History of the Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Korean War, 1917-1950 0394706110, 9780394706115

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FROM

THE

OCTOBER

TO THE KOREAN

REVOLUTION

WAR,

1917-1950

A DIVISION

OF

RANDOM

HOUSE

NEW YORK

ANDRÉ FONTAINE

OF T H E

COLD F R O M THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION T O THE KOREAN WAR, 1917-1950

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

D. D. PAIGE

PANTHEON

BOOKS

FI RST AMERI CAN

EDI TI ON

© Copyright, 1968, by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by Pantheon Books, a division of Ran­ dom House, Inc., and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Limited. Originally published in French as “Histoire de la Guerre Froide.** © Copyright, 1965, by Librairie Arthème Fayard. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-19180 Manufactured in the United States of America By The Book Press Incorporated, Brattleboro, Vermont Typography by Kenneth Miyamoto

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Author and Publishers would like to thank the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, for their kind permission to quote from Winston S. Churchill's The Second World War.

3

INTRODUCTION

PA RT ONE

SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY Chapter 1 • THE GIANTS AWAKEN (pre-1917) Russia and America. Europe and the Tsars. Socialists and Peace. 11

C hapter 2 • FROM THE IMPERIALIST WAR TO CIVIL WAR (1917-1920) The October Revolution. Brest-Litovsk. Allied intervention. The Polish War. 25

Chapter 3 • RESPITE (1921-1931) The N.E.P. Stalin against Trotsky. The revolution in the colonial countries. Rapallo. Russia, England and France. The beginnings of the Chinese revolution. The U.S.S.R. and the United States. 48

C h ap ter 4 • BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS (1931-1938) Franco-Soviet rapprochement. The U.S.S.R. and Nazism. The switch to collective security. Laval in Moscow. The Spanish War. The Anschluss. Munich. 75

Chapter 5 • TWO IRONS IN THE FIRE (1938-1939) Stalin and the “chestnuts in the fire.” Germans in Prague. Double negotiations. Ribbentrop in Moscow. 97

C hapter 6 • THE FIRST DIVISION OF EUROPE (1939-1940) Double invasion of Poland. German-Soviet collaboration. The Finnish War. The Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations. Anglo-French plans against Russia. 119 •

vii

•

CONTENTS

Chapter 7 • JUST A MOMENT, MR. EXECUTIONER . . . (1940-1941) The annexation of the Baltic States and Bessarabia. Molotov in Berlin. Stalin’s attempts at appeasing Hitler. 139

Chapter 8 • RUSSIA REGAINED (1941-1945) The German invasion of Russia. Allied aid. The Second Front. Feelers for a separate peace. Stalin as marshal. The Big Three. 155

Chapter 9 • THE SECOND DIVISION OF EUROPE (1941-1944) The Polish question. Katyn. The Teheran Conference. Unconditional surrender. Tito. De Gaulle. 174

Chapter 10 • THE ART OF DISPOSING OF OTHERS (1944) The Greek affair. The Tito-Churchill meeting. The drama of Warsaw. The German debacle in the Balkans. The secret agreement between Churchill and Stalin. 200

Chapter 11 • THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM (February to April 1945) The Yalta Conference. The first difficulties. The death of Roosevelt. 219

Chapter 12 • THE IRON CURTAIN (April to August 1945) The war ends. Hopkins in Moscow. The birth of the U.N. The Potsdam Conference. Hiroshima and the surrender of Japan. 238

P A R T TW O

THE DUEL Chapter 13 • PANDORA’S BOX (1945-1946) The beginning of the Atomic Age. The Baruch Plan. Truman is sick of babying the Russians. Churchill’s speech at Fulton. 263 •

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CONTENTS

Chapter 14 • BLOCK TO THE SOUTH (1945-1947) The crises of Iran, Turkey and Greece. The Truman Doctrine. 279

Chapter 15 • FIVE TREATIES BUT NO PEACE (1945-1957) The treaties with the German satellites. The first differences in Germany. Molotov and Byrnes appeal to the German people. The collapse of the Moscow conference. 296

Chapter 16 • BLOCK TO THE WEST (1947) The Marshall Plan. “Containment.” The creation of the Cominform. Unrest in western Europe. 321

Chapter 17 • THE BIRTH OF THE BLOCS (1948-1950) The Prague coup. The Soviet-Yugoslav rupture. The purge in the Popular Democracies. Finland preserves its freedom. The Berlin Blockade. The Atlantic Pact. 340

Chapter 18 • THE MARGARINE COMMUNISTS (1940-1950) The victory of Communism in China.

368

Chapter 19 • STORM OVER ASIA (1945-1950) The crises in Indonesia and Indochina. The occupation of Korea and Japan. 387

CHRONOLOGY

399

THE MAJOR FIGURES INDEX

ix

421

411

L I S T OF M A P S

I II

• Eastern Europe at the time of the Russian Revolution

36

* Eastern Europe after the defeat of Germany

37

I I I • The beginning of the Chinese Revolution. The Long March of the Chinese Communists IV * Hitler and Stalin divide eastern Europe V VI V II

67 121

* Europe as established by the Yalta and Potsdam agreements

221

* The Yalta Agreement on the Far East

234

* The Soviet drive into the Middle East, 1945-1947

287

LI S T OF ABBREVI ATI ONS

The Axis, Rome-Berlin Axis—the German-Italian alliance formed just before World War II and lasting until Italy was knocked out of the war. The Entente—the World War I coalition of France, England, Italy and the United States against the Central Powers (the German, Austro-Hungar­ ian and Turkish empires and Bulgaria). (The Eentçnte Cordiale between France and England was supplanted by the Entente, between France, England and Russia. Subsequently, Italy and U.S.A. joined the Entente and this group became known as the Allies.) Cominform — (the information agency of the Communist and workers’ parties) a body composed of representatives of the Communist parties of the Soviet Union, France, Italy and the popular democracies of Europe, created in 1947 in order to unify the party “line”; dissolved in 1956. Comintern —another name for the Third or Communist International set up in opposition to the Second International (of Social Democratic parties). Created in 1919, dissolved in 1943. Kuomintang —National People’s Party, founded by Sun Yat-sen, later becom­ ing Chiang Kai-shek’s single party. M .R .P .—Popular Republican Movement (Mouvement Républicain Populaire) R . S.D .L.P .—Russian Social Democratic Labor Party S. R .s —Socialist Revolutionaries. One of the Russian political parties at the time of the Revolution. The right wing was led by Kerensky; the left wing (called the Left S.R.s) was led by Maria Spiridonova and sup­ ported the Bolsheviks until it was declared counterrevolutionary. U .N .— the United Nations. Created in 1945 by the countries actively engaged in the war against Germany. Its aim was to preserve peace and make the principles of the Declaration of the United Nations—which the Allies signed on January 1, 1942—prevail as the basis for international under­ standing.

FROM TO

THE

OCTOBER

THE KOREAN

REVOLUTION

WAR,

1917-1950

IN T R O D U C T IO N

“ W A R IS A C O N F L IC T O F IN T E R E S T S S E T T L E D BY M E A N S

of bloodshed, and nothing else distinguishes it from other conflicts," wrote Clausewitz, its most celebrated theorist and director of the Prus­ sian war college. This classic definition makes a sharp distinction between the states of war and peace, a distinction that progress in the techniques of de­ struction has rendered anachronistic. In the times of Clausewitz, a soldier could count on eliminating only a few dozen of his fellow men during his military service. At the end of World War I, it was still pos­ sible to estimate that it would take tens of thousands of bullets or ten shells to bring about the death of one individual. War could be profit­ able. It figured in the calculations of every government. Mothers cursed it, but men saw in it the most noble of arts and an opportunity to prove their valor. Today, nuclear strategists count in terms of "megadeaths,” of mil­ lions of deaths. In the White House, the Kremlin, Downing Street, the Élysée and Peking, the great powers of the earth could wipe out entire nations by pressing a button. But they know that they might well be numbered among the victims of the thunderbolt that they had loosed. And if by some miracle one or the other escaped, his victory would leave him but a kingdom of ruins stretching as far as the eye could see, a race of debilitated subjects whose descendants would be sapped by atrocious radiation sickness. There is no stake worth this price. Thus the Great Powers have had to renounce open war as a means of making their ambitions and in­ terests prevail over others. The traditional conditions of world politics were overturned precisely when two states with differing universalist ideologies, each with sufficient strength to make it a candidate for world leadership, began to clash in an unprecedented duel.

. 3 .

HISTORY

OF

THE

COLD

WAR

Recently the balance of terror between these two states has brought about a sort of armistice concretized by the Moscow Treaty on the limitation of nuclear testing. The fact that the Viet Nam war and the Israeli-Arab war of June 1967 did not discourage—in fact, they encouraged—Washington and Moscow to seek to complement the earlier agreement with a second accord on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons has demonstrated, since then, the very real reasons that make them prefer active coexistence to pursuit of the Cold War. This is not to say that the antagonism between socialism and capi­ talism has ended with the slacking of Soviet-American tension. Not only is there nothing to prove that it will not one day break out anew, but Mao and Fidel Castro, each in his own way, have seized the torch of world revolution and are urging the exploited masses of Asia, Africa and Latin America to take up arms against imperialism. The essential difference between this form of deliberately violent struggle and that which has obtained for twenty years between the “socialist” and Atlantic blocs is, however, perfectly clear: in spite of localized wars and chess games “on the edge of the abyss” the EastWest conflict— which historians will probably come gradually to rec­ ognize as the Third World War—has remained essentially a “cold war.” It is the history of this war and of no other that we have elected to recount here, since lack of perspective prevents us from introducing at such an early date what will perhaps be the Fourth World War— a war in which it is still very difficult to foresee today who would be involved and with what significance. When did it begin? Bernard Baruch first publicly gave it the name, the Cold War, in a speech he delivered in 1947 at the time of the debate over the Truman Doctrine for aid to Greece and Turkey. A few weeks later, Walter Lippmann published a series of articles under this name, soon to be followed by a book. But the phrase had long been making the rounds in Washington. Moreover, current opinion traces the beginning of the Cold War to the spring of 1946, and spe­ cifically to Churchill’s speech at Fulton College in Missouri, in which he appealed to English-speaking peoples to unite in order to meet the Soviet threat. Accordingly, my first intention was to begin this book with the rupture that took place at this time in the Grand Alliance which had •

4

•

INTRODUCTION

overcome the Reich and Japan. But I soon realized that the confronta* tion between Soviet power and the bourgeois world had always existed and that it was impossible to understand the crises that have occurred since 1945 without going back to the first phases. Events like Western intervention in the Russian Civil War, the German*Soviet Treaty of Rapallo, Munich, Ribbentrop’s visits to Stalin and Molotov’s to Hitler, the Warsaw rising, and the StalinChurchill agreement of 1944 regarding the division of spheres of influence in the Balkans, have probably influenced the behavior of the contemporary protagonists of the Cold War more than the stakes which have set them against one another in various parts of the world. In any case, they have determined both sides’ conception of the mag­ nitude of these stakes. Why a history of the Cold War? Because, though we do not often realize it, it has shaped all of us. It has affected our beliefs and habits, the way we live in San Francisco and Peking, in Havana and Leopold­ ville; it has cut cities and countries in two, destroyed and created nations, kept tens of millions of men under arms, and killed hundreds of thousands of them, jammed political prisons, aroused enthusiasm, caused suffering, bred fear and, like all great trials, brought out the best and the worst. It is futile to wonder what would have happened if it had been avoided—probably it could not have been. On the other hand perhaps it is not useless to recall its evolution, even if only to convince ourselves, in the face of what seems to be the most estab­ lished certainties, that the world is in a perpetual state of change and that the reversals of yesterday could very well take place tomorrow. One need only recall that in the space of half a century Soviet Russia has successively been the ally or associate of Germany against the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles; of France against Hitler; of Hitler against France, England and Poland; of England and the United States against Hitler; and of China against the United States—before Mao almost daily accused it of collusion with the United States. In order to stay within reasonable bounds, this account must ob­ viously omit or merely touch on many facts that are, nevertheless, important. It has, however, been necessary to follow rather closely the development of certain events that are either particularly con­ troversial or too often forgotten, but which are indispensable to fol­ lowing the thread of this history, whose apparent “direction” moves * 5

•

HISTORY

OF

THE

COLD

WAR

in anything but a straight line. This is particularly the case with the German-Russian peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the HitlerStalin pact of 1939, the rupture between Hitler and Stalin, the discus­ sions at Teheran and Yalta, the development of the Indochinese crisis of 1954, the abortive Summit Conference of 1960, and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. We hope thus to contribute to the work of clarification and revision that is now going on, particularly in the United States— we have in mind, for example, Gar Alperovitz’s Atom ic Diplomacy, Martin F. Here’s Beginnings of the Cold War and Louis J. Hallé’s The Cold War as History— and which we believe will one day also be undertaken on the other side of the iron curtain. Various individuals— political figures, military men, diplomats both French and foreign, who were involved in these events in one role or another—have been kind enough to elaborate on certain cir­ cumstances or to read parts of this book. To the thanks I owe them, I must add also the thanks I owe my colleagues on Le Monde, without whose friendship, knowledge and source materials I could never have completed this book; to André Schiffrin, who has courageously un­ dertaken to publish this lengthy work in the United States; and to Douglass Paige, who has tackled the enormous job of translating it and of tracking down the originals of the numerous citations from English and American sources. I cannot disguise the rather ambitious character of an undertaking whose scope I had not completely gauged when I embarked on it. Many parts are inevitably missing. Diplomatic archives are opened only very slowly, particularly in France. The debates within the socialist camp would be totally unknown if Moscow’s polemics against Belgrade, Peking and Tirana had not resulted in a whole series of major revelations which are still going on at the present time. And no one could read all of what has actually appeared. Nevertheless, I was happily surprised, as I got further into the writing of this book, by how little margin there is for controversy in the history of recent years, provided one tries to approach the events in depth and without bias. Of course, it is somewhat artificial to consider only the political, diplomatic and, on occasion, military confrontations of the East-West conflict. Completeness would demand that one show also the eco­ nomic, spiritual and intellectual forces at work on each side. I have been able to make only brief allusions to these factors. But to proceed •

6

•

INTRODUCTION

otherwise would have terribly overburdened a book that was already so large that it had to be divided into two volumes, separated by the probably decisive landmark of the Korean War—the paroxysm of the great confrontation. One word more. I have not tried to prove a thesis, but simply to tell the story of what has been, after all, the greatest war of all time. Not of course, thank God, the one that has so far claimed the largest number of victims— although one should not be misled by its alleged “coldness”—but the first in which the domination of the entire globe and even of the space surrounding it is at stake, the first in which, beyond interests and passions, two recipes for automatic and universal happiness confront one another. However one views both sides, it would be ridiculous to reduce the Cold War to a struggle between Good and Evil. Like all of humanity’s great conflicts, it has given rise to the highest sacrifices and the basest crimes. Had they been born elsewhere, the heroes of one camp could often have been the heroes of the other. And while it is fair to say that apart from Hitler and his lieutenants, the greatest criminal in this stoiy was Stalin, it would be dishonest not to remember that the blood he shed was spilled in the name of a cause that tran­ scended his person, his party and his people and was identified with the hopes of a large part of mankind. Just as there would have been no 1789 if the leaders of the Ancien Régime had not betrayed their trust, there would have been no 1917 or any Cold War if capitalist society had discovered social justice before it was forced to— in too few places— by pressure from the masses. With the help of this pressure, the so-called “western” or “devel­ oped” world has been considerably transformed and has grown in­ creasingly removed from Marx’s classic description of “capitalism” and Lenin’s of “imperialism.” Meanwhile, the socialist world, clois­ tered by Stalin behind an impenetrable iron curtain, has reassumed some of the most detestable characteristics of the regime that it had destroyed: terror, intellectual slavery and the thirst for power, and it has preserved them all too long. Cynicism and cowardliness have played their part. Each side has fallen into the habit of seeing the adversary as an outlaw against whom no holds were barred. The miracle is that a sort of coexistence was finally established between these two warring worlds, and that little by little a dialogue and an effort at .

7

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HISTORY

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WAR

comprehension, even at interpenetration, have taken the place of invective. It is difficult to deny that nuclear weapons are responsible for this. Of course, power is not a sufficient basis for peace, as one sees every day. And it would be a tragedy if the possession of power kept the people of the United States, to whom Europe owes the preservation of its liberty, from working to bring about—from Viet Nam to Latin America—those deep social and political changes with­ out which the only future in store for our children and grandchildren is interminable world-wide guerrilla warfare—if not full-scale war. The easing of the Soviet-American conflict has shown how insane are those who claim that the only way for humanity to settle the problems of the twentieth century is to choose one or the other of these two nineteenth-century ideologies, bom before the advent of the airplane, the atom, space, mass communication, automation, decolonization and the population explosion. Sooner or later this truth will come to be accepted also in places where people are still killing one another. If, in fact, there is a lesson to be drawn from this history, it is above all one of modesty. Neither so-called scientific socialism nor so-called liberal capitalism furnishes a ready-made solution to the problems of our poor world. Neither one guarantees that its leaders will be free from errors, failures and crimes. There is no ambition that is not forced sooner or later either to compromise or to perish. January 1962-October 1967

PART ONE

“How long does it take lava to solidify? What will remain of Russia? How will it continue to exist once it is organized? A ll that is a mystery. Its history is beginning anew, and it will take an Ivan the Terrible to give it the semblance of a nation —Paul Cambon, French ambassador to the United Kingdom, in a letter to M. Boppe, French minister in Peking, February 28, 1918

•

CHAPTER

1

•

Europe has had its day. There are now but two nations: the first is far-off Russia, still barbarian, but large and—apart from Poland—worthy of respect. Sooner or later old Europe will have to come to grips with this force of youth, for, as people say, Russia is young. The other nation is America, an intoxicated, immature democracy that knows no ob­ stacles. The future of the world lies between these two great nations. One day they will collide, and then we will see struggles the like of which no one has dreamed of, at least as far as sheer mass and physical impact are concerned, for the epoch of great moral issues is over. —Saint-Beuve’s paraphrase of an observation by Thiers, Cahiers, December 19, 1847

T H E R E W OULD H AVE BEEN NO COLD WAR HAD TH ER E

not been, at mid-century, two— and only two—sufficiently large and populous powers that were confident enough in the worth of their beliefs and weapons to contest which would assume world leadership, without either’s being able to prove a decisive superiority. Their rivalry exploded only after their common enemies, Germany and Japan, were crushed in 1945. But its roots go back to two events of 1917: America’s entry into the war and the Russian Revolution. •

r r

•

HISTORY

OF

THB

COLD

WAR

President Wilson's exhortation in his message to Congress on April 2 of a year of high hopes and black despair that “peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty,” collided head-on with the profession of faith that Leon Trotsky, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, proclaimed before the Congress of Soviets just after the victorious insurrection: “Either the Russian Revolution will create a revolutionary movement in Europe, or the European powers will destroy the Russian Revolution.’’1 Or, as Trotsky put it in a striking epigram, Lenin and Wilson were “the apocalyptic antipodes of our time.”2 As in the French Revolution of 1792, the ideological chal­ lenge added yet another justification to the age-old motives that have always caused nations to ravage each other: pride, greed, distrust and fear. S

9

9

The first clash—United States intervention in the Russian Civil War—was to be both short-lived and on a small scale. The Americans then returned to isolationism and the Bolsheviks turned inward. Mean­ while, Europe, unaware of the perils ahead, prepared itself for the new slaughter, in which it would lose its freedom. But the stage had already been set for the great conflict which so many French thinkers and statesmen of the nineteenth century foresaw. Napoleon in exile on Saint Helena thought that the world would soon be “either an American republic or a Russian absolute mon­ archy.”8 Henri Martin, Jules Michelet and Ernest Coeurderoy all believed that the decisive battle between despotism and liberty would be waged between Moscow and Washington. In an unforgettable pas­ sage describing the differences between these two peoples, De Toqueville predicted that they would one day divide the world between them. Until the war of 1914, however, nothing had happened to confirm these sweeping prophecies. Europe was at the height of its colonial and industrial expansion and did not doubt that it was more than ever the center of the world. But meanwhile, separated by two oceans, Russia and America were creating—by sword, gold and rail—immense conti­ nental empires which would later enable them to enter a contest that few then would have dared to imagine. “There is no reason,” wrote Alexander I to Jefferson at the begin­ ning of the nineteenth century, “that anything should mar our friend­

THE G I A N T S A W A K E N

ship. We are both interested in the freedom of the seas.*'4 More than fifty years later, Secretary of State Seward echoed him with these words: “She [Russia], has our friendship, in every case, in preference to any other European power, simply because she always wishes us well and leaves us to conduct our affairs as we think best."5 Alexander had even wanted the United States to enter the Holy Alliance. This was pushing the paradox a bit far, as the revolt of the Spanish colonies soon demonstrated. In 1824, at a time when the Tsar was disposed to fly to the aid of the Spanish Bourbons, President Monroe, assured of vital protection by the British Navy, then undis­ puted mistress of the seas, pronounced the doctrine that immortalized his name. We will abstain, he declared, from any interference in the affairs of the Old World, but Mwe owe it . . . to candor and to amicable relations existing between the United States and those pow­ ers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it [the Latin American republics] . . . we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppress­ ing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." The seeds of strife were sown, but they failed to germinate. Prompted by opposition from Vienna and London, Russia not only abandoned her attempt to meddle in the affairs of South America but also progressively liquidated the numerous and prosperous colonies which its settlers had established from Vancouver to San Francisco. In 1825, Nicholas, Alexander’s successor, afraid that he might en­ courage rebel elements in the Spanish colonies, rejected Mexico’s offer of Upper California in exchange for recognizing her independence. The following year, he concluded an agreement with the United States granting freedom of trade and fishing rights to ships of both countries. In 1825 he came to an agreement with England to stop Russian terri­ torial expansion in the New World at what is today the southern border of Alaska. Treaties with Great Britain and Mexico in 1846 and 1848 definitively gave California and Oregon to the United States without so much as a word from Saint Petersburg. The first experiment in active cooperation between Russians and

. j3 .

HISTORY

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THE

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WAR

Americans came in 1863 even though their ideological differences at this time should have kept them apart. During the Civil War Saint Petersburg clearly gave its sympathies to the Slave States while Karl Marx sent a cable to Lincoln, on behalf of the First International: “From the commencement of the titanic American strife, the working­ men of Europe felt instinctively that the star spangled banner carried the destiny of their class/’6 As for the American crusaders for liberty, they could not help but feel bound to the insurrection that had just broken out in Poland. But self-interest caused things to take quite a different turn. Napoleon III, who was completely wrapped up in his Mexican dream, and the British Government, which was worried about keeping the Lancashire mills supplied with cotton from Virginia and Mississippi, supported the Confederacy. The Tsar believed that Paris and London were taking advantage of his difficulties in Warsaw to launch a new war in the Crimea. He sent two naval squadrons into Union ports— which were very pleased to have them—to block British sea lanes should the occasion arise. In 1862, Seward said that when the serfs and slaves were really freed there would be no limit to what the Russian and American people could do and that at least they would be able to maintain world peace and prevent ambitious despots from plunging their peo­ ples into useless wars. In 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt would use sim­ ilar language. This cooperation resulted in a development of great significance. In 1867, when the Tsar decided to get rid of Alaska, which was con­ sidered unprofitable and difficult to defend, he sold it to the United States for a mess of pottage because he thought that the United States would never pose a threat to his empire’s security. Besides, there was no enthusiasm for the scheme inside the United States. Seward, who had warmly defended the venture, had endless trouble getting Con­ gress to ratify the acquisition of what was then called “Seward’s folly’’ or “Seward’s icebox.” In a similar manner, Voltaire has once referred to Canada as “a few acres of snow.” Today Alaska plays a major role as an outpost in the American defense system and as a hub for polar flights. In that period, in fact, Russia’s main rival was Great Britain, whose ambitions it was running up against everywhere, from the Turkish borders to the Indies, as it strove to secure warm-water ports. •

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T HE G I A N T S A W A K E N

Lenin, too, all his life regarded England as the paragon of “im­ perialism,” the “monopolistic” or “supreme” stage of capitalism, which is marked, according to his definition, by the “monopolistic posses­ sion of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”7 In fact, if ever there was an imperialist power on earth, it was certainly Great Britain, which, in the forty years from 1860 to 1900, had quadrupled the area under its rule. It was with the intention of weakening this power that Russia sup­ ported America’s first manifestations of colonialism, which— after the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines— carried the American border more than 6,000 miles west of San Francisco. The history of mankind, Theodore Roosevelt had observed at the time, had begun with a Mediterranean era, continued with an Atlantic period and was entering upon a Pacific epoch.* But while this “widest sweep, in space, of our national extension,”9 to use the formula of its apologist of the time, Admiral Mahan, put the Americans squarely in the middle of Old Europe’s preserves, it was not at first directed against Britain. Quite the contrary, since, as the British writer Anthony Hartley points out in a brilliant essay, it was at this period that Britain’s statesmen resolved to do nothing that might offend the United States. Since that time, there has been but one exception, and that very brief, to this rule— the Suez crisis of 1956. There you have the true entente cordiale of our times. . . . But American imperialism was fated to clash with Russia. Pres­ ident McKinley had declared, after the annexation of the Philippine archipelago, that, like Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Philippines had been confided to the U.S.A. by Providence, and that they would always be hers. Just behind the Philippines stood the limitless steppes of China, and America would give up neither the one nor the other.10 And in fact, Secretary of State John Hay upheld the Open Door Policy with regard to international commerce in China from the be­ ginning of the twentieth century; it coincided both with the interests of American industry and with the good liberal conscience of his com­ patriots. Stoutly denying any colonialist designs, tsarist diplomacy intended, to use the euphemism of its principal architect, Count Witte, to assure “a mission of protection and education”11 in the East. Korea and Manchuria had become Russian protectorates in 1898. •

15

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Nicholas ITs ambassador to Berlin officially declared that “the prov­ inces of northern China, of Che-li and Chinese Turkestan constituted an exclusive sphere for his country.”13 Saint Petersburg leased the harbors of Port Arthur and Dairen from Peking. On April 28, 1899, London recognized that the lands to the “north of the Great Wall of China”18 were a Russian sphere of influence. Subsequently England and Russia entered into other agreements of this kind: in 1907 and 1941, the division of Persia into spheres of influence; in October 1944, again between Stalin and Churchill, the division of the Balkans into zones of interest and influence, estimated in percentages. For a short while in 1902, under the influence of her French ally, Russia pretended to pull back, even agreeing to leave Manchuria. But the conditions that she immediately set for fulfilling her promises were unacceptable. Extreme tension with Japan followed. It ended in the war of 1904 and the cruel defeats suffered by the Russian Army, which were to worsen considerably the already threatening social and political climate and lead to the revolution of 1905, the prelude to that of 1917. Theodore Roosevelt was not content merely to gloat over the Japanese attack. He “notified Germany and France in the most polite and discreet fashion,” as he put it, “that in the event of a combination against Japan,” the United States would “promptly side with Japan and proceed to whatever length was necessary on her behalf.”14 Nevertheless, he was also afraid of an out and out Japanese victory that would unleash Tokyo’s ambitions. Therefore he was delighted to act as mediator; his efforts culminated in the Treaty of Portsmouth on September 5, 1905, which gave Japan control of southern Manchuria, Korea and the southern portion of Sakhalin. Forty years later during World War II, Stalin took his revenge on another Roosevelt: in pay­ ment for his declaration of war against the Empire of the Rising Sun, he obtained at Yalta the reestablishment of “the former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904.”18 As far back as 1907, however, the government of the Mikado, foreseeing a possible conflict with the United States, had effected a rapid rapprochement with Saint Petersburg, involving the recognition of the special interests of the tsars in northern Manchuria, Mongolia and even in Korea. Bolshevik Russia would not forget this. . . . When Woodrow Wilson entered the White House in 1913, a radi­

T HE G I A N T S A W A K E N

cal change took place in Washington’s foreign policy. His own Demo­ cratic Party had sharply criticized the “dollar diplomacy” and im­ perialism of Theodore Roosevelt and his successor Taft. Wilson believed only in good will, international organizations and the “New Freedom.” He firmly put idealism— or ideology, if you will—before self-interest in the field of international politics. The new American statesmen had only contempt for tsarism, with its deportations, hangings, and pogroms. But after tsarism had been destroyed, they were quite ready to believe that Russia would imme­ diately turn into a liberal paradise. Wilson, in his message to Congress on April 2,1917, did not hesitate to proclaim that “Russia was known by those who knew it best to have always been in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relations of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure . . . was not in fact Russian in origin, character or purpose. . . . Here is a fit partner,” he concluded, “for a League of Honor.” Touching illusions, which were to bloom once again during the period of the alliance against Nazism, although in the meantime Stalinism had revived an image of Russia that was strangely similar to the one that the French diplomat the Marquis de Custine had discovered in 1839: “Essentially a nation of conquest, rendered greedy by privations,” which “expiates in advance through humiliating submission at home its desire to exercise tyranny abroad.”16

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Unlike the United States, almost all the nations of Europe had had occasion to cross swords with Russia at one time or another. In fact, expansionism was a congenital trait of the tsarist empire. Lacking a natural border at which to stop the conquerors from the west, the tsars were constantly tempted to extend their buffer zone farther and farther into Europe. Inasmuch as the winters virtually blockaded Russia for six months of the year, she naturally sought warm-water ports as an escape. When Nicholas II declared war on the Central Powers in 1914, his aim was not to assure the victory of law and liberty—which they respected far more than he— but to gain the deci­ sive territorial advantages to the west and south that his predecessors had failed to obtain. •

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Consequently, he laid before the Allies his claims to the Darda­ nelles, the Carpathians, all of Poland and a part of eastern Prussia. In 1915, he obtained from them by secret treaty the promise of Con­ stantinople. The following year, the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the remains of the Ottoman Empire between England and France, awarded Trebizond, Kurdistan and half of Persia to Russia. Not content with coveting Europe’s borderlands, Russia took upon herself the mission of purifying the “corrupt West.” The Cossacks had camped on the Champs-Elysées in 1815. Nicholas I, an enthusiastic champion of reaction, had offered his soldiers to the King of Holland in 1830 to put down the Belgian revolt. Metternich did not hesitate to appeal to him in 1848 to crush the Hungarian insurrection. “Slavo­ phile” intellectuals were no better than the tsars. Gogol wrote in Dead Souls: “And you, Holy Russia, caught up in a whirlwind, like a troika that no one can catch. You raise dust storms, bridges crash down and everything recoils.. . . You surpass everything! . . . And he who con­ templates you stops as though transfixed by a divine miracle . . . the troika cleaves the air, inspired by God. . . . Every living thing on earth flees and disappears, and the other peoples and empires draw back and leave the way open to you, Holy Russia!” The Dostoievsky of The Devils wrote of the “God-bearing” char­ acter of the Russians: “The only ’God-bearing’ people is the Russian people," that of all peoples it alone “possessed the true God” and that the “second coming will take place in Russia. . . .” “A truly great people,” he wrote, “can never reconcile itself to playing second fiddle in the affairs of humanity, not even to playing an important part, but always and exclusively the chief p a r t . . . . ” In the opposite camp, the anarchist Bakunin in 1848 foresaw the day when “from an ocean of blood and fire, the star of the Revolution would rise in Moscow, high in the sky, to become the guide to humanity.” Half a century later a red star did in fact crown the tower of the Kremlin and Marxist messianism would graft itself onto Russian messianism, resembling it more and more. This was the day that Marx had hoped for during the last years of his life. However, he had long professed the greatest contempt for a “Muscovy formed and matured in that school for abjectness that was the terrible Mongol slavery.”17 He had violently denounced its tendencies to “universal aggression.”18 But after having written in the Communist Manifesto that “the bour-

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geois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution,” after having awaited “the Gallic cock's crow" as the signal for a universal revolution, after having harbored a few illusions concerning the English working class, he had consoled himself by staking his hopes on Russia, where his works had aroused great interest: “Russia . . .,” he wrote to his friend the music professor Sorge in 1877, “has long been standing on the threshold of an upheaval; all the elements for it are prepared. . . . All sections of Russian society are in full decomposition economically, morally and intellectually. This time the Revolution begins in the east. . . .”10 Influenced by the Russo-Turkish War, Marx had once again mis­ taken his desires for realities. But twenty-eight years later, in 1905, the Revolution did in fact break out in Russia. It was a bourgeois revolution. What tack was the militant nucleus that had formed in 1898 within a Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (R.S.D.L.P.), affiliated with the Second International, to take? As against the Social Revolutionaries, who advocated the division of the land prior to the coming of industrialization in order to avoid the contamination of western ideas, the Russian Social-Democrats believed, as did the author of Capital, that a socialist revolution (i.e., the collective appro­ priation of the means of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat) could take place only in an industrially advanced country. Thus, wrote Lenin at this time, “the present degree of economic de­ velopment of Russia (an objective condition) and the degree of class consciousness and organization of the broad masses of the proletariat . . . make the immediate, complete emancipation of the working class impossible.”20 Again: “. . . there is not, nor can there be, any other path to real freedom for the proletariat and the peasantry than the path of bourgeois freedom and bourgeois progress.”21 But on this premise the two principal currents in the party drew two different conclusions. The Mensheviks— so called because they formed a minority in the party leadership though their rank and file membership was actually larger— were convinced, like Martov, that the revolution was ineluc­ table. They thought that the spread of Marxist ideas would be enough to create in the people “a burning need to attack and to take arms.”22 Thus they favored the formula of a mass party and were opposed to giving even tactical support to “bourgeois” politicians on the grounds •

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of ideological purity. They did not want to help bring about the bour­ geois revolution even though they thought it indispensable to the realization of their own doctrines. Against them, Lenin and his Bolsheviks (majority) preached the language of realism and audacity. He maintained that the party had to be organized to seize power, to be made into a tough, disciplined army— which presupposes that the quality of recruits was to be pre­ ferred to quantity. It was also necessary to begin at the beginning, for, as Lenin writes, “the idea of seeking salvation for the working classes in anything save the further development of capitalism is reaction­ ary.”23 “The proletariat,” he goes on to state, “must carry out to the end the democratic revolution, and in this unite to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush by force the resistance of the autocracy and to paralyze the instability of the bourgeoisie.”24 From “the demo­ cratic revolution we shall at once, according to the degree of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious and organized proletariat, begin to pass over to the socialist revolution.”25 “Nothing will raise the revolutionary energy of the world proletariat so much, nothing will shorten the path leading to its complete victory to such an extent as this decisive victory of the revolution that has now started in Russia.”26 But the “bourgeois” revolution of 1905 only appeared to be vic­ torious. The Tsar soon took his revenge and fierce repressive measures were employed against the Social-Democrats, who nevertheless con­ tinued their frenzied intestine battles. In 1912, as social unrest was growing in Russia, the Bolsheviks scored a series of successes. The Fifth Conference of the R.S.D.L.P., which met in Prague in January, eliminated the Mensheviks from the party controls and added the letter “B” (Bolshevik) to its official title in order to consecrate the split. A “Russian bureau” directed by Joseph Djugashvili, alias Stalin, a tough Georgian member of the party then in exile in Siberia, was responsible for concentrating revolutionary activities within Russia itself. Lenin settled in Austrian Galicia near the border in order to keep in close touch with party members. A major paper, Pravda— Truth— was launched by the Party in Saint Petersburg. Banned a number of times, it reappeared on each occasion under a new name. In October, six Bolshevik deputies were elected to the Imperial Duma (Parliament). The Party’s candidates received one million votes as 2o

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opposed to only two hundred thousand for the Mensheviks. Finally, at the Basle Congress the Second International adopted a resolution in which it declared that helping to bring about the fall of tsarism, “the hope of all the reactionary powers of Europe,” constitutes “one of the foremost tasks of the entire International.”27 Two years later, the picture changed completely. The socialist parties meeting in Basle had declared “war on war” and urged the working classes of all nations in the unfortunate event of war to do everything in their power to bring it promptly to an end and to utilize “the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.”28 But with the first shots of World War I, the socialist parties on both sides rallied to the support of their own countries. “This is the end of the Second International,” wrote Lenin, forced to take refuge in Switzer­ land. “Henceforth I will no longer call myself a Social-Democrat but a Communist.. . .”29 On November 1, 1914, the R.S.D.L.P. published a resolution affirming that transforming “the present imperialist war into civil war—is the only correct proletarian slogan.. . .”30 “Under present conditions, it is impossible to determine, from the standpoint of the international proletariat, whether the defeat of one or the other group of belligerent nations is the lesser evil for socialism. For us Russian Social-Democrats, however, there cannot be the slight­ est doubt that, from the standpoint of the working class and of the toiling masses of all nations of Russia, the lesser evil would be the defeat of the tsarist monarchy, the most reactionary and barbarous government that is oppressing the greatest number of nations and the largest mass of the population of Europe and Asia.”81 At the time, such language did not cause much stir. A handful of militant pacifists from all the European countries did succeed in meet­ ing in 1915 and 1916 at Zimmerwald and Kienthal in Switzerland. But it was in vain that Lenin, supported by his faithful lieutenant Zinoviev, attempted to launch an appeal to the soldiers to turn their “weapons against the government and the bourgeoisie in each coun­ try.”32 It was in vain, too, that he urged those at the meeting to recog­ nize the collapse of the Second International and to make up their minds to create a third. In 1914, Lenin came within an inch of giving up politics. But as the slaughter grew progressively worse, the development of anti-war

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sentiment on both warring sides made him gradually take hope. It was then, after having advanced in a famous pamphlet the cautiously ex­ pressed theory— since it was to be printed in Russia— of imperialism as “the highest stage of capitalism,” that he conceived the law of the uneven development of capitalism, whence he concluded that “social­ ism cannot be victorious simultaneously in all countries. . . .”33 Stalin later summed this concept up in his Foundations of Lenin­ ism as “The front of capital will not necessarily be pierced where in­ dustry is most developed . . . ; it will be broken where the chain of imperialism is weakest.”34 At that time the weakest link was clearly Russia. In 1902, Lenin had written in “What Is to Be Done?” : “History has now confronted us with an immediate task which is more revolu­ tionary than all the immediate tasks that confront the proletariat of any other country. The fulfillment of this task . . . would place the Russian proletariat in the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat.”35 The fall of tsarism in March 1917 caught him off guard. But it immediately struck him as a unique opportunity to realize his program. He hastened to explain “scientifically” why it was inevitable and to urge the proletariat to pass to the second phase: the conquest of bourgeois power, in order to make its own revolution later on. Suiting action to words, he took the train for Russia in the company of a group of émigrés, armed with safe conduct passes and the blessing of the German authorities. “Russia,” he wrote in his farewell letter to the Swiss workers, “is a peasant country, one of the most backward of European countries. Socialism cannot triumph there directly at once. . . . The Russian proletariat single-handed cannot successfully com­ plete the socialist revolution.” However, he held that “the peasant character of the country . . . may . . . give tremendous scope to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, and make our revolution a prelude to and a step towards the world socialist revolution.”36 This was the task to which he was henceforth to dedicate himself with such energy, courage and intelligence as to make him surely one of the most outstanding figures in the history of mankind. After February 1917, two powers coexisted after a fashion at the head of Russia: the provisional government, dominated by the bour­ geoisie, and presided over successively by Prince Lvov and the Social .

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Revolutionary Kerensky, and the Soviets, an expression of the workers and soldiers, the majority of whose members in most of the large cities consisted of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Vehemently de­ nouncing the “imperialist” character of the provisional government, which was continuing the war on the side of the Entente, Lenin im­ mediately campaigned on the slogan “All power to the Soviets,” at­ tempting to win the majority of this group over to his side. In August, General Kornilov's attempt to destroy the Soviets caused the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow to rally to the Bolsheviks. On October 23 (New Style), the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. recognized that “an armed rising is inevitable and the time perfectly ripe.”3T

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York: Vintage Books, 1960) p. 190. 2 Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Un­ armed (New York: Vintage Books, 1965) p. 215n. * Denis de Rougemont, Vingt siècles d'Europe (Paris: Payot, 1961) p. 268. *Victor Alexandrov, L'ours et la baleine (Paris: Stock, 1958) p. 14. 6A. A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (New York: Collier Books, 1961) p. 133, quoting Marie Hansen Taylor and Hor­ ace E. Scudder (eds.), Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, I, pp. 399-401. 'K arl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans, 1848-1895 (New York: International Pub­ lishers, 1963) p. 65. TV. I. Lenin, Imperialism (New York: International Publishers, 1939) p. 89.

'F ern an d L’Huillier, De la SainteAlliance (Neuchâtel: Editions de la Baconnière, 1954) I, p. 266. 9 Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943) p. 25. 10 Lenin, L ’Impérialisme, stade su­ prême du capitalisme (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1945) p. 109n. The note is that of the anonymous Soviet editor of the French edition of Imperialism and is not included in the American edition. 11 L’Huillier, De la Sainte-Alliance, II, p. 21. 12 L’Huillier, De la Sainte-Alliance, I, p. 248. 13 Pierre Renouvin, La question d'Orient (Paris: Hachette, 1946) p. 169. 14 William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961) p. 276. 15 Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Roose-

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velt and the Russians (New York: Doubleday, 1949) p. 93. 14 Marquis de Custine, La Russie en 1839 (Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, 1843) IV, p. 354. 17 Michel Collinet, Du bolchevisme (Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1957) p. 179. 18 Collinet, p. 180. 10 Marx and Engels. Letters to Amer­ icans, pp. 115-16. 20 V. I. Lenin, “The Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Dem­ ocratic Revolution,” Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, n.d.) II, p. 52. 21 Lenin, Selected Works, II, p. 122. 22 Iskra of January 27, 1905, quoted by Collinet, p. 57. 23 Lenin, Selected Works, II, p. 75. 24 Lenin, Selected Works, II, pp. 11011. 25 Lenin, “The Attitude of SocialDemocracy toward the Peasant Movement,” Selected Works, II, p. 145. 28 Lenin ‘Tw o Tactics,” Selected Works, II, p. 83.

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27 Lenin, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1930) XVIII, p. 469. 28 Lenin, Collected Works, XVIII, p. 469. 28 Nina Gourfinkel, Lenin (New York: Grove Press: 1961) p. 89. 80 Lenin, Selected Works, V, p. 130. 81 Lenin, Selected Works, V, p. 129. 32 Lenin, Selected Works, V, p. 130. 88 Lenin, “The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution,” Collected Works, XIX, p. 364. 84 Joseph Stalin, Foundations o f Leninism (New York: Interna­ tional Publishers, 1932) pp. 33— 34. 88 Lenin, Selected Works, II, p. 50. 38 Lenin, Selected Works, VI, pp. 17-18. 87 Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Vintage Books, 1964) p. 169.

