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sphere, must work together as good neighbors in the solution of their common problems. 10. We believe that full economic collaboration between all nations ... is essential to the improvement of living conditions all over the world, and to the establishment of freedom from fear and freedom from want. 11. We shall continue to strive to promote freedom of expression and freedom of religion throughout the peace-loving areas of the world. 12. We are convinced that the preservation of peace between nations requires a United Nations Organization composed of all the peace-loving nations of the world who are willing jointly to use force if necessary to insure peace. That is the foreign policy which guides the United States now. That is the foreign policy with which it confidently faces the future. . . .

Big Three Moscow

meeting

plans peace conference for 1946

This statement of American foreign policy was general in its terms. However, the world situation was still so unstable that specific policies could not be spelled out in detail until working arrangements were perfected. This was especially true in respect to Europe. An interim meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union took place in Moscow from December 16 to 26, 1945. In spite of further disagreements between Mr. Byrnes and Mr. Molotov, the meetings did produce a plan for a peace conference to be held at Paris in the spring of 1946. This conference was to draft the treaties for Italy, Finland, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The Moscow sessions also agreed to the establishment of a Far Eastern Commission and of an Allied Council for

Other accomplishments of Moscow sessions

Japan; on the creation of a joint. Soviet-American commission for Korea; on the complete withdrawal of United States and Russian troops from China; on a recommendation to the United Nations for the setting up of a commission for the control of atomic energy; and on several matters concerning the broadening of the Rumanian and Bulgarian postwar governments. The accomplishments of the Moscow conference, therefore, were encouraging in the light of the failures of the previous meeting of the Foreign Ministers.

By the close of 1945, American policy toward Europe began to assume a generally recognizable character. The Truman administration had dis

The Morgenthau Plan for Germany is discarded

carded, without specifically disavowing, the so-called Morgenthau Plan for Germany. This plan, advanced by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and adopted by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at the Quebec Conference in September 1944, would have de-industrialized Germany and reduced that highly developed country to an agrarian state. (54) The new American policy reached after a more realistic appraisal of the position of Germany in Central Europe, embraced a concept of a deNazified Germany without military power but with enough industrial organization to support the economic needs of that portion of Europe.

With respect to other former enemy countries in Europe, the United States was anxious to reach peace settlements which would permit the development of democratic institutions in these states. In 1945 this view included the encouragement of coalitions of such elements as the democratic socialists, the comliberal forces munists, and the liberal which had from exile or within the

General United States policies on liberated areas

country combatted the Nazi-type regimes. As for those areas which had been liberated from the Nazis by Russian or other allied armies, the quicker representative, democratic governments could be constituted, here again usually combining communist and liberal political parties, the sooner the United States believed a rehabilitation would be possible. (55) In the case of Italy, a peace treaty at an early date and on generous terms would help to solve the problem of erecting a stable regime in that country.

So, in brief, American policy toward Europe in late 1945 represented a general attempt to get the battered continent back on its feet to prevent a wave of uprisings, revolutions, and other civil disorders which might characteristically be expected to succeed a devastating war. While the opinion may not have been widely. held or publicly expressed at the time, there was evident as early as the beginning of 1946 a belief that international communism, as represented principally by the strength of the

Stability and rehabilitation the immediate goals

U.S.S.R., would quickly rush in to take advantage of any such upheavals as occurred in central and western Europe. To forestall this possibility, stable governments based on a wide participation of all anti-Nazi elements in the populations of the former enemy and newly liberated countries were a first consideration. Economic and social rehabilitation programs were a close second in the American design. To achieve these twin goals the State Department under Secretary Byrnes expanded its organization and set about exercising its direction of foreign policy with a firmer hand than had been the case during the war when Mr. Roosevelt was popularly regarded as "his own Secretary of State" and Messers Hull and Stettinius were frequently left far behind the procession while personal emissaries of Mr. Roosevelt-Harry L. Hopkins, Patrick J. Hurley, William Donovan, and others or military leaders in the field greatly influenced the nation's foreign policy.

2. Countering Communism in Europe: The Truman Doctrine of 1947 Aside from the serious problem of Germany, which will be discussed in later sections of this study, the position of the United States with respect to Europe became more Demobilization clear in the year 1946. The large weakens armies which the United States had American massed in western Europe to defeat influence the Nazis were rapidly withdrawn abroad following VE-Day. When Japan

surrendered sooner than had been expected, the public clamor at home, reflected immediately in demands by many members of Congress, caused a precipitate demobilization of the American armed forces. This demobilization had the effect of weakening America's influence in international affairs since there was little power to back up diplomatic pronouncements for carrying out terms of peace. Moreover, when the huge Soviet military forces continued to stay near their wartime peak the American demobilization automatically allowed the Russians to fill in the vacuums created by the withdrawal of American and other allied troops. It is true that the United States, as well as several of the other leading western countries, placed large hopes in the United Nations and in a perpetuation of the war

3 See pp. 137-41, 144-52, 154-59 and 166-74 below.

time spirit of cooperation which had unified the Allies. But there is evidence that President Roosevelt just before his death suspected the Russians would be troublesome and not keep their agreements. And many American diplomats, administration leaders, and military commanders reached similar conclusions about this same period.

