ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR, 19171949

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ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR, 1917-1949
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Cold WarHot Topic

• President Trumans advisor Bernard Baruch coined
  the phrase Cold War in a congressional hearing
  in 1947, but essayist and journalist Walter
  Lippmann popularized it with a 1947 series of
  articles The Cold War opposing Containment and
  the Truman Doctrine
• Different PeriodizationsDifferent
  Interpretations
• 1947-1962 use of term by contemporaries
• 1943-1955 division of Europe
• 1917-1991 U.S.-Soviet antagonism
• 1943-1975 U.S.-Soviet antagonism dominated
  world affairs
• 1890s-1991 U.S.-Russian antagonism
• John L. Gaddis For all its dangers, atrocities,
  costs, distractions, and moral compromises, the
  Cold Warlike the American Civil Warwas a
  necessary contest that settled fundamental issues
  once and for all. We have no reason to miss it.
  But given the alternatives, we have little reason
  either to regret its having occurred. Gaddis,
  The Cold War A New History, xi
• Walter LaFeber The Cold War has dominated
  American life since 1945. It has cost Americans
  8 trillion in defense expenditure, taken the
  lives of nearly 100,000 of their young men and
  women, ruined the careers of many others during
  the McCarthyite witch hunts, led the nation into
  the horrors of Southeast Asian conflicts, and in
  the 1980s triggered the worst economic depression
  in forty years. It has not been the most
  satisfying chapter in American diplomatic
  history. LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold
  War, 1

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The Specter of Bolshevism, 1917-1945

• Woodrow Wilsons response to the Russian
  Revolution (1917) and V.I. Lenin agent theory
  of revolution double meaning of Bolshevik as
  communist and foreign agent
• U.S. military intervention in 1918-20 Russian
  Civil War
• World War I as a war that fostered and undermined
  democracy
• Example 1 1917 Espionage Act (prohibited spying
  and interfering with draft and false statements
  that might impede military success), Eugene Debs
  arrested
• Example 2 Red Scare (1919-20) over 5,000
  persons arrested in Palmer Raids (hundreds of
  immigrant radicals deported, among them Emma
  Goldman)
• World War II tensions Second Front
• Manhattan Project
• Occupations of Poland, Italy, Germany
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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George F. Kennans Long Telegram, 1946

• At bottom of Kremlins neurotic view of world
  affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian
  sense of insecurity And they learned to seek
  security only in patient but deadly struggle for
  total destruction of rival power, never in
  compacts and compromises with it There is good
  reason to suspect that this Government is
  actually a conspiracy within a conspiracy and I
  for one am reluctant to believe that Stalin
  himself receives anything like on objective
  picture of the outside world
• In summary, we have here a political force
  committed fanatically to the belief that with US
  there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it
  is desirable and necessary that the internal
  harmony of our society be disrupted, our
  traditional way of life be destroyed, the
  international authority of our state be broken,
  if Soviet power is to be secure
• Problem of how to cope with this force is
  undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever
  faced and probably greatest it will ever have to
  face I would like to record my conviction that
  problem is within our power to solveand that
  without recourse to any general military conflict
  
• Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany,
  is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does
  not work by fixed plans. It does not take
  unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason,
  and it is highly sensitive to logic of force.
• Source Telegram, George Kennan to George
  Marshall "Long Telegram"

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Winston Churchills Iron Curtain Speech, 1946

• 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 Police governments are
  prevailing in nearly every case, and so far,
  except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true
  democracy Except in the British Commonwealth,
  and in the United States, where communism is in
  its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth
  columns constitute a growing challenge and peril
  to Christian civilization there is nothing they
  Russians admire so much as strength, and there
  is nothing for which they have less respect than
  for military weakness. For that reason the old
  doctrine of a balance of power is unsound.
• Map Cold War Division Map 1
• Contextualizations
• British Motive Churchill wanted to prevent U.S.
  return to pre-war isolationism
• Soviet Response Stalin accused Churchill of
  issuing a call to war with the Soviet Union
• U.S. Response Wall Street Journal The
  countrys response to Mr. Churchills Fulton
  speech must be convincing proof that the US wants
  no alliance or anything that resembles an
  alliance, with any other nation.
• African American Protests speech delivered at
  segregated Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri

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Nikolai Novikov on U.S. Drive for World
Supremacy, 1946 (Part 1)