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When the Revolution broke out, the kings did not understand it at all; they saw a revolt where they should have seen the transformation of nations, the end and the beginning of a world. —Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

L E N IN W A S N O T E X A C T L Y T H E A P O S T L E O F P E A C E F U L

coexistence that Soviet propaganda later reassuringly pictured him to be. W hen his brother, a romantic terrorist, was hanged by tsarist authorities, this sixteen-year-old civil servant's son was transformed into a m o rta l enemy of capitalist civilization. If he was good, it was in an a b strac t way, like Robespierre. As Gorki used to say, “he could keep silen t about the great agitations of his soul.’’1 He believed that he was authorized in the name of the faith that sustained him to use all means available to him to gain his ends. The natural bent of his mind, wonderfully gifted in dialectic, polemic and historical synthesis, spurred h im to it. Marx had been the prophet of world revolution. Lenin w as its midwife and inspired strategist. He w ould not have launched his attack on the weak provisional governm ent of Kerensky if he had not believed that revolution was • 2 5 *

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imminent in the principal countries of Europe. “It is an absolute truth,” he declared as early as his return to Russia, on April 16, 1917, before the Seventh All-Russian Congress of the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd, “that we will be condemned to perish if the revolution does not break out in Germany.”2 And the Central Committee put “the international position of the Russian Revolution (the mutiny in the German Navy, which is an extreme manifestation of the growth of the world socialist revolution throughout Europe)”3 as first among the reasons which, on October 23, 1917 (October 10, Old Style), caused it to launch its insurrection against Kerensky’s “bourgeois” provisional government. Lenin had overestimated the revolutionary tonus of the German working class. The uprising in the Kaiser’s fleet dwindled to a quickly repressed mutiny of three docked ships. But it would have taken more than this to change the mind of a man so convinced of the scientific character of his analyses and intentions. Had not Marx seen socialism as “the solution to the enigma of history?”4 The Soviet Government’s first decision, the “proclamation on peace” of November 8, 1917, can be understood only in the light of the conviction that the Russian example would quickly spread. The proclamation that Lenin delivered personally at the All-Rus­ sian Congress of Soviets, which had welcomed him with an overwhelm­ ing ovation, was addressed “to the peoples and governments of all the belligerent nations.” It proposed that negotiations be immediately opened to obtain a “just and democratic peace,” that is, one without annexations or indemnities. Declaring that it was disposed to study all peace proposals provided that the negotiations be conducted “in the light of day before the people,” the revolutionary government an­ nounced its intention of abolishing secret diplomacy and of publishing the full texts of all secret treaties signed by the tsars. It proposed an immediate armistice of at least three months, during which it would be possible to conclude peace negotiations. In formulating this prop­ osition, the declaration added, it addressed “in particular the con­ scious workers of the three nations most devoted to humanity and the three most important nations among those taking part in the present war—England, France and Germany.”5 Commenting on the proclamation, Lenin declared that he would encounter the opposition of the imperialist governments. “We don’t

FROM THE I M P E R I A L I S T WAR TO CI VI L WAR

fool ourselves on that score,” he said. “But we hope that revolution will soon break out in all the belligerent countries. . . . If the German proletariat realizes that we are ready to consider all offers of peace, that will perhaps be the last drop which overflows the bowl— revolu­ tion will break out in Germany.”® The declaration was unanimously adopted to the singing of the Internationale. But it went completely unnoticed outside Russia. At that time the authority of the Soviets did not extend beyond Petrograd. Even s o .. . . The president of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky, a former friend of the Mensheviks reconciled with Lenin, who had been named People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, had to get a locksmith in order to open the doors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs while the civil servants inside refused him any assistance. He could not even get the peace proclamation translated into foreign languages. The governments of the Great Powers were receiving the most contradictory reports on events in Russia. They refused to believe that men who had declared war on the traditional pillars of social order— property, religion and morality—could win a lasting victory. When the Soviets, after somehow managing to consolidate their position in Petrograd and establishing themselves in Moscow, formally presented their proposal for immediate peace to the Allies on November 20, they were not even answered. Germany being officially at war with Russia, had no diplomatic representative in Petrograd. Consequently, emissaries had to be sent across the lines. In Berlin, the diplomats rubbed their hands gleefully. They had not been wrong in letting Lenin and a few dozen followers return to Russia after the abdication of the Tsar on a train which, contrary to legend, was not sealed.7 Hostilities came to an end on December 1. On December 5, a ten-day truce was concluded, which on the fifteenth was then extended for a month. At this time, it was also decided to begin peace talks in the Polish city of Brest-Litovsk, the headquarters of the German command in the east. Thus it was with the plenipotentiaries of the Kaiser that the Soviets were to negotiate, not with those of the German proletariat. Since neither Paris nor London had given the slightest indication of any desire to negotiate, these talks could end only in a separate peace. This prospect in itself did not frighten men who, against the opposition of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, had advocated several .

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months earlier a policy based on the “defeat of one’s own government in the imperialist war.”8 Still, they had to obtain conditions which would not endanger their power: a difficult task for they entered the peace talks without the slightest asset on their side. There was no longer a Russian army worthy of the name. Just before the February revolution, the number of deserters had already reached two million. General Dukhonin, the supreme commander, who refused to establish contact with the German command as the Counsel of People’s Commissars had ordered him to, had been immediately relieved of his post and was subsequently killed by the soldiers of the Moghilev garrison. The ensign Krylenko, who was named to replace him, clearly had no chance of being obeyed by generals who dreamed only of turning their arms against the Revolution. His main job was to negotiate an armistice and to organize demobilization, which began on December 19. Deprived of its leader and of the army which held it together, the Russian Empire was breaking up. Not only were the anti-Bolsheviks, encouraged by Paris and London, springing up again everywhere, but the non-Russian peoples were throwing off the Russian yoke. Had not the Soviets been the first to encourage them? In April, the Seventh All-Russian Congress of the Bolshevik Party had claimed the right for “all nationalities forming part of the state to freely separate and to form independent states.”9 The report on this question had been pre­ sented by Stalin, who was not himself a Russian but a Georgian and the author of a work on Marxism and the National Question published in 1913. As early as 1901, he had written in an essay which appeared in Tiflis: “Groaning are the oppressed nationalities and religions in Russia, among them the Poles and the Finns driven from their native lands and injured in their most sacred feelings. . . . Groaning are the unceasingly persecuted and humiliated Jews, deprived even of those miserable rights that other Russian subjects enjoy. . . . Groaning are the Georgians, the Armenians and other nations___ ”10 Named Commissar of Nationalities of the revolutionary govern­ ment, Stalin had a “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Rus­ sia”11 adopted on November 14, 1917; it reaffirmed the principles of the declaration of April on the right to secession. Several days later, he attended the Congress of the Finnish Social Democratic Party in Helsinki and proclaimed the independence of Finland, which had been •

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a Russian grand duchy since 1809. But at the same time he launched an appeal for a “voluntary and honest alliance between the Finnish and the Russian peoples.“12 Although the Finnish Social Democrats supported this alliance, the bourgeois parties, which feared the spread of bolshevism, did not. And they were not wrong, for Soviets had begun to form in the cities as early as March 1918. In order to stamp them out, Baron Mannerheim, a former tsarist general who was Commander-in-Chief of the newly-formed Finnish Army, asked for help from Sweden, which refused to intervene, and then from Germany, which sent him a detachment of twelve thousand men under General von der Goltz. As for the Red Guards, they received arms and en­ couragement from Russia. Numerous atrocities on both sides marked the month-long civil war. The Communist defeat was followed by severe measures of repression. Soviet-Finnish relations were long af­ fected by it, in spite of the peace treaty signed in October 1920. Although Soviet Russia could if necessary put up with the existence of a totally independent Finland, it could not put up with an independ­ ent Ukraine, which was both its breadbasket and its coal bucket. Forc­ ibly joined to the empire of the tsars during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and deprived of the right to publish or to teach in their native language from 1875 on, the Ukrainians felt the full weight of Russian domination. In the days following the abdication of Nicholas II, a central Ukrainian counsel, the Rada, met in Kiev where, on June 23, it proclaimed the country’s independence. Dominated by “bourgeois” elements, the Rada refused to recognize the Soviets and on November 20 announced the creation of a republic which, if the occasion arose, could form alliances with other nations. The Kiev gov­ ernment was recognized by France and Great Britain, which sent dip­ lomatic and military missions to the new nation. Already at odds with the soviets of workers and soldiers in the large cities, the young republic soon came into conflict with Petrograd. In fact, the Rada had ordered all Ukrainian troops wherever they might be to return to their country—which left whole sectors of the front open to the German Army. At the same time, they would not let Russian Communist troops, reinforcements for the Bolshevik strong­ hold of Donetz, which the White General Kaledin was preparing to attack, pass through the Ukraine. On December 17, Lenin and Trotsky addressed a manifesto to the •

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Ukrainian people— not to its government— in which, while recognizing the Ukrainian Republic and its right to complete secession from Rus­ sia, they gave it forty-eight hours to let their troops pass. The invasion began almost immediately and on February 10,1918, the Commander in Chief of the Soviet troops announced that he had “transferred the power established here by the force of our bayonets to the Soviets of the Ukraine.”13 In January, Stalin had already urged the Congress of the Soviets to revise the principle of the self-determination of peoples. Henceforth, in the case of small nations, the principle was to apply only to the proletarian masses and not to the bourgeoisie. This was the first violation of those lofty principles whose honest application would have quickly defeated the power of the Soviets. There were to be many m ore.. . . After discharging Minister of War Petliura, who advocated con­ tinuing the war on the Allied side, the Rada sent a delegation to BrestLitovsk which was accepted by the Russians. Berlin was happy to be able to use the existence of a Ukrainian government as a pretext for making Bolshevik withdrawal from the new republic a condition for peace with Russia. This was not the only German territorial demand— far from it. At the beginning of January, the Soviets were asked to give up most of the European territory that the tsars had won since Peter the Great. This was a great deal to ask of people who had per­ sistently campaigned for a peace “without annexations or indemnities” and who, totally indifferent to military realities, calmly demanded in the name of the right of the self-determination of peoples that all areas occupied by German troops—particularly in Poland—be evacuated and plebiscites be held. On January 18 the talks were suspended in order to permit Trotsky to consult his government. Two tendencies were becoming apparent: the more important group, the “Left Communists” under the leader­ ship of Bukharin and the Left Social Revolutionaries, who were then allied with the Bolsheviks, rejected the idea of a “shameful peace.” With Stalin’s support, Lenin advocated that the Soviets accept the German conditions in the name of realism. “That the socialist revolu­ tion must come and will come to Europe,” he declared on January 21, “is beyond doubt. All our hopes for the final victory of socialism are founded on this certainty and on this scientific prognosis.. . . It would be a mistake, however, to base the tactics of the Russian Socialist Gov♦

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erament on attempts to determine whether or not the European, and especially the German socialist revolution will take place in the next six months (or some such brief p e rio d ).. . . Workers who lose a strike and sign terms for the resumption of work that are unfavorable to them and favorable to capitalists, do not betray socialism. . . . He betrays socialism who calls the war with German imperialism a defensive and just war, but actually receives support from the Anglo-French imperi­ alists, and conceals secret treaties concluded with them from the peo­ ple. He does not in the least betray socialism who, without concealing anything from the people,. . . agrees to sign terms of peace which are unfavorable to the weak nation and favorable to the imperialists of one group, if at that moment there is no strength to continue the war.’’14 But only a minority supported him. Aware of the hesitation of the Soviets, President Wilson sought to encourage resistance to Bolshevism by declaring in a speech on the Allied war aims that these included maintaining Russia’s territorial integrity. Finally on January 24, after endless debates, the Central Committee was quite happy to solve the matter by passing with nine votes against six a resolution proposed by the imaginative Trotsky, who duly declared that it was “unique in history” :16 “We interrupt the war and do not sign the peace— we demobilize the army.”18 The Congress of Soviets, the country’s supreme authority, approved it unanimously but without giving the negotiators a definite mandate. The only instructions that the Central Committee had given them was to use any means in order to stall for time, as Lenin had asked. He still believed that the German workers and soldiers would ultimately revolt. But the representatives of the Central Powers were perfectly well aware of the Russian game. They heard the passionate appeals broad­ cast by the Bolshevik radio and read the tracts that the plenipotenti­ aries of Petrograd were distributing by handfuls to the garrison at Brest-Litovsk. They knew that three days before the negotiations op­ ened Trotsky had defined Russia’s aims in the following manner: “First, to arrive as rapidly as possible at a cessation of the shameful and criminal butchery which is ruining Europe; secondly, to help by every means . . . the working classes of all countries to overthrow the rule of capital and seize political power,’’17 and that he had returned to this theme on December 30. They also knew that the Soviets had

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put the sum of two million rubles at the disposition of the revolutionary movements of all nations. On February 9, as the Red Guards were seizing Kiev, Germany and Austria signed a peace treaty with the Ukraine. Now their repre­ sentatives could pound on the table, convinced that they would force the Reds to stop their braggadocio and come to a decision. On the tenth, the German general Kühlmann produced a large map indicating the territorial demands of Berlin and Vienna. It was then that Trotsky, on his own initiative, performed what the official history of the Com­ munist Party of the U.S.S.R. would later term a “monstrous act.”18 “In expectation of the approaching hour when the working classes of all countries seize pow er,. . . ” he declared, “we are withdrawing our army and our people from the war. . . . We refuse to endorse terms which German and Austro-Hungarian imperialism is writing with the sword on the flesh of living nations.”18 He concluded by confiding the defense of Russian soil to the German people—an illusion which he still refused to give up. This ingenuous calculation was soon disappointed in spite of the strike in the Reich’s war industries, which momentarily kindled Bolshe­ vik hopes. The Central Powers denounced the armistice. The Kaiser’s troops occupied Revel, Minsk, and Kiev within a few days, crossed the Don to Kharkov and pushed on as far as Rostov, while the Turks seized Kars, Ardahan and Batum in the Caucasus. The workers of Petrograd, who were hastily armed to stop the invader at Narva, found themselves engulfed in the helter-skelter retreat of the army. Acting without formal instructions, three westerners, Captain Jacques Sadoul, a lawyer attached to the French military mission, Colonel Robins, the director of the American Red Cross in Russia, and the Englishman Bruce Lockhart, the former consul-general in Moscow, maintained contact with Trotsky. Sadoul and Lockhart took it upon themselves to offer economic and military aid to the Soviets if they continued the war against Germany. On February 22, Trotsky submitted their proposal to the Central Committee, which accepted it with a vote of six to three. A message from the absent Lenin, scrawled on a piece of paper, had brought about the decision. “Please add ray vote to those who are in favor of receiving food and weapons from the Anglo-French imperialist robbers.”20 But how could this food and .

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these weapons reach their destination? This was a question that no one ever seriously considered. Now only peace with Germany could forestall the collapse of the Soviets. Lenin and Stalin had understood perfectly that they would have to negotiate with Berlin and as quickly as possible. Lenin, how­ ever, had to threaten to resign and to raise the spectre of a reconcilia­ tion between Germany and its enemies against bolshevism in order to win the Central Committee’s approval of the peace conditions that Berlin proposed on February 23, leaving the Russians only forty-eight hours to accept or reject them. Still, he won only by seven votes to four. Trotsky, who abstained along with three of his supporters, did not attempt to hide his opposition. He resigned his post as Commissar for Foreign Affairs on the spot, which fell to his assistant Chicherin. The new conditions were much more onerous than the previous ones, and there were additional demands from Turkey. The Soviets were forced to give up the Baltic provinces as well as the territories conquered in the Caucasus by the Sultan’s soldiers. Moreover, they had to pay an enormous indemnity to the Central Powers. Peace was concluded on March 3. The Allies attempted to keep the treaty from being ratified by threatening Japanese intervention if it were passed. Unsuccessfully. On March 6, the Seventh Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. ratified the treaty by a vote of thirty to twelve with four abstentions and, as evidence of its desire to begin with a clean slate, decided to change the name of the Party to the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)— in abbreviated form R .C .P.(B). “. . . We must be able to retreat, . . .” Lenin had said in his report. “God grant that we retreat in perfect order. If we cannot retreat in perfect order, then God grant that we retreat in semi-order, that we gain a little time for the sick part of our organism to be absorbed at least to some extent. On the whole the organism is sound, it will overcome its disease. But you cannot expect it to overcome it all at once, instantaneously; you can­ not hold up an army in flight. . . . The thing I foretold has come to pass: instead of the Brest-Litovsk Peace we have received a much more humiliating peace, and the blame for this rests upon those who refused to accept the former peace. . . . Every serious peasant and worker will say I am right, because they understand that peace is a means of gathering strength.’’21 He had mocked those who asked him

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whether or not he would observe the treaties and urged communists to get to work immediately to acquire the material means for victory. He was prepared to lose land in order to gain time. But the terri­ tory over which he held sway was shrinking like a peau de chagrin. At Brest-Litovsk, he had already given up territory one-and-a-half times as large as France and that contained a quarter of the population of the empire, a third of its wheat fields and three-quarters of its coal and iron resources. In the meantime the Germans continued to push south at the behest of the Don and Crimean Cossacks. Byelorussia pro­ claimed its independence on March 24 and, at the instigation of the West, was soon followed by the three Transcaucasian republics: Arme­ nia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Moslem Baskhirs, Kirghiz, Turko­ mans and Circassians had not waited for the “Declaration on the Rights of the Peoples of Russia” to throw off the authority of the cen­ tral government. White armies were busy in every corner of the coun­ try. The “left” Social Revolutionaries (S.R.s), who were supported by the majority of the peasants and who had allied themselves with the Bolsheviks during the insurrection, now broke with them in protest against the “shameful peace.” They committed a number of assassina­ tions and acts of sabotage. Meanwhile the “right” Social Revolution­ aries raised an army which took Jaroslavl, 150 miles north of Mos­ cow, in July 1918. Yet another peril threatened the Soviets: Allied intervention. To­ tally committed in the war against Germany, most of the French and English leaders had never realized the full implications of the October Revolution. They could not believe that a state that had systematically destroyed the bases of society and dared to renounce the tsarist debts and so antagonize the enormous block of money lenders— 1,600,000 in France alone—could possibly survive. Ever since the so-called sealed train affair, they regarded Lenin as only a paid agent of the Kaiser. It has now been established beyond doubt that before the revo­ lution Berlin had sent funds to the Bolsheviks through Trotsky's friend Alexander Helphand, alias Parvus; it is less certain that these funds reached their destination. In any case, Brest-Litovsk could only strengthen the Allied view of Lenin as a traitor. The plenipotentiaries of the Central Powers who for weeks had heard their Russian neigh­ bors at the conference table calling on their soldiers to revolt had a .

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better idea of the true character of the wave which was soon to break over Europe. In November 1917, the British Government had rejected a plan, sponsored by Foch and supported by Churchill, to reopen an eastern front. “No policy would be more fatal,” declared Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, “than to give the Russians a motive for welcoming into their midst German officials and German soldiers as friends and deliv­ erers.”22 But in November, Clemenceau and Lord Milner signed an agreement specifying the regions in which the two governments would intervene if the occasion arose: Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, the Baltic countries and the arctic region for Great Britain; the Ukraine, Bessarabia and the Crimea for France. In January 1918, Japanese, British and American warships were dispatched to Vladivostok, officially to prevent the enormous Allied arms supply, which had not been sent on to the front due to lack of transport, from falling into the hands of the Germans who were . . . a couple of thousand miles away. Several Nipponese gunboats arrived in Siberia in March, spearheading an army of 75,000 men whose imperialist designs could not help but worry the Americans. It was partly in order to thwart them that Wilson sent a small contingent of marines who were withdrawn only in 1920, while the Japanese hung on for another four years. Again with the pretext of protecting their arms supplies the French, English and Americans landed several thou­ sand men at Murmansk and Archangel in the north, also in August. But the core of intervention consisted of soldiers who were already on the spot: several tens of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks mobilized under the Hapsburg flag who had let themselves be taken prisoner in the Carpathians so that they would no longer have to fight for the dual monarchy. When the revolution broke out, they had declared their neutrality in Russian affairs and had arranged with the Allies as well as with the Communists to travel to western Europe. Since a wall of German and Austrian troops separated them from their goal, only one path lay open to them— the Trans-Siberian. One can imagine what this railway anabasis must have been like in a country that was in the grip of com­ plete anarchy, terrorized by armed groups of all sorts, pure and simple bandits as well as partisans of various clans. Again and again the Czech Legion beat a path with arms in hand. As they went they car*

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States having proclaimed (heir independence after the October Revolution Zone heklby the Bolsheviks in the sommer of 1918 Zone anneied by Turkey

mhh

Advance of the German, Austrian and Turkish armies after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk The “White" or Allied army Allied intervention

L AFTER THE RUSSO-GERMAN ARMISTICE

E U R O P E A T T H E T I M E OF

—— Fronden after the Treaty of Riga (March 18f 1921) Poland, as proposed by Focfa, February 20,1919 =---- TbeCurzon Line ■ ■ 4 The Polish attack on Kiev (Spring 1920) Furthest advance of the Bolsheviks (August 14,1920)

The Free-German corps n n h > Return route of the Allied army to Germany (1918-19) The White army Allied intervention

TL A FTER THE DEFEAT O F GERMANY

THE R U S S I A N R E V O L U T I O N

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ried off the gold reserve of the tsars. In May 1918, a serious incident occurred near Cheliabinsk between one of their formations and some Hungarian Communist prisoners who, like thousands of others, were serving in the Red Army. Shortly afterward, the Czechoslovakian delegates in Moscow were arrested and Trotsky ordered the Legion to disarm. Its leaders refused and declared themselves in revolt against the Bolsheviks. It is difficult to say whether or not they were incited by certain Allied elements. “The intervention that we have tried to bring about,” wrote Grenard, who was French consul in Moscow at the time, “and that is partly a result of our efforts, has begun. Now it remains for us to see that it is victorious.”23 Apparently, the Czechs hoped that this move would bring them into the good graces of the Allies and so persuade them to support the creation of a Czechoslovakian state after the defeat of the Germans. Under Czech protection, a “Panrussian” government dominated by Social Revolutionaries was installed in Ufa. They drove the Communists out of Vladivostok, where they seized the aforementioned Allied arms dump. At summer’s end, the situation of the Communists seemed desper­ ate. They had lost all of Siberia. The Czechs occupied the Volga basin. The Don Cossacks were again marching on Moscow. In regions still under Soviet control peasant riots sparked by the harassment of the political police, the Cheka, were on the increase. Then gradually the wind began to blow the other way. White atrocities turned a large part of the population against the anti-Bolsheviks. Partisan formations in­ creased in the back areas. And, most important of all, in the meantime Trotsky’s iron hand had forged the Red Army. On the day that the Red Army was created— January 12, 1918— it had been proclaimed “socialist” and “voluntary.”24 Six months later it was neither. The election of officers had been abolished, obligatory military service was established and capital punishment reinstated in the name of the principle expounded by Trotsky himself: “. . . one cannot lead masses of men to their death if their commanders do not have the death penalty at their disposal. As long as those naughty monkeys without tails that are called men form armies and fight," he writes in My Life, “those in command will confront their soldiers with a choice between a possible death in the front line and a certain death in the rear.”25 In September, this improvised force, bolstered by German, Aus•

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trian, Hungarian and Serb prisoners, the survivors of whom would later form the avant-garde of the Communist parties of central Europe, pushed the Czechs back to the Urals and took the Don valley. The West would not take this army seriously until twenty-four years later, at the Battle of Stalingrad. But the revolution was still seriously threatened. The S.R.s, who could not forgive the Bolsheviks for Brest-Litovsk, were inciting nu­ merous riots and staging assassinations. On July 6, one of them killed the German ambassador. On August 30, Fanny Kaplan tried to assas­ sinate Lenin. An implacable terror fell upon all of the adversaries of the government. These lines of tragic brevity from the official history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union offer perhaps the best illustration of its scope: “On September 2, 1918, the Soviet Republic was proclaimed an armed camp. The Soviet State replied to counter­ revolutionary terror by introducing the Red terror. All persons who had belonged to White organizations or had been involved in conspira­ cies or revolts, were liable to be shot. During those days the All-Rus­ sian Extraordinary Commission, headed by F. E. Dzerzhinsky, dealt a number of crushing blows to imperialist agents.”24 The defeat of the Central Powers opportunely came to the aid of the Bolsheviks, whose agents had used every possible means to en­ courage German, Austrian and Hungarian workers to overthrow their governments and demand peace. In the first days of November 1918, the Berlin cabinet had expelled the Soviet ambassador Adolf Joffé, who had pushed Communist orthodoxy so far as to refuse to present his credentials to the Kaiser and who made no secret of his subversive activities. On November 5, the revolution dawned in Germany. The sailors of Kiel hoisted the red flag. In a few days, “councils” (Räte) of soldiers and workers, modelled on the Russian soviets, were formed throughout the empire. The Kaiser abdicated, a republic was proclaimed and the armistice was signed at Rethondes. The news was greeted in Moscow with transports of joy. The BrestLitovsk treaty was immediately denounced. Forgetting that Stalin had personally signed a peace treaty with the separatist Rada on the pre­ ceding June 12, the Red Army invaded the Ukraine. A clause in the armistice stipulated that the German troops on the eastern front would engage in no movements without Allied agreement; this was appar­

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ently an attempt to prevent a Bolshevik takeover. But in most cases, the Kaiser’s soldiers were more inclined to desert or to fraternize with Lenin’s troops than to start fighting against them again. The German Free Corps, led by officers who later took part in various reactionary enterprises— the last of which would be Nazism— opposed the Red advance in a number of regions, notably in the Baltic countries. The Communists easily retook Byelorussia, while in the Ukraine they clashed with the separatist troops of the Hetman Petliura and with White Guardists, to say nothing of the anarchists under the terrible Makhno. As early as November 6, the Sixth Soviet Congress had called upon the governments involved in the struggle against Russia to open peace talks. Wilson was in favor of a positive reply. He held that “to try to stop a revolutionary movement by massed armies is to use a broom to stop a great tide.”27 The British cabinet was divided. Lloyd George favored negotiation. But Churchill, as Minister of War, was sending troops to Baku in the Caucasus. He feared, as he wrote shortly afterward to his French col­ league Loucheur, that the victory of Bolshevism would lead to the formation of a “powerful Jacobin military empire, animated with the Russian national spirit” which would attempt “to reconquer all the lost Russian provinces” and “to divide the peoples of the Entente by revolutionary propaganda supported by the financial resources of a powerful state.” He thought that the Communist state would quite naturally be inclined to reach an agreement with Germany “to whom it could restore everything that the latter had lost.”28 He thus advocated all-out intervention on the side of the White Admiral Kolchak, who on November 18 had overthrown the Social Revolutionary government of Ufa and had proclaimed himself “supreme regent.” Assured of sup­ port from Denikin, who held the Crimea and the Don basin, Kolchak sought Allied recognition. And Clemenceau had sent an expeditionary force chosen from the eastern army to Odessa in December. In January 1919, the United States proposed that the leaders of the various Russian political forces meet on the island of Prinkipo in the sea of Marmara, for peace talks. Inspired by Paris, which hoped to re­ coup its lost investments with a political restoration, the Whites re­ jected this overture; Wilson continued to try to negotiate with Moscow •

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on the basis of a consolidation of the status quo—in other words, the dismemberment of Russia. A young American diplomat named Wil­ liam Bullitt, a future ambassador to Moscow and to Paris, was dis­ patched to talk with Lenin. He returned convinced that an arrange­ ment was possible. But he was not able to convince the Allied leaders. In any case, things had changed for the Bolsheviks since the days of Brest-Litovsk, when they had no choice but to accept the adversary’s conditions. True, with respect to terrain their situation was far from bright: the Allies, who had decided to blockade the zones held by the Reds, were landing reinforcements. The White armies, which had been abundantly supplied by France and England, were marching on the Volga and threatening Petrograd. But now the Soviets had two strong cards to play: the Red Army and the contagion of revolutionary fervor. Scattered across the vast Russian plain and commanded by divided leaders who often thought only of their personal ambitions, the White troops increasingly began to lose the support of the peasants, who were tired of their reprisals. “The Volunteer Army,” wrote one of the chief leaders of the Whites, Baron Wrangel, “has discredited itself by pillage and violence.”29 Trotsky had an enormous advantage over his adversaries: all the determination of a mandate that had passed the stage of improvisation and was playing for keeps. “The Soviet leaders,” writes George Kennan, who has studied this period more thoroughly than anyone else, “knew what they wanted; they worked day and night to carry it into effect; they gave no thought to themselves. . . . For those who saw this at first hand, the impression was unforgettable.”30 Since they now had enough enthusiastic fighters to serve as cadres into which the lukewarm could be placed and, thanks to the institution of political commissars, many former officers, including generals, to train recruits and to lead them into battle, the Bolsheviks imposed an iron discipline on the Soviet troops. Their ranks increased unceasingly. In the autumn of 1918, the Central Committee decided to raise the army to three million men. In Berlin in January 1919, the brutal hand of the Social Democrat Noske crushed the uprising of the Spartacists— as the German Bolshe­ viks called themselves after the leader of the slave revolt in Rome. Nev­ ertheless, everywhere Communists were beginning to organize around

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the internationalist and pacifist fraction of the Social Democratic par­ ties, profiting from the growing discontent of large parts of the work­ ing class at their leaders’ acceptance of war and participation in the government. Soon a small number of delegates made up of Russians and prisoners of war who had rallied to the Bolshevik cause met in Moscow; they were joined by five western Communists who had succeeded in penetrating the Allied blockade. They offered Lenin what the indecisive pacifists at Zimmerwald and Kienthal had refused him four years before. On March 2, they created a Third International, the Communist International or Comintern that was destined to supersede the Second, which had passed over bag and baggage to the “class enemy.” The discussion took place in an atmosphere of confusion and enthusiasm. Having read in an anti-socialist English paper that the London government had received the “Soviet” worker delegates from Birmingham and had promised to recognize the Soviets as economic organisms, Lenin concluded a little too quickly that “The Soviet sys­ tem has conquered not only in backward Russia but also in the most developed country of Europe—Germany, and in the oldest capitalist country— England,” and he declared that “the victory of the world Communist revolution is assured.”31 Three weeks later he announced to the Eighth Party Congress Bela Kun’s proclamation in Budapest of a “republic of councils” in the Russian style. “We are convinced,” he said, “that this will be the last difficult half-year. . . .”32 And a few days later: “We will face every test in order to achieve final victory, so that new sister republics may join the Soviet Republics of Russia and Hungary; we will see these sisters of ours born; we will see the International Republic of Soviets bom.”33 And in fact a few days later a Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Munich. But the assassination of its leader, Kurt Eisner, quickly put an end to its existence. As for the Hungarian Communist regime, it was overthrown after 133 days by Rumanians acting for the West, but not before it gave the Magyars a foretaste of what would later be Rakosi’s sinister dictatorship; there as elsewhere, of course, White terror quickly succeeded Red terror. In the meantime there was mounting unrest among Allied soldiers in Russia, who after five years of war against Germany wanted to •

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come home. André Marty organized a mutiny in a French naval squadron, and on April 3, Paris had to withdraw its expeditionary force from Odessa. The English evacuated Baku the following month, and Archangel and Murmansk soon after. “As soon as the inter­ national bourgeoisie raises its hand against us,” cried Lenin, “its own workers seize it by the wrist.”34 The Whites were severely defeated in many areas and Kolchak was captured and shot. The great democracies had in fact done their best to create a picture of themselves that resembled as closely as possible the Marxist stereotype: imperialists who were always ready to go to war to defend their financial interests but who were finally forced to retreat when their peoples refused to serve their infamous designs. And yet, said Lenin, it would have taken only a few hundred thou­ sand soldiers to overthrow the Communist regime in Russia.39 But after four years of relentless fighting, neither France nor England was in any shape to make war on the Red Army. America alone had the necessary resources. If it had openly intervened, it could have assured victory for those opponents of Bolshevism who were campaigning for true democratization: after all, the Social Revolutionaries had won twenty million out of the thirty-six million votes cast in the general elections following the October Revolution, while the Communists re­ ceived only nine million. It could also, by strict application of the Wilsonian principle of the right of peoples to self-determination, have taken a stand against any sort of interference in Russian affairs and, as Wilson had proposed in a message to the Congress of Soviets on March 14,1918, it could have seized every opportunity to guarantee the com­ plete sovereignty of the Russian peoples . . . and to restore them to the great position that they must hold in the life of Europe and the modem world.38 By so doing he could have helped create a trust fund of con­ fidence to exploit at a later date. Caught between two opposing tendencies, the President of the United States was unable to choose. Against intervention in principle, he finally resigned himself to involving his country too little to assure success, but enough to cause the Bolsheviks to lump him with the “imperialist bandits.” Moreover, he felt the need to justify this inter­ vention by moral arguments and to present himself as a friend of Russia. Nothing more was needed to convince the leaders of the revo­ lution, trained by their Marxist background to detect falsehood be­ *

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hind every bourgeois word, that Americans practiced hypocrisy and duplicity. S

S

8

Having failed to extirpate communism in Russia, the West would henceforth attempt to protect itself by a cordon sanitaire and, as Wilson put it, let the Bolsheviks “stew in their own juice until circum­ stances make the Russians wiser.”87 And wiser they were in the process of becoming, not because of any spiritual change but by dint of necessity. After two years of cease­ less fighting and all sorts of horrors, the country was exhausted and its factories and fields deserted. Trotsky decided to put the Red Army to work. In 1920 the Soviets concluded peace treaties not only with Fin­ land but also with the three Baltic states over which they had un­ successfully struggled with the German Free Corps and then with the Allies. They also made peace with Poland, which had proclaimed its in­ dependence after the German-Allied armistice was signed. In Februaiy 1919, the newly formed army of the young Polish state had taken the offensive in an attempt to occupy the territories evacuated by the Germans. But at this time the Bolsheviks were being seriously threat­ ened by the Whites. And Pilsudski, the head of the Polish state, was not in the least interested in restoring an empire with which he would later have to dispute his eastern steppes. Like many people at this time, he believed that communism would keep Russia in a permanent state of anarchy and impotence. Not only was he careful not to cooperate with Denikin when he marched on Moscow, but he kept in secret contact with Moscow until Denikin was defeated in December 1919. During this entire period, the encounters between the two armies re­ mained sporadic. On December 22, Chicherin, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, officially proposed that Moscow and Warsaw open negotia­ tions to conclude a lasting peace between the two countries. But Pil­ sudski was not disposed to comply. His mind was occupied with dreams of detaching the Ukraine and Byelorussia from Russia and of forming them into a federation under Poland to which Lithuania would also belong. At the end of February 1920, when the Commission for *

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Foreign Affairs of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, decided to acknowl­ edge receipt of the Soviet proposal, it let it be known that peace would be possible only if Russia accepted a return to the situation prior to the division of 1772—which would have placed the Russo-Polish border along the Smolensk-Kiev line—and if all peoples living within this border were given the right of self-determination. On March 27, the Polish Government agreed in principle to negotiation but did nothing to make it possible; it was impossible to reach an agreement, partic­ ularly with regard to the place where the negotiations were to take place. On April 25, after having concluded an alliance with Petliura, who had become the Ataman (Commander in Chief) of the Ukrainian separatists and who had agreed to fight under the Polish leader, Pilsudski announced that he had ordered his army “to penetrate deeply into the Ukraine”38 and to leave the country only after an independent Ukrainian government was firmly established. Several days later, the Polish Army entered Kiev. The remnants of Denikin’s army, which had reassembled in the Crimea under the command of General Wrangel, took advantage of this godsend to launch an attack along the Dnieper. Unsuccessfully. Two months later, the Poles were routed and the cavalry under Budyenny, the dashing mustachioed officer who was so popular in the Red Army, marched on Warsaw. A Polish revolution­ ary committee was formed. The Second Congress of the Communist International meeting in Moscow in July concluded its final resolution with these words: “Long live Soviet Poland.”39 On August 12, the advance troops of the Reds reached the suburbs of the Polish capital, which seemed destined to fall in a matter of hours. When armistice talks began in Minsk on the 17th, the Soviets advanced proposals that would again have made Poland a Russian protectorate. They did not know that luck had changed sides and that, with the aid of a French military mission under General Weygand, Pilsudski had again taken the offensive. This alternation of fortunes could not continue. Both sides were exhausted. Lenin must have realized that as a whole the Polish people had remained deaf to the call to revolution. The preliminaries of peace were finally concluded in Riga on October 12, 1920. The border was fixed 125 miles east of the Curzon Line, named for the British Foreign •

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Secretary who had earlier proposed it as the line of demarcation be­ tween the Polish peoples on the one hand and the Ukrainian and Bye­ lorussian on the other. Thus White Russia and the Ukraine were cut in half, and it was clear that Moscow would challenge this artificial line the first chance it got; that chance would come with the German attack on Poland. Generally speaking, the Curzon Line would separate the Soviet from German troops in 1939. Four years later, Roosevelt and Churchill would, with a few modifications, recognize the Curzon Line as a def­ inite border. Meanwhile, unhappy Poland would have paid dearly for all its leaders’ ambitions and the harrowing machinations which they inspired

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES péen, No. 21, September 1963. 14 Lenin, La révolution bolcheviste, (Paris: Payot, 1963) pp. 41ff. 15 Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed (New York: Vintage Books, 1965) p. 381. 16 Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, p. 375. 17 L’Union soviétique dans la lutte pour la paix (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1929) p. 34. 18 Histoire du parti communiste ( bolchevik) de L’URSS (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1946), p. 183. 19 Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, pp. 380-81. 20 Les Bolcheviks et la Révolution d’octobre (Paris: Maspero, 1964) p. 283. 21 Lenin, Selected Works, VII, pp. 297ff. 22 David Lloyd George, War Mem­ oirs (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936) V, p. 114.

1 Gourfinkel, Lenin, p. 164. 2 Fritz Sternberg, Le conflit du siècle, (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1958) p. 233. 8 Lenin, Selected Works, VI, p. 303. 4 Jean-Yves Calvez, La pensée de Karl Marx (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1965) p. 528. 5 Reed, Ten days, pp. 172-5. 6 Reed, Ten Days, pp. 176-7. 7 On this point cf. the letter that ap­ peared in the Süddeutsche Zei­ tung of July 20, 1963, from one of the passengers on the train, Mr. Erich Wollenberg. 8 Lenin, Selected Works, V, pp. 14248. •Lenin, Selected Works, VI, p. 118. 10 Isaac Deutscher, Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949) pp. 40-41. 11 Text of the preamble in Reed, Ten Days, p. 345. 12 Deutscher, Stalin, p. 181. 13 Problèmes actuels de l'Est euro­ •

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FR OM T HE I M P E R I A L I S T WAR TO THE CI VI L WAR 83 André Marty, La révolte de la mer Noire (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1949) p. 59. 84 Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard Uni­ versity Press, 1963) p. 464. 85 Galtier-Boissière, Histoire de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Les Pro­ ductions de Paris, nd) p. S43. 83 History of the CPSU (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960) p. 392. 8T J. B. Duroselle, From Wilson to Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963) p. 104. 88 Louis Loucheur, Carnets secrets, (Brussels: Brepols, 1962) p. 78. 89 Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, p. 446n. 30 George Kennan Russia and the

West under Lenin and Stalin (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961) p. 61. 81 Lenin, Selected Works, X, p. 27. 38 Lenin, Selected Works, VIII, p. 47. 33 Lenin, La révolution bolcheviste, p. 132. 34 Histoire du parti communiste (1946) p. 208. 8S Lenin, La révolution bolcheviste, p. 145. 36 Jacques Sadoul, Naissance de l'URSS (Paris: Chariot, 1946) p. 303. 3T Duroselle, From Wilson to Roose­ velt, p. 103. 38 Josef Korbel, Poland between East and West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) p. 28. 88 Korbel, Poland, p. 45.