Foreign Ministers meet in Paris, 1946

The Paris conferences to arrange the peace treaties for Italy, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, and Roumania gave evidence of the Soviet tactics of obstruction. At the meeting of the Big Four foreign ministers in Paris in April-May and June-July 1946, Molotov and the other three could not agree upon the fate of the city of Trieste, claimed by both Italy and communist Yugoslavia. At the close of the first session Secretary Byrnes made a report on the lack of progress.5

SECRETARY BYRNES' REPORT ON SECOND MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF FOREIGN MINISTERS, WASHINGTON, MAY 20, 1946: We found that there were three

Secretary basic issues outstanding on the Italian

Byrnes reports a stalemate

...

treaty: reparations, the colonies, and the Italian-Yugoslav boundary, particularly as it concerns the Italian city of Trieste. we are willing to agree to limited reparations. . . . The Soviet Government has insisted on reparations for itself of $100,000,000.... she insists that some of the naval ships surrendered by Italy to the navies of the United States and Britain be shared with her. She declares the ships are war booty. But war booty belongs to the nation capturing it. The Soviet Union has never shared with Allied nations any war booty captured by her. We are willing to give to her in lieu of reparations some of the . . . ships. . . . She insists upon being paid out of current production. We would have to finance the production, and therefore I refused to agree with the proposal. . . . The Soviet Government receded from its claim for a trusteeship of Tripolitania . . . in favor of an Italian trusteeship. . . . our position has always been that the colonies should be placed under United Nations trusteeship. . . . [As to the question of Trieste] the Soviet Representative [insists] that Venezia Giulia must be treated as an inseparable whole,

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and that so treated the claim of Yugoslavia to the area is superior to that of Italy. . . . we will continue to appeal to the Soviet Government and the Yugoslav Government not to press for a boundary line which will needlessly violate ethnic principles. . . . If a peace conference is not called this summer, the United States will feel obliged to request the General Assembly . . . under Article 14. . . to make recommendations with respect to the peace settlement

we must not forget that if we fail to cooperate in a peace which is indivisible we may again find that we will have to cooperate in a war which is world-wide. Whether we like it or not we live in one world.

The four foreign ministers met again in Paris from June 15 to July 12, 1946. Secretary Byrnes succeeded in getting a compromise agreement

Partial settlement of the Trieste issue

whereby the larger portion of Venezia Giulia was to be placed under United Nations supervision with the Security Council administering the Free Territory of Trieste through a governor appointed by the Council. A small area of the province, inhabited predominately by Italians, was to be left with Italy. And the foreign ministers agreed to the convening of a peace conference to meet in Paris on July 29, 1946. A final decision on the Italian colonies was left to a later date. While the American, British, and French ministers gave in to the Soviet demands for $100,000,000 reparations from Italy, they did stipulate that such reparations as were taken from Italian production must not interfere with the economic reconstruction of Italy. The foreign ministers made no progress at this meeting on the German and Austrian questions, but they did reach some agreements with respect to the Bulgarian, Finnish, Hungarian, and Roumanian treaties. An enlightening observation upon the difficulties of dealing with the Russians is contained in Secretary Byrnes' report on the JuneJuly 1946 sessions.

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friends fear we would think them weak and soft if they agree without a struggle on anything we wanted, even though they wanted it too. . . . I do not believe the Soviets realize the doubts and suspicions which they have raised in the minds of those in other countries who want to be their friends. . . .

Secretary Byrnes returned to Paris for the peace conference which opened on schedule on July 29, 1946. The sessions continued until October 15. Molotov, the chief Soviet delegate, offered many objections to the terms proposed by the western democracies, but finally the five draft treaties were adopted. A Third Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, held in New York from November 4 to December 12, 1946, completed the drawing of the five treaties. This meeting also made preliminary plans for peace settlements with Austria and Germany.

Since the United States had never been at war with Finland it was not a signer of the Finnish treaty. The Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Roumanian treaties were signed by George C. Mr. Byrnes on January 20, 1947 as Marshall his last official act as Secretary of succeeds State. General George C. Marshall Byrnes as was sworn in as Secretary on JanSecretary, 1947 uary 21st. The three minor treaties were approved by the American Senate on June 5, 1947 by a voice vote after discussion which indicated that the treaties were not very favorably regarded by the Senators. The Italian treaty met with considerable opposition in the Senate where the reparations awarded to the Soviet Union were characterized as "highway robbery," inasmuch as the U.S.S.R. had not been a direct participant in the war in Italy. There was some talk also that the withdrawal of occupation forces from Italy would enable the strong communist elements in that country to proceed against little resistance to take over political power. However, the Senate on June 5 gave its assent to the Italian treaty by a vote of 79 to 10. President Truman signed all four treaties on June 14, 1947 and they went into effect on September 15, 1947.

