ing the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. Winston Churchill, other English leaders, and a good many Americans looked on the wartime alliance with Russia as an unfortunate necessity; others saw it as the prelude to a new day of international cooperation and peace that would mark the postwar world.

Even as the war in Europe was drawing to a close, however, sharp differences began to emerge between the allies. A number of American diplomats and political leaders became concerned at Russian consolidation of power in Eastern Europe. From Moscow, the U.S. Ambassador, Averell Harriman, was warning that the United States could not do business with Stalin. Before he left Washington for the last time, in late March 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt is reported to have said angrily that Stalin had broken every one of the promises he had made at Yalta.1

By the time of the Potsdam conference,2 after the defeat of Germany, Soviet-U.S. differences were so pronounced that no common basis could be arranged for the Government of Germany; instead, the Big Four (the United States, the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, and France) decided to continue four separate occupation zones. The Western Allies agreed to transfer to the Soviet Union a portion of the German reparations from their zones. When it became apparent, however, that the Russians were establishing a Communist regime in their zone of Germany, the United States suspended delivery of reparations to the Soviets. At the same time, the Western Allies agreed that relaxation of the harsh terms imposed on Germany was necessary to allow German industry to make a comeback and Europe to recover. The Russians disagreed, and called for rigid, unified control of Germany. The Western Allies recognized that acquiescence in such "unification" would have

1 Yalta, a seaport on the Crimean Sea, was the site of an Allied conference toward the end of World War II fighting in Europe, on Feb. 4-11, 1945. At the conference President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin made decisions about their countries' actions following the defeat of Germany. Certain secret provisions of the Yalta agreement were not made public until after the war. They included a Russian promise to declare war against Japan soon after the defeat of Germany; in return, Russia was to remain the dominant influence in Outer Mongolia and was to regain territories lost during the Russo-Japanese War (190405). Most of the criticism of the Yalta agreement centered on the fact that in Europe the U.S.S.R. was to take over the Eastern portion (approximately one-third) of Poland. There was also later criticism of the Russian occupation and establishment of Communist governments in Eastern Europe as part of an implicit understanding reached at the conference. The written text of the Yalta agreement does not specify this, however. Most historians speculate that while it might have been understood that Eastern Europe should be in the Soviet sphere of influence, the Western Allies had not anticipated the thorough Russian domination of the area.

2 See footnote 7 to the hearing of Feb. 27, 1953.

submerged the German economy in the Soviet system. The likely result would be continued stagnation and probable breakdown of the economies of Western Germany and Western Europe. This development would actually be in the Russians' long-term interest. Thus came about the permanent division of Germany, still one of the most prominent elements in the East-West confrontation.

In 1948, the Russians attempted once more to push the West out of Berlin, this time by blockading all surface access to West Berlin. The United States and Great Britain responded with the Berlin airlift. It proved so successful that the Russians backed off after some 10 months.

At the Potsdam conference, it also became evident that the U.S.S.R. was never going to allow the free elections in Eastern Europe called for by the Yalta agreement. By the end of 1946, in Eastern Europe, from the Arctic to Greece there stretched a belt of Russian satellite nations. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia were in the grip of Communist parties. Czechoslovakia, after a period of neutrality and democracy, fell victim to a Communist conspiracy in 1948 and joined the others. The division of Europe was characterized in unforgettable terms by Winston Churchill in a speech at Westminster College at Fulton, Mo. in March 1946. In his words,

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies.*** From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject *** to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow.✶✶✶ Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.' *** this is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.

What were the implications for the United States of the swift Russian moves in Eastern Europe? From the American Embassy

See footnote 4 to the hearing of Aug. 4, 1954, on the Mutual Security Act of 1954, in vol. XII of this historical series.

*The complete text of the "Iron Curtain" speech by Winston Churchill may be found in the Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., pp. A1145-A1147.

in Moscow, George Kennan, already recognized as an outstanding authority on Russia and Russians, sent a long telegram to the Department of State on February 22, 1946. It included these words:

In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the United States there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken *

* 5

The bases for confrontation, so cogently described by Churchill and Kennan, were, even as they spoke, being transformed into situations of conflict or potential conflict. Only with great diplomatic pressure was the Soviet Union forced to relinquish footholds she had established in Iran and ease pressure on Turkey for concessions in the Dardanelles. Western Europe was being endangered by the growing Communist parties in France and Italy, and Communist partisans began a civil war in Greece which threatened to

5 George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1967), p. 557. Kennan's assessment of the Soviet long-term objective takes on added significance when we recall that he was the principal author of the "containment" policy which he set forth in 1947 in an article in Foreign Affairs. With variations and modifications, the containment policy was for many years a guiding principle in American policy toward the Russians. See footnote 7 to the hearing of Jan. 18, 1952 in vol. XVII of this historical series.

More than 3 years after his long telegram, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (vol. VIII of this historical series, p. 63), Kennan not only assessed the U.S.S.R.'s postwar objectives in terms similar to those he had wired from Moscow, but also presented a rough delineation of the containment theory.

"We were confronted after this recent war with a tremendous and urgent, serious problem of the defense of our position in the world. That problem existed in the fact that the Soviet Union, that had improved vastly its power position by the events of the war, had undertaken to choose this moment to destroy our world, first in Europe if they could, and then in the other areas of the world. We have had to react to that. Our first reaction, I think quite properly, has been defensive. It has meant that we have tried at least to stop them wherever we could, where they were, and to try to get a line that we could at least begin to hold on. Of course, there must come now another phase in which we must try to correct the situations that do exist, where their power has been expended beyond what you can call the normal limit."

In mentioning what he called "the normal limit," Kennan was conveying his recognition that great powers, from the pragmatic, realistic standpoint, if not in the "moral" sense, had legitimate "spheres of influence." Eastern Europe he looked on as a Russian sphere of influence in this sense, just as the Caribbean had long been recognized as a U.S. sphere of influence. This is where Kennan fell out with many other American opponents of communism in Congress and out. Where we could, Kennan would have the United States "contain" communism, even roll it back some if that could be done without engendering a war. But he would not go along with vigorous attempts to "liberate" Communist-dominated or -occupied areas. Even Secretary of State Acheson's "building situations of [American] strength" was a somewhat more activist position. The "containment" and liberation philosophies were only two among diverse American reactions to the East-West confrontation; a number of others are presented in the hearings in this volume.

topple the Western-oriented Government of that nation. The confrontation had become so widespread and profound in 1947 that Walter Lippman termed it the "Cold War."

In early 1947, Great Britain, in dire economic straits, advised the United States she would have to give up her commitments to defend Southern Europe. The United States responded with the Truman doctrine, under which our Nation provided economic and military assistance to Greece and Turkey. In the former, U.S. advisers reorganized the Greek Armed Forces and succeeded in stabilizing their resistance to the Communist guerrillas. Eventually, the guerrillas lost their sanctuaries in neighboring countries, and the Greek Government regained control of its territories.

Western Europe was a more serious problem. In 1947 it became apparent that further European recovery would be difficult. The U.S. response was the Marshall plan, named for the Secretary of State, Gen. George C. Marshall. More formally known as the European recovery program, the Marshall plan was part of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948. The Marshall plan was a great economic success; by 1950, Western Europe's recovery had become phenomenal. The political results were more complex. The Russians and their satellites had refused to participate in the European recovery program; some observers felt that the close U.S. cooperation with Western Europe hastened and accentuated the bipolar split of Europe into Russian and anti-Russian camps.

In the development and adoption of the Marshall plan, we can observe the operation of a number of the forces that played a part in the development of midcentury American foreign policy. There were the traditional generosity, humanitarianism, and moral sensibilities of the American people, and the new realization of the American economic interests in the modern world, particularly in the restoration of the European economic structure. But, overriding the other considerations and becoming increasingly important as the Soviet menance to Europe showed itself more plainly, was the concern for America's security. As Representative John M. Vorys, the Republican floor leader for the Marshall plan bill, wrote, fear of communism was the "overriding factor" in a complex of motives which he summarized succinctly as follows:

* For extensive discussion of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948 and text of some of the hearings on it by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, see vol. III of this historical series.

I think Congress supported the Marshall plan because they thought it would keep Europe from going Communist, that it was planned intelligently, and would be all over in 4 years. Sympathy, generosity, and humanitarian considerations played a part, but they were also used as additional good reasons for the real reasons I mentioned. * * *

Congress felt farsighted (for 4 years), anti-communist, big-hearted and hardheaded in passing the Marshall plan.7

The Marshall plan and in the following year the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) under the aegis of the United States were the key elements in America's early part in the East-West confrontation. During the period of this group of hearings, interest in the buildup of NATO continued, but there was also a great deal of attention to another aspect of the cold war: Developments in the Far East. Communists had overrun mainland China in 1949, invaded South Korea in 1950 and, in conjunction with native nationalist movements, were endeavoring to seize areas of Southeast Asia. There was a natural tendency at the time to see a linkage between the confrontation which had developed in Europe and the Communist threat in Asia. Throughout the period 1951-56, the hearings in this volume particularly, but in the other volumes as well, reflect the concerns of the Committee on Foreign Affairs with tensions of the cold war in many parts of the world and with the effectiveness of measures being taken to prevent erosion of the position of the United States, its allies, and other areas considered vital to American interests.

After the death of Stalin in March 1953 and the cease-fire agreement in Korea in July of that year, there was some evidence of a reduction in the sense of urgency in the East-West confrontation. The reader may note this in the volume of this historical series which presents the hearings of the Committee on Foreign Affairs on the Mutual Security Act of 1956; in those hearings, Congress reduced the administration's foreign aid request (which included funds for military assistance) by approximately a billion dollars. To some extent, the sensational recovery of European

'Letter from John M. Vorys to Harold L. Hitchens, May 7, 1959. See Harold L. Hitchens, Influences on the Congressional Decision to Pass the Marshall Plan, Western Political Quarterly, March 1968. 8 The buildup of NATO and the U.S. role in NATO were primary concerns of the Committee on Foreign Affairs as it discussed the various Mutual Security Acts, 1951-56. See vols. IX-XIII of this historical series.