President Truman and the origins of the Cold War

THE DAY THE COLD WAR BROKE OUT?

The Miscamble interpretation - the introduction to Wilson Miscamble's book (difficult).

Part 1 - Truman did NOT come into office looking for a fight with the Soviet Union

Ever since the Gar Alperovitz in the 1960s, it has been more or less accepted that Truman’s accession to the Presidency marked a change in US policy. 

Roosevelt, the thinking goes, was soft on Stalin.  He believed that he could woo Stalin with his reasonableness – i.e.  that Roosevelt was, is the unspoken accusation, Stalin’s ‘appeaser’.  Truman, it is claimed, changed all that namby-pamby stuff.  He stood up to Stalin.  A story many historians relate is of a meeting on 23 April 1945, early in Truman’s Presidency, between the President and Soviet Minister Molotov:

This incident has been seen by many historians as evidence that Truman’s succession to the presidency was a turning point in America’s foreign policy.  Daniel Yergin in his book Shattered Peace (1977) claimed that the meeting ‘signified a major shift in American attitudes towards the Russians’.  And this view has trickled down into your textbooks, many of which credit Truman with taking a new tough line towards the Soviet Union into the Potsdam Conference … often quoting his statement: ‘I’m tired of babying the Soviets.’

But how true is this interpretation?  Truman’s ‘babying’ statement was made in January 1946 – SIX MONTHS after Potsdam.  A LOT of water had flowed under the bridge between Truman’s accession the Presidency in April 1945. 

And what of the celebrated slapping-down of Molotov?  It is likely that the actual meeting was a good deal less confrontational than it was later made out to be.  Drew Pearson was a muck-raking journalist famous for making up scandals about politicians – we can’t trust him for anything other than adding a salacious slant on events.  Truman too was notorious for exaggerating, and the autobiography which recounted the event was written in 1956, at the height of the Cold War – i.e.  when he had every reason to stress his anti-Soviet credentials (one historian has accused him of ‘sexing up the Cold War’).  The initial briefing memo given to Truman for the meeting had advised the President had to ‘make it clear to him that it is your intention to carry on President Roosevelt’s policy of collaboration and the development of friendly relations with the Soviet Union’.  According to Bohlen, who took the official minutes, Truman spoke ‘sharply’ and ‘with great firmness’, but Molotov was not downbeaten, and even suggested afterwards that he and Truman pose for photographs. 

Enter Professor Reverend Wilson D Miscamble, and his book, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War (2007).  Says Miscamble, ‘One must resist the temptation to use a single incident as emblematic of his whole approach to the Soviets.’  Far from confronting the Soviets in the early months of his presidency, claims Miscamble, Truman actively tried to continue Roosevelt’s policies of cooperation – as Truman wrote in 1956: 'It was my intention to continue both the foreign and domestic policies of the Roosevelt Administration.'

Part 2 – at the start of his Presidency Truman tried to cooperate with the Soviet Union

Now, of course, it is undeniably true that Truman changed those policies eventually.  In the end, the Truman Doctrine changed American policy from one of cooperation, to one of containment and confrontation: ‘Clearly after 1947, Truman led a major transformation of American foreign policy,’ admits Father Miscamble. 

But the question is: When did this change start?  According to Miscamble – far from the impression given by the common (mis)representation of Truman’s meeting with Molotov – Truman did not immediately ride into battle with the Soviets, but came to his new position gradually, as Stalin’s policies gradually provoked America into the Cold War.  According to Miscamble, Truman tried to follow Roosevelt’s policies toward the Soviet Union until the autumn of 1946.  (And thus, Father Miscamble goes on to claim that revisionism – the attempt to blame the US for the Cold War – is ‘a dead duck’.)

To a significant extent, some of the facts about the Potsdam seem to support Miscamble’s view of Truman’s early period in foreign affairs. 

When he first took over as President, Truman was painfully aware that – having had no experience whatsoever, he was a novice:

All the evidence is that at first, he was decidedly nervous about foreign affairs:

In his early months in the White House, therefore, Truman continued to rely on Roosevelt’s pro-Soviet foreign advisers, especially Joseph Davies and Edward Stettinius.  Truman asked Stettinius to resign in June 1946, but he took Davies to Potsdam with him as Special Advisor with the rank of Ambassador. 

