Cold War

leadership "to give the Government of Poland [and other Eastern European

countries] an external appearance of independence [italics added]," in the

words of Roosevelt's aide Admiral William Leahy. In the month before his

death, FDR had evidently begun to question that presumption, becoming

increasingly concerned about Soviet behavior. Had he lived, he may well

have adopted a significantly tougher position toward Stalin than he had

taken previously. Yet in his last communication with Churchill, Roosevelt

was still urging the British prime minister to "minimize the Soviet problem

as much as possible . . . because these problems, in one form or another,

seem to arrive everyday and most of them straighten out." If Stalin's

intentions still remained difficult to fathom so too did Roosevelt's. And

now Truman was in charge, with neither Roosevelt's experience to inform

him, nor a clear sense of Roosevelt's perceptions to offer him direction.

Without being able to analyze at leisure all the complex information

that was relevant, Truman solicited the best advice he could from those who

were most knowledgeable about foreign relations. Hurrying back from Moscow,

Averell Harriman sought the president's ear, lobbying intensively with

White House and State Department officials for his position that

"irreconcilable differences" separated the Soviet Union and the United

States, with the Russians seeking "the extension of the Soviet system with

secret police, [and] extinction of freedom of speech" everywhere they

could. Earlier, Harriman had been well disposed toward the Soviet

leadership, enthusiastically endorsing Russian interest in a postwar loan

and advocating cooperation wherever possible. But now Harriman perceived a

hardening of Soviet attitudes and a more aggressive posture toward control

over Eastern Europe. The Russians had just signed a separate peace treaty

with the Lublin (pro-Soviet) Poles, and after offering safe passage to

sixteen pro-Western representatives of the Polish resistance to conduct

discussions about a government of national unity, had suddenly arrested the

sixteen and held them incommunicado. America's previous policy of

generosity toward the Soviets had been "misinterpreted in Moscow," Harriman

believed, leading the Russians to think they had carte blanche to proceed

as they wished. In Harriman's view, the Soviets were engaged in a

"barbarian invasion of Europe." Whether or not Roosevelt would have

accepted Harriman's analysis, to Truman the ambassador's words made eminent

sense. The international situation was like a poker game, Truman told one

friend, and he was not going to let Stalin beat him.

Just ten days after taking office, Truman had the opportunity to play

his own hand with Molotov. The Soviet foreign minister had been sent by

Stalin to attend the first U.N. conference in San Francisco both as a

gesture to Roosevelt's memory and as a means of sizing up the new

president. In a private conversation with former Ambassador to Moscow

Joseph Davies, Molotov expressed his concern that "full information" about

Russian-U.S. relations might have died with FDR and that "differences of

interpretation and possible complications [might] arise which would not

occur if Roosevelt lived." Himself worried that Truman might make "snap

judgments," Davies urged Molotov to explain fully Soviet policies vis-a-vis

Poland and Eastern Europe in order to avoid future conflict.

Truman implemented the same no-nonsense approach when it came to

decisions about the atomic bomb. Astonishingly, it was not until the day

after Truman's meeting with Molotov that he was first briefed about the

bomb. By that time, $2 billion had already been spent on what Stimson

called "the most terrible weapon ever known in human history." Immediately,

Truman grasped the significance of the information. "I can't tell you what

this is," he told his secretary, "but if it works, and pray God it does, it

will save many American lives." Here was a weapon that might not only bring

the war to a swift conclusion, but also provide a critical lever of

influence in all postwar relations. As James Byrnes told the president, the

bomb would "put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the

war."

In the years subsequent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historians have

debated the wisdom of America's being the first nation to use such a

horrible weapon of destruction and have questioned the motivation leading

up to that decision. Those who defend the action point to ferocious

Japanese resistance at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and the likelihood of even

greater loss of life if an invasion of Japan became necessary. Support for

such a position comes even from some Japanese. "If the military had its

way," one military expert in Japan has said, "we would have fought until

all 80 million Japanese were dead. Only the atomic bomb saved me. Not me

alone, but many Japanese. . . ." Those morally repulsed by the incineration

of human flesh that resulted from the A-bomb, on the other hand, doubt the

necessity of dropping it, citing later U.S. intelligence surveys which

concluded that "Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had

not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no

invasion had been planned or contemplated." Distinguished military leaders

such as Dwight Eisenhower later opposed use of the bomb. "First, the

Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with

that awful thing," Eisenhower noted. "Second, I hated to see our country be

the first to use such a weapon." In light of such statements, some have

asked why there was no effort to communicate the horror of the bomb to

America's adversaries either through a demonstration explosion or an

ultimatum. Others have questioned whether the bomb would have been used on

non-Asians, although the fire-bombing of Dresden claimed more victims than

Hiroshima. Perhaps most seriously, some have charged that the bomb was used

primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union rather than to secure victory over

Japan.

Although revulsion at America's deployment of atomic weapons is

understandable, it now appears that no one in the inner circles of American

military and political power ever seriously entertained the possibility of

not using the bomb. As Henry Stimson later recalled, "it was our common

objective, throughout the war, to be the first to produce an atomic weapon

and use it. ... At no time, from 1941 to 1945, did I ever hear it suggested

by the president, or by any other responsible member of the government,

that atomic energy should not be used in the war." As historians Martin

Sherwin and Barton Bernstein have shown, the momentum behind the Manhattan

Project was such that no one ever debated the underlying assumption that,

once perfected, nuclear weapons would be used. General George Marshall told

the British, as well as Truman and Stimson, that a land invasion of Japan

would cause casualties ranging from five hundred thousand to more than a

million American troops. Any president who refused to use atomic weapons in

the face of such projections could logically be accused of needlessly

sacrificing American lives. Moreover, the enemy was the same nation that

had unleashed a wanton and brutal attack on Pearl Harbor. As Truman later

explained to a journalist, "When you deal with a beast, you have to treat

him as a beast." Although many of the scientists who had seen the first

explosion of the bomb in New Mexico were in awe of its destructive

potential and hoped to find some way to avoid its use in war, the idea of a

demonstration met with skepticism. Only one or two bombs existed. What if,

in a demonstration, they failed to detonate? Thus, as horrible as it may

seem in retrospect, no one ever seriously doubted the necessity of dropping

the bomb on Japan once the weapon was perfected.

On the Russian issue, however, there now seems little doubt that

administration officials thought long and hard about the bomb's impact on

postwar relations with the Soviet Union. Faced with what seemed to be the

growing intransigence of the Soviet Union toward virtually all postwar

questions, Truman and his advisors concluded that possession of the weapon

would give the United States unprecedented leverage to push Russia toward a

more accommodating position. Senator Edwin Johnson stated the equation

crassly, but clearly. "God Almighty in his infinite wisdom," the Senator

said, "[has] dropped the atomic bomb in our lap ... [now] with vision and

guts and plenty of atomic bombs, . . . [the U.S. can] compel mankind to

adopt a policy of lasting peace ... or be burned to a crisp." Stating the

same argument with more sophistication prior to Hiroshima, Stimson told

Truman that the bomb might well "force a favorable settlement of Eastern

European questions with the Russians." Truman agreed. If the weapon worked,

he noted, "I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys."

Use of the bomb as a diplomatic lever played a pivotal role in Truman's

preparation for his first meeting with Stalin at Potsdam. Not only would

the conference address such critical questions as Eastern Europe, Germany,

and Russia's involvement in the war against Japan;

It would also provide a crucial opportunity for America to drive home

with forcefulness its foreign policy beliefs about future relationships

with Russia. Stimson and other advisors urged the president to hold off on

any confrontation with Stalin until the bomb was ready. "Over any such

tangled wave of problems," Stimson noted, "the bomb's secret will be

dominant. ... It seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes and

diplomacy without having your master card in your hand." Although Truman

could not delay the meeting because of a prior commitment to hold it in

July, the president was well aware of the bomb's significance. Already

noted for his brusque and assertive manner, Truman suddenly took on new

confidence in the midst of the Potsdam negotiations when word arrived that

the bomb had successfully been tested. "He was a changed man," Churchill

noted. "He told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally

bossed the whole meeting." Now, the agenda was changed. Russian involvement

in the Japanese war no longer seemed so important. Moreover, the United

States had as a bargaining chip the most powerful weapon ever unleashed.

Three days later, Truman walked up to Stalin and casually told him that the

United States had "perfected a very powerful explosive, which we're going

to use against the Japanese." No mention was made of sharing information

about the bomb, or of future cooperation to avoid an arms race.

Yet the very nature of the new weapon proved a mixed blessing, making

it as much a source of provocation as of diplomatic leverage. Strategic

bombing surveys throughout the war had shown that mass bombings, far from

demoralizing the enemy, often redoubled his commitment to resist. An

American monopoly on atomic weapons would, in all likelihood, have the same

effect on the Russians, a proud people. As Stalin told an American diplomat

later, "the nuclear weapon is something with which you frighten people [who

have] weak nerves." Yet if the war had proven anything, it was that Russian

nerves were remarkably strong. Rather than intimidate the Soviets, Dean

Acheson pointed out, it was more likely that evidence of Anglo-American

cooperation in the Manhattan Project would seem to them "unanswerable

evidence of ... a combination against them. ... It is impossible that a

government as powerful and power conscious as the Soviet government could

fail to react vigorously to the situation. It must and will exert every

energy to restore the loss of power which the situation has produced."

In fact, news of the bomb's development simply widened the gulf further

between the superpowers, highlighting the mistrust that existed between

them, with sources of antagonism increasing far faster than efforts at

cooperation. On May 11, two days after Germany surrendered—and two weeks

after the Truman-Molotov confrontation—America had abruptly terminated all

lend-lease shipments to the Soviet Union that were not directly related to

the war against Japan. Washington even ordered ships in the mid-Atlantic to

turn around. The action had been taken largely in rigid bureaucratic

compliance with a new law governing lend-lease just enacted by Congress,

but Truman had been warned of the need to handle the matter in a way that

was sensitive to Soviet pride. Instead, he signed the termination order

without even reading it. Although eventually some shipments were resumed,

the damage had been done. The action was "brutal," Stalin later told Harry

Hopkins, implemented in a "scornful and abrupt manner." Had the United

States consulted Russia about the issue "frankly" and on "a friendly

basis," the Soviet dictator said, "much could have been done"; but if the

action "was designed as pressure on the Russians in order to soften them

up, then it was a fundamental mistake."

Russian behavior through these months, on the other hand, offered

little encouragement for the belief that friendship and cooperation ranked

high on the Soviet agenda. In addition to violating the spirit of the Yalta

accords by jailing the sixteen members of the Polish underground and

signing a separate peace treaty with the Lublin Poles, Stalin seemed more

intent on reviving and validating his reputation as architect of the purges

than as one who wished to collaborate in spreading democracy. He jailed

thousands of Russian POWs returning from German prison camps, as if their

very presence on foreign soil had made them enemies of the Russian state.

One veteran was imprisoned because he had accepted a present from a British

comrade in arms, another for making a critical comment about Stalin in a

letter. Even Molotov's wife was sent to Siberia. In the meantime, hundreds

of thousands of minority nationalities in the Soviet Union were removed

forcibly from their homelands when they protested the attempted

obliteration of their ancient identities. Some Westerners speculated that

Stalin was clinically psychotic, so paranoid about the erosion of his

control over the Russian people that he would do anything to close Soviet

borders and prevent the Russian people from getting a taste of what life in

a more open society would be like. Winston Churchill, for example, wondered

whether Stalin might not be more fearful of Western friendship than of

Western hostility, since greater cooperation with the noncommunist world

could well lead to a dismantling of the rigid totalitarian control he

previously had exerted. For those American diplomats who were veterans of

service in Moscow before the war, Soviet actions and attitudes seemed all

too reminiscent of the viselike terror they remembered from the worst days

of the 1930s.

When Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met in Potsdam in July 1945, these

suspicions were temporarily papered over, but no progress was made on

untying the Gordian knots that plagued the wartime alliance. Truman sought

to improve the Allies' postwar settlement with Italy, hoping to align that

country more closely with the West. Stalin agreed on the condition that

changes favorable to the Soviets be approved for Romania, Hungary,

Bulgaria, and Finland. When Truman replied that there had been no free

elections in those countries, Stalin retorted that there had been none in

Italy either. On the issue of general reparations the three powers agreed

to treat each occupation zone separately. As a result, one problem was

solved, but in the process the future division of Germany was almost

assured. The tone of the discussions was clearly not friendly. Truman

raised the issue of the infamous Katyn massacre, where Soviet troops killed

thousands of Polish soldiers and bulldozed them into a common grave. When

Truman asked Stalin directly what had happened to the Polish officers, the

Soviet dictator responded: "they went away." After Churchill insisted that

an iron fence had come down around British representatives in Romania,

Stalin dismissed the charges as "all fairy tales." No major conflicts were

resolved, and the key problems of reparation amounts, four-power control

over Germany, the future of Eastern Europe, and the structure of any

permanent peace settlement were simply referred to the Council of Foreign

Ministers. There, not surprisingly, they festered, while the pace toward

confrontation accelerated.

The first six months of 1946 represented a staccato series of Cold War

events, accompanied by increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. In direct

violation of a wartime agreement that all allied forces would leave Iran

within six months of the war's end, Russia continued its military

occupation of the oil-rich region of Azerbaijan. Responding to the Iranian

threat, the United States demanded a U.N. condemnation of the Soviet

presence in Azerbaijan and, when Russian tanks were seen entering the area,

prepared for a direct confrontation. "Now we will give it to them with both

barrels," James Byrnes declared. Unless the United States stood firm, one

State Department official warned, "Azerbaijan [will] prove to [be] the

first shot fired in the Third World War." Faced with such clear-cut

determination, the Soviets ultimately withdrew from Iran.

Yet the tensions between the two powers continued to mount. In early

February, Stalin issued what Supreme Court Justice William Douglas called

the "Declaration of World War III," insisting that war was inevitable as

long as capitalism survived and calling for massive sacrifice at home. A

month later Winston Churchill—with Truman at his side—responded at Fulton,

Missouri, declaring that "from Stetting in the Baltic to Trieste in the

Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the [European] continent."

Claiming that "God has willed" the United States and Britain to hold a

monopoly over atomic weapons, Churchill called for a "fraternal association

of the English speaking people" against their common foes. Although Truman

made no public statement, privately he had told Byrnes in January: "I'm

tired of babying the Soviets. They [must be] faced with an iron fist and

strong language. . . . Only one language do they understand—how many

divisions have you?" Stalin, meanwhile, charged Britain and the United

States with repressing democratic insurgents in Greece, declaring that it

was the western Allies, not the Soviet Union, that endangered world peace.

"When Mr. Churchill calls for a new war," Molotov told a foreign ministers'

meeting in May, "and makes militant speeches on two continents, he

represents the worst of twentieth-century imperialism."

During the spring and summer, clashes occurred on virtually all the

major issues of the Cold War. After having told the Soviet Union that the

State Department had "lost" its $6 billion loan request made in January

1945, the United States offered a $1 billion loan in the spring of 1946 as

long as the Soviet Union agreed to join the World Bank and accept the

credit procedures and controls of that body. Not surprisingly, the Russians

refused, announcing instead a new five-year plan that would promote

economic self-sufficiency. Almost paranoid about keeping Westerners out of

Russia, Stalin had evidently concluded that participation in a Western-run

financial consortium was too serious a threat to his own total authority.

"Control of their border areas," the historian Walter LaFeber has noted,

"was worth more to the Russians than a billion, or even ten billion

dollars." A year earlier the response might have been different. But 1946

was a "year of cement," with little if any willingness to accept

flexibility. In Germany, meanwhile, the Russians rejected a Western

proposal for unifying the country and instead determined to build up their

own zone. The United States reciprocated by declaring it would no longer

cooperate with Russia by removing reparations from the west to the east.

The actions guaranteed a permanent split of Germany and coincided with

American plans to rebuild the West German economy.

The culminating breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations came over the

failure to secure agreement on the international control of atomic energy.

After Potsdam, some American policymakers had urged the president to take a

new approach on sharing such control with the Soviet Union. The atom bomb,

Henry Stimson warned Truman in the fall of 1945, would dominate America's

relations with Russia. "If we fail to approach them now and continue to

negotiate with . . . this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their

suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase."

Echoing the same them, Dr. Harold Urey, a leading atomic scientist, told

the Senate that by making and storing atomic weapons, "we are guilty of

beginning the arms race." Furthermore, there was an inherent problem with

the "gun on our hip" approach. As the scientist Vannevar Bush noted, "there

is no powder in the gun, [nor] could [it] be drawn," unless the United

States were willing to deploy the A-bomb to settle diplomatic disputes.

Recognizing this, Truman set Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal to work in

the winter of 1945—46 to prepare a plan for international control.

But by the time the American proposal had been completed, much of the

damage in Soviet-American relations seemed irreparable. Although the Truman

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