultations see Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:3836°., passim. Ala was the Shah's appointee, not Qavam's, and their purposes were different. Qavam used the delegate to bring bargaining pressure against the Soviets in the Teheran negotiations. Ala's conduct allowed Qavam to suggest that the Soviets would face a tougher negotiation if they failed to settle. At the same time Qavam was critical of Ala both openly and privately. For an account of his March 23 press conference, see New York Times, March 24, 1946, and Murray to Secretary of State, March 28, 1946, SD 24591/3-2846. Qavam did not, however, despite Soviet requests, recall the delegate. Indeed, he explicitly confirmed Ala's accreditation on April 3. Stettinius to Byrnes, April 3, 1946, foreign Relations, 1946, 7:402-4. For a description of leftist press attacks on Ala in Teheran, pointing out that the ambassador took orders from the Shah, not Qavam, see Murray to Byrnes, SD 861.24591/3-3046. 4. Murray to Byrnes, March 25, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:379—80. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 10-43. 5. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 10—43. 6. Byrnes to Acheson, March 26, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:383-85. 7. Memorandum of Conversation by Bohlen, March 27, 1946, SD 50I.BC/ 3-2746 See also PM, March 28, 1946. 8. For the full proceeding on March 27, see SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 44-70. For Byrnes's remarks see ibid., 49. For the vote see ibid., 56. For Gromyko's statement and withdrawal see ibid., 58. See also Byrnes's report in Byrnes to Acheson, March 27, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:388-90. 9. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, p. 62. 10. Ralph Ingersoll in PM, March 28, 1946. Trygve Lie, In the Cause of Peace (New York, 1954), 77. 11. New York Times, March 28, 1946. 12. New York Herald Tribune, March 27, 1946.
332.
NOTES
13. New York World Telegram, March 28, 1946; New York Sun, March 28, 1946. 14. New York Herald Tribune, March 28, 1946. 15. Newsweek, April 8, 1946. 16. PM, March 28, 1946. 17. Leahy MS Diary, March 18, 1946; New York Times, March 29, 1946; Newsweek, April 8, 1946. 18. The Times, March 28, 1946; Bullock, Bevin, 226. 19. Bevin to Cadogan, March 29, 1946, £2845/5/34; Cadogan to Bevin, March 30, 1946, £2901/5/34; Bevin to Cadogan, April 2, 1946, £2950/5/34, all FO 371.52671; Halifax to Bevin, March 30, 1946, AN96o/i/45, FO 371.51607. 20. New York Times, March 29, 1946. For United States embassy surveys of British Foreign Office and press opinion leading up to firmer support lot American firmness over Iran, see Gallman to Byrnes, March 25, 26, 28, 1946, SD 861.24591/25-0346, 861.24591/26-0346, 861.24591/28-0346. 21. Cited in Gallman to Byrnes, March 31, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-3146. See also Manchester Guardian, April 3, 1946. 22. Wilson to Byrnes, March 28, 1946, SD 501.60/3-2846. Cf. the pessimism in Ankara during February and fears that American policy was "one of leaving the U.K. to struggle alone against the Soviet Union." Bushey to Byrnes, Feb. 13, 1946, ibid., 501.60/2-1346. For an expression of Turkish anxiety, as late as March 26, that the Soviet goal was Turkey, see Patterson to Byrnes, March 26, 1946, ibid., 501.60/26-0346. 23. "Memorandum of Private Meeting of Members of the Security Council," March 28, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:391-93. For full proceedings on March 29, see SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 70-82. For Byrnes's statement and proposal see ibid., 74. For the delegation's report see Stettinius to Byrnes, March 29, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:396-98. 24. New York Times, March 28, April 6, 1946. 25. Byrnes to Acheson, March 26, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:383-85. SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, p. 58. New York Times, March 28, 29, April i, 1946. Pravda, March 31, 1946. American officials found additional reassurance in the Communist press. For the statement in the Italian Communist newspaper Unita that "Soviet delegates were still not present in a sign of protest," see Key to Byrnes, April i, 1946, SD 861.24591/4-0146. For an American correspondent's description of Soviet press reassurances of commitment to the United Nations, see New York Times, April 2, 1946. The general attitude of the Communist press around the world to American actions in the Security Council is best expressed by the Cuban daily Hoy: "There is no doubt that the great Anglo-Saxon powers are taking UNO as an instrument for aggravating and not for resolving international questions." Norweb to Byrnes, March 29, 1946, SD 501.60/3-2946. 26. Pravda, March 31, 1946. For sample press speculation that the United Nations might become an Anglo/American alliance, see Newsweek, April 8, 1946. Manchester Guardian, cited in Gallman to Byrnes, SD 861.24591/3-2546.
NOTES
333
27. Smith to Byrnes, April 5, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 6:731. See also Smith, Three Years in Moscow, 50-54. 28. Byrnes to Murray, March 29, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-2946. See also Lenczowski's comment on the Soviet position: "Their only hope lay jn continuance of direct negotiations with the Iranian Premier, which might result in an agreement favoring their interests." Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 298. 29. Murray to Byrnes, March 27, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:383-87. 30. Although he conducted the negotiations coolly and with skill, Qavam showed signs of personal strain. See Murray to Byrnes, March 28, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-2846. For persisting concern among Qavam's. entourage about Soviet intentions, see Murray to Byrnes, April 16, 1946, ibid., 86i.2459i/ 4-1646. 31. New York Times, March 30, 1946. 32. For Byrnes's attitude see Murray to Byrnes, March 23, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:373; Byrnes to Murray, March 24, 1946, ibid., 378. 33. Murray to Byrnes, March 27, 1946, ibid., 383—87. 34. See Murray to Byrnes, April 4, 1946, ibid., 405-6. For formal notes see Murray to Byrnes, April 9, 1946, ibid., 413-15. For the communiqu6 see New York Times, April 5, 1946. See also Feis, From Trust to Terror, 85-86. Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 299—300. For Soviet notification see Gromyko to President of Security Council, April 3, 1946, SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, p. 84. 35. Ala to President of Security Council, April 2, 1946, ibid., 85-86. For Ala's Council statement on April 3, see ibid., 87. 36. Ibid., 88-89, 97~99- Australia abstained in the vote on Byrnes's resolution, carried by a vote of eight to nothing. 37. Gromyko to President of Security Council, April 6, 1946, SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., supplement no. 2, pp. 46-47. 38. Ibid. 39. Byrnes to Stettinius, April 8, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:411-12. Ala to President of Security Council, SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., supplement no. 2, 46—47. 40. Rossow to Byrnes, March 31, 1946, SD 861.24591/3-3146. Rossow to Byrnes, April 4, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:404-5. Murray to Byrnes, March 30, 1946, ibid., 399. Murray to Byrnes, April 3, 1946, SD 861.24591/4-346. Acheson, Present at the Creation, 266. See also New York Times, April 3, 1946. 41. New York Times, April 5, 1946. 42. Congressional Record, 79th Cong. 2d sess., 1946, 92:3086-91. See also New York Times, April 5, 1946. 43. Murray to Byrnes, April 10, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:415-16. 44. Byrnes to Murray, April 10, 1946, ibid., 416. 45. Murray to Byrnes, April 11, 1946, ibid., 417-18. After April 7 the Soviet government widely publicized the Soviet-Iranian agreement in the press and stressed that the United Nations had no right to interfere further. See U.S. Embassy, Moscow (unsigned), to Byrnes, April 8, 1946, SD 86i.2459i/ 4-0846; and April 9, 1946, SD 861.24591/4.0946.
334
NOTES
46. Byrnes to Murray, April 12, 1946, ibid., 419-20. 47. Murray to Byrnes, April 13, 1946, ibid., 422—23. For Qavam's instructions to Ala see Stettinius to Byrnes, April 15, 1946, ibid., 423-24. 48. Murray to Byrnes, April 15, 1946, SD 861.24591/4-1546. Murray to Byrnes, April 16, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:426-27. 49. Radio Moscow, March 3o-April j, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2447-49; Pfvda, March 30, 1946. 50. Radio Moscow, April 7-9, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2455-57. 51. Radio Moscow, April 9-17, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2457-65; Roberts to Bevin, April 10, 1946, ^810/71/38; Roberts to Bevin, April 17, 1946, N5402/7r/38; Roberts to Bevin, April 19, 1946, ^204/71/38; Roberts to Bevin, April 25, 1946, ^683/71 /38, all FO 371.56745. 52. Pravda, April 12, 1945; Radio Moscow, April 12—15, I94&> BBC Digest, Files 2460—63. 53. Department of State Bulletin 14 (April 14, 1946): 622-24; Roberts to Bevin, April 10, 1946, N48io/7i /38, FO 371.56745. 54. H. Freeman Matthews, "Memorandum for the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee from the Acting State Member," April i, 1946, SD 711.61/3-1446; Moseley to Thompson, July 15, 1946, SD 711.61/7-1546; Hickerson to Byrnes, June 19, 1946, SD 711.61/6-1946. 55. Connor to Howe, April 15, 1946; and Howard to Byrnes, April 21, 1946, Byrnes MSS, File 535. 56. Byrnes to Stettinius, April 13, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:420-22. 57. See three documents entitled "Memorandum of Conversation" recording Stettinius's meetings with Ala, Quo, and Cadogan, April 15, 1946, SD 501.80/4-1546. See also Memorandum of Conversation, O'Brien (attorney) and L. Henderson, April 15, 1946, ibid., 861.24591/4-1546. 58. Memorandum of Conversation, Stettinius with Ala, April 15, 1946, ibid., 501.80/4-1546. 59. For the full proceedings on April 15, see SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 122-41. For Gromyko's remarks see ibid., 123. For Stettinius's statement see ibid., 126. 60. Ibid., 142-52. 61. Ibid., r42~5o. 62. For Lie's letter see ibid., 143-45. For his description and discussion see Lie, In the Cause of Peace, 85. See also Andrew W. Cordier and Walter Foote, eds., Public Papers of the Secretary Generals of the United Nations: Trygve Lie, 1946-1953 (New York, 1969), 39-43. For Stettinius's imitation of this "extremely dubious practice," see Stettinius to Byrnes, April 16, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:427—31. 63. Memorandum by Warner, April 2, 1946, 09927/130/6, FO 371.55581. On the great influence of Warner's analysis in the Foreign Office and beyond, see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 255-60. 64. Minutes of First Meeting, Committee on Policy Towards Russia, April 2, 1946, N5i69/G, FO 371.56885. (Minutes of subsequent meetings through the end of June are also in FO 371.56885.) Memorandum by Mason, April 4, 1946
NOTES
65. 66.
67. 68. 69.
70.
71. 72.
73. 74.
335
(with attached minutes of later date by various hands and departments), AN35og/5/G, FO 371.51630; Memorandum by Howe, April 10, 1946, E3458/5/34; Pyman minutes, Meeting of April 15, 1946, £3459/5/34; Pyman minutes, Meeting of April 18, 1946, £3522/5/34, all FO 371.52673. Gallman to Byrnes, April 17, 1946, SD 861.24591/4-1746. Cassidy (NBC) from Ankara, April 5, 9, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2453-59. Wilson to Byrnes, April 18, 1946, ibid., 861.24591/4-1846. The Turks also communicated a warning of possible secret clauses in the Irano-Soviet agreement and advised that their intelligence reports revealed no sign of any Soviet withdrawal from Azerbaijan. In his Army Day speech on April 6, Truman pointedly referred to the Middle and Near East, promising social and economic support and declaring that American military might stood behind the United Nations. Department of State, Bulletin 14 (April 14, 1946) 622-24. PM, April 16, 1946; State Department, "U.S. Public Opinion on Relations with Russia," April 17, 1946, SD 501 (rest of citation faded). New York Herald Tribune, April 14, 16, 17, 1946. New York Times, April 17, 1946; Washington Post, April 17, 1946; for the Washington Star, Scripps-Howard, and Sumner Welles citations, see State Department, "U.S. Public Opinion on Relations with Russia." Nation 162. (April 27, 1946): 494-95, 498-99; Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1946; New York Daily Mirror, April 17, 1946; Hartford Courant, April 17, 1946; Abilene Morning Reporter News, April 18, 1946; Lansing State Journal, April 17, 1946; Charlotte Observer, April 19, 1946. See also, similarly, Worcester Telegram, April 19, 1946; Battle Creek Inquirer News, April 18, 1946; and Cincinnati Times-Star, April 19, 1946. State Department, "U.S. Public Opinion on Relations with Russia." The British embassy noted a degree of rising frustration but added, "At the same time opinion has hardened. In all but left-wing quarters there is no deviation from the view that the United States must maintain a firm stand in international disputes and not allow itself to be swayed from its, moral and benign stand in the direction of appeasement or expediency." Halifax to Bevin, April 20, 1946, ANn8i/G, FO 371.51607. Chicago Sun, April 17, 1946; Birmingham Age-Herald, April 17, 1946. Halifax to Bevin, April 6, 1946, ANio47/i/45; Halifax to Bevin, April 14, 1946, ANi 128/1/45; Halifax to Bevin, April 20, 1946, ANi 181/1/45; Minute by Mason, April 5, 1946, AN96o/i/45; Minute by Gage, April 10, 1946, ANio47/i/45; Minute by Mason, April 18, 1946, ANi 128/1/45; Minute by Gage, April 18, 1946, ANi 128/1/45, all FO 371.51607. New Times, April 15, 1946; Radio Moscow, April 25, 1946, BBC Digest, File 2471. For more general themes see ibid., April 17-27, 1946, Files 2463-73. Sulzberger Diary, April 22, 1946, cited in C. L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles: Memoirs and Diaries, 1934-1954 (New York, 1969), 311; Baruch to Byrnes, March 31, 1946, Baruch MSS, "Selected Correspondence," File; New York Times, April 7, 1946. See also Newsweek, April 29, 1946; U.S. News, May 3, 1946, and "Memorandum 1945-46," Davies MSS, Box 30. Byrnes also received congratulatory cables from prominent journalists. See, for
336
75. 76.