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History shows us that peace is a truce for war and that war is a means for obtaining a peace that is a little better. —Lenin, Speech in favor of the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk treaty

TH E FA IL U R E OF A H IG H L Y IM PR U D E N T “ MARCH A c­

tion” in 1921 and the subsequent repressive measures put an end to the German Communists’ hopes of seizing power; in 1923, when work­ ers’ governments would be legally established in Saxony and Thurin­ gia, they would allow themselves to be disbanded by the Reichswehr without offering the least resistance. In 1922 there were several military engagements between the Russians and the Japanese near Vladivostok. The following year, after sitting still for a rightist coup d’état, the Bul­ garian Communists staged an insurrection that was drowned in blood. Nevertheless, for the most part the Polish campaign marked the end of the first period of armed confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the bourgeois world. It ended in a draw. The West failed to overthrow the Communist regime; the Communists failed to export the Revolution. From the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, it was fronted by one hostile state after another. It had been forced to accept borders that involved giving up most of the conquests of Peter the Great and his successors. There were no buffer states to protect Petrograd, Moscow and the wheat and ore of the Ukraine. Russia still had no warm water ports. Could anyone have doubted that it would not one day try to smash through this belt? There was little chance of it in the immediate future. After eight years of fighting, Russia was like a corpse: the harvest of 1921 was less than half the pre-war harvest, industrial production had fallen to a •

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seventh of the 1913 level. Five million people were the victims of typhus. Hundreds of thousands were dying of starvation. On March 3, 1921, the sailors of Kronstadt, tired of all this misery, rebelled against the Communists. Trotsky, who four years earlier had hailed them as “the glory and pride of the Revolution,”1 put them down, without cruelty to be sure, but also without pity. This revolt sounded the alarm: the time of sacrifice had come. This was to be the New Economic Policy, the N.E.P., which Lenin defined as follows: “Without the assistance of capital it will be impossible for us to retain proletarian power in an incredibly ruined country in which the peasantry, also ruined, constitutes the overwhelming majority— and, of course, for this assistance capital will squeeze hundreds per cent out of us. This is what we have to understand. Hence, either this type of economic relations or nothing.”2 Private commerce was re­ established, the freedom to dispose of their excess production was given back to the peasants, foreign investments were encouraged, and piece-work was permitted. This was to be the last major decision of the founder of the Revo­ lution. In November 1922 when he proclaimed his conviction before the Moscow Soviet that “N.E.P. Russia will be transformed into Social­ ist Russia,”3 he was already a victim of hemiplegia, which would bar him from all public activities— except for the writing of a few articles — and lead to his death fourteen months later. Taking advantage of his gradual withdrawal, a shadowy figure began to emerge— one that the whole world would soon learn to hate, or venerate. Named Gen­ eral Secretary of the Central Committee in April 1922, Stalin would stop only when he had eliminated all those who could have halted him on the road to absolute power—or, once he had obtained it, those who could have taken it from him. For thirty-one years he worked at this task with, as one of his disillusioned admirers, the Yugoslav Milovan Djilas writes, “the senselessness of a Caligula, with the refinement of a Borgia and the brutality of a Tsar Ivan the Terrible.”4 It would take a long time to wipe away the blood with which he would soil the Revolution. Lenin had foreseen the danger: “Comrade Stalin,” who had be­ come General Secretary, he writes in the letter to the Thirteenth Con­ gress that was to become his testament, “has concentrated boundless power in his hands and I am not certain that he can always use this •

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power with sufficient caution." He proposed therefore “to the comrades to consider a means of removing Stalin from that post and appoint another person to this position who in all respects differs from Stalin only in superiority, namely, more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, and so forth. This circum­ stance may seem to be an insignificant trifle,” he concluded, “but I think t h a t . . . this is not a trifle, or it is a trifle that may acquire de­ cisive significance.”5 Nevertheless, the congress of May 1924 decided to keep Stalin in his post. It was believed that he was held firmly in check by the other two members of the “Troika” that then governed the Party—and through it the state—Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were so prudent that they had advised against the insurrection in 1917. Moreover, he affected to be a modest and honest man. “To lead the Party except collegially is impossible,” he declared even in 1926. “It would be stupid to dream about it after Ilyitch (applause), stupid to speak about it.”6 The bureaucrats (apparatchiki), who were primarily concerned with keeping their privileges, were more afraid of Leon Trotsky. They were jealous of his brilliant, versatile intelligence, and they could not stand the “excessive self-confidence”7 that Lenin justly reproached him with. They were afraid that he would disturb their insignificant but tranquil existence as bureaucrats and careerists. Since he commanded the Red Army, of which he was the glorious creator, they naturally denounced him as a future Bonaparte. Stalin would protect them against him. A talented agitator, gifted with a marvelous sense of organization, Trotsky was a poor tactician compared with the crafty Georgian who took his Party name from the word “steel” (Stal, in Russian). For example, he did not try to unite Stalin’s various opponents. In his pamphlet “The Lessons of October,”8 in which he drew a lesson from the failure of the Bulgarian and German revolutions, he attacked the very men who were supposed to keep an eye on the General Secretary: Zinoviev and Kamenev, whom he reproached for the pusillanimity in 1917. Stalin, of course, then defended them. Thus, before becoming his victims, they became his hostages. When they subsequently turned back to Trotsky, it was too late. Likewise, Stalin’s Rightist opponents, •

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headed by Bukharin, first supported Stalin against the Leftist Trotsky, never suspecting that the dictator would turn against them once he had got rid of his more powerful adversary. Stalin’s death— no more than Trotsky’s, who died in Mexico in 1940 under the blows of a hired killer—did not put an end to the con­ flict, which was the pretext for one of the most frightful persecutions of all time. Khrushchev would repudiate the tyrant, removing his body from the mausoleum where it was venerated and renaming cities and streets that bore his name. He would rehabilitate many of Stalin’s vic­ tims, but not Trotsky, whose disciples in the Fourth International would stubbornly continue to denounce the Stalinist characteristics which the Soviet system preserved. His name was the supreme insult in the incessant polemics which the Chinese and Albanians directed against the Yugoslav heresiarch and the “modern revisionists,” as well as in Soviet criticism of the Peking “dogmatists.” What was behind this fierce rivalry? Was it really, as the most popular interpretation contends, merely a theoretical difference in strategies between “permanent revolution” and “socialism in one country?” Was the only problem to determine whether to give priority to extending the revolution geographically or, on the basis of its suc­ cessive failures abroad, to begin by building an invincible foundation in Russia itself? Trotsky himself seems to confirm this view: “Perma­ nent revolution or socialism in a single country: this alternative sums up the domestic problems of the Soviet Union, the prospects of revo­ lutions in the East, and finally the fate of the entire Communist Inter­ national.”9 And yet the controversy would become clear only as it developed and grew still more bitter. As Lenin’s right-hand man, Trotsky never opposed the conclusion of peace with Finland, Poland, Turkey or the Baltic states or the establishing of commercial relations with England or Germany. He was a member of the Politburo when Chicherin de­ clared in Genoa on April 10, 1922: “. . . the Russian delegation rec­ ognize that in the present period of history, which permits the paral­ lel existence of the old social order and of the new order now being born, economic collaboration between the States representing these two systems of property is imperatively necessary for the general economic reconstruction.” It is not far from “parallel existence” to “coexist-

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ence.”10 Stalin, however, clearly asserted the right of the U.S.S.R. to intervene on behalf of a revolution in peril: “I suppose that the forces of the revolutionary movement in the west are great; that they grow; that they will grow; and that they may overthrow the bourgeoisie here or there. That is true. But it will be very difficult for them to hold their ground. . . . The problem of our army, of its strength and readiness, will inevitably arise in connection with complications in the countries that surround us. . . . The banner of peace remains our banner as of old. But, if war begins, we shall hardly have to sit with folded arms. We shall have to come out, but we ought to be the last to come out. And we should come out in order to throw the decisive weight on the scales, the weight that should tilt the scales."11 There was certainly a fundamental difference between the attitude toward foreign states held by Trotsky, the cosmopolitan who had lived in exile in every western capital, and that of Stalin, who had always mistrusted Europe and whose Georgian origins did not keep him from falling into the sin of “Great Russian chauvinism” often deplored by Lenin— and which Stalin himself had formerly criticized. Had the fu­ ture generalissimo not said, back in July 1917: “You cannot rule out the possibility that precisely Russia will be the country that paves the way to socialism.. . . We ought to discard the obsolete idea that only Europe can show us the way.”12 But more than this, their very tempera­ ments thrust them apart. It was impossible for them to agree— the ro­ mantic and optimistic Jewish intellectual with a penchant for intermin­ able discussions, who was unable to recognize any authority other than his own, and the sly, taciturn chess player whose long years in the underground had taught him to have confidence in no one and to see his best friends as rivals if not as potential traitors. Stalin waged this battle with weapons more reminiscent of the In­ quisition than of the Marxists’ cherished materialist dialectic, which prides itself on absolute scientific objectivity. In the winter of 19231924, Trotsky experienced a need—it was a combination of self-justifi­ cation and sheer vanity—to reaffirm in a series of articles dedicated essentially to denouncing the increasing bureaucratization of the re­ gime, his fidelity to the thesis of “permanent” revolution which he had upheld in 1905 when he flirted with the Mensheviks. Stalin, who did not forget that Trotsky had criticized his own behavior during the •

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Civil War, used these writings as a point of departure to condemn a theory which he contended led “to the negation of the Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat,”13 illustrating his views with copious quotations. On the same occasion, he questioned the central role that his rival claimed, not without a trace of smugness, to have played in the launching and leading of the insurrection of 1917. Thus began that continuous revision of history which inspired the unforgettable pages of George Orwell’s 1984. Thirty years later, paint­ ers would continue to erase from official paintings the portraits of leaders fallen into disgrace, and the Soviet Encyclopedia would send its subscribers notices rectifying the acts of the founding fathers. For example, after Beria was liquidated, his biography was replaced by a timely study on the Behring Straits. The campaign against Trotsky, then convalescing in Georgia, was unleashed by Zinoviev’s speech on November 18, 1924, which Stalin himself and the other leaders immediately supported. As a result, the creator of the Red Army resigned from his post as President of the Revolutionary Council of War early in January. It will never be defi­ nitely known whether it was Party loyalty or fatigue that prompted him thus to abandon without a fight the principal, if not the only, means through which he could have resisted Stalin. In January 1925, his doctrines were officially condemned by the Central Committee, which refused, however, to follow Zinoviev’s lead in demanding his removal. This took place two years later, and as Zinoviev had, in the interim, become reconciled with Trotsky against Stalin, they were both excluded together.. . . In April 1925, the Fourteenth Party Congress, at Stalin’s behest, adopted a resolution stating that every effort must be exerted “to build a Socialist society, confident that this construction can and will cer­ tainly be successful, provided the country is safeguarded against any attempt at a restoration of capitalism.”14 Naturally, Trotsky opposed the resolution, thus demonstrating, according to the public prosecutors of the period, his lack of confidence in the ability of the Russian work­ ers to defend the Revolution. From here it was only a short distance to claiming that Trotsky advocated capitulation in the face of imperialism—as the official histoiy of the Party proceeded to do. At the same time he was reproached * 5 3 *

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for refusing in the name of his “petty bourgeois“ anarchism to grant the state the draconian measures indispensable for its protection against a new capitalist offensive. For, as the resolution goes on, “the sole guarantee . . . against restoration is, therefore, the victory of the Socialist revolution in a number of countries.“15 Let us translate that, viz: as long as other revolutions do not take place, we must place the U.S.S.R. in a state of defense in every area. Thus, against Bukharin, who preached the building of socialism “at a snail’s pace,” Stalin countered with his slogan “catch up with and surpass”— which he had borrowed, moreover, from Trotsky15—and which Khrushchev would merely transpose. “We are fifty to a hundred years behind the ad­ vanced countries,” Stalin declared on February 4, 1931. “We must make this stride in ten years. We will either do it or be crushed.”17 The year 1929, which in the capitalist world marked the begin­ ning of the greatest economic crisis of all time, saw Stalin triumphant. In Russia the year was marked by decisions which were to determine it’s public image: the inauguration of the first Five Year Plan, forced collectivization accompanied by the deportation of hundreds of thou­ sands— if not millions—of kulaks ( “rich” peasants), the elimination both of the rightist leaders prior to their execution and, finally, the beginning of the deification of the dictator on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. To its rare bourgeois visitors, the “Soviet paradise" during this period presented a frightening spectacle; things had changed greatly since the period of the N.E.P., when some naive observers like Presi­ dent Coolidge saw in Russia the beginnings of a “returning to the ancient ways of society.”18 Every trace of freedom had disappeared. The forced collectivization of the countryside caused a new famine. Tens of thousands of abandoned children, the besprizornye, wandered about in bands, stealing and killing. The cities behind their cracked façades were virtually deprived of means of transport. Long, silent and resigned lines stretched in front of empty shops. Few would then have guessed that in this sinister setting the gigantic power was being forged that when put to trial would permit the Krem­ lin to dispose of an army whose prowess would astonish the world, to catch up with the United States in the atomic bomb race ten years later, and for a time to outdistance it in the space race. Moreover, •

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when he had wrung out all he could, Stalin was clever enough to retreat, give the peasant back his cow and his corner of land and provide the worker with “material incentives” in the form of prizes and competitions. He also revived old Russian traditions, reestablished ranks in the army, had medals awarded to mothers of large families (from the selfsame regime that had once glorified sexual anarchy) and, finally, mobilized the whole nation, from housewives to artists, to serve a state in which it was harder and harder to say which of its two traditions predominated, that of Holy Russia or that of the Communist Revolution. But against the exiled Trotsky and all those who like him accused Stalin of Bonapartism, the dictator could argue that he had completely destroyed capitalism and that the U.S.S.R. was the first country in the world to have done so. This argument seemed convinc­ ing enough to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935 for it to adopt a resolution that read “the defense of the U.S.S.R. and the assistance that must be given it to contribute to its victory over its enemies must dictate the actions of every revolutionary organization of the proletariat, of every true revolutionary, every socialist, every worker, every peasant, every intellectual and honest democrat.”19 Thus in the name of the supreme interest of the proletariat the “socialist fatherland” was able to follow any policy whatsoever, cer­ tain that it would find enthusiastic support everywhere from Party members who were ready to give time, liberty and even their lives for the salvation of the Red revolution, unmindful of the increasingly heavy tribute that Stalin’s pathological mistrust would exact, from 1934 on, from those Bolsheviks who were most above suspicion. Never in his­ tory had a country been able to engage in such a self-centered nationalist policy and enjoy such widespread and disinterested aid from abroad. It was able to do so because it was commonly thought that this was only a “respite” during which the Soviet state would put itself in a condition to face “a war with the capitalist world.” Under the mantle of Lenin’s authority, Stalin declared on December 4, 1927, that this war was “inevitable, but it can be postponed until the prole­ tarian revolution reaches maturity in Europe or until the colonial revolutions begin or until the capitalist countries fight among them­ selves over the division of the colonies.”20 It was not until 1952 that the world Communist movement would begin to envisage the possi-

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bility of abandoning this apocalyptic vision and not until 1957 that the dogma of the “inevitability of war,” still in force in Peking and Tirana, would be officially buried in Moscow. 5

S

9

While awaiting this inevitable conclusion, however, the Soviets did not neglect a single opportunity to extend the limits of their au­ thority by force. In 1921, after having destroyed the anti-Communist base of operations that the Baltic adventurer Ungem Sternberg had set up in Outer Mongolia, they reestablished the authority that tsarism had exercised there since the beginning of the century. In the same year, the Red Army invaded Georgia, scorning the treaty of friendship and non-interference concluded a few months earlier. In 1924, a nationalist peasant uprising broke out in Georgia, and it was repressed with a brutality which gave a foretaste of that which would be used thirty-two years later in Budapest. As in 1956, the western world became indignant, and then forgot. The two other republics of Transcaucasia—Armenia and Azerbaijan—had previ­ ously fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks following local rioting, which had, of course, been strongly encouraged from outside. But everywhere else communism was firmly contained, in spite of the prestige that the October Revolution still enjoyed among part of the European proletariat and in spite of the substantial material means that the Comintern put at the disposition of its agents in capitalist countries. Why did the revolution fail in the most advanced countries? Lenin's theory was that the “super-profits” which the capitalists ob­ tained by exploiting the colonial countries permitted them “to bribe the labor leaders and the upper stratum of the labor aristocracy.”21 The logical consequence of this observation should have been a new tactic: help the colonial peoples to revolt and so cut off the source of these super-profits. But how could this be achieved? Lenin held to Marx’s doctrine that “no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been devel­ oped; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.”22 Thus, just as he had compelled the Bolsheviks to sup­ port the bourgeois revolution in 1905 because its success was the necessary precondition for the proletarian revolution, so he urged •

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the Marxists in colonial countries to support the national liberation movement led by the native bourgeoisie. A young Indian mathematician, Manabendranath Roy, a delegate to the Second Congress of the International in July 1920, convinced Lenin that the national bourgeoisie and the feudal order were inter­ dependent and that it was necessary to create Communist parties everywhere that, when the time came, would permit the working class to lead the struggle for national liberation. The First Congress had promised the “colonial slaves of Africa and Asia” that the “hour of proletarian dictatorship [that had] struck in Europe would mark for them the hour of their deliverance.”28 This was an echo of Lenin, who had written just before the war: “All of young Asia, that is, the hun­ dreds of millions of workers of Asia have a sure ally in the proletariat of all the civilized countries. No force in the world can impede its victory, which will free both the peoples of Europe and of Asia.”24 But Lenin’s language during the Second Congress was quite differ­ ent. He proclaimed that “it is the absolute duty of Communist parties and of elements prepared to form Communist parties, everywhere to conduct propaganda in favor of peasants’ Soviets or of working peo­ ple’s Soviets, this to include backward countries and colonial coun­ tries.”25 This watchword was to be followed literally, not only in China, as we will see a little later, after an ill-fated attempt to collab­ orate with the bourgeois power, but also in Indonesia (1926) and French Indochina where a Soviet was created in the province of NgheAn, in July 1930. The upshot was that the Congress was persuaded to adopt certain theses one of which concluded: “with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.”20 Only one dele­ gate, the Italian Serrati, voted against this formulation so contrary to the tenets of Marxism; three others abstained. “History,” wrote Trotsky, “seems to be unwinding her skein from the other end”27— i.e., from the least developed countries. On September 1, 1920, some two thousand Moslems, most of whom came from Russia but some also from Turkey, Iran and even China, met in Baku, where they held a congress of oppressed peoples. Zinoviev, the President of the Comintern, who organized this meeting, •

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addressed them with stirring words. He declared that it was possible to form Soviets “even in places where there are no industrial workers. . . . When the East really moves,” he cried, “Russia, and the whole of Europe with it, will represent only one small comer of this gigantic canvas.”28 The discussion took place amid great confusion, for the repre­ sentatives of the International were mostly interested in obtaining the delegates' support for their own actions in Europe, while the Moslems wanted to discuss the specific details of their problems and the need of their first giving a nationalist character to their revolution. Among them were many representatives from Soviet Central Asia, who be­ lieved that the Bolshevik Revolution had brought about little change, since the Communists had simply taken over from the tsarist function­ aries without allowing the least participation by the natives, who were completely unorganized. This explains the uprising in Turkestan of the Basmachi, whose leader, Enver Pasha—a former leader of the Young Turks, son-in-law of the last sultan and de facto dictator of the Ottoman Empire during World War I— was killed on August 4, 1922. Having attended the Baku Congress because he hated England, Enver Pasha had entered the service of the Soviets, who had sent him to fight against these distant ancestors of the fellaghas, never dreaming that he would rally them in the name of an ephemeral “Pan-Turanian” dream. At a time when the prospects of immediate revolution were grow­ ing increasingly dim in Europe, the Baku Congress renewed the hopes of the Bolshevik leaders. In one of his last articles, “Better less, but better,” which appeared in Pravda on March 4, 1923, Lenin declared that “one may foresee the general outcome of the struggle, because the vast majority of the earth’s population is being drawn into the struggle against capitalism itself. The outcome of this struggle will depend in the final analysis on the simple fact that Russia, India, China, etc., con­ stitute the great majority of the earth; in recent years, this majority has been drawn into the struggle for liberation with extraordinary rapidity and there can be no shadow of doubt as to the final outcome of this world-wide struggle.”

s

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As at Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks negotiated with an emperor while calling on his subjects to overthrow him, so Moscow did not •

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cease making advances to those very bourgeois states whose death sentence it had pronounced in its philosophy, propaganda and actions. First, their sympathies were enlisted. Gorki wrote to President Hoover asking that his relief organization come to the aid of the faminestricken Russian peoples. The Americans responded generously. The Holy See and various charitable institutions supported their efforts. In March 1922, ten million food rations were distributed daily by foreign powers. On this occasion, the Kremlin even allowed a dozen Catholic ecclesiastics on its soil. But the latter were forced to leave after a few weeks because they had not all kept their promise to refrain from evangelizing. The U.S.S.R. also appealed to the self-interest of the Great Powers. It had been some time since the day when Trotsky, who had just been named People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, had said he would publish a few revolutionary proclamations and then close shop. March 16, 1921, saw the signing of two agreements: first, a commercial one with Great Britain. “After all, we trade with cannibals,” Lloyd George said as an excuse.29 The other was with Mustapha Kemal. Because Moscow was interested in regaining Armenia, whose independence had been proclaimed by the Allies, and in keeping the “imperialists” as far removed from the Caucasus as possible, she had supported the founder of the new Turkey in his struggle against the Sultanate and the West­ ern Powers. Now Mustapha Kemal concluded a treaty “of friendship and fraternity” with the U.S.S.R., which had solemnly renounced the tsars’ designs on Constantinople. The Russian leaders, however, were well aware that six weeks earlier the police of the future Atatürk had seized Mustapha Subhi, whom the Comintern had placed at the head of the Turkish Communist Party, and sixteen of his friends as they were attempting to disembark secretly near Trebizond and had drowned them then and there without trial. . . . The treaty restored Batum to the Russians but left Turkey the vilayets of Kars and Arda­ han, which had been awarded it at Brest-Litovsk. There were to be many subsequent setbacks in the relations between these two countries, and Stalin would provoke one of the first crises of the Cold War by demanding these two vilayets in 1945. Again, it was self-interest which attracted Bulgaria, Afghanistan and Persia to Russia— a treaty of February 26, 1921, recognized Russia’s right to intervention in these countries if she herself were .

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threatened— and which prompted the capitalist powers to invite her to take part in a conference at Genoa in April 1922 designed to reestab­ lish freedom of trade in Europe. The conference itself came to nothing, but it was the occasion of a first—and futile—meeting between the Kremlin and the Catholic Church, and, more notably, of a diplomatic thunderbolt: the first agreement between the Soviets and the Weimar Republic. After the “March action” of 1921 failed in Germany, the Bolshe­ viks lost all further illusions about an imminent revolution in that country; and Stalin urged the Communists in Saxony and Thuringia to go easy in the autumn of 1928 when they joined workers’ govern­ ments that were quickly overthrown by the army. But even if the Communists could not take power in Berlin, wasn’t it possible to turn the Weimar Republic away from the Allies and get its industry to contribute to Russia’s reconstruction? What matter if Germany was not communist so long as it did not clasp the hand the West proffered! Everything favored Russo-German collaboration: the solidarity of mutual outcasts, their rejection of Versailles, which Lenin termed a “treaty of thieves and bandits” and an “outrageous, wicked peace,”30 and their awareness of possible profit from economic collaboration. On May 6,1921, the Weimar Republic accorded the Soviet Union de facto recognition and concluded a trade agreement. The event passed unnoticed. This was not true of the next step. On Easter Sun­ day, 1922, Chicherin, who had come to Genoa for a conference on trade relations, slipped discreetly over to the small seaside village of Rapallo to sign a treaty with Walther Rathenau, the new German Minister of Foreign Affairs— a treaty the name of which has since come to symbolize, like that of Tauroggen after the defection of Yorck in the last century, the German tendency to play turnabout. There was nothing extraordinary about the treaty itself: diplo­ matic relations were reestablished, there was a most favored nation clause, mutual renunciation of reparations or restitutions, mutual assistance for alleviating economic difficulties. It contained no secret clauses. However, it did shock public opinion, which ever since BrestLitovsk thought of any entente between Berlin and Moscow as a pact between bandits. “Russia,” wrote Izvestia, organ of the Supreme Soviet, “has obtained recognition. The opening will never be closed •

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again.” Germany, on the other hand, as Clemenceau noted, “has re­ asserted its independence in the eyes of the world.”31 And it was able to reassert it thanks to Moscow, which offered German industry new avenues that would permit it to set its factories going at full capacity. Never had Germany better deserved the epithets of “militarist” and “revanchist”— two terms that Soviet propaganda would use inces­ santly against the Federal Republic thirty years later. Under the leadership of General von Seeckt, the high command of the Reichs­ wehr had but one idea: to circumvent the military provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The U.S.S.R. would be of great help in this respect by permitting German manufacturers to perfect prototypes of forbid­ den armaments on Soviet soil. On December 16, 1926, on the floor of the Reichstag, the Socialist leader Scheidemann denounced as “neither proper nor honest” Soviet Russia’s tactics of “preaching world revo­ lution while arming the Reichswehr.”32 This collaboration was not unaccompanied by suspicion. In 1925 w'hen the Locarno Pact, one of the first attempts to bring Europe to­ gether in an alliance of the bourgeois states, was signed by Germany and its neighbors, Moscow took the news badly. Since she had been excluded from the negotiations, she interpreted the pact, as later she interpreted the Munich agreement, as directed against herself. It took the Russo-German neutrality and non-aggression pact of 1926 and various declarations by German leaders to quell Russia’s misgivings. In any case, the Soviets were handsomely paid for putting up with the German generals. Fokker supplied the U.S.S.R. with 824 airplanes. Dornier supplied the base at Kronstadt. Badische Anilin organized the Soviet chemical industries. Five thousand German technicians went to the U.S.S.R., half of whose total foreign commerce for several years would be with Berlin. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 would also be publicized as a return to tradition: “We have always held,” the People’s Com­ missar for Foreign Affairs said in October 1939 before the Supreme Soviet, “that a strong Germany is an indispensable condition for a durable peace in Europe.”33 And at the height of the war against Nazism, when Marshal Paulus founded the Committee for a Free Germany in his prison camp, Stalin cried: “Hitlers come and go, whereas the German people and the German state remain.”34 Re­

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peated disillusionment would not prevent Khrushchev in December 1961 from again inviting “the two most powerful countries in Europe”85 to come to an agreement. S

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New Russia’s attitude towards England was in marked contrast to its sympathy for Germany, for at that time the former country seemed to the leaders in Moscow to be the principal bastion of imperialism. The ideological diagrams that they had inherited from Marx and the heritage of tsarist diplomacy probably made them exaggerate Eng­ land’s coldness and avidity. They refused to admit that the war and a Labour victory had begun a vast transformation in British society. Nevertheless, the fact remained that from Shanghai to Cairo English rule was still particularly brutal and that at that time there were very few people in London who envisaged someday abandoning the im­ mense possessions which assured the prosperity of the British economy. The British ethos remained extremely conservative. The Russian Revolution did, of course, awaken the sympathies of the socialist movement, even though the totalitarian intellectualism of Lenin and his followers left no room for English pragmatism. But the heart of every duke and baronet in the kingdom as well as every bourgeois, great or small, shuddered as one at the massacre of the imperial fam­ ily, the ally of the House of Windsor, and at the repudiation of tsarist debts. Moreover, at a time when national emancipation movements were being born from the Indies to the Near East, it was tempting to place full responsibility for these movements on agitators paid by the Kremlin, which at that time made no bones about financing revolu­ tionary parties outside the Soviet Union and rallying them, as Kamenev said at the Baku Congress, to the “holy war against British imperialism.”s# The Labour Party’s assumption of power in 1924 led to a short­ lived truce. While recognizing the U.S.S.R. de jure, MacDonald pro­ posed to arrange the matter of Russia’s debts by admitting that England owed something in reparations to Moscow for its intervention in the civil war. But in the meantime, the “Zinoviev Letter,” in which English Communists were urged to stage an insurrection, was pub­ lished. The letter was very probably a fake, but it did much to make the public look with disfavor on any effort at rapprochement with the •

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RESPI T E

Bolsheviks; the Labour Party was crushingly defeated in the October general elections. The Conservative leader Baldwin, who formed the new govern­ ment, appointed Winston Churchill to the Exchequer, whose hostility to Bolshevism had not diminished one iota and who lost no oppor­ tunity to make it known. When Churchill visited Mussolini, he con­ gratulated him publicly on his “triumphant fight against the bestial appetites of communism.” According to Churchill, the Duce had “furnished civilized nations with the necessary antidote to the Russian poison.”37 He lashed out at the heads of labor unions—including Ernest Bevin, the future leader of British diplomacy after the Second World War— who were responsible for the great strikes of 1926 and accused them of collusion with the Soviets. For hadn't the Russian trade unions sent them a substantial subsidy? Again the following year, after certain documents—apparently authentic— were seized at the headquarters of the Soviet commercial mission proving that Russia was involved in espionage, Churchill used the incident as a reason for demanding that diplomatic relations with the Kremlin be broken. He had the complete support of public opinion and the cabinet. Relations between the two countries were restored only in 1930 when the Labourites returned to power. During this period, the Conservative Party’s unswerving hostility to communism remained intact. But when the Nazi threat became clear, Churchill rose above simple anti-communism and preached resistance to Hitler; the same was not true of most of his political friends, starting with Chamberlain and Halifax. It was their anti-Soviet prejudices much more than fear of war that explains the whole policy that led to Munich. One finds the same sentiments in France, with the difference that Bolshevism awakened much greater sympathy there from the outset and opposition to it assumed more obviously violent forms with the famous fascistic “leagues” even before the cagoulards. The successive governments did not hide their anti-Soviet prejudices. In 1919, during the period of intervention, Millerand had gone so far as to give Gen­ eral Wrangel, the leader of the White armies of the south de facto recognition. But even at that time, the Communists were in the ma­ jority in workers' organizations. Under the leadership of Daniel Renoult, Marcel Cachin, and Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, back from Russia, •

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the United Socialist Party, on December 29, 1920, at its Congress in Tours after a dramatic debate voted 3,208 to 1,022 (with 397 ab­ stentions) in favor of joining the Third International. The minority led by Longuet, Paul Faure and Leon Blum, provoked a split that survived all the shifts of Soviet policy. The new Communist Party, which numbered a dozen members in the chamber of deputies, adopted the most extremist attitudes—so extremist indeed that they provoked the departure of several of its founders. It encouraged colonial insurrections. It congratulated Abd el Krim on his victories in the Rif. It upheld the right to self-determi­ nation of the “two million Alsatians and Lorrainers” whom Maurice Thorez reproached France for “oppressing” in a speech given at Berlin in January 1933, denouncing as well the “arbitrary borders” imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty.38 The Party maintained an important underground organization that was under the strict con­ trol of Moscow and that specialized in industrial espionage and anti­ militarist agitation. The indignation of the bourgeoisie led on several occasions to legal proceedings against the leaders of the movement, who spent a good deal of time in prison or underground. Albert Sarraut, the Minister of the Interior, expressed the official doctrine in 1927 when he declared: “Communism—that is the enemy . . . the leaders of Muscovite communism hope to bring forth a new imperial­ ism out of some vast Slavic hegemony. . . the destruction of the fatherland is not a matter of opinion; it is a crime. . . .”3# In spite of the fact that the Edouard Herriot government recog­ nized Russia in 1924, France’s relations with the Soviet Union suf­ fered from this general climate. The Pollyannas of the period, more­ over, believed that the days of the Bolshevik regime were numbered. And then, the diplomatic interests of France lay elsewhere. They lay in the preservation of the Versailles Treaty, against which Russia and Germany were allied, and thus in maintaining alliances with nations like Poland and Rumania, which were more afraid of Russia’s interests in a revision of the treaty than of Germany’s. The U.S.S.R., on the other hand, viewed askance France’s diplo­ matic activity on its immediate borders. One might think that it was principally in order to thwart the French that Russia, not content with supporting the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 outlawing war, proposed to its neighbors that the provisions of the pact be applied immediately •

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to their mutual relations without waiting for general ratification. Formalities were concluded to this effect on February 9, 1929. But one can also see in this an indication of the Soviet Union’s desire to normalize its relations with the bourgeois world. Hadn’t the Kremlin in 1927 agreed in principle to participate in the preliminary disarma­ ment conference proposed by the League of Nations to which Russia did not even belong? This decision was all the more remarkable be­ cause in October 1916 Lenin had hurled an anathema against dis­ armament. To formulate such a demand, he had written, “is tanta­ mount to the complete abandonment of the point of view of the class struggle, the renunciation of all thought of revolution.”40 Naturally, the Soviet leaders had no illusions about the chances of reaching an agree­ ment on this point. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it was a step on the long road of “revisionism”— a step that would soon be followed by others. S

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There was at this time, far to the east of the Old World, a country that also had every reason to complain about the victors’ peace of 1918: China. Fallen into anarchy at the beginning of the century, object of the covetous desires of the Great Powers who had carved out of it concessions and privileges for themselves, unscrupulously ex­ ploiting a poverty-stricken population, China was an ideal terrain for the propagation of extremist ideas. As in Germany however, Stalin sought not so much to provoke a revolution as to come to an agree­ ment with its rulers to break “the capitalist encirclement.” The Ver­ sailles Treaty turned over to Japan all Imperial Germany’s privileges in China, which completely frustrated the latter—though China had been an ally of the Entente since August 1917— and quite naturally led it to a rapprochement with Russia. In 1921, the year the Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai by a dozen intellectuals among whom was an assistant librarian named Mao Tse-tung, two “powers” claimed to govern the the empire internally. In Peking, there was a self-styled government recognized by the foreign powers but incapable of imposing its author­ ity over the “Tou-Kioun,” the great feudal lords who were part soldier and part bandit and who quarreled over provinces and waged per­ petual warfare characterized by shifting allegiances and short-lived •65

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victories. In Shanghai there was Sun Yat-sen who had taken refuge in the French concession after having been driven from Canton, his capital, by his own Minister of War. Sun Yat-sen was the founder of the Chinese Republic, the apostle of the “Three Min” (the three “im­ peratives of the people” : nationalism, democracy and the vital necessi­ ties). He was the man who wanted to westernize China and whom the West could neither help nor even understand. His prestige remained considerable and he spent his time publishing grandiloquent mani­ festos while biding his time. As early as 1919, Chicherin had announced that the Soviets re­ nounced all the advantages that the tsars had acquired in China and contacts were established between Moscow and Peking. In 1922, Joffé, who had been in the Russian delegation at Brest-Litovsk, ar­ rived in the capital to negotiate with the puppet “government” of the Republic. At the same time, other emissaries of the Kremlin got in touch with Sun Yat-sen who, disillusioned by lack of understanding from the great democracies, welcomed them with open arms. They supplied him with massive aid in the form of arms and matériel. Joffé himself soon arrived in Shanghai. There, on January 16, 1923, he signed the famous document in which he declared that he agreed with Dr. Sun's observation that “because of the absence of conditions favorable to their fruitful application in China, communism or even the Soviet system cannot be introduced there.”41 At the same time, Joffé assured Dr. Sun of Moscow's support in realizing national unity and complete independence for his country. Several days before, the Comintern had urged the Chinese Communist Party, “without aban­ doning its political personality, to join with the Kuomintang,” the movement headed by Dr. Sun, and to “exert pressure on it with the aim of strengthening ties with Soviet Russia in the common struggle against European, American and Japanese imperialism.”42 The following month, Sun Yat-sen regained his footing in Canton. He soon sent one of his young deputies, Colonel Chiang Kai-shek, to Moscow. On his return, Chiang founded a military academy in Wham­ poa, the political commissar of which was Chou En-lai, the future prime minister of Communist China, and the real leader of which was the Soviet General Blücher under the name of Gallen. In the mean­ time, a personal representative of the Comintern and, indeed, of Stalin installed himself in Shanghai: the professional agitator Michael •

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S&ooseveifr had adopted the idea of “de-industrializing” the Reich and restricting Jt_ rrrrntially in n^ıiniltim im ijjjlîrïr breeding. “Soup morning, noon and night” : such, according to James F. Byrnes, then Under Secretary of State, was the fate that he had in mind for an overweening Ger­ many. At Quebec on September 15, Churchill had thoughtlessly en­ dorsed this project, which the President himself soon abandoned in the face of the objections of the majority of his advisers, including Cordell Hull. A cabinet committee was then chosen in Washington to decide on the treatment that was to be given to Germany, the primary intention being to make sure that she would never again be able to endanger the peace. To ensure the security of Europe and his own country, at Yalta demanded that German heavyjndustry be reduce« •

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percent. In addition, he called for reparations to be made up of levies on German capital—factories, machinery, land, investments—and for levies from their current production to extend over a ten-year period. He thought it would be possible to make Germany pay twenty 'billion dollars, half of which would go to the Soviet Union. Churchill replied that this might reduce millions of persons to starvation without the slightest gain. He pointd out “that if you wanted a horse to pull your wagon you had to give him some hay.”26 For all that, the protocol of the conference preserved the Soviet figures as a “basis for discus­ sion" by the reparations commission, the creation of which was de­ cided on at this time. It was conceded also that the commission might consider “the use of the labor force” as a possible contribution toward reparations. This instrument, on which the Russians were to rely from the moment of their entrance into Germany for the execution of “Operation War Booty”— the piecemeal removal of factories, railways, sanitary installations, the requisition of personnel and of property of all kinds — later became the object of innumerable quarrels. At Stalin’s request the Yalta conferees also discussed the dis­ memberment of the Reich. The generalissimo recalled that at Teheran Roosevelt had suggested partitioning the country into five autonomous states and the placing of the Kiel Canal, Hamburg, the Ruhr and the Saar under U.N. control; that he had aligned himself with this pro­ posal in principle, but that the only thing that had been accomplished was an exchange of views. He recalled too that Churchill had pro­ posed creating a large Austro-Bavarian federation and separating the Ruhr and Westphalia from Prussia, which would thus atone for her centuries-long dreams of domination. It was time, Stalin concluded, to come to a decision. The Prime Minister pointed out that the formulation of the borders of the new German states would pose problems much too complicated to be straightened out in a few days. On Roosevelt’s sug­ gestion it was agreed to appoint a committee, composed of the Soviet and American ambassadors in London and headed by Eden, that would be charged with the task of studying the method of dismem­ bering Germany, with the understanding that this committee “would consider the desirability of associating with it a French representa­ tive.”27 It was further decided that some reference to dismemberment *

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would be included in the formal terms of surrender that would be imposed on Germany. The dismemberment committee soon went far afield in procedural questions. It had arrived at no results when, on the very morrow of victory, on May 8,1945, Stalin, without having consulted anyone pro­ claimed to his people that “the Soviet Union had no intention of dis­ membering or destroying Germany.”28 So there was no further talk of the matter. Every allusion to dismemberment had vanished from the instrument under which on June 5, 1945, the French, American, British and Soviet supreme commands, taking cognizance of the total disappearance of the central government, announced their “assump­ tion of supreme authority in Germany.”29 The generalissimo never explained the reasons behind his sudden reversal. Did he think, that, with the help of pro-Soviet groups in Germany, it would be possible for him to get all Germany into his hands overnight? Such, according to Djilas, was the program that he presented in 1946 to the Bulgarian and Yugoslav delegates.30 In answer to a question that he had put to Roosevelt at Yalta, the Presi­ dent had told him that he did not think that American troops would remain in Europe more than two years. It is quite conceivable that he had interpreted this incautious remark as an invitation to move in. The principle of joint and total occupation of the Reich—the logical consequence of the idea of unconditional surrender—had in effect been adopted without much trouble in October 1943 by the Big Three foreign ministers in Moscow, with the understanding that, after the surrender of the Reich, their respective governments would jointly have the responsibility of running Germany. In January 1944 the British had proposed the establishment of three occupation zones and the joint occupation of Berlin by the Big Three. In their scheme, the zone allocated to the Soviet Union (Meck­ lenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg— Prussia having been wiped off the map— Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia) represented approximately 48 percent of the land mass, 38 percent of the population and 33 percent of the economic resources of the Reich. Great Britain would occupy the northern part of the western area, the south being given to the Americans. But Washington had said that it would prefer the northwest, which was richer and also accessible by sea. On the other •

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hand, they gave their consent to the proposed boundaries of the Soviet zone, after having first thought of making Berlin the apex of all three zones. The idea of marking out a corridor to Berlin, advocated by Philip Mosely, one of the experts in the State Department, was ruled out by the American Secretary of War, who viewed the matter as one that concerned him most and who was not inclined to allow political considerations to complicate the countless technical problems posed by the occupation of a large part of Germany.31 Churchill and Roosevelt did not reach an agreement on their respective zones until the Quebec conference in September 1944. On November 14 their representatives in the European Consultative Com­ mission signed a protocol with their Soviet colleague on the boundaries of the three zones and the joint occupation of Berlin. It was ratified at Yalta after a discussion that dealt entirely with the allocation of a part of the western zones to France. The Prime Minister pointed out that, if the Americans left Europe after two years, the British would be unable to occupy western Ger­ many alone and that therefore, in order that the area be properly supervised, it was necessary to put France back in the saddle. Stalin was extremely antagonistic to this: he did not want to let General de Gaulle join the Great Power club, the entrance fee for which, by his standards, was “five million soldiers.” “Three,” Churchill interrupted. «

9

f

It becomes clear from this brief summary that of all the wartime questions dealt with between the Eastern and Western Allies, that of sharing out their respective occupation zones was the most easily settled. Does this mean that no one had foreseen the danger that this line might come to divide Germany between two opposing blocs? Not at all. Precisely in order to avert this peril, Eden had as early as May 25, 1943, submitted to the War Cabinet a plan designed to post con­ tingents of troops of the other Allied armies in each occupation zone, the occupation forces of all nationalities having been placed under a single joint command.32 The proposal had been rejected by the American commanders on technical grounds, but the State Department, in its major memorandum • 231

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on the future of Germany (July 1944), had also voiced its fear that actual partition would arise on the basis of the demarcation of the zones.” And there is reason to believe that the British Chiefs of Staff had gone so far at this time as to entertain the hypothesis that if the Russians in practice annexed their zone it would be necessary to put the regions under western control at the disposition of the Western Allies’ war potential. It is true that several months earlier in the War Department in Washington it had already been taken for granted that it would be impossible to prevent the Russians from driving as far as the Rhine. This prospect, however, was apparently contemplated without too much anguish.” Such was not the case with Churchill, who, not satisfied with arguing for a drive on Vienna by way of Ljubljana and Istria, en­ visaged as well a forced march by the Allies on Berlin and Prague in order to counterbalance the Russian influence. The chief concerns of the British and Americans at this period were indeed far from parallel. While London was trying to obtain control of as many areas as possible in order to reach a profitable trading position with the Russians, Washington intended to win the war against the Nazis as quickly as possible and with the least possible sacrifice. “I see no reason,” Roosevelt had asserted to his son Elliott at Teheran, “for putting the lives of American soldiers in jeopardy in order to protect the real or fancied British interests on the European continent. We’re at war, and our job is to win it as fast as possible, and without adventures.”” The voters were eager to see “the boys” home and the war against Japan seemed far from being over. To Churchill, whom he met at Malta, the President had confided that he expected it to last into 1947. Apparently he was not then thinking of using the atomic bomb in order to hasten the end. Con­ fiding the secret of this terrible weapon to Stettinius some weeks earlier, he had added that he had no idea how long it would take to bring it to perfection. In these circumstances there is nothing surprising in the fact that Roosevelt’s first thought, as soon as he had arrived in the Crimea, was to inquire of Stalin the conditions under which the latter expected to fulfill the promise he had made at Teheran of joining the war against Japan as soon as the Reich had been crushed. The American •

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THE IM PO SS IBL E D RE AM

forces in the Pacific were at this time encountering fierce resistance from the Mikado's troops, and the capture of even the smallest island entailed great losses. Intervention by the Red Army would obviously materially hasten the end of the conflict, and MacArthur, the Com­ mander in Chief in the Far East, was the first to insist that no effort be spared in order to bring Russia in. At Teheran Roosevelt had already given his approval to Russia's recoveiy of the lands and privileges that had been snatched from her by the Japanese attack of 1904. Hence there was no difficulty in reaching agreement on February 11 on a document that looked for­ ward not only to the recognition of the status quo in Outer Mongolia but also to the restoration of “the former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan.”36 In other words: the restoration of southern Sakhalin to the Soviet Union, the renewal of the lease on Port Arthur, the internationalization of the neighboring port of Dairen with the reservation that the predominant interests of the Soviet Union would be safeguarded, joint Soviet-Chinese exploitation of the rail­ ways of eastern China and Manchuria, and, as a bonus, the archipelago of the Kuriles. Against the counsels of Eden, Churchill countersigned this document on February 11 ; however, to take effect it had still to receive China’s approval. The Crimean Conference ended on the same date with an elab­ orate but informal dinner, during which the Big Three affixed their signatures to what history would thenceforth call the Yalta Agreements. Bidding farewell to Stalin and Churchill as he left to confer with the kings of Arabia and Egypt, the Emperor of Ethiopia and, he thought, de Gaulle, Roosevelt was in a state of what Robert Sherwood called “supreme exaltation.”87 Hopkins was to say later: “We were absolutely certain that we had won the first great victory of the peace—and by ‘we,’ I mean all of us, the whole civilized human race.”88 Congratula­ tions poured in from all sides; John Foster Dulles, at that time foreign affairs adviser to Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt’s defeated opponent in the presidential campaign, was not in the rear ranks. The American press, on the whole, proclaimed its confidence and its enthusiasm. “All doubts about the Big Three’s ability to co-operate in peace as well as in war seem to have been swept away,” wrote Time magazine.89 Churchill did not wish to be left behind. On February 27 he told the House of Commons: “The impression I brought back from •

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■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Japan and its dependencies in 1940 ■■■■■■ Japan and its dependencies in 1945 B l l Territory annexed by the U.S.S.R* Territory occupied by the U.S.S.R. Region held by the Chinese Communists

VL THE YALTA AGREEMENT ON THE FAR EAST, AND THE CAPITULATION OF JAPAN

THE IM PO SS IBL E D RE AM

Crimea . . . is that Marshal Stalin and the Soviet leaders wish to live in honourable friendship and equality with the western democracies. I feel also that their word is their bond. 1 know of no government which stands to its obligations, even in its own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government.”40 The Prime Minister did not know that at the same time Vishinsky was arriving in Bucharest. He went at once to the Royal Palace, in front of which Soviet armor was deploying while the Red Army was occupying the Rumanian headquarters and disarming the troops in the interior. He forced the king to dismiss the premier, Radescu, on a charge of plotting against the Soviet Union. In order to make matters easier for the sovereign, he then gave him a list of the govern­ ment officials the Kremlin wanted installed. When young King Michael showed signs of resisting, he returned to the attack on March 2 and gave him until the evening to make up his mind. When he left, he slammed the door so hard that the plaster around the jamb crumbled. Naturally he got what he wanted. The new premier, Petru Grozea, a “fellow-traveler,” immediately turned over the Ministry of the Interior to a Communist. Just as in neighboring Bulgaria, a wave of arrests at once swept up the bourgeois political leaders. Repeated protests from London and Washington accomplished nothing. Churchill, furthermore, admitted in his memoirs that he was “hampered in [his] protests”41 by the agreement on the spheres of influence that he had signed in October. Far from being bound by that document, Roosevelt, who thought that it had been made moot at Yalta, requested that a three-power commission be set up in Bucharest in order to apply the principles of the Declaration on Liberated Europe. On March 17 the Soviet Union brushed aside the proposal on the ground of military exigencies. In Poland, in any event, there existed no agreement on spheres of influence, but only a commitment by the three powers to assist in broadening the Lublin Committee in order to enable it to proceed as quickly as possible to free elections. At Yalta Stalin had gained the core of what he had been seeking for months: the assurance that the Lublin group would form the nucleus of the new government. But this was not enough. The western leaders had barely returned home when he took exception to the names of the men whom they had put forward as participants in the new government; he opposed even the '

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dispatch of Allied observers to Warsaw because the Poles “would regard this as an insult to their national dignity."42 Bombarding Roosevelt with messages in the effort to persuade him to undertake joint pressure on Stalin without delay, Churchill wrote to him on March 13: “Poland has lost her frontier. Is she now to lose her freedom? That is the question which will undoubtedly have to be fought out in parliament and in public here. I do not wish to reveal a divergence between the British and the United States Governments, but it would certainly be necessary for me to make it clear that we are in the presence of a great failure and an utter breakdown of what was settled at Yalta, but that we British have not the necessary strength to carry the matter further and that the limits of our capacity to act have been reached.”42 While the exchange of correspondence between London and Washington being carried on, Molotov remained absolutely intransi­ geant in his talks with the western ambassadors. Thereupon they re­ fused to assign the Lublin government a seat at the organizational conference of the U.N., which was to open on April 25 in San Francisco, until there had been agreement on the conditions of broadening its base. Molotov retorted that he himself would not at­ tend that meeting. Roosevelt finally allowed himself to be persuaded to approach Stalin directly. On April 1 he sent him a cable in which he said that any “solution which would result in a thinly disguised continuance of the present Warsaw regime would be unacceptable and would cause the people of the United States to regard the Yalta agreement as having failed.”44 The generalissimo's answer, six days later, was rather encourag­ ing. He declared in effect that he would withdraw his objections to Mikolajczyk's participation in the Moscow talks if the Pole, who had criticized the Yalta decisions, expressly approved them and made a public statement in favor of friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Poland. On April 11 Roosevelt cabled Churchill to ask him for a joint examination of the “next step”45 to be taken in answer to Stalin. A day later the President dropped dead. The champion of understanding with the Soviet Union was succeeded by a man who was very soon to become the symbol of resistance to its ambitions. •

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 Sherwood, p. 843. 2 Sherwood, p. 846. 8 Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs, III, p. 728. 4 Elliott Roosevelt, p. 222. 5 Sherwood, p. 842. 6 Keesing’s 6073A. 7 Complete text of the Dumbarton Oaks plan in Céré-Rousseau, Chronologie du conflit mondial (Paris: S.E.F.I., 1945) p. 589. 8 Elliott Roosevelt, p. 130. • Elliott Roosevelt, p. 207. 10 Sherwood, p. 9. 11 Sherwood, p. 789. 12 Churchill, VI, p. 344. 13 The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951 ) p. 35. 14 Stettinius, p. 243. 18 Titus Andronicus, Act IV, Scene 1 18 Cited by Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (New York: Harper, 1952) p. 639. 17 Churchill, VI, p. 374. 18 Churchill, VI, p.368. 18 Churchill, VI, p. 371. 20 Stettinius, p. 158. 21 Woodward, p. 494. 22 Churchill, VI, p. 373. 23 Stettinius, 211-12.