• The foreign policy of the United States,
  which reflects the imperialistic tendencies of
  American monopolistic capital, is characterized
  in the postwar period by a striving for world
  supremacy the Soviet Union continues to remain
  economically independent of the outside world and
  is rebuilding its national economy with its own
  force At the same time the USSRs international
  position is currently stronger than it was in the
  prewar period In the Slavic countries that were
  liberated by the Red Army or with its
  assistancePoland, Czechoslovakia, and
  Yugoslaviademocratic regimes have also been
  established that maintain relations with the
  Soviet Union on the basis of agreements on
  friendship and mutual assistance President
  Truman, a politically unstable person Obvious
  indications of the U.S. effort to establish world
  dominance are also to be found in the increase in
  military potential in peacetime and in the
  establishment of a large number of naval air
  bases both in the United States and beyond its
  borders ... The establishment of American bases
  on the islands that are on the other side of
  the Atlantic and Pacific oceans clearly indicates
  the offensive nature of strategic concepts of the
  commands of the U.S. army and navy American
  capital now controls about 42 percent of all
  proven oil reserves in the Near East, excluding
  Iran The hard-line policy with regard to the
  USSR announced by Secretary of State James F.
  Byrnes after the rapprochement of the reactionary
  Democrats with the Republicans is at present the
  main obstacle on the road to cooperation of the
  Great Powers.

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Nikolai Novikov on U.S. Drive for World
Supremacy, 1946 (Part 2)

• In Germany, the United States is taking
  measures to strengthen reactionary forces for the
  purpose of opposing democratic reconstruction.
  Furthermore, it displays special insistence on
  accompanying this policy with completely
  inadequate measures for the demilitarization of
  Germany. The American occupation policy does not
  have the objective of eliminating the remnants of
  German Fascism and rebuilding German political
  life on a democratic basis, so that Germany might
  cease to exist as an aggressive force. The United
  States is not taking measures to eliminate the
  monopolistic associations of German
  industrialists on which German Fascism depended
  in preparing aggression and waging war One
  cannot help seeing that such a policy has clearly
  outlined anti-Soviet edge and constitutes a
  serious danger to the cause of peace preaching
  war against the Soviet Union is not a monopoly of
  the far-right yellow American press This
  anti-Soviet campaign also has been joined by the
  reputable and respectable organs of the
  conservative press, such as the New York Times
  and New York Herald Tribune Careful note should
  be taken of the fact that the preparation by the
  United States for a future war is being conducted
  with the prospect of war against the Soviet
  Union, which in the eyes of American imperialists
  is the main obstacle in the path of the United
  States to world domination.
• Source Telegram from N. Novikov, Soviet
  Ambassador to the US, to the Soviet Leadership

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Containment Policy

• Truman Doctrine (1947) to defend freedom and
  contain communism, Truman requested 400 million
  in military aid to Greece and Turkey Sources
  Truman Doctrine, March 12, 1947 Truman Doctrine
  Activity
• Senate leader Arthur Vandenberg advised to scare
  hell out of Americans to get a reluctant
  Congress to fund containment policy
• Marshall Plan (1947) provided 13 billion for
  the economic recovery of (Western) Europe Our
  policy is directed not against any country or
  doctrine, but against hunger, poverty,
  desperation, and chaos. Marshall Plan Slogan
  Prosperity Makes You Free. Sources Marshall
  Plan Marshall Plan Teaching Packet
• Berlin Blockade (1948-49) Soviets cut off road
  and rail traffic to West Berlin, led to
  eleven-month airlift Source The Berlin
  Airlift-June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949
• NATO (1949) The member states of the North
  Atlantic Treaty Organization (U.S., Canada,
  western Europe) pledged mutual defense against
  any future Soviet attack first long-term
  military alliance between U.S. and Europe since
  American Revolution Source North Atlantic
  Treaty Organisation - Official Homepage

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Walter Lippmann, The Cold War (1947)Part 1

• I believe that the strategical conception
  and plan which Mr.X recommends is fundamentally
  unsound, and that it cannot be made to work, and
  that the attempt to make it work will cause us to
  squander our substance and our prestige We must
  begin with the disturbing fact that Mr.X's
  conclusions depend upon the optimistic prediction
  that the Soviet power bears within itself the
  seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of
  these seeds is well advanced Of this
  optimistic prediction Mr. X himself says that it
  cannot be proved. And it cannot be disproved.
  Nevertheless, he concludes that the United States
  should construct its policy on the assumption
  that the Soviet power is inherently weak and
  impermanent I do not find much ground for
  reasonable confidence in a policy which can be
  successful only if the most optimistic prediction
  should prove to be true ... Do we dare to assume,
  as we enter the arena and get set to run the
  race, that the Soviet Union will break its leg
  while the United States grows a pair of wings to
  speed it on its way?