77. 78. 79.
80.
NOTES
example, Byrnes to Wallace R. Derel (Chicago Daily News), April 19, 1946, SD 501.80/4-1946; Byrnes to Martin Agronsky (American Broadcasting Corporation), April 19, 1946, ibid. For text of the Committee of Experts report, see SC Official Records, ist yr., ist set., supplement no. 2, p. 47. For full proceedings on April 23, see ibid., istyr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 201-14. For State Department instructions see Acheson to Murray, May 2, 1946, SD 861.24591/05-0246. For consular reports from Iran see Dooher to Byrnes, May 5, 1946, and Roscow to Byrnes, May 6, 1946, ibid., 861.24591/05-0646. For Ala's May 6 letter, see SC Official Records, ist yr., ist ser., no. 2, pp. 24647. For Stettinius and proceedings on May 8 see ibid., 247-52. Rossow to Byrnes, May 17, 1946, SD 861.24591/04-1746. Acheson to Stettinius, May 18, 1946, SD 501.80/05-18346. Stettinius to Byrnes, May 7, 1946, SD 501.60/04-0746. For New Yorker and other comment see U.N. Department (Washington) to Bevin, April 20, 1946, 04628/0, FO 371.57244; Wilson to Byrnes, April 26, 1946, SD 861.24591/4-2646; Minute by Warner, April 15, 1946, N485O/ 71/38^0371.56745. Churchill to Attlee, March 19, 1946, PREM 8.197; New York Times, March 15, 1946.
CHAPTER 10: AFTERMATH AND CONCLUSION 1. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 126; Bohlen, Witness to History, 253. 2. For the documentary record of this conference, see Foreign Relations, 1946, 2:88-440. Lord Gladwyn, Memoirs, 193; Sulzberger, Long Row of Candles, 3ii3. Foreign Relations, 1946, 2:204; Yergin, Shattered Peace, 192. 4. Yergin, Shattered Peace, 223; Vandenberg Diary, April 29, 1946, Vandenberg, Private Papers, 268. 5. "Anglo-American Discussions," Minute by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, n.d., FO 800/513. This record seems to invalidate the suggestion that Clay acted alone. Cf. Yergin, Shattered Peace, 229. See also Bevin-Byrnes "Discussion," April 26, 1946, FO 800/446. 6. For Byrnes's comment about this time that "he had almost given up hope for a united Germany," see Mowrer to Pollock, June 4, 1946, cited in Yergin, Shattered Peace, 226, 457 n. 12. For the documentary record see Foreign Relations, 1946, 2:88-440. 7. Department of State Bulletin 14 (June 2, 1946): 950-54; Bohlen, Witness to History, 252. 8. Pravda, May 27, 1946; Peterson to Bevin, May 28, 1946, PREM 8.349. 9. See, e.g., Izvestia, May n, 1946; Pravda, May 26, 1946. Roberts to Bevin, April 26, 1946, N5683/G; Roberts to Bevin, May 16, 1946, N6777/G, both FO 371.56746. See also, for numerous examples, Radio Moscow, March 28June 4, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2445-513. 10. NewTimes, May i, 15, June i, 15, July i, 15, 1946. u. Minute by Donnelly, May 17, 1946, Minute by Gage, May 17, 1946, both A N i 5 i 5 / i / 4 5 , FO 371.51607; Halifax to Bevin, May 13, 1946, ANi5i5/
NOTES
12. 13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18. 19.
337
1/45; Balfour to Bevin, May 18, 1946, AN1566/1/45, both FO 371.51607. Minute by Mason, April 4, 1946, AN3509/G, FO 371.51630. Some skepticism remained. For the assertion that Byrnes was "an admirable representative of the United States; weak when the American public was weak, and tough when they are tough," see Dixon MS Diary, May 6, 1946. Inverchapel to Bevin, June 3, 1946, FO 800/513. Dixon memorandum, "Instructions to Sir Maurice Peterson," May 16, 1946, N4977/140/38, FO 371.56783; Minutes, Committee on Policy Towards Russia, June 4, 1946, N73I5/G, FO 371.56885. For the Bevin-Bidault conversation see Memorandum by Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, May 17, 1946, CP (46) 197, CAB 129/7. Bevin to Duff Cooper, "May 1946" (draft only), FO 800/460. Messer, End of an Alliance, 193-94 referring to Patricia Dawson Ward. For a summary of these negotiations, see Curry, Byrnes, chaps. 7—9. See also Patricia Dawson Ward, The Threat of Peace: James F. Byrnes and the Council, of Foreign Ministers, 1945-1946 (Kent, Ohio, 1979). Talbott, Khrushchev Remembers, 361; Geir Lundestad, The American NonPolicy towards Eastern Europe, 1943-1947 (New York, 1975), 136. See also Radio Moscow, May 1, 2, 10 and generally May 1 to July 31, 1946, BBC Digest, Files 2480-2571. For Litvinov see McCagg, Stalin Embattled, 390-91 n. 76. For the Zhdanovshchina see ibid., 163-66; and Gavriel Ra'anan, International Policy Formation in the USSR (Hamden, Conn., 1983), 54-61. Leahy, MS Diary, May 3, 4, 5, 1946. Forrestal Diary, May 3, 4, 1946, Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 157-58. Neither Truman nor Acheson referred to this episode, It is an interesting sign of the polarization of left and right now taking place in the world that the right-wing Ala called on Stettinius on April 24 and told him that the Spanish ambassador had asked him to pass word privately to the former secretary of state "that the Soviet Union was supplying substantial quantities of arms to Communistic inspired forces in France oh the Spanish border whose aim would be to incite conflict within Spain." Stettinius to Byrnes, April 24, 1946, SD 501.80/4-2446. Helm to Bevin, May 14, 1946, R7311/G, FO 371.59312. For the Soviet note to Ankara, see Foreign Relations, 1946, 7:827-28, 840-42, 849-50; Wilson to Byrnes, Aug. 12, 1946, ibid., 837; Acheson to Byrnes, Aug. 15, 1946, ibid., 840-42. Forrestal Diary, Aug. 14, 1946, Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 192. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 97. Acheson, Present at the Creation, 195-96. New York Times, Sept. 18, 1946. For Greece see Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 161-62, 170. Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 303-12; Marlowe, Iran, 81-83. For the Far East see Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 282, and for a general overview, ibid., 316-52. For American activism see also Lundestad, American Non-Policy towards Eastern Europe, 167, 170-71, 278-79; and Yergin, Shattered Peace, 222-37. For Turkey see also Kelly to Bevin, May 14, 1946, R7594/G, FO 371.59312. For British approbation see, for example, Bevin to Attlee, July 20, 1946, FO 800/489. For a British perspective see Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 359—61, 395—405. See also Foreign Office, Memorandum on Attlee-Tsaldaris Conversation, July 10, 1946, PREM
338
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26. 27. 28.
NOTES 8.197. For a general overview see Gaddis, United States and the Origins, 316-52. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, 249, 248-53. See also, for administration rationales, Department of State Bulletin 14 (March 31, May 5, 26, 1946): 511-14, 759-60, 893-94, PM- For other congressional sentiment see Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1946, 92:8824, 8825, 8913, 8915. See also New York Times, July 14, 1946. Bevin to Attlee, July 18, 1946, PREM 8.314; Memorandum by Foreign Secretary, May 3, 1946, CP (46) 186, CM (46) 68th Conclusions, July 15, 1946, CAB 128/5. Department of State Bulletin 15 (Sept. 15, 1946): 496—501. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 179-81. See also, for Truman's endorsement of the division of Germany, Davies's memorandum of conversation with Truman, Sept. 10, 1946, Davies MSS, Box 24. A full collection of the materials used is contained in Clifford MSS, Folders 2 and 3; and Elsey MSS, Folders 1 and 2 and Box 105. For Elsey's central role and for his conception that the report should be "the great all-inclusive evaluation and definition of policy," see Elsey Memoranda, July 17, 18, 19, 20, 1946, Elsey MSS, Folder 1. See, e.g., Memorandum, Leahy to Clifford, Sept. 21, 1946, Clifford MSS, Folder 2; Wilson to Leahy, Aug. 19, 1946, ibid.; Clark (Attorney-General) to Clifford, Aug. 6, 1946, Clifford MSS, Folder 3; Acheson to Clifford, Aug. 6, 1946, ibid. For a sample of the standard request sent, with appropriate modifications, to various officials, see Clifford to Forrestal, July 18, 1946, ibid. Clifford to Kennan, Sept. 13, 1946 (with undated "Comments" by Kennan attached), Elsey MSS, Folder 1. The final report, "American Relations with the Soviet Union," is printed in Arthur Krock, Memoirs, Appendix A, 417—82. Willett to Forrestal, Jan. 15, 1946, Forrestal MSS, Box 69. Forrestal frequently wrote approving notes to anti-Soviet commentators and sometimes suggested printing for wider circulation. See, e.g., Forrestal to G. F. Elliot, Jan. 12, 1946, ibid. For Forrestal's wide-ranging activities in aid of a coherent American ideology, see correspondence in Forrestal MSS, Boxes 68, 69, 70, 71, passim. Everett Dirksen, Communism in Action (Printed by Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, 1946). Russell to Braden, Nov. 1, 1946, SD 711.61/11-1946 forwarding "U.S. Public Opinion on Russia," Oct. 31, 1946; AIPO poll, cited in Cantril and Strunk, Public Opinion, 964-65. See Joseph and Stewart Alsop, in Washington Post, March 1, 1946. James Reston, in New York Times, May 6, 1946; Newsweek, Sept. 9, 1946. See also "The Personal Setting of Public Opinion: A Study of Attitudes towards Russia," Public Opinion Quarterly 11 (Winter 1947—48): 514—15; and Almond, American People and Foreign Policy, 94—95. The bill was passed on June 5, 1946. Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1946, 92:6343. For Vandenberg's speech on April 22, 1946, see ibid., 4079. Gardner, SterlingDollar Diplomacy, 250. See, e.g., Time, Sept. 2, 23, 1946; New York Times, Oct. 2, 1946. For a survey of the development of anti-left sentiment in this period, and its association with
NOTES
29.
30.
31.
32.
33. 34.
35. 36.
339
the Soviet Union and totalitarian Germany, see Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, "Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930's-1950's," American Historical Review 75 (April 1970): 1046-64. See, e.g., PM, April 5, May 11, 1946; Nation 162 (March 30, 1946): 362-66; (May 25, 1946): 613; 163 (July 8, 1946): 6-8; (Aug. 24, 1946): 204-6; (Sept. 14, 1946): 288-89; New Republic 114 (June 10, 1946): 819-21; 115 (July 22, 1946): 70-73; (Sept. 16, 1946): 321-23. For the Wallace speech see Vital Speeches 12 (Oct. 1, 1946): 739. For these events generally, see Wallace Diary, Sept. 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 1946, Blum, Price of Vision, 612-32. See also Truman, Year of Decisions, 557-60; Byrnes, All in One Lifetime, 370-76; Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 206-10. See also "Memorandum on L'Affaire Wallace," Sept. 17, 1946, Elsey MSS, Box 105. Dubrow to Byrnes, Sept. 26, 1946, SD 761.00/9-2646; Pravda, Sept. 29, 1946; N. Ronald draft memorandum, n.d.: N. Ronald minute, Dec. 19, 1946, Z10754/120/G, FO 371.59911; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 158; Memorandum by J. Henderson, "Attlee-Bevin Discussion at Chequers, Dec. 27, 1946," FO 800/475. Bullock, Bevin, 329, 368-70; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 158; Minute by Troutbeck, Dec. 5, 1946; Rumbold draft memorandum, Dec. 5, 1946; Ronald to Balfour and Roberts, Dec. 16, 1946, all Z107547 120/G, FO 371.59911; Bevin to Little, June 10, 1946; Bevin memoranda, Nov. 6, Dec. 9, 1946, all FO 800/501. For Attlee's campaign see "Central Organisation of Defence," PREM 8.169; for the American trend see Yergin, Shattered Peace, chap. 8, and the diary of a key official in Millis, Forrestal Diaries, 59-64 and passim. Dixon MS Diary, April 16, 1946; The Times, May 10, 1946; Benton to Byrnes, May 10, 1946, SD 741.56/5.1046; Anderson, United States, Britain, and the Cold War, 141. For confirmation see the comment that "cooperation is becoming so close that the foreign policies of Washington and London are practically identical, although the fiction of independence is maintained." Newsweek, Sept. 9, 1946. Bevin to Attlee, Aug. 27, 1946, FO 800/513. Dixon MS Diary, April 16, 1946. Note of Bevin-Molotov meeting, Nov. 6, 1946, FO 800/501.