24 Stettinius, p. 234. 25 James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper and Row, 1947), pp. 32-3. 26 Churchill, VI, p. 353. 27 Stettinius, p. 344. 28 Pravda, May 10,1945. 28 Le Monde, June 7,1945. 80 Djilas, p. 153. 81 Cf. Philip Mosely, The Kremlin and World Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1960) Chapter VI, “The Occupation of Ger­ many: New Light on How the Zones were Drawn.” 82 Woodward, pp. 443-4. 88 Mosely, p. 139. 84 Mosely, p. 167. 85 Elliott Roosevelt, p. 186. 86 Stettinius, p. 351. 87 Sherwood, p. 869. 88 Sherwood, p. 870. 88 Byrnes, p. 45. 48 Churchill, VI, pp. 400-401. 41 Churchill, VI, p. 420. 42 Churchill, VI, p.438. 48 Churchill, VI, p.426. 44 Churchill, VI, p.744. 48 Churchill, VI, p.439.

• CHAPTER

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But having come thus far on the way to universal empire, is it probable that this gigantic and swollen Power will pause in its career? . . . The broken and undulating western frontier of the Empire, ill-defined in respect of natural boundaries, would call for recti­ fication; and it would appear that the natural frontier of Russia runs from Danzig, or perhaps Stettin, to Trieste. —Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune, April 12, 1833.

ON A P R IL 12, 1945, A T F IV E IN T H E A F T E R N O O N , A H A B E R -

dasher from Missouri—who, through a quirk of politics, had become Vice President of the United States several months earlier—received an urgent summons to the White House. He learned from Mrs. Roose­ velt herself that her husband had died. “I had been afraid for many weeks,” Truman wrote in his Memoirs, “that something might happen to this great leader, but now that the worst had happened I was unprepared for it.”1 It was clear that this sixty-year-old, whose sole ambition in life had been to be a senator, was more than just morally unprepared. At this period the Vice President, aside from his duties as Speaker of the Senate, was merely an heir-apparent. He was in no way as­ sociated with major government decisions nor did he have a voice in policy. He found himself in power at a time when there were major decisions to be made regarding Germany, the U.S.S.R., Japan and China— decisions destined to leave their mark on the planet perhaps for decades to come. A cheerful, plain man of simple tastes and limited cultural back­ •

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ground, the new President, a good poker player, was far more at­ tracted by action than by ideas. A patriot, a veteran of the First World War and utterly convinced of the universal validity of Ameri­ can civilization, he despised all totalitarian systems and had no in­ tention of yielding to them in any way. Stalin at first blush seemed to him no better than Hitler. In 1941, in a New York Times interview he had even said that if the United States saw that Germany was likely to win the war, she should sup­ port Russia and if she saw that Russia was likely to win, she should help Germany and in this way let them kill off as many of each other as possible.2 His advisers were not very inclined to change his mind. On April 4, 194S, a week before Roosevelt’s death, the American ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, sent a long dispatch to the State Department in which, after noting that “the Communist Party or its associates everywhere are using economic difficulties in areas under our responsibilities to promote Soviet concepts and policies and to undermine the influence of the Western Allies,” he con­ cluded that “we should be guided . . . by the policy of taking care of our Western Allies and other areas under our responsibility first, allocating to Russia what may be left” and that, with as much econo­ mic aid as possible, the United States should seek to “re-establish a reasonable life for the people of these countries who have the same general outlook as we have on life and the development of the world.”2 In his first report for the new President, Secretary of State Stettinius wrote: “Since the Yalta Conference the Soviet Government has taken a firm and uncompromising position on nearly every major question that has arisen in our relations.”4 Finally Admiral Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose duty it was to report each morning to the Chief Executive with a résumé of reports re­ ceived from the four comers of the earth, was strongly anti-Soviet and believed that the United States under Roosevelt had been much too gentle in dealing with the formidable Uncle Joe. Decidedly disgruntled at having been excluded from the secret talks that were opened after German troops in Italy had offered to sur­ render, Stalin did little to endear himself to the new President. Though Stalin’s first act upon hearing of Roosevelt’s death was to tell Harri­ man “that he wanted to give some immediate assurance to the Ameri­ •

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can people to indicate his, Stalin's, desire to continue on a coopera­ tive basis,’’0 on the ambassador’s suggestion he had immediately agreed to rescind his decision not to send Molotov to attend the con­ stituent assembly of the United Nations in San Francisco at the end of April. But the hope aroused by these gestures of good will were soon dimmed. Truman had barely moved into the White House when the world learned that most of the key figures of the Polish secret army and the leaders of the Polish non-Communist political parties had disappeared. They had been caught in a trap similar to the one which later cost General Maleter, Minister of War under Imre Nagy, his life at the time of the Hungarian Revolution. The Russians had pro­ posed “friendly’’ talks with the express aim of coordinating the Polish action with that of the Red Army and accordingly had issued safeconducts to a meeting in a Warsaw suburb. The next day the Poles were in a Moscow prison. It was six weeks before Molotov would even admit that they had been arrested. On June 2, thirteen were sentenced to prison on charges of anti-Soviet activities. As early as April 14, forty-eight hours after Roosevelt's death, Truman was already making his first attempts to thaw out the Polish situation. He had sent Stalin a list of Polish leaders and suggested that he invite a certain number of them to Moscow to discuss the formation of a new government. He added that the United States had never objected to the Lublin Committee’s playing “a prominent part” in these discussions, but he maintained that there was nothing in the Crimea decision that gave “the Warsaw Government. . . the right to veto individual candidates for consultation.”4 For his part, Churchill persuaded Mikolaczyk to issue a declara­ tion stating that “close and lasting friendship with Russia is the key­ stone of future Polish policy" and accepting the Yalta decisions.7 Stalin proved willing to retract his pronouncements against Mikolajczyk. This concession, however, appeared less significant when it was learned that Vishinsky was at the same time giving the Allied am­ bassadors to understand that there was “a great public demand”4 for an immediate mutual assistance treaty between the U.S.S.R. and the Polish provisional government without waiting for a government to be constituted or for the West to recognize it. Before receiving Molotov, who had announced that he would visit •

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Washington en route to the San Francisco conference, Truman had a long talk with his ambassador to Moscow. Harriman said he felt that the world was facing a “barbarian invasion of Europe” and that “certain elements around Stalin” mistook any desire to cooperate as a sign of softness. He felt, however, that the Russians had no inten­ tion of breaking off relations with the United States and that there­ fore “we could stand firm on important issues without running serious risks.”* Truman interrupted to tell him that that was precisely his inten­ tion. Before leaving, Harriman said: “Frankly, one of the reasons that made me rush back to Washington was the fear that you did not understand, as I had seen Roosevelt understand, that Stalin is break­ ing his agreements.. . . I am greatly relieved to discover . . . that we see eye to eye on the situation.”10 After expressing the hope that it would be possible to maintain the relations that Roosevelt had established with the U.S.S.R. and stating that he intended to honor the agreements made by his prede­ cessor, Truman gave Molotov to understand that the American people had come to regard the Polish question as “the symbol of the future development of our international relations.”11 The Russian limited his comments to generalities and the two agreed to meet again the following day. Meanwhile, the President held a meeting with his diplomatic and military advisers. He told them that he felt that up to that point the agreements with the Soviet Union “had so far been a one-way street and that this could not continue.”12 A long discussion followed dur­ ing which Secretary of War Stimson and General Marshall, then Chief of Staff, warned that a break with the U.S.S.R. would be serious, since Russian support was vital in the struggle against Japan. Stimson asked that it be remembered that, outside of the United States and Great Britain, few countries had any conception of the meaning of free elections. As far as he was concerned this had been demon­ strated to him in Nicaragua. At the time these arguments seemed to have little effect on Tru­ man. Shortly afterwards he met with Molotov again and, in his own words, spoke “bluntly” to him, giving him a message for Stalin in which he warned the Soviet Government “that the failure to go for­ ward at this time with the implementation of the Crimean decision •

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on Poland would seriously shake confidence in the unity of the three governments.”13 “I have never been talked to like that in my life,” said Molotov. “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that,” replied Truman.14 The Cold War did not yet exist, but here was its language. And it was certainly not the language of Roosevelt. Stalin was no more impressed by this bluntness than he had been by the amiability of the month before. In his reply dated April 24 he stated that since he was not trying to find out whether the govern­ ments of Belgium or Greece were representative or not, the British and the Americans should stop trying to impose their demands upon Po­ land, a country whose fate was of prime importance to Soviet security. He concluded by proposing “to adopt the Yugoslav example as a pattern for Poland.”18 This “example,” to be sure, was not particularly attractive to the West. In carrying out the agreement reached on June 16, 1944, between Tito and Ivan Subasic, the prime minister whom the British had recently forced on King Peter II, which the Big Three had demanded be immediately executed, a government of national union was constituted in Belgrade on March 7, 1945. Headed by Tito, it included twenty-eight members, twenty-three of whom belonged to the partisan movement and only five to other political groups. All the key positions were in the hands of the Communists. The govern­ ment was temporarily entrusted to three regents whom the king was forced to acknowledge. On April 17 the young sovereign, who had tried in vain to persuade Churchill to delay the implementation of the June agreements—particularly the decision that turned over to the partisans, the A.V.N.O.J., the right to decide the election laws— wrote him a letter calling his attention to the mutual assistance treaty just concluded between Belgrade and Moscow. “Yugoslavia,” he wrote, “cannot pursue a policy of strict collaboration with only one of the three great nations who desire to establish and ensure its role in a future Europe.”16 He also deplored the disappearance of freedom of the press and of association. All this was clearly far removed from the equal sharing of power that Churchill and Stalin had agreed on in Moscow in October 1944. Nor did the British Prime Minister try to gloss over the truth in his answer. “We have done everything in our power,” he wrote to the •

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king on May 8, the very day of the German surrender, Mto influence the development of events in Yugoslavia in the direction that seemed preferable to us. But I cannot hide from Your Majesty that up to now the events have betrayed my dearest hopes and that regrettably I am in no position to stop what is happening in Yugo­ slavia today.”17 Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Churchill in a long and soberly worded message to Stalin dated April 29 made no reference to Yugoslavia but took up instead the Polish question: “After all, we have joined with you, largely on my original initiative, early in 1944, in proclaiming the Polish-Russian frontier which you desired. . . . We think you ought to meet us with regard to the other half of the policy which you equally with us have proclaimed, namely, the sovereignty, independence, and freedom of Poland, provided it is a Poland friendly to Russia. . . . But do not, I beg you, my friend Stalin, underrate the divergences which are opening about matters which you may think are small to us but which are symbolic of the way the English-speaking democracies look at life.”18 To which Stalin replied on May 5 “that such an attitude excludes the possibility of an agreed solution of the Polish question.”18 The next day Churchill, who had suggested to Truman that an­ other meeting of the Big Three be held, cabled him to suggest that the English and American troops “should hold firmly to the exist­ ing position obtained or being obtained by our armies in Yugo­ slavia, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, on the main central United States front and on the British front, reaching up to Lübeck, includ­ ing Denmark” and “show [the Soviets] how much we have to offer or withhold.”30 Returning to this theme in a cable to Truman dated May 12, he wrote: “An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind. There seems little doubt that the whole of the regions east of the line Lübeck-Trieste-Corfu will soon be completely in their hands. To this must be added the further enormous area conquered by the American armies between Eisenach and the Elbe, which will, I suppose, in a few weeks be occupied, when the Americans retreat, by the Russian power. . . . Meanwhile the attention of our peoples will be occupied in inflicting severities upon Germany, which is ruined and prostrate, and it would be open to the Russians in a very short time to advance if they chose *

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to the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic.” The Prime Minister concluded: “Surely it is vital now to come to an under­ standing with Russia, or see where we are with her, before we weaken our armies mortally or retire to the zones of occupation. This can only be done by a personal meeting.” Churchill states in his memoirs that of all the public documents that he wrote on the subject of the iron curtain this is the one he would like to be judged by.81 This idea of taking up the challenge was not exactly new with the Prime Minister. We have already seen how at Teheran and again in the summer of 1944 he campaigned for an Anglo-American military move towards Vienna via Istria and Ljubljana. From the time the German front collapsed in France he had been suggesting an Allied march on Berlin and Prague to counterbalance Russian influence. On September 4, 1944, the British Commander in Chief Montgomery had asked Eisenhower for enough supplies to enable him to break through to Berlin and end the war. This project came to nothing, as did a later one to take the city with paratroops of the 82nd Airborne Division under General Gavin, later President Kennedy’s ambassador to Paris. Over the objections of the Prime Minister who in heated telegrams demanded that a “new front” be created “against the onward sweep” of Soviet Russia which had “become a mortal danger to the free world,”88 Eisenhower had on his own decided at the beginning of spring 1945 to advance in the central sector and meet the Russians, thus cutting the German forces in two. Stalin declared himself delighted with the idea. He added slyly that “Berlin has lost its former strategic importance” and that he planned to allot only “secondary” forces there.83 On April 25 photographers caught for posterity the historic hand­ shake of the first American and Russian soldier who met at Torgau on the Elbe. Churchill tried to persuade Truman to send the Third Army, which had already crossed the Czechoslovakian frontier, on to Prague. There was no agreement with Moscow, he pointed out, establishing who was to have the honor of liberating the city of Jan Hus. But the White House chief supported Eisenhower who preferred to halt at the Carlsbad-Pilsen-Budejovice line. “Why,” asked the Commander in Chief, “should we endanger the life of a single American or Briton to capture areas we soon will be handing •

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over to the Russians?”24 Thus on May 9, six years after the estab­ lishment of the German “protectorate” over Bohemia, the Red Army entered Prague which four days earlier had risen in revolt against the Nazis. Shortly afterwards President Benes was back in the capital at the head of a government presided over by the leftwing Socialist Fierlinger and in which Communists held eight out of twenty-five ministries, including those of the Interior, Agriculture and Information. Would the course of events that three years later led to the Communist seizure of power have been so smooth had the Americans rather than the Russians liberated the city? Nothing is less certain. In Austria, however, Truman took a firm stand. There, without consulting the Allies, the Russians had recognized a provisional government under former Chancellor Renner, a sixty-four-year-old Socialist who in 1938 had come out in favor of the Anschluss. The Ministry of the Interior was handed over to a man who happened to be a Communist. What worried London and Washington most was that, without any compelling reasons, Moscow was preventing Allied missions that were charged with studying the demarcation of the occupation zones from entering Vienna. Truman and Churchill by turn cabled Stalin urging him to let the Allied representatives in immediately. He finally agreed. The events in Yugoslavia, too, demanded that the West take a clear stand. Tito’s troops had entered Trieste at the same time as the New Zealanders who had been ordered to liberate the town and port and to establish a base which was needed to supply Western troops in Austria. Tito’s soldiers changed the names of the towns in Venezia Giulia, expelled the Italian Archbishop of Gorizia and generally pursued a policy of pure and simple annexation in line with the claims of the partisans’ parliament in 1943. Nevertheless, in January 1945 Tito had agreed with Field Marshal Alexander, the Allied Commander in Chief of the southern front, that all matters of administration would be under the jurisdiction of the combined Allied military government. Truman reacted energetically, massing troops and sending a firm note to Belgrade, though confidentially he told Churchill that he would in no case take action against Yugoslavia. Under Kremlin pressure the Yugoslavs backed down on June 9 and signed an agree•

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ment establishing two occupation zones with Trieste remaining in Anglo-American hands. Stalin protested against the “supercilious” and “unacceptable”29 tone which London and Washington had used with regard to Belgrade. Recapitulating the terms of the Moscow agreement on the sharing of zones of influence, Churchill replied so sharply that the Russians found it convenient to omit this document from their edition of the secret correspondence of the Big Three that they published in 1959. One problem—the most serious that had divided the Allies over three years of cooperation—nevertheless was finally resolved. On June 7 Harry Hopkins left Moscow after having come to an agree­ ment with Stalin in principle on the reorganization of the Polish Government. It was Charles Bohlen who in mid-May had suggested that Roosevelt’s eminence grise visit the Kremlin in view of the turn taken at the beginning of the San Francisco conference. Opening on April 23, the conference had been marked by several confrontations between the U.S.S.R. and the Western Powers. Molotov had tried to have the Polish seat assigned to the Lublin Committee, but without success. He had failed, moreover, to block the American-supported admission of Argentina, whose right—under Perdn—to a seat in a coalition of anti-Fascist nations was debatable. Lastly, he had insisted that the question of whether this or that matter did or did not come under the jurisdiction of the Security Council was a basic and not a procedural question and that, therefore, the right of veto could be invoked. On June 2 Stettinius had let it be known that the United States would never sign a charter containing such a provision. Finally, the Republican Senator Vandenberg, a former isolationist whose conver­ sion to internationalism was accompanied by much fanfare and who a few years later played a major role in the creation of the Atlantic Pact, had proposed a series of amendments to the agreements regard­ ing the organization of the U.N. which the Great Powers had reached at Dumbarton Oaks in October 1944. One of these would have given the Security Council the right to “recommend appropriate measures which may include revision of treaties and of prior international decisions” when it found that any situation that it investigated in­ volved “injustice to peoples concerned.”26 •

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Wholeheartedly approved by American public opinion, this pro­ posal becomes more significant when one remembers that Vandenberg represented Michigan and its hundreds of thousands of Poles. And naturally it was a red rag to the delegation of a country whose first objective was to remove from others any rights over the sphere of interest she had just carved out, principally by the sword. One more element added its poison to the atmosphere. On May 8, several hours after the Reich surrendered, Truman had signed a decree that considerably reduced the volume of supplies going to the Allies under the lend-lease arrangements. The administrator of foreign aid, Crowley, had interpreted this decree so strictly that some ships had put about within the hour and unloaded their cargoes in American ports. It would have been hard for the Soviets not to be alarmed by this step since on several occasions, particularly at Yalta, they had inquired about the possibility of obtaining long term post-war credits to rebuild their shattered country; and they had not been discouraged in any way. In a letter to Roosevelt dated January 1, 1945, Morgenthau had written favorably of “an arrangement that will have definite and long-range benefits for the United States as well as for Russia,” declaring that he was convinced that if America presented Russia with “a concrete plan to aid them in the reconstruction period it would contribute a great deal towards ironing out many of the diffi­ culties” which it had been having with them “with respect to their problems and policies.”” Harriman had given Molotov to understand that negotiations on this question might be begun before the end of the war. And now Truman suddenly suspended lend-lease without proposing any sort of negotiations on credits and even before the end of the Pacific war in which the U.S.S.R. had promised to join. . . . Under the circumstances it was hardly surprising that this was one of the first questions that Stalin raised when he received Harry Hop­ kins on the evening of May 27, listing a number of things that had given him the impression “that the American attitude toward the Soviet Union had perceptibly cooled once it became obvious that Germany was defeated, and that it was as though the Americans were saying that the Russians were no longer needed. . . . If the refusal to continue lend-lease was designed as pressure on the Russians in order to soften them up then it was a fundamental mistake.”28 •

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Hopkins reassured him that it had been a technical misunder­ standing with no political overtones whatsoever. Moreover, the order to unload the merchandise had been quickly countermanded. Truman wrote in his Memoirs that he had signed die decree without reading the clause suspending deliveries. Stalin ended the discussion saying that he believed Hopkins but he hoped that the American would understand the feelings that had been aroused among the Russian people. Roosevelt’s former special assistant was, of all the American political figures of the time, probably in the best position to reopen the dialogue with the generalissimo, who was always happy to blame the deterioration of American-Soviet relations more on die change of presidents than on the manner in which he himself had applied the Yalta Agreements. Hopkins told him that in his opinion “the overwhelming majority” of the American people felt that relations between the United States and the U.S.S.R. “could be worked out in a spirit of cooperation despite the differences in ideology.” But “Poland had become a sym­ bol in the sense that it bore a direct relation to the willingness of the United States to participate in international affairs on a world-wide basis.”2* Stalin then made a long speech on the reasons why it was essential for the U.S.S.R. that Poland should be both “strong and friendly.” He swore that he had absolutely no intention of “sovietizing” the country. He said that “even the Polish leaders, some of whom were Communists, were against it,” and that they “were right since the Soviet system was not exportable.” Poland would live “under a parlia­ mentary system which is like Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Holland.” He therefore proposed to give four ministerial posts in the Warsaw government to men selected from the list submitted by London and Washington.80 In all Hopkins had six meetings with Stalin. The Polish question came up almost every time, and especially the matter of the resistance leaders who were arrested at the time of Roosevelt’s death. To Hop­ kins’ repeated demands for their release, he received the reply that they had been engaged in subversive activities, and that the generalis­ simo had no intention of allowing the British to run Poland. He promised only that they would be given trials. • 248

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Stalin having agreed that all the freedoms would be applied in Poland “in full peace time” but “with certain limitations,” for ex­ ample, it would not be granted to the Fascist Party trying to over­ throw the government, Hopkins advised Truman to negotiate on the terms proposed by the Kremlin. The President considered that “very encouraging” progress had been made, especially since in the course of the conversations the Georgian had yielded on the question of voting procedures in the Security Council—which cleared the way for the signing of the United Nations charter on June 26, 1945— and confirmed his intention to declare war on Japan as soon as China had accepted the terms of the Soviet-American Far Eastern agreement at Yalta. When Churchill was consulted, he gave his assent, though he wrote Truman that they could not “regard this as more than a mile­ stone in a long hill we ought never have been asked to climb.”81 Mikolajczyk allowed himself to be persuaded without too much diffi­ culty to accept an invitation from Stalin to go to Moscow. On June 21 he reached an accord with the Lublin Committee of which he became Vice President and Minister of Agriculture. Contrary to what they did with Rumania, Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria, the Americans did not even dare ask the new government, as the price of recognition and U.N. membership, to hold the free elections which the Yalta Agreements stipulated. Eighteen months later the Com­ munists had full control of Poland and Mikolajczyk was back in exile. On the same day—June 4— that he gave Truman his consent to the compromise negotiated by Hopkins, Churchill sent the President a wire pressing him once again to postpone sending the American and British forces back to the positions stipulated by the Allied agree­ ment on occupation zones until things had been settled with Stalin. The latter had told Hopkins that he was ready to participate in a meeting of the Big Three in mid-July. But Truman did not wish to wait. “The Russians were in a strong position,” he wrote in his Memoirs, “and they knew it. On the other hand, if they were firm in their way, we could be firm in ours. And our way was to stick to our agreements and keep insisting that they do the same."82 After consulting Churchill, who felt it was a death knell but “had no choice but to submit”83 in order to obtain alterations of the text, he proposed to Stalin that the meeting be held on July 15 and .

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planned to begin the withdrawal of the American troops on June 21. However, the Western forces would immediately begin to occupy their sectors of Berlin and Vienna, and the Interallied Commission for Austria would be set up. The change-over finally took place on July 1. Hundreds of thousands of refugees accompanied the G.I.s evacuating Thuringia, Saxony, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, abandoning to the Russians Leipzig, Erfurt and the Weimar of Goethe and of the Constitution of 1919. It is not certain that Stalin was expecting this withdrawal. His chief economic adviser, Eugene Varga, had not included Saxony and Thuringia in the production estimates for the Soviet occupation zone which he presented several weeks later at the Potsdam Conference. On July 3 the British and Americans, soon joined by the French, settled in the ruins of what had been Gross-Berlin. In their two months as sole occupation force, the Red Army had exacted a heavy toll for the atrocities that the Wehrmacht had committed in Russia. Women raped, men put to forced labor or deported eastward, ma­ chines of all kinds, down to sanitary facilities, carefully removed during Operation War Booty, the law of retaliation rigorously applied to Germany. Yet Berlin could rejoice that Stalin had forgotten the intention he had expressed at Teheran in such a way that no one was sure whether he was serious or joking—Churchill and Roosevelt dif­ fered on the matter—to execute fifty thousand officers and technical experts to liquidate German military power once and for all. On July 1 1 a four power Kommandatura took over the adminis­ tration of the city. It was not easy for the Western Powers to take possession of their sectors since the Soviets had refused to turn over their powers. General Clay, the American Commander in Chief, wrote that he had been forced to order quarters to be requisitioned at dawn and the Stars and Stripes hoisted while the Russians slept in order to confront Marshal Zhukov with a fait accompli. It was in this climate that the third and last conference of the Great Powers opened on July 17 in Potsdam, in the crown prince’s former summer residence that the Russians had sumptuously deco­ rated and filled with flowers for the occasion. The day before, an event had occurred which was to change the world political situation completely. The first atomic bomb had been successfully tested at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert and on the same day another •

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bomb had been placed in the hold of the Indianapolis headed for Tinian Island, the American base of operations against Japan. News of the bomb had been carefully guarded. Early in the afternoon of July 17, Stimson laid before Churchill a sheet of paper on which was written “Babies satisfactorily bom”— meaning that the test had been successful and inviting him to confer with Truman. The Prime Minister had been kept informed of the progress of these experiments— in which British experts were also participating— and on July 4 he had given his consent for the use of the new weapon against Japan. There had been no discussion whatsoever between the two English-speaking leaders as to whether the bomb should or should not be dropped. “There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table," Churchill wrote in his memoirs; “nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.”34 The Prime Minister, who had until then contemplated “the desperate resistance of the Japanese fighting to the death with Samurai devo­ tion,” felt that the Japanese people, whose courage he had always admired, “might find in the apparition of this almost supernatural weapon an excuse which would save their honor and release them from their obligation of being killed to the last man.”35 Almost overnight the Americans, who had paid the Russians dearly, at Teheran and Yalta, for their promise to declare war on Japan, now, in the three months following the capitulation of the Reich, no longer needed Soviet help. However, they made very little attempt to disembarrass themselves of it. In talking with Truman, whom he met for the first time before the Potsdam Conference opened, Stalin remarked that there was one more problem to settle: the Chinese Government still had to accept the clauses of the Yalta Agreements. The talks he had had on this subject in Moscow with Prime Minister T. V. Soong had not yet been concluded. Chiang Kai-shek considered, in fact, that the Russian demands exceeded what had been decided in the Crimea. The new Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, a former Supreme Court justice who had succeeded Stettinius after having served as his aide, lost no time in telegraphing Chiang to advise him to hold firm. But that did not stop Chiang from yielding several weeks later, out of fear that Moscow would support the Chinese Communists. On July 17, Truman had not said a word to Stalin about the •

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bomb. Actually, he wondered how he was to break the news to him. It was only on the 20th that he received the full report on the success of the experiments and the fantastic vistas they had opened. Finally, on the 24th, following Churchill’s advice, he told Uncle Joe in pass* ing that the United States had developed an extremely powerful new weapon. It seems the generalissimo displayed no particular emotion at this revelation but merely said he was glad to hear it and hoped that the weapon would be put to “good use against the Japanese.”36 Today we have eveiy reason to believe that his spies—especially the scientist Klaus Fuchs—had kept him well posted on the progress of the bomb. Meanwhile, he had informed Churchill of a communication from the Japanese ambassador to Moscow indicating that the emperor, while rejecting the idea of unconditional surrender, would consider a compromise. The Prime Minister favored finding a way to allow Japan “some show of saving their military honor.”31 But Truman answered that after Pearl Harbor he no longer believed in Japanese military honor. And so, after gaining Chiang’s consent, an ultimatum was sent to Japan on July 26 guaranteeing that she would not be destroyed as a nation, reduced to slavery, nor deprived of the basic freedoms, but that her armed forces would have to surrender unconditionally; if not the country would open itself to “prompt and utter destruc­ tion.”38 At the time Tokyo had rejected the ultimatum, the American Air Force had already been ordered to drop the bomb on Hiroshima as soon after August 3 as weather permitted. There was still one more question to settle. The U.S.S.R. was bound to Japan by the non-aggression pact of 1941 and was now seeking a legal pretext for denouncing the pact and declaring war. On July 29 Molotov asked the Americans for some suggestions. After hours of wracking his brains, Benjamin Cohen, one of Byrnes’s aides, came up with the solution. Truman wrote a letter to Stalin in­ viting the U.S.S.R. in the name of Article 103 of the United Nations charter—which had not yet been ratified—“to consult and cooperate with other great powers now at war with Japan with a view to joint action on behalf of the community of nations to maintain peace and security.”33 On August 9, without waiting for the results of the talks held with •

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the Chinese, Stalin declared war on Japan. He had adhered rigidly to the Yalta Agreements, for it was exactly three months and one day after the surrender of the Reich. But it was also four days after the atomic baptism of Hiroshima. On August 10, the day after Nagasaki was bombed, the Japanese government accepted the Allies* terms of surrender. On August 14, World War H was over. After a mere five days’ campaign, Soviet troops fell heir not only to the territories designated in the Yalta Agreements but also to Manchuria and to Korea as far south as the 38th parallel. The conditions were created for one of the bloodiest tests of strength of the so-called Cold War. The United States can always say that it didn’t need Soviet help. But the Kremlin has a letter, signed by the President, that shows the opposite. As Byrnes wrote, the Soviet historian will be able “to show that Russia’s declaration of war on Japan was in accordance with what they like to claim is their scrupulous regard for international obligations.”40 “However,” he wrote, “an agreement had been made and we had to stand by our obligation.”41 The atomic bomb did not change the situation in the Far East alone. As Churchill wrote calmly, “a far happier prospect” was in view for Europe. “The array of European problems could therefore be faced on their merits and according to the broad principles of the United Nations.”42 Even before the Potsdam Conference, the Prime Minister had reviewed the situation in eastern Europe with Stalin. He had shown his concern over what he regarded as Soviet intentions to expand westward and had protested at the way in which the October 1944 fifty-fifty agreement on Yugoslavia had been abused. Stalin replied that he had no expansionist desires, that, on the contrary, he had already begun withdrawing troops and that, as for Yugoslavia, if the relative percentages of influence had really been changed, it seemed to him that it was all to the benefit of Great Britain with her 90 per­ cent against 10 percent for the Yugoslavs and zero percent for the Russians. This was, of course, an exaggeration, but it was not long before the world discovered that Tito was indeed far from being the obedient servant of Moscow that he then appeared to be and that Stalin had a great deal to do to apply the brakes to Tito’s enterprising nature. As early as the first session, Truman brought up with some asperity • 253

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Russia’s failure to carry out the Yalta Agreements on liberated Europe in Rumania and Bulgaria. He proposed that a study be made to find the best way to help those two countries, together with Greece, to organize free elections. Stalin rejected as “fairy tales” the list Churchill had drawn up of the difficulties encountered in Bucharest and Sofia by British and American representatives who found them­ selves being cut off by an “iron curtain.” The Prime Minister was ob­ viously fond of this expression. No specific agreements were reached except on the necessity of concluding peace treaties with the former satellites of the Reich as soon as possible and on granting representa­ tives of the Allied press “complete freedom” to see for themselves what was happening in these countries.43 The Polish question was once again discussed at length. As early as the second session Stalin demanded that all the funds of the Polish government in exile in London—twenty million pounds sterling frozen in British banks—be turned over to the Warsaw cabinet, which the Western Allies had recognized, and that the Polish troops still loyal to the government in exile—some 124,000 men—be placed under the command of the new government. Churchill obtained a “reasonable delay” and the problem was referred to the foreign ministers. On July 21 there was a discussion of the western frontier, a prob­ lem left open at Yalta. The Soviets demanded that it follow the Oder and the western branch of the Neisse from Stettin to the Czechoslo­ vakian border. At Teheran, Roosevelt had, with Churchill’s support, proposed that it be the eastern branch of the Neisse, about 125 miles further east. But the situation had changed on the field. The U.S.S.R. had given the Warsaw government jurisdiction over the part of the Soviet occupation zone which was east of the western branch of the Neisse and some eight million Germans had fled or were expelled. Churchill pointed out that the area in question was nothing less than Germany’s breadbasket and that to deprive her of it would be to burden the Allies with feeding masses of hungry people. But “Ger­ many has always had to import food,” said the generalissimo.44 He claimed that Soviet authorities had been powerless to stop the Poles from taking over the area and that there was no longer a single German behind the Oder-Neisse line. He contended that under such conditions it was impossible to modify the existing situation. All the • 254

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Western arguments were unsuccessful, and also Churchill’s appeal to Bierut: he was assured that Poland would “develop on the principles of western democracy.”45 That is the point at which matters rested when the Prime Minister flew to London on July 25; on the following day he would hear the results of the general elections that had been held in conformity with an agreement he made in the fall of 1944. Stalin at Yalta had de­ clared that he was certain that the Conservatives would win “since the people would understand that they needed a leader, and who could be a better leader than he who had won the victory?”46 Just before the Potsdam Conference he had predicted that Churchill would win with a majority of twenty-four seats. The old lion was not so optimistic. But he certainly was not prepared for such an overwhelming defeat; Labour won a majority of more than two hundred seats and five million votes. Heartsick but careful not to show it, he immediately yielded his post to the man who during the war years had been his right arm and who, several weeks before the electoral campaign, had become the leader of the opposition. On July 27 Major Attlee took over the still-warm chair of the leader of the British delegation in Potsdam. Elected by a majority which preferred the tranquil joys of the welfare state to the exalted but harsh demands of the Churchillian epoch, the new Prime Minister was a high-minded man who was perforce diminished by the shadow of his remarkable predecessor. Churchill did not hide his scorn, referring to him as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.” Would Poland’s fate have been different if the Conservatives had won the elections of July 26? It is hardly likely. But it is true that in Churchill Stalin lost his toughest adversary until a new jouster came forth in the form of Anthony Eden’s successor, the former longshore­ man Ernest Bevin. As for Truman, he was waiting for the border problem to be solved by the peace treaty with Germany, and he obviously did not have the slightest sippicion that even twenty years later no one would be willing to bet when such a treaty would be signed. Thus in the last act of the conference the Big Three, after noting that the Polish provisional government accepted the proposition that free elections should be held as soon as possible on the basis of universal secret suffrage, declared the final decision on Poland’s western border would •

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have to be made at the time of the peace treaty but they were agreed that the part of Germany already under Polish administration should continue that way and should not be considered as a part of the Soviet occupation zone. This time Stalin had got practically all he wanted. Short of going to war against the U.S.S.R., the Western Powers had hardly any way of avoiding this conclusion. But they probably would have been better advised not to keep multiplying their objections at the beginning only to give in as the discussions went along. By taking an intransigeant stand at the outset, Roosevelt and Churchill condemned themselves to eventual retreat. And they compounded the error by far more serious ones; they constantly yielded without gaining any­ thing in return except fine words that—it was clear after all that had gone before— if they meant anything at all, certainly it was not the meaning the Western Allies gave them. Worse yet, when Stalin had a complaint against the West he aired it so bluntly that he was frequently ill-mannered. But Roosevelt and, to a lesser degree, Churchill and their lieutenants felt obliged to address Stalin circumspectly, never saying all they thought. This strengthened the dictator’s conviction that he was dealing with weak­ lings and hypocrites forever ready to yield to pressure and happy to settle for empty promises. This experience probably explains his post-war conduct. On the other hand, the way in which he achieved his ends contributed largely to the doubts that Western leaders subse­ quently entertained as to the usefulness of trying to negotiate with a partner in such flagrant bad faith. 9

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At Potsdam, as at Yalta, many other issues were discussed. It had not been difficult to reach an agreement on the delineation of the occupation zones of Austria, on broadening the base of the Renner government and on organizing free elections. They took place on November 25 and resulted in the defeat of the Communists who had to settle for the Ministry of Power and Fuel. “We are democrats,” said their organ, the Volkstimme. “Therefore we accept the decision of the people. The struggle will continue.” But up to now the strug­ gle has come to little. It was decided that Iran would be evacuated within some period

THE I R O N C U R T A I N

that the foreign ministers would stipulate and that the situation in Tangiers would revert to what it had been before Spain had unilat­ erally changed it in 1940. Stalin sought unsuccessfully to persuade his colleagues that they should join in an official condemnation of Franco’s regime. Churchill’s recognition of the legitimacy of the Soviet desire for access to the oceans led the conference to go on record as supporting a revision of the Montreux Convention on the Dardanelles and Truman to advocate freedom of navigation on all international waterways. It was a matter particularly dear to his heart. But Stalin was categorically opposed to this, refusing even to refer the question to the foreign ministers. “No, I say no!” he exclaimed when the President brought it up again. It was the first and last time that Stalin was heard to speak English. Truman was deeply offended; it was then, according to Robert Murphy, that he decided that he would never take part in such meetings again.47 The conference also took up the matter of putting the Italian colonies under a trusteeship, and Molotov, who was not overly con­ cerned about the epoch of anticolonialism, calmly demanded his share; on the other hand, he strongly insisted that British intervention in the Middle East come to an end. The Big Three did not, however, discuss Germany in detail. On July 19 they signed a document that the American delegation had drawn up on the basis of proposals sub­ mitted by the three foreign ministers regarding the “political and eco­ nomic principles which would govern the treatment of Germany in the opening period of control.” This document established a “control council” made up of the four commanders in chief. There followed a series of provisions that aimed to totally disarm and demilitarize Ger­ many as well as to “eliminate or control all German industry that could be used for military purposes,” the trial of war criminals, the “eventual” reconstruction of a democratic political life for Germany after denazification with a view toward the equally “eventual” peace­ ful collaboration of Germany in international affairs, the division among the Allies of German warships and merchant vessels, the control and limitation of production, etc.48 It soon became clear that good principles on paper count for little when the intentions of those who have written them are at cross purposes. In such circumstances only agreements dealing with con•

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Crete problems have any real value. As Churchill wrote, “the exact powers of the Control Council, economic questions, the disposal of the Nazi fleet, none were ready for discussion.”40 These and other petty details were remanded to the Council of Foreign Ministers, which Truman at the first session had proposed be set up in order to prepare the peace treaties, first of all those with the Nazi satellites and afterwards with Austria and Germany. The President had suggested that the three foreign ministers be joined by those of France and China, also permanent members of the Security Council. But Stalin, ever hostile to the small powers, objected that the issue did not di­ rectly concern these two nations. Thus France was excluded from the formulation of peace treaties with eastern Europe and China from anything touching on Europe. The Council would have its seat in London, hold its first meeting on September 1, 1945, and create a permanent secretariat. Truman was quite satisfied with the results of the meeting which took place in a cordial atmosphere. It was divided into several inter­ ludes during the course of which he was not loath to display his tal­ ents as a pianist. He observed to Forrestal, his Secretary of the Navy, that “he was being very realistic with the Russians and found Stalin not difficult to do business with.”80 Before closing the final session of a conference that Truman described as unjustifiably prolonged by “petty bickering,”61 the President of the United States expressed the hope that the next meet­ ing of the Big Three would take place in Washington. “Someone,” he wrote, “said ‘God willing.’ It was Stalin.”62 He died seven and a half years later without again meeting, in Washington or London, the representatives of his prestigious and ephemeral allies. An era had come to an end. The disappearance of the common enemies whose aggressiveness had tom them out of their isolationism suddenly revealed to capitalist America and Soviet Russia both the measure of their strength and the incompatibility of their ambitions. Rarely does an alliance survive its victory.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 Harry S Truman, Memoirs (Gar­ den City: Doubleday and Co., 1955,2 vols.) I, p. 5. 2 New York Times, July 24, 1941. 8 Forrestal, p. 39. 4 Truman, I, p. 15. 8 Sherwood, p. 883. • Truman, I, pp. 38-9. 7 Churchill, VI, p. 489. 8 Truman, I, p. 50. • Truman, I, p. 70-71. 10 Truman, I, p. 72. 11 Truman, I, p. 76. 12 Truman, I, p. 77. 18 Truman, I, p. 81. 14 Truman, I, p. 82. 18 Truman, I, p. 86. 18 Peter II of Yugoslavia, p. 197. 17 Peter II, p. 199. 18 Churchill, VI, pp. 496-7. 18 Churchill, VI, p. 501. 20 Churchill, VI, p. 501. 21 Churchill, VI, pp. 572-4. 22 Churchill, VI, p.456. 28 Churchill, VI, p.460. 24 Murphy, p. 254. 28 Churchill, VI, p. 560. 26 Fleming, I, p. 277.

27 Stettinius, p. 120. 28 Sherwood, p. 893-4. 29 Sherwood, p. 899. 80 Sherwood, p. 900. 81 Churchill, VI, p. 582. 82Truman, I, p. 217. 88 Churchill, VI, p. 605. 84 Churchill, VI, p. 639. 88 Churchill, VI, p. 638. 88 Truman, I, p. 416. 87 Churchill, VI, p.642. 88 Text of Truman’s ultimatum in Truman, I, pp. 390-92. 89 Truman, I, p. 404. 40 Byrnes, p. 209. 41 Byrnes, p. 208. 42 Churchill, VI, p. 639. 48 Stettinius, pp. 343-4. 44 Churchill, VI, p. 656. 48 Churchill, VI, p. 665. 48 Churchill, VI, p. 392. 47 Murphy, pp. 278-9. 48 Stettinius, p. 334. 49 Churchill, VI, pp. 650-51. 80 Forrestal, p. 78. 81 Truman, p. 410. 82 Truman, p. 410.

