Harry Targ
(The recent visit of President Biden to the beaches of
Normandy reflects the continued efforts of presidents to rewrite World War 2
history to celebrate the achievements of “democracy” over “authoritarianism.”
The speech, however, reflects the ongoing “cognitive war” to convince the US
citizenry, if not the world’s, of the special virtues of the United States and
to proclaim:
“Here we proved the forces of liberty are
stronger than the forces of conquest. Here we proved that the ideals of
our democracy are stronger than any army or combination of armies in the entire
world. “
And he pridefully reported that “We established NATO,
the greatest military alliance in the history of the world. And over time
… we brought more nations into NATO — the NATO Alliance, including the newest
members: Finland and Sweden. …
Today, NATO stands at 32 countries strong.
And NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace,
deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”
As the material below suggests the Soviet Union and its Red Army bore
the brunt of the war in Europe from its outset, while the allied leaders,
Winston Churchill and Franklyn Roosevelt, postponed the invasion of Europe, the
second front, for two years to further bleed the Red Army. In addition
historian Gabriel Kolko suggested that the “the politics of war” meant that
from at least 1943 on the “unnatural alliance” of the United States, Great
Britain, and the Soviet Union involved each nation planning for a post-war
world in which it would have maximum influence. As President Biden’s speech
indicated., the US vision was to create a US dominated world based on an
alliance system of which from 1949 on NATO
would become a centerpiece.
These points and more suggest that the Biden speech at Normandy, was
used by him, as presidents before, to conceptualize a world view of American
exceptionalism and the need to continue to protect “democracies from
authoritarian regimes.”)
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U.S. Foreign Policy during World War Il
After Nazi Germany had attacked the Soviet Union,
France and Great Britain, and after U.S. entry into the war, an alliance of
convenience was formed between Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union,
what might be called “the unnatural alliance.” Wartime collaboration has been
characterized by historian Gabriel Kolko (The Politics of War, 1968) as
amicable until 1943, when all sides realized that the Nazis would be defeated.
From that point on, each ally sought to maximize its own advantage in reference
to postwar political influence.
The major source of conflict between the Soviet Union
and the Western allies concerned plans for a cross-channel
invasion of Europe. The Soviets fought the largest share of Germany's forces
during most of the war. Consequently, they viewed the invasion of Europe
promised by President Roosevelt in 1942 as of vital importance for relieving
the pressure on the Red Army. Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain
repeatedly counseled Roosevelt to postpone the invasion and instead to carry
out operations in North Africa, Greece, and Italy. The Soviets believed that the
British strategy, accepted by the United States, was designed to weaken the Red
Army, preserve the lives of Western
armies, and consequently increase the power of the West after
the war was over.
In June, 1944, after nearly three years of
postponement, the Normandy invasion was carried out. While during most of the
war the Soviets faced 70 to 75 percent of Germany's divisions, the
cross-channel invasion increased the West's contact with German forces to 81 of
its 181 divisions. British and U.S. confrontation with German forces peaked
only in January,
1945, when they were engaged against 42 percent of the German
army.
Further, the United
States, Britain, and the Soviet Union established contacts with political
factions or movements from Eastern and Western European countries that
represented political tendencies closest to the interest of each. The United
States and Britain collaborated with conservative political forces, such as
landed aristocrats from Eastern Europe and military officers from Eastern and
Western Europe. Despite the fact that Britain and the United States often
favored different clients, each supported political figures that were least
likely to seek radical social change within their societies after the war.
While the Soviet Union often encouraged Communist and
other left resistance fighters to cooperate with their more conservative
countrymen to defeat fascism in Western Europe, they were not interested in
supporting those political figures in Eastern Europe that were
anti-Soviet.
A critical example of the latter were the Polish ex
iles in London, who called for an Eastern European bloc after
the war that would contain the Soviet Union. Since Poland had been the
traditional point at which the Soviet Union had been invaded from Europe, the
status of the postwar Polish government was of critical importance to the
Soviet leadership. Early in the war
Stalin had said that the Soviet Union would not tolerate a
bloc of anti-Soviet states on its western borders. The London Poles represented
just such a prospect.
Therefore, the wartime experience had been one of
jockeying for position among the allied powers. The late date of the
cross-channel invasion and the kinds of exile and resistance fighters each side
supported indicated to the Soviet leadership that allied collaboration was
indeed fragile.
This was the background for the famous wartime
conference held February 4-11, 1945, at Yalta, when Churchill, Roosevelt, and
Stalin met to begin to settle outstanding postwar issues. The major accords
resulting from the Yalta conference dealt with Asia, Eastern Europe, and
postwar policy toward Germany.
