The Cold War & Its Origins, 1917–1960. Vol.I, 1917–1950

Just before Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, he had prepared a radio address to be given the next day to celebrate Jefferson’s birthday. In it he had written that “the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough. We must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.”

Urging that an end be put “forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the difference between peoples by the mass killing of peoples,” he asked the American people to “keep up your faith. I measure the sound, solid achievement that can be made at this time by the straight-edge of your own confidence and your resolve.”

Then in his last words to us Roosevelt said: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

This was the spirit in which Roosevelt faced the making of peace, on the last day of his life. There was no hint of a long, bitter “cold war” over who should control Eastern Europe, a conflict extending to Asia and becoming the loudest and most expensive “peace time” power fight in all human history. Both Roosevelt and Hull had been filled with a mighty resolve that this time the peace should not be frittered away and lost, that there should be no resurgence of self-defeating isolationism, no reentry into the old, old treadmill of rival alliances, armaments race, mounting tension and war. This time it should be different. They both willed it and had faith that the fatal cycle could be avoided. They both knew that preserving good relations with Russia was the factor upon which all their hopes depended and they meant to achieve a solid working agreement with the U.S.S.R. in a new league of nations.

Sudden Reversal

When the strong hands of both Roosevelt and Hull were removed from the helm of the ship of state within a short space of time it was almost certain to move less surely into the future. Some of their successors meant to carry on their international policies, but others wanted to reverse them, especially the key policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union.

After he returned from Yalta, Roosevelt had little time or energy to counsel with the new Vice President, Harry S. Truman, about post-war foreign policy, and as his strength waned the risk of a reversal of his world policy constantly increased. It began to materialize two days after his death, when on the way home from Roosevelt’s funeral the new President began to learn of “the status of many serious problems in our foreign and domestic relations” from James F. Byrnes.¹

The next morning at 9:45, and every morning thereafter, the new President, overwhelmed by the tremendous responsibilities suddenly placed upon him, had a conference with one of the strongest and most impressive personalities in Washington, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Staff to the President and top-ranking man in the entire hierarchy of army, navy and air officials.

Each morning at this hour Admiral Leahy told the President about the state of the world. He summarized intelligence reports received during the night, military, political, social and economic, almost anything that had a “bearing on American security and the shaping of policy.”

The man who was in this unique position to influence the new President had a long-time aversion to the Russians. “Only once did Leahy swerve from his adamant attitude toward the Soviets and then only momentarily” at Teheran when he thought the Russians were very friendly, until Charles Bohlen reminded him that they had also been friendly to Ribbentrop when the Hitler-Stalin Pact was signed.²

It was Leahy, said Frank Gervasi in a significant article “Watchdog in the White House,” who “tutored Truman on what happened at all of the Big Four conferences and a lot of others he had attended.” He “coached Roosevelt’s inexperienced successor on the significance of Russia’s emergence as a major power at the end of World War II” and these tutoring sessions enabled Leahy to be “one of the principal architects of the ‘tough-policy’ toward Russia.” He “did not singlehandedly bring the United States about in a full 180 degree turn on the course toward Russia. Other helmsmen had a hand on the wheel from time to time. But only Leahy was always near enough to the wheel to make his influence felt constantly.”³

Leahy worked so rapidly that a week after his first conference the new President was ready to reprimand the Russians strongly. The occasion came on the afternoon of April 23, 1945, when Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov came to see the President on his way to the San Francisco Conference. Stalin had refused to send Molotov to the conference until after Roosevelt’s death, when he acceded to Truman’s request as a gesture of good will toward him.

The Truman-Molotov meeting was preceded by a conference in the White House attended by Secretary of State Stettinius, Secretary of War Stimson, Navy Secretary Forrestal, Admiral King, General Marshall, Admiral Leahy, Assistant Secretary of State James Dunn, Charles Bohlen, Ambassador to Russia Harriman, and Major General Deane, Chief of the United States Military Mission to Moscow.

The majority of this group was quite ready to take a tough attitude toward Russia, some from long predilection, others influenced by the series of dispatches from Ambassador Harriman during the preceding three weeks to the general effect that the Russians were feeling their oats too strongly and that a “tough” policy should be adopted toward them.⁴

Secretary of State Stettinius reported to the gathering that discussions with Molotov about the seating of the Russian-sponsored Polish Lublin Government at San Francisco had taken a most unsatisfactory turn. Stettinius had “completely reliable information” that the Lublin Government “did not in any way represent the Polish people.” (Forrestal’s italics.) When asked for his views Secretary of War Stimson, the most experienced elder statesman in the room, reminded the group that the Russian conception of freedom, democracy and voting was quite different from ours, and he “thought that the Russians perhaps were being more realistic than we were in regard to their own security.” In other words, Stimson understood what Poland meant to Russia from the security standpoint. He recalled that “the Russians had carried out their military engagements quite faithfully and he would be sorry to see this one incident project a breach between the two countries.”

Stimson almost seemed to say that after all Poland was a matter of desperate concern to Russia and far away from our borders.

Admiral Leahy recalled that “he had left Yalta with the impression that the Soviet government had no intention of permitting a free Poland, and that he would have been surprised had the Soviet government behaved any differently than it had.” He hoped “the matter could be put to the Russians in such a way as not to close the door to accommodation.”

General Marshall was “even more cautious.” He reminded them that we hoped for Russian participation in the war against Japan “at a time when it would still be useful to us,” participation which the Soviets could delay “until we had done all the dirty work.”

Secretary Forrestal was for “a showdown with them now rather than later” and President Truman came down heavily on that side, saying “that he felt our agreements with the Soviet Union so far had been a one-way street and that he could not continue; it was now or never. He intended to go on with the plans for San Francisco and if the Russians did not wish to join us they could go to hell.”⁵

This decision brings out strikingly the great rapidity with which Roosevelt’s policy of working with Russia was reversed. It may well be that Roosevelt would have resisted the acceptance of the Lublin Government at San Francisco. The strong probability is that he would have, but without telling the Russians to go to hell.

The three outstanding men in the conference, from the twin standpoints of experience and personality—Stimson, Marshall and Leahy—all refused to regard the matter of the Lublin Government as a casus belli. From their statements they did not regard it as of capital importance that Russia be slapped down, then and there, but belligerent minded President Truman was all ready for it, at the very start of his presidential career.

Admiral Leahy and Charles Bohlen stayed for the meeting with Molotov when he was ushered in to pay his respects to the new President, “who lost no time in making very plain to Molotov our displeasure at the Soviet failure to carry through the agreement made at Yalta about the character of a new Polish Government.” Truman’s “blunt language unadorned by the polite verbiage of diplomacy” was “more than pleasing to me,” said Leahy. Then he added: “Personally I did not believe that the dominating Soviet influence could be excluded from Poland, but I did think it was possible to give the reorganized Polish Government an external appearance of independence.”⁶

Leahy knew what the realities in Poland were. He had told Roosevelt at Yalta that the agreement concerning Eastern Europe could be “stretched all the way from here to Washington without ever technically breaking it,” and he knew that Roosevelt’s reply that he could not do better for Poland was true,⁷ but Truman would not concede to Molotov that the interests of Russia in Poland were controlling,⁸ and the meeting ended abruptly.

Ten years later, when Molotov was reluctant to hear Truman speak at the Anniversary session of the United Nations, Drew Pearson wrote, as he had repeatedly done before, that on the occasion under review Molotov “heard Missouri mule-driver’s language.” Charles Bohlen, who served as interpreter had told Byrnes later that “he had never heard a top official get such a scolding.”⁹

There are some who think the Cold War did not begin until around 1947, but it is clear from this episode that President Truman was ready to begin it before he had been in office two weeks. The years of labor by Roosevelt and Hull to build a basis of understanding with the Soviet leaders which would last through the peace making were cancelled out on April 23, 1945. The Foreign Minister of a victorious ally, one still greatly desired by us for the Japanese war, was given a tongue lashing such as the minister of a Central American republic might bridle under.

From the eminence of eleven days in power Harry Truman made his decision to lay down the law to an ally which had contributed more in blood and agony to the common cause than we had—and about Poland, an area through which the Soviet Union had been invaded three times since 1914.

It was another five months before Truman decided finally to regard the Soviet Union as an unfriendly state, after our post-Hiroshima diplomatic campaign to enforce free elections in the Balkans had led to total deadlock in the very first Conference of Foreign Ministers, and began composing the Truman Doctrine for the “containment” of the Soviet Union.¹⁰ However, the basis for the Cold War was laid on April 23 in the scourging which Truman administered to Molotov, giving notice that in areas of the most crucial concern to Russia our wishes must be obeyed.