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PART TWO

"Besides the commercial and military importance re­ sulting from the situation of Constantinople, there are other important considerations, making its possession the hotly controverted and permanent subject of dis­ pute between the East and the West— and America is the youngest and most vigorous representative of the W est" — K a r l M a rx ,

The Eastern Question, 1 8 5 3

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There is no comparison between the armed man and one who is not armed. —Machiavelli, The Prince

U P TO T H E LA ST M I N U T E H I T L E R A N D HIS F A I T H F U L BE-

lieved in a miracle weapon that would permit them to reverse the situation. The weapon indeed existed, and in large part thanks to them, but the other side had it. It was in fact the research of German scientists that at the time the Wehrmacht was entering Paris con­ vinced Roosevelt, who had been alerted first by Einstein and then by Dr. Vannevar Bush, that the United States should undertake to make an atomic bomb. In addition there were Jewish scientists, like Ein­ stein himself, who contributed to the success of the bomb after hav­ ing fled Germany. When Strasbourg was liberated, American specialists were con­ vinced, on the basis of documents found in the desk of a physicist and professor at the university, Dr. Weizsäcker, that the Nazis had practically decided that it was impossible to produce an atomic bomb. Some scientists wondered if, given the circumstances, it would not be better to halt the production of something the dire effects of which no one knew better than they. But the military was deaf to words of caution. A dramatic and secret debate was carried on among all these intellectuals who previously had confined most of their thinking to technical problems and who suddenly discovered the abysm of political and moral considerations. One of the most famous of these men, the German James Franck, a Nobel laureate in physics who had emigrated to the United States in 1934, sent Secretary of War Henry Stimson a report magnificent in its total grasp of the situation, even foreseeing that the American •

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atomic monopoly could last for only a few years. In the name of six of his colleagues at the University of Chicago, he wrote: “Unless an effective international control of nuclear explosives is instituted, a race for nuclear armaments is certain to ensue following the first rev­ elation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world.” He ob­ served further that no country could look upon the prospect of nuclear war without trembling. He concluded therefore that “only lack of mutual trust, and not lack of desire for agreement, can stand in the path of an efficient agreement for the prevention of nuclear warfare” and that hence “the achievement of such an agreement will thus essentially depend on the integrity of intentions . . . by all the parties to the agreement.” But he added that “no paper agreement” could replace “actual and efficient controls.” The Franck report also took a stand on the use of the bomb against Japan. Not only did it advise against “such a fateful decision” without a previous demonstration in a desert or on an uninhabited island, but he advocated that even this demonstration be postponed “in case chances for the establishment of an effective international control of nuclear weapons should have to be considered slight.”1 Einstein was of like mind. And despite the repeated efforts of Leo Szilard, one of the signers of the report, to reach Truman himself, none of these suggestions was taken into account. A scientific commit­ tee of four of the principal architects of the bomb— Compton, Fermi, Lawrence and Oppenheimer—acting as consultants to the administra­ tion said that it was impossible to imagine arranging any sort of technical demonstration that could reasonably be expected to bring about Japan’s capitulation. Another argument also worked against the proposal in the Franck report: at the time, the United States had only three bombs. The first was tested at Alamagordo on July 16. On the same day the second began its journey to Tinian, the base for air raids against Japan. It might never have arrived, for the cruiser Indianapolis, which carried it, was sunk shortly after it had unloaded the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It was the third, dropped on Nagasaki, which brought about the surrender of the Japanese who obviously did not know that no more bombs existed. The question of who decided to use the bomb will be debated for a long time to come. Actually, it seems that there was no discussion of the matter among the political and military leaders involved, nor •

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the slightest hesitation as to the need for opening Pandora’s Box. “They had spent so much money making the atomic bomb,” said Einstein, “that they wanted to show that the two billion dollars they had spent were not spent in vain.”2 Was it a crime? Despite the horror of the “lightning-thunder,” as the Japanese call it, the number of dead at Hiroshima (71,400) is smaller than the number of victims in the conventional bombings of Tokyo (83,000 on March 9 and 10, 1945), not to mention the bombing of Dresden (135,000 dead on February 13 and 14, 1945), where the R.A.F.’s incendiaries caused a fearful holocaust. Had the war in the Far East continued, it would have cost the lives of tens of thousands of Allied soldiers and of many more Japanese, civilians and military, than were lost at Hiroshima. On the other hand, there are the long years of agony of the victims of radioactivity and the anguish of the survivors for their unborn children. Crime or not, it was doubtless a great mistake to open Pandora’s Box without knowing if it could be shut again. In Truman’s opinion the atomic bomb was too dangerous to be turned over to a lawless world and who knew better than he that the world was lawless? Who more than he was distrustful, at war’s end, of the formidable power abuilding from Berlin to Vladivostok? And who had accepted, with full awareness, the responsibility for the massacre of countless inno­ cents before the bar of world opinion and especially before the Asiatic peoples whom the Japanese surrender left in full nationalist and anti-white ferment? It is pointless to wonder what would have happened if Truman had listened to Franck and Szilard rather than to Oppenheimer and Fermi. It is hard to imagine that such a formidable invention as the atomic bomb could have remained hidden under a bushel during those post-war years when the Soviet wave was threatening to break over Europe, or that the Russians themselves would not have pro­ duced it. It is more to the point to try to assay the changes that Hiroshima wrought, the new direction that the atomic bomb gave to the contentions between the great powers and their ideologies. One might say, inverting Valéry’s famous phrase, that August 6, 1945, marked the beginning of the “infinite world.” In every sphere the traditional frontiers of humanity were brutally challenged. In population, for example, the annual rate of increase, which was •

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1.1 percent during the interwar years, soon rose to 1.6 percent. The average life span had doubled in certain regions, thanks to advances in hygiene. Distances suddenly shrank: planes were crossing the At­ lantic in twenty-four hours while five years earlier it took at least six days to cross. Soon jets would put New York only seven hours from Paris. Soon rockets would hurl man past the earth’s gravitational pull prior to taking him to the moon. One after another the wildest dreams of Jules Verne were coming true. Many other factors, of course, make 1945 the beginning of an era in which all figures would be increased by several zeros, in which a real psychological and sociological change would take place: the development of means of communication—radio, cinema, television; literacy among the backward masses; the beginning of the retreat of the colonial powers in Asia; unprecedented human migrations as a result of the captivity, deportation and expulsion of minorities, not to mention the ebb and flow of immense armies and of populations fleeing their approach. None of these quantitative revolutions, how­ ever, can more than distantly compare with the decisive importance of the discovery that overnight conferred upon mankind the key to well-nigh limitless powers of destruction and creation. The de­ structive force of the two bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki equalled that of two-thirds of all the bombs dropped on Germany during the whole of World War II. And this was only a modest beginning. The first hydrogen bomb, tested at Eniwetok in 1952, was more than three megatons—two hundred Hiroshimas. In 1962 the Soviet Union tested a sixty megaton bomb. As Jules Moch remarked, in twenty years the bombardier’s target changed from a specific bit of terrain to the city, from the city to the region, from the province to the whole nation.* At the same time, scientists were disciplining the atom, inventing submarines that could remain under water for two months using up a few grams of uranium, creating nuclear electric generating plants and thus opening a new prospect to countries with­ out other means of generating electricity. Perhaps tomorrow they will manage to tame the forces released not only by atomic fission but also by atomic fusion, recreating for the good of mankind the solar miracle they have thus far been able to synthesize only for his an­ nihilation. In the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima, while the Japanese •

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were still wondering about the nature of the mysterious mushroom that had blotted out a town of 350,000 inhabitants in a few seconds, the Americans alone had the new weapon. Truman expressed his pride, saying that America could tell itself that it had come out of this war the most powerful nation on earth and perhaps the most powerful nation in all history. His attitude towards die U.S.S.R. changed overnight. He had needed Russia to finish off Japan. It was becoming a burdensome creditor whose demands would have to be reduced as much as pos­ sible. It possessed such a military power that according to Roosevelt’s military advisors, who dreaded seeing the Red Army reach the Rhine, it would perforce dominate Europe, which meant that everything pos­ sible would have to be done to reach an understanding with the U.S.S.R. But what did these thousands of peerless soldiers count against a few bombs that could bring their government to its knees? At no point was Truman tempted to use America’s atomic monopoly to force Russia to retreat to its frontiers. But this monopoly provided him with an “umbrella” under which he could, without running too many risks, pursue his policy of firm resistance to any Communist advance beyond the “iron curtain” that had fallen across Europe at the time of the German surrender. Without the bomb, it is hard to imagine how the countries of western Europe could have escaped Communist contagion or how the United States could have formally guaranteed to protect them. On August 15, 1945, after the end of the Pacific war, the President asked all those concerned to take whatever steps were necessary to prevent the spread of information concerning the atomic bomb. This was a precautionary measure prior to choosing among the three policies that were then conceivable: giving up the bomb; offering to come to an agreement with the U.S.S.R. on its use; or starting a new armaments race and at the same time doing everything possible to maintain the American lead. The first possibility, advocated by certain dissidents, involved enor­ mous risk: if Washington gave up the bomb, this would not guarantee that Moscow would not try to make one. Soviet researches along this line must have already been well advanced at the time of Hiroshima since Molotov was able to announce in November 1947 that the U.S.S.R. had the secret of nuclear fission. Many political leaders •

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thought he was bluffing. But it was President Truman himself who told the world on September 23, 1949, that the Russians had just tested an atomic bomb. American and British planes had long been checking the upper atmosphere for traces of radioactivity indicative of a Soviet explosion. The President and his advisors had, however, too great a sense of their historical responsibilities to resign themselves to a nuclear race without investigating the possibility of an agreement with the Kremlin. Such an agreement could take many forms, and a very heated debate on the subject took place within the Cabinet, which called a meeting for September 21 to decide the issue. A few days earlier Stimson, who had continued as Secretary of War under Truman, sent his chief a memorandum, at the same time that he resigned his post, urging that vis-à-vis the Russians the United States should propose a “partnership upon a basis of cooperation.” He suggested that the Big Three should stop production of the bombs and agree to use the existing ones, which would be put under seal, only by common agree­ ment. He also proposed to exchange information on the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy.4 The majority of the Cabinet members agreed with Stimson’s view, but it was vehemently opposed by Secretary of the Treasury Vinson, Secretary of the Navy Forrestal and several others who later played important roles in the McCarthy crusade. In a message to Congress on October 3 Truman proposed “to initiate discussion, first with our associates in this discovery, Great Britain and Canada, and then with other nations, in an effort to effect agreement on the con­ ditions under which cooperation might replace rivalry in the field of atomic power.”6 At the same time he called for the creation of an Atomic Energy Commission, the members of which would be ap­ pointed by the President with Senate approval, and which would be granted extremely wide powers to control and eventually to handle everything having to do with this new source of energy. The talks with Attlee and the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King began on November 10 in Washington. Four days later, without any serious differences having arisen, a lengthy joint declaration was issued. The three countries doubted that communicating technical infor­ mation on the practical applications of nuclear energy “before it is •

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possible to devise effective, reciprocal, and enforceable safeguards ac­ ceptable to all nations, would contribute to a constructive solution of the problem of the atomic bomb.” They thought that it would have “the opposite effect.” They declared that they were “prepared to share, on a reciprocal basis with others of the United Nations, detailed in­ formation concerning the practical industrial application of atomic energy just as soon as effective enforceable safeguards against its use for destructive purposes can be devised.”0 But they admitted in the same document that “no system of safeguards that can be devised will of itself provide an effective guarantee against production of atomic weapons by a nation bent on aggression.”7 This was doubtless an un­ intentional blunder, but it showed clearly that the possibility of pass­ ing information on to the U.S.S.R. was simply a stylistic exercise. What Henry Wallace, Truman’s predecessor as Vice President and now Secretary of Commerce, had called “the line of bitterness” during the Cabinet meeting of September 21 won out completely over Stimson’s policy of generosity and trust. There is no reason to believe that things would have been different if America should have decided in 1945 to share the twin secrets of death and prosperity with Russia. But it is clear that the refusal to share this new knowledge gave encouragement to those behind the iron curtain who were ideologically convinced that the capitalist and Communist systems were irreconcilable and that an armed conflict was inevitable. There was a striking contrast between the Socialist fatherland that had come out of the torment with 17,000,000 dead, entire regions devastated and its industrial capacity cut by 42 percent, and the United States, whose losses were no more than 0.2 percent of the population. In four years of war, United States industrial pro­ duction and national income had more than doubled to the point where the number of families with annual incomes of less than $2000 had fallen from 75 percent to 25 percent. It would certainly have taken many years for the knowledge of the peaceful uses of atomic energy to have advanced enough to make any substantial difference to the Russian economy. But the offer of disinterested cooperation in open­ ing rich perspectives for the future would have caused such a psycho­ logical shock as to sweep away many an objection. Washington preferred to refuse the slightest technical assistance precisely at a time when the end of the war put a definite stop to •

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lend-lease. Would the danger of officially giving the Soviets some of the secrets which “ideological spies” like May, Pontecorvo and Fuchs had already passed on as early as the spring of 1945 and which in any case would come into public domain, have been greater than that implied by the refusal to help the ally that had borne the brunt of the war? When, on August 16, the American authorities published the Smyth Report on the development of the bomb in order to justify the vast atomic expenditures, they somewhat rashly made public much information of considerable value to the Russians; in particular the document described processes which experience had shown to be too costly or impracticable. Soviet scientists were thus able to save con­ siderable time, study and money by ruling them out. Shouldn’t Tru­ man have gone further and offered the devastated world a vast pro­ gram for the international development of peaceful uses of atomic energy? Even if the Russians had spurned the outstretched hand or tried to turn the whole matter to military uses, world opinion would have been grateful to America for a gesture of solidarity that was more in keeping with her historical magnanimity than the cloak of selfishness and fear in which she was wrapping her brand-new power and incredible wealth. If the Anglo-American-Canadian declaration ruled out all co­ operation among the Big Three, who only nine months before at Yalta had pledged their “common determination to maintain and strengthen in the peace to come that unity of purpose and of action which has made victory possible and certain for the United Nations in this war,”8 it did not close the door to a negotiated solution within the framework of the young U.N. But the composition of this organ­ ization— despite the seats granted to the Ukraine and Byelorussia as a favor to Stalin—at that time assured the United States of an auto­ matic majority, a situation tempered only by the veto power that each of the five permanent members of the Security Council held. One could therefore, legitimately doubt that the Commission could, under the auspices of the U.N., as Truman, Attlee and Mackenzie King had proposed, achieve the goals they set for it of “extending between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends . . . control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes . . . the elimination from national •

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armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adapt­ able to mass destruction. . . Nevertheless, such a commission was created on January 24, 1946, by the unanimous vote of the U.N. General Assembly. It held its first meeting in New York on June 14 of the same year. The United States delegate Bernard Baruch, a septuagenarian financier who had been a highly trusted advisor to both Wilson and Roosevelt, presented the plan which was to take his name. Actually, it was merely the statement of conclusions reached by a group of scientists and political men under the leadership of Secretary of State Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal, whose success as head of the Tennessee Valley Authority qualified him to direct the American Atomic Energy Commission. The Baruch Plan was based on a very daring concept. For the first time in history a government suggested that the possession of an essential source of industrial and military power transcended national sovereignty. It was nothing less than a proposal to turn over to an inter­ national organization the authority for atomic development, the own­ ership of uranium and thorium mines and ores and the operation of the extraction plants, which would be distributed equitably through­ out the world. The reason for the last of these provisions was, of course, to prevent any single nation from winning a decisive strategic advantage should it take over the nuclear installations on its soil. An international control body would see that no one could produce bombs secretly. The plan provided for “immediate, prompt and cer­ tain” punishment of all infractions. Once effective control and punishment for infractions, which would be considered “international crimes,” were set up, bomb pro­ duction would be halted and existing bombs turned over to the In­ ternational Authority along with all available information on methods of using atomic energy. The plan envisaged several transitional stages before its full implementation that would give the United States, in Baruch’s words, “a guarantee of safety” not only against “offenders in the atomic area” but against the “illegal [s/c] users of other wea­ pons—bacteriological, biological, gas, and perhaps—and why not?— against war itself.”10 At the time, the project did not seem technically impracticable: the structures and the methods proposed had in large measure been •

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inspired by the success of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a revolu­ tionary enterprise in a country where free enterprise is absolute dogma. During the war it had, in fact, joined public power with pri­ vate enterprise; moreover, since it was wrongly supposed at the time that uranium and thorium were very rare metals, it did not seem in­ superably difficult to keep a check on mines and stockpiles. Politically, no one underestimated the obstacles. But those who supported the Baruch Plan, including many cosmopolite scientists who had developed a political conscience with the appearance of the atomic monster, were absolutely convinced that the traditional rival­ ries between countries and ideologies were now completely anachron­ istic, leaving mankind no choice but to unite or perish. Einstein made no secret of the fact that he himself saw a world government as the only solution. His ideas, widely echoed in the in­ tellectual and scientific community, were less popular among the public at large. It took a minor American actor, Gariy Davis, who tore up his passport and proclaimed himself a citizen of the world, to attract public opinion, especially in England, Germany, France and Japan, to the notion of One World. The Acheson-Lilienthal report upon which the Baruch Plan was based had been made public in March, so the Russians had had several months to study it and decide on their position. It could not have been more negative. On June 19, 1946, Andrei Gromyko pro­ posed a treaty that would outlaw the use of atomic energy for military purposes and called for the destruction of existing bombs. Infractions would be punished by each nation—on its own territory by legislation to that end which would be adopted within six months of the time when the treaty became effective.11 It was demanding a great deal of the Americans to ask them to give up their bombs without receiving in return any rights whatsoever of inspection of Soviet territory. It took two more years before the U.N.’s Atomic Energy Com­ mission formally announced that its mission was defeated, although it was clear the moment Gromyko announced his proposal. The U.S.S.R. would have had to be veiy different from what it was for things to have gone any other way. It would have had to agree to yield part of its sovereignty— and no small part at that—to a suprana­ tional organization that was then unquestionably dominated by the capitalist powers. The Soviets would have had to open their territory •

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to teams of foreign inspectors authorized to put their noses practically everywhere. Few totalitarian states, especially when they feel them­ selves the object of world-wide hostility, would be disposed to open their doors to the professionally curious. With all their vicissitudes, the East-West disarmament talks con­ tinued. Generous souls, many atomic scientists among them, did all they could in the many official and private meetings to find some way of reaching an accord. But whatever— often considerable— progress was made on details, there always remained two stumbling blocks: the Kremlin’s refusal to accept majority rule on defining in­ fractions and sanctions, and its extreme aversion to measures of con­ trol that it could regard only as licensed espionage. Consequently, to this day, the only concrete agreement reached concerns nuclear testing in space, on the ground and in the sea, since such explosions are easily checked by seismographs outside the countries involved. A few days after the Baruch Plan was defeated, Truman signed the MacMahon Act—still in effect today—turning control of atomic energy in the United States over to a civilian commission. With the support of Senator Vandenberg and a large part of public opinion, the Army struggled to the last minute to win this privilege for itself. Most of the scientists, on the contrary, fought to insure civilian pre­ dominance, feeling that this was the only way of directing their re­ searches toward peaceful uses of atomic energy. But their achieve­ ment was robbed of some of its meaning because of timing. With rising tensions between East and West, strategic considerations would inevitably dominate American nuclear policy no matter what the nature of the body making and directing that policy. The MacMahon Act gave the Atomic Energy Commission the same duties and responsibilities that the Baruch Plan had proposed for the international body. In addition, it clamped a lid of secrecy on the procedures involved in making bombs. To reveal such tech­ niques to a foreign power, even in peacetime, became a capital of­ fense. On the strength of this legislation a minor Communist tech­ nician and his wife—Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—went to the electric chair in 1953. They had been accused by her brother, David Greenglass, of having passed atomic information to the U.S.S.R. while that country was an ally of the United States. As a reward for his testimony, Greenglass, a self-confessed traitor, had his life spared. .

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The Rosenbergs would not have been executed if they had confessed. But they preferred to die proclaiming their innocence, as much vic­ tims of the Cold War as the casualties in Korea and Budapest. Later, the prosecuting attorney said that their trial, which failed to establish their guilt beyond doubt, was a “necessary by-product of the atomic age.”12 I

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The first power to feel the effects of American secrecy was Great Britain. Throughout the war Britain, like Canada, had participated in American atomic research. In his book describing the development of the bomb, of which he was in charge, General Groves wrote that “without active continuing British interest there probably would have been no atomic bomb to drop on Hiroshima.”13 During their November 1945 visit to Washington Attlee and Mackenzie King joined Truman in signing a brief memorandum to the effect that they intended to continue “full and effective coopera­ tion” in the field of nuclear energy and to maintain the existing mixed bodies “in a suitable form.”14 The MacMahon Act abruptly cut these plans short. Before its passage, Attlee yielded time and again in order to obtain concessions that would permit his country to develop a nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, but to no avail. The White House turned a deaf ear. A young British physicist, Allan Nunn May, had just been ar­ rested because of the revelations of Gouzenko, a secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa who had defected to the West. May freely admitted that he had given the Russians very important details about making the bomb, details which he had learned while working at Los Alamos as part of Oppenheimer’s team. Although at the time famous scientists like Fuchs and Pontecorvo were not suspected, it soon became apparent that May was not alone. This was enough for the Americans to refuse to share any more secrets with London. Their attitude was confirmed much later when they learned that certain Brit­ ish leaders had known that Fuchs was a member of the Communist Party and had neglected to mention it to the Americans in charge of the atomic project. Not for a moment did the British dream that their country could do without atomic weapons and rely completely on the United States •

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in the future. Touched to the quick by such an attitude from a country which the United Kingdom had greatly helped in developing the bomb, the Labour Government, by a law passed in November 1946, assumed full powers in atomic matters. Six years later the first British nuclear device was successfully tested at Montebello in Aus­ tralia. This determination to assure national survival at all costs is ex­ plained principally by the memory of the summer of 1940 when Great Britain faced Hitler alone. The same memory explains why, despite being disappointed in the field of nuclear collaboration, Great Britain decided on solidarity with the United States come what may. Churchill had warned de Gaulle just before the Normandy invasion in an often quoted remark to the effect that if Britain had to choose between Europe and America, the choice would fall upon the latter.18 While de Gaulle and the first leaders of the Fourth Republic were making it clear even then that their first concern was to keep France independent of all its allies, both East and West, Attlee was deter­ mined to maintain close relations with Washington. But by a curious paradox the roles had been reversed. The contentious Truman, the poker player who wrote to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes on January 5, 1946, that he was “tired of babying the Soviets,”16 had succeeded to Roosevelt who had always been eager to appease Stalin for whom he felt a strange attraction. In London the conciliatory Attlee had replaced a dogged enemy of communism. Nonetheless, it was Churchill who, far from starting the Cold War as had been charged, recorded for posterity with the language of a romantic visionary the sharp deterioration of relations among the conquerors of the Reich. Everything weighed upon him. For his turbulent temperament, peace meant certain boredom. His dismissal by the British voters in the middle of the Potsdam Conference had brought him great bitter­ ness. “It may well be a blessing in disguise,” Lady Churchill re­ marked on hearing the news over breakfast. “At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised,”17 answered the Prime Minister who had so identified himself with England as to look the very figure of John Bull. What could he do in the mediocre Labourite paradise? How could he be content to lead the opposition against a man who, while unquestionably honorable and competent, cut so unremarkable a

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figure that Churchill once said cuttingly of him: “One day an empty taxi stopped in Downing Street. A man got out. It was Attlee.”18 For six months he existed in a state alternating between anger and depression, rejecting all suggestions, refusing to be taken around the world like the museum piece he had unwillingly become. When winter came, his doctor and old friend Lord Moran managed to persuade him to take a complete rest in a warm climate. A rich Canadian put his Florida home at Churchill’s disposal. The offer was accepted, and on the same day the White House announced that Churchill would take advantage of the trip to make an important speech on international relations at the President’s alma mater, Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill’s stay in Miami lasted two weeks. From there he went to Cuba, which was doubly dear to him: he had received his baptism of fire there in 1895— on the Spanish side—and it was from Cuba that he ordered the special packages of his legendary cigars—Romeo y Julieta, of course. Shakespearean heroes perforce; he could smoke no others. His Havana welcome showed him that his international prestige had not suffered from his electoral defeat. Fidel Castro was still just a boy. Fulton gave him an even more enthusiastic reception on March 5. That little town, named for its most illustrious native son, the in­ ventor of the steamboat, has a population of about ten thousand. About four times that number came to the college campus from all over the country to hear the speech broadcast from the amphitheatre ‘by countless microphones. From the very first words it was clear that Churchill was not dealing in banalities: “Opportunity is here now,” he cried, “clear and shining for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the aftertime . . . the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science. . . . Be­ ware, I say. Time may be short.” From Stettin to Trieste, he continued, “an iron curtain has de­ scended across the Continent.” He then described the regimes that the U.S.S.R. had forced on the countries behind the curtain and its attempts to extend its rule to the other side of the curtain. “From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war,” • 276

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he continued, “I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength and nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.” He concluded therefore that the English speaking peoples must urgently unite in order to remove every “temp­ tation to ambition and adventure.”1* The British Government hastened to declare that it had not given the former prime minister any mandate to express himself in such a manner, The American State Department followed suit. But Presi­ dent Truman had gone in person to hear Churchill. Three weeks be­ fore, they had had a lengthy meeting at the White House. The whole of the American press reported that they had weighed together the content of the speech. Stalin was not concerned with the details of protocol. A week later in an interview in Pravda he had the opportunity to answer in the same tone the man who, before being his ally against Hitler, had campaigned in 1918-1919 for intervention in Russia and an agree­ ment with Germany against nascent communism. “I do not know,” he said, after having charged Churchill in a curious diminuendo with “slander, discourtesy and tactlessness,” “whether he and his friends will succeed in organizing a new armed campaign against Eastern Europe after the Second World War; but if they do succeed— which is not very probable because millions of little people stand guard over the cause of peace—it may confidently be said that they will be thrashed just as they were twenty-six years ago.”20 Until Stalin’s death seven years later, the controversy grew sharper, the iron curtain ever thicker, serious incidents ever more frequent. The world skirted war by a hairsbreadth on more than one occasion. In the spring of 1946 the crisis in Iran provided the first example of the game of brinkmanship which would now punctuate the chapters in the Cold War and which Truman, for as long as he held the atomic monopoly, played with extraordinary coolness.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 The full text of the appeal may be found in Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (New York: Grove Press, n.d.) pp. 348-60. 8 Antonina Vallentin, Le drame d’Albert Einstein (Paris: Plon, 1954) p. 252. • Jules Moch, En retard d’une paix (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1958) p. 14. 4 Text of the memorandum may be found in Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper, 1948) pp. 642-6. • Truman, I, p. 533. • Truman, I, pp. 542-3.

7 Truman, I, p. 526. 8 Stettinius, p. 339. 9 Truman, I, p. 543. 10 Fleming, I, p. 460. 11 Keesing’s 8685A. 12 Claude Julien, Le Chant inter­ rompu (Paris: Gallimard, 1955) P* 22. 18 Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper, 1962) p. 408. 14 Truman, I, p. 544. « De Gaulle, II, p. 557. 18 Truman, I, p. 552. 77 Churchill, VI, p.675. 18 Chastenet, p. 495. 19 Keesing’s 7770-72. 20 Keesing’s 7793.

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B L O C K TO T H E S O U T H The policy and practice of the Russian government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but al­ ways to stop and retire when it was met with decided resistance, and then to wait for the next favorable opportunity to make another spring on its intended victim. —Palmerston, letter to Clarendon, May 22, 1853

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countershock to Hitler’s aggression, satisfied one of the traditional aims of Russian diplomacy: to create a military glacis. It also of­ fered the advantage of erecting an impenetrable barrier between the Soviet population, that after four years of devastation was still con­ demned to a long period of privation, and the allurements of capitalist well-being and freedom. But the southern border of the U.S.S.R. remained unprotected. That is where, with the oil of the Caucasus, the Soviet Achilles’ heel is to be found. “Beria and others tell me that saboteurs— even a man with a box of matches—might cause us serious damage,” Stalin remarked apropos of that region to the American ambassador, Bedell Smith, on his arrival in Moscow in April 1946.1 From a man of suspicious nature haunted by the idea that some day the “imperialists” would try to undo him, the remark was cer­ tainly sincere. He had, nonetheless, other ambitions: access to the Mediterranean which Paris and London had promised Tsar Nicholas II as a reward for entering the war and which Molotov had unsuccess.

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fully demanded from Hitler at Berlin in 1940; the India route long coveted by the Tsars; the oil in the north of Iran so necessary to a country whose annual production of diesel oil at the time of the Reich’s surrender had fallen to five million tons and whose govern­ ment had been so wrong as to take seriously the countless Allied declarations during the war about the need to share raw materials equitably; even North Africa where the U.S.S.R. sought a foothold through demanding a mandate over Tripolitania when the spoils of Fascist Italy were being divided. When all was said and done, Stalin gained nothing. The way the Kremlin imposed its reign upon Poland and the Balkans did not exactly predispose the Allies to welcome Soviet demands sympatheti­ cally. To achieve his ends, then, Stalin had to rely either on cunning or force. The American atomic monopoly further limited his freedom of action, forcing him to yield whenever he met more than casual resistance. Furthermore, he had learned from Lenin that “he who can only advance and has not learned how to retreat under certain conditions cannot win the war.”2 The Azerbaijan affair provided the first illustration of this maxim. This oil-rich province with its barbaric name, inhabited by a nonSlavic people speaking a language related to Turkish, had been divided between Persia and Russia since 1810. Throughout the nine­ teenth century Russia had ceaselessly extended her influence along the two shores of the Caspian Sea. In order to protect India, Great Britain made every effort to contain this expansion, a determination strengthened in 1901 when the Anglo-Persian Oil Company began creating its vast empire. But in 1907 the necessity for a united front against Germany led London to sign an agreement with Saint Peters­ burg dividing the country into zones of influence. Russia lost no time in making its zone into a protectorate. Immediately after the October Revolution, the Soviets declared the treaty of 1907 null and void because it was, they said, contrary to the principle of the self-determination of peoples. Encouraged by London, the Transcaucasian provinces proclaimed their independ­ ence. In 1920, however, the Mensheviks were overthrown by the Bolsheviks in Azerbaijan and Red soldiers crossed into Persian terri­ tory to dislodge the last remnants of the White Army and an ephem­ eral Communist republic was proclaimed on the shores of the Cas•

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pian. The propaganda of the Kremlin was unleashed against the government of Teheran for having handed the country over to British imperialism by a treaty signed in 1919. And the propaganda was heeded. Several months later, the Persian parliament— the Majlis— refused to ratify the treaty. The chief of the cossack brigade, Reza Khan, the Atatürk of Persia, marched on the capital and seized power. Like Kemal Atatürk, he signed a friendship pact with the Soviet Union in which the latter renounced all claims on Persian soil but won the right to intervene should any foreign power try to use the country as a base of operations against the U.S.S.R. Having now become Shah and the founder of a dynasty, Reza restored the ancient name of Iran to his empire in tribute to its twothousand-year-old history as the fatherland of Cyrus and unsuccess­ fully tried to dislodge the intrusive Anglo-Persian (renamed AngloIranian) Oil Company. Did his lack of success in this area provoke his flirtation with Berlin? Obviously he was unaware that his country was part of the zone of influence that Hitler planned to concede to Stalin should they come to the point of dividing the world between them. In the summer of 1941 the presence of a number of Nazi agents in Iran gave Stalin and Churchill, who considered the country as an ideal route for sending British supplies to the U.S.S.R., an excellent pretext for intervention. The Shah having refused to oust the Nazis as was demanded of him, British and Russian troops invaded the empire. On September 17 Teheran was occupied and Reza was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammed, the future husband of Soraya and Farah Diba. In January 1942 a treaty was signed by Iran, Britain and the U.S.S.R. in which the latter two countries agreed to withdraw their troops within six months after the end of the war. The Big Three renewed the agreement at Teheran in 1943. The Soviets, however, showed every intention of establishing themselves permanently in Iran. Following their usual procedure, they had two irons in the fire. On the one hand, they installed their men in the leadership of the Tudeh Party, a grouping of elements hostile to the dethroned sovereign that included the relations of the Kadjars from whom he had seized power. On the other hand, they encouraged the separatist movements of the Kurds and the Azeris with the idea of annexing the northern provinces and of weakening •

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the central government enough to place it at the mercy of the Tudeh. In September 1944 an agreement between Anglo-Iranian and Standard Oil for joint exploration in Iran led the Kremlin to take a further step. It made an official request for the creation of a mixed Soviet and Iranian company to prospect for and eventually to exploit oil deposits in the northern region of the country. Such a proposal could only alarm the Western oil companies. London had little diffi­ culty in persuading the authorities in Teheran to refuse the request. The Iranians had had enough experience with the Russians to know that such a pact would mean a complete Soviet takeover of the oil region. Thus on December 3 the parliament almost unanimously passed a law to forbid the granting of a concession to a foreign country for the duration of the occupation without a prior agreement. The author of the law was Dr. Mossadegh who became famous a few years later as the head of the government that nationalized the Aba­ dan oil fields. Stalin took it badly, complaining about British intrigue. At Yalta he rejected as superfluous Eden’s proposal that the Big Three reaffirm their good intentions regarding Iran. At Potsdam, when the Iranians demanded that their territory be evacuated immediately after Ger­ many’s surrender, he consented only to leave the capital and turned the rest of the problem over to die foreign ministers. The latter quickly agreed at their London meeting in September that all foreign troops would be evacuated at the latest by March 2, 1946, but one may well wonder if Molotov had any intention of honoring the agree­ ment. In fact, a month later an autonomist party sprang up in Iranian Azerbaijan; its name—the Democratic Party— did little to mask its Communist affiliations and it soon became part of the regional Tudeh organization. Agitation began among the Kurdish tribes. Their chief, Mustafa Barzani, had fought for thirty years to win recognition for the rights of his race, an Indo-European people converted to Islam, whose territory extended over Iraq, Turkey and Syria, curiously enough covering the most important oil fields in Mesopotamia. In November a revolt broke out in Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan. Pichewari, head of the Democratic Party and a former minister in the Soviet Caspian Republic of 1920, proclaimed an independent republic in which all the key posts were given to Communists. Twelve hundred Iranian soldiers whom the central government •

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sent to restore order found their way blocked by Russian troops. Prime Minister Hakimi took the matter up with the Big Three and asked that he be included in the foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled to be held in Moscow in December. After the Kremlin ignored his request and also rejected a proposal for a tripartite investigation put forward by London and Washington in a conciliatory spirit, Hakimi resigned (January 26, 1946), but not without having brought the matter before the U.N. Security Council. Ghavam es Sultaneh formed the new goverament.This septuagenarian who owned vast properties in the Russian occupation zone passed for being well-disposed toward Moscow. Nevertheless, he succeeded somewhere along the line in duping Stalin as he had never been duped before. On January 30, after a lively debate between the Iranian dele­ gate and his Soviet colleague Vishinsky, who was employing on the international scene the same talent and the same bad faith that had served him during the Moscow Trials, the Security Council approved a resolution formulated by Ernest Bevin. It recommended direct nego­ tiations between the two parties. Ghavam then went to Moscow, not without having prepared the terrain by purging the Army and the police of their most Anglophilic elements. Stalin told him his price: independence for Azerbaijan and an oil concession. In exchange the Red Army would evacuate the central provinces but would continue to occupy the north of the country. London replied with an announce­ ment that the British withdrawal would be completed by March 2. On March 6, the day after Churchill’s shattering Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Washington let it be known that its ambassador to Moscow had handed the Soviet Government a note suggesting that it recall its troops without delay. For a few days it seemed that Stalin would ignore this barely civil message. On March 9, in fact, while Ghavam was returning home without having been able to reconcile himself to the Kremlin’s demands, Soviet units were moving towards Teheran. Only seven months after the Japanese surrender, war was threatening to break out again. On March 19 Iran brought the prob­ lem before the Security Council for the second time, declaring that the presence of Stalin’s troops on Iranian soil constituted a “threat to peace.” The Kremlin had put pressure on Ghavam to keep him from making this complaint, and the United States had indicated that if •

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Ghavam remained silent they would bring it up themselves. On the 20th the Iranian Kurds revolted and established a People’s Republic at Mehabad which allied itself with the autonomists of Azerbaijan. Barzani, who had become a general overnight, took command of their army, newly outfitted with Soviet uniforms. Later on he did the same sort of thing several times in Iraq. On March 27 Gromyko, who had not succeeded in getting the Security Council to declare the question outside its sphere of competence or even in getting it to postpone the debate until April 10, announced that the U.S.S.R. would not participate in the discussions on Iran. This bit of provocation was aimed solely at saving face, for when the Soviet Government realized that the Americans were in earnest, it decided to be conciliatory. On March 22 Stalin had given an American press agency a statement expressing faith in the U.N. On March 26 his ambassador to Teheran informed Ghavam that Russian troops would evacuate the whole country by May 9 if he would agree to the mixed oil company— 51 percent of the capital for the U.S.S.R., 49 percent for Iran— and reach an understanding with the leaders of Azerbaijan. The Prime Minister gave his consent with one reserva­ tion: that it would have to be ratified by a parliament that was to be elected within the seven months following the end of foreign occupa­ tion. When summer came, there were strikes in the Anglo-Iranian’s installations that developed into full-scale riots. Bevin lost no time in blaming the Tudeh and the Russians who were backing it or in send­ ing a brigade to Basra on the Iraqi bank of Shott el Arab, opposite the gigantic Abadan refinery. On August 3 Ghavam demanded that these troops be withdrawn, appointed several members of the Tudeh to his cabinet, established martial law in Teheran and ordered the arrest of a number of well-known Anglophiles and Russophiles. But certain tribes in the south, probably instigated by British agents, re­ volted and demanded that the Prime Minister sever relations with his Communist collaborators. Were they conniving with the crafty Ghavam? In any case, he quickly agreed to the tribes’ demands. Then it was Moscow’s turn to be alarmed; it demanded the prompt ratification of the oil accord. Ghavam replied that it was impossible to elect a new parliament so long as the Azerbaijan leaders continued to obstruct the activities of •

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political parties favorable to the central government. This argument carried weight, though perhaps less than the veiled threat of interven­ tion by the British and Americans whose language was growing sharper and sharper. That winter when Ghavam decided to send his troops to reconquer Azerbaijan, the Russians, who had massed large armies on the frontier and whose ambassador had given repeated “warnings” to Teheran, did not lift a finger. Separatism collapsed in a matter of days. The president of the Presidium of the Republic of Tabriz took refuge in the U.S.S.R. where he soon met his death in an automobile accident. Barzani with a thousand of his Kurds fought his way toward Russia via Iraq and Turkey. A harsh repression followed. One of its victims was the sinister Beria, namesake of the Soviet chief of the M.V.D. and like him in charge of “security.” He had been turned back by Russian border guards when he asked for asylum in the Socialist fatherland. After this success Ghavam could arrange for elections. The parliament that was elected in July 1947 promptly refused to ratify the oil pact with Russia; the Prime Minister himself had declared that it had to be revised. The cabinet resigned and the Anglophile Hakimi took power again; the Russians, who had been roundly beaten, did not even attempt to intervene. S

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During the same period the Kremlin was forced to yield in Turkey also, in a test of strength that involved much higher stakes. Although traditional rivals, once the Russian and Ottoman empires had become republics— the one a Communist republic and the other a secular and presidential one that outlawed communism—they nonetheless became good friends. Lenin had sent Frunze to Kemal Atatürk’s capital at Ankara where he had announced to the National Assembly that “The voices which once urged our peoples on to the conquest of Constan­ tinople, the Straits and Anatolia have been stilled forever.”* A pact of non-aggression, arbitration and friendly relations had been signed in Odessa in 1925. The two governments had been the principal benefi­ ciaries of the Montreux Convention which in 1936 had once again changed the regulations governing navigation in the Straits. Turkey was again fully responsible for defense of the Straits, while the U.S.S.R. was permitted to sail its war fleet through the Dardanelles. • 285

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After the Stalin-Hitler pact, relations began to be strained. A month later, after negotiations that had lasted since spring, came the mutual aid pact signed in Ankara by England, France and Turkey and limited to the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Stalin was deeply troubled by it. He wrested from General İnönü, who had succeeded Atatürk as president, the statement that the treaty would be inap­ plicable if Paris or London were at war with the U.S.S.R. At the same time, in order to show Hitler his good will, he proposed that Soviet Russia and Turkey sign a pact that would deny the Straits to warships and merchantmen belonging to countries other than those bordering on the Black Sea. This demand, which would have been hard to reconcile with the treaty concluded with Great Britain and France, was rejected by the Turks and negotiations were broken off. Ankara then assumed an attitude of strict neutrality, even going so far as to maintain in 1940 that the fall of France nullified the tri­ partite treaty. London unsuccessfully tried to persuade Turkey to en­ ter the war, first when Greece was invaded and then when Yugoslavia was attacked. As soon as the Wehrmacht invaded Soviet soil, the U.S.S.R. in turn demanded that Turkey intervene. But Soviet in­ sistance diminished as the military situation improved, while Churchill, increasingly concerned for the future of the Balkans, pressed İnönü to open a southern front which to a certain degree would have counterbalanced the Red Army. İnönü, however, limited himself to declaring his country a “non-belligerent." Pleading, with a good deal of justification, that his forces were not prepared, he did not forbid the sale to Germany of strategically essential chrome until May 1944, did not break diplomatic relations with Germany until August and held off a declaration of war until February 1945 which, while totally platonic, was indispensable for membership in the U.N. Did Turkey’s prudence and passivity during World War II pro­ voke the demands that Stalin presented to Ankara even before the Reich surrendered? It is hard to support this theory since Molotov had advanced similar demands to Hitler in December 1940. But at any rate it was Turkish inactivity that gave Stalin an excuse. It would have been a much more delicate matter to have got angry with a comrade at arms. “But Turkey is weak," the generalissimo told Bedell Smith in April 1946, “and the Soviet Union is very conscious of the danger of foreign control of the Straits, which Turkey is not •

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strong enough to protect. The Turkish government is unfriendly to us. That is why the Soviet Union has demanded a base in the Darda­ nelles. It is a matter of our own security."4 It was in October 1944, during Churchill’s visit to Moscow when the famous agreement on percentages of influence in the Balkans was drawn up, that the Soviets for the first time brought up the matter of revising the regulations governing the Straits. The Prime Minister, annoyed with Turkey’s delaying tactics, agreed in principle. Stalin re­ opened the question again at Yalta without, however, making clear just what he wanted. A month later, on March 19, 1945, Molotov declared that the Turkish-Soviet pact of 1925 was a dead letter. From his conversations with Molotov, the Turkish ambassador felt justified in concluding that Moscow was ready to make a more comprehensive agreement. Ankara thereupon proposed a regular alliance along the lines of the treaties the U.S.S.R. had made with Great Britain, Czechoslovakia and France. In June the Kremlin an­ swered that such an accord would require revision of the Montreux Convention and the establishment of a permanent Soviet base in the Dardanelles. It also demanded the return of the vilayets (provinces) of Kars, Ardahan and Artwin, which had been in Turkish hands since Brest-Litovsk. Ankara, of course, quickly dropped the project. In July, at Potsdam, Stalin returned to the charge. He contended that it was not normal for Turkey to be able to close the Straits at will in time of war or threat of war, as the Montreux Convention per­ mitted. He pointed out that he would claim Kars and Ardahan only if Ankara wished to conclude an alliance. He remained, however, firm in his demand for an Aegean base, telling Churchill that it would be installed at Dede Agach (Alexandroupolis) in Thrace. The British and Americans tried to convince him that the security of the U.S.S.R. would be just as well guaranteed if an international agreement such as they had proposed were to establish the principle of complete freedom of navigation on inland waterways. But the generalissimo refused to listen. The conference ended without having concluded anything on this point except that it was necessary to revise the regulations con­ cerning the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In a note dated November 2, the Americans formally spelled out their “open door” proposal. As a conciliatory gesture toward the Kremlin, they included the statement that warships of nations not •

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bordering on the Black Sea were to be prohibited from entering it without prior agreement from the Black Sea nations or of the United Nations. The British supported this move. Moscow did not answer, unless one can take for an answer a call to the patriarch of the auton­ omous Armenian Church to reestablish the unity of all Armenians— within the framework of the Soviet Union, of course, and at Turkish expense. Soon two scholars from Tiflis advanced similar claims, which were given a good deal of space in Pravda, on behalf of Georgia. Soviet troop movements were observed along the Turkish border. The Ankara government stopped the demobilization of soldiers who had been called up during the war and let it be known that it would de­ fend its national territory by force if necessary. For several months nothing happened. On August 7, 1946, eleven days before the period established for proposing changes in the Montreux Convention expired, the Kremlin sent Turkey a note, with copies to London and Washington, stating that during the war Turkey could not have prevented the use of the Straits against the countries bordering the Black Sea. The argument was unexpected: during hos­ tilities the Russians had never reproached Ankara for failing to carry out the role assigned it by the Montreux Convention: namely, deny­ ing access to the Black Sea during wartime to warships of belligerents not allied to Turkey. But this did not stop the Soviets from demanding that the agreement be revised along the lines of the November pro­ posals advanced by the Americans and capped with a clause by which Turkey and the Soviet Union would jointly guarantee to defend the Straits and prevent them from being used by states with aims hostile to the Black Sea powers.0 On August 19 Washington let it be known that in its opinion Turkey should continue to be primarily responsible for the defense of the Straits and adding that if they be­ came the object of an attack by an aggressor the resultant situation would constitute a menace to international security and would clearly furnish the Security Council with a justification for taking ac­ tion.6 Suiting action to words, Truman sent the giant aircraft carrier Franklin Roosevelt, four cruisers and a destroyer flotilla to the eastern Mediterranean to join the battleship Missouri, whose sudden appear­ ance off Istanbul in April had symbolized the price which the United States had set upon Turkish security. James Forrestal, then Secretary •

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of the Navy, describes in his Dianes the conference during which the White House decided to send the note to the Soviet Union. Dean Acheson, then Under Secretary of State, declared himself in favor of an “energetic” response but then conjured up the danger of an armed conflict “if Russia did not back down.” Truman answered that “we might as well find out whether the Russians were bent on world con* quest now as in five or ten years.”7 His determination, approved by Paris and London and based on , the American atomic monopoly, had the same effect that it had had in the spring on the Iranian situation. Ankara rejected the Soviet pro­ posal and even suggested breaking off the exchange of notes when the Kremlin returned to the charge. Moscow hardly even complained. But it was necessary to wait until Stalin died and Malenkov became premier for the U.S.S.R. to abandon officially its claims to Kars and Ardahan, which, to tell the truth, everyone had forgotten. 9

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The role that the Turkish crisis played in the history of the Cold War went far beyond the immediate stakes, high though they were. Along with the Greek Civil War, which we must now take up, it precipitated the Truman Doctrine which constituted the first stage of American engagement in Europe and therefore of the Atlantic Alliance. The Varkiza Agreement which in February 1945 had brought an end to fighting between the leftist resistance, which was led by the Communists, and the Royalists, who were heavily supported by the British Army, was not respected for long. The agreement had been made possible only because Stalin, faithful to his understanding with Churchill on their respective zones of influence, allowed his Hellenic disciples to be massacred by General Scobie’s soldiers and because London had persuaded the king to retire temporarily in favor of Archbishop Damaskinos. The latter, however, soon found himself so overrun by reactionary elements that Attlee, who had just come into office, sent him a message on August 1, 1945, to warn him against violating the armistice agreement and continuing repressive measures against the Republicans. The following spring, the elections, which were held under the supervision of an international control group in which the U.S.S.R. had refused to participate, were won by the Populist Party led by •

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the monarchist Tsaldaris. On the advice of the extreme left, nearly half the registered voters had abstained from voting in elections whose honesty, especially in the rural areas, was very much in doubt. The September referendum, however, showed a large majority in favor of the return of the king, who did not survive his triumph for long. He died the following year, leaving his crown to his younger brother, the Diadochian Paul. The restoration of a dynasty that the working masses associated with the harsh dictatorship of Metaxas must have given the decisive thrust to the civil war which had again broken out in endemic fashion immediately after the elections. Employing the methods used against the German and Italian oc­ cupations and that the Viet Minh and the Huks were using in Asia, the rebels (which Athens regarded merely as “bandits” to be punished by regular courts of law) attacked isolated garrisons and seized their weapons, sabotaged supply lines and established an administration that was clandestine in some areas and open in others. And this time they had the benefit of the full support of the Soviet satellites, which controlled almost all Greece’s land borders and could supply arms and goods and provide training and rest camps. And in 1948, when the Royalists took over the Grammos region, the partisans’ main Greek base and the center of their provisional government, the rebels retreated across Albania to reappear on the Vitsi front. Ever since 1945 the Communists had been consolidating their hold on all the countries bordering Greece to the north—Bulgaria, Yugo­ slavia and Albania—and making claims on Greek Macedonia and the Epirus. There were a number of border incidents. Tito had an­ nounced that he intended to maintain a strong army and his imitator in Tirana— who later became his most ferocious enemy—Enver Hodja, had called up four classes of reservists and even mined the strait of Corfu where a British ship was blown up. Belgrade displayed the most aggressive attitude of the three gov­ ernments. In the west, ignorant of the latent conflict between the Yugoslav and Soviet dictators, there was a tendency to blame Titoist aggressiveness on the Kremlin, though it is now clear that the Kremlin was trying to dampen Belgrade’s ardor. Consequently, when the Yugoslav Air Force downed two Flying Fortresses over Yugoslav ter­ ritory Molotov said to Vice President Kardelj that that was just fine .