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The following bibliography selects, from the vast historiography of this period, only those materials and sources most germane to the specific subject of this book. ARCHIVAL AND MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS Acheson, Dean. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Allen, George V. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Alsop, Joseph W. and Stewart. Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Attlee, Clement. Papers. Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, England. Baruch, Bernard M. Papers. Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey. Bevin, Ernest. Papers. Public Record Office, Kew, England. Bohlen, Charles E. Papers. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Byrnes, James F. Papers. Clemson University Library, Clemson, South Carolina. Clifford, Clark M. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Connally, Tom. Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.
Cunningham, Andrew. Papers. British Library, London, England. Dalton, Hugh. Papers. London School of Economics, London, England. Davies, Joseph E. Papers. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Dixon, Pierson. Papers. Hon. Piers Dixon, London, England. Dulles, John Foster. Papers. Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey. Eden, Anthony. Papers. Public Record Office, Kew, England. Elsey, George M. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Forrestal, James V. Papers. Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey.
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Halifax, Lord. Papers. University of York Library, York, England. Harvey, Oliver. Papers. British Library, London, England. Hopkins, Harry. Papers. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Inverchapel, Lord. Papers. Public Record Office, Kew, England. Ismay, Hastings. Papers. Liddell Hart Military Archives, Kings College, London, England. Kennan, George F. Papers. Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey. Leahy, William D. Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Matthews, H. Freeman. Papers. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Morgenthau, Henry M., Jr. Papers. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Patterson, Robert B. Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Roosevelt, Franklin D. Papers. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Rosenman, Samuel I. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Sevareid, Eric. Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Stettinius, Edward R., Jr. Papers. University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia. Stimson, Henry L. Papers. Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. Swing, Raymond Gram. Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Truman, Henry S. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. United States Department of States. Archives. 1923, 1945-46. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Vaughan, Harry. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Wallace, Henry A. Papers. University of Iowa Library, Iowa City, Iowa. OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, 1945-47. Washington, D.C., ig6r-63. United States Congress. Congressional Record, ygth and Both Congresses, 1944-48. United States Department of State. Department of State Bulletin. 1945-46. . General Records. Decimal Series. 1943-47. National Archives, Washington, D.C. . Foreign Relations of the United States. Annual volumes. 1941-46. Washington, D.C., 1958-70. . Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference at Quebec, 1944. Washington, D.C., 1972. . Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943. Washington, D.C., 1961. . Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 194%. Washington, D.C., 1955. . 'foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference^, 1945. 2 vols. Washington, D.C., 1960.
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343
United States Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Hearings on the Investigation of Far Eastern Policy, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945. Documents of American Foreign Relations. Vols. 2-9. 1939-1947. Boston and Princeton, 1940-49. United Kingdom. Parliamentary Debates (Commons). 1945-46. United Kingdom. Foreign Office. Records. Public Record Office. Kew, England. . Prime Ministers Papers, 1940—47. Public Record Office. Kew, England. . Cabinet Papers, 1940-47. Public Record Office. Kew, England. United Nations. Security Council. Official Records, 1st yr., 1st and 2d sess. 1946. British Broadcasting Corporation. Daily Digest of World Broadcasts. 1943-47. Written Archives Centre. Reading, England. Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents. Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidents of the USA and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. 2 vols. Moscow, 1947. The Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences: Documents. Moscow, 1969. Documents on Polish-Soviet Relations, 1939-1945. 2 vols. London, 1961-67. OTHER UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL Adler, Les K. "Red Image: American Attitudes towards Communism in the Cold War Era." Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1970. Byrnes, James F. Interview. John Foster Dulles Oral History Project. Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey. Gilbert, Martin. "The Origins of the Iron Curtain' Speech." First Crosby Kemper Lecture, April 26, 1981, Hamby, Alonzo L. "Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism, 1945-1948." Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1965. Harriman, W. Averell. Interview. John Foster Dulles Oral History Project. Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey. Howard, Michael. "Strategy and Politics in World War II: The British Case." Paper for the 14th International Congress of Historical Sciences, San Francisco, 1975Messer, Robert L. "The Making of a Cold Warrior: James F. Byrnes and AmericanSoviet Relations." Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1975. Rosenman, Samuel I. Interview. Oral History Collection. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Vaughan, Harry S. Interview. Oral History Collection. Harry S, Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS American Mercury Atlanta Constitution Bolshevik Christian Science Monitor Chicago Sun Chicago Tribune
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Collier's Daily Worker (New York) Economist Fortune Harper's Humanite Izvestia Journal of Commerce Life Los Angeles Times Manchester Guardian Nation National Republic New Republic New Statesmen Newsweek New Times New York Herald Tribune New York Journal American New York Mirror New York News New York Sun New York Times New York World Telegram New Yorker PM Pravda Reader's Digest Salt Lake Tribune San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Examiner The Times (London) Time U.S. News Voina i rabochii klass Watt Street Journal Washington Post Washington Star BOOKS Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York, 1969. Alexander, G. M. The Prelude to the Truman Doctrine: British Policy in Greece, 1944-1947. Oxford, 1982. Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York, 1967. Almond, Gabriel A. The American People and Foreign Policy. Rev. ed. New York, 1960.
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Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New York, 1965. Anderson, Terry H. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 19441947. Columbia, Mo., and London, 1981. Barker, Elisabeth. British Policy in Southeastern Europe in the Second World War. London, 1976. —. Churchill and Eden at War. New York, 1978. Baruch, Bernard M. Baruch: The Public Years. paper ed., New York, 1962. Bernstein, Barton J., ed. Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration. Chicago, 1970. , ed. Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History. New York, 1968. Birkenhead, Earl of. Halifax. London, 1965. Blum, John M., ed. The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 19421946. Boston, 1973. . Prom the Morgenthau Diaries: Years of War, 1941—1945. Boston, 1967. . V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II. New York, 1976. Bohlen, Charles E. Witness to History, 1929-1969. New York, 1973. Bullard, Sir Reader. The Camels Must Go. London, 1961. Bullock, Alan. Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951. London, 1983. Burns, James M. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. New York, 1970. Byrnes, James F. Speaking Frankly. New York, 1947. . All in One Lifetime. New York, 1958. Callahan, Raymond A. Churchill: Retreat from Empire. Wilmington, Del., 1984. Campbell, John C. The United States in World Affairs, 1945-1947. New York, 1948. Campbell, Thomas A. Masquerade Peace: America's U.N. Policy, 1944—1945. Tallahassee, 1973. -——-—•, and George Herring, eds. The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. New York, 1975. Cantril, Hadley, and Mildred Strunk, eds. Public Opinion, 1935-1946. Princeton, N.J., 1951Churchill, Winston S. The World Crisis. 5 vols. London, 1923-3 1. . Great Contemporaries. American ed. Chicago, 1973. . The Second World War. 6 vols. Boston, 1948-53. . The Complete Speeches, 1897—1963. 8 vols., 1945-1949. Edited by Robert Rhodes James. New York, 1974. — . The Collected Essays. Edited by Michael Wolff. 4 vols. London 1976. Clay, Lucius D. Decision in Germany. New York, 1950. Clemens, Diane Shaver. Yalta. New York, 1970. Colville, John. Winston Churchill and His Inner Circle. New York, 1981. Cottam, Richard W. Nationalism in Iran. Pittsburgh, 1964. Curry, George. James F. Byrnes. The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, edited by Robert Ferrell and Samuel Flagg Bemis. New York, 1965. Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945. New York, 1979. Dalton, Hugh. High Tide and After: Memoirs, 1945-1960. London, 1962.
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Daniels, J. The Man of Independence. Philadelphia, 1950. Davis, Lynn E. The Cold War Begins. Princeton, N.J., 1974. Davis, Vincent. Postwar Defense Policy and the United States Navy, 1943-1946. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966. Deane, John. The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation with Russia. New York, 1947. De Santis, Hugh. The Diplomacy of Silence: The American Foreign Service, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947. Chicago, 1980. Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin. Rev. Pelican ed. Oxford, 1966. Dilks, David, ed. The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1928-1945. London, 1971. Divine, Robert A. Roosevelt and World War II. New York, 1969. . Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America during World War 11. New York, 1967. Dixon, Piers. Double Diploma: The Life of Sir Pierson Dixon. London, 1968. Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York, 1962. Donovan, Robert J. Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 19451948. New York, 1977. Douglas, Roy. From War to Cold War, 1942-4948. New York, 1981. Druks, Herbert. Harry S. Truman and the Russians, 1945-1953- New York, 1966. Eagleton, William, Jr. The Kurdish Republic of 1946. London, 1963. Eden, Anthony. The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon. Boston, 1965. Ehrman, John. Grand Strategy, August 1943-September 1044. Vol. 5 of History of the Second World War, edited by J. R. M. Butler. London, 1956. . Grand Strategy, October 1944-August 1945. Vol. 6 of History of the Second World War, edited by J. R. M. Butler. London, 1956. Feis, Herbert. Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference. Princeton, N.J., 1960. . Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought. Princeton, N.J., 1957. -. From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950. New York, 1970. Fenno, Richard F., ed. The Yalta Conference. Boston, 1966. Ferrell, Robert H., ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman. New York, 1980. Fleming, D. F. The Cold War and Its Origins, 1917-1960. 2 vols. New York, 1961. Caddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 19411947. New York, 1972. . Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York, 1982. Gardner, Lloyd C. Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1041-1040. Rev. ed. Chicago, 1970. , with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Hans Morgenthau. The Origins of the Cold War. Waltham, Mass., 1970. Gardner, Richard N. Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy: Anglo-American Collaboration in the Reconstruction of M-utilateral Trade. New York, 1956.
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Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill. 6 vols., 1874-1941. First two by Randolph S. Churchill. Boston, 1966-83. . Churchill's Political Philosophy. Oxford, 1981. Gimbel, John. The American Occupation of Germany; Politics and the Military 1945-1949. Stanford, 1968. Goldman, Eric F. The Crucial Decade and After: America, 1945-1960. ad ed. New York, 1961. Graebner, Norman A. An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1961. Halle, Louis. The Cold War as History. New York, 1967. Hammond, Thomas, ed. The Anatomy of Communist Takeovers. New Haven, 1975. Harriman, W. Averell, America and Russia in a Changing World: A Half Century of Personal Observation. New York, 1971. , with Elie Abel. Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946. New York, 1975. Harvey, John, ed. The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1941-1945. London, 1978. Hathaway, Robert. Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944-1947. New York, 1981. Herken, Gregg. The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 19451950. New York, 1982. Herring, George C., Jr. Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War. New York, 1973. Herz, Martin. Beginnings of the Cold War. Bloomington, Ind., 1966. Hillman, William, ed. Mr. President. New York, 1952. Hull, Cordell. The Memoirs of Cordell Hull. 2 vols. New York, 1948. latrides, John. Revolt in Athens: The Greek Communist "Second Round," 19441945. Princeton, N.J., 1972. Iriye, Akira. The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., I974. James, Robert Rhodes. Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939. London, 1970. Jenkins, Roy. Nine Men of Power. London, 1974. Kennan, George F. Memoirs, 1925-1950. Boston, 1967. Kirk, George. The Middle East, 1945-1950. Survey of International Affairs, 19391946, edited by Arnold Toynbee. London, 1954. Kolko, Gabriel. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945. New York, 1968. , and Joyce Kolko. The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954. New York, 1972. Krock, Arthur. Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line. New York, 1968. Kuklick, Bruce. American Policy and the Division of Germany. Ithaca, 1972. Kuniholm, Bruce Robellet. The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece. Princeton, N.J., 1980. La Feber, Walter. America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1967. New York, 1967. Lash, Joseph. Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941. New York, 1976.
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Leahy, William D. I Was There. New York, 1950. Lederer, Ivo, and Wayne Vucinich, eds. The Soviet Union and the Middle East: The Post-World War II Era. Stanford, 1974. Lenczowski, George. Russia and the West in Iran, 1918—1948. New York, 1949. Levering, Ralph B. American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939-1945. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976. Lewin, Ronald. Churchill as Warlord. New York, 1973. Lie, Trygve. In the Cause of Peace. New York, 1954. Lilienthal, David E. The Journals of David E. Lilienthal. Vols. 1 and 2, 1939-1950. New York, 1964. Loewenheim, Francis, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds. Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence. New York, 1975. Louis, Wm. Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. New York, 1978. . The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951. Oxford, 1984. Lundestad, Geir. The American Non-Policy towards Eastern Europe, 1943—1947. New York, 1975. . America, Scandinavia and the Cold War, 1945-1949. New York, 1980. McCagg, William. Stalin Embattled, 1943-1948. Detroit, 1978. Macmillan, Harold. Tides of Fortune, 1945—1955. New York, 1969. McNeill, William H. America, Britain and Russia: Their Cooperation and Conflict, 1941-1946. New York, 1953. Maisky, Ivan. Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador: The War, 1939-1943. London, 1967. Marlowe, John. Iran, New York, 1963. Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945. New York, 1979. Mayer, Arno. Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-1919. New York, 1967. Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York, 1971. Mee, Charles. Meeting at Potsdam. New York, 1975. Messer, Robert L. End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman and the Origins of the Cold War. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982. Millis, Walter, ed. The Forrestal Diaries. New York, 1951. Millspaugh, Arthur C. Americans in Persia. Washington, D.C., 1946. Moran, Lord. Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965. Boston, 1966. Motter, T. Vail. The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia. Washington, D.C., 1952. Murphy, Rohert. Diplomat among Warriors. London, 1964. Nagia, Yonusuke, and Akira Iriye, eds. The Origins of the Cold War in Asia. New York, 1977. Nicholas, H. G., ed. Washington Dispatches, 1941-1945. Chicago, 1981. Nicolson, Nigel, ed. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945. New York, 1971. , ed. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1945-1962. New York, 1971. Northedge, F. S., and Audrey Wells. Britain and Soviet Communism: The Impact of a Revolution. London, 1982.