By this time the Roosevelt-Hull policies had been thrown into reverse, though the people did not know it, and the signals set for many years of desperate and dangerous power rivalry, beginning in Eastern Europe and involving the expenditure of many hundreds of billions of dollars in an atomic armament race.

Lend-Lease Abruptly Cut Back. The famous incident of the abrupt reduction of lend-lease supplies to our allies, including the U.S.S.R., was due to a willingness of some officials to act quickly in this direction, to the inexperience of President Truman, and to legislative requirement, rigidly interpreted. In his Memoirs President Truman explained that the order had been approved by President Roosevelt, but not signed, and that when Foreign Economic Administrator Leo Crowley and Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew brought it to him on May 8, 1945, he signed it without reading it.

Then Crowley promptly placed an embargo on all shipments to Russia and other European countries on May 12. Some ships were even turned around and brought back to port for unloading. This abrupt end of the great flow of food, clothing, arms and munitions “naturally stirred up a hornet’s nest” in the U.S.S.R. and after other European countries complained President Truman rescinded the order. He adds that if he had read it in the first place the incident would not have occurred.¹¹

Secretary of State Stettinius, himself a former lend-lease administrator, was shocked by the occurrence. From San Francisco he promptly indicated his disagreement¹² and he wrote later that the order was “particularly untimely and did not help Soviet-American relations.” The fact that the Soviets were pledged to enter the war against Japan made it “even more incredible.” It “caught the State Department completely by surprise” and came “without any warning whatsoever to the Soviet Union.” Stettinius urged Acting Secretary of State Grew to discuss it with President Truman immediately, and the President ‘wisely modified the order. However, psychological damage had been done in our relations with a nation as suspicious as the Soviet Union.”¹³

When Truman sent Harry Hopkins to Moscow, on May 27, 1945, to try to settle some of the outstanding questions with Russia, Stalin said that if due warning had been given the cancellation of lend-lease would not have caused hard feelings. Hopkins explained that no pressure upon Russia was intended and Stalin replied that he was fully satisfied with the explanation.¹⁴

Then after the end of hostilities with Japan, Administrator Crowley did exactly the same thing. Japan surrendered on August 14 and four days later, at 5:00 p.m. on August 18, Crowley suddenly stopped all lend-lease shipments through Portland, Oregon, the port for shipments to the Soviet Union. Two days later Crowley sent unofficial notice of the ending of lend-lease to all of our allies, and on August 21 President Truman suddenly announced the end of all lend-lease operations. Again the British were hurt, though the axe had fallen on Russia more promptly. Prime Minister Attlee said that “we had hoped that the sudden cessation of this great mutual effort would not have been effected without consultation and prior discussion,” and Churchill found it difficult to believe that the Americans “would proceed in such a rough and harsh manner as to hamper a faithful ally—an ally who had held the fort while their own armaments were prepared.”¹⁵

During this period everything which Roosevelt and Hull had hoped to avoid came to pass. With Russia conflict was the order of the day, instead of cooperation, to such an extent that after a year or two diplomacy practically ceased to exist. There were only name calling and propaganda efforts by each side to convict the other of an intention to conquer the world. Even the United Nations, which was created to keep the peace after it was made, was reduced mainly to a forum in which the two giant powers assailed each other.

The Creation of the United Nations

Nothing of this was foreseen when the United Nations was being created. Nobody anticipated that Roosevelt would die at the moment of victory and that the next day there would begin the “full 180 degree turn on the course toward Russia” which Gervasi recorded in 1948.

In the early war years all attention was centered on preventing again precisely such a disastrous 180 degree turn in our foreign policy as had happened after World War I. The abrupt reversal of Woodrow Wilson’s policy after 1918 had let us in for World War II. This time we would not about face the moment the fighting ended.

When it became apparent that the incredible fact of a Second World War was about to curse mankind, so soon after the Armageddon of 1914, the spirit of Woodrow Wilson was strong in the land. Everywhere people remembered his heroic struggle to prevent just such a pitiful, tragic repetition of worldwide death and desolation. Everywhere people said: “Wilson was right. We must do better this time.”

By this they meant that the effort to make peace must not again be smothered under a deluge of partisan and personal hatred, registered in the United States Senate at treaty making time. The Senate must not again bury the peace beneath a shroud of hair-splitting, “preservative” reservations, designed to make the world wholly safe for Uncle Sam forever, and end up by making a separate peace with the enemy.

This feeling was so general that even the Senate could not avoid being aware of its power. Isolationist Senators began to ask their internationalist brethren to tell them about this League of Nations. Group meetings were held at Senators’ homes and when the inquiring heard about the League they said: “Why this is the very thing we need.”

It was not enough, however, for the Senate to be willing to let the peace be organized in 1945. Some affirmation was necessary to persuade the world that this was true. The Senate had convinced people everywhere that the United States could not make peace. The other peoples agreed that we could win wars, but added that our requirement of a two-thirds vote in the Senate for the approval of treaties made us unable to make peace.

This conviction was so universal, and so well understood, that on March 14, 1943, four Senators—Ball, Burton, Hatch and Hill—began to agitate in the Senate for a promise of good behavior on its part after this war. Naturally this went hard with Senatorial dignity, but the country insisted, knowing that otherwise there would be no foundation of faith on which a more durable peace could be built. When a Republican Post-War Advisory Council meeting was held at Mackinac Island, Michigan, on September 3, 1943, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, head of the key committee, made it plain that heavy accent would be put on nationalism and the full retention of sovereignty in any pledge to cooperate with other countries.¹⁶ Yet a group of New England Governors was able to secure a resolution which promised “responsible participation by the United States in post-war cooperative organization among sovereign nations to prevent military aggression. . . .”

The Fulbright and Connally Resolutions. A few days later, on September 21, the House of Representatives passed the Fulbright Resolution by a vote of 360 to 29. It was “Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring) that the Congress hereby expresses itself as favoring the creation of appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace among the nations of the world and as favoring participation by the United States therein, through its constitutional processes.”

Thus prodded, the Senate at last voted a resolution of its own, on November 5, 1943, in which the Senate recognized the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization “with power to prevent aggression and to preserve the peace of the world.” The vote was 85 to 5 and the announced position of absentees made it 90 to 6, every Senator being committed.

Discussions with Senators. This made the planning of peace possible and, with the sensibilities of Henry Cabot Lodge the elder and his associates ever in his mind, Secretary Hull resolved to make a mighty effort to get bi-partisan agreement during the peace making. Accordingly, he cultivated Senators informally and then invited the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to name a sub-committee to meet with him. When this group held its first meeting, on April 25, 1944, Hull stressed the primary necessity of keeping Russia “solidly in the international movement.” He pointed out that “malcontents in this country were doing their best to drive Russia out of the international movement by constant attacks and criticisms largely about minor incidents or acts. Unless it was possible to prevail upon newspapers, commentators, and columnists to refrain from this line of activity, which during the past two months had greatly confused the mind of the public with regard to the more essential phases of the postwar situation, it would be difficult for any international undertaking, such as that offered by us, to succeed.”¹⁷

At the next session, on May 12, 1944, a Senator “inquired pointedly” whether Russia really desired to cooperate and Hull replied that “at all times up to this day, Marshal Stalin and Molotov and their associates had quickly made clear to any inquirer their unqualified desire to become full-fledged associates in the international cooperation movement.” Our customs and manners were about as mysterious to the Russians as theirs were to us. Time and patience were absolutely indispensable, Hull added, insisting that “we simply must not quarrel with each other.”

When the Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the international organization met, August 21, 1944, the preliminary discussion had been so thorough that the Russian, British and American drafts did not differ greatly. In the debates some difficulties did develop. Gromyko paralyzed the conference on one occasion by observing that the sixteen Soviet republics should be charter members of UN, but he did not press the point. This conference was unable to agree upon the exercise of the veto power, but Hull recorded that the Russians had “shown an admirable cooperation from the first day of the conference.”¹⁸

The Origin of the Veto. The principle of the great-power veto was not under discussion at Dumbarton Oaks, but only the extent to which it should be used when a great power is a party to a dispute. The American delegation had itself split on this issue, and on December 5 the State Department forwarded a compromise proposal to Russia and Britain, providing that the great powers should have the right to veto any sanctions or other action against themselves, but not to prevent the discussion of a dispute with another member of UN, little or big. This was accepted at Yalta and became the permanent provision in the UN Charter.¹⁹

It is essential to be clear about the origins of the veto, since its frequent use by Russia later on raised great feeling against the veto power itself and the impression grew that it was a Russian invention. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When the framework of UN was being prepared in the State Department it was agreed that the United States must retain a veto over the ultimate use of force; that is, over the use of its armed forces in any and all contingencies.

Then the question arose: “If we keep a veto for ourselves to whom else must we concede it?” The answer was, “to the other great powers.” This was a real gain, since in the League of Nations every member had had a veto, in both the Assembly and the Council.