Regarding hostilities in Asia, the Soviet Union
promised to enter the war against Japan within three months after the formal
end to the war against Germany. As a result of the Soviet Union's commitment to
the final phase of the Asian war, the USSR was to gain control of the Kurile
Islands, and the Sakhalin Islands. The Port of Dairen and Port Arthur would be
internationalized. All of these concessions restored the status of these areas
to what they had been at the time of the Russo/Japanese war during the first
decade of the twentieth century. The Soviet Union was to control the Manchurian
railroad jointly with the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek and agreed to
sign a treaty of friendship with the Nationalist Chinese forces. Finally, a
joint trusteeship was to be set up between the United States and the Soviets
for the
postwar occupation of the Korean peninsula. The Soviet Union
would occupy Korea north of the 38th parallel—the United States south of it.
The accords on Eastern Europe were to provide the
initial point of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Poland's eastern and western frontiers were to be moved westward, giving land
to the Soviet Union and taking land away from Germany. The issue of the
governance of Poland after the war was discussed, and the great powers agreed
that the government of the Lublin Poles, supported by the Soviet Union, should
be broadened as a result of elections to include representatives from other political
tendencies. The United States and Britain were particularly interested in
representation from the conservative London Poles. In reference to Eastern
Europe in general, the allied powers were to assist in the establishment of
free governments throughout the area.
The last issue of major
consequence involved the disposition of Germany after the war. Each wartime
ally, including France, was to administer a zone of Germany, and policy
affecting all of Germany was to be subject to the decisions of an Allied
Control
Council, The United States agreed in principle to reparations
to the Soviets to be extracted from Germany. Stalin had mentioned a figure of
$20 billion, but no final decision was made on the precise figure. Finally, it
was agreed that German industrial capacity for military purposes would be
eliminated.
Within two months of the Yalta Conference, President
Roosevelt had died and his successor, Harry Truman, acknowledged the fact that
no elections had yet been held in Poland. The language of the accords on Poland
was ambiguous, allowing for political participation of "all democratic and
anti-Nazi parties," which by some standards could exclude the London
Poles. It was clear, nevertheless, that the London Poles represented forces
hostile to
the Soviet Union. Truman and his key advisors, such as Admiral
Leahy and Averell Harriman, ambassador to the Soviet Union, decided that it was
time to pressure the Soviets to reduce their influence in Eastern Europe.
Harriman reiterated the charge that
he had been making throughout the war: 'I believe that Stalin
hoped to get to the Atlantic, and that was perhaps the reason why he didn't
carry out the Yalta agreements. The prospects for Communist takeover seemed too
good" (Harriman, in Howard Bliss and M. Glenn Johnson ed., Consensus at
the Crossroads, 1972, 102-111)
Two weeks after
Roosevelt's death, on April 23, 1945, Truman met with Foreign Minister Molotov
of the Soviet Union and scolded him because no elections had been held in
Poland. On May 5, 1945
lend-lease shipments to the Soviet Union were abruptly
canceled without formal notice to the Soviets. Further, a $6 billion loan
request the Soviets had sent to Washington was "lost. " The goal of
this hardening policy towards the Soviets was to pressure them to withdraw from
the affairs of Eastern Europe. The Open Door for U.S. economic and political
influence then could be exercised there as it had been before World War Il.
The seeming concern for "free elections' in
Poland, which
served as a signal to the world of the United States's
unilateral dismissal of allied collaboration, was somewhat deceitful. Stalin
had repeatedly said throughout the war that he would not
tolerate a belt of anti-Soviet states bordering the Soviet Union. It was clear
that the London Poles sought just that. Also, when Truman attacked Molotov,
only two months had passed since Yalta. Further, the Soviets had not violated
their Yalta commitment regard
ing Asia and Germany, so that in retrospect it becomes clear
that Truman's conduct, immediately on taking office, constituted a conscious
movement away from cooperation to confrontation. Harriman's position was that
the dire economic situation in the Soviet Union would force it to capitulate to
the demands of the United States for a postwar world order based on the Open
Door.
To maintain the façade of alliance, Truman sent Harry
Hopkins, a close advisor to Roosevelt, to negotiate with Stalin on these
emerging conflicts in May, 1945. As a result of Hopkins's deliberation with
Stalin, the latter agreed to include some London Poles in a new Polish
government. The new Polish government that was established was recognized on
June 21, 1945, by the United States and Great Britain.
The last wartime conference was held at Potsdam in
July, 1945. While minor agreements were reached on the administration of
Germany, the meeting -attended by Churchill (and his replacement, Clement
Attlee, who had just defeated Churchill in British elections), Stalin, and
Truman was filled with acrimony. By the outset of the conference, Truman had
heard of the successful test of the atomic bomb. He realized that economic
pressure on the Soviets could then be coupled with the implied threat of using
the most destructive weapon the world had ever seen.
Truman,
Attlee, and Chiang Kai-shek issued a proclamation during the conference calling
for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese. This public statement was made
without the prior knowledge of the Soviets. During the weeks preceding Potsdam,
the Japanese had been negotiating with the Soviets over surrender. They only
wished to preserve the Emperor as their spiritual leader. It was clear,
however, that the United States no longer needed or wanted the Soviet Union to
intervene in the Asian war or aid in securing Japan's surrender now that the
atomic bomb was operational.