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Notter, Harley. Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939-1945. Washington, D.C., 1949. Parkinson, Roger. A Day's March Nearer Home. New York, 1974. Paterson, Thomas G., ed. The Origins of the Cold War. Lexington, Mass., 1970. . Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War. Baltimore, 1973. Perrett, Geoffrey. Days of Sadnes, Years of Triumph: The American People, 19391945. New York, 1973. Phillips, Cabell. The Truman Presidency: History of a Triumphant Succession. New York, 1966. Pickersgill, J. W., and D. F. Forster. The MacKenzie King Record, 1944-1946. 2 vols. Toronto, 1968—70. Pogue, Forrest. George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945. New York, 1973Ponomaryov, B., A. Gromyko, and V. Khvostov, eds. History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1945. Moscow, 1969. Rapoport, Anatol. The Big Two: Soviet-American Images of Foreign Policy. Indianapolis, 1971. Roosevelt, Elliot. FDR: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945. 2 vols. New York, 1950. Rose, Lisle A. After Yalta. New York, 1973. . Dubious Victory: The United States and the End of World War 11. Kent, Ohio, 1973. Rosenman, Samuel I., ed. The Public Papers and, Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Vol. 13, 1944-1945. New York, 1950. Rothwell, Victor. Britain and the Cold War, 1941-1947. London, 1982. Sharp, Tony. The Wartime Alliance and the Zonal Division of Germany. London, 1975Sheehan, Michael. Iran: The Impact of United States Interests and Policies, 19411954. New York, 1968. Sherry, Michael S. Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941-1945. New Haven, 1977. Sherwin, Martin J. A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. New York, 1975. Sherwood, Robert E. Hopkins and Roosevelt: An Intimate History. New York, 1948. Shinwell, Emanuel. I've Lived Through It All. London, 1973. Shulman, Marshall. Stalin's Foreign Policy Reappraised. Cambridge, Mass., 1963. Smith, Arthur L., Jr. Churchill's German Army: Wartime Strategy and Cold War Politics, 1943-1947. Beverly Hills and London, 1977. Smith, Gaddis. American Diplomacy during the Second World War, 1941-1945. New York, 1965. Smith, Walter Bedell. My Three Years in Moscow. Philadelphia, 1950. Snell, John, ed. The Meaning of Yalta. Baton Rouge, 1956. Spanier, John. American Foreign Policy since World War II. 2d rev. ed. New York, 1965. Spector, Ivar. The Soviet Union and the Muslim World, 1917-1958. Seattle, 1959.
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Index
Abilene Morning Reporter News, 262 Acheson, Dean, 131, 148, 154, 159, 177, 218, 227, 253, 265 Acheson-Lilienthal group, 177 Adams, Henry, 41 Aftermath, The (book), 12, 27 Africa, 269 Ala, Hussein, 142, 145-46, 232, 243-45, 251, 254-55, 258-59, 264 Albania, 109, 113, 135, 167, 176 Alexander, Field-Marshal Sir Harold, 6061, 76, 103 Allied Control Councils, 91, 126, 129, 131, 167, 274 Alsop, Joseph, 156, 226, 258, 262 Alsop, Stewart, 226, 262 American Federation of Labor, 199 American Institute of Public Opinion, 152 American Slavic Congress, 205 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 258 Anglo-American civil aviation issue, 149 Anglo-American Financial Agreement (British loan), 136, 138, 149, 160, 191, 207, 263, 276, 278 Anglo-French treaty idea, 127, 130, 273 Anglo-Jordanian treaty, 255
Anglo-Soviet agreement (1941), 34 Anglo-Soviet negotiations (1941), 36—37 Anglo-Soviet relations, see Great Britain and USSR Anglo-Soviet-Iranian tceaty (1942), 50 Answers (magazine), 32 Antonov, General, 179 ANVIL, 56, 63-64, 72 Anzio, 65 Argentina, 61, 105, 278 Armenian Progressive League, 227 Associated Press, 237, 249 Atlanta Constitution, 200 Atlantic Charter, 37, 41, 83, 107 Atlantic conference (1941), 22 Atomic bomb issues: American atomic exclusivism, 176-78, 278; and Baruch appointment, 177-78; Churchill's views on, 76, 184-85, 191, 194; in Churchill's Fulton speech, 184—85, 191, 194; and Hyde Park agreement, 72—73; international control of, 134, 136, 139-40, 176-77; as possible American instrument of coercion, 101i, 104, no, 114, 123-26, 153; Soviet accusations concerning, 264; and Soviet spy ring, 159
356 Attlee, Prime Minister Clement: and Bevin, 114-15, 279; and Churchill, 137, 168, 170-71, 177; and declaration with Truman and Mackenzie King, 134; and imperial withdrawal, 279-80; and reaction to Fulton, 201-2, 222; and role at Potsdam, 114-15 Austin, Senator Warren, 253 Austria, 102, 123, 125, 166-68, 248 Badoglio, Marshal Pietro, 68 Bagramian, General, 218 Baku, 141, 143, 233 Baldwin, Stanley, 13, 15, 30, 32 Balfour, John, 150 Balkans, 70, 76, 95-96, 115, 121, 125, 158, 274 Baltic states, 102, 111, 122, 194 Barkley, Senator Alben, 92 Baruch, Bernard: appointment as U.N. atomic delegate, 177—78, 206; and February 24, 1946, speech, 177; and Miami meeting with Churchill, 168, 179-80; and pre-1946 associations with Churchill, 8, 16; and relations with Byrnes, 168, 177-80, 264 Beaverbrook, Lord, 21, 38, 63 Benes, President Eduard, 49 Berlin, 98, 102, 195 Berlin, Isaiah, 130, 140 Berry, Burton, 166 Bevin, Foreign Secretary Ernest, ix, 156, 169, 234; and American stake in Near East, 261; and Attlee, 114-15, 122, 279; and Byrnes, 125, 128, 138—41, 218, 221-23, 230, 233, 235-36, 26970, 272; and Churchill, 122-23, 125, 137, 170, 172, 222, 227, 285; and commission proposal for Iran, 145, 147; and desire for Anglo-French alignment, 273; and Halifax, 171—72, 177; and U.N. strategy, 150; and Iranian issue, 141, 143, 145-46, 218, 221-23, 231, 233, 236, 247, 260-61, 275; at London conference, 1945, 125—28; and Molotov, 122-23, 125-28, 140-41, 145, 285; at Moscow conference (1945), 138-41, 145; at Paris conferences (1946), 269-71, 273-74; personality and policies of, 122-23; at Potsdam, 114—15; at Security Council meeting,
INDEX London (1946), 146—48; situation of in February 1946, 149-50; and Soviets, 114-15, 125-28, 132-33, 140-41, 145, 149, 208, 222, 273, 276, 279; and Stalin, 140-41, 145, 271; and struggle with Labour left, 122, 133, 247, 260, 273; and U.S., 132-33, 137-41, 222, 261; and "war scare" of March 1946, 222 Bidault, Georges, 235, 269, 273 Birmingham Age-Herald, 263 Black Sea, 102, 122 Bloom, Representative Sol, 237 Bohlen, Charles: and accommodationist plan (1945), 131-32; assessment of Teheran, 60; and Iran crisis, 218; and March 13, 1946, memo and revisions, 225-26, 228-29, 256-58, 276; and neutrality in the State Department, 154; and Roosevelt's final correspondence, 96; and subversion of Byrnes, 139-40 Bolsheviks, 10-11, 23-30 Bolshevik revolution, vii Bornholm, 102, 213-14, 238, 255 Boston Globe, 200 Bracken, Brendan, 21, 38 Bretton Woods agreement, 213 Brimelow, Thomas, 224 British Broadcasting Corporation, 137 British Empire, see Great Britain Brown, Constantine, 156, 229 Brusilov, General, 27 Bryce, Lord, 7 Buell, Raymond Leslie, 12-13 Bulgaria: Byrnes and Soviets on recognition of, no, 125-26, 131, 140, 157, 165-68, 180, 213, 274; Churchill's anger at atrocities in, 95, 109; Greek issue with, 113, 134-35, 179; issue at Potsdam,110-11,115-16; pressure of, on Turkey, 221; Soviet invasion of, 73; subject of Churchill-Stalin deal (1944), 74-75, 77-78 Bullitt, William, 156 Bullock, Alan, 136 Byrnes, Secretary of State James F.: and accommodationist diplomacy, 130— 48, 158-59; and Ala, 146, 244-45; and Albania, 166-67; and Anglo-American relations, 130, 140, 150, 168, 174— 75, 180-82, 218-23, 230, 235-36, 260-
357
INDEX
61, 268—74, 276; and atomic bomb and associated issues, 124-25, 139—40, 176— 77; and Austria, 166-68; and Baruch, 168, 177-78; and Bevin, 125, 128, 130, 132, 138-41, 181-82, 218-23, 268-70, 272-74, 276, 279; and Bidault, 269; and Bohlen, 131, 225, 228-29, 256-58; and British ambivalence, spring 1946, 272-73, 276, 279; and Bulgaria, 125, 131, 140, 166-67, 182; and Churchill, 165, 168, 179-82, 185, 201-2, 208-9, 217, 227-28, 239, 265-66, 281-82, 285; and Cohen, 268; and conversion to confrontation, 165; at Council of Foreign Ministers, London (1945), 117, 124-28; at Council of Foreign Ministers, Paris (April 1946), 258, 268-71; at Council of Foreign Ministers, Paris (June 1946), 273—74; and cultivation of American opinion (March 1946), 223-32, 258, 271; and Danube navigation, 167; and Eastern Europe, 125, 131, 167-68; and economic pressure against the USSR, 176, 178, 276; and Ethridge, 131; at Foreign Ministers conference, Moscow, 1945, 138—41, 143—45; and formulation of Iran issue strategy, 217—19, 228, 230-41; and Forrestal, 154; and France, 175, 23536, 244; and Fulton speech, 163-65, 201-2; and Germany, 269-70, 276; and Greece, 276; and Gromyko, 240— 45, 252-53; and Harriman, 130, 13940, 268; and Hungary, 125, 131, 167— 68; and India, 269-70; and Iranian crisis, 143-48, 150, 158, 168-70, 181, 217-68, 275; and Italy, 175—76, 270; and Kennan, 168, 180, 238, 316n34; and Leahy, 152, 154; and Lie, 232; and MacArthur, 181; and Matthews, 256; and Missouri (USS) Mission, 170; and Molotov, 125-26, 138—40, 143, 181, 268, 270—71, 273-74; and Murray, 143, 230-31, 233—35, 239; and New York speech (March 1946), 228; and Northern Tier, 175, 182, 261; as object of post-Fulton British skepticism, 263, 272—73, 276, 279; as object of rising criticism (1945—46), 152, 154— 57; and oil dimension to Iran crisis, 233, 250; Overseas Press Club speech (February 1946), 172-75; and Polish
issues, 125, 131; position enhanced by Iranian hearings, 245-48, 253, 260-64; at Potsdam, 110-16; proposes fourpower treaty, 269-70; and Qavam, 168, 219-20, 230-34, 238-40, 251, 253— 54; and revival of former anti-Soviet strategies, 178; and Roosevelt, 87, 9192; and Rossow, 217-18, 221; and Rumania, 125, I31, 140, 166-67, 182; and Security Council confrontations with the Soviets, 242-48, 252; and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 155; and Soviet Union, 158, 168-69, 176-82, 217-41, 267-77; and stagesetting for Fulton, 180-82; and Stalin, 139-40, 143—45, 242-43, 248; and State Department, 130-31, 143, 154— 55, 217—18; and Stettinius, 148, 25859; and Stuttgart speech (September 1946), 276; and Truman, 111, 124, 140, 157-59, 163-66, 217, 231-32, 246-47, 278, 281-82; and Truman "ultimatum" to Stalin, 163-64; and United Nations, 169, 172-75, 182, 228, 253; and U.S. military authorities, 256, 258, 270; and Vyshinsky, 166; and Wallace resignation, 278; and "war scare" of March 1946, 217-18, 220-23; and Western Europe, 175, 182; at Yalta, 87-88; and Yalta presentation, 91-94 Cadogan, Sir Alexander, 94, 133, 236, 244-47 Cairo conferences (1943), 55, 59-6o Calcutta, 269 Canada, 177, 193 Capper, Senator Arthur, 237 Casablanca conference (1943), 48 Cassino, 65 Catholic hierarchy (U.S.), 199 Chamberlain, Joseph, 7 Chamberlain, Neville, 20, 32-33 Chamberlain, W. H., 198 Charlotte News, 200 Charlotte Observer, 262 Cherwell, Lord, 72 Chiang Kai-shek, 55, 89-90, 154 Chicago Sun, 198, 262-63 Chicago Tribune, 198, 207, 221 Childs, Marquis, 157