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Walter Lippmann, The Cold War (1947)Part 2

• Yet a policy of containment cannot be
  operated unless the Department of State can plan
  and direct exports and imports. For the policy
  demands that American goods be delivered or
  withheld at constantly shifting geographical and
  political points corresponding to the shifts and
  manoeuvres of Soviet policy Mr. X is surely
  mistaken if he thinks that a free and
  undirected economy like our own can be used by
  the diplomatic planners to wage a diplomatic war
  against a planned economy at a series of
  constantly shifting geographical and political
  points. He is proposing to meet the Soviet
  challenge on the ground which is most favorable
  to the Soviets, and with the very instruments,
  procedures, and weapons in which they have a
  manifest superiority. I find it hard to
  understand how Mr. X could have recommended such
  a strategic monstrosity. .. It commits the United
  States to confront the Russians with counterforce
  "at every point" along the line, instead of at
  those points which we have selected because,
  there at those points, our kind of sea and air
  power can best be exerted the policy of
  containment is an attempt to organize an
  anti-Soviet alliance composed in the first
  instance of peoples that are either on the
  shadowy extremity of the Atlantic community, or
  are altogether outside it i.e. the factions
  of eastern Europe, with the Greeks, the Turks,
  the Iranians, the Arabs and Afghans, and with the
  Chinese Nationalists Instead of becoming an
  unassailable barrier against the Soviet power,
  this borderland is a seething stew of civil
  strife.

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Walter Lippmann, The Cold War (1947)Part 3

• The failure of our diplomatic campaign in
  the borderlands has conjured up the specter of
  a Third World War ... The contest between the
  Truman Doctrine on the one hand, the Marshall
  line and the support of the U.N on the other is
  the central drama within the State Department,
  within the Administration, within the government
  as a whole. The outcome is still undecided ...
  The difference is fundamental. The Truman
  Doctrine treats those who are supposed to benefit
  by it as dependencies of the United States, as
  instruments of the American policy for
  "containing" Russia. The Marshall speech at
  Harvard treats the European governments as
  independent powers, whom we must help but cannot
  presume to govern, or to use as instruments of an
  American policy ... The Marshall Plan is a
  graceful way of saving the United States from the
  destructive and exhausting entanglements of the
  Truman Doctrine ... The Harvard speech calls,
  therefore, for a policy of settlement, addressed
  to the military evacuation of the continent, not
  for a policy of containment which would freeze
  the non-European armies in the heart of Europe
  ... The history of diplomacy is the history of
  relations among rival powers, which did not enjoy
  political intimacy, and did not respond to
  appeals to common purposes ... For a diplomat to
  think that rival and unfriendly powers cannot be
  brought to a settlement is to forget what
  diplomacy is about The communists will continue
  to be communists. The Russians will continue to
  be Russians. But if the Red Army is in Russia,
  and not on the Elbe the power of the Russians
  communists and the power of the Russian
  imperialists to realise their ambitions will have
  been reduced decisively.
• Source Walter Lippmann, The Cold War, New
  York Herald Tribune (1947), reprinted in Foreign
  Affairs (1987) see Lippmann, Cold War

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The National Security State

• National Security State the ideology and
  institutions established by the National Security
  Act of 1947 (cf. Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron,
  1998)
• National Security Act (1947) enlarged
  presidential power Defense Department merged War
  and Navy Departments and created Central
  Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security
  Council
• Federal Employee Loyalty Program (1947) examined
  three million employees, four hundred were fired
  and thousands resigned
• In 1951 the Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act
  (1940) to advocate or teach the forcible
  overthrow of the U.S. government was a crime
• HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)
  probed the motion picture industry in 1947 Walt
  Disney, Gary Cooper, and Ronald Reagan testified
  that movie industry harbored many communists
• Whittaker Chambers, editor of Time magazine,
  accused Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State
  Department official, of being a Soviet spy in
  1950 Hiss was convicted of perjury and sentenced
  to five years in prison

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Recommended Readings

• Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color
  Line American Race Relations in the Global Arena
  (2001)
• John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War A New History
  (2005)
• Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy Anglo-American
  Response to Revolution, 1913-1923 (1984)
• Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron Harry S.
  Truman and the Origins of the National Security
  State, 1945-1954 (1998)
• Fred Inglis, The Cruel Peace Everyday Life and
  the Cold War (1991)
• Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold
  War, 1945-2006 (2006)
• Melvyn Leffler, The Preponderance of Power (1992)
• Geir Lundestad, The United States and Western
  Europe Since 1945 (2003)
• David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War (2006)
• Stephen Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War
  (1991)
• William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American
  Diplomacy (1959)