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Cold War (1947–1948)

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The Cold War (1947–1948) is the period within the Cold War from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the incapacitation of the Allied Control Council in 1948. The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–91. In 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term “Cold War” to describe the increasingly chilly relations between three World War II Allies: the United States and British Empire together with the Soviet Union.

Some conflicts between the West and the USSR appeared earlier. In 1945–46 the US and UK strongly protested Soviet political takeover efforts in Eastern Europe and Iran, while the hunt for Soviet spies made the tensions more visible. However historians emphasize the decisive break between the US–UK and the USSR came in 1947–48 over such issues as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan. The Cold War took place worldwide, but it had a partially different timing outside Europe.[1]

Creation of the Eastern Bloc

Main article: Eastern Bloc
Eastern Bloc

During World War II, the Soviet Union annexed several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Most of those countries had been ceded to it by the secret agreement portion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany.[2][3] These later annexed territories include Eastern Poland (incorporated into two different SSRs),[4] Latvia (became Latvian SSR),[5][6] Estonia (became Estonian SSR),[5][6] Lithuania (became Lithuanian SSR),[5][6] part of eastern Finland (became part of the Karelo-Finnish SSR)[7] and northern Romania (became the Moldavian SSR)[8][9]

Several of the other countries it occupied that were not directly annexed into the Soviet Union became Soviet satellite states. In East Germany after local election losses, a forced merger of political parties in the Socialist Unity Party ("SED"), followed by elections in 1946 where political opponents were oppressed.[10] In the non-USSR annexed portion of Poland, less than a third of Poland's population voted in favor of massive communist land reforms and industry nationalizations[11] in a policies referendum known as "3 times YES" (3 razy TAK; 3xTAK), whereupon a second vote rigged election was held to get the desired result.[12][13][14] Fraudulent Polish elections held in January 1947 resulted in Poland's official transformation to the People's Republic of Poland.

The reality is that most of these Eastern European countries were also part of Stalin's other secret agreement; this one with Winston Churchill, agreed to at the 4th Moscow Conference in 1944 and called the Percentages Agreement. This only became known about in 1953 when Churchill published his memoirs.[15] Resis' research illustrates that Roosevelt was well aware of this agreement but only gave conditional support to Churchill after receiving updated information regarding the talks; however, prior to the meeting Roosevelt had informed Stalin that "in this global war, there is no question, political or military, that the United States is not interested" and as such, the 4th October 1944 is arguably the day the Cold War started.[15]

The list of world leaders at the beginning of these years are as follows:

In Hungary, when the Soviets installed a communist government, Mátyás Rákosi was appointed General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party,[16] which began one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe[17][18] under the People's Republic of Hungary. In Bulgaria, toward the end of World War II, the Soviet Union crossed the border and created the conditions for a communist coup d'état on the following night.[19] The Soviet military commander in Sofia assumed supreme authority, and the communists whom he instructed, including Kimon Georgiev (who was not a communist himself, but a member of the elitarian political organization "Zveno", working together with the communists), took full control of domestic politics[19] in the People's Republic of Bulgaria.

With Soviet backing, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia in the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, ushering in a dictatorship.[20][21][22] In the Romanian general election of 1946, the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) employed widespread intimidation tactics and electoral fraud to obtain 80 percent of the vote and, thereafter, eliminated the role of the centrist parties and forced mergers, the result of which was that, by 1948, most non-Communist politicians were either executed, in exile or in prison. In the December 1945 Albanian election, the only effective ballot choices were those of the communist Democratic Front (Albania), led by Enver Hoxha.[23] In 1946, Albania was declared the People's Republic of Albania.

Initially, Stalin directed systems in the Eastern Bloc countries that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies, democratic governance (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state.[24] They were economically communist and depended upon the Soviet Union for significant amounts of materials.[25] While in the first three years following World War II, massive emigration from these states to the West occurred, restrictions implemented thereafter stopped most East-West migration, except that under limited bilateral and other agreements.[26]

Containment

The immediate post-1945 period may have been the historical high point for the popularity of communist ideology. The burdens the Red Army and the Soviet Union endured had earned it massive respect which, had it been fully exploited by Joseph Stalin, had a good chance of resulting in a communist Europe. Communist parties achieved a significant popularity in such nations as China, Greece, Iran, and the Republic of Mahabad. Communist parties had already come to power in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Yugoslavia. The United Kingdom and the United States were concerned that electoral victories by communist parties in any of these countries could lead to sweeping economic and political change in Western Europe.