358 China: U.S. protests Soviet demands against, 181; on Council of Foreign Ministers, 114, 124—26; in Fulton speech, 193-94; Marshall mission to, 276; at Potsdam, 114; on Security Council, 258; and Soviet withdrawals from, 236-37; at Yalta, 82, 89-90 Christian Science Monitor, 198, 204, 262 Churchill, Clementine, 196 Churchill, Winston L. S.: at Admiralty, 7, 8, 20; and Alexander, 60—61, 103; and ANVIL, 55-56, 63-64; and atomic energy issues, 71-73, 177, 194; and attack on Yalta "vision," 189; and Attlee, 137, 168, 170-72, 201, 222, 266; and Austria, 102; and Balkans, 102; and Baruch, 9, 16, 168, 177, 180; and Beaverbrook, 21, 38, 63; and Bedell Smith, 227; and Belgium, 78; and Bevin, 122-23, 125, 137, 170, 172, 222, 227, 285; and Bohlen, 256-57; and Bourke Cockran, 5; and Bracken, 21, 38; and British loan, 160, 207, 278; and Bulgaria, 75, 95, 109; and Byrnes, 165, 168, 179-82, 185, 201-2, 208-9, 217, 227-28, 239, 265-66, 281-82, 285; and Byrnes's February 28, 1946, speech, 173—75; and Cadogan, no; and Cairo conferences (1943), 54-55, 60; as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 13-15, 30; and Clementine Churchill, 14, 196; and Collier's articles, 17-19; and Combined Chiefs of Staff, 193; and Comintern, 187; and concern for British reactions to Fulton, 170-71, 227-28; and Conservative government (1945), 108; and Conservative party, 6; and convoy issue, 49; and Coolidge, 14-15; in Cuba (1895), 5, (1946), 161; and Czechoslovakia, 102; and Declaration on Liberated Europe, 94— 96, 195-96; and declining power (1944), 52-53; and de Gaulle, 76-77, 79; and desire for shared Anglo-American bases, 193; and destroyer-bases deal, 20-21; and Eden, 33, 35, 37-38, 62, 65-69, 73, 75-77, 99-100, 102-3, 109, 194; and Eisenhower, 102; and election defeat (1945), 111; as embodiment of British diplomatic tradition, 120; equates Nazis and Communists, 32-33; and European unity, 17; and
INDEX
Far East, 186; and Fascism, 29-31; and fear of communization of Balkans and Italy, 68; fear of Nazi Germany, 1719, 31-33; and February 10, 1946, meeting with Truman, 161-65; and Foreign Office, 261; and France, 76— 79, 84, 90, 186; and Fulton speech, 183-97 (see also Fulton speech); and Gallipoli campaign, 8, 29; and Germany, 186, 194—95; and the Gold Standard, 13; and Gousev, 103-4; and the "Grand Alliance" concept, 35; and Greece, 68, 73-75, 77-79, 86, 94; and Halifax, 160—62, 171—72, 180, 207; and Harriman, 21-22, 46, 62; and Harvard speech (1943), 48, 168; and Hitler, 31; and Hopkins, 21-22, 36, 47-48, 105-7; and Hull, 68—69; and Hungary, 75; and Hyde Park agreement (1944), 7273; and influence on events leading to Cold War, 281-82, 284-85; and Iran crisis, 213-16, 228, 242, 249, 281-85; and "iron curtain," 183-84, 186, 208, 271; and Italy, 186; and Jack Churchill, 5; and Jennie Churchill, 4, 5; and Jewish Bolsheviks, 29; and Kennan, 165, 215, 256-57, 276; and Labour "continuity," 122-23; and Leahy, 161, 180; on Lenin, 27—28; and Liberal party, 6; and Lloyd George, 8, 10, 23—26; and London Poles, 44, 49, 66—71, 74-75, 86,99, 109; and Lublin Poles, 80, 86— 87, 96-99, 109; and Lusitania, 8; and Maisky, 31-32, 46; and Marshall, 36, 47—48; and Mediterranean, 47—48, 55— 56, 74; and Mikolajczyk, 75, 86-87, 98, 100, 109; as Minister of Munitions (1917-18), 8; and Molotov, 39, 68, 211-I2, 265, 285; and Montgomery, 102-3; and Morgenthau, 72, 75; and Morgenthau Plan, 72-73, 75; and Munich crisis, 19; and Mussolini, 29—31; and Neville Chamberlain, 20, 32—33; and New Deal, 7, 18; and New York speech (1946), 227-28; and OVERLORD, 55-56, 63; and Paris Peace conference 1919), 10-12, (1946), 273; and Plastiras, 95; and Polish issues, 56, 58-60, 66-71, 74—75, 84—87, 90, 96—100, 102, 107, 186; and position within Grand Alliance, 35-36; and post-election re-emergence (1945), 137—
INDEX
38, 150; and post-Yalta analyses, 91, 95; at Potsdam, 110-16; and pre-Potsdam anxieties, no; as President of the Board of Trade, 6—7; and "prestige" policies (1944), 63-65, 67-68; and Quebec conference (1944), 71-73; and Radescu, 95; and Roosevelt, viii, 18-22, 35-41, 41-65, 69-74, 79-80, 83-90, 95-99, 189, 284; and Royal Air Force, 104; and Rumania, 75, 94-95; and Second Front, 46-50; as Secretary of State for War, 10, 24-25; and Spain, 77-78; and "spheres" deal with Stalin (1944), 74-80; and Stalin, 33—39, 40, 44-45, 53-56, 58-60, 63, 66-82, 84, 86-87, 90, 95, 97-100, 108-16, 187, 189, 190-96, 207-16, 223-25, 23940, 267, 281-83, 285; and Stettinius, 79; at Teheran, 54-60; temperament, 6; and Tito, 103, 109; and de Tocqueville, Alexis, 5; and Trieste, 101-3; and Trotsky, 28—29, 32; and Truman, viii, 99—102, 104—5, 107—16, 152, 159-63, 179-80, 185, 201, 281, 284-85; and Turkey, 59, 228; and United Nations, 150, 161-62, 189-94, 228; and Warsaw uprising, 70—71; and Washington conference (1941/42), 35-37; and Washington conference and treaty (1921/22), 13-14; and Western bloc, 79; and Woodrow Wilson, 9-13, 15, 24; and World War I, 7-9, 23-24, 26; and World War II strategy, 36, 47, 54— 56, 58—61, 68, 75—77; on wrong foot at Teheran, 56-60; at Yalta, 80, 82-90; and Yugoslavia, 86 Churchill, Winston L. S., and America: and American coordination with Fulton, 168, 170, 178-82; and American economic pressure (1944), 61—62; and American public opinion, 19, 62 (see also Fulton speech); and American slights, June/July 1946, 109—10; capitalism and capitalists, 7, 15-17; confrontations with Republicans, 13, 15; desire for U.S. association with Britain, vii-x, 4, 6-12, 17-20, 23, 26-27, 3537, 47-56, 59-60, 66-67, 70-74, 8386, 90—116, 152, 159-65, 171, 183—85, 187-94, 227—28, 281-85; and federalism, 7; impressions of American diplomacy, 5—6, 9-15, 69—70; and "material-
359 ism," 6, 7, 13-15; and naval issues, 8, 14-15; and progressives, 7, 18; reaction to American belligerency (1917/18), 8-9; and reorientation of American policy (1946), 159-65; and response to American isolationism, 18-22; and sense of American power, 5—7, 9, 13, 15-18, 20; and U.S. Congress, 160; visit (1895), 1-6, (1900), 6, (1929/ 3°), 15-17, (I93O, viii, 17, 31 Churchill, Winston L. S., and USSR: as anti-Soviet publicist, 24—33; and antiSoviet strategy (1939/40), 33; appreciation of Soviet clumsiness, 109—10, 266, 285; desire to attack (1936-39), 31-33; fear of and hostility to, vii—x, 4, 10-12, 17, 23-35, 44, 46-47, 50, 5860, 67-69, 70-71, 77-78, 86-95, 13738, 160-65, 168, 183-97, 209, 227-28, 233, 281-85; intervention in, vii—viii, 10-12, 24—27; Moscow visit (1942), 46-47, (1944), 73-76; Post-Yalta campaign against Soviets, 96-105; response to German invasion of Soviet Union, 34; sea exits for Soviets, 102; setting Germany against the Soviets, vii, 24, 26, 77, 102—3, 196; shipping issue, 67; and sources of anti-Bolshevism, 27-30; and Soviet western frontier, 37-38 Clark Kerr, Ambassador, 91, 104, 129, 136-37, 139, 148 Clausewitz, Karl von, 37 Clay, General Lucius, 269-70 Clemens, Diane S., 83 Clifford, Clark, 277 Cockran, Bourke, 5 Cohen, Benjamin, 154, 156, 165-66, 218, 268 Collier's (magazine), 17—19, 31, 33 Colmer, Representative William H., 155, 176-77 Combined Chiefs of Staff, 36, 61, 11213, 137, 201, 277 Comintern, 187, 205 Committee on Policy Towards Russia, 261 "Confederations" in Europe, 49, 53, 193 Congress of Vienna, 81 Connally, Senator Tom: on Fulton, 196; at Paris Peace conference (1946), 268; praises Byrnes, 253; and speech of March 12, 1946, 225, 232; on Stalin, 237; supports military renewal, 206
360 Conservative party, 6, 30 Coolidge, President Calvin, 14-15, 190-91 Cordon sanitaire, 105, 212 Council of Foreign Ministers, London (1945), 114, 124-18, 139 Council of Foreign Ministers, Paris (1946), 181, 258, 268-74 Cox, Representative E. E., 206 Cripps, Sir Stafford, 33 Curzon line, 66, 85, l00 Czechoslovakia, 49, 102 Daily Herald (London), 137, 238 Daily Telegraph (London), 15, 17, 19 Daily Worker (New York), 92, 168, 198, 262 Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh, 136, 222 Danube navigation, 82, 115, 116, 167, 193 Dardanelles campaign (1915), 8 Dardanelles egress issue, 111, 121, 127, 157, 194, 228, 261 (see also Montreux Convention) Davies, Joseph E., 104, 131, 154, 156— 57, 163, 165, 168, 212, 241, 264 Declaration of the United Nations, 36 Declaration on Liberated Europe (1945), 41, 87-90, 92-96, 99, 125, 195, 283 Declaration regarding Iran (1943), 143, 146, 218, 220 De Gaulle, General Charles, 63, 65, 76, no, 121 Denekin, General, 25, 27 Deutscher, Isaac, 210 Dewey, Governor Thomas E., 3, 227 Dirksen, Representative Everett, 277 Dixon, Pierson, 121, 127—28, 139—40, 285 Djilas, Milovan, 47, 120 Dodecanese, the, 48, 127, 270, 274 Dos Passes, John, 207 Drummond, Roscoe, 258 Duclos, Jacques, and "letter," 98 Dumbarton Oaks conference (1944), 71, 80, 193, 249 Dunn, James C., 154 Durbrow, Elbridge, 154 Eastern Europe, 25, 55, 57, 68, 78-79, 82, 95, 101, 104, 111, 115, 123—25,
INDEX
126, 131, 139-40, 153-54, 167, 170, 175, 178-80, 182, 186, 194-95, 204, 212,
214,
224,
242,
27O,
274,
280,
283
(see also individual countries) Eaton, Representative Charles, 205 Ebtehaz, Gholam, 234, 239 Economist (London), 108, 137 Eden, Anthony, 33, 35, 44, 50; assessment of Truman, 99—100; and AngloSoviet Balkan deal (1944), 68-69; and Bevin, 123; and Churchill, 33, 35, 3738, 62, 65—69, 73, 75—77, 100, 102—3, 109, 194; and "confederations" in Europe, 49, 53; at Moscow conference (1941), 35-37, 44, (1943), 53-55, (1944), 73, 75; in U.S. (1946), 99100, 109; upset at American Yalta policy, 86-87; urges Anglo-Soviet settlement (1941/42), 38; at Yalta, 86-87 Egypt, 135, 148 Eisenhower, General Dwight, 64, 98, 102, 124 Ermashev (Soviet commentator), 108 Ethridge, Mark, 131, 157 European Advisory Commission, 53 European Council, 57 Far East, 89-91, 111, 121, 123-24, 126, 129, 134, 139, 155, 158, 182, 186, 193, 213—14, 261, 275, 280 (see also China; Japan; Great Britain; United States; USSR) Far Eastern Advisory Commission, 140 Fashoda, 5 Finland, 131, 274 Fish, Hamilton, 206 Firouz, Muzaffar, 239 Foch, Marshal, 11 Foreign Office, 81, 108, 110, 118, 128, 132, 137, 178-79, 187; attitude to Near East, 147; and Bevin, 122—23, 128, 132-33; and Churchill, 65, 110; and distinctive outlook, 65; phlegm and occasional sluggishness of, regarding Soviets, 118, 133-34; and post-Fulton assessments, 212, 215, 224, 230, 260, 272-73; views in autumn 1945, 13233; and "war scare," March 1946, 221— 22, 235 Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy James V., 131, 166, 196, 227, 277