As he went to Potsdam, Truman followed Davies’ lead of cooperation with the Soviets, and seemed genuinely taken with Stalin:

As late as 19 July, the American delegation was trying to cooperate with the Soviets, although there were beginning to be doubts, as Stimson recorded in his diary:

Also in the early days at Potsdam, Truman appeared to want to follow Roosevelt’s policies of drawing in the Soviet Union to help in the Pacific War:

And he also appears to have genuinely shared Roosevelt’s anxiety to stay out of European affairs if at all possible:

That takes us up until 20 July.  Perhaps he didn’t like it, but Truman can be seen to be consciously following Roosevelt’s policy of cooperation towards the Soviet Union. 

Part 3 – Truman did NOT continue trying to cooperate with Stalin until autumn 1946

Did Truman, however, continue this policy up until autumn 1946?  I am not as knowledgeable as Professor Miscamble, but it seems to me that it is untenable to argue that Truman was still seeking rapprochement as late as that – Churchill’s Fulton speech was made in March 1946, and the Kennan telegram was discussed in February 1946, and it is hard to gloss these as evidence of 'attempts at cooperation'. 

Part 4 – it is possible to see a change in policy towards the end of Potsdam Conference

In fact, it is possible to see the beginnings of an anti-Soviet stance developing in Truman as early as towards the end of the Potsdam Conference:

1. There is a discernible switch from Davies to anti-Soviet advisers such as Henry Stimson and James Byrnes, and even to military advisers such as Generals Marshall and Eisenhower. 
2. On 23 July Truman received a report from the Naval Department.  It stated that Soviet naval power was a growing danger, and concluded: ‘To preserve the peace, we must demonstrate to the Soviet Union that the penalties of war will be certain and severe.  We must therefore maintain … readiness to take and sustain prompt and effective military action’. 
3. On 25 July, Truman reneged on Roosevelt’s Yalta deal regarding Poland, and stuck in his heels about reparations: ‘It was a bombshell and sort of paralysed the Russkies’ he commented in his diary. 
4. On 26 July, America, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration calling for Japan’s unconditional surrender WITHOUT getting Stalin’s agreement or signature, and in fact in defiance of an alternative declaration suggested by the Russians. 
5. On 26 July, also, Truman received a report from the joint chiefs of Staff which listed Soviet violations of agreements made with the USA since 1941, and declared: ‘The Soviet Union is concentrating on the build up of its war potential … The ultimate objective of the Soviet Union is to dominate the world’.  It finished by outlining US military policy in the event of a war, concluding: ‘Our military policy … must be based on the elementary assumption that the Soviet mentality will recognise only one deterrent to their policy of aggression, and that is force.’
6. On 26 July also talked to the US ambassador to France, Jefferson McCaffery: ‘He is scared stiff of communism, the Russian variety which isn’t communism at all but just police government pure and simple’.

So did the change in Truman’s policy happen at Potsdam?  Certainly historian Walter LaFeber thinks so: ‘I think Potsdam marks the point at which Truman and Stalin don't have a whole lot to say to each anymore.  Their armies are essentially doing the talking.’

Potsdam perhaps doesn’t mark the point where Truman turned AGAINST the Soviet Union (the Truman Doctrine in 1947 is that).  But it is evident that during the Conference he stopped trying to propitiate the Soviets, and just started telling them, in a take-it-or-leave-it way. 

Potsdam marks the point where he made the mental change from cooperation to confrontation, and the months from August 1945 to March 1946 simply chronicle the outworking of that change of attitude.

Part 5 – this change in course during the Conference was caused by the successful trial of the atomic bomb

So – what could have caused such a sea-change in Truman’s attitude and conduct? 

The cause, obviously, was the atomic bomb. 

Truman had received notice of the successful bomb-test on 17 July, but it was not until 21 July that Stimson received and read out the full report to Truman and Byrnes (note that Davies was NOT present):

That effect was immediate and obvious.  Next day, Stimson went to tell Churchill about the Bomb:

Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy noticed the same thing:

The effect of the atomic bomb was more than simply that it gave Truman confidence.  It affected the whole balance of power – as Stimson noted in his diary: ‘with our new weapon we would not need the assistance of the Russians to conquer Japan’.  And with that knowledge, the USA was released from any need to ‘baby’ the Soviets any longer – which explains why Truman suddenly became much tougher in his demands, and started thinking of what would happen in a war if the Soviets started one.

Conclusion

If this interpretation is correct, then US policy changed very suddenly, on 21 July 1945, from cooperation to confrontation.  Add to this historian David Holloways’ theory that finding out about the atomic bomb made Stalin more intractable, then it is possible to say that the day the Cold War started was 21 July 1945 – the day they found out about the Bomb.