The West did not understand basic Soviet Russian concerns: Far from advocating perpetual revolution, Stalin had revoked the Leninist-Trotskyite approach in favour of ‘Socialism in one country’. Stalin’s primary concern, as he often stated, was security of Russia’s borders, particularly in the west: “Twice in the last thirty years our enemies, the Germans, have passed through this corridor … Poland is not only a question of honour but of life and death for the Soviet Union.” Stalin’s ultimate objective thus was to ensure that this should never happen again. Firstly by ensuring that Germany should remain decentralized and demilitarized, and secondly by tying the Eastern European countries into a defensive, Moscow-orientated buffer zone. After all, from the Russian point of view, if it had not been for the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 23rd August 1939, the Wehrmacht most probably would have taken Leningrad and Moscow in 1941. Thus as early as 1943, following the great reversals at Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet bodies politique were already busily planning the post-war setting up of Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe whilst dealing with the main problem of how Germany was “to be rendered harmless.” Therefore America’s steady efforts from December 1950 onwards, to remilitarise Germany and introduce her twelve divisions to NATO were unacceptable to Russian security policy, particularly when seen in a global context. By the end of World War II American generals ruled in Berlin and Tokyo whilst Washington effectively controlled four of the world’s five major industrial regions: North America, Great Britain, Western Europe and Japan.
Stalin on the other hand was equally imperceptive of the West, notably the importance that public opinion played in the process of policy making. He could hardly understand how “from the standpoint of psychology and public relations” Poland and the Declaration on Liberated Europe should be interdependent. Why would the President want to deliberately risk a barely achieved quid pro quo agreement by announcing it to the public? To him the solution was simple: “They [the people] should be informed and some propaganda work should be done.” This explains why the Soviets were so annoyed when Secretary of Byrnes upon returning from Yalta presented glowing images of Roosevelt’s diplomatic achievements whilst heralding the victory of Democracy in Europe. Roosevelt himself gave a Congressional report on the Yalta outcomes on March 1 which was “pure in its Wilsonianism.” In the meantime Soviet magazines emphasised “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.”
Soviet understanding of democracy was obviously profoundly different to that of the West. And Roosevelt seems to have fully realised that when put on the spot by Admiral Leahy: “This is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it [Final report of ‘Plans for Final Defeat of the Common Enemy’] .” – “I know, Bill, I know it. But it’s the best I can do for Poland at this time.”
Whilst signing the Yalta communiqué, Stalin reassured a worried Molotov: “Do not worry. We can implement it in our way later. The heart of the matter is in the correlation of forces.” The versatility of a Roosevelt handled the vagueness and unreliability so characteristic of Anglo-Soviet wartime dealings without allowing tensions to escalate. The straightforward and correct Truman, however, found it impossible to deal with the Soviet dictator whom Lenin had described as “slishkom grub.” Truman left Potsdam with his mind made up that he would no longer “take chances in a joint setup with the Russians.” Thus, armed with the Atomic bomb and the might of the US economy, Truman embarked on the Cold War journey and towards the division of Europe.
As a direct consequence of the discouraging negotiations at Potsdam, Truman decided on a truly magnificent show of strength in the Pacific theatre of war. The use of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 was described by leading Physicist Baron Blanckett as the “the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.” The Russians were expected to declare war on Japan around August 8. The bombs however were dropped in rapid succession on 6th and 9th August which led to the Japanese surrender before the Russians could make their presence felt. The Atomic bomb was, besides being cost-effective and life-saving, instrumental in keeping the Soviets out of the Far Eastern post-war settlement. In the aftermath of the great bomb, foreign political incidents caused by aggressive Communist expansion in Eastern Europe, Iran, Turkey and Greece encouraged Western politicians to adopt policies of containment of Communism instead of collaboration with Communism. Alarmed by the impression that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” public opinion and Western policymakers adopted George Kennan’s explanation that peace was being obstructed by a “traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.” Churchill’s famous Fulton speech and Kennan’s 8,000 word essay bolstered this new course in US foreign policy which became known as the Truman Doctrine following the latter’s announcement of the policy of containment on March 12, 1947. By the time Truman officially announced containment, US foreign policy had long made effective use of America’s mighty economy to contain the USSR.
Given the destruction that Russia had been subjected to during the war, economic aid was from the start a highly potent weapon in terms of American foreign policy. On 8th May 1945, in an attempt to force Soviet compliancy on Poland, Truman outraged Stalin by suddenly cancelling all American lend-lease shipments heading for Europe. The US administration continued to exert economic pressure upon Moscow by refusing loans for reconstruction. By exploiting Russia’s dire economic needs, US foreign policy, far from creating political solutions only served to fuel Soviet prejudices about America’s imperialistic ambitions. The Americans not only infuriated the Soviet dictator who refused to be blackmailed, but also drove Soviet Russia further into isolation by forcing them to adopt economic self-sufficiency, thus losing the one truly effective carrot & stick policy available.
If Americans are to be blamed for having been opportunistic so do the Soviets for having been overtly intransigent. Stalin stubbornly refused to accept political conditions that the Americans attached to their reconstruction loans and aid programs. In 1945 Stalin twice demanded very substantial US loans, which but were both refused because Stalin would not admit to the essential American prerequisite of opening the Eastern markets to the West. Stalin also prohibited the Eastern Europeans to join any Western economic initiatives. In July 1947 the Czechs and Poles were forbidden to join Marshall’s blissful initiatives, which were to lay the foundation of the ‘Wirtschaftswunder’, on the grounds that “it might be construed as an action against the Soviet Union.”