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but that it was a good point at which to stop— another manifestation of the prudence we have seen at work in Iran and Turkey. In comparison to these two cold-war theaters, Greece offered the Communists great advantages. The U.S.S.R. was not directly in­ volved, which at first glance excluded any major risk. They had enough partisans on the spot to control whole regions in which they mobilized the population behind them. Finally, overtaken by events and forced to spend the bulk of its scant resources on fighting the war, the Athens government could do nothing for the reconstruction of the country, which, naturally poor, had been bled white in four years of war. The administration and the army had been infiltrated by the extreme left, and undermined by defeatism, corruption, and abuses of all kinds. At the end of 1946, without the E.L.A.S. having won a single victory in the field, the situation was critical. At the same time, however, Great Britain, which had 40,000 men in Greece and was furnishing military and financial aid to Greece as well as to Turkey (without which both governments would have col­ lapsed), found itself in grave difficulties. Britain discovered that it had nearly bankrupted itself to win the war and that it was no longer in a position to bear its traditional share of the “white man’s burden.’’ Draconian measures would have to be taken if it was to avoid bank­ ruptcy. On March 24, 1947, the British ambassador to Washington gave the then Secretary of State General Marshall a note informing him that British troops would be withdrawn from Greece beginning at the end of March. Urged to act by his ambassadors in Athens and Moscow as well as by his closest advisers, Truman did not hesitate for a moment: “This was the time,” he wrote in his Memoirs, “to align the United States of America clearly on the side, and at the head, of the free world”8 and to begin to give Greece the immediate and massive aid that was indispensable to it. Actually, he had ex­ pected to be faced with just this situation, and two months earlier he had dispatched a mission under his adviser Paul Porter to study the country’s needs. On March 11, after painstaking consultations, the President made an address to Congress in which he presented what came to be called the Truman Doctrine. “I believe,” he said, “that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting at­ tempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I •

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believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own desti­ nies 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.”9 The moves that had halted Soviet penetration in Iran and Turkey had been relatively mild. But this had all the brutality of a declaration of war. After comparing the two systems vying for control of the world, the one based on terror, aggression and the suppression of the freedoms, the President asked Congress to grant Greece $250,000,000 and Turkey $150,000,000 with the clear understanding that this was only a beginning. Though dominated since the preceding year by a Republican majority automatically hostile to a Democratic president, both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed the Presi­ dent’s proposal by large majorities. It was in vain that Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado denounced the Truman Doctrine as equivalent to a declaration of war against Russia10 and that Representative Smith of Wisconsin described it as a “war measure”11 which the government had not had the courage to present as such to the people. The voices of these isolationists were drowned out by one of their former brethren, Senator Vandenberg, chairman of the Com­ mittee on Foreign Affairs, who had rallied to internationalism during the war and who was to play his most important role at the moment when America had, in his words, made a “rendezvous with destiny.”12 On May 22 the President signed the law that placed his country, only two years after the death of Roosevelt, at the head of the antiBolshevik crusade. He had declared during the debate that “we must act in time— ahead of time— to stamp out the smouldering beginnings of any conflict that may threaten to spread over the world.”13 The day after the promulgation of the law granting aid to Greece and Turkey, a fact-finding committee appointed by the U.N. at the request of Athens officially reported that Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania were supporting the Greek rebellion. The U.S.S.R. and Poland had voted against this conclusion and France had abstained. A race against time began with the Communists trying to land deci­ sive blows before the United States arrived on the scene. By now E.L.A.S. had large numbers of fighters—the Andartes—organized in battalions and with all the services of an army in the field. It con­ trolled a large part of the Pindus and Olympus ranges and nearly all .

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of the northern border. In December 1947 a “Government of Free Greece” was formed in the Grammos Mountains. Despite local vic­ tories by the Royalists and the growing influx of American dollars and matériel, guerrilla warfare continued to expand. However, the rebels were unable to take the town of Konitza in Epirus where their leader “General” Markos wanted to establish his capital. By the beginning of 1948 Stalin understood that the United States would not permit the insurgents to win. He told the Yugoslav Kardelj that the affair should be halted as soon as possible. A year later, the high command of the Royal Army, organized in strict collaboration with the American Military Mission led by General Van Fleet, was invested with extraordinary powers. A local peasant militia was recruited to help the regular army in the struggle against the partisans. The whole country was systematically swept clean working from south to north. Suddenly the rumor spread that Markos had fallen ill and had been replaced by the secretary general of the Communist Party, Zachariades. The truth was that Markos had been purged for refusing to join the Cominform in condemning his friend and principal sup­ porter, Tito. Nevertheless, it was Tito who gave the rebellion its coup de grace by announcing in a speech at Skopje in July 1948 that the border would be closed and all aid to the Andartes immediately stopped. Unpleasant things are soon forgotten. Yugoslavia, now ex­ cluded from the Soviet bloc, hastened to make alliances with Athens and Ankara and King Paul saw no reason not to vacation on the island of Brioni at the home of the marshal who in preceding years had done everything he could to overthrow the Greek throne. On October 16, 1949, the Communists announced that they had ceased fighting to avoid the total destruction of the soil of Greece.14 But government troops had occupied the last rebel strongholds in the Vitsi and the Grammos mountains and the partisans had had to take refuge in Bulgaria and Albania at the end of August. The U.S.S.R., which the previous spring had received discreet overtures from Britain and America seeking a friendly settlement of the conflict, did not even attempt to save face, being content to demand complete amnesty— which was obviously out of the question. All traces of Markos were lost and for a long time it was thought that he had died, like so many others, a victim of Stalinist insanity. But many years later he ap­ *

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peared in Poland, visiting his former comrades-in-arms. Later he was rehabilitated by the underground Greek Communist Party while his adversary Zachariades found himself in turn accused of all kinds of deviations. Although the war was over on the battlefield, with some 50,000 killed and 11,000 villages sacked, it was not over for Greek families. The gates of the royal prisons were very slow to open and free the enemies of monarchy. The Communists returned only a very small number of the twenty or thirty thousand children whom, under the pretext of protecting them from the horrors of war and atomic bombs, they had torn from their parents and deported behind the Iron Curtain. The Greek authorities themselves did not really press for the return of these men and women brought up outside Greece, a good number of whom doubtless became Communist propagandists. Of all the tragedies provoked by the so-called Cold War, few caused so much bitterness as the struggle in this land of passion and voracious gods.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 Walter Bedell Smith, My Three Years in Moscow (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 19S0) p. 52. 2 Lenin, La révolution bolcheviste, p. 263. 8 Raymond Lacoste, La Russie sovi­ étique et la question d'Orient (Paris: Editions Internationales, 1946) p. 62. 4 Bedell Smith, p. 53. 6 Keesing’s 8076B.

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• Keesing’s 8102 A. 7 Forrestal, p. 192. 8 Truman, II, p. 102. • Truman, II, p. 106. 10 Keesing’s 8723A. 11 Fleming, I, p. 460. 12 André Maurois, Histoire parallèle, USA. 1917-1960 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1962) p. 283. 18 Truman, II, p. 107. 14 Keesing’s 10293A.

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Tell me, what do you expect From what we are striving for in Germany? —Goethe, Faust, 1

T H E S T A T E S M A N ’S R IG H T H A N D M U ST O F T E N BE U N -

aware of what his left hand is doing. At the same time when the first tests of strength were being made between Moscow and Washington in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, when the echoes of their disputes rang through the U.N. from one end to the other, their diplomats were negotiating tirelessly to find solutions to the problems that the sur­ render at Rheims had created in Europe, beginning with the conclu­ sion of peace treaties with Germany and her allies in the Second World War. To this end, the Big Three in their Potsdam conference had set up a Council of Foreign Ministers in which, side by side with their own delegates, France and China were to be represented. This Council held its first meeting in London on September 13, 1945. It had been agreed that its first order of business would be the former satellites of the Reich. But Molotov demanded that it discuss as well the control of Japan, which, after Hiroshima, the Americans had tended to regard as their own private preserve. After two days of futile debate on this point, the conference took up the problem of Italy, the first of the Axis powers to have asked for terms of surrender. Areas of disagreement very soon emerged. The Western Powers wanted to make Trieste a free port, while the Soviet Union intended to turn it over to Yugoslavia. Byrnes proposed that an appointee of the Security Council be chosen to administer the Italian colonies, •

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which would gain independence after an interval of ten years. Bevin supported him as far as Libya was concerned, suggesting that an agreement with Ethiopia be sought with respect to Somaliland and Eritrea. Bidault, appraising the dangers that Libyan independence would pose to the French in Algeria, suggested that Italy herself should undertake the trusteeship of her former possessions. As for Molotov, the traditional anticolonialism of Soviet policy did not deter him from requesting that each of the Big Three be entrusted with a former Italian colony in order to prepare it for its emancipa­ tion. He claimed Tripolitania for Russia, calling Byrnes to witness that the Soviet Union should take the place that was its due and conse­ quently should have Mediterranean bases for its merchant fleet. “We do not propose,” he said, “to introduce the Soviet system into this ter­ ritory apart from the democratic order that is desired by the peo­ ple. . . . This will not be done along the lines that have been used in Greece.”1 Bevin’s dockworker background and his belonging to the labor movement did not prevent him from reacting sharply to Russia’s bid to join the colonial club. Bidault and Byrnes backed him. But it appeared that several months earlier in San Francisco, Stettinius, who was then Secretary of State, had told the Soviet minis­ ter that his government could administer a territory under U.N. mandate. From which Molotov had inferred that the United States would support a Kremlin request of this nature, and he bitterly re­ proached his American colleague for this breach of promise. He made it known that he would take no position on transferring Rhodes and other Dodecanese Islands to Greece until the fate of the Italian colonies had been settled to his taste. Finally he proposed that the reparations to be paid by Rome be fixed at a level— $600 million, of which $100 million would go to the Soviet Union—that the other ministers be­ lieved would imperil the peninsula’s economy. The talks turned bitter when they reached the subject of Bulgaria and Rumania. The Yalta “Declaration on Liberated Europe” had anticipated that the governments of the peoples liberated from the yoke of Hitler would be created “by free elections” and in conformity with “the will of the people.”2 The declaration had established the principle of automatic consultation among the Big Three whenever circumstances required. Yet every effort by the British and American •

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liaison missions to procure the observance of these provisions had been fruitless. Having failed to win the consent of the Big Three, to whom he had appealed, for the broadening of the Grozea government that Vishinsky had forced on him in February, the king of Rumania refused to sign the official treaties. In Sofia, two of the chief leaders of the Patriotic Front, Petkov of the Agrarians and Lulchev of the Social Democrats, had resigned in order to make it clear that they had had enough of just being bondsmen for the actions of the Com* munists. The American delegation in London therefore let it be known that it would sign no peace treaty with Rumania and Bulgaria until the situation in those countries had been clarified. From which, de­ spite all Byrnes’ protestations to the contrary, Molotov inferred that the United States wanted to reestablish anti-Soviet governments in those countries. As in the matter of the Italian colonies, he probably thought that his colleagues were going back on their word. Had not Churchill, in the spheres of influence agreement that he had made with Stalin in Moscow, conceded a virtually exclusive position for Russia in Sofia and Bucharest? Had not the Soviet Union, in return, scrupulously lived up to its promise of non-intervention in Greece? For men like the Soviet leaders, obsessed with security, deeply dis­ trustful of the western world, incapable of believing in the existence of disinterested principle in colleagues whose cynicism and incon­ sistency they had had so many opportunities of observing, Washing­ ton’s and London’s professions of concern for the rights of man in areas where little attention had been paid to them throughout the ages could only mean a new quarrel over the distribution of Hitler’s plunder. Since the French and Chinese representatives had joined the de­ bate on the Anglo-American side, Molotov remembered on September 22 that the Potsdam proclamation gave him a basis for demanding that they be excluded. This document provided, in fact, that in the drafting of each peace treaty the council would be composed of members representing those states that were signatories to the in­ strument of surrender imposed on the enemy state in question, and this, as far as the countries of eastern Europe were concerned, ruled out both Paris and Peking. Bevin, who was becoming more and more exacerbated and whose career as a labor militant had hardly afforded •

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him the opportunity of learning the art of litotes so dear to the Foreign Office, denounced this as uthe nearest thing to the Hitler theory I have ever seen.”8 Molotov made for the door. The English­ man had to make a full apology in order to persuade the Russian to return to his seat. Truman cabled to Stalin to remind him that at the Potsdam Conference it had been agreed that the French and Chinese would be allowed to take part in discussions but not to vote. Nothing came of it. On October 2, after having approved a memorandum from Georges Bidault on keeping Germany decentralized, the Council adjourned without having achieved anything concrete. On the same day it was announced that Marshal Zhukov, the Soviet Commander in Chief in Germany, had canceled his proposed visit to the United States, which was to have returned that of his American counterpart, Eisenhower. A short time later, this great Russian military leader, who had conquered Berlin and who had been on better terms with his western colleagues than any other of his compatriots, fell into a trap from which he was not to escape until after Stalin’s death—and then only temporarily. On the American side the tone became openly unpleasant. Truman said publicly that he would refuse Mto recognize any govern­ ment imposed upon any nation by the force of any foreign power,”4 which obviously could refer only to eastern Europe, while the im­ pressible General Patton, proclaiming outright what many thought in secret, called on the world to prepare for “the ‘inevitable’ Third World War.”5 A few days later he enquired of Robert Murphy: “whether there was any chance of going on to Moscow, which he said he could reach in thirty days, instead of waiting for the Russians to attack the United States when we were weak and reduced to two divisions.”6 Truman placed him on the retired list and shortly afterward he was killed in an automobile accident, but his com­ ments, taken up and amplified by the right wing of the American press, were bound to make a profound impression on the Kremlin. Nevertheless, the five ministers met again in December, somewhat behind the timetable set up at Potsdam. This time they met in Moscow, a fact that gave Byrnes the opportunity for three meetings with Stalin, wnfwhom he succeeded in arriving at a compromise formula. It was decided that, as the Russians had proposed earlier, •

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a treaty would be prepared for each of the satellites by the countries that had signed an armistice with it and that these would later be submitted to a conference of the twenty-one powers that had ac­ tually taken part in the war. To prepare that list was no easy task. The final decision, however, would remain in the hands of the signatories of the armistice, and it was understood that this provision would be extended to France with respect to Italy. This represented a substantial concession to the Soviet point of view; in exchange, Stalin, after much argument, agreed to some broadening of the governments of Sofia and Bucharest, which would make it possible for them to be recognized by the West after they had committed themselves to holding new elections, this time completely free. This was tantamount to admitting that the elections that had been held a few weeks before and that had given the “patriotic fronts” majorities on the scale of 80 and 90 percent had not been free at all. This promise was carried out in Rumania. Grozea’s cabinet, filled out with representatives of the Peasant and Liberal Parties, was recognized by Great Britain and the United States on February 4, 1946. In Bulgaria, on the other hand, no agreement could be reached. Washington and Moscow exchanged testy notes. The autumn elections gave 71.8 percent of the votes to the Patriotic Front in Rumania and 78 percent in Bulgaria. Arrests and assassi­ nations had preceded these elections, whose legality was of course solemnly challenged by the Western Powers. They had less ground for complaint about the conditions in the three other former satellites of Hitler Germany. The Italian Com­ munists, obedient to the counsels of moderation brought back from Moscow by Palmiro Togliatti, had contented themselves with the portfolios of Finance, Justice and Agriculture in the government set up in December 1945, by the Christian Democrat, Alcide de Gasperi. Finland, which had escaped Soviet occupation, had been able to hold completely free elections after March 1945, and these had given 150 seats to the bourgeois parties, as against 50 to the extreme left. In Hungary, the provisional government of General Miklos had rejected the Soviet suggestion that it prepare single lists of “democratic parties,” on the Rumanian and Bulgarian model, for the elections of November 4, 1945. As a result, the Small Holders’ Party won 245 seats, against 70 for the Communists, 49 for the Social Democrats •

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and 23 for the National Peasants, and the Small Holders’ president, Pastor Zoltan Tildy, became the head of the government. In Helsinki, however, as in Budapest, the Ministry of the Interior went to a Communist. The importance of this assignment was to become evi­ dent somewhat later. Thus recognition of the governments of these three countries gave the Western Powers no difficulties. As for the question of borders, these had been largely resolved even before the negotiations had begun. Finland and the Soviet Union had concluded an agree­ ment in October 1945. Immediately after the establishment of the Grozea government, Stalin had authorized Rumania to recover west­ ern Transylvania, which the Ribbentrop-Ciano bargain of 1940 had given to Hungary. When the foreign ministers convened again on April 25, 1946, this time in Paris, Molotov at once agreed that France should take part in all discussions, but this was his one concession. After argu­ ments over Germany, Austria and Iran, the conferees returned to the Italian colonies. Russia proposed a Soviet-Italian trusteeship for Tripolitania. Bevin baited the bear by proposing to grant immediate independence to all Italian possessions in North Africa. Anticoloni­ alist Molotov joined forces with Bidault to squash that effort. Later, dining with Byrnes, he offered to sacrifice his colonial claims on condition that Trieste and Venezia Giulia be given to Yugoslavia. The following session of June and July, also held in Paris, was more rewarding. Without discussion the Soviet minister agreed to the transfer of the Dodecanese to Greece and accepted a one-year post­ ponement of the decision on the fate of the Italian colonies. He yielded on reparations. Finally, after interminable haggling, in the course of which Georges Bidault played a dominant part, everyone adopted a French proposal to make Trieste a free state. Thus the peace conference could be scheduled for July 29. It was held in Paris, in the Luxembourg Palace, which was made avaiable by the absence of the Senate. For two-an-a-half months the traditional shrine of good manners and middle-class respectability resounded with the incongruous echoes of the new diplomacy: a dialogue between the deaf, embellished with the most offensive attacks on the floor after the basest bargaining in the corridors. •

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When the conference adjourned on October IS, no perceptible progress had been made except in the field of reparations. In November, however, Molotov arrived in New York for the next session of the Council of Ministers bearing conciliatory instruc­ tions. He ratified more than half the recommendations that the peace conference had adopted by simple majorities; in other words, he ratified recommendations that the Soviet Union and its clients had voted against. He accepted the Western formula defining the powers of the governor of Trieste, thus deserting the Yugoslavs, who were still campaigning to annex the city. He supported the principle of an international conference to establish a system for the control of traffic on the Danube. This last concession did not, in truth, cost him much. When the conference was held in Belgrade in June 1948, the Soviet Union would see to it that the non-Danubian countries would be excluded from the commission charged with regulating navigation on the river. It must be pointed out that in the interval the tension between East and West had been sharply heightened. At the moment, the easing of the Soviet Union’s position, coinciding with a clear relaxation of tension in the affairs of Iran and Turkey, produced a brief euphoria in international relations. On February 10, 1947, the peace treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and Finland were solemnly signed in the Clock Room of the Quai d’Orsay; it was not the first time that its stately grandeur had been the setting in which the mighty of the moment hoped that a bit of parchment would stabilize a state of affairs that had already begun to cheat their calculations or their illusions. The treaties provided for the evacuation of foreign troops within nine months, with the understanding that the Soviet Union could maintain garrisons in Rumania and Hungary as long as Austria remained under militaiy occupation. Was Stalin sincere in making this commitment? Twenty years later there are still Soviet troops in Hungary and American troops in Italy. Only the legalistic expla­ nation of their presence has changed: now they are there as allies, not as occupants. 9

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Had they wanted to restore the conditions of normal life first to those who had escaped in time from the grip of Hitlerism and, with arms, earned the Allies’ forgiveness? Or was it recognition of the complexity of the issue?—which soon became apparent, at the same time destroy­ ing the brittle hopes that had been bom from the signing of the treaties in Paris. Preciseness was not the outstanding characteristic of the protocol of the Potsdam Conference that had set the directives for the tem­ porary administration of Germany and the neutralization of her capacity to destroy. Perspective sharpens our recognition of the lack of harmony among the signatories. The protocol stipulated, for in­ stance, that “excessive” concentration of economic power should be prevented, but it omitted to define what was “excessive" and what was not; it provided for the removal of all means of production not re­ quired for “authorized” output—but it never defined the “authorized” level; it prescribed equal treatment for the German population in all zones, but only “as much as possible” ; it called for the reestablish­ ment of local autonomy through elected councils—but only “as soon as military security and the purposes of military occupation permit”; it established freedom of speech, of the press and of religion and the formation of labor unions, but subject to “the needs of military security.” When the protocol stated that, “during the period of occupation, Germany will be treated as an economic whole,” gov­ erned by “common directives,” it added that, “in the application of these directives, account will be taken of local differences whenever necessary.” Finally and above all, no criterion was provided by which to distinguish what concerned Germany as a whole, which was to be administered collectively by the Control Commission— the four commanders in chief—from what came within the jurisdiction of each of these commanders in his own zone of occupation. Such a contract among partners determined to have a common understanding would open the door to grave problems of interpreta­ tion. It was of little use to powers who were divided from one another in their every interest and who lost no time in suspecting one another of the blackest schemes. The Control Commission that was established in Berlin on July 30, 1945, during the Potsdam Conference, set up its principal ma­ chinery without much trouble— directorates, commissions, sub­ • 303

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commissions, working parties, whose number soon mounted to 175— but struck its first obstacle almost at once. In fact, on August 7, having associated itself with the major provisions of the Potsdam accords after the event, as the Big Three had proposed, the French provisional government voiced reservations on Mthe reconstitution of political parties for Germany as a whole,” and “the creation of central administrative departments that are to be directed by secre­ taries of state whose jurisdiction would seem to extend to the whole of German territoiy, which has not yet been defined.”7 De Gaulle, who had discussed “the German state or states”8 in November 1944 before the Consultative Assembly without indicating which he preferred, intended in any event to preclude the recon­ struction of a united Germany and to detach and permanently occupy the Rhineland and to internationalize the Ruhr. He was inspired to this policy—endorsed at that time by all the French parties—not only by the doctrine of Foch, who had written to the Allies in a famous note of November 28, 1918: “Henceforth the Rhine shall be the western military frontier of the German peoples; henceforth Germany shall be deprived of every access and of every base—that is, of all territorial sovereignty— on the left bank of this river, or else she will once more enjoy every advantage to invade again, as in 1914, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, reach the North Sea and threaten England.”9 De Gaulle feared as well, he told Truman and Byrnes during his visit to Washington in August, 1945, that a unified but weak Germany might fall “under the influence of a strong and powerful Slav bloc” and become “the political instru­ ment of other powers.”10 Now, the Potsdam agreements looked to the activation of certain central administrative departments directed by the secretaries of state, particularly in the matter of finances, transportation, com­ munication, foreign trade and industry. The Americans tried unsuccessfully to convince the leader of Free France that the creation of these departments did not mean that the Reich was going to be restored. Clinging to his favorite tactic, obstruction, de Gaulle refused to have anything to do with this clause in the agreements. He ordered his representative on the Control Commission to employ his right of veto whenever the dis­ * 304

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cussion turned to a proposal bearing however little in the direction of the restoration of German unity. General Koeltz, therefore, opposed the creation of a central administration of transport and the unifica­ tion of labor unions, and, in December, the free movement of civilians from one zone to another. The Russians, who pretended to see no obstacle to German reunification if the Germans wanted it, put more faith in the democ­ ratization of the sources of power—in other words, in the elimina­ tion of the power of the Junkers, of the army and of heavy industry— than in the “vertical” division of the Reich, for which, however, Stalin had declared his endorsement at Teheran and at Yalta. Beginning on July 25, 1945, they had set up a dozen “central German administrations,” charged with controlling the economy of their zone, and they openly battled tendencies to federalism. Yet they found it apparently rather difficult to understand the French attitude. On several occasions, Sokolovsky of the Soviet Union expressed to General Lucius Clay, the American representative on the Control Commission, his doubts as to the genuineness of the Franco-American disagreement. This Marxist could not believe that a country as heavily supported on the economic level by the United States as France was could act in opposition to the will of the United States. Consequently he attributed to Washington some unguessable double game with indecipherable ends. It was nevertheless the fact that certain topranking American diplomats, including Charles Bohlen, were not angered by France’s vetoes that spared the Americans a confrontation for the domination of Germany for which, in the opinion of Am­ bassador Walter Bedell Smith, they were clearly not prepared. When Bidault agreed in spring 1946 to the establishment of common consultant technical councils for all zones, it was too late. The inexorable process toward the division of Germany had begun— a division not into autonomous states corresponding to historical, economic, and psychological realities, but into two hostile republics, separated by an utterly arbitrary line of demarcation. The creation of central administrations would probably not have prevented the split. But at the very least it would have kept alive the chance of reunification by opening the way for the antagonists of the Cold War, when the thaw set in, to find a solution analagous to that which •

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had made it possible for Austria, throughout eight years of occupa­ tion, to preserve her unity even though the four victors, as in Germany, had divided her territory into four distinct zones. From the outset of the Allies’ presence in Germany, differences between zones began to mount. On June 11, 1945, the Russians, without consulting anyone, had authorized the creation of four political parties on a zonal level. On July 14— in other words, before the signing of the Potsdam accords—following plans worked out in the previous months, these parties set up a single front, comparable to the entities that had seized power in Bulgaria, Rumania and Yugo­ slavia. Truman soothed Churchill, who was raging. At the same time, supported by the Soviet occupant, the Communists opened a campaign for union with the Social Democratic Party. That the population was disinclined to go along, that, as Fritz Selbmann, Vice President of the Land of Saxony recognized, it was “afraid of sovietization,”11 goes without saying. For four years Goebbels had portrayed the Russian as a savage, a bestial sub-man. The arrival of the Red Army and the sequel of rapes, summary executions, de­ portations, plundering of every kind, was not conducive to recon­ ciling the Germans and the Ivans. The new arrivals therefore went to considerable effort to calm public opinion, to declare that “it would be a mistake to impose the Soviet system on Germany,*’13 as the appeal of the Communist Party stated on June 11, 1945, and to preach a “special way” (Sonderweg) designed essentially to democratize the country from its roots— a change that it would be difficult to deny was needed. Was it simply a matter of lulling the innocent by employing the famous “salami method”—one slice at a time— which the Hungarian Rakosi two years later boasted that he had used as a means of taking power? Or did Stalin really believe then in the possibility of a rela­ tively democratic experiment in central Europe outside those regions essential to the protection of the Soviet Union? To these two hy­ potheses one must add a third, undoubtedly much less plausible: namely, that as always he was playing both sides at the same time: unification and separation. The first presupposed that the regime of the eastern zone was not so frightening that it would prevent the formation of a popular front on a national scale; the second, that the essential keys were in Russian, or German Communist, hands, •

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which came to the same thing, since most of the party leaders had fled into the Soviet Union a dozen years before and acquired Soviet citizenship. The controversy was strong within the German Social Democratic Party, which, in spite of the heavy tribute exacted from it by re­ pression, had managed better than any of the others to preserve its underground organization during the terrible years. In October, during a meeting in a monastery near Hanover, there was a dramatic debate between its two leaders, Kurt Schumacher and Otto Grotewohl, both of whom were survivors of the concentration camps. Schumacher had lost an arm, a leg and his stomach and could not move without being held upright, but his strength of will was unimpaired. Grotewohl argued that only the disunity of the German working class had made it possible for the Brown Shirts to triumph. Schumacher, leaning on his lieutenant, Ollenhauer, returned after a long exile in England, recalled twenty-five years of working-class history to support his view that the fusion of the parties would only lead to the transformation of German Social Democracy into a simple tool of the Communist Party. It must be added that he was a native of Danzig and that the annexation of the eastern provinces by the Russians and the Poles had stirred him to an acutely nationalistic reaction. No ground for agreement had been reached when the meeting adjourned. Grotewohl, who was to become the first premier of the German Democratic Republic, established himself in the eastern zone at the head of the supporters of fusion. Schumacher and Ollenhauer led a fierce campaign against it. The western occupants supported them to the full and organized an assembly of militant Socialists in the western sectors of Berlin: 88 percent of them declared themselves simultaneously opposed to fusion and dedicated to unity of action. The referendum had been forbidden in the Soviet sector, where, after many more or less spontaneous demonstrations, the two parties, Communist and Social Democratic, gave way on April 20, 1946, to a united Socialist party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands— Socialist Unity Party of Germany—or S.E.D.). In the autumn legis­ lative elections were held in the five Länder (states) of the Soviet zone. The new unified party won absolute majorities in three of them and pluralities in the two others. Communists with good records were •

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installed everywhere in key positions, while the Socialists who had opposed the fusion of the parties were sent to join old Nazis in the concentration camps that the new government had inherited from Hitler. The elections that took place in the succeeding months in the western zones and in West Berlin, on the other hand, gave the Communists only two million votes, against seven million for the Christian Democrats and the same number for the Socialists. Thus it can be said that, from the spring of 1947, the division of Germany was an accomplished fact on the ideological and political level. The Soviet authorities’ creation of a Department of the Interior at this time, with jurisdiction over their entire zone, was to confirm with unmistakable clarity the division on the juridical level. The rest quickly followed. The Inter-Allied Tribunal of Nuremberg having completed its work with the sentencing of twelve war criminals to death and seven to prison, denazification was henceforth the obliga­ tion of each zone commander; since it was obviously not envisaged in the same fashion in both east and west, it quickly became a new source of controversy. The laicized and statized, not to say sovietized, school system of the one and the still largely church-run school system of the other did nothing to narrow the gap. It was the same with economic and social matters. In September 1945, the Länder administrations in the Soviet zone had suc­ cessively promulgated laws for agrarian reform, analogous to those that had been adopted at the same time in the other countries occupied by the Red Army. Holdings of more than 100 hectares (approximately 250 acres)— that is, about half the arable land— were confiscated without payment. The same thing happened to the property of Nazis and war criminals. The land thus made available was redistributed in parcels, the largest of which were sixteen hectares (about 40 acres). This radical reform, long the dream of a large part of the population of eastern Germany, where the Junkers had preserved an almost feudal type of society, certainly contributed to the massive successes of the S.E.D. candidates. There was as yet no talk of collectivization. Obviously there was no question of applying the same methods in the western zones. Farm property there was much smaller and the liberators were opposed on principle to evicting owners. Four-sided •

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discussions of land reform, whether in the Control Commission or among the foreign ministers, ended abruptly. The authorities in the west were content to set limitations on holdings. But except in Schleswig-Holstein, where the Socialist Diet had set a maximum of 100 hectares, the results were largely symbolic. In sum, the area of redistributed properties in the west was hardly more than 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres), against more than two million hectares in the Soviet zone, although its territory was less than half that of the west. Land allocations in the west to the innumerable fugitives from the east virtually never exceeded two hectares. The orientation of production and of industrial property was to widen still further the breach between the two Germanies. The Kremlin had taken the right under the Yalta protocol on reparations, even though it had not been formally ratified, to seize everything that came into its hands as its troops moved farther into the territory of the Reich, from wrist watches to machine tools, and not excluding power plants, railway tracks and coal reserves. Innumerable civilians had been sent off to Russian factories and workshops, beginning with the best qualified technicians. But in this respect the Russians were only following the example set by their Western Allies, who had launched their hunt for German scientists almost simultaneously with their invasion of Normandy; it was thus that, in particular, Wemher von Braun, who had built the frightful V-2 rockets for Hitler, was to become in a few years the master of N.A.S.A., the American administration for the conquest of space. It did not take long for Truman’s collaborators at the Summit Conference in Potsdam to measure the extent of Russian “recoveries.” They feared having to supply Germany, in order to save her from the outriders of communism, bankruptcy and anarchy, with credits that in the end would go to help pay reparations to the Soviet Union. They argued therefore, not without sound reasoning, that it was necessary to restore the question of reparations to the over-all plan for the direction of the entire German economy. Throughout the Potsdam Conference there was discussion and hard bargaining. On July 30, Byrnes proposed, in the name of the United States, that each power look to its own zone—a contradiction of the principle previously adopted that envisaged the economic •

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unity of Germany. But he added to this a corrective clause to the effect that the Russians and the Poles, in the light of the magnitude of their just claims and of the inequalities in industrial development among the various zones, should also receive 40 percent of the installations to be removed from the Ruhr as unnecessary to peace­ time industry, of which 25 percent should be paid for in raw materials. Bevin made a similar proposal. Molotov retorted that the percentages were meaningless: he wanted amounts stated in dollars. In the end agreement was reached on Byrnes’ basic ideas, the total of the contribution from the western zones, and not merely the Ruhr, being set at 25 percent of the totality of what was found to be their superfluous equipment: 15 percent against payment in raw materials, 10 percent free. Subsequently the western countries, in which Yugo­ slavia, Czechoslovakia and Greece were included, reached a common agreement that set the total of their claims against Germany at $326 billion in dollars of 1938 value. Recognizing the impossibility of collecting so high a reimbursement, they agreed to share propor­ tionately in whatever sums could be recovered. Agreement was still to be reached with Moscow on the so-called “normal” level of industrial capacity, on the basis of which the available surplus would be computed. The Potsdam accords had de­ clared in principle that the scale of living for Germans should not exceed that of other countries on the continent. On March 27, 1946, after much discussion, the Control Com­ mission adopted a program forbidding certain types of production: war industries and those associated with them, including the manufacture of ball bearings, of heavy tractors, of synthetic rubber and gasoline, and limiting others on a percentage basis, whether in relation to 1938 (machine tools: 11.4 percent; machinery: 40 per­ cent or 50 percent) or by volume (particularly steel: 7.5 million tons, temporarily cut to 3.8 million tons). On the other hand, coal production was to be increased, because of the enormous need of all Europe. This was already a long distance from the Morgenthau Plan, which had envisaged, eighteen months earlier, the pure and simple destruction of the Ruhr mines. Altogether, 1800 factories were to be dismantled; the majority lay in the British and American zones. In fact, by the following December 31, only thirty-one had been actually dismantled and put at the disposition of the inter-allied •

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reparations agency. All collaboration on the economic level, mean­ while, had vitrtually ceased between the Allies of east and west. The Russian policy of recovery had indeed encountered many disappointments. In the eastern Europe of 1945, where the railway network had been destroyed, where groups of anti-Soviet partisans— Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, survivors of General Vlassov’s pro-Hitler Russian Army—ranged everywhere, where people were inclined to appropriate whatever fell within their reach, it was not easy to transport capital goods worth a billion dollars over three thousand miles. It was even more difficult to reassemble all the components of the same factory in the same place and to find people qualified to put them together again and set them back to work. As a result, a substantial part of the transported material was lost and the contribution of the rest to Soviet production fell far short of the expectations of the Kremlin leaders. Therefore they set up Soviet companies in occupied Germany that took over 200 enter­ prises in key industries, including I.G. Farben, Rheinmetall-Borsig, the synthetic rubber factories of Saxe-Anhalt, without any control by local authorities. The production of these plants was accelerated with hardly any regard for the restrictions established in a common agree­ ment by the Allies. Face to face with enormous needs, the Russians balked at sending out of their zone the commodities that they had committed them­ selves to deliver in exchange for a part of the industrial equipment that they had received from the western zones. They refused to provide the slightest information on the expropriations they made in the areas under their control. At the beginning of April, they had re­ quested that the problem be considered on a zone-by-zone basis until a favorable balance of trade had been achieved for Germany as a whole. General Clay, the American representative on the Control Commission, whose patience had long been subjected to harsh stress, erupted on April 26: Mthe boundaries of our zone gave us a great part of the scenic beauty of Germany but had been accepted only on the understanding that the economic resources of all Germany would be available to Germany as a whole."1* And on May 3 he informed his colleagues that, as long as no joint export and import program was worked out for the zones as a whole, he would halt all supply of reparations to the Soviet Union. •

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This was exactly what was done. Deliveries were never resumed. At the same time the economic structures of the eastern and western zones were growing farther and farther apart. In Saxony, occupied by the Red Army, a referendum in June 1946 had approved the nationalization without compensation of 1861 factories belonging to Nazis and war criminals. A year later, all the heavy industry in the east passed to the ownership of the Länder. The intentions of the western occupants, in the beginning, were no less draconian. Law No. 52 of the Supreme Allied Command had sequestered the property of all enterprizes having a monopoly character—and that meant the huge Konzerne that held the keys to coal production and the metal­ lurgical industry. Gustav Krupp and eight other directors of his company had been arrested as war criminals. The British, whose zone included, with the Ruhr, the whole region of basic industry, clamped solid control on the metal industry and enforced its fragmentation. But the Americans, bound to the dogma of free enterprise and heavily invested in German industry, erected barriers to the nationali­ zation that the Labour government in London would have gladly encouraged. In these conditions, the growing pace of division could have been arrested only if the negotiation of the peace treaty for Germany had followed the same favorable course as those with the satellites. But this was indeed far from being the case. As early as September 1945, in London, Byrnes had approached Molotov with a plan for a twenty-five-year treaty among the Big Four in order to assure the disarmament of Germany. The Russians had evinced interest, nothing more, in this proposal. It must be added that its inspiration had been a speech made at the beginning of the year by Senator Vandenberg admittedly with the hope of bringing about the withdrawal of Russian troops from eastern Europe, where their presence for any length of time could be justified only on grounds of security. When the Secretary of State went to Moscow in December, he broached the question to Stalin. He emphasized that this treaty would give all the nations of Europe the assurance that the United States was not going to return to isolationism. "If you decide to fight [in con­ gress] for such a treaty,” the generalissimo replied, apparently not •