Morgenthau and Marshall Plans

Further information: Morgenthau Plan, Marshall Plan, and Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948
The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest in West Germany against the disastrous food situation (March 31, 1947). The sign says: We want coal, we want bread

Having lost 27 million people in the war, the Soviet Union was determined to destroy Germany's capacity for another war, and pushed for such in wartime conferences. The resulting Morgenthau plan policy foresaw returning Germany to a pastoral state without heavy industry. Because of the increasing costs of food imports to avoid mass-starvation in Germany, and with the danger of losing the entire nation to communism, the U.S. government abandoned the Morgenthau plan in September 1946 with Secretary of State James F. Byrnes' speech Restatement of Policy on Germany.[27]

In January 1947, Truman appointed General George Marshall as Secretary of State, and enacted JCS 1779, which decreed that an orderly and prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of "a stable and productive Germany."[28] The directive comported with the view of General Lucius D. Clay and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over growing communist influence in Germany, as well as of the failure of the rest of the European economy to recover without the German industrial base on which it previously had been dependent. Administration officials met with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and others to press for an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.[29] After six weeks of negotiations, Molotov refused the demands and the talks were adjourned.[29] Marshall was particularly discouraged after personally meeting with Stalin, who expressed little interest in a solution to German economic problems.[29] The United States concluded that a solution could not wait any longer.[29] In a June 5, 1947 speech,[30] comporting with the Truman Doctrine, Marshall announced a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe, called the Marshall Plan.[29]

Fearing American political, cultural and economic penetration, Stalin eventually forbade Soviet Eastern bloc countries of the newly formed Cominform from accepting Marshall Plan aid.[29] In Czechoslovakia, that required a Soviet-backed Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948,[31] the brutality of which shocked Western powers more than any event so far and set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.[32]

The Greek Civil War and the Truman Doctrine

Main articles: Truman Doctrine and Greek Civil War
Guerillas of ELAS

Both East and West regarded Greece as a nation well within the sphere of influence of Britain. Stalin had respected the "percentages agreement" with Winston Churchill to not intervene, but Yugoslavia and Albania defied the USSR's policy and sent supplies during the Greek Civil War to the army of the Communist Party of Greece, the DSE (Democratic Army of Greece). The UK had given aid to the royalist Greek forces, leaving the Communists (without Soviet aid and having boycotted the elections) at a disadvantaged position. However, by 1947, the near-bankrupt British government could no longer maintain its massive overseas commitments. In addition to granting independence to India and handing back the Palestinian Mandate to the United Nations, the British government decided to withdraw from both Greece and nearby Turkey. This would have left the two nations, in particular Greece, on the brink of a communist-led revolution.

Notified that British aid to Greece and Turkey would end in less than six weeks, and already hostile towards and suspicious of Soviet intentions, because of their reluctance to withdraw from Iran, the Truman administration decided that additional action was necessary. With Congress solidly in Republican hands, and with isolationist sentiment strong among the U.S. public, Truman adopted an ideological approach. In a meeting with congressional leaders, the argument of "apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one" was used to convince them of the significance in supporting Greece and Turkey. It was to become the "domino theory". On the morning of March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman appeared before Congress to ask for $400 million of aid to Greece and Turkey. Calling on congressional approval for the United States to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures," or in short a policy of "containment", Truman articulated a presentation of the ideological struggle that became known as the "Truman Doctrine." Although based on a simplistic analysis of internal strife in Greece and Turkey, it became the single dominating influence over U.S. policy until at least the Vietnam War.

Truman's speech had a tremendous effect. The anti-communist feelings that had just begun to hatch in the U.S. were given a great boost, and a silenced Congress voted overwhelmingly in approval of aid. The United States would not withdraw back to the Western Hemisphere as it had after World War I. From then on, the U.S. actively fought communist advances anywhere in the globe under the ostensible causes of "freedom", "democracy" and "human rights." The U.S. brandished its role as the leader of the "free world." Meanwhile, the Soviet Union brandished its position as the leader of the "progressive" and "anti-imperialist" camp.