It is true that Russia would not have entered UN without a veto right which would prevent any action against her, by a majority dominated by twenty Latin American states or by any majority, but Britain was just as firm in retaining the veto for her own use and there cannot be the slightest doubt that the Senate would have rejected any UN Charter which did not retain a veto for the United States. If, too, the Russians should suddenly come forward and propose the abolition of the veto it is certain that we would rush to its defense.

It may be unfortunate that the great powers were not willing to give the United Nations any real, irrecoverable authority, but this was the fact and all three of them were equally to be blamed, or praised, for this decision. In Hull’s words: “we were no less resolute than the Russians in adhering to this principle. . . .”²⁰

Senator Vandenberg’s Call for Justice

Shortly after Hull left office Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan, rose to a position of strong leadership in the field of foreign affairs, a position which grew rapidly after Roosevelt’s death.

Up until Pearl Harbor, Vandenberg was a leading isolationist. His biographers say that for years “he had been carefully creating for America a kind of Portrait of an Isolationist.” When the lend-lease bill was passed he felt as if he “was witnessing the suicide of the Republic.” If America cracked up, this would be the moment when “the crime was committed.”²¹

Soviet Russia was “a matter of no little concern” to him from the start of the war. He repeatedly reminded people that he had been one of two Senators who voted against recognition of the Soviet Union. He had urged the breaking of relations in 1939. Yet on April 21, 1943, he recorded “the gloomiest morning I have had since Pearl Harbor.” He had heard that Germany had made “peace proposals to Russia which might detach her from the war.” A week later he faced a dilemma which he found intolerable. Suppose Stalin should ask if we considered his retention of the Baltic States, East Poland and Bessarabia, as “territorial aggrandizement.” If we said “Yes,” we would infuriate Moscow and if “No,” we would infuriate tens of thousands of our own people, referring to his heavy Polish-Ameiican constituency in Michigan. Therefore: “We must win the war first. Russia’s withdrawal would cost a million needless casualties.”²²

In other words, we could not do without Russia’s powerful aid. Losing it would cost us a million casualties. So the effort to roll back Russia’s 1941 boundaries would have to wait until the war was won.

As it continued, Vandenberg saw that “real international cooperation was the only alternative to future wars too horrible to imagine.” He therefore combined this objective with a demand for the revision of Russia’s boundaries in his famous speech of January 10, 1945. It was intended, as he wrote later, to be “a challenge to the President on the eve of his departure for Yalta.” He was moved by “the deep conviction that it was time to anticipate what ultimately became the ‘Moscow menace’ and to lay down a formula which would make post-war Soviet expansionism as illogical as it would be unnecessary.”²³

Vandenberg’s address was made with such “honest candor”—he used the phrase seven times—that the nation was deeply impressed. Speaking in a “spirit of anxious humility” and pleading for “the straightest, the plainest and the most courageous thinking of which we are capable,” “devoid of prejudice or ire,” Vandenberg proclaimed his disbelief that “any nation hereafter can immunize itself by its own exclusive action.” Pearl Harbor had settled that. War had “become an all-consuming juggernaut.” He proposed to do everything in his power to keep the laboratories of death closed hereafter and as a concrete step to this end he proposed that “a hard and fast treaty between the major allies” be signed at once, “today,” binding us to move automatically against any new German or Japanese aggression in the future, without any “need to refer any such action back to Congress.” The “Commander-in-Chief should have instant power to act.”

When Vandenberg, a man of impressive voice and personality, closed his address with the statement: “I do not wish to meddle, I wish only to help. I want to do my duty,” the effect upon the Senate was profound. From that moment and for years afterwards he was to be the leader of his Party and of the Senate in foreign affairs. The world was now his province.

A New Statesman. The effect upon the American people was almost as far reaching. Vandenberg was hailed as the isolationist who had made a full, frank and sincere confession of his conversion to internationalism. Far from quoting George Washington on entangling alliances he was now willing to make the most sweeping and binding alliances to keep the peace. Since it took a broad gauge man to do that, he at once became a statesman. The present writer wrote him a letter of appreciation, and it was not until long afterwards that he discovered that the famous Vandenberg address was the first basic document in the Cold War.

In the meantime, Vandenberg’s prestige rose to record proportions. He was promptly invited by the OWI to speak to the nations overseas. On January 21 the headlines stated that he was boomed for the Presidency in 1948 by his party colleagues in the Senate. On February 4 the New York Times found that fifty Senators would vote for his proposed treaty and eighteen others were favorable, a two-thirds majority.

Delegate to San Francisco. On February 14, 1945, President Roosevelt named him a delegate to the great United Nations Conference at San Francisco. Four days later the country heard that Vandenberg would not accept the appointment unless he had a free rein. He could not serve in the constitutional position of a representative of the President. He must be in no manner bound. On March 6 it was announced that an exchange of letters with Roosevelt had convinced Vandenberg of his right to free action. He would exercise it to insure that “justice” should be made the “guiding objective” of the peace.²⁴

“Justice” for Poland. By this time he had made the word “justice” his motto. His famous address of January 10, 1945, filled nearly five newspaper columns and when analyzed it was, first and foremost, a demand for “justice” for Poland. The startling proposal of a hard and fast treaty with Russia and Britain was aimed squarely at their unilateral actions in Poland and Greece. He included Greece, but Poland was his real concern.

The London Polish Government was being submerged by a Russian sponsored one, and half of Poland’s territory was lost to Russia unless something was done. Since Russia gave us her “perfectly understandable reason,” her “insistent purpose never again to be at the mercy of another German tyranny,” Vandenberg proposed his treaty of guaranty as a substitute for Russia’s method of gaining security. “Russia’s unilateral plan appears to contemplate the engulfment, directly or indirectly, of a surrounding circle of buffer states, contrary to our conception of what we thought we were fighting for in respect to the rights of small nations and a just peace.” This was the core of the immediate problem.

Having by his proposed treaty guaranteed Russia’s security against any future German attack on Russia, the way would then be open to revise the Polish settlement according to our own ideas of “a just peace.” He made it clear that “we have the duty and the right to demand that whatever immediate unilateral decisions have to be made,” military and civil, “they shall all be temporary, and subject to final revision in the objective light of the postwar world and the post-war league.” He was “not prepared to permanently guarantee the spoils of an unjust peace.”

This was the first public call by a responsible Western leader for a stop-Russia movement. She could not be stopped then. As he spoke, her armies were sweeping into Budapest. But let us tell her, in the most solemn and binding manner, that we will protect her from Germany in the future and then revise these war-made settlements that she is making, “in the objective light of the post-war world and the post-war peace league.” What Churchill had failed to accomplish by military action through the Balkans Vandenberg now proposed to achieve by diplomacy.

His Offer to Russia. Was his proposal not statesmanlike and fair? Would not Russia be safer to entrust her security to the protection of the United States and the new peace league than to rest it on “a circle of buffer states?”

The answer is that Russia would have been wise to accept Vandenberg’s apparently generous offer, if the United States had first honored and then kept Wilson’s offer of the same guarantee to France in 1919. This treaty of guarantee, signed by Wilson and Lloyd George with Clemenceau, was Vandenberg’s model. It had the identical purpose, to ease the French security neurosis growing out of repeated and ever more devastating German invasions of France, and to persuade her to accept a paper guarantee instead of holding the Rhine and the Rhineland.

When this triple alliance to keep Germany from erupting again was signed by the three great Western Allies in 1919 it was one of the most realistic and practical treaties ever framed. All three states, close democratic brothers, had a powerful, common interest in preventing another German eruption. This was the sensible way to do it. But Vandenberg’s friends in the Senate scorned this obvious step utterly. They raised a great hue and cry because Wilson chose not to submit the Treaty of Guarantee at the same time that he laid the Treaty of Versailles before the Senate, but once they had gotten the Treaty in their hands they put it into a pigeon-hole and never thought of sending such an absurd, traitorous entangling alliance to the Senate for ratification.

On the contrary, the Senators made a separate treaty of peace with Germany and the United States and Britain rearmed her, leaving France without the security of: (a) the guarantee treaty; (b) the military possession of the Rhineland; or (c) a strong League of Nations. The League was scuttled by France’s allies, later with her own help, along with the treaty of guarantee.²⁵

This is the background for Vandenberg’s magnanimous proposal of January 10, 1945. In 1919 it was the obvious solution and if loyally executed by the United States and Britain it would have prevented the Second World War. In 1945 it was a clever gesture to make the same proposition to the Russians, in lieu of the territorial and political moves in East Europe which they wished to make, but it was only a gesture. It might, and did, seem noble and generous to Vandenberg’s countrymen, but there was not a chance of the Russians accepting it. Since this prescription was originally written in 1919 they had seen the Western powers deliberately permit and encourage Germany to go her own vengeful way, with the result that rivers of Russian blood had been shed. There was no chance whatever that in 1945 they would accept the same kind of paper as the sufficient Palladium of their future peace and security.