INDEX Fortune (magazine), 152, 156 "Four Policemen" concept, 39, 57 Four Power Declaration, 54 France, 11, 31, 32, 94, 101, 108, 149, 186, 212; Bevin and, 133, 150, 273; Byrnes and, 175, 235-36; Churchill and, 23, 31, 84, 90, 186; on Council of Foreign Ministers, 114, 124, 128; Foreign Office valuation of, 65; in Indochina, 101; and postwar relations with Britain, 118, 121, 130, 133, 149, 150, 273; Roosevelt's views of, 59; Soviets and, 94, 108, 149, 259-60; threat of communist coup (1946), 275; treatment of, at Yalta, 84, 90; in U.N., 173, 235-36, 244, 259-60 Franco, General Francisco, 77, 116, 176, 178-79, 207, 278 Fulton, Missouri, 159 Fulton speech: American response to, 197-208, 217, 223-32, 281-82; analysis of, 183-97; antecedents of, in Churchill's thought, 25-26, 37, 48, 107, 112, 114, 120, 137-38, 147, 161, 16869; general significance of, viii, 281— 85; immediate origins of, 159-65; impact on Soviets, 209-16, 239-40, 242, 281-85; reorientation in American policy preceding, 165-82 Gaddis, John Lewis, 111 Gallman, Waldemar, 222, 236 Gallup poll (1946), 152 Gardner, Richard, 278 George, Henry, 7 George VI, King, 108 Germany, vii-viii, 33, 58-60, 123, 154, 261; Byrnes and reparations from, 114, 270, 276; Byrnes's Stuttgart speech, 276; as cause of Cold War, 114-15; Churchill and threat of, 17—19, 31-33; Churchill and Roosevelt confront, 20-22 and passim; Churchill and Stalin confront, 34-35, and passim; Churchill and, at Teheran, 58-59; Churchill values, as barrier to Soviet expansion, vii, 24, 26, 77, 102—3, 196; issue of, at Potsdam, 111-12, 114-15; issue of, divides Britain and France, 130, 273; issue of, at Teheran, 58-59; issue of, at Yalta, 8284; and Morgenthau plan, 72-73; and
361 postwar East-West tension over, 114— 15, 129, 186, 207, 212, 236-37, 255, 270, 273-74, 276; references to, at Fulton, 186, 194-95; reparations from, 82, 101, 114 Gibraltar, 68 Gouin, Prime Minister Felix, 23; Gousev, Ambassador Fedor, 103—4 Grand Alliance, the, 210; analysis of, 35— 45; origins of term, 35 Great Britain: agreement with USSR (1941), 34; and British Empire, 4, 121-22, 190; and Chiefs of Staff, 65, no; and civil aviation agreement with U.S., 149; diplomatic approach of, contrasts with U.S., 53-60, 81-90, 110—16, 124-28, 141-42; and Dominions, 65; and financial agreement with U.S. (1945/46), 136, 138, 149, 207, 263, 276, 278; impulse toward European collaboration with USSR, 36-37, 44-45, 70-80, 127-28; and Iran crisis, 116, 118, 123—24, 141, 145—48, 186, 193, 218, 221-23, 23031, 235-36, 247, 260-61, 272—75; Labour government of, 122, 133, 147, 149, 160, 170, 202-3, 212, 222, 247, 261, 279; negotiations with USSR (1941), 36-37; political dispute with U.S. (December 1944), 79—80; possible treaty with France (1945/46), 127, 130, 273; and public opinion in, 202,
2IO,
222,
235-36, 247-48,
260—
61, 272-73, 278-80; Soviet "cold war" against, x, 81, 108—9, 117-50, 209—16, 222; Soviet post-Fulton appeasement of, 178-79, 236, 271-72, 278-79; treaty with Jordan, 255; and USSR, 21-27, 29-40, 45-60, 66-80, 81-87, 9°-105, 110-52, 160-65, 168-72, 175, 178-85, 191—97, 209—16, 222-24, 235—36, 247, 255, 260-61, 271—73, 278-85; and United Nations, see United Nations; and United States, vii—x, 6—15, 19—23, 35-39, 47-65, 69-74, 76, 79-87, 90105, 110—18, 124—28, 130-33, 138-41, 146, 149-50, 156, 159-62, 168-72, 175, 178—82, 183—209, 218—23, 23031, 235-36, 242, 244, 247-48, 258-61, 263, 267-74, 276-85; and U.S. economic pressure, 6-8, 13-15, 60-65, 7173, 79-80, 101, no, 123, 128, 133,
362 Great Britain (cont.) 149, 160, 181, 278; and vulnerable position between U.S. and USSR, 4, 35, 39-40, 45-60, 69-70, 103, 10510, 117-50; see also Bevin, Ernest; Churchill, Winston L. S.; USSR; United States Great Contemporaries (book), 32 Greece, 134; Anglo-Soviet diplomacy and tension over, 68-69, 73-75, 86, 94, 100, 113, 124, 127, 130, 135, 143, 179, 279; Bevin and) 134-35, 140-4:, 279; Byrnes's changing attitude toward, 140-41, 166, 270, 275—76, 279; Churchill's concern over, 68-69, 73-75, 77— 78, 94, 121, 193; references to, at Fulton, 193; and Security Council case over (1946), 143, 146-47; at Yalta, 86, 94 Gromyko, Ambassador Andrei: at San Francisco conference, 106; at Security Council, London (1946), 173; at Security Council, New York (1946), 232— 33, 240-41, 243-46, 248-54, 264, 266; and visit to Truman, 237
Hakimi, Ebrahim, 146, 147 Halifax, Lord, 62, 103, 105, 231; as ambassador in Washington, 22, 35, 38, 61, no, 131, 146, 157, 170-72, 176-77, 230, 247, 272; and Bevin, 171—72; and Churchill, 22, 35, 160-62, 171-72, 180, 196, 207, 230; and post-Fulton assessments, 230, 247, 263, 272; and preparations for Fulton speech, 160—62, 171-72, 180, 196 Hannegan, Postmaster-General Robert, 163, 168 Harper's (magazine), 156 Harriman, W. Averell, 82; advocates firmer line with Soviets (1945), 99, 100, 264, 268; appointment as ambassador to USSR, 50; and Byrnes, 130, 134, 139-40, 264, 268; and Churchill, 21—22, 46-47, 62, 74, 100, 196; and diagnosis of Yalta breakdown, 91; and domestic communists, 207; at Moscow conference (1942), 46-47; (1944), 74; (1945), 139-40; and Polish communists, 69; prompts Hopkins mission,
INDEX
105; and Stalin, 131, 134, 159, 176; and Truman, 99, 100, 105 Harsch, Joseph, 158, 204, 262 Hart, Senator Thomas, 205 Hartford Courant, 262 Hearst newspapers, 199, 278 Henderson, Loy, 145-46, 150, 154, 170, 217-18 Hiroshima, 215 Hiss, Alger, 82, 154, 218 Hitler, Adolf, 4, 17, 22, 32-33, 195, 224 Hoover, President Herbert, 14, 92 Hopkins, Harry L.: assessment of British constitution, 64-65; and Churchill, 2122, 47-48, 56, 62, 64-65, 120, 125,
164, 188; at Moscow (1941), 34, 41; (1945), 100, 105-7, 116—17, 234; and Roosevelt, 34, 41, 73, 74; supports Marshall's strategy, 47-48, 56 Howard, Roy, 156, 258 Hoxha, Enver, 167 Hoyt, Palmer, 156 Hull, Secretary of State Cordell, 62; criticism of British Balkans policy, 69, 74; at Moscow conference (1943), 53-54; and post-Teheran criticism of Soviets, 66, 68; presses Britain over Argentina, 61 Humanite, 237 Hungary: Byrnes criticizes Soviet policy in, 167-68; Churchill and, 74-75, 186; communist coup in (1919), 24; integration into Soviet bloc, 274; in AngloSoviet deal (1944), 74-751 recognition issue, 125, 131 Hyde Park agreement, 72-73, 76 Iceland, 136, 255 Ickes, Secretary of Interior Harold, 62, 199 Imperial preference, 36, 255 India, 36, 121, 129, 141, 148, 237, 269 India Office, 137 Ingersoll, Ralph, 246 Indonesia, 143, 146—47 Inonu, President Ismet, 261 International Monetary Fund meeting (1945), 213 Intervention in Russia, 10-11, 23—25 Iran: as Anglo-Soviet arena, 116, 118, 123-24; Anglo-Soviet collaboration and treaty (1942), 49-50; Azerbaijan coup,
INDEX
135; Azerbaijan issue, 118, 135, 216, 221, 238, 250-51, 253, 264-65, 275; Bevin and, 141, 143, 145—48, 218, 221-23, 230, 235-36, 247, 260-61, 272-73, 275; Byrnes and U.S. policy toward, 140-41, 143—48, 168—70, 175, 182, 215, 217-23, 225-41, 242—48, 251-60, 262—66, 268, 275-76; Byrnes's protest to Moscow over, 181; Churchill and, 116, 186, 193, 209, 213-16, 22728, 281-85; historical sketch, 141—42; issue at Moscow conference (1943), 53-54, (1945), 139-45; issue at Potsdam, 116; issue at Security Council, London (January 1946), 145—48; issue at Security Council, New York (1946), 242-66; Kurdish coup, 136; referred to at Fulton, 186, 193; significance of crisis over, in prompting Cold War, 281—83; Soviet recriminations over crisis in, 249-50, 255, 268; Stalin and Soviet policy toward, 118, 121, 130, 135-36, 139-48, 203, 210, 213-23, 232-41, 241-66, 268, 275, 281-85 (see also Qavam el Sultaneh) Iran-Soviet agreement (1921), 143, (1946), 252, 265 Iraq, 135, 217, 224, 237, 250 Irish Republican Army, 227 "Iron Curtain," 183-84, 186, 208, 271, 3I9n2
Istanbul, 127, 135 Italy: and Anglo-Soviet deal (1944), 75; Churchill and, 63-65, 76, 78, 115-16, 186; disposal of colonies of, 79, 116, 127; invaded (1943), 48; issue at Paris conferences (1946), 270, 274; issue at Potsdam, 114-15; Soviets and, 68, 75, 79, 116, 127, 274; and Trieste issue, 101, 103, 108-9, 270, 274; U.S. and, 114-16, 175—76, 270, 274 lzvestia, 79, 105, 129, 214 Japan, 35, 105, 124, 126, 131, 140, 154 Jernegan, John, 253-54 Johnston, Eric, 237 Journal of Commerce (magazine), 197 Kalinin, President, 149 Karachi, 269
363 Katyn Forest, 49 Kennan, George F., 168, 180; and Byrnes, 130-31, 140, 316n34; and Churchill, 165, 215, 256-57, 276; and Clifford report, 277; and influence of 'long cable," 165, 187, 225, 256, 276, 316n34; on London conference (1945), 129; at Moscow conference (1945), 140; and need for Anglo-American collaboration, 130, 140; on problem over Iran, 238— 39; on Stalin's February 9, 1946, speech, 159; urges firmer, policies, 130, 140, 154, 187 Kennedy, Joseph, 22, 206 Khrushchev, Nikita, 210, 212, 274 Kilgore, Senator Harley, 198 King, Prime Minister William Mackenzie, 134, 162 Kirk, Ambassador Alexander, 156, 203 Korea, 90, 143, 255 Krock, Arthur, 156, 206, 226, 228, 258, 264 Kurdish People's Republic, 136, 275 Kurds, 217—18, 221 Kuriles, 124 Kursk-Orel, battle of, 53
Labour party, British, 132; Bevin and, 122, 133, 136, 247, 260, 273, 279; Churchill and, 30, 170-71; election victory, 111; and Soviets, 30, 122, 133, 136, 247, 260, 273, 279; and U.S., 132-33, 136, 273, 279 Lange, Oscar, 248 Lansing State Journal, 262 Latin America, 255 Lawrence, David, 156, 198, 204 League of Nations, 32, 65, 246 Leahy, Admiral William, 152, 166; and Byrnes, 154, 157, 203, 229, 246, 264; and Churchill-Truman meeting (February 12, 1946), 161-62; and Fulton preview, 180; and press, 156, 203; and Roosevelt's last correspondence, 96; urges firmer policies, 99, 153—54 Lehmann, John, 134 Lend-Lease, 21, 34, 61, 72, 99, 101, 105, no Lenin, V. I., 11, 27-28, 30 Lerner, Max, 188, 199, 208
364 Lewis, Sinclair, 18 Liberals, 6, 30 Liberty League, 18 Liddell Hart, Basil, 97 Lie, Trygve, 232; and Iran dispute, 232, 245, 248, 259-60, 262, 264; Soviet choice of, 158; view of Security Council jurisdiction, 259-60, 262, 264 Life (magazine), 156, 207 Lilienthal, David, 177 Lindley, Ernest K., 204, 207 Lippmann, Walter, 105, 132, 156, 204, 206, 221 Literaturnaya Gazeta (magazine), 134 "Little Blitz," 65 Litvinov, Maxim, 36, 38, 82, 274 Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 7 Lloyd George, David, 8-10, 23-26 London Economic Conference (1933), 18, 88 London Security Council meeting (1946), 146-48, 150, 173 Los Angeles Times, 200 Louisville Courier Journal, 262 Lublin, Committee of National Liberation, see Poland Luce, Henry, 156, 190 Luneberg Trial, 129 Lusitania, 8 Lvov, 56, 75, 84
MacArthur, General Douglas, 140, 181, 275-76 McCagg, William, 120 McCloy, John J., 154 McCormick, Colonel Thomas, 278 McLean, Robert, 156 Maisky, Ivan, 31—32, 44, 46, 68, 179, 274-75 Majlis, the, 145, 147, 230, 239, 251 Manchester Guardian, 137, 222 Manchuria, 181, 186, 213—14, 226, 237 Marlborough, Duke of, 22, 35 Marshall, General George C.: China mission (1946), 276; disputes with Churchill, 36, 47-48, 102, 109; at Washington conference (1941/42), 36 Massigli, M., 94 Mastny, Vojtech, 78, 83 Matthews, H. Freeman, 256, 260
INDEX
May, Representative A. J., 207 Maybank, Senator B. R., 201 Mayer, Arno, 30 Mediterranean, the, 121, 123, 126-29, 141, 147-48, ]170, 182, 186, 193, 242, 273-74, 279-81 (see also individual countries) Memphis Commercial Appeal, 198 Messer, Robert L., 91, 158 Michael, King, 91 Middle East, 121, 123, 158, 223, 255, 261, 269, 271, 279 (see also individual countries) Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw, 69, 75, 86, 98, 100, 109 Millspaugh, A. C., 142 Missouri, USS, 170, 182, 227, 261 Moley, Raymond, 258 Molotov, Vyacheslav: and appeasement of British, 179, 236; and application for American credit, 101; and the Balkans, 68-69, 75;and Bevin, 123, 125-28, 141, 145, 279, 285; and Byrnes, 125-26, 13941, 143, 167, 181, 211—12, 265, 26871; and Churchill, 39, 47, 68-69, I91, 268, 285; and Eden, 49, 53-54, 68-69; and Iran, 143, 145, 211-12, 218, 236, 268; at London conference (1945), 123-27; at Moscow conference (1943), 53-54, (1944), 75, (1945), I39-41, 143; at Paris conferences (1946), 265, 268-71, 273-74; and Polish issue, 9194, 96-97; and pre-Yalta claims, 79; and Roosevelt (1942), 38-39, 57; and speech of November 1945, 134; and Truman (1945), 100-101; at Yalta, 85-87 Montgomery, Field-Marshal Lord, 102-3 Montreux Convention (1936): Churchill offers Stalin revision of, 59, 76, 113; Churchill's views of, 76, 111-13, 116; Soviet demands, 108, 116, 127-28 Moran, Lord, 48, 56, 74, 111 Morgenthau, Secretary of Treasury Henry, Jr-, 72-73, 77, 199, 229 Morgenthau Plan, 72-73, 75 Morse, Senator Wayne, 237 Moscow conference (1941), 36—37, (1942), 46-47, (1943), 53-54, (1944), 73-76, (1945), 138-45 Mukden, 213, 236 Munich crisis, 32, 49, 82, 215
INDEX
Murray, Ambassador Wallace, 143, 219, 220, 230-31, 233—35, 239, 250 Mussolini, Benito, 16-17, 29-32 Nation (magazine), 199, 202, 262 National Lawyers Guild, 262 Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939), 33 Near East, 121, 141, 147, 154, 182, 186, 242, 252, 261, 280-81 Netherlands, the, 94, 259 New Mexico atomic test, 114 Newsweek, 200, 204, 246—47 New Republic (magazine), 199—202 New Statesman (magazine), 149 New Times, 124-25, 129, 264 New York Herald Tribune, 92, 200, 206, 231, 233, 246, 262 New York Minor, 199, 262 New York Post, 179 New York Sun, 200, 246 New York Times, 148, 156, 172, 181, 197-98, 200-201, 203, 221, 224-27, 237, 245, 251, 253, 266 New York World Telegram, 197-98, 245-46 New Yorker, 265 New Zealand, 193 Nicolson, Harold, 277 North African campaign (TORCH), 4748
North America, 274 North American Review (magazine), 5 Northern Tier, 40, 121, 134, 136, 139, 154, 169, 175, 182, 193, 215, 261, 276 (see also Greece; Iran; Turkey) Norway, 79, 102, 108 Oil, 61, 62, 216, 223, 233, 238-39, 25051, 261, 275 Osservatore, 237 OVERLORD, 55-56, 63 Pacific war, 55, 64-65, 72, 74, 83, 89-90, 114 Palestine, 134 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 10-12, 24-25, 81, 88, (1946), 268-74 Pasvolsky, Leo, 154 Patterson press, 199, 278
3*5 Patterson, Secretary of War Robert, 166, 206, 277 Pearl Harbor, 35 Pearson, Drew, 156, 159, 206, 221 Pearson, Ambassador Lester, 162, 180 Pepper, Senator Claude, 198, 232 Perkins, Frances, 229 Persian Gulf, 121 Peter the Great, 277 Peterson, Sir Maurice, 211, 271, 273 Phoenix Republican, 200 Plastiras, Prime Minister Nicholas, 95 PM (New York), 188, 198-99, 201-3 Poland: Byrnes and, 114-15, 131; Churchill and, 49, 54, 56-60, 66-70, 84, 87, 90, 95-105, 107, 109, 112—15, 186; Declaration on Liberated Europe and, 87-95; and frontier issues with USSR, 56, 84, 86, 112, 114-15; issue at Moscow conference (1943), 53, (1944), 74—75; issue at Teheran conference (1943), 56-60; issue at Yalta conference (1945), 82-90; and Katyn massacre, 49; London exile government of, 34, 54, 56, 69-70, 74-75, 85, 109; Lublin regime of, 70, 79-80, 82, 8485, 95—105, 109, 186; and Lvov issue, 56, 58, 84; at Potsdam (1945), 112-15; Roosevelt and, 55—58, 69—70, 83-99; on Security Council, 244, 248, 259; Stalin and Soviet policy toward, 54-60, 6671, 74-75, 78-80, 82-90, 95-105, 107, 109, 112-15, 121, 249, 274; Truman and, 99-101, 104-9, 112-15; U.S.Soviet agreement over (1945), 105-9; Warsaw uprising, 70-71; Yalta aftermath crisis, 95—105 Politburo, 91, 191 Popular Front, the, 31 Port Arthur, 141 Potsdam conference, 4, 104, 107, 109-16, 123, 167 Prague, 102—3 Pravda, 79, 93, 105, 134, 177, 197, 213, 224, 249, 255, 271 Priestley, J. B., 134 Prinkipo, 24 Public opinion (U.S.), vii, 3-4, 18-20; and Anglo-American crisis (1944/45), 79-80; British assessments of, 132-33, 150, 230, 272-73; Byrnes and, 172-75, 201-2, 217-32, 245, 253, 256-58, 262-
366 Public opinion (U.S.) (cont.) 64, 269-71; Churchill and, 62-63, 137— 38, 159-60, 185-97, 181—82, 284-85; consolidation of, behind "firmness" toward USSR, 267, 269-71, 276-78; evolution of, through March 1946, 197— 208, 220-32; fall in anti-fascist sentiment, 207; initial response of, to Fulton speech, 197-208; limited interest of, in European politics, 71, 124, 132, 138, 159; response of, to Iran crisis, March/ April 1946, 243-47, 2156-58, 262-66; rising concern of, over Soviet policy, 138, 152-57, 159, 172-75, T97-208, 220—32, 245-47, 256-58, 262-66; Stalin's post-Fulton sensitivity to, 21016, 224-25, 232-41 Public opinion (non-U.S.): British public response to Fulton speech, 202, 2ro, 222; British public response to Security Council Iran hearings, 235-36, 24748, 260—61; evolution of British, through 1946, 272-73, 278-80; Iranian and Turkish response to Fulton, 210; Turkish reaction to Security Council Iran hearings, 248, 261 Punch (magazine), 160 Qajar dynasty, 141 Qavam el Sultaneh: Byrnes and, 168-69, 182, 219-20, 230-34, 243, 251, 25355, 258-59, 275, 282; elected, 147; and Security Council hearings (March-May 1946), 230-34, 238-40, 243, 250-51, 253-55, 258-59; and Soviets, 216, 23841, 243, 250-51, 253-55, 275 Quebec conference (1944), 71-73, 94, 178 Radescu, Prime Minister, 95 Radio Moscow, 97, ro2-3, 120-21, 129, T32, 134-35, 148, 202, 216, 236, 255, 264, 274 Rankin, Representative John, 206 Reader's Digest, 156 Red Star, 108 Reid, Ogden, 156 Reparations Commission, 101 Republican party, 126, 155 Reston, James, 226-28, 264 Reynolds, Thomas F., 246
INDEX
Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 261 Roberts, Frank, 129-30, 140, 178-79, 215, 235-36 Ronald, Nigel, 150, 279 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 160, 229 Roosevelt, Franklin D.; and Anglo-American relations, 20-22, 61-62, 79-80; approach to U.S./Soviet relations, 40— 45; approach to wartime diplomacy, 40-45; and assistance to Soviets (1941), 34; and Atlantic Charter, 41; assumptions of, about postwar, 42—43; and Baltic states, 57-58; and Bern incident, 97-98; and Byrnes, 87, 91-92; and Casablanca conference (1943), 48; and Churchill, viii, 18-22, 35-36, 44-51, 69-74, 79-80, 83-90, 95-99, 189, 284; and Declaration on Liberated Europe, 41, 87-90, 92, 94—95, 105, 283; and declining health, 96, 99; desire for postwar U.S./Soviet partnership, 45, 50-51, 54; and dilemma at Yalta, 83; and Eastern Europe, 57—58, 60; and economic campaign against Britain (1944), 61—62; and "Four Policemen," 39, 41; and Far East, 85, 89-90; and France, 90; and Harriman, 46, 50, 69; and Hopkins, 21, 73, 88; and Hyde Park agreement (1944), 72-73; and London Economic Conference (1933), 18, 88; and longterm traps set for Stalin, 283-84; and Morgenthau plan, 72, 88; and negotiations with Molotov (1942), 38, 39; and New Deal, 18; and Polish issues, 40, 57—58, 66, 69-71, 84-88, 92-93, 95-99; and political "bargain" with Stalin, 55-58, 60, 69-71, 82-86, 100; and posthumous endorsement by Soviets, 255-56; and posthumous enshrinement by American Left, 199, 229-30, 246; and post-Yalta crisis, 95-99; and proposed Anglo-Soviet treaty (1942), 37—38; and public presentation of Yalta, 91-93; and Quebec conference (1944), 71-73; and Second Front, 3839, 46; and Soviet Union, 39-45, 73, 84, 99, 101; and Stalin, 41—45, 55-58, 60, 69-71, 76, 80, 82-90, 93, 95—100, 283-84; and strategic issues, 38-39, 41, 46—48, 55-56, 63, 83; at Teheran conference (1943), 52-60; and United Nations, 44, 71, 83—86; unremarked in
INDEX
Fulton speech, 189; view of Grand Alliance, 35; at Washington conference, 1941/42, 35-37; at Yalta conference (1945), 82-90; Yalta tactics of, 82, 87-90 Roosevelt, James, 206, 229 Roosevelt, President Theodore, 190 Rose, Lisle A., 115 Rossow, Robert, 217, 221, 253 Royal Air Force, 104 Royal Navy, 170 Rumania: Anglo-Soviet deal over (1944), 68—69, 74—75> 95; Churchill and, 68, 74-75, 77, 94-95, 102; Soviets change regime (1945), 91, 93, 214; U.S./ Soviet recognition issue, no, 125—27, 131, 140, 157, 166-67, 274 Sadchikov, Ambassador Ivan, 231-33, 238-39, 250-51 Salt Lake Tribune, 200 San Francisco Chronicle, 200 San francisco Examiner, 199 Sargent, Sir Orme, 94, 133, 260 Saturday Evening Post, 17, 156 Saturday Review (magazine), 5 Scripps-Howard press, 226, 245, 262 Sea of Marmara, 227 Second Front issue: Stalin on, 44-49; at Moscow conference (1943), 53; Roosevelt-Molotov discussions on (1942), 38— 39; Soviet pressure for, 34, 38-39, 4647. 49. 53, 55-56; at Teheran conference (1943), 53, 55-56; U.S. and, 4749 Seyid, Zia-ed-Din, 233, 239 Shah of Persia, 142, 220, 233, 239, 265 Sherwin, Martin J., 73 Shirer, William, 262., 264 Shuster, Morgan, 142 Sims, William Philip, 226 Sinclair, Upton, 7 Sino-Soviet treaty, 181 Smith, General Walter Bedell, 105, 211, 227, 249 South Africa, 193 Soviet Union, see USSR Spaak, Paul-Henri, 237 Spain, 77, 116, 176, 178, 207, 278 Spanish-American war, 5 Stalin, Joseph: agrees to summit (1943), 51; attacks Churchill (March 13, 1946), 3, 224-25; and Bern incident,