Nazi–Soviet relations and Falsifiers of History

Main article: Falsifiers of History

Relations further deteriorated when, in January 1948, the U.S. State Department also published a collection of documents titled Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, which contained documents recovered from the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany[33][34] revealing Soviet conversations with Germany regarding the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, including its secret protocol dividing eastern Europe,[35][36] the 1939 German–Soviet Commercial Agreement,[35][37] and discussions of the Soviet Union potentially becoming the fourth Axis Power.[38]

In response, one month later, the Soviet Union published Falsifiers of History, a Stalin edited and partially re-written book attacking the West.[33][39] The book did not attempt to directly counter or deal with the documents published in Nazi-Soviet Relations[40] and rather, focused upon Western culpability for the outbreak of war in 1939.[35] It argues that "Western powers" aided Nazi rearmament and aggression, including that American bankers and industrialists provided capital for the growth of German war industries, while deliberately encouraging Hitler to expand eastward.[33][35] The book also included the claim that, during the Pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's offer to share in a division of the world, without mentioning the Soviet offers to join the Axis.[41] Historical studies, official accounts, memoirs and textbooks published in the Soviet Union used that depiction of events until the Soviet Union's dissolution.[41]

After the Marshall Plan, the introduction of a new currency to Western Germany to replace the debased Reichsmark and massive electoral losses for communist parties in 1946, in June 1948, the Soviet Union cut off surface road access to Berlin. Besides Berlin, the port city of Trieste was a particular focus after the Second World War. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste was founded in 1947 with the United Nations.[citation needed]

Notes

  1. ^ Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (Penguin UK, 2017) pp. 2–7.
  2. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, 2008
  3. ^ Text of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, executed August 23, 1939
  4. ^ Roberts 2006, p. 43
  5. ^ a b c Wettig 2008, p. 21
  6. ^ a b c Senn, Alfred Erich, Lithuania 1940 : revolution from above, Amsterdam, New York, Rodopi, 2007 ISBN 978-90-420-2225-6
  7. ^ Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline, Stalin's Cold War, New York: Manchester University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-7190-4201-1
  8. ^ Roberts 2006, p. 55
  9. ^ Shirer 1990, p. 794
  10. ^ Wettig 2008, pp. 96–100
  11. ^ Curp, David, A Clean Sweep?: The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Western Poland, 1945–1960, Boydell & Brewer, 2006, ISBN 1-58046-238-3, pages 66–69
  12. ^ Tom Buchanan, Europe's Troubled Peace, 1945–2000: 1945–2000, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-631-22163-8, Google Print, p.84
  13. ^ A brief history of Poland: Chapter 13: The Post-War Years, 1945–1990 Archived 2011-07-09 at the Wayback Machine. Polonia Today Online. Retrieved on 28 March 2007.
  14. ^ "Poland." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 7 April 2007
  15. ^ a b Resis, Albert (1978). "The Churchill-Stalin Secret Percentages Agreement, Moscow October 1944". American Historical Review. University of Chicago Press. doi:10.2307/1862322. JSTOR 1862322.
  16. ^ Sugar, Peter F., Peter Hanak and Tibor Frank, A History of Hungary, Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-20867-X, pp. 375–77
  17. ^ Granville, Johanna, The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58544-298-4
  18. ^ Gati, Charles, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, Stanford University Press, 2006 ISBN 0-8047-5606-6, pp. 9–12
  19. ^ a b Wettig 2008, p. 50
  20. ^ Grenville 2005, pp. 370–71
  21. ^ Grogin 2001, pp. 134–35
  22. ^ Saxonberg 2001, p. 15
  23. ^ Cook 2001, p. 17
  24. ^ Hardt & Kaufman 1995, p. 12
  25. ^ Hardt & Kaufman 1995, p. 15
  26. ^ Böcker 1998, p. 209
  27. ^ John Gimbel "On the Implementation of the Potsdam Agreement: An Essay on U.S. Postwar German Policy" Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 2. (Jun., 1972), pp. 242–269.
  28. ^ Beschloss 2003, p. 277
  29. ^ a b c d e f Miller 2000, p. 16
  30. ^ Marshall, George C, The Marshal Plan Speech, June 5, 1947
  31. ^ Airbridge to Berlin, "Eye of the Storm" chapter
  32. ^ Miller 2000, p. 19
  33. ^ a b c Henig 2005, p. 67
  34. ^ Department of State 1948, p. preface
  35. ^ a b c d Roberts 2002, p. 97
  36. ^ Department of State 1948, p. 78
  37. ^ Department of State 1948, pp. 32–77
  38. ^ Churchill 1953, pp. 512–524
  39. ^ Roberts 2002, p. 96
  40. ^ Roberts 2002, p. 100
  41. ^ a b Nekrich, Ulam & Freeze 1997, pp. 202–205