This certainty, however, did not stop Vandenberg’s meteoric rise. On March 9, 1945, he was telling a respectful Senate that the new Polish Provisional Government would be tested by its attitude toward Generals Bor and Anders. He warned that expediency and “justice” were often not even on speaking terms. If injustices remained they would “fall squarely within the asserted jurisdiction of the new Peace League.”

Revision of Dumbarton Oaks Demanded. When he studied the Dumbarton Oaks draft Vandenberg found that this was not the case, and he learned that there was no reference to “justice” in the Oaks document.

To remedy these omissions he wrote a memorandum to the State Department which was issued to the press, proposing eight amendments. Three of these mentioned “justice,” though without defining it or saying how it was to be determined in complex situations. The small states, he insisted, had to be protected. “In a word, our League needs a ‘soul’.”

To breathe immortality into the soulless UN, his No. 7 amendment provided that “if the Security Council finds that any situation which it shall investigate involves injustice to peoples concerned it shall recommend appropriate measures which may include revision of treaties and of prior international decisions. . . .”

When the new league was established it should hold a majestic review of the fallibilities of Teheran and Yalta, and especially of Russia’s unilateral acts in Poland. “For example,” Vandenberg explained, “it is one thing to accept a dictated boundary for Country X under pressure of immediate expediency. It is quite a different thing to accept such a boundary as a permanent limitation, underwritten in the basis of world peace, never again to be changed except by international rebellion which we agree to help suppress.” (This was the old isolationist argument that the League of Nations Covenant would fasten Britain’s chains on Ireland forever.) In an impassioned paragraph he urged, “with every emphasis” at his command, “the indispensability of this amendment.”

In case Russia should not heed the behest of the UN to change her boundary with Poland, his No. 8 amendment provided that the Security Council “shall not act, nor shall any member be called upon to act, to perpetuate a status which has been created in disregard of recommendation by the Security Council,” or “a status the adjustment of which has been recommended by the General Assembly or by the Security Council,” or a new status which comes about “through a permanent member of the Council vetoing measures of restraint against it.”²⁶

The intent to discipline Russia with all the moral resources at the command of UN, in spite of her veto, was plainly stated, though this intent did not deter general and enthusiastic acceptance of Vandenberg’s amendments by the American and British delegations.

When a long list of British and American amendments was presented to Molotov at San Francisco on May 4 he accepted all of them with a “friendly attitude,” except the Vandenberg proposal to authorize recommended revision of the peace settlements.²⁷ He thought that such recommendations would give the Germans a chance to propagandize everlastingly for revision of the settlements in their favor, as they had done after World War I.

Nothing, of course, could be more certain. Yet in the end the Russians accepted Article 14 of the Charter, under which “any situation, regardless of origin,” may be brought up for debate and recommendation, subject to the provision of Article 12 that no “dispute or situation” before the Security Council could be dealt with. This Article would make it possible, though not as mandatory as Vandenberg would have liked, for Polish affairs to be debated and recommendations made.

Indicating the kind of action he wanted taken, Vandenberg wrote a public letter to the State Department, on July 20, 1945, stating that the settlement of the Polish question thus far made was “inadequate and unconvincing” and demanding supervision of the promised “free elections” in Poland. Citing the Moscow and Yalta declarations, the Atlantic and San Francisco Charters, he urged that the “full weight of our American influence should be exerted in behalf of final determinations which shall clearly serve the ends of justice in behalf of Poland.”

The Double Standard. A few days later, on August 6, the New York Times accurately headlined another Vandenberg letter to Secretary of State Byrnes as follows: “Vandenberg Urges We Do All Policing in This Hemisphere.” “We might well enough,” said the letter, “accept” in connection with our American allies “exclusive responsibility for any armed forces required to maintain peace and security in the Western Hemisphere. I doubt whether we shall ever want any other armed forces to enter this area.”

The same letter proposed that the President receive a free hand to commit a limited quota of our military forces to world action for keeping the peace.

Vandenberg had made a perfect recording of the double standard which was to be increasingly applied to Russia thereafter. From his citadel of justice he yearned to regulate matters in Poland, according to the canons of principle and conduct which he knew to be just. Poland was on the other side of the earth, and what went on there was to the Russians a matter of life and death, but that made no difference. Justice must be done.

In this hemisphere the case was totally different. Nobody from afar should ever take any hand in establishing justice in this vast area, even through UN. We would not “want” them to do so. If some Mexican bandits should kill a few American citizens in Texas and we should send General Pershing deep into Mexico in their pursuit, as happened in 1916, there can be no doubt about our reaction to any Russian efforts to secure justice for Mexico. The Reds would get short shrift. And if perchance Latin America had disastrously invaded the United States twice in thirty years, through Mexico, one needs little imagination to foresee the thunders of righteous wrath which would hurl back any Russian efforts to get justice for Mexico. The most obtuse Russian would be made to understand that American security took precedence over his notions about justice, and that Mexico was not his affair.

Herbert Hoover wrote in the New York Times on March 27, 1945: “There will be continuing gigantic wrongs in the world. Americans for all time will sorrow for the fate of Finland, of Estonia, of Latvia, of Lithuania, the partition of Poland, and other states that will be partly or wholly submerged by this war. Arguing for the revision of treaties, he wanted to at least leave “a hope open for their long future.”

Argentina Speeded Into UN

Our hearts bled permanently for the fate of Latvia, but we were not willing to consider Russian susceptibilities toward any country in Latin America. There was one government there toward which Russia had strong feelings. Argentina had taken the lead in Russia’s expulsion from the League of Nations. She had also gone fascist and had become, in Hull’s words, “the refuge and headquarters in this hemisphere of the Fascist movement,” a regime obviously aiming at “Argentine hegemony of South America.”²⁸

Worse still, Argentina had given great aid and comfort to our enemies the Germans and the Italians all through the war. Hull’s memoirs contain on many pages ample evidence of her enmity.

For all these reasons Molotov protested the admission of Argentina to the UN at San Francisco, and when the Conference steering committee overrode his protests, Molotov called a press conference and put his case before the world. Quoting castigations of Argentina by both Roosevelt and Hull, he asked only for a few days’ delay in voting on Argentina’s entry. Then he appealed to the full Conference Assembly and was outvoted, first by a vote of 28 delegations to 7 and then by 31 to 4.

As its last act the League of Nations had expelled the Soviet Union. The first act of the United Nations was a vote isolating and humiliating the Soviet Union. This action was taken, moreover, in behalf of a government which was openly taking fascist action against its internal enemies. On June 1, 1945, Arnold Cortesi, who had long reported the doings of Italian Fascism to the New York Times, cabled from Buenos Aires an article which was accurately headlined: “All Freedom Found Ended in Argentina. New Curbs Imposed. Wholesale Arrests Made and Press Is Silenced Under War ‘Security.’ Jails of Country Full. Correspondent Says Conditions Are Worse Than Any He Saw in Fascist Italy.”

Hull was a member of the American delegation to San Francisco. Too ill to attend, he telephoned to Secretary Stettinius his strong opposition to Argentina’s entry. He warned that “if the American delegation were not careful we should get Russia into such a state of mind that she might decide that the United Nations organization was not going to furnish adequate security to her in the future.” She might decide to rely on the acquisition of outposts, buffer territory, warm water harbors, and build up “a federation of nations close to her.”²⁹

This prophetic warning was ignored and Argentina went sailing into the United Nations. On the very first test vote in the UN Russia was isolated with a couple of her satellites (Greece made a gesture of independence), a position from which she has rarely been able to emerge.

Argentina was admitted partly because of commitments made to the Latin Americans at the Chapultepec Conference in Mexico City, February 21, 1945, a preliminary conference which had been held to consolidate a regional Pan-American security system before the world conference at San Francisco met.

At this gathering two fears of Russia met. Throughout Latin America, with the exception of Mexico and one or two other countries, a thin upper crust rules a vast mass of submerged peons and workers. Communism had grown in this fertile ground during the war, alarming “church and state leaders alike.” They were sure that this increase in communist activity was due to Moscow, rather than to the dangerous social conditions beneath them, and so were highly nervous about Russia.