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having forgotten the fate of the Treaty of Versailles in the Capitol, “you can rely on my support.”14 Encouraged, Byrnes had his staff prepare a plan whose particu­ lars, as far as the demilitarization of Germany was concerned, very closely followed the text of the four-power declaration of June 5, 1945, on the surrender of the Reich. He added a provision for main­ taining an inspection body composed of representatives of the four countries and designed to prevent the creation of war industries. Should this body prove to be in violation of the treaty, the Four Pow­ ers, or only three of them, in order to avoid a veto, would have the power to take all necessary measures, including the destruction of the forbidden installations. At the Paris meeting of the foreign min­ isters in April and May 1946, Molotov told Byrnes that his plan would tend to postpone the disarmament of Germany until the end of the occupation. He accused the West of hiding something in this area. The British had indeed retained a German staff in their zone in order to expedite the demobilization of prisoners of war. Molotov was offered an investigation in the field so that he could see for him­ self that demilitarization was actually going on. He thereupon complained that the treaty said nothing about reparations and democ­ ratization. In short, he made plain that he wanted no part of it. In his memoirs, Byrnes examines the reasons that impelled the Soviet minister to reject a plan that Stalin had seemed to greet with en­ thusiasm and that he himself had always treated with indifference, and Byrnes concludes with the opinion that “the Soviet High Com­ mand or Politburo concluded that they did not want the United States involved in the maintenance of European security for the next twentyfive or forty years.”15 It has since been learned, through Khrushchev’s disclosures, that when Malenkov became head of the Soviet Government on Stalin’s death, he favored reaching an agreement with the West on Germany. But in 1946 the Russians did not for a moment contemplate with­ drawing from that country. They were interested in making Germany pay them the famous ten billion dollars that Roosevelt had more or less promised at Yalta. They were also interested in sharing control of the Ruhr, which would have given them a vantage point to ob­ serve one of the main strongholds of European capitalism, or at any rate the basic source of German might. Molotov, moreover, told •

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Byrnes outright, during a dinner in July, 1946, in the Soviet Em­ bassy in Paris that, as far as the treaties with Germany and Austria were concerned, he was anything but in a hurry.1* Forty-eight hours earlier, in a public statement to the Council of Foreign Ministers, which had barely finished negotiating peace trea­ ties with the satellites of the Reich, he had violently attacked Amer­ ican policy. At the same time, he had offered the olive branch to that Germany to which he had so often expressed his sympathy in the past. If indeed it should not prove possible to force the Germans, without the help of the other Allies, to put part of their potential at the Soviet Union's disposal, there was still another card to play: persuasion. An arduous task! How could they be convinced that their real friends were in the east when these friends had stripped them of one-third of their national territory, were holding millions of prisoners of whom no word was ever heard, and were the villains of the revolting tales of countless fugitives who had escaped the occupation of their native soil by the Red Army? Nevertheless, Molotov tried. At the same time that he was denouncing the West’s sabotage of the Potsdam agreements, he was violently attacking the long-sinceabandoned idea of the “pastoralization” of the Reich, demanding an end to all impediments to the increase of its coal and steel produc­ tion. He demanded four-power control of the Ruhr but he was against separating the region from the Reich, as the French Government, in­ cluding its Communist ministers, was trying to bring about. He de­ manded, too, that it be left to the Germans themselves to determine through a plebiscite whether they preferred a unified or a federal state. Meanwhile, although he declared that he agreed “in principle” to the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany,17 this was second­ ary to establishing a German government that would have to spend a certain number of years demonstrating that it was able to pay repara­ tions and extirpate the last traces of fascism. Neither the British nor the Americans wanted anything to do with a four-power administration of the Ruhr, which in the end would have poisoned their zones with the daily complications and problems that beset their representatives on the Allied Control Com­ mission in Berlin. Bevin emphasized that the failure to cany out the Potsdam clauses on the restoration of German economic unity, and especially the Russians’ refusal to take part in developing a joint pro­ *

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gram for import and export, were costing the British $320 million and the Americans $200 million a year. He said that the condition could not continue. Byrnes echoed his sentiments, announcing that his government was inclined to merge its zone with any one or more whose custodians wished to do so. And the meeting adjourned until December after an equally futile, if brief, discussion on Austria. The West would have preferred, in fact, that the deputy foreign ministers be set to work at once to draft a proposed treaty with the Vienna government. But for this Molotov demanded a condition that was naturally refused: the expulsion of the 437,000 displaced persons— political refugees from the east—who were in the western part of the country and who, to hear him tell it, were traitors and war criminals. France refused to merge her zone with that of the United States as long as her claims were left unsatisfied. She was even to go so far as to set up, unilaterally, a customs barrier between the Saar and the rest of her zone. But on July 20, London announced that it agreed to the creation of an Anglo-American “bi-zone.” And on September 5, in the Stuttgart Opera House, before an audience consisting of members of the occupation forces and 1400 German function­ aries, including the minister-presidents of Bavaria, Hesse, and BadenWürttemberg, Byrnes delivered a speech that marked a decisive turning point in the policy of the United States. He did not intend to finish last in the competition for Germany’s favors that had been set in motion by Molotov’s statement of July 10. He proclaimed that once it had freed Germany from militarism, his government wanted to give the German people the opportunity “to apply their great energies and abilities to the works of peace,” and “in time to take an honorable place among the members of the United Nations.” “Surely,” he insisted, “it is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West." And he proclaimed his intention to watch closely the process of demilitarization and the payment of reparations. But he intended to put Germany into a position in which she could become economically self-sufficient, to allow her to dispose of her entire agricultural output, and to raise the level of industrial produc­ tion sufficiently to enable her to export and contribute to the recovery of all Europe. • 3 1 5

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Doubting that “alien soldiers are in the long run the most reliable guardians of another country's democracy,” he announced that the American Government found the moment apposite to give the German people the responsibility for its own affairs and to make known to it the basic principles of the peaceful system that it would have to accept and respect. He called therefore for the early establishment of a provisional government for the entire country, based on the Lander governments; he condemned separating the Ruhr and Rhineland from Germany, and he asserted that in Potsdam the Big Three had made no com­ mitments on the question of Germany’s eastern border. Finally he solemnly proclaimed the intention of the United States to interest itself in European affairs, to oppose every encroachment of force and to keep its troops in Germany for a long time to come.18 Received with a flood of insults by the Moscow and Warsaw press and with sharp criticism by most French newspapers, the speech evoked no official reaction from the Soviet Union except Molotov’s declaration reaffirming that the Oder-Neisse frontier was definitive. In support of his thesis, not without some reason, he recalled that the Control Commission had agreed to admit three and a half million “Germans from Poland” to the British and Soviet zones in December 1945, when it could not pretend not to know that in large measure these fugitives came from territories that had not been Polish for centuries. Who, he asked, could possibly think that that expulsion was a “temporary expedient?”18 He might in addition have quoted Georges Bidault, who on July 10, 1946, at the meeting of the Big Four ministers, had reiterated that France “did not challenge the agreements, in principle provisional but in fact basic,” that had been reached by the Potsdam Conference on the subject of Eastern Germany.80 In New York in December 1946, the ministers agreed on a new meeting in Moscow in February, to be devoted exclusively to Germany and Austria. On Molotov’s suggestion, it was agreed to deal first with the execution of the Potsdam accords, then with the creation of a central German government and only afterward with the peace treaties with these two countries. This amounted to condemning the Moscow conference from the start to a fine free-for-all of recrimina­ tions. Byrnes came forth with a new idea: placing ceilings on the •

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personnel strength of the occupation forces in Germany and Austria after the conclusion of peace treaties with the satellites. In the beginning of January 1947, the deputy foreign ministers began to draft a treaty “of state” with Austria, so called in order to take cognizance of the fact that Austria had never been officially at war with the Allies. They could not guess that it would take them innumerable meetings, extending over eight years, to arrive at an agreement. As for the ministers themselves, they met again in Moscow on March 10, just before Truman’s speech to Congress that presented his “doctrine” of help for Greece and Turkey. They reached agree­ ment quickly enough on the majority of the fifty-nine articles of the draft treaty for Austria, but they stumbled over three problems: Yugoslavia’s claims to southern Corinthia, which the Soviet Union supported until it broke with Tito; reparations, of course; and, finally, the disposition of “German holdings” in the Soviet zone, which the Kremlin meant to manage according to its own desires. If it had been allowed to do so, it would have controlled a substantial part of Austria’s industry and thus mortgaged the country’s independence. But these were only trivial differences beside the furious battle over Germany. The conference had begun, however, with a decision that was intended to be historic: in a matter of minutes, the Big Four agreed to “eliminate Prussia,” to erase its accursed name from future geography and history. But when General Marshall, to whom Truman had just entrusted the leadership of the State Department, again put forward the American proposal for a treaty on the neutralization of Germany, which he offered to maintain in force for forty years, Molotov flatly rejected it. The old quarrels over reparations and the Ruhr were resumed with new vigor. The Soviet minister demanded ten million dollars’ worth of tribute out of current German produc­ tions. This would have doomed Germany to misery. “The United States is opposed to policies which will continue Germany as a con­ gested slum or an economic poorhouse in the center of Europe.”21 In addition, the Americans were already making heavy investments in the country in the hope of enabling it to pull itself up by its own efforts within three years. The discussion on the structure of the future German state was equally useless. Molotov wanted it to be strongly centralized, in such .

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a way, obviously, as to give Russia as broad an opportunity of keep­ ing an eye on it as possible, while the Western Powers were afraid that centralization, which had already facilitated the advent of Hitlerism, might lead to a new kind of totalitarianism. Very soon all the questions became confused and acrimony ran rampant on both sides. By March 28 the conference had reached such a state of con­ fusion that Bevin asked: “Where are we?” Bidault replied: “God knows.” “I didn’t know He was a member of the Council of Foreign Ministers,” the Foreign Secretary retorted.32 After a year-and-a-half of wrestling with the Russians, he had learned to fall back on humor as a counter-thrust to discouragement. Certainly as the days dragged on, the ministers had come to minor agreements: on prisoners of war, on the acceleration of denazifica­ tion, on the exchange of information between the two zones . . . but on the main point it was apparent that there would be no understand­ ing. Now, for one man, a decision was vital. In order to confront the enormous demands of reconstruction, France needed more than ever to be able to pay for the Saar’s coal in francs and therefore to create a currency union with the region. Bidault went to Stalin to discuss the matter openly. The Father of All Russia heard him out absentmindedly, being concerned above all with persuading him that it was far better to be “two against two than three against one,”2* which was a way of dissuading him from joining with the Anglo-Americans, who were quite ready to give him what he wanted. Having failed to win any commitment from the generalissimo, the French minister told his colleagues on April 10 that he could wait no longer. Bevin and Marshall backed his stand on the Saar. Molotov, who until this point had avoided taking a clear position on the one side or the other, thought he could get out of the matter by demanding that Bidault first give him an answer on four-power control of the Ruhr. The “nice little man” answered in the same tone. “I am quite ready to discuss the Ruhr,” he said, “but the question before us is that of the Saar, and I ask for an answer." The Russian said that he had nothing to add. “This was further proof,” Bidault wrote, “of the need to create a free Europe.”24 In other words, to give up the idea of a “geographical Europe,” General de Gaulle’s and the early Fourth Republic’s dream of a Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, and to abandon every attempt to demon•

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strate independence with relation to the two big forces in process of formation, as well as to renounce the hope of keeping the former Reich forever in a state of harmlessness. On April 21, Bidault signed in Moscow, but only with the British and Americans, the agreements for the allocation of the Ruhr’s coal. The expression “Cold War” would soon be heard everywhere. Had Stalin really understood what was going on? Receiving Marshall on April 25, he blamed “governmental bungling” when the American presented a long list of proposals made to the Russians that had never been dignified by replies. When Marshall voiced his pessimism at the prospects for international relations in the light of the only too probable failure of the Moscow Conference, the gen­ eralissimo retorted: “It is wrong to give so tragic an interpretation to our present disagreements . . . [they are] only the first skirmishes and brushes of reconnaissance forces . . . when people had exhausted themselves in dispute they recognized the necessity for compromise.”29 A remark made in confidence a few days later to Georges Bidault may explain this serenity of mind: “The German Government will agree to what we ask it to agree to, for, if it does not agree, there will not be any German Government.”29 Two years later there would be two of them. . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 Byrnes, p. 96. 2 Stettinius, p. 336. 8 Byrnes, p. 105. 4 Fleming, p. 322. 5 Fleming, p. 323. • Murphy, p. 294. 7 Documents français relatifs à YAllemagne (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1947) p. 9. 8 Charles de Gaulle, Discours et messages (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1946) p. 523. * General Weygand, Foch (Paris: Flammarion, 1947) p. 290.

10 Byrnes, p. 170. 11 G. Castellan, DDR-Allemagne de YEst (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1955) p. 74. 12 Castellan, p. 73. 12 Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1950) p. 121. 14 Byrnes, p. 172. 15 Byrnes, p. 176. ia Byrnes, p. 198. 17 Le Monde, July 12,1946. 18 Byrnes, pp. 189-91. 18 A. Grosser, L’Allemagne de I’Occi-

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dent (Paris: Gallimard, 1953) p. 57. 30 Documents français relatifs à l'Allemagne, p. 29. 31 Bedell Smith, p. 226. 33 Bedell Smith, p. 217.

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33 Georges Bidault, D'une résistance à l’autre (Paris: Editions du Siècle, 1965) p. 148. 34 Bidault, p. 151. 39 Bedell Smith, p. 221. 39 Unpublished.

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B L O C K TO T H E W E S T The next revolution in Europe will be accomplished by violence and by a force that will be concentrated in the hands of Russia. A second revolution will oc­ cur later, when the fruits of the first have lost all their savor, and this one will be made by America through liberty and a federation of the peoples. —Ernest Coeurderoy: Hurrah! or, The Cossacks’ Revolution, 1854.

T H E A M E R I C A N L E A D E R S LO ST N O T I M E I N L E A R N I N G

their lesson from the failure of the Moscow Conference. “It was now clear that no amount of time and energy would be sufficient to give the conference a real basis for agreement so far as the German problem was concerned,” Ambassador Bedell Smith wrote.1 “The alternatives of a divided Germany, or a Germany under the effective economic and political domination of the Soviet Union had become unmistakably clear. The westerners all were facing the cold reality that if the latter alternative were to be prevented, their desire for an undivided Germany could no longer be made an excuse for inaction in western Germany, which now must be effectively associated with the western European powers through economic arrangement and perhaps ultimately through mutual political understanding.”2 Stop­ ping in Berlin on April 25, 1947, on his way home, Marshall in­ structed General Clay to speed up the establishment of the bi-zone and the restoration of industrial capacity. A month later the embryo of political power was set up in Frankfort. It consisted of an executive committee, composed of a representative of each Land, and a legis­ lative economic council whose fifty-two members were elected by the parliaments of the Länder. .

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On June 6 the minister-presidents of the western Länder met in Munich with their colleagues from the Soviet zone for the last time. The latter slammed the door on the discussions after their proposal to add the question of creating a provisional central government to the agenda was rejected. A few days later, the east in its turn set up a central economic commission, while the Anglo-Americans issued authority to recruit a German “industrial police” in the west. “An orderly and prosperous Europe,” a directive of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff declared on July 11, 1947, “requires the economic contribution of a productive and stable Germany.”3 But the American reaction was not to be confined to the former Reich. As early as April 4, 1945— that is, a few days before Roosevelt’s death—A vereli Harriman, who was then ambassador to Moscow, had sent the State Department a long report in which, after having first made it clear that “the Communist Party or its associates everywhere are using economic difficulties in areas under our responsibilities to promote Soviet concepts and policies and to undermine the influence of the Western Allies,” he concluded that “we should be guided . . . by the policy of taking care of our Western Allies and other areas under our responsibility first, allocating to Russia what may be left,” and that, with as much economic aid as possible, the United States should seek to “reestablish a reasonable life for the people of these countries who have the same general out­ look as we have on life and the development of the world.”4 This recommendation was listened to. No action had been taken on the requests for long-term credits that the Soviet leaders had presented at Yalta. In 1947, when Marshall complained to Stalin about the Kremlin’s lack of response to a number of American communications, the gen­ eralissimo was in a position to retort that a new request for capital funds had not even been acknowledged. On the other hand, Truman increased his efforts to obtain payments of interest on lend-lease precisely when he was lending Great Britain $3.75 million at only 2 per cent interest. Credits designated as interim help were also given to European nations. The Soviet Union received only aid doled out by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the agency set up to assist devastated areas. Would the United States have followed the same policy if •

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Roosevelt had lived? One may well wonder. In any event Henry Wallace, who had been Roosevelt’s Vice President from 1940 to 1944 before becoming Secretary of Commerce under Truman, was convinced of the contrary. Taking it for granted that Soviet policy could be explained in large measure by the Russians’ “dire economic needs and by their disturbed sense of security,” he suggested to the President in March 1946, before Bedell Smith left for Moscow, “a new approach along economic and trade lines,” the opening of a basic discussion on all conditions of collaboration.8 Truman himself says in his Memoirs that he “ignored this letter.”8 But Wallace returned to the attack, before he gave his views public exposure in a speech delivered on September 12 in Madison Square Garden in New York. He expressed his conviction that it would be possible to cooperate with Russia once she had recognized that the basic goal of the United States was “neither saving the British Empire nor purchasing oil in the Near East with the lives of American soldiers.” He proposed an agreement that the United States keep out of eastern Europe and Russia out of western Europe and the two Americas.7 This was just six days after Byrnes’ vigorous speech in Stuttgart in which he had offered a hand to the German people and denounced Soviet policy. The contradiction was much too flagrant: on September 16 Truman requested Wallace’s resignation. Wallace then became the leader of the Progressive Party, which was warmly supported by the Kremlin but which was rapidly to lose its public. Had it wished to do so, however, the Soviet Union could have profited from American assistance. Moscow would merely have had to give its allegiance to the system set up by the Bretton Woods Conference, in which Russia had taken part with the major Allies at the beginning of July 1944. Convened at the suggestion of the United States, this conference had established two institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, open to Soviet Russia as to all the other members of the alliance against Hitler. Obviously no one expected her to commit herself unquestioningly to a formula largely inspired by traditional American concepts of freedom of ex­ change and monetary stability. But special clauses had been prepared for Russia, and in practice they would have allowed her to benefit by a credit of one-and-a-half billion dollars, financed essentially by America, with no obligation beyond that of providing certain sta­ •

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tistics. Her representatives had hotly discussed the most concrete de­ tails of the agreement. Why, in the end, did she decide to remain aloof? It is a mystery that no one has been able to explain satis­ factorily. But one can imagine that at the last minute the Kremlin leaders trembled at the prospect of losing their souls by joining a “capitalist” system and of jeopardizing their national security by providing the information requested on the amount of their gold reserve or their credit circulation. In the two years that followed the end of the war, the United States spent a total of $15 billion to restore the economies of the liberated countries. But it had become clear in 1947 that these fantastic sums were still not enough. Great Britain especially was in a critical situation. The deficit in her balance of payments in the preceding year had reached £ 3 8 0 million. The greater part of the American loan of 1945, which was supposed to have carried her into 1950, was already used up. The coal shortage made it necessary to cut back the supply of electricity, and this destroyed all hope of getting industry back into production. The condition of France was hardly better. In one year prices soared 80 percent. When Léon Blum returned to power, he had been able to apply only a temporary brake by decreeing, on January 1, an arbitrary reduction of 10 per­ cent in two stages. The vicious circle of prices and wages was again soon in operation. His successor, Ramadier, got rid of his Communist ministers, with whom he had already come into conflict over Indo­ china. After having condemned the agreement that Georges Bidault had reached with Marshall and Bevin on Ruhr and Saar coal, the Communist ministers had abruptly repudiated the policy of wage freezes that until then they had championed. The National Council of the Socialist Party, of which the Premier was a member, supported him by a tenuous majority after a dramatic debate. The Communist Party and the General Confederation of Labor (C.G .T.), which had thus far restrained as well as they could the impatience of working men disheartened by the persistence of poverty more than two years after the Liberation, would not let their people loose. A wave of strikes, which began in the Renault factories, spread rapidly, especially to the railways, mines and the power in­ dustry, growing to such dimensions that Ramadier did not hesitate to ascribe it to “the conductor of a secret orchestra.”8 .

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In Italy too, where more than four million men were unemployed, the Communists’ departure from the government was accompanied by a wave of social unrest. The Germans were living under the dictatorship of the black market, inflation and hunger. Only Belgium, thanks to Katanga copper and Camille Gutt’s skillful currency re­ forms, had recovered her prosperity, and all of Europe envied her.

s

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As soon as Marshall had returned from Moscow, Truman, who in his own words was the target of “a steady stream of appeals” and who had just succeeded in persuading Congress to adopt his program for aid to Greece and Turkey, had the conviction, as he wrote in his Memoirs, that there was “no time to lose in finding a method for the revival of Europe.”9 What means? First of all, money—obviously. But this was not enough. The European economy had become a bottomless pit, down which money disappeared without a trace, without the slightest sign of a hope of stabilization. A psychological shock was needed. It could be provided only by a new man and a new idea. The man was Marshall, and the idea was the plan that has immortalized his name. There are two kinds of great statesmen: Caesar and Cincinnatus— those who are motivated by the passion for power, who want to command history, and those who have no ideal other than that of serving their countries and their compatriots without any personal interest. There is no doubt that Marshall belonged to the latter class. Chief of Staff of the American armies during the war, he was chosen to command the operations in Europe. But at the last moment Roosevelt chose to keep Marshall beside him in Washington. “I feel I could not sleep at night with you out of the country,"10 he confided to him one day. Marshall did not make a single move to grasp the laurels that he saw escaping him. He had just gone into retirement when Truman entrusted him with the delicate mission of attempting to conciliate Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communists. And after Byrnes resigned, it was altogether natural that the President should have decided to turn the State Department over to him. No one has better filled that high office than he. Ill-prepared for rug-peddlers’ haggling or the lies and distortions that often mark the diplomacy of the Cold War, he *

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treated weighty problems simply, without passion but certainly not without conviction, supported by a direct, fearless expression that inspired confidence in his friends and respect in his opponents. He very quickly grasped the importance of bringing about the economic unity of Europe. As Harry Truman put it in his Memoirs; “If the nations of Europe could be induced to develop their own solution of Europe’s economic problems, viewed as a whole and tackled co-operatively rather than as separate national problems, United States aid would be more effective and the strength of a re­ covered Europe would be better sustained.”11 On May 8 Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson made public the basic premises of the Marshall Plan. But virtually no attention was paid to them. This was not the case, however, when the Secretary of State himself delivered a speech on June 5 at the Harvard com­ mencement. After announcing that the United States “should do what­ ever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world,” without which there could be neither political stability or peace, he called on Europeans to come to an understanding in order to be able to define their needs. “It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe back on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do »» SO* European reaction was immediately favorable. The Times of London called the idea “politically courageous” and “economically constructive.” The Agence France-Presse was certain that it would be received in France “with a special welcome.” On June 17 and 18 Bevin conferred in Paris with Ramadier and Bidault. They agreed that they would suggest convening a meeting in Paris that would bring together all the countries concerned, in­ cluding the Soviet Union. Marshall, indeed, had excluded no one in his Harvard speech. “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine,” he had said, “but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos,” adding only: “Governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom •

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politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.”12 The Secretary of State’s language was quite different from that Tru­ man had employed three months earlier in announcing his “Doctrine” of aid to Greece and Turkey. Indictment and crusade had given way to a call for reconciliation and the cooperation of all for the common good. To tell the truth, he had few illusions as to how his action would be received in the Kremlin. On his return from the Moscow Conference he had told the President that, having gone to Moscow to convince the Russians of the United States’ desire for peace, he had discovered that his listeners “were coldly determined to exploit the helpless condition of Europe to further communism rather than cooperate with the rest of the world.”18 The great French and Italian strikes, like the turn that events had taken in eastern Europe, served only to confirm his opinion. The first stage in the Communists’ total seizure of power, the liquidation of the principal non-Marxist group—the Agrarian Party—was in full course. Since 1946 it had been reduced to impotence in Rumania and Bulgaria; its leaders, Maniu and Petkov, had been arrested early in 1947. In Poland, Mikolajczyk, although he had won 32 percent of the votes in a referendum a year earlier, had been crushed in January 1947 in openly rigged elections whose fraudulence he had at once denounced. In Hungary, when the National Assembly had refused to take away the parliamentary immunity of Bela Kovacs, secretary general of the Small Holders’ Party, whom Minister of the Interior Rajk had accused of connivance in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, the Russians took on the job of arresting him in February 1947. In May the Kremlin informed Budapest that Kovacs’ confession proved he had participated in Ferenc Nagy’s conspiracy, the leaders of which had meanwhile been hanged. Premier Nagy was himself a member of the Small Holders. Summoned to return to his country from a vacation in Switzerland, he preferred to resign. Father Varga, president of the party, fled the country forty-eight hours later when the Russians compelled the President of Hungary to appoint Dinnyes, a member of the left wing of the Small Holders’ Party, the new premier. As Bedell Smith had predicted, the first Russian reaction to the Marshall Plan was completely negative. On June 16 Pravda branded it a new incarnation of Truman’s tactic of “political pressure with the •

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help of dollars, of interference in the internal affairs of other countries.” On June 22, however, contrary to all expectations, the Kremlin accepted the invitation of Bevin and Bidault and sent Molotov to the Quai d'Orsay to discuss with them the agenda of the international conference instructed to examine the American offer. The Communist press stopped criticizing the Marshall Plan. Maurice Thorez denied having called it a “Western trap,” although he had done so publicly.14 Was the miracle about to happen? Everyone would have liked to think so. On June 26 Molotov arrived in Paris heading a delegation whose size and character inspired still greater trust among the optimists. But he immediately stated that he disagreed with the method sug­ gested by Bevin and Bidault. They envisaged completing before the end of September “as full and accurate a document as possible, describing Europe’s own efforts, its needs, and also what conditions it would be in if its economy worsened— a document that the Ameri­ can authorities could use to make their decisions." All the countries of Europe with the temporary exclusion of Spain, they said, should be included, whether they had been friends, enemies or neutrals during the war. As much as possible, Europe’s deficit should “be met by an action of all the countries and only to the extent that this could not be accomplished should help be asked from outside”— in essence, that is, from the United States.10 On June 29 the TASS agency, breaking the vow of silence that the three delegations had imposed on themselves, rejected a joint program, contending that “internal economic problems are the busi­ ness of the sovereign nations themselves,” and reducing the duties of the conference to preparing a list of what the countries concerned needed, ascertaining whether the United States was disposed to give this aid, and helping the nations of Europe get it. TASS demanded that priority be given to the needs of countries that had suffered from Nazi occupation and contributed to the common victory. It reminded the world that the German problem in general and the reparations problem in particular fell within the jurisdiction of the four foreign ministers. Molotov repeated the same point of view in the meetings. His game was plain: he wanted bilateral aid without conditions or con•

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trois. He did not want a collective undertaking that would pose a threat to the Soviet Union’s exclusive influence on eastern Europe and increase western Europe's capacity to resist. At the same time, he was striving to m inim ize the psychological shock produced by the Marshall Plan by contrasting the magnitude of the needs with the limited nature of American capacities. For three days Bidault repeatedly attempted to reach a com­ promise. Bevin gave him little help. He was afraid, not without ground, that if the Soviet accepted, the American Congress, which had been dominated by the anti-Communist tide ever since the Republican victory in the 1946 Congressional elections, might reject the Marshall Plan. Finally, on July 2, the Soviet minister broke off the negotiations, declaring publicly that European countries brought under control would lose their economic and national in­ dependence in order to satisfy the needs and desires of certain great powers. He accused France and England of setting the nations of Europe against one another. Would the Soviet Union’s “No” necessarily mean that the coun­ tries within its sphere of influence would respond in the same way? Molotov's whole line of argument tended to shore up such a belief. Djilas, who was in France at the time of the conference, says, moreover, that when he visited Molotov they both agreed to reject the plan. A good many illusions still persisted, however, even among cer­ tain of the interested parties. “Molotov clearly does not wish this business to succeed,” Bidault told the American ambassador, “but on the other hand his hungry satellites are smacking their lips in expectation of getting some of your money. He is obviously embarrassed.”16 At the same time, the members of a Polish delegation that had gone to France to negotiate a commercial treaty said that they be­ lieved that, given the scope of their country’s needs, the Soviet Union would allow Warsaw to send representatives to the inter­ national conference scheduled for July 12 in Paris. It was similar to what several Polish colleagues told the Czecho­ slovak minister, Ripka, when he visited them. Despite Czechoslo­ vakia’s being headed by a Communist, Klement Gottwald, the Prague Cabinet had unanimously accepted the Anglo-French invitation on •

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July 4. But on July 8, when the Polish Government had met to take the same position, Radio Moscow announced that Rumania and Poland had declined the Anglo-French offer. The leaders in Warsaw then had no choice but to follow this advice. They gave as their reason the fact that Germany would be among the beneficiaries of the plan. Yugoslavia announced its rejection on the same day, violently. Bulgaria did the same, but not so violently. As for Gottwald, when he arrived in Moscow for a previously arranged visit, he had to put up with some sharp remarks from Stalin. The Russians told him that the sole purpose of the Marshall Plan was to isolate the Soviet Union and that his acceptance amounted to breaking off the Soviet-Czechoslovak alliance. A month earlier, President BeneS had declared: “If our security is threatened and there is a German danger, we will fight, and we will fight beside the Russians and the Soviet Union. We will never stand with the East alone or with the West alone, but always with East and West.”17 Now he faced a dramatic choice, but everything was pressing him to yield. The Communists already controlled not only the premiership but also the ministries of the Interior and National Defense. At any moment they could take over the government. And after Munich public opinion had much more faith in the Slavic big sister than in the western democracies. On July 10 the Prague gov­ ernment made it known that it was reneging on its pledge to Paris because its participation might be interpreted as an act directed against the Soviet Union and its other allies. On July 11 Rumania’s refusal arrived, along with those of Hun­ gary, Albania and Finland. Helsinki pointed out that the Marshall Plan had become a grave source of disagreement among the powers and that Finland wished to remain aloof from international conflicts. The conference that Bidault and Bevin had proposed opened, therefore, on July 12 at the Quai d’Orsay with the attendance only of the delegates of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, the Nether­ lands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. In a few weeks it reached agreement on an organization and program that were then submitted to Truman. He called Congress into special session in order to ask its approval of appropriations for the Marshall Plan. The Paris conference had estimated Europe’s needs at $22 billion. The Presi­ •

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dent requested $17 billion, to be stretched over four-and-a-half years. Congress preferred to cling to its classical practice of annual appro­ priations. In the final outcome, the total of the credits allocated to the “plan for the reconstruction of Europe” was to reach $13 billion. That this sum fell so far below the original estimates is sufficient evi­ dence of how successful the undertaking was. The division of Europe really dates from this month of July 1947: on the one side the clients of the United States, on the other the satellites of the Soviet Union and the millions of men and women behind the Iron Curtain who believed that they had no other country but that of socialism. The international climate swiftly deteriorated. Under the signature of “X”, Foreign Affairs published an article in July that first expounded what has since become the doctrine of American diplomacy: “containment.” The author was George Kennan, a scholar at Princeton and today the most renowned “Kremlinologist” in the United States. A year earlier, as counselor at the embassy in Moscow, he had sent Washington an 8,000 word dispatch in which he had arrived at the following conclusion: “We have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. 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 be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure.”18 Returning to the essence of his analysis, Kennan, whom Marshall had just entrusted to set up the first political planning section of the State Department, wrote: “It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies . . . designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.” He was not a long-term pessimist, and, seen in perspective, the full perspicacity of his judgment is ap­ parent. “Let us . . . suppose,” he wrote, “that the Western world finds the strength and resourcefulness to contain Soviet power over a period of ten to fifteen years. What does that spell for Russia itself? . . . A wise and skillful foreign policy . . . can serve to convince the masters of the Kremlin that their grand design is useless and unattain­ able and that in clinging to it they have no assurance of finding a way • 3 3

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out of their own difficulties and dilemmas. . . . Who can say with assurance that the strong light still cast by the Kremlin on the dis­ satisfied peoples of the Western world is not the powerful afterglow of a constellation already on the wane? . . . the possibility remains . . . that Soviet power . . . bears within it the seed of its own decay.”19 It required a great fund of optimism to risk such a prophecy at that time, and Kennan pointed out that even if the prophecy could not be demonstrated, neither could its contrary. In fact, bad news poured in at an increasing rate. In August the Hungarian elections, managed with a master’s hand by Laszlo Rajk, ended with the defeat of the Small Holders’ Party, which only two months earlier still had the majority in Parliament. On the basis of the 22 percent of the votes that they had won, which made them the leading party in the country, the Communists seized control of all the key positions and dissolved the most resolute opposition group, the Independence Party, whose leader, Pfeiffer, owed his life only to his fleeing the country. At the end of the same month there was an ominous thunderclap that announced a bloody purge in all eastern Europe: the hanging of Nicholas Petkov, the leader of the Bulgarian Agrarian Party and a hero of the resistance, who in the days of the Liberation had preached collaboration with the Communists and the Russians. On September 15 came a major danger signal, which, however, went ignored by the public. On the very day that the Italian peace treaty went into effect, Yugoslavia informed the American ambassa­ dor, James Dunn, that she intended to occupy Trieste, which the treaty had declared to be a free city. The American applied the doc­ trine of containment with firmness. He replied that in that case Gen­ eral Lee, the Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean sector, would resist with all the force at his disposal. In the end nothing hap­ pened. At that very moment, at a Polish nursing home in the castle of Szklarska Poreba in the formerly German Lower Silesia, a highly secret conference was under way among the representatives of eight European Communist Parties, six in power and the other two the most important in the capitalist world—the French and the Italian parties. No invitations had been sent to the Chinese, Greeks and Vietnamese, all fully occupied with “wars of liberation,” or the •

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Albanians, although they were in power, or to the East Germans. On October S a communiqué announced that, having recognized the “serious handicaps” that “lack of contact among Communist Parties” created in the situation at the time, the conferees had decided to establish a joint “information office”—the Cominform— in Belgrade in order to organize the “exchange of experiences and, if necessary, to coordinate the activities of the Communist Parties on the basis of voluntary agreement.”20 They also announced the publication of a weekly bulletin in several languages. The West naturally interpreted this announcement to mean that the Comintern, which had been dissolved in 1943 in order to con­ vince the Allies that the Soviet Union had abandoned the idea of world revolution, was now being revived. In fact it seems quite likely that as far as Stalin was concerned the action was as much designed, at that time, to pave the way for the excommunication of Yugoslavia by planting the seeds of discord between its representatives and those of the other Communist Parties. Indeed, ever since 1945 Tito himself had been calling for the reestablishment of the Communist Inter­ national. In 1946 he mentioned it again to “Uncle Joe” whom he visited with the Bulgarian Dimitrov, who for ten years had been the grand master of the Third International. Quite in character, the Georgian dragged that old militant through the mud, saying that the Comintern had done a very bad job and that what was needed was an organization for the exchange of information. He suggested that Belgrade make the first step. The matter went no further until one day in the summer of 1947 when Stalin sent a message to Gomulka press­ ing him to invite the other parties to a meeting in Poland, in order to underline unmistakably the egalitarian character of the relations among the various members of the Communist family. In contrast to his Politburo colleagues, the Polish First Secretaiy considered such a meeting badly timed. For the most part, Poles regarded communism as a foreign import. He was having difficulty convincing them that it was nothing of the kind, and the formation of a new International threatened to complicate his task even more. Stalin explained that Gomulka would have complete freedom to put forth his own point of view— and this indeed proved to be the case—but that he himself attached great importance to the meeting. There were two major speeches, one by the Russian Zhdanov and •

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the other by the Yugoslav Djilas. Zhdanov, who died of a heart attack a few years later, was then at the peak of his power. The man who just before the war lectured the democracies in great detail in the columns of Pravda, and later directed the political and military operations against Finland, had become the government’s chief ideolo­ gist and guardian of the purity of faith and morals, nipping every wisp of middle-class aspiration, intellectualism and revisionism in the bud. He explained that henceforth the world would be divided into two camps; the imperialists, led by “American monopoly capital,’’ who were preparing for war, and the Socialist camp, led by the Soviet Union, which included the champions of peace and democracy every­ where in the world. The Yugoslavs then spoke along the same lines and with Zhdanov’s approval sharply criticized the French and Italian “opportunists” who had allowed themselves to be driven out of their governments and who were falling into “parliamentary deviationism.” Jacques Duclos and the Italian, Luigi Longo, made abject apologies, but they departed raging against the Yugoslavs, whom the communiqué mentioned immediately after the Russians, thus putting them in second place in the hierarchy of world Bolshevism. On in­ structions from Stalin, who was consulted by telephone, the seat of the Cominform was established in Belgrade. That city was also to be the headquarters of the magazine For A Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy. It was later learned that Stalin himself insisted on this long-winded title, hoping that the West would have to repeat it when­ ever it quoted from die publication and thus willy-nilly give publicity to Communist slogans. At that time, obviously, nothing was known abroad about these nascent disagreements. Similarly, none of the conferees at Szklarska Poreba had any idea that Moscow had pushed the Yugoslavs out to the end of the Umb in order to isolate them from the others and make them odious to them. The “Soviet bloc” looked like an impressive monolith and the birth of the Cominform appeared to be a declara­ tion of war on western civilization. And indeed this was just how the matter was presented in the declaration issued after the meeting, which repeated the essence of Zhdanov’s report: “Two camps have been set up in the world: on the one side, the imperialist and anti­ democratic camp whose essential purpose is to establish world domi­ *

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nation by American imperialism and to smash democracy; on the other side, the anti-imperialist democratic camp, whose essential pur­ pose is to undermine imperialism, to reinforce democracy, to liquidate the remnants of fascism.” The declaration stigmatized the Socialist leaders— Blum, Bevin, Schumacher, Saragat, Schaerf, etc.— with be­ ing guilty of “concealing the piratical character of the imperialist policy under the mask of democracy and of Socialist phraseology” and called on the democratic forces to rally round the Communist parties.21 While a few idealists—exclusively on the western side of the Iron Curtain— went on preaching an impossible reconciliation, the leaders of the two camps devoted all their efforts exclusively to gathering their forces. The Communists went on the offensive in China, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia; guerrilla warfare intensified in Indochina and Greece. Washington and Moscow raced to see who would be first to recognize the Zionist state established in Palestine, which the English had just abandoned after India. George Kennan predicted that the United States would change its attitude toward Japan, which MacArthur’s proconsulate had oddly enough converted to pacifism and even to socialism, and toward Spain, whose govern­ ment, by reason of its origins, had been kept in quarantine since the war. Franco, however, had not been behindhand in offering favors to the Allies. In a letter dated November 8, 1942, the date of the landings in North Africa, Roosevelt declared that he was Franco’s “sincere friend” and assured him that, as long as she remained neutral, Spain “had nothing to fear from the United States.”22 On May 24, 1944, Churchill had told the House of Commons that Spain’s internal affairs were the business of no one but the Spaniards themselves. El Caudillo, who had skillfully trimmed and tacked his diplomacy in direct proportion to the diminuition of the chances of a Nazi victory, felt encouraged. On October 10, 1944, he sent the British Prime Minister a message in which he underlined the need to unite the nations of western Europe against the “insidious power of Bol­ shevism”23 and emphasized that, after Germany was destroyed, Spain would be the sole country on the continent toward which England could turn. But these overtures were ignored and at Potsdam it was agreed to keep Spain out of the international organizations so long as *

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she was ruled by the government that had emerged from her Civil War. A few days later the Allies bade the Madrid authorities to evacuate Tangiers immediately: they had occupied it unilaterally during the war. Spanish guerrilla fighters from France hurled them­ selves aganst the Spanish regular army in the valleys of the Pyrenees. In the beginning of 1946, after the execution of a number of Socialists in Madrid, the Franco-Spanish frontier was closed and Georges Bidault laid the Spanish problem before the Security Coun­ cil. Paris, London and Washington issued a statement whose terms made it plain that the Spanish people could not hope for a full and cordial association with Europe so long as el Caudillo remained in power. On December 13 of the same year, the General Assembly of the U.N. almost unanimously recommended that the member states recall their ambassadors accredited to Madrid. Although it rejected an un­ usually strong Polish proposal, it ordered the Security Council to take appropriate measures if a representative government was not set up within a reasonable time. In 1947, Spain was the only European na­ tion that Paris and London kept off the list of those invited to take part in the Marshall Plan conference. Now for the first time an authori­ tative figure in American diplomacy, George Kennan, strongly en­ couraged by the military and by certain congressional elements, not­ ably Catholics, counseled that there should be no “further attempt to discredit”24 the Madrid government. In preparation for the dramatic confrontation that was now looming, help had to be accepted from every quarter without examining too closely the credentials of those who were ready to enlist in the crusade. This was all the more the case since the positions adopted at the meeting of the Cominform had had immediate repercussions in west­ ern Europe. On October 30 the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, which even during the spring strikes had been able to maintain a moderate and constructive position, performed its act of self-criticism and announced that it had gone over to the opposition against a government that had sold out to America. It put its Social­ ist allies of the day before into the same boat with General de Gaulle's Assembly of the French People (R .P.F.), which, barely a few weeks after its creation, had just won a smashing victory in the municipal elections on a platform of the most primitive sort of anti-Communism. *

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When Robert Schuman succeeded Paul Ramadier on November 22, Jacques Duclos took the floor of the Assembly to denounce this man of Lorraine, whom the Nazis had arrested as early as 1940, as a “boche.” Cries of “Heil HitlerF greeted the Minister of the Interior, Jules Moch, a Jew whose son fell under German bullets in the ranks of the Resistance. Rumors of a coup d'état were rife, while the wave of strikes mounted and spread and one dramatic incident followed an­ other, the most serious being the sabotage that derailed the ParisTourcoing train and caused sixteen deaths. On November 28 the government had to recall eighty thousand men to the colors in order to maintain order and fill the gaps carved into vital sectors of the national economy by the walk-outs. In eastern Europe during this period the Communists’ seizures of power were moving steadily ahead. Though in Hungaiy and Czecho­ slovakia the majority in the Socialist Party obdurately resisted a merger with the Communists, the final battle had just been fought in Rumania: after the peasant leaders Maniu and Mihaleche had been sentenced to life imprisonment and the Social Democratic Party had been swallowed up by the Communists, the king, whom Stalin had decorated three years before, was forced into exile; a veteran leftist, Anna Pauker, took over as Minister of Foreign Affairs from the liberal, Tatarescu, who to the very end believed that it was possible to work with the Stalinists. In Bulgaria, Georgi Dimitrov, the former secretary general of the Comintern, took the leadership of a govern­ ment that counted fourteen Communists among its twenty-three members. Finally, in the Soviet sector of Berlin, a “People’s Congress for Unity and a Just Peace” met on December 7, supposedly to make known to the Great Powers, even though its members had been chosen by the Soviet occupation forces and not elected, the real wishes of the German nation. This body, side by side with the central economic commission set up in June, constituted a sort of consultative parlia­ ment. It was from this source that the German Democratic Republic was to emerge eighteen months later. In such circumstances no one had many illusions about what to expect from the London conference in November that the four foreign ministers had scheduled in May when the Moscow meeting closed. When Bevin had announced the conference in May he de­ scribed it as “the most vital in the world’s history,”25 but during a '

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press conference on December 4 John Foster Dulles, a member of the American delegation, asserted that what was then taking place in France— he meant the struggle between the Communists and the government— “was far more important than what was happening in London.”26 The bets had all been made, and all that was needed was a pretext for ending the game. Molotov used every argument to demand that a provisional cen­ tral German authority be established so that a peace treaty could be negotiated. His opponents retorted that understanding must first be reached on the form and frontiers of the German state. The old dis­ cussion of reparations began again and quickly turned venomous, until the day when Marshall suddenly told the Soviet minister that he knew very well that he did not believe a word of what he was saying and that in the last analysis it was impossible when he listened to him to retain the slightest respect for the Soviet Union. After a vague agreement the conference rose on December 15 without even having got through its agenda and, contrary to its custom, without having set a date for the next meeting. But outside the conference Bidault, Bevin and Marshall had been having talks on merging the Anglo-American “bi-zone” with the French zone. The Western Three soon announced that they had con­ cluded agreements on coal among themselves and Italy, which was authorized to reclaim part of the gold reserve that the Nazis had stolen from her. Finally, on December 19, the State Department an­ nounced that henceforth the Soviet Union would receive no further deliveries of equipment as reparations and that these would be made exclusively to western countries. Franco-Soviet relations crumbled shockingly. Moscow accused Paris of opposing the return of displaced persons to the Soviet Union. Supplies of arms were unearthed in a Russian repatriation camp in France. Sixteen persons of Soviet origin were expelled for having interfered in French affairs during the strikes. The Kremlin expelled the French repatriation mission, which was engaged in returning thousands of prisoners from Alsace and Lorraine who were still held in the Soviet Union, and suspended commercial negotiations. The talks that had been going on for several months in preparation for the Franco-Polish and Franco-Czechoslovak treaties dragged out indefi­ nitely. The hour of the rupture of alliances was near. . . . •

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 Bedell Smith, p. 220. 2 Bedell Smith, p. 229. 8 Grosser, p. 72. 4 Forrestal, p. 39. 8 Truman, I, p. 555. 4 Truman, I, p. 556. 7 Fleming, p. 419-20. 8 Année politique, 1957, p. 113. • Truman, II, p. 112. 10 Sherwood, p. 803. 11 Truman, D, p. 113. 12 Congressional Record, June 30, 1947. 18 Truman, II, p. 112. 14 Alexander Werth, France 19401955 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1956) p. 359. 18 Année politique 1947, p. 353. 14 Truman, II, p. 116.

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17 Année politique 1947, p. 89. 18 Forrestal, pp. 138-9. 14 George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in The Soviet Union 1922-1962, A Foreign Affairs Reader (New York: Praeger, 1963) pp. 183-4. 24 Le Monde, October 7,1947. 27 Ibid. 22 Jean Marie Créac’h, Le coeur et Vépée (Paris: Plon, 1958) p. 433. 28 Samuel Hoare, Ambassador on Special Mission (London: Collins, 1946) p. 300. 24 Forrestal, p. 328. 28 Peter Calvocoressi, Survey of In­ ternational Affairs 1947-1948 (London: Oxford University Press, 1952) p. 236. 24 Werth, France, p. 384.

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Europe will soon become simply two enemy camps: the divisions between them will no longer be those of nations or territories but rather those of color and belief. —Napoleon to Las Cases

“ W E H A V E B E C O M E M E R E V A SSA LS,” JA N M A S A R Y K , T H E

Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, observed to his colleague Ripka a short time after Stalin had compelled them to have nothing to do with the Marshall Plan conference,1 but in the winter of 1947-1948 many of their compatriots did not realize the truth of his observation. They did not understand that parliamentary democracy could survive in Prague only by the grace of the Kremlin, the obedience of the local Communists to its instructions and the firm resolution of BeneS to maintain relations of complete trust with the Soviet Union. The Czech President was a convinced European and democrat. But his major preoccupation was to keep his liberated country safe from a new thrust by that Germanism whose determined enemy he had been throughout his life. Munich having taught him the value of Western guarantees, he counted on Slavic solidarity for security against the Germans. He was installed in London during the war at the head of a provisional gov­ ernment in exile. Because he wanted to reestablish diplomatic rela­ tions with Russia, as soon as the Germans had launched their attack on the Soviet Union he forgot that Russia had countenanced the Reich’s seizure of Bohemia. In May 1943 he went to Moscow to sign .

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a treaty of alliance with Stalin. This was supplemented by an agree­ ment with the Communist Party, whose representatives, although they had dragged him in the mud three years earlier, joined the exiled parliament. When he saw de Gaulle on his return from Moscow, Benes declared: “Look at the map. The Russians have reached the Carpathians. But the Western Powers are not yet ready to land in France. Hence it is the Red Army that will liberate my country from the Germans. Afterward, in order for me to be able to establish my administration, it is with Stalin that I must come to an agreement. I have just done so, and on conditions that will not mortgage Czecho­ slovakia’s future.”2 But in March 1945, when a new government was established in Kosice in liberated Slovakia under the leadership of the left-wing Social Democrat Fierlinger, formerly ambassador to the Soviet Union, the Communists took eight of the twenty-five portfolios, including two vice premierships and the post of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. General Svoboda, the Minister of Defense, was sym­ pathetic to the Communists. The key elements of the state, therefore, were now in the hands of the extreme left, which could seize total power whenever it decided to do so. But this was not what Stalin wanted to do; instead, he wanted Czechoslovakia to provide the evi­ dence that a harmonious understanding among all anti-Fascist parties was possible, and for the moment he was satisfied with the annexation of sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to the Ukraine. Elections took place all the more freely because the Communists had long had numerous and enthusiastic supporters in Bohemia and especially in Prague. The agrarian reforms remained within a mod­ erate and limited sphere, and, in spite of a few squabbles, Czechoslo­ vakia for two years seemed to provide a real bridge between East and West. Having become premier, the Communist Gottwald declared that he wanted to achieve “a new kind of democracy,”3 and Benes was happy to observe on the continent the transition of pure liberal­ ism into a system in which the socialist elements would carry a con­ siderable, i.e., preponderant, weight.4 This was the type of develop­ ment that Stalin wanted for Finland, Yugoslavia (where it was thwarted by Tito’s revolutionary resoluteness) and Hungary, which a representative from Belgrade described at the time as “a popular democracy of one-tenth of one per cent.”3 A wholehearted Stalinist— faithful to his master even after death, since both were interred in *

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mausoleums from which later their bodies were removed—Gottwald did what he was told. He could be moderate or fierce as Soviet interests demanded. By making the division of Europe concrete, the Marshall Plan sounded the death knell for Bene! and Masaryk’s attempts to pre­ serve good relations with both sides. In the autumn of 1947, Prague had to withdraw from the negotiations it was holding with France to conclude a treaty of alliance against Germany. At the same time the Communists declared war on all those in Czechoslovakia itself whom they suspected of having any connection with the United States. On September IS it was announced that a “conspiracy” had been discov­ ered in Slovakia, where demonstrators had protested the execution of the former pro-German chief of state, Msgr. Tiso. Ursiny, the Demo­ cratic Vice Premier of the Bratislava Government, whose secretary was said to have been involved, was compelled to resign. National elections were to be held in May. Everyone, beginning with Benes,8 expected that the extreme left, which a large part of the public blamed for an exceptionally severe food crisis, would be de­ feated. The defeat of those Social Democrats who advocated merging with the Communist Party at the party congress in November that had ousted their chief, Fierlinger, from his office as president was considered a specially significant straw in the wind. Well aware of the threat hanging over them, the Communists spent their time in consolidating their hold on the labor unions, the army and the police. In early February, Nosek, a member of the Communist Party and Minister of the Interior, dismissed eight high officials of the secret service, whom he replaced with men on whom he could count. At the instance of the National Socialist Party, the majority in the government demanded that Gottwald rescind Nosek’s order. When the Premier refused, twelve ministers resigned on Febru­ ary 20. They expected to cany all their non-Communist colleagues with them and thus force the Communist Party to back down if not to give up the Ministry of the Interior entirely. But this was not to be. Three days before, the Party’s Central Committee had published a manifesto accusing the bourgeois parties of seeking to place an anti­ democratic government in power and calling on the workers to rally in Prague to thwart this plan. On February 19, Zorin, the Soviet Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and future ambassador to Paris, had ar­ •

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rived in Prague. In the face of the mobilization of the working class and the threat of Russian intervention that seemed implicit in this unexpected visit, which was supported by a violent press campaign in Moscow, at the last second the Social Democratic ministers refused to join their bourgeois colleagues. Gottwald called on Benes to accept the resignations of the bour­ geois ministers and to form a government “without reactionaries.” At first Benes refused. But 200,000 workers demonstrated in the streets of Prague, while revolutionary action committees and an armed working-class militia instigated by the Communists sprang up virtually everywhere. On February 23, the police dispersed a student demon­ stration with gunfire and launched a series of attacks against the leaders of the National Socialists, whom Nosek accused of having organized a conspiracy. On the next day the extreme left, by force of arms, took over the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party, whose Central Committee was then actually meeting. Another twenty-four hours and Benes yielded, while thousands of Communists in blue coveralls with guns in their belts paraded through the capital. All important cabinet posts were assigned to Communists except the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which remained in the hands of Jan Masaryk, “If I had to choose between the East and the West,” he had told the American Howard Smith the year before, “I would have to go with the East. But it would kill me.”7 On March 10 his body was found beneath the window of his offices in the Foreign Ministry. Officially the death was called a suicide. Some who had known him well said this was unlikely. But up to the present there has been no reliable evidence to establish the truth of the matter. In any event, the National Socialist Minister of Justice, Drtina, had definitely tried to kill himself on February 27, also by leaping from a window. Still alive when he was found, he was sent to prison, and in the meantime those bourgeois leaders who could do so fled to other countries. On May 30 elections were held, based on the single-list system; on June 8, BeneS, whose feeble health had been undermined by events, offered his resignation. He died in September. A vast and silent throng at his funeral mourned not only the man but the loss of freedom. As far as the relationship of forces, of military and political reali­ ties, was concerned, the coup d’état had not changed things much. *

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But, because it had taken place in Prague, in the heart of Europe, where nine years earlier the Nazis’ establishment of a “protectorate” over Bohemia had destroyed all hope of avoiding war, it echoed loudly. On February 26, Washington, London and Paris issued a note condemning “a development whose consequences could be only dis­ astrous for the Czechoslovak people.”* This was a rather remarkable step. There was no proof of foreign interference in the crisis; therefore the Prague government would simply reject, without further com­ ment, such meddling in its internal affairs. On March S, General Clay in Berlin sent his chief of army intelli­ gence a cable that was quite typical of the anxiety of the time. “Within the last few weeks,” he wrote, “I have felt a subtle change in Soviet attitude which I cannot define but which gives me a feeling that [war] may come with dramatic suddenness.”* It took intelligence headquarters ten days to compose a report for Truman and his ad­ visers to the effect that war “was not probable within sixty days.”10 9

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Czechoslovakia was not the only country in Stalin’s sphere of influence where he had apparently decided early in 1948 to liquidate the least bit of opposition. This was the period in which he started the huge operation that to his mind would lead to the submission or elimination of all those in the Communist parties of eastern Europe who dared to argue with the Kremlin instead of regarding its slightest wish as a command. The prototype of all these was Tito, whose break with the Cominform in June shocked an incredulous world. Ever since he had joined the Social Democratic Party of Croatia in 1910 at the age of eighteen, the Yugoslav marshal had been an exemplary Bolshevik. A soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army and captured by the Russians, he had enrolled in the Red Guard. When he returned to Zagreb after the war, he had joined the Yugoslav Communist Party, which was outlawed almost immediately there­ after. His underground activities had been interrupted only by the time he spent in prison or in the Soviet Union. In 1937 the Comin­ tern— i.e., Stalin— had made him general secretary of a Communist Party that had been sorely tried by the ordeal of an unsuccessful up­ rising in 1929 and by the elimination of his predecessor, Milan Gorkic, as an alleged agent of the Intelligence Service. Subsequently, *

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Tito had approved the Nazi-Soviet treaty. He had given the order to rise against the Nazis as soon as they attacked the Soviet Union. In those days he and his comrades unreservedly considered the Soviet Union their second fatherland and Stalin the leader of their struggle. Yet the roots of the Soviet-Yugoslav conflict go back precisely to the years of the common war against Hitler. For the master of the Kremlin, Yugoslavia was one of the pieces in the chess game that he was playing against the Western Powers. It was in his interest that the country, like Czechoslovakia and Hungary, should agree at least temporarily to co-exist with Russia. Tito intended to construct com­ munism quickly, and this presupposed that he would take an ex­ tremely hard line with the Western Powers, to whom the former gov­ ernment had relinquished a substantial part of the countiy’s natural wealth. This was one of the main reasons for the conflict. There were many others, beginning with the Russian proclivity for treating Yugo­ slavia like an occupied country, secretly surrounding the officials of the Belgrade government with their own information agents, and seeking to set up “mixed” Soviet-Yugoslav agencies, where the word “mixed” ill concealed the fact that they were intended to serve Soviet purposes exclusively. Above all there was the forceful personality of the Yugoslav marshal himself, in sharp contrast to the customary dullness of Eastern leaders. His popularity, evidenced by the trium­ phal welcomes that he received when he made official visits to Sofia, Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest, annoyed Stalin, who could not bear to have anything but supernumeraries around him. And to boot, Tito was not without ambition. It was not enough for him to struggle with Italy over Trieste, with Austria over southern Carinthia, with Greece over a part of Macedonia. Albania, where Yugoslav partisans had organized the resistance movement, was almost wholly under his influence, and he was actively campaigning for a Balkan federation that would start with the federation of Yugo­ slavia and Bulgaria. If this plan succeeded, if other countries sought to join this new association, there was eveiy likelihood that he would be its unchallenged leader, and this would have put him on a footing of virtual equality with the generalissimo in the Kremlin. Talks had begun as early as the end of 1944, and at that time Moscow had approved this project that had in fact figured in the pro­ *

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gram of the Yugoslav Communist Party in the 1920s and that was intended to lead to integration with the Soviet system itself. It was soon apparent, however, that the viewpoints of Sofia and Belgrade diverged. The Bulgarians wanted the federation to consist of two states: their own and Yugoslavia. But Tito pointed out that his coun­ try was itself already a federation of states, certain of which, such as Serbia and Montenegro, had enjoyed independent existences long before Bulgaria. As he saw it, then, Bulgaria should receive a status similar to those of the six Yugoslav republics, Bulgarian Macedonia being merged with Yugoslavia. The British opposed the scheme, and since at that time Stalin wanted to avoid quarreling with the Western Powers, the talks were suspended. In 1947 they resumed in Bled between Tito and Dimitrov, both of whom declared that they had decided to bring about the federation “gradually.”11 But on an official visit to Bucharest in January 1948, Dimitrov was more loquacious. He said that the question of a federation or a confederation was “premature,” but that solutions had already been “prepared” and that at the proper time the nations of the peoples’ democracies, including Greece, would work the matter out.13 This was the first clue the West had that there were discords inside the citadel of the “Socialist camp.” On January 29, in fact, Pravda pub­ lished an editorial note stating that the countries in question “did not require some more or less dubious and artificial form of federation, confederation or customs union.” On February 1 Dimitrov flatly re­ tracted. Stalin then decided to intervene personally. On February 10 a Soviet-Bulgarian-Yugoslav conference began in the Kremlin. Tito had declined to attend, believing that his lieutenant Kardelj, who had left for the Soviet Union a few days before, could handle the business perfectly well. From the very beginning of the discussions, which of course were completely secret but which the Yugoslavs later reported in full detail, the Georgian dragged poor Dimitrov, stammering ex­ cuses, through the mud. At the same time he suggested to the con­ ferees that they immediately set up a Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation and “annex” Albania.18 He followed this with a panoramic survey of foreign policy in which he emphasized the differences of view between Moscow and Belgrade, especially with respect to Greece and Albania. Consulting afterward, the Yugoslavs concluded that Stalin had in­ •

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sisted on their creating the federation only because he believed that he would be able to keep closer check on the actions of Belgrade through the more pliable Bulgarians. On the next day Molotov kept urging Kardelj, who finally gave in, to sign an agreement for mutual consultation, which was designed to eliminate what Stalin called Yugo­ slavia’s bad habit of acting without consulting the Soviet Union. On the same day, portraits of Tito were removed from wherever they hung in Rumania, a fact that first provoked Western rumors of diffi­ culties between Belgrade and Moscow. Several days later the Kremlin cancelled the meeting in April at which the Soviet-Yugoslav commer­ cial agreements were to be renewed. The Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party con­ sidered the postponement as a form of intolerable pressure, for the Soviet Union was far from being the country’s major customer or chief supplier, and Yugoslavia was depending strictly on herself to fulfill her five-year plan. On March 1 the Central Committee decided to reject the Soviet demand that Yugoslavia immediately establish a federation with Bulgaria. On March 18 Moscow reacted by recalling its military advisers. On April 12, after a sharp exchange of letters with Stalin and Molotov dealing mainly with the activity of Soviet intelligence agents in Yugoslavia, the marshal reconvoked the new Central Committee. With the exceptions of Finance Minister Zujovich, who was more­ over immediately arrested, and former Politburo member Hebrang, all its members agreed on the terms of a new message to the Kremlin, which constituted a refusal to accept its claim. Thereupon the Rus­ sians called a meeting of the Cominform; remembering the ambushes into which Ukrainian and Polish Communist leaders had fallen be­ fore the war, the Yugoslavs refused to attend. The session was held in Bucharest on June 20. Neither Gomulka nor Dimitrov, who when he had passed through Belgrade two months earlier, had advised Djilas to “be firm,”14 attended the meeting. The resolution published on June 28 stated that the Yugoslav Communist Party had adopted a “false” line, implying that it had deserted Marxism-Leninism. It condemned the Yugoslavs’ reprehensible policy of slandering the Soviet Union, the “shameful, purely despotic and terrorist nature of the government,” the abandonment of the Marxist theory of class struggle, lack of democracy within the party, the nationalism of its •

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leaders, in a word their “revisionism.” It added that the party “was placing itself outside the family of fraternal Communist parties” and it urged the “healthy elements” within it to compel their leaders to admit their errors or, if they refused, to replace them.15 Stalin then boasted, if one is to believe Khrushchev's secret report to the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, of having beaten Tito “simply by wiggling his little finger.”1* But, although one Communist party after another concurred in the denunciation of the Titoist heresy, the Yugoslav party remained vigorously united behind its chief. On July 21 the 2,344 delegates of the Fifth Congress denounced the Soviet slanders and acclaimed Tito and his colleagues. The Kremlin, however, had important sources within the ranks, be­ ginning with Jovanovich, former chief of staff of the Army, and two other generals. The Danube Conference that was also held in July in Belgrade gave the Soviet delegation the opportunity to make contact with them. A putsch was projected, and Anna Pauker of Rumania boasted that “everything will be in order in Yugoslavia in a few days.”17 But the three officers found little support and, fearing arrest, they tried to slip into Rumania. Jovanovich was killed in a skirmish and his two collaborators arrested and sentenced. The coup d’état having failed, Stalin tried everything short of armed attack: frontier incidents, an increasingly violent propaganda campaign that went so far as to brand Tito a “Hitlerian-Trotskyite agent,” a veritable economic war. In January—probably in order to create a provocation— Stalin and Molotov had urged Djilas to “swallow” Albania,18 just as they themselves had “swallowed” the Baltic states, and now on July 1, 1948, Albania denounced all its economic agreements with Belgrade, charging that Yugoslavia had tried to impose her will on Albania. Rumania soon cut off oil deliv­ eries. By summer 1949 Yugoslavia’s trade with the people's democra­ cies had fallen almost to zero. Only then did Tito, who for a year had tried to convince the Communist movement of his good faith, finally recognize that his sole choice was to reconcile himself with the West whose dedicated enemy he had been for so long and that asked nothing better than a chance to help him, provided that he stood firm in his declared policy of independence and non-engagement. The Kremlin punished him for this, not only by intensifying its campaign •

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against his "bourgeois” neighbors but also by increasing its harassments. One of these consisted of using a capital G in its diplomatic notes to designate the Soviet Government while always using a small g for the Yugoslav Government. We do not know whose bril­ liant mind excogitated this ultimate in pettiness and if "destalinization” cost him his job. The Kremlin’s Cold W ar against the rebellious marshal obviously implied that all his friends, real or imagined, in Communist countries would have to be eliminated from positions of command. The first victim was Gomulka, the leader of the Polish Workers’ Party, who had always remained very close to the people and both before and after the war shared their sufferings. Even though he was markedly different from the Yugoslav heretic in both demeanor and tempera­ ment, he had never given more than lip service to the condemnation of Tito. On August 31, 1948, he was relieved of his position as gen­ eral secretary of the party and replaced by that perfect Stalinist bureaucrat, Boleslaw Bierut, formerly president of the Lublin Com­ mittee. Bierut denounced Gomulka before the Central Committee for having minimized the Titoist peril, for not having recognized the leadership of the Soviet Union within the socialist camp, and for having protected the kulaks—“rich” peasants. Accustomed like all good Communists to bow to the exigencies of discipline, Gomulka pronounced his "self-criticism.” But it totally lacked conviction. Kept on as a member of the government, he was vilified in December at a congress convoked in order to merge the Socialist and Communist parties. This time it was too much. "You have organized a demon­ stration against me!” he shouted. "You have tried to reduce me to a dishrag! But you will not succeed!”10 In 1950 he was thrown into prison, but there was never an official announcement of his arrest. Though Gomulka managed to save his neck and the aged Dimi­ trov had the good luck to die in bed in 1949, the presumed “Titoists” in other people’s democracies were less fortunate. Again in 1949 there were the executions of Kotchi Xoxe and Laszlo Rajk, former Ministers of the Interior of Albania and Hungary respectively, of Traicho Kostov, former secretary of the Bulgarian Central Commit­ tee, and of their so-called accomplices in treason. The implausibility of the confessions of these men, who after having risked their lives for twenty years in the service of communism, denounced themselves *

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as having never really been anything but agents of imperialism, aroused even in those western circles that until then had been the strongest champions of collaboration with the extreme left a feeling of horror comparable to that brought on before the war by the great Moscow Trials. From the other side of the “Iron Curtain,” now more impenetrable than ever, the only news that emerged was one report after another of the discovery of some new conspiracy and the pun­ ishment of its organizers. Things even went so far that state prosecutors came to stand in the same docks where before they had arraigned prisoners whom they had sent to the gallows. Besides the relics of the old order, the bour­ geois parties and the Social Democrats, there were now countless suspects arrested for a word, a family relationship, and sometimes for nothing. Soon they were joined by hundreds of bishops, priests and Catholic laymen. Unquestionably the Church of Rome had been cruelly persecuted since 1945 and virtually reduced to silence in countries where it formed only a tiny minority—the Ukraine, Bulga­ ria, Rumania, the Baltic states. The Uniates of Ruthenia had been forced back into orthodoxy. But in other nations of the east the secular power seemed to have understood that the feelings of people deeply attached to the faith of their ancestors had to be considered. Accustomed by their doctrine to look on religion as a mere super­ stition that would disappear with the remnants of the social and economic systems that had enabled it to survive, the Communists in power hoped gradually to eliminate it through propaganda, the demonstration of the superiority of their philosophy and administra­ tive harassment. If Archbishop (later Cardinal) Stepinac of Zagreb had been sentenced in 1946 to life imprisonment, it was because during the occupation he had collaborated somewhat too closely with the Croatian separatist government of the sinister Pavelitch, whose “Ustachis” had forced thousands of Orthodox communicants at gunpoint to acknowledge the authority of the Holy See. And even Tito had delayed prosecution until the prelate, still in office, had vehemently inveighed against the laicization of the state. And if similarly, in Bratislava, Msgr. Tiso had been condemned to death in 1947, it was because from 1939 to 1945 he had presided over the destinies of the Slovak state allied with Hitler. The trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, Prince-Primate of Hungary, *

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had an entirely different character. His behavior during the occupa­ tion had been beyond reproach and it was the Russians who had liberated him from the prison into which he had been flung by the men of the “Arrow Cross,“ the Hungarian Nazis. In spite of his arrogance and the legitimist sympathies that he did not trouble to hide, he did not come into conflict with the government until 1948, after the chief of the Communist Party, Rakosi, had announced his intention of “regularizing the relations between the Church and the People’s Republic within the year.”20 On July 1 Parliament voted to nationalize education. The prelate protested strongly. On December 29 it was officially announced that he would be tried for high treason, conspiracy, espionage and currency violations. His comportment in court bore no resemblance to what might have been expected from a man so belligerent in character and so convinced of the rightness of his cause. From start to finish, apparently “broken”, he never stopped repeating his regret and repentence. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. Even his liberation in 1956 during the Budapest uprising afforded no opportunity to illuminate the real rea­ sons for his behavior. As soon as the Russians returned, he sought refuge in the American legation, from which he has never emerged. In 1951 it was the turn of the cardinal’s successor, Msgr. Groesz, to appear at the bar of justice. During his trial he admitted whatever he was asked to admit. The Archbishop of Prague and Primate of Czechoslovakia, Msgr. Beran, had been arrested the year before but was never brought to trial. In 1965 he was allowed to go to Rome, where Pope Paul VI bestowed the cardinal’s hat on him. His Warsaw colleague, Msgr. Wyszynski, had also been able to go to the Vatican in 1951 to meet the Pope. This was virtually the only contact established at that time between “the silent Church" and the Holy See, where, on the eve of the Italian elections of 1948, the Holy Office had forcefully restated the validity of Pius X I’s condem­ nation of atheistic communism in the encyclical Divini Redemptoris. At the time one could discern a certain amount of success in the efforts of the Kremlin and its local representatives to cut Catholics off from Rome by encouraging national schisms and progressive movements such as the “Catholic Action” of the banned priest, Plohjar, who became a member of the Prague government, or the Polish group known as “Dzis l Jutro.” •

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In 1950 the Hungarian hierarchy had agreed to purchase a modus vivendi with the secular power at the price of an appeal to the faithful to take part in the “glorious labor” of the Magyar people under the leadership of its government.31 It supported the “peace movement” that, in spite of the obvious sincerity of some of its ad­ herents, served essentially to disseminate the slogans of Soviet foreign policy among non-Communists. In the following year the Hungarian hierarchy went so far as to declare its allegiance to the government. As for the Czech episcopate, it gave its priests permission to contri­ bute to “constructive efforts tending to bring about the happiness of the Czechoslovak people.”23 One of the things that destalinization demonstrated was that faith, which was the sole refuge for many people against an unacceptable present, in the end resisted the persecutions of the East much better than did the blandishments of the most mundane materialism in the West. A t the beginning of 1948 another country seemed to be threat­ ened by Stalin’s desire to replace the coalitions that had thus far prevailed with an almost direct totalitarian administrative system along the Soviet buffer zone. As early as January the Kremlin had shown its interest in its northern neighbors by inviting the Oslo gov­ ernment to join in mutually guaranteeing the defense of the Spitz­ bergen archipelago, which had been transferred to Norway by treaty in 1920. King Haakon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Halvard Lange, who had been damaged in body but not in energy or intellectual keenness by a long ordeal in Nazi concentration camps, saw through this at once; he announced that he was ready to take part in multi­ lateral negotiations but rejected any thought of bilateral conversa­ tions. The matter was dropped. But meanwhile something much more important had got under way in Finland. On February 22, the very day when Gottwald put BeneS on the spot, the TASS news agency distributed a letter signed by Stalin personally and addressed to the Finnish President, Juho Paasikivi, who had negotiated with the Russians before the war in 1939 and who on two occasions, in 1940 and 1944, had made peace with them. The generalissimo pointed out that of the three neighbors of the Soviet Union allied to the Reich, two— Hungary and Rumania— had just signed mutual assistance treaties with Russia, and he sug­ *

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gested that Finland follow their example.38 Now the major provision of these treaties laid it down that after the treaties were signed, these now more or less allied countries would permit the Soviet troops already there as occupation forces to remain. The Russian move aroused all the more anxiety because the Communists had clearly received a set-back in the municipal elections of the previous month, December. It was reasonable to wonder whether, as in Czechoslovakia, the Communists, who held the Min­ istry of the Interior, might not try to consolidate their power before the national elections threw them out of the government. There is every reason to believe that this was their and Stalin’s purpose. “We made a mistake by not occupying Finland,” Djilas had been told in January 1948 by Andrei Zhdanov, who, now that he was the grand master of ideology, continued nonetheless his special assignment for northern affairs. “Everything would have been taken set up if we had.” And Molotov added: “Akh, Finland—that is a peanut.”24 This alimentary comparison, made just when Stalin was suggest­ ing that Yugoslavia simply “swallow” Albania, was the more eloquent because events in Czechoslovakia had aroused great enthusiasm among the extreme left in Finland and the wife of the Minister of the Interior Yrjo Leino, who had gone to Moscow with him on a “private” visit, had said on March 25 with reference to what had happened in Prague: “That is the road that we too should take.”29 It seems that, as in 1939, the Soviet leaders made an error of judgment with respect to Finland when she requested an armistice in 1944. Profiting by the special sympathy of the United States, the Helsinki government had managed to avoid being occupied by Soviet Russia: in return, it had undertaken to expel the Germans by its own efforts and to pay huge reparations. Stalin had set the total so high— $300 million in six years— that he probably thought that the Finns would never meet it. They succeeded nevertheless, creating out of nothing by dint of tremendous effort the heavy industry necessary to produce die machine tools that, among other things, Moscow de­ manded. Irritated, the Russians invented various complications. They demanded that the reparations be calculated on the basis of the 1938 dollar and not, as Helsinki had expected, on its value at the time the peace treaty was signed. The difference added approximately 53 per­ *

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cent to the reparations bill. They demanded that Finland pay them the whole of a debt of $27 million that she had contracted with Germany. They also exacted a penalty of 5 percent per month for any delays in deliveries. But the shipments were always made so regularly that the Soviet representatives had no cause for complaint. As a result Finland remained entirely independent, her press could crit­ icize the Soviet Union and her government could maintain a policy of absolute neutrality in contrast to the growing submission of the “people’s democracies.” Stalin hated the idea of neutrality. Zhdanov’s analysis at the organizational meeting of the Cominform recognized only two sides, the “imperialist” and the “socialist.” Whoever did not adhere to the second played the game of the first. There was no clear reason why Finland should escape the obligation of making a choice. If she nevertheless managed to do so it was basically because of the tenacity of her people and the wiliness of old Paasikivi, who in 1948 was able to put through the maneuver of appeasement that he had vainly urged his government to attempt in 1939. Taking his time, he replied to Stalin that he was inclined to enter into negotiations but that “after the hardships that it had suffered in previous wars,”26 his country hoped to be able to remain aloof from all international conflicts— this was the reason why it had already refused the Marshall Plan aid— and that he thought that the actual drafting of the treaty would be the purpose of the talks. They began on March 23 in Moscow between Molotov and the Finnish Premier, Mauno Pekkala, a Social Democrat; meanwhile news agencies were relaying alarmist reports of Russian troop movements and Commu­ nist demonstrations were being staged in Helsinki. The treaty was finally signed on April 6 in Stalin’s presence: Finland promised to go to war to repel any armed attack by Germany or any of its allies, whether against herself or across her territory against the Soviet Union. But even in this case she did not commit herself to call for Soviet help. Such help and the forms it would take were simply to be the subject of consultations between the two parties. In this way Hel­ sinki avoided both the permanent occupation imposed on Rumania and Bulgaria and the danger of unilateral Soviet action. The Finnish Diet ratified the treaty on the same day by a vote of 157 to 1: thirty-one deputies were absent. Less than a month later *

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the test of strength began between the Communists and the other parties. Fearing defeat in the imminent national elections, the ex­ treme left had launched a campaign of social demands, openly en­ couraged by the Communist Minister of the Interior, Yrjo Leino, who has already been mentioned. Rumors of a putsch were rife. The Ministry of National Defense observed that it might be necessary to call up reservists, while the chief of police in the capital ordered weapons removed from local police stations and National Guard garrisons placed them in the central arsenal, which was controlled by the Army. Then the attack on Leino himself began. By eighty-one votes to sixty, Parliament voted a motion of censure against him, basing it on the fact that he had turned twenty persons over to Soviet authorities in 1945 without consulting the government. On May 22, in conformity with the Constitution, Paasikivi relieved the minister of his portfolio. Leino replied two days later, during a protest meeting: “We will not give up the post of Minister of the Interior: it belongs to the People’s Democratic Union and above all to the Communist Party.”27 A roar of approval went up when he called for a general strike. A “directorate for the presentation of demands” was soon created, openly intended to prevent any change in the government before the elections— in other words to return Leino to his duties. A second edition of the Prague coup seemed to be in the air. But the general strike failed. In contrast to their Czech comrades, the Socialists stood fast, and the Soviet Union did not make a move. Why? Perhaps Stalin was afraid that this stubborn nation would re­ fuse to be subjugated any more easily now than in 1940. Perhaps he feared an American reaction that would force him to back-track. Perhaps too his propaganda needed at least one “bourgeois” nation that enjoyed good relations with the Soviet Union. The fact remains that a compromise was reached. Leino was replaced as Minister of the Interior by a pro-Communist Social Democrat; his wife, Herta Kuusinen, joined the Cabinet under the title of Minister without Portfolio. Today she is divorced from Leino, who in the interim has been expelled from the Party as a “deviation­ ist”; although she dominates Finnish communism, she is no longer a member of the government. As had been expected, the extreme left suffered a substantial setback in the national elections of July 1948, •

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losing one-seventh of its popular vote and thirteen seats in Parlia­ ment. As a consequence, the new premier-designate, the Socialist Fagerholm, was in a good position to refuse to name a leftist as Min­ ister of the Interior. Unable to reach an understanding with the left­ ists, he set up a homogeneous Social Democratic cabinet that stood firm against a new wave of frankly political strikes. Not only had the Kremlin refused to move a finger to support its faithful, but on the eve of the elections it had halved Finland's remaining war indem­ nities. 9

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This unforeseen outcome came too late to have the soothing effects on international tension that might otherwise have been expected of it. Nothing, it now seemed, could any longer prevent the division of the world into two blocs in accordance with the Cominform’s analy­ sis and desires. On March 17, one week after the death of Jan Masaryk, France, Great Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxem­ bourg had signed a mutual-assistance treaty in Brussels. When Bevin had first proposed it on January 21, it was conceived of as extending to the Benelux countries the treaty that the French and British had signed a year before at Dunkirk. But there was a great difference between these two documents: the treaty of 1947 was directed against Germany; that of 1948 was directed "against any and all aggression.” The new phraseology had been suggested by the United States. Washington did not conceal the fact that it attached great importance to the creation of this core of a union of western Europe, with respect to which the head of the British foreign service had him­ self expressed the wish that it might be "backed by the Americans and the Dominions.”38 On the very day it was signed, Truman proclaimed his conviction that if the free nations of Europe were determined to protect themselves by their own efforts, the Americans would be equally determined to help them do so,20 and he requested Congress to reestablish compulsory military service. On March 5 Bidault had written confidentially to Marshall to suggest that he "tighten the political and, as soon as possible, the military collaboration of the old and new worlds, who are so closely united in their dedication to the only civilization of value.”80 And on March 11 Bevin had come out in favor of holding Anglo-American •

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talks on expanding the Brussels treaty and setting out a program of Atlantic security, reinforced by a program of Mediterranean security. The time was still distant when Eden, fearing to see the Russians set up a rival bloc, would discard the project for a western European alliance that Paul-Henri Spaak had formulated with the support of The Netherlands and Norway. The hour had struck for that Atlantic pact that, according to General de Gaulle,*1 Trygve Lie, had dreamed of since 1944 when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Norwe­ gian government in exile, and that, according to Bedell Smith,33 Truman too had contemplated since the beginning of 1946. It was no easy undertaking, however, to convince Americans, who had been nurtured on an isolationist tradition that went back to the founding fathers, to commit themselves permanently in the Old World. It was necessary first to demonstrate that the countries that would be helped were firmly resolved to defend themselves. Just as the key to the Marshall Plan had been the agreement among European nations to make a common effort toward economic recovery and share in United States aid, so the key to the Atlantic Alliance was the signing of the Brussels Pact, however limited its real significance might have been at the time considering the state of the forces actually available to the signers. The next thing was to skill­ fully re-educate the members of the United States Congress. This was the task of Marshall and Senator Vandenberg; on June 11 Vandenberg persuaded his colleagues to adopt a resolution in favor of “constitutionally taking part in regional or collective measures based on effective, continuing individual or mutual aid.”83 Only four senators opposed this historic document, which en­ abled the United States and Canada, whose Prime Minister, Louis St-Laurent, had been campaigning more than a year for the Atlantic Pact, to open negotiations with the signatories of the Brussels Pact on July 6. The negotiations were completed in two months. Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway and Portugal subscribed to the treaty, which was solemnly signed on April 4, 1949, in Washington to the strains of Hands Across the Seas. Ireland and Sweden, which had also been invited to sign, preferred to retain their traditional neutrality. On its own, Stockholm had unsuccessfully tried to persuade its Scandinavian partners to enter into a three-nation agreement. But it discreetly let it be known that it might reconsider its position [with respect to the *

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Atlantic Pact] if the Soviet Union tried to absorb Finland again. The different orientations of their foreign policies, however, did not pre­ vent the Scandinavian countries from reinforcing ties among them­ selves, notably by creating a “Nordic Council” and establishing a “common market” for labor. The North Atlantic Treaty stipulated that an armed attack against any one of its signatories would be tantamount to an attack against the territories of all, and it obligated each signatory to help the victim, but without defining the nature of the help. In spite of certain apprehensions, it appeared from the debates in the Capitol that preceded ratification of the treaty that the kind of assistance that the United States had in mind was essentially military. Only thirteen senators voted against it, and on September 22 Truman had no trouble in getting Congress to approve a gigantic appropriation for the supply of arms to members of the new alliance: almost $1.5 billion for die fiscal year 1949-1950: on the same day he announced to the world that the Soviet Union had exploded its first atomic bomb. Moscow’s reaction to the signing of the Washington pact was naturally violent. In a note dated April 1, the Soviet Foreign Minis­ ter contended that it was “obviously aggressive” and that it violated the Potsdam Agreements as well as the Anglo- and French-Russian treaties.*4 A month later, however, the Big Four reached an agree­ ment that ended the gravest crisis that had confronted the world since the capitulation of the Reich. One consequence of the failure of the Big Four conference in London in December 1947 was that it accelerated France’s adherence to Anglo-American policy toward Germany. It was during the same December that the Western Powers began negotiations that ended in the creation of an international authority for the Ruhr (of course without Soviet participation) on June 4, 1948, and the convening of a constituent assembly for western Germany. Later General de Gaulle caustically castigated this repudiation of a policy that he had striven to maintain to the last minute. He pointed out that the “Reich” thus created in Frankfort would be answered by another “in Berlin or in Leipzig” set up by the Soviet Union. Afterward, he added, “only one question will dominate Germany and Europe: which of the two Reichs will bring about reunification?”35 Again in the follow­ *

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ing year, during the birth pangs of the federal republic whose eager ally he was to become after his return to power, he turned his irony on the “illusions” of those who “pretended to believe that if no agreement was reached between East and West, two Germanys would arise.”86 The Russian attitude from the winter of 1947-1948 showed, however, that like the Americans they were resigned to a divided Ger­ many until such time as the people of West Germany would— in­ evitably, according to their Marxist minds— also choose the road of “socialism.” The pitch rose as the meetings went on in that ancient building where the Nazi “People’s Court” had sentenced dozens of Germans to be hanged for their parts in the plot of July 20, 1944, against Hitler. On January 20 Sokolovsky attacked Anglo-American attempts to integrate West Germany in the western military and political bloc.87 On March 10, after a violent discussion on the ban­ ning of the Socialist Unity Party in the western zones—where the Communist Party was operating normally—he asserted that all dis­ cussion was now useless. He repeated this ten days later, after his three colleagues had refused to include a review of a Polish-CzechYugoslav statement against the Western position on the German ques­ tion in the agenda. Having said his say and disdaining to consult the other members of the council, he took advantage of his turn in the chair to adjourn the session: the council was never to sit again. Marshall lost no time in making it known that in conformity with the international agreement binding the four controlling powers, the United States intended to continue to carry out its responsibilities as a member of the Control Commission.88 On March 31 the Russian commandant informed Clay that in order to improve the administration of the zone occupied by the U.S.S.R., Soviet officials would henceforth check the luggage and papers of all travelers on Western military trains entering Berlin.86 The American general protested against this violation of the principle of free access to the former capital, and he ordered a train to move under armed guard; the Russians merely shunted it on to a siding where it stayed for several days before returning to its starting-point. But the Kremlin did not stop here. After having claimed the right to require permits for trade by rail between Berlin and the outside, they stopped all trains as they left the eastern zone, limited the quantity *

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of parcel post and imposed individual permit requirements on river traffic. After the end of May, military traffic between Berlin and the rest of the world was virtually cut off. The Western Powers had to resort to airplanes to relieve and supply their garrisons; this was the start of the airlift that soon became a part of history. On June 18 the American, British and French occupation forces, recognizing that it was impossible to reach an agreement with the Russians on the best way to choke off the general inflation, promul­ gated a law in their zones that established a new currency: the Deutsche Mark, which soon became the foundation of the “German miracle.” They suggested that the former currency be continued in Berlin, provided that its issuance be jointly controlled. The Russians had left the Berlin Kommandatura two days before, demonstrating their feeling that Four-Power control had existed in Berlin as well as in Germany as a whole, and refused this offer. When they in turn introduced a new currency in their zone on March 23 they implied that it would circulate in all sectors of Berlin. On the same day they cut off the supply of electric current and coal to the western sectors, while Communist demonstrations that bordered on riots were held in front of the City Hall. Since the elections of October 1946 the city had been dominated by Social Democrats, who were against any merger with the extreme left. Berlin had gone so far as to elect Ernst Reuter to the mayoralty, and to the Russians this amounted to a kind of provocation. After being taken a prisoner of war in 1917 Reuter had become a friend of Lenin, who had appointed him to organize the descendants of the German colonists along the Volga; later general secretary of the German Communist Party, he had been expelled in January 1922 because he had demanded complete freedom of movement against the centralizing tendencies of Moscow. The Russians, who had not forgot this, vetoed his election. Finally he became the first Burgo­ master of West Berlin, after new demonstrations in September had compelled the city government to abandon the old City Hall, which stood in the Soviet sector. Until the last minute, however, the municipal administration had hoped to be able to preserve the unity of Berlin. It had taken a stand against the Western monetary reform and then asked the U.N. to serve as a mediator. But on June 30 it accepted the Soviet chal­ •

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lenge and called on “all men of whatever opinion” to condemn the “serious crime against humanity”40 of which the Russians had con­ victed themselves by imposing their blockade on Berlin. In fact, at 6 a .m . on June 24, under the pretext of having to repair the bridges over the Elbe, they had stopped all traffic on the Autobahn, the railway and the canals that linked Berlin with West Germany. Clay suggested sending an armed convoy through. But in Washington, where the utmost confusion reigned, the word was to abstain from any “provocation.” That there was a group in the American capital that was inclined to yield is proved by the cable that the Secretary of the Army, Kenneth RoyaU, sent to the Com­ mander in Chief to urge him not to put the new Western currency into circulation in Berlin “if there was any possibility that it might bring armed conflict.” But Clay replied that it was too late to go back on a decision taken after due deliberation and that he did not expect things to take a turn for the worse even though it was obvious that a firm stand always entailed certain risks.41 He concluded, