V o L u m e I : a d

ern leaders did not appreciate the extent to which concerns over security and

xenophobia drove this policy.

Finally, there was the ideological motivation. Although its leaders had

soft-pedaled it during World War II, the Soviet Union had never abandoned

its goal of furthering international communism. Irrespective of security con-

cerns, the Kremlin was ideologically committed to combating capitalism. It

is thus inconceivable that Stalin would not have attempted to take full advan-

tage of the opportunities that presented themselves at the end of the war.

As with the United States, Soviet foreign policy was closely tied to domes-

tic needs. The Cold War would aid in enforcing authority and cooperation at

home. The communist world had to appear to be threatened by encircling

enemies. By the close of the war, millions of Soviet soldiers had been in the

West and had seen the quality of life and amenities there. They found their

own system sadly wanting by comparison, and clearly they expected a better

quality of life with the end of the war. Only a new announced threat from

abroad would cause them to close ranks behind the Soviet leadership. Play-

ing the nationalist card would enable the Kremlin to mobilize public effort

and suffocate dissent.

Although for different reasons, Roosevelt shared with Stalin a strong

antipathy toward European colonialism, and Washington encouraged the

disintegration of the European colonial empires. While idealistic and correct

morally, this stance nonetheless reduced the strength of U.S. allies such as

Britain, France, and the Netherlands and helped ensure that ultimately the

United States would have to carry most of the burden of defense of the non-

communist world.

Roosevelt gambled his place in history in part on the mistaken assump-

tion that he could arrange a détente with the Soviet Union. His optimism

regarding “Uncle Joe” Stalin was ill-founded, however. By mid-March 1945

it was patently obvious, even to Roosevelt, that the Soviets were taking over

Poland and Romania and violating at least the spirit of the Yalta agreements

regarding multiparty systems and free elections.

Roosevelt died in April 1945. His successor Harry S. Truman insisted,

despite Churchill’s protests regarding the mounting evidence that the So-

viets were not keeping their pledges, that U.S. forces withdraw from areas

they had occupied deep beyond the lines assigned to the Soviets for the

occupation of Germany. The American public clearly did not want confronta-

tion or a global economic and political-military struggle with the Soviet Union.

Americans were limited internationalists who merely wanted to enjoy their

economic prosperity.

The Soviets, however, were already angry over Washington’s abrupt ter-

mination of World War II Lend-Lease aid on 21 August 1945, regardless of

the terms of the original law. Russian ill will was also generated by the usu-

ally smooth cooperation of the Anglo-Saxon powers and Moscow’s belief that

the two constantly combined against the Soviet Union. The U.S. monopoly

on the atomic bomb also aroused fear in the Soviet Union as a small but vocal

group of Americans demanded preventive war. Soviet concerns increased

Origins of the Cold War to 1950

19

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when the United States retained bomber bases within striking distance of

Soviet industrial areas and undertook naval maneuvers in the Mediter-

ranean Sea.

The USSR, however, rejected a plan put forth by the United States to

bring nuclear weapons under international control; instead, it proceeded with

its atomic research (aided by espionage) and exploded its own bomb in Sep-

tember 1949. The atomic arms race was under way.

Certainly American and British attitudes toward Soviet activity in East-

ern Europe and the Balkans exasperated Moscow. Having accepted Soviet

hegemony there, why did the West continue to criticize? Initially Moscow

permitted political parties other than the Communist Party, and now it seemed

to the suspicious leaders in the Kremlin as though the West was encouraging

these parties against Soviet interests. At a minimum the USSR required

security, while the United States wanted democratic parties in a Western-

style democracy. In only one country, Finland, did the Soviet Union and the

West achieve the sort of compromise implicit in the Yalta agreements. In

countries such as Poland and Hungary, noncommunist parties were highly

unlikely to ensure the security that the Soviet Union desired, and Western

encouragement of these groups seemed to Moscow to be a threat.

On the American side, the Russian moves kindled exasperation and

then alarm as the Soviet Union interfered in the democratic processes of one

East European state after another. In addition, the UN seemed paralyzed as

the Soviet Union, in order to protect its interests when the majority was con-

sistently against it, made increasing use of its UN Security Council veto.

Despite this, Western pressure in the UN did help secure a Soviet withdrawal

from northern Iran in 1946 in what was the first major test for the inter-

national body.

This did not mean that the West was unified. In Britain, left-wing Labour-

ites criticized American capitalism and wanted to work with the Russian

communists. The French, especially interim President Charles De Gaulle,

made vigorous efforts to build a third force in Europe as a counterbalance to

the Anglo-Saxon powers and the Soviet Union. It is thus tempting to con-

clude that only Moscow could have driven the West to the unity achieved

by 1949. As Belgian diplomat Paul-Henri Spaak put it, Stalin was the real

founder of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The British bore the brunt of the initial defense against communism.

Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin took up Churchill’s role as a voice of Western

democracy against totalitarianism and fought many verbal duels with Soviet

Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov in the Council of Foreign Minis-

ters. But for a variety of reasons, chiefly financial, Britain eventually had to

abandon its role as world policeman.

Churchill sounded the alarm regarding the Soviet Union in a March 1946

speech in Fulton, Missouri. With President Truman at his side, Churchill

said that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain

has descended across the continent.” The peril would not be surmounted by

ignoring it or following a policy of appeasement. Churchill called for a “spe-

cial relationship” between Britain and the United States to meet the chal-

20

Origins of the Cold War to 1950

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