The Latin Americans also feared Argentina, who was not invited to the Chapultepee Conference. It proceeded to agree to apply sanctions to any American aggressor state. Having thus warned Argentina, the Latins wanted her also subject to the vows and sanctions of the UN, and our delegation received orders from Washington to promise implicitly that Argentina would be voted in. Arthur Krock, who is always very close to official sources, said on November 21, 1946, that at San Francisco, “on orders from Washington, redeeming an implicit pledge previously made at Chapultepec by the same orders, the American delegation formed a combination with Latin American and other states in favor of the motion” to admit Argentina.³⁰ In both cases the “orders from Washington” must have come from President Truman, since Secretary of State Stettinius attended both conferences.

From Truman’s point of view he was doubtless consolidating his Latin bloc, in advance of the organization of UN, as a counterbalance to Russia’s prospective East European bloc, though this bloc was not yet organized or its permanence conceded. Pedro Leao Velloso, Brazil’s Foreign Minister, who had just flown up from Rio with Secretary of State Stettinius, baldly declared to the Chapultepec Conference that one of its prime purposes was to line up “a solid bloc of votes” for the forthcoming world security conference.³¹

This was a natural, normal move in the game of power politics, but it was also a body blow at world cooperation with the U.S.S.R. through the UN, not only because of the initial effects but because it would tend to set a pattern. As Krock observed later, “the bloc idea was permanently founded in UN practice,” that is, the anti-Russian bloc idea.

The Latin Americans had reluctantly agreed not to insist on Argentina’s admission when the Ukraine and White Russia were admitted, but when Molotov pressed for Poland’s admission, about whose government there was so much current conflict, they rebelled and insisted that Argentina must go in at once.

This is, essentially, the explanation which Harriman later gave to Stalin.³² It was as good an explanation as could be made of an action which was politically unwise and morally wrong. A little later Walter Lippmann observed that “it was not necessary to purchase the solidarity of this hemisphere by riding roughshod through a world conference with a bloc of twenty votes.” We were strong enough to have insisted that “our neighbors show a wise moderation in the presence of nations which have suffered so much more in the war and have contributed so much more to winning it.”

Our Central Position Lost. Lippmann noted with regret that the United States had already drifted away from and been maneuvered out of “its central position as a mediator.” We had suddenly become the champions of a Latin American bloc against the Soviet Union, and in the Polish question the departure from Roosevelt’s position as mediator had already “had the most unfortunate consequences.” The real issue was between London and Moscow, yet at San Francisco we had allowed ourselves to be drawn into it as partisans.

This was alarming, Lippmann continued, since Anglo-Soviet difficulties extended in “a wide arc through the Balkans to the Middle East and Persia.” If ever there was a moment “when a wise reserve is called for on our part, it is now.”³³

“Inevitable” War Assumed

Lippmann had sensed the drift accurately. Only a month after Roosevelt’s death we had abandoned the controlling, central position among the Allies and had become a partisan. Soon we would be fighting Russia actively alongside of Britain. Then we would take the leadership in opposing Russia at every point until, less than two years later, we would actually proclaim a policy of mounting watch and guard around every mile of the vast perimeter of the Soviet Union and Russia’s sphere in Europe.

This is a profound change. How could it be that at the very moment of a splendid common victory in Europe, and before the agreed common assault on Japan, we should begin a plunge toward conflict with Russia? Before attempting a statement of the reasons for this momentous shift, let us look at some of its details.

On May 22,1945, the able editor of the liberal newspaper PM, Max Lerner, discussed the developing agitation for war with Russia, most of it whispered, but some becoming quite open. Very little of it, “except in the papers which operate on the margin of sanity,” had reached “the stage of direct incitement,” but some writers were beginning to say gravely that a clash with Russia may be “inevitable.” Labelling such a conflict “a day dream war,” Lerner declared that it existed “only in the wishes and imaginations of small groups of men,” people who shared the basic outlook of the German Nazis. These men had had to practise some restraint throughout the long Roosevelt period. “Now that Roosevelt is gone and our energies slackened their pent up hatred bursts out.”

On May 26 Archibald MacLeish, Assistant Secretary of State, sought in a radio address to quiet the growing talk that Russia and the United States were “headed for inevitable conflict.” The basis of the fear, he said, is only fear itself. “The basis of the suspicion is nothing more substantial than suspicion.” He termed the talk of inevitable conflict “a curious debate, with our soldiers living side by side in conquered Germany and our common dead but freshly buried.”

The two nations had proved that they could cooperate in the trying and difficult prosecution of a total war, as well as in the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco Conferences. Their vital interests did not conflict at any point on the globe. Both were rich in their own resources. There was nothing real or logical behind the talk of inevitable conflict.³⁴

Columnist Edgar Ansel Mowrer welcomed this broadcast. There was “far too much talk in this country about our having to fight Russia next. Some of this is silly, some of it criminal, all of it is dangerous.”³⁵

In the same newspaper, Samuel Grafton, one of the keenest and most penetrating writers of the time, analyzed the attacks of a conservative columnist on the British Labor Party as being too friendly to Russia. Moreover, it was complained, a victory for the Labor Party in the coming British election would encourage radicals in America. That, said Grafton, was the way fear spreads. One begins by fearing Russia and ends up by fearing Americans.

On June 3, eleven members of the faculty of Yale University voiced in a letter to the New York Times their concern about “the deplorable and dangerous state” of our relations with Russia. Noting that none of the issues between us touched the security of either country, they warned against the dire effect of “talk in some quarters of the ‘inevitable’ war with Russia—the fulfilment of Hitler’s dream.” The fear of such a conflict could become “the premise of future policy on both sides.”

Ammunition from the Left. Two days later Lemer noted that representatives of the Left like William Henry Chamberlin and Socialist Norman Thomas were furnishing anti-Russian ammunition to the great mass audiences which Hearst and McCormick, DeWitt Wallace and Clare Luce supplied. The Left opposition to Russia had two themes: (1) that Soviet Russia is both tyrannical and imperialist, bloody and omnivorous in its appetites; and (2) that American policy under both Roosevelt and Truman has been a long course of appeasement toward this monster. Chamberlin had recently told a Town Meeting of the Air audience that “America has swallowed many insults, many broken promises, in the interest of war-born unity. But American patience is wearing thin.”

The “frayed Utopians” and “embittered Galahads” of the Left, said Lemer, “see no distinction between meeting an ally half-way to cement a war coalition and maintain a peace coalition, and appeasing an enemy who is openly bent on destroying you.” He challenged these “irresponsibles” of the Left to have the courage to call for a war, as the publishers and publicists of the Right did.

An Isolationist Contribution. On the same day, Senator Burton K. Wheeler delivered a long anti-Russian speech to a body of American soldiers in Rome which was combated by one of them. The soldier said: “I thought we were all Allies fighting one war. I’ve never been told there was any possibility of a war with Russia over some mystic ground about fundamental difference from the American way of life. I’ve never heard of such a conflict. Has the United States Government been fooling me? What is this conflict?”³⁶

Demands for Drawing a Line. On June 14 Grafton noted a quiet phase in the process of making up our minds about Russia. Three approaches had been tried. (1) The idea of war. It had not sold well. “Mrs. Clare Luce’s position of bitter and unredeemed hostility toward the Russian government has not made her a heroine.” (2) Bitterness had developed “against Americans who entertained more or less friendly sentiments toward Russia.” (3) There was a demand that we draw a line; thus far may Russia go and no farther. For the moment there was a lull.

After the entry of Russia into the war against Japan temperatures rose again. On August 9 the New York Post recorded new outbursts by the elements who could not accept the idea of a world balanced between Russia and America. Instead of approaching the emergence of Russia as a peace problem to be solved, they were press agenting the end of the world. They were hysterical because we had bargained with Russia at Potsdam and bewailed that conference as a disaster. They could not be reassured because wherever they looked Russia was still there. Yet we ourselves had grown greatly during the war. We had sprouted a great Pacific fleet, island bases, and a colossal industrial power. If Russia did not like all this she would just have to get used to it.

The People Optimistic. Momentarily it appeared that the American people felt confident about the future. A Gallup poll released on September 10 reported that confidence that Russia could be trusted to cooperate with us was back at high peak. On this question 54 per cent had voted affirmatively, 30 per cent in the negative and 16 per cent were undecided. Confidence in peace with Russia was closely related to education. Of those who had attended college 71 per cent believed that Russia would work with us, while only 58 per cent and 47 per cent of the high school and grammar school groups thought so.

In Washington, too, there was a détente. James B. Reston, one of the most responsible correspondents in the capital, surveyed official opinion and concluded that officials were beginning to understand that the solution of the “Russian problem” was “not an act but a process.” Solution would never come in any one conference. It must be pursued for generations.³⁷

Some Reasons for the Quick Assumption of Inevitable War

1. Accumulated fear, hatred and distrust

When the war ended the bulk of the American people unquestionably wanted only to live in peace with the Russians, whose valor they had admired so much. This was far from true of some groups, both on the Left wing and on the Right. It was the latter whose influence was of tremendous import, because they controlled so much of the machinery of public information. Some conservatives are always afraid of the future, and when it comes with sudden, rushing impact, bringing the development feared most of all, it becomes next to impossible to accept it. French Rightists have never yet accepted the French Revolution of 1789 and their American counterparts had not accepted the Russian Revolution of 1917 when the Second World War catapulted Communist Russia into control of the heart of the world.