It is indeed very clear that the Americans used their economic might to re-shape and re-built Europe and especially Germany to their advantage. In less than a year after Potsdam, where the Americans had agreed to limit German heavy industry, and amidst the rising of Anglo-Soviet tensions, on 3rd May 1946, General Clay breached limitations on production and stopped West-German reparations to the USSR in an attempt to make Germany self-sufficient. This aim was confirmed by Byrne’s Stuttgart speech in January 1947. The administrative changes that were taking place in Germany (January 1947: Americans and British merge their zones) were encouraged by Truman’s new doctrine. America’s long-lasting tradition of isolationism was broken with the clear intention of containing Communism by providing “economic and military support to Greece and Turkey and to any other country threatened by communism.” This uniquely unambiguous statement was equally hostile because it made it perilously clear that Moscow’s arch-enemy was being rebuilt (and re-armed) for military and not humanitarian purposes.
The sharpness with which the USSR responded to West-Germany’s integration into NATO illustrates the deep anxieties that the Kremlin felt in term of its security. Following the Three Power Foreign Ministers Conference in New York, September 1950, the Soviets charged the USA for using “Western Germany, its manpower and material resources … behind which are the aspirations of the USA ruling circles for world supremacy.” Western leaders found it hard to understand why the Kremlin would accuse the West of pursuing a policy of aggressive Imperialism when clearly it was the Soviets who had illegally pushed the German-Polish border to the Oder/ Neisse line, and established puppet regimes in East Europe’s capitals: “It cannot be too firmly driven home that Russian conquest of neighbouring states preceded and provoked NATO.” With 350,000 men cramped into East Germany alone, a Soviet invasion was a very real threat to Western policy makers: “This is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up.” Thus it was absolutely essential that West-Germany should be rebuild, remilitarised and integrated into NATO high command. Following Germany’s admittance to NATO on May 9, 1955 Premier Nikolai Bulganin declared that “The Warsaw Treaty was forced upon us” and that “it was the result of the position of the Western States.” Bulganin did have a point because Moscow’s position had become far more consolatory following Stalin’s death in March 1953. On March 31 the Soviets had baffled the Western World by applying for NATO membership, and following the signing of the Paris Agreements, the Kremlin offered all-German free election in October 1954, January and February 1955, but were ignored on each occasion.
Given the record of broken promises it was no surprise that the USA did not give the Soviets much credibility. Crucially the USSR, though its conduct in East Europe had on more than one occasion invited comparisons to be made with Hitler’s foreign policy. Notably the Czechoslovakian coup in February 1948 reminded people of the tragic events which took place in September 1938. Former Ambassador to Moscow Averell Harriman noted that “There are aggressive forces in the world coming from the Soviet Union which are just as destructive in their effect on the world and our own way of life as Hitler was, and I think are a great menace that Hitler was.”
The fundamental reason why East and West drifted apart in the post-Yalta period was that following World War II the only binding theme: Nazi Germany, the deadly enemy, had been defeated. And if there were any personal ties between Roosevelt and Stalin then they were lost as well when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. His successor Harry Truman had “no faith in any totalitarian state” for “they all start with the wrong premise – that lies are justified and that … the end justifies the means…” For the Soviets, especially Stalin who was moulded in the Leninist-Marxist fashion, it was unfeasible that a Communist nation could be permanently allied with the leading Capitalist power. As the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 so was the ‘Strange Alliance’ a short-lived and strictly purpose orientated alliance. The ending of World War II also ended the one thing Communists and Capitalists had in common: The Common Enemy.
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Churchill, Winston: The Sinews of Peace. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5th March 1946.
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The Times Tuesday February 13, 1945.
Winston Churchill to Russian Ambassador Maisky. London, 23rd March 1938, quoted in Edmonds, p. 87.
Winston Churchill quoted in Edmonds, p. 40.
Pechatnov/ Edmondson, p. 92.
Walter Lippmann quoted in Douglas/ Ambrose, p. 52.
The Times Tuesday February 13, 1945.
Stalin quoted in Ambrose/ Brinkley, p. 55.
Ivan Maisky quoted in Pechatnov/ Edmondson, p. 91.
Stettinuis quoted in Harbutt, p. 87.
Stalin at Teheran on the Baltic question, quoted in Harbutt, p. 57.
Voina i rabochii klass quoted in Harbutt, p. 93.
The Times. Tuesday February 13, 1945.
Roosevelt quoted in Levering/ Botzenhart-Viehe, p. 27.
Stalin quoted in Pechatnov/ Edmondson, p. 98.
Lenin quoted in Edmonds, p. 50.
Truman quoted in Ambrose/ Brinkley, p. 66.
Blackett quoted in Ambrose/ Brinkley, p. 47.
Winston Churchill: The Sinews of Peace. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5th March 1946.
George Kennan’s Long Telegram, February 23, 1946.
Ambrose/ Brinkley, p. 87.
Statement of USSR/ East European Foreign Ministers, October 12, 1950, Prague. Quoted in Stoessinger, p. 180.
The New York Herald Tribune. May 14, 1955. Stoessinger, p. 180.
Winston Churchill: The Sinews of Peace. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5th March 1946.
Nikolai Bulganin quoted in Stoessinger, p. 188.
Averell Harriman quoted in Ambrose/ Brinkley, p. 92.
Truman quoted in Levering/ Botzenhart-Viehe, p. 29.