3*7 97-98, 103; and Bevin, 114-15, 122, 140-41, 145, 148, 271; and Black Sea exits, 74; and Byrnes, 139-40, 143-45, 242-43, 248; and Churchill, 3, 32-39, 43-47, 49-51, 53-56, 58-60, 63, 6682, 84, 86-87, 90, 95, 97-100, 108-11, 113-16, 187, 189, 190-96, 207-16, 223-25, 239—40, 267, 281-83, 285; and Eastern Europe (see Eastern Europe and individual countries); fears of resurgent Germany, 37; and general attitude to United States, 40-45, 58; and Harriman, 47, 134, 176; and Hopkins, 34, 41, 100, 105—7, 116—17, 234; indifference of, to British courtship (1939-41), 33; intimates collaboration with Britain in Europe, 36-37, 44—45, 70-80., 12728; and Iranian crisis (1945-46), 14345, 168, 214—23, 232-66; and Moscow conferences (1941-1945), 36-37, 4647, 54, 73-76, 130-45; and "obsession" with Eastern Europe, spring 1946, 274; and Polish issues (see Poland); and political "bargain" with Roosevelt, 55-60, 69-71, 80, 82-90, 93-99, 100-101, 106-7, 126; and post-Fulton appeasement of British, 178-79, 236, 271-72, 278-79; and post-Fulton attempts to avoid confrontation with U.S., 212-16, 232—41, 248-49; and post-Teheran pressures against Britain, in Eastern Europe and Balkans, 66-68, 70-71, 73, 75, 7880; and post-Yalta crisis, 95-105; at Potsdam (1945), 110-16; prefers Churchill as partner, 43-45; purges Red Army, 32; reaction to Fulton, 209-16, 224-25; and renewed Iranian gambit (1946), 275; and role in starting Cold War, 281—85; and Roosevelt, 38-45, 54-58, 69—71, 76, 80, 82—90, 93, 9599, 283-84; and ''spheres" deal with Churchill (1944), 70—80; and strategy toward postwar aims, 43-45, 58-60; at Teheran conference (1943), 52-60; and Truman, 99-101, 104-8, 114—16, 124, 284; and United Nations, 56-58, 71, 74, 82, 85, 97, 140; and wages "Cold War" against Britain, x, 81, 108-9, 117-50, 209-16, 222; at Yalta conference (1945), 42, 80-95; see also Churchill, Winston L. S.; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Second Front; Turkey; USSR
368 Stead, W. T., 6 Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 62, 116; appointment of, as Secretary of State, 79; diagnosis of Yalta breakdown, 91; dispute with Britain, 79-80; heads U.S. United Nations delegation, 148; replacement by Byrnes as Secretary, 111; and role in Iran case hearings, 240-41, 243, 253, 258-59, 263-65; urges AngloAmerican collaboration, April 1945, 100; urges primacy of U.S.-Soviet collaboration, May 1945, 109; at Yalta conference, 86-87 Stimson doctrine, no, 153 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 198 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 200 Stone, I. F., 202, 246 Stuyvesant Mothers Association, 227 Sullivan, Mark, 198 Sulzberger, Cyrus, 226, 258, 262, 264 Sunday Times (London}, 247 Swing, Raymond, 158
Tabriz, 118, 135-36, 217, 221, 253, 265, 275 Taft, Senator Robert A., 201 Tangier, 108 Taquizada, Said, 146-47 Tarle, Evgenii, 213 Tass, 223, 239, 255 Taylor, A. J. P., 171 Taylor, Santor Glen, 198, 229 Teheran conference, 45, 52-60, 111 Thomas, Norman, 199 Thompson, Dorothy, 258 Time, 20, 92, 156, 197, 203, 224 Tito, Marshall, 103, 109, 115 Tribune (London), 149, 222 Trieste, 101, 103, 108-9, 270, 274 Tripolitania (Cyrenaica), 127, 270, 274 Trotsky, Leon, 28, 32, 78 Truman doctrine, 163, 210 Truman, Harry S: and Anglo-American relations, 111-13; and Army Day speech (1946), 256; and atomic bomb and related issues, 110, 124, 134, 177-78; background on assumption of presidency, 99; and Baruch, 177—78; and British loan, 181; and Byrnes, 111, 124, 140, 157-59, 163-66, 223, 231-32, 246-47,
INDEX
278; and Churchill, viii, 99, 100-102, 104-5, 107—116, 152, 159-65, 179-80, 185, 201, 281, 284-85; and Combined Chiefs of Staff, 201, 205; and complicity in Fulton strategy, 159-65; and Congress, 155; continues "detachment" policies, 111-16, 120; and Danube proposal (1945), 115-16; and Davies, 104, 168; and Declaration on Liberated Europe, 99, 115; and early anti-Soviet militancy, 101-9, 104—5: and Eastern Europe, 115; and Eisenhower, 102; and Ethridge, 131, 157; and Gromyko, 237; and Hannegan, 168; and Harriman, 99, 105; historical assessment of, 284; and Hopkins mission to Moscow, 105-8; and Indochina, 101; and Iran, 116, 223; and Italy, 116; and Leahy, 99, 161-62; and "letter" to Byrnes of January 5, 1946, 157-58, 165; and Molotov, 100101; and meeting with Churchill (February 10, 1946), 161-65; and Navy Day speech (1945), 131, 138; orders statement on U.S.-Soviet relations, 27677; and Polish issues, 99-101; at Potsdam conference, 110-16; and public reaction to Fulton speech, 201; and reparations to the USSR, 101; and Soviet credit, 201; and Spain, 116; and Stalin, 99-101, 104-8, 114-16, 124, 284; and termination of Lend-Lease, 99, 101; and Trieste, 101; and TrumanAttlee-King declaration, 134; and Truman doctrine, 210; and "ultimatum" to Stalin, early 1946, 163-64; and USSR, 124, 131, 155, 157; and Wallace resignation, 278 Tudeh party, 147, 220, 231, 233, 240, 275 Turkey: Anglo-Soviet wartime strategic views on, 49-50, 77; Bevin and British concern for, 121, 123—24, 127, 130, 140-41, 149—50, 222—24, 279; Byrnes and American commitment to, 140, 169-70, 179, 210, 217, 248, 261, 265, 275-76, 279; Churchill and, at Teheran, 56, 59-60; Churchill's support for, generally, 109, 113, 116, 186, 193, 228; issue at Potsdam, 113, 116; Missouri mission, 169—70, 182, 261; Soviet pressure on, 108-9, 118, 121—22, 127, 130, 135, 141, 179, 221-23, 228, 261, 265,
INDEX
369
United States: and "bargain" with USSR, see Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Chiefs of Staff of, 63, 111, 166, 256, 258, 270, 277; and congressional actions, 92, 111, 155, 160, 177, 276; and demobilization and draft issues, 119, Ukrainian delegation to U.N., 146 154, 191, 205, 228; Department of Ulam, Adam B., 119, 210 United Nations, 102, 104, 123, 154; State, 111, 128, 132, 142-43, 154-55, 202, 217, 220-22, 225-27, 229, 231, Atomic Energy Commission of, 139-40, 256-57, 262, 272, 275, 277; and de177-78, 206; Baruch and, 177-78; sire for bases, 136—37; and detachment Bevin and, 145—50, 218, 221-23, 231, from Europe, viii-x, 4, 8, 10-15, '8— 233, 236, 247, 260-61, 275; Byrnes 22, 39-45, 69-71, 81, 90-105, 110— and, 92, 145-50, 169, 172-75, 177-78, 18, 124-28, 130-33; and development 202-3, 217—41, 242-68, 271; Charter of Iran crisis, 209—41; and economic issues, 146, 169, 182, 193, 226, 232, pressure against USSR, 101; and Great 242, 247-50, 252-53, 264; Churchill Britain, vii-x, 6-15, 19-23, 35-39, and, 65, 79, 101-2, 112, 161-62, 177, 47-65, 69-74, 76, 79-87, 90-105, 184, 189, 191, 194, 227; and Com110-18, 124—28, 130-33, 138-41, 146, mittee of Experts, 248-49, 264; con149-50, 156, 159-62, 168-72, 175, version of, into Anglo-American instru178-82, 183-208, 209, 218-23, 230ment, 169, 171-75, r77-78, 184, 189, 31, 235-36, 242, 244, 247-48, 258191, 194, 217-32, 242-68, 280-85; and 61, 263, 267-74, 276-85; initial public Dumbarton Oaks, 71, 80; referred to, reaction to Fulton, 197—208; and policy in Fulton speech, 184, 189, 191, 194; reorientation toward USSR (1946), Halifax and, 171-72; Hull and, 54, 165-82; and rising criticism of USSR, 225; international control of atom by, in, 152-59; and USSR, 34, 39—45, 139-40, 171-72, 189, 194, 206; Iran 49-60, 69-74, 76, 80—118, 123-28, issue in, 143-50, 169, 215, 217-41, 130-34, 138-59, 165-82, 183-208, 242-66; issue at Moscowc o n f e r e n c e ( 1 9 4 3 ) , 54; issue at Potsdam, 115—16; 209-23, 232-285; and United Nations (see United Nations); see also Byrnes, isue at Teheran, 57-58; issue at Yalta, James F.; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; 82-85; as medium joining U.S. to Truman, Harry S; and individual conAnglo-Soviet Cold War, 209, 242, ferences, countries, and American pub267-68, 280-85; Molotov and, 100lications 101; as part of optimistic American U.S. News, 204-5 "vision" of Yalta, 92, 120, 123, 132, USSR: Allied intervention in, 23-25; and 154-55, 200; in post-Yalta crisis, 97; basis of wartime relations with U.S., Roosevelt and, 40—44, 57-58, 71, 80, 39-45; and "Cold War" against Great 83—86; and San Francisco conference Britain, x, 81, 108-9, 117-50, 209-16, (1945), 97, 100-101, 105-6; and Secu222; and European collaboration with rity Council hearings, London (JanuaryBritain, 36-37, 44—45, 70-80, 127-28; February 1946), 143-50; and Security German invasion of, 33; and Great Council hearings, New York (MarchBritain, 21-27, 29-40, 45-60, 66-80, May 1946), 242-66; Stalin-Hopkins 81-87, 90-105, 110-52, 160—65, 168— talks on, 105-6; Stalin and Soviet atti72, 175, 177-85, 191-97, 209-16, tude to, 57-58, 80, 97, 100, 105-6; and 222—24, 235—36, 247, 255, 260—61, Secretary-General (see Lie, Trygve); 271—73, 278—85; at London conference Truman and, 100-101, 106, 112, 161(1945), 124-28; at London Security 62, 201; U.S.-Soviet confrontation in Council meeting (1946), 146-48; at (March-May 1946), 242-66; and Moscow conferences (1941—45), 36— veto issue, 154, 172-74, 249, 252 United Press, 239 37, 46-47, 53-54, 73-76, 138-45; at 275; war scare over (March 1946), 217, 221, 223; see also Dardanelles; Montreux Convention
37° USSR (COM*.) New York Security Council meeting (1946), 242-66; and October revolution, 23; and Popular Front era, 31— 33; at Potsdam conference (1945), 110-16; and post-Fulton appeasement of Britain, 178-79, 236, 271-72, 27879; and post-Hopkins mission policy reorientation, 108; and pre-Yalta aims of, 42—45, 80-82; at Teheran conference (1943), 52-60; and United Nations (see United Nations); and United States, 34, 39-45, 49-60, 69-74, 76, 80—118, 123-28, 130-34, 138-59, 165-82, 183-208, 209-23, 232-85; at Yalta conference (1945), 82-90; see also Molotov, Vyacheslav; Radio Moscow; Stalin, Joseph; and individual conferences, countries, and Soviet publications Vandenberg, Senator Arthur H., 152, 192; and British loan, 278; and criticism of Soviets, 172-73, 268-69, 278; and February 27, 1946, speech, 172— 73; and suspicions of Byrnes, 155, 172-73, 268, 271 Varga, Evgenii, 213 Virginia Joint Assembly, 201 Voina i rabochii klass, 78, 82, 93 Vyshinsky, Andrei: on Bulgarian recognition, 165-66; and British, 179; and Rumanian coup (1945), 91; as Soviet delegate, London Security Council meeting (1946), 146—48, 179 Wall Street Journal, 197-98, 207 Wallace, Secretary of Commerce Henry: criticism of Fulton, 199; resignation, 278; puts Soviet case, 154, 157, 229— 30; and Truman, 154, 278; and war fears, 188 War and the Working Class (Moscow), 93
INDEX Warner, Christopher, 215, 236 Warsaw uprising, 70-71, 75 Washington Post, 157, 262 Washington Star, 156, 180, 200, 229, 262 Welles, Sumner, 262 Western Europe, 197; Bevin and, 126— 27, 133, 136, 150, 2,73, 276, 279; Byrnes and, 175-76, 1821 274, 279; Churchill's concern for, 44—45, 50, 53, 58-61, 68, 73—80, 84, 102-3, 104, no, 114-16, 186-93; ChurchillStalin deal (October 1944), 74-80; Soviet appeasement in (March 1946), 213-14; Soviet pressure on, 108—9, 118, 121-23, 136, 149, 280; Stalin intimates acceptability of British sphere in, 36-37, 44-45, 74—80, 126-28; see also names of individual countries Western bloc: Bevin and, 126-27, 150, 279; British and Benelux protagonists of, 77, 150, 279; Churchill and, 77, 79, no, 175; Soviet campaign against, 118, 121, 123, 126-27, 134, 193 Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 159 White, Senator Wallace, 92 Whitney, Jock, 227 Willett, E. F., 277 Wilson, President Woodrow, viii, 10-13, 24, 88, 93, 190 Wilson, Mrs. Woodrow, 229
Yalta conference (1945), 45, 81-90, 104, 111, 114, 155, 158, 173, 184, 189, 205 Yergin, Daniel, 92 Yugoslavia, 73-74, 86, 101, 115, 125, 134-35, 176, 270
Zaslavskii, David, 93 Zhdanovshchina, the, 274—75 Zhukov, Marshal, 124 Zionism, 29, 135, 276