A large body of our enlightened conservatives did not find this result intolerable, but the powerful conservative-nationalist-isolationist element did. They had never wanted to fight the fascist powers and only did so with wrathful reluctance when Pearl Harbor compelled them. Then when Germany attacked Russia their spirits soared. The hated Red menace would surely be scotched, after all.

To their amazement it wasn’t. The abhorred system generated great power and emerged in control of half of Europe. This meant that the war was more than lost. Much more than they had ever feared had come true. Something must be done about it.

This compulsion became as strong also in powerful religious bodies.

2. Tribal, balance of power thinking

The almost insupportable feelings of these groups merged into the age-old tribal thinking of men organized in nations. Every other group which might be a threat is feared, in proportion to its strength. Here suddenly was a strong new group, brash and self-confident, therefore automatically assumed to be aggressive.

I well remember my own feelings on VE-Day, when I realized that all buffers were gone between us and this rising incalculable power, rolling up out of the East. I did not regret that the German buffer was gone, and my study of the Russian Revolution had by no means made me a Russophobe, yet I had a powerful feeling that the going might be rough and uncertain from here on.

Months before the victory over Germany I had been alarmed by the discovery that certain army officers were looking forward to war with Russia. They took it for granted, as a matter of course. Their entire professional training had taught them to prepare to fight the most probable enemies, mentally and materially. Every army must have an enemy, if it is to thrive or even survive. Now there was only one possible enemy left in the world, so duty was perfectly plain. The situation was simple, as it had never been before. Of course the clash would come, especially since the new enemy was an upstart, with false ideas and bad practices.

I do not believe that this line of reasoning was strong among the men who fought the war, but it was bound to spread as friction with the Russians grew. It would spread rapidly also among influential civilian groups which had come out of the war without any pronounced dislike of Russia. They also would soon accept the idea of “inevitable” war, as the press and radio brought news of the refusal of the stubborn Russians to agree with our negotiators.

Once started, a vicious circle of recriminations would feed itself. More and more people would conclude that this Russian outfit had to be dealt with.

3. Russian Acts

The Russians came out of the war very self-confident. They had taken the worst that could be hurled at them and had overcome it. They proceeded to take their own security measures with one hand, and they held out a sincere offer of cooperation with the world through UN with the other, but they were through with being treated as pariahs and inferiors. They would sit down at the head of the table, and put their feet upon it if others did.

Each time they engineered “a friendly government” in Eastern Europe, beginning with Poland, they convinced the groups of Americans discussed above, and others, that something should be done about them. Each time, too, that they deadlocked a conference with their demands the result was the same.

The United Nations Organized

During the San Francisco Conference there were many headlines indicating deadlocks caused by the Russians, and there were some clashes.

In his opening address, on April 26, Molotov assured the delegates that the Soviet Government was “a sincere and firm champion of the establishment of a strong international organization of security” and that “in our country the whole people are brought up in the spirit of faith in and devotion to” that cause. Then he promptly challenged the traditional right of Secretary Stettinius to serve as President of the Conference, being host, and that office was put in a commission of the Great Powers.

On Argentina Molotov was defeated, after using all the resources at his command. The next day he eased the tension by calling on Stettinius and saying that he was disappointed but wanted the Conference to succeed and would cooperate to that end.³⁸ On May 10, when Molotov returned to Russia, Arthur Krock, conservative writer for the New York Times, wrote from San Francisco that Molotov could report to Stalin that Russia conducted itself at the Conference “as a great power and a generally cooperative one on the task in hand.” If he should add that Russia’s individual interests were handled very well, “he would be within the facts.” He could report also that, “despite extraordinary efforts” by articulate groups to make the success of the conference turn on a settlement of the issue between Moscow and the London Poles “that would be satisfactory to the Western Allies of Russia,” the attempt failed and the conference went on with the quite separate business for which it was summoned.

Allied Victory Celebrated in Moscow. On the same day the Associated Press telegraphed from Moscow that the final surrender of Germany was presented in the Russian newspapers “as a triumph of all the Allies, not just one,” and they put the sharp words of Truman and Churchill against Japan on the front page. The press also carried an unprecedented display of photographs—Truman, Stalin and Churchill across the top of the front page. Others included Eisenhower, General Carl A. Spaatz, and the British Marshals. The speeches by Truman and Churchill had also been carried throughout the Soviet Union.

On the other side of the coin, the Russians were making difficulties about admitting Allied representatives to Austria or Hungary and they stalled on letting the Allied Control Commission go to Berlin, perhaps regretting the four-power agreement for the administration of the German capital. However, the fighting in Berlin had ceased only a day or two before.

American Communists Reactivated. On May 24, also, a 7600–word article in The Daily Worker by Jacques Duclos, French Communist leader, indicated that the Kremlin might have concluded that cooperation was likely to break down. The article condemned the policies of Earl Browder as swerving “dangerously from the victorious Marxist-Leninist doctrine.” The implication was plain that Moscow was considering the revival of the American Communist Party.³⁹

Yet only two months earlier the editors of The Foundations of Marxism had published a long article which indicated that “a sweeping change is being made in Soviet Russia in Marxist economic dogmas as they have been officially taught in the schools, the press, on the platform and radio. Marx’s theory of the exploitation of the proletariat is completely revised and capitalism is declared to be a ‘progressive’ and not a ‘backward’ system.”⁴⁰

At the end of the Roosevelt period preparations were apparently being made in Russia for a live and let live policy, so far as doctrine was concerned.

Russia Cooperative at San Francisco. The San Francisco Conference does not provide any evidence that the Russians had despaired of cooperating with the West. While asserting themselves at various points, the Russians had played a cooperative role at the Conference. On June 12, James B. Reston summed up the record in a dispatch from San Francisco to the New York Times, saying: “The conference record shows, the delegates note, ten concessions by Russia which have contributed greatly to the liberalizing of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals.”

He then described the Russian concessions in more than a column of newspaper print. They had: (1) not been eager to have the conference at that time or to have Molotov attend, but had yielded on both points; (2) insisted on four Presidents, but had conceded to Stettinius all the powers he needed as chairman of the four Presidents; (3) opposed any autonomy for regional security systems, unless directed at a renewal of German aggression, but had yielded twice to the Pan-American group; (4) accepted three important modifications of the veto power; (5) acquiesced in strong outlawry of war proposals after opposing them earlier; (6) compromised with the United States on the trusteeship provisions; (7) made two important concessions to the middle-sized nations in connection with the Security Council; (8) agreed finally to an amendment on peaceful change; (9) accepted reluctantly an American amendment providing for a constitutional convention for revision of the Charter, and agreed to reduce from three-fourths to two-thirds the General Assembly vote necessary for convocation; (10) agreed at last that the Security Council should have real power to recommend terms for the settlement of disputes.

This was certainly not the record of an obstinate, domineering government, vetoing everything right and left and refusing to play except on its own terms. On the contrary, that was the record of a government willing to make real and important concessions, which might be used against it later, in order to get agreement for a great undertaking in cooperation. The Reston article continued: “The delegates here are conscious of reports that the Soviet Union has come here and demanded what they wanted and got what they demanded, and there is a general feeling that these reports do not give an accurate impression of what has happened.”

This could only mean that the delegates had read the American press and knew that powerful sections of it were giving a false account of Russian conduct in the conference. The process of convincing the American people that the Russians are a contentious, unreasonable lot, who will agree to nothing right, was well under way. The Reston article would do a little to counteract that impression, but it would not be read by most of those who had been subjected to the original articles in other newspapers.

An article in the Moscow newspaper Izvestia in late June 1945 also gave no hint that Russia expected to be labelled an aggressor for the next ten years. Izvestia described the new UN as “an organization able to prevent possible aggression or to curb the aggressor by the united forces of the peace loving peoples. . . . One can say with conviction that the final text of the United Nations Charter leaves far behind all previously existing projects for the creation of a stable international organization.”⁴¹

Twenty-five Years Late. When the huge San Francisco Conference ended, on June 26, 1945, most Americans were also confident that a new era in peace making had opened. They believed that the tragic error of 1919 had been repaired or, if not that, its repetition avoided.

