Truman stepped in to take over and in March 1947, he told the American Congress it was America's job to stop communism growing any stronger. This was called the Truman Doctrine. It is often said that Truman advocated containment (stopping the Soviet getting any more powerful), but Truman did not use this word and many Americans spoke of "rolling back" communism.
In June 1947, General George Marshall made a visit to Europe to see what was needed. He came away thinking Europe was so poor that the whole of Europe was about to turn Communist. Marshall and Truman asked Congress for $17 billion to fund the European Recovery Programme nicknamed the Marshall Plan - to get the economy of Europe going again. Congress at first hesitated, but agreed in March 1948 when Czechoslovakia turned Communist.
Stalin viewed Marshall Aid with suspicion. After expressing some initial interest, he refused to have anything more to do with it. He also forbade any of his puppet governments in Easter Europe to have anything to do with it. He saw Marshall Aid as a ploy to weaken his hold on Eastern Europe and felt that the USA were trying to dominate Eastern Europe by making them reliant on US dollars.
In 1945, the Allies decided to split Germany into four zones of occupation. The capital, Berlin, was also split into four zones. The USSR took huge reparations from its zone in eastern Germany, but Britain, France and America tried to improve conditions in their zones.
In June 1948, Britain, France and America united their zones into a new country, West Germany. On 23 June 1948, they introduced a new currency, which they said would help trade. The next day, Stalin cut off all rail and road links to West Berlin - the Berlin Blockade. The west saw this as an attempt to starve Berlin into surrender, so they decided to supply West Berlin by air.
The airlift continued until May 1949, when the USSR lifted the blockade. Western forces immediately pulled out of Germany and approved the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany. The USSR responded by creating the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. The Berlin Blockade lasted 318 days. During this time, 275,000 transported 1.5 million tons of supplies and a plane landed every three minutes at Berlin's Templehof airport.
Nuclear weapons played a central role in the possibility of military engagement between the U.S. and the USSR. In September 1949, the USSR detonated its first atomic bomb. This development, combined with the establishment of a communist regime in China, inspired a new and fiercer anticommunism in the U.S. government, expressed in its decision to more than triple the defense budget and to mount a furious campaign to develop a hydrogen bomb. The drive for the hydrogen bomb succeeded in the November 1952 detonation of an H-bomb in the Marshall Islands. But the American advantage was short-lived. In July 1953, the Russians detonated their own H-bomb.
As tension escalated between the USA and the USSR, war seemed a real possibility. At the height of the crisis, the western powers met in Washington and signed an agreement to work together in order to defend themselves from attack from the USSR. The new organisation formed in April 1949 became known as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), primarily because all member countries were situated around the North Atlantic Ocean. Stalin saw this as a severe threat and as a result set up a communist counterpart of NATO, The Warsaw Pact. All of the communist controlled eastern European countries immediately joined.
During the Cold War anti-communist hysteria gripped the general population. Many people were interrogated and “suspects” were asked to name people. If they did not they were suspected of being communist. This became known as “The Red Scare”. Politicians could see an opportunity in winning voted by condemning communism. A by product of The Red Scare was McCarthyism. Senator McCarthy was a ruthless and ambitious man. He rose to power after claiming to have a list of 200 communist that had infiltrated the government. The claims turned out to “be a fraud and a hoax”, however he accused anybody who attacked his policies as being a communist and was well known for turning his committee into a weapon to increase his personal power and terrify others. In 1954 he turned his attacks on the army. By this time, his claims seemed ridiculous and he was publicly humiliated by the army lawyer. As a result McCarthy lost all his public credibility and died three years later, in 1957.
Truman played a central role in the Cold War. He was at the forefront of conflict often being the person to make the first move thus setting out a pattern in which the Soviet Union would immediately retaliate. Both Stalin and Truman attempted to obstruct each other in any possible way they could. They bombarded each other with propaganda; however each country had shown that they were not keen to get involved with direct conflict. The Berlin blockade was an example of this and set out a tense balance between the superpowers that would dominate much of the Cold War period. In my opinion, both Stalin and Truman were equally responsible for provoking each other into starting the Cold War.