References

  • Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998). British perspective
  • Beschloss, Michael R (2003). The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941–1945. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-6085-5.
  • Böcker, Anita (1998), Regulation of Migration: International Experiences, Het Spinhuis, ISBN 90-5589-095-2
  • Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989);
  • Brune, Lester Brune and Richard Dean Burns. Chronology of the Cold War: 1917–1992 (2005) 700pp; highly detailed month-by-month summary for many countries
  • Churchill, Winston (1953), The Second World War, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 0-395-41056-8
  • Cook, Bernard A. (2001). Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-8153-4057-5.
  • Ericson, Edward E. (1999), Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-275-96337-3
  • Gaddis, John Lewis (1972), The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941–1947, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-08302-5
  • Gaddis, John Lewis (1990), Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States- An Interpretive History
  • Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005)
  • Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987)
  • Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982)
  • Grenville, John Ashley Soames (2005), A History of the World from the 20th to the 21st Century, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-28954-8
  • Grenville, John Ashley Soames; Wasserstein, Bernard (2001), The Major International Treaties of the Twentieth Century: A History and Guide with Texts, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0-415-23798-X
  • Grogin, Robert C. (2001). Natural Enemies: The United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, 1917–1991. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0739101605.
  • Hardt, John Pearce; Kaufman, Richard F. (1995), East-Central European Economies in Transition, M.E. Sharpe, ISBN 1-56324-612-0
  • Henig, Ruth Beatrice (2005), The Origins of the Second World War, 1933–41, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-33262-1
  • LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 7th ed. (1993)
  • Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2018) The United States, the Soviet Union and the Geopolitical Implications of the Origins of the Cold War, Anthem Press, London
  • Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2018), The Role of Ideology in the Origins of the Cold War, Scholar's Press, ISBN 9786202317269
  • Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2010), The German Question and the International Order,1943-48, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-24812-0
  • Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2008), The German Question and the Origins of the Cold War, IPOC, ISBN 978-88-95145-27-3
  • Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
  • Miller, Roger Gene (2000), To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949, Texas A&M University Press, ISBN 0-89096-967-1
  • Nekrich, Aleksandr Moiseevich; Ulam, Adam Bruno; Freeze, Gregory L. (1997), Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German–Soviet Relations, 1922–1941, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-10676-9
  • Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988)
  • Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
  • Roberts, Geoffrey (2002), Stalin, the Pact with Nazi Germany, and the Origins of Postwar Soviet Diplomatic Historiography, vol. 4
  • Roberts, Geoffrey (2006), Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-11204-1
  • Shirer, William L. (1990), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-671-72868-7
  • Saxonberg, Steven (2001), The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland, Routledge, ISBN 90-5823-097-X
  • Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
  • Department of State (1948), Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, Department of State
  • Soviet Information Bureau (1948), Falsifiers of History (Historical Survey), Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 272848
  • Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974)
  • Walker, J. Samuel. "Historians and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus", in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker, eds., American Foreign Relations: A Historiographical Review (1981), 207–236.
  • Wettig, Gerhard (2008), Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 978-0-7425-5542-6
  • Cumings, Bruce The Origins of the Korean War (2 vols., 1981–90), friendly to North Korea and hostile to U.S.
  • Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1959-1956 (1994)
  • Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
  • Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992).
  • Mastny, Vojtech. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979)
  • Zhang, Shu Guang. Beijing’s Economic Statecraft during the Cold War, 1949-1991 (2014). online review
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