Yet actually the shades of Lodge, Borah, Brandegee, Johnson and the other Senators of 1919 had triumphed. What these men did then had struck such fear into the hearts of Roosevelt and Hull that they courted the Senators of 1945 long and ardently. These later Senators were mollified and won to cooperation, but the result was just another league of nations. It was an improvement on the old, rejected League in many details, and in a few important particulars, notably the curtailment of the veto right to the great powers, yet it was still a league of sovereign states, when a real mechanism for world government was required.

Time had moved on relentlessly and decisively, but American official thinking on the crucial problem of world peace had not. It merely caught up with 1919. This time a Republican Senator sat in the conference, and a Democratic one, and they returned from San Francisco all aglow with their achievement. They knew, too, that they could put it into effect. Wilson had not been able to secure ratification; they would.

Hands across the aisle were so firmly clasped that the consideration of the UN Charter in the Senate was one long love-feast. I sat in the Senate galleries for some days, marvelling at the great change which had come over the Senate. Henrik Shipstead, of Minnesota, one of the older irreconcilables, did utter some syllables of objection, but they were spoken in too low a voice to be heard. Hiram Johnson was too ill to come for his always bitter dissent. In all the Senate only two votes against the Charter were cast, when the vote came on July 28, 1945, those of Shipstead and Langer of North Dakota. The poll was 89 to 2 and the Committee on Foreign Relations had not offered a single reservation.

It was high time that the Senate rested from making reservations to peace treaties. “Since a league to enforce peace had first been mentioned to members of this chamber by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, some 40,000,000 human beings, armed and unarmed, had been killed in two great wars.”⁴²

Yet, sadly enough, the 1945 concord in the Senate was oppressive and ominous, for it really meant that the Senate was doing what it should have done in 1919, not what a later epoch required. Most Senators felt that the damage had now been repaired, after another colossal war which should never have been allowed to happen, but it could not be. In the lightning progress of our scientific age there are no second chances. When the crash and flame of a great human disaster like the First World War lays open to all men the absolute urgency of a new course, they cannot take it a generation later, after a still greater catastrophe has resulted from their blind stubbornness.

It is the fashion to say that no league of sovereign states can ever keep the peace, since the larger states will invariably pursue their short-term, selfish interests of the moment, instead of acting for the common good when aggression occurs. This may well be true, but there was a precious, golden opportunity in 1919 for the United States really to establish the peace through the League of Nations.

Then there were seven great powers left in the world, and no one of the other six was strong enough to defy a league of nations led by the United States. Both Japan and Italy could have been handled with relative ease and Germany could never have gone on a revenge rampage. Russia was down and out in 1919, and counted out too completely, but she was incapable of aggression, even if she had desired it. The League of 1919 might have failed, even under the leadership of the United States, the giant of the nations in that day, but the conditions for success were there. Unquestionably the United States could have organized the world so effectively through the League of Nations that Russia could do little about it.

In 1945 only two great powers remained. The full extent of Britain’s weakness was not known, but everyone knew that she would be a poor third in the post-war world. France was far below her, and China only a potential power in the future, after her old order had collapsed. In these vastly changed circumstances no league of nations could hope to enforce peace upon either of the two great powers. This was indeed recognized throughout the controversy over the veto. The overwhelming need was for cooperation between the giant Big Two. Yet we allowed a group of small states with very little power to override Russia on the Argentine case at the very beginning of the UN organization meeting.

This indicated, again, that we believed nothing had changed since 1919. Yet in the interval Russia herself changed decisively. In the years before 1939 she had tried hard to make the League of Nations succeed. Now she was not willing to subject herself to the coercive authority of a new league, and she was wholly unwilling to go on to the establishment of a real world government, unless it should come about through the expansion of the Soviet Union to global proportions.

Russia’s View of World Peace Organization. Everlastingly, at every Allied conference, the Russians made known their conception of the UN. It should be a body led by the great powers, preferably by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. They would include Britain—and, much more grudgingly, France and China—but what they wanted to do was keep the decisions in as few hands as possible. That was the nearest approach to their authoritarian way of doing business at home and it also seemed to them to accord with the realities of power. Since we had great power, and since they respected us, they would go far to meet our wishes if we would deal on that basis. They would also resent, in rapidly rising degrees, being overridden by the votes of many small states.

On our side this way of doing business offended our ideas about the rights of small states and about majority rule. Besides, we knew that the little states, were almost certain to vote with us. Since we were sure that the majorities were on our side, whenever needed, majority rule seemed more than ever right to us.

Thus in 1945 neither of the two behemoths was willing to advance beyond a league of nations. Everything would depend on their being able to settle down to cooperation in UN, dividing the world between them on some basis acceptable, or bearable, to both. At the same time, both of the giants were young and immature in world politics, without any slowly acquired skills in world politics to guide them. In these circumstances the ancient tendency of strong national states to fear and distrust each other promised to be irresistible, and fatal.

Would Bi-Partisan Agreement Save Us? Nor was the desire for bi-partisan unity on foreign policy likely to prevent disaster. Such a policy could continue only on the lowest common denominator of national interest. Toward Russia, especially, we could maintain a bi-partisan foreign policy only by accepting the toughest attitude that the leaders of either party favored. Otherwise it would quit the bi-partisan coalition with loud charges that the other party was appeasing the Reds and selling out the national interest. There could be bi-partisan competition in tough attitudes toward Russia, but no rivalry in devising a policy of cooperation with her. Only by agreement on toughness could bi-partisan accord in foreign policy be maintained. Then, as the inevitable tension with Russia mounted, the hue and cry of a national debate over policies toward Russia could not be afforded, it was sure to be argued, because it would destroy national unity in the face of danger.

Potsdam

In mid-summer 1945 matters had not yet gone so far. There was still the assumption that the world must not split in two again and plunge toward the final war. Another inter-Allied conference met at Potsdam on July 17. The Russians had as usual made the most painstaking preparations to entertain the delegates. President Truman liked Stalin, and Stalin at once suggested that Truman preside.

Deadlock on East Europe. The Conference, according to the account of the new Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, at once approved the creation of a Council of the Foreign Ministers of the Great Powers.⁴³ Then the Americans presented a paper which “stated flatly” that the Yalta agreements concerning East Europe had not been carried out. Joint action by the three powers was proposed to reorganize the governments of Bulgaria and Rumania, in order to permit the participation of “all democratic groups.” Such action would precede the establishment of diplomatic relations and the conclusion of peace treaties. The three powers would then help the interim governments to hold “free and unfettered elections.”

This program for insuring that Rumania and Bulgaria should be organized on the Western model, and remain in the Western orbit, was met by the presentation the next day of a Soviet paper severely attacking the Western brand of democracy in Greece. Eden angrily termed the attack “a travesty of fact,” pointing out that international observers had been invited to observe the Greek elections. This was not true in Rumania or Bulgaria. The British Government “took the gravest exception” to the charges. Eden did not add that the power of the Left had been effectively smashed in Greece before international observers were invited to come and check the elections.⁴⁴

Molotov replied by quoting British and American newspaper reports on events in Greece to show that there were greater excesses there than in Rumania or Bulgaria. He then complained that the Soviet representative on the Allied Control Council in Italy was not receiving proper attention, a point which had some substance. “The exclusion of the Soviet Union from all voice in Italian matters was . . . a bad precedent for common action by the Big Three elsewhere.”⁴⁵ The truth was that neither side was willing to yield to the other a share of political control in the countries occupied by its armies.

Byrnes sought to convince Molotov, both at Potsdam and on many later occasions, that it would be better for Russia to have friendly people on her borders. This meant representative government and elections supervised by all three powers, to make sure that all classes voted freely. Byrnes tried hard to persuade Molotov that this would be the best way, for Russia, but he feared that “Mr. Molotov never understood or believed.” Instead of admitting that it would be better for Russia to have Balkan landlords, bankers, industrialists and other pre-war ruling elements keep their political power, Molotov persisted in reverting to Greece when pressed on free elections for the Balkans. It happened “scores of times during ensuing months.”

Another irritant which ran through the Potsdam discussions was the disposition of American and British owned industrial equipment in Rumania which had been seized by the Russians, who maintained that because the Germans had owned these properties last they belonged to Russia.

On the other hand, when Russia asked to be named trustee of one of the Italian colonies in North Africa, “Churchill was reluctant even to discuss it.” At length he “delivered an impassioned statement” in which he explained how the war had impoverished Britain, yet she was making not a single territorial claim. She did, however, “have great interests in the Mediterranean” where any marked change in the status quo would need long and careful consideration. He had not even “considered the possibility of the Soviet Union desiring to acquire a large tract on the African shore.”⁴⁶

The shock was equally great when the Russians pressed for the return of two provinces from Turkey and the establishment of a Soviet base in the Turkish Straits. Byrnes was unable to convince the Russians how “unrealistic” they were to want a base in the Straits which, “without complete air superiority would be of little value.”