Italian peace treaty approved by the Senate

The prolonged negotiations over these treaties had taken place in an atmosphere charged with

1 Senators Connally and Vandenberg again served as Secretary Byrnes' principal associates at this meeting.

Po

apprehension over the fate of central and eastern Europe. With its powerful armed Winston forces in occupation up to the Elbe Churchill in Germany and openly or tacitly in defines the control in Hungary, Albania, Yugo"iron curtain" slavia, Bulgaria, Roumania, land, and the Baltic states, as well as established in parts of Austria, the Soviet Union was shutting off this important area of Europe from access to the west. As Winston Churchill so aptly said in a foreign policy speech at Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, an "iron curtain" was being interposed between the former wartime allies of east and west. The countries under some form of Soviet and communist domination became known as "satellites." Perhaps they might more correctly be termed "captives," for a satellite may be thought to have some freedom of action while a captive is held in bondage or confinement. Satellite or captive, the reality is that governments, peoples, institutions, and land were falling into the communist grip at an alarming rate in the period between VE-Day and the close of 1946. Typical of the frictions of the first year of "peace" was the shooting down of an American transport plane by Yugoslav troops in August 1946. Five American airmen lost their lives in this incident. Since the Yugoslavs were already angry with the American government because of Secretary Byrnes' unwillingness to hand Trieste over to Yugoslavia,

"Satellite"

or

"captive" ?

Yugoslavia shoots down an American plane

this deliberate attack upon the American plane worsened relations between the two countries. Marshal Tito, then dictator of a Yugoslavian communist government closely connected with Soviet Russia, claimed that the Americans had violated Yugoslav territory. But the American State Department was firm and after much explosive language Tito apologized to the United States and paid an indemnity of $150,000. This shooting was but one of several instances in which Yugoslavs were involved in disputes with Americans, especially in the jointly occupied Trieste

area.

The Marshal's original name was Josip Broz.

Great Britain plans to withdraw aid to Greece

Soon a more dramatic and more important occasion arose when the American government decided to take a firm stand against the growth of communist power in eastern Europe. In February 1947 the British government notified Washington that after March 31st it could no longer give military and financial support to the constituted government of Greece. Since the expulsion of the Nazis from Greece the British had helped to maintain the restored Greek monarchy which was desperately trying to preserve itself from overthrow by communist guerillas and underground forces. These communists were ostensibly receiving help from fellow communists in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria. If British support was withdrawn, the communists would probably engulf the rightist government of Greece. On March 3, 1947 the Greek Prime Minister appealed to the United States for immediate assistance.

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The Truman Doctrine on aid to Greece and Turkey

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes. . . . I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period ending June 30, 1948. . . In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey, at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use

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pointed that the United States had not sought to enlist the aid of the United Nations in solving the problem of Britain's withdrawal of support from Greece and Turkey. But those who defended the administration's action in "by-passing" the UN believed that the U.S.S.R. would have vetoed any attempt by the UN to proceed in the matter. Something had to be done at once, and the United States was determined to protect Greece and Turkey from almost certain enslavement by the communists. While the Truman Doctrine established a dangerous precedent in that it could mean costly and endless endeavors to counter communism wherever that menace appeared, the American people generally applauded the strong stand taken by the President and the State Department in this case. The Congress voted the requested appropriations on May 15, 1947 by secure majorities in each house.9

In a sense the Truman Doctrine formed a renewed and augmented form of lend-lease. The strength of America was to be pitted against the

America wins first great victory of the "cold war"

strength of international communism by furnishing aid to peoples resisting communist aggression. If the Truman Doctrine was a reversal of the non-intervention principle of the Monroe Doctrine, it was likewise a guarantee that the United States would move quickly and strongly to protect eastern Europe against the inroads of communist totalitarianism. The pattern set by the Truman Doctrine led directly to the Marshall Plan of 1947 and the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949. The failure to follow the same pattern in 1948 may have been part of the cost of the loss of

As an answer to objections that the Truman Doctrine bypassed the UN, Senator Vandenberg secured a bi-partisan amendment to the appropriation act which provided that the United States would withdraw its support whenever the UN was ready to take up the burden of aid. Senator Vandenberg had succeeded Senator Connally as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee with the organization of the 80th Congress in January 1947.

Czechoslovakia to the west.10 But in 1947 the Truman Doctrine was a daring stroke in the "cold war" against worldwide communism and it marks the first great American victory of that struggle.(56) 3. The Marshall Plan and

Economic Aid to Europe

In the aftermath of war's destruction the economic plight of Europe caused concern throughout the world. If Europe, one of the world's major production areas, could not regain its former productivity the whole international economic structure was in danger of collapse. And, should such a collapse occur, the incidence of depression, civil unrest, revolution, and disorder would be so widespread that communism might envelope the entire continent in a matter of a few months. While the immediate excuse of offering aid to Greece and Turkey was as much military as it was economic, the threatening spectres of disease, poverty, starvation, and revolt alarmed the State Department. And the policy implicit in the Truman Doctrine would, in the belief of many, soon have to be extended to the rest of Europe.

This extension came in the late spring of 1947 with an invitation to the nations of Europe to

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The Marshall Plan

...

are

SECRETARY MARSHALL'S ADDRESS, CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 5, 1947: . . . The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products SO much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character.. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which

10 See p. 135 below.

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