On the German question the allies agreed at Potsdam to
take reparations from their own zones. The Western zones would give the Soviets
ten percent of their reparations because the Western zones included the
industrial sectors of Germany. Also, fifteen percent of Western reparations
taken were to be exchanged for agricultural products from the Soviet sector.
These agreements
were soon to be dishonored.
Despite the
communiqués between the Japanese and the Soviets about possible surrender, the
United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing
80,000 people. The Soviet Union sent their armies into Manchuria on August 8,
1945
and on August 9 a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki,
leveling the city. The United States had become the first power
in world history to use nuclear weapons.
The Cold War Heats Up
In October, 1944, Stalin
and Churchill had reached an agreement whereby the Soviet Union would have
dominant influence in Romania
and Bulgaria after the war, and the British would have
dominant influence in Greece. Both nations were to have equal influence in
Yugoslavia and Hungary. While this arrangement was made without formal approval
of President Roosevelt, many analysts argue that Stalin assiduously honored the
arrangement after World War Il,
until the Western nations began to pressure Stalin to reduce
Soviet influence in Eastern Europe.
This pressure began almost immediately after the United
States dropped the atomic bomb in the summer of 1945. The U.S. secretary of
state, James Byrnes, publicly attacked the Soviets for a lack of democracy in
the Bulgarian election, which was subsequently postponed until 1946. While the
Soviets did influence Bulgarian politics, in what had been a country allied
with Germany, at the same time they did not engage in political pressure in
support of the left in Greece, Hungary, or Yugoslavia. Consequently, the public
attack on the Soviets was probably seen by them as a repudiation of the
Churchill-Stalin agreement of 1944. Further, as Horowitz suggests:
The deeper significance of
Byrnes' statement was that it indicated to the Russians that the West was no
longer in
terested in working with them, and indeed was ready to use
its preponderant power to prevent the Soviet Union from organizing
a sphere of influence (in accord with previous agreements) in the vital East
and Central European area.
Thus, on the very day the second atomic bomb was dropped on
Nagasaki, and while Washington was staking out its own
sphere of influence in the Pacific, President Truman
declared that the East European countries were "not to
be
spheres of influence of any one power." This was the
effective end of the coalition (David Horowitz, The Free World Colossus, 1971,
57).
After an acrimonious
meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the big powers in September,
1945, the foreign ministers met in Moscow in December. Secretary of State
Byrnes agreed to draft treaties concerning former German satellite countries:
Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. When Byrnes returned to the United States, he
was castigated by the media and more impor
tingly by President Truman for his "appeasement" of
the Soviet Union. In a memorandum dated January 5, 1946, Truman made his
position on the Soviet Union clear. It was only a matter of time for this
policy to be institutionalized militarily, politically, and economically:
There isn't a doubt in my
mind that Russia intends an invasion of Turkey and the seizure of the Black Sea
Straits to the Mediterranean. Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and
strong language, another war is in the making. Only one language do they
understand-"how many divisions have
I do not think we should
play compromise any longer. We should refuse to recognize Russia and Bulgaria
until they comply with our requirements; we should let our position in Iran be
known in no uncertain terms and we should continue to insist on the internationalization
of the Kiel Canal, the Rhine-Danube waterway and the Black Sea Straits, and we
should maintain complete control of Japan and the Pacific. .
We should insist on the
return of our ships from Russia and force a settlement of the Lend-Lease debt
of Russia. I'm tired of babying the Soviets (Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal : Harry
S. Truman and American Liberalism, 1971, 117).
The growing hostility to the Soviet Union in 1945—46
was coupled with a naval buildup in the Mediterranean, a $13 billion defense
expenditure, further atomic bomb tests, and initial efforts to secure U.S. air
bases around the world. With dissent emerging within the Truman administration,
Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace wrote Truman on the import of these
policies:
These facts make it appear
either ( l ) that we are preparing
ourselves to win the war which we regard as inevitable or
(2) that we are trying to build up a predominance of force to intimidate the
rest of mankind. How would it look to us
if Russia had the atomic bomb and we did not, if Russia had 10,000 mile
bombers and air bases within I ,000 miles of our coastline and we did not? (Richard
J. Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War, 1976,
90)
Shortly after this memorandum to Truman, the ex-prime
minister of Great Britain came to the United States and spoke at a small
college in Fulton, Missouri. President Truman was on the podium when Churchill
called for a United States-British military alliance against a
"totalitarian" and expansionist Soviet Union. He proclaimed that
"from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain
has descended across the continent" (Halle 103—4). While not publicly
endorsing the Churchill view, Truman did not disavow it either.
Wallace Global Fund
This essay
is taken from:
Strategy of
an Empire in Decline: Cold War II ( free book download)
https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2018/05/strategy-of-empire-in-declinecold-war.html