Here was an issue which would have caused little difficulty if the Allies had trusted each other. An Italian colony for Russia, and her entry into the Mediterranean, might have been taken as a matter of course. But, since the Russian occupation of the Balkans had caused great distrust and fear, the Americans were quite certain to support the British in holding on to exclusive control of the Middle Sea. There would be fear that the world strategic balance would be too greatly upset, if Russia came into the Mediterranean.

The Churchill Government Defeated. At this point the Potsdam Conference recessed to permit the British delegates to go home and learn the result of the 1945 election. A report by Herbert Matthews in the New York Times on July 27 was headlined: “Churchill Defeated in Labor Landslide. British Turn Left.” Labor had “the staggering total of 390 seats out of a Parliament of 640.” In the last Parliament Labor had only 163 seats. The Conservatives fell from 358 to 195 seats; the Liberals from 18 to 11. The probable Government majority, including the small groups, would be 407. The popular vote gave Labor twelve millions and the Conservatives nine millions. The results, said Matthews, were “a personal, decisive repudiation of Mr. Churchill as a peace-time leader. He himself personalized the election; he had asked that votes be cast for him so that he would be returned to power.”

Churchill did not return to Potsdam, but Ernest Bevin, new Foreign Secretary, sat in his place and British policy toward Russia did not change an iota. Bevin was a Labor Churchill, still more volcanic and irascible, without Churchill’s aristocratic graces. Bevin had long been an inner member of the Churchill coalition cabinet. His opposition to Russia was even greater than Churchill’s, since to Sir Winston’s defense of Imperial positions vis-a-vis Russia he added the hatred of the democratic socialist for the dictatorial brand. Neither tact nor diplomacy would restrain British attitudes toward Russia thereafter, as the Conservative-dominated Foreign and Colonial offices stiffened Bevin for conflict with the Soviets.

World Conquest. At the end of his account of the Potsdam Conference Mr. Truman says that he was not altogether disillusioned “to find now that the Russians were not in earnest about peace.” It was clear, he continued, that their policy was based on the expectation of a major American depression, of which they would take advantage. They understood nothing but force and were “planning world conquest.”⁴⁷

How he arrived at this startling conclusion is not evident from his account of the conference. He records that Stalin “spoke in a quiet, inoffensive way.” Stalin did not make long speeches, as Churchill did, but reduced his arguments quickly to the question of power. His “wry humor” was frequently in evidence. When Molotov talked as if he were the Russian state, Stalin would smile and change his tune with a few words in Russian.⁴⁸

On the other hand, by the end of the second session Truman was beginning to “grow impatient for more action and fewer words.” Soon he was telling Churchill and Stalin that he had not come to hold “a police court hearing.” He told them that if they did not get to the main issues he was “going to pack up and go home.” He “meant just that.” Later, his impatience grew and on a number of occasions he “felt like blowing the roof off the palace.”⁴⁹

Though undoubtedly a man of action, Truman’s narrative makes it clear that he was not a negotiator. His handling of the Potsdam Conference was a far cry from Roosevelt’s mediating but firm and conciliatory role in the earlier conferences. Truman was clear about the thing he most wanted to get from Stalin at Potsdam, “a personal reaffirmation of Russia’s entry into the war against Japan, a matter which our military chiefs were most anxious to clinch,” but he made up his mind that the Russians would get no share in the control of Japan after the victory. General MacArthur would have “complete command and control.”⁵⁰

The Potsdam Agreements. The Potsdam communique, recording the Potsdam agreements, is an impressive document. Nearly filling a newspaper page, it laid down procedures for the framing of peace treaties with all the satellite states, beginning with Italy. It contained detailed rules for the de-Nazification and demilitarization of Germany, and for her economic administration, “as a single economic unit.” An extensive section on reparations allotted ten per cent of German surplus industrial capital equipment to Russia outright, and an additional fifteen per cent if exchanged for raw materials. Agreements on a dozen other important subjects were recorded, including one that the Franco Government in Spain, “having been founded with the support of the Axis powers, does not, in view of its origins and its close associations with the aggressor States, possess the qualifications necessary to justify” membership in the United Nations.

Applauding the realism of the decisions Turner Catledge attributed much of the tension which had arisen since Yalta to “the apparent timidity of spokesmen for the United States and Britain to face up” to this question of reparations. “Now, at least they have faced up.”⁵¹

The Issue of Russia’s Recovery—Reparations and Loans. This comment recognized the abysmal difference between the economic conditions of the two victorious Allies. The Russians craved reparations for the repair of their devastated land. We had no devastation and too many new factories, if anything. Our chief desire was to avoid paying Germany’s reparations again indirectly, as we had after 1920. At the same time, we were reluctant to grant large credits to Russia for her reconstruction.

Reston had reported from Washington, on April 3, that a leading reason for the coolness of the Russians toward the San Francisco Conference was their disappointment at the slowness of the United States to act in the economic field. They were not getting the heavy industrial equipment requested under the fourth lend-lease protocol, due to be signed June 30, 1944, but still under negotiation.

The Russians were disturbed also by the lack of progress on their request for a $6,000,000,000 post-war credit, to aid in their reconstruction. This request had been discussed for months, and always the Administration said it had no power from Congress to grant anything like this sum, but the Russians felt that nothing was being done to get the authority. In other words, Russia wanted her international collaboration based “on what she believes to be more tangible things than international security alone.” Another writer observed that the Russians did not mind the roof of collective security being provided, but they wanted the house built first.

In the later days of the Cold War most people applauded our slowness to help bind up Russia’s wounds. Why arm “the enemy”? Yet the reflection cannot be excluded that the grant of a large credit to Russia might have changed much of the post-war atmosphere—if it could have been made in good spirit and not largely devoured by American inflation—both apparently impossible conditions.

On July 22, 1945, Russia gave an indication of willingness to carry risks as well as receive benefits from international economic collaboration. In the Bretton Woods Monetary and Financial Conference she had first insisted that her subscription to the Bank for International Reconstruction and Development be held down to $900,000,000, but just before the conference closed she raised it to $1,200,000,000, agreeing with the American argument that each country’s risks in the world bank should be as large as its rights in the international monetary fund to stabilize post-war currencies.⁵²

No Deep Rift in Sight. The Potsdam Conference certainly did not prove that the East and the West could not agree. They could not agree on all points, but the amount and range of agreement was impressive indeed. The principles agreed upon for the control of Germany especially, were sound and promising. As before, not everything agreed upon would be smoothly put into practice, but a good foundation for further Allied collaboration was laid down.

A Program for a Sure Peace. In the summer of 1945 one of America’s most beloved elder statesmen, Bernard M. Baruch, was asked to give his views to the Senate Military Affairs Committee on the future of Germany. He responded on June 23 with a plan not for a “hard” or a “soft” peace but a sure one. Plunging to the heart of the problem of making peace, he warned that what was done with Germany “holds the key to whether Russia, Britain and the United States can continue to get along.” Unless Germany were firmly dealt with we could be certain that she would make a third try to conquer the world. “By tackling immediately and forthrightly the question uppermost in the Russian mind—security against Germany—” he believed we could arrive at a full understanding with the Soviets. If it was not possible the sooner we knew it the better.

There must be a drastic diminution of Germany’s war-potential, by dismantling factories, breaking up the junker estates and other means. To accept the view that the restoration of German industrial dominance in Europe was inevitable was “to resign ourselves to the return to a new cave age.”

Unlike so many influential Americans, Baruch had tried to put himself in Russia’s place, to ask himself “what would I think if I were a Russian?” Reviewing the history of the preceding thirty years he found much to give him pause. On their side the Russians must make the same effort to understand us; they should permit free access to Eastern Europe; we should treat them strictly on a basis of reciprocity; and we should pursue a program of determined preparedness.

Though Baruch’s attitude toward Russia was firm, there was no hint in it of “inevitable” war, or of the hysteria which was to carry so many of his countrymen out of the realm of sober thinking. He had “no fear of the spread of Bolshevism in the United States—jobs and higher living standards were the proven anti-toxins.”

Then, leaping years ahead of the most constructive thinking among American political leaders, he urged the lifting of living standards all over the world. He “would insert into all financial and economic arrangements we make a denunciation clause giving us the right to terminate any agreement which results in lowering wages or lengthening hours—an undercutting of human standards,” but that was not enough. Living standards must be lifted.

Before the Marshall Plan or President Truman’s 1949 proposal to send our “know-how” over the world were thought of, Baruch knew that the condition of the vast masses of depressed people over the world was the key problem of our time. “And as living standards within Russia improve, the atmosphere there should lighten, and some practices which strike us as unfavorable are likely to disappear.”⁵³

Here was the conflict in which both East and West should have joined hands—a common war to improve living conditions everywhere, to give men life instead of more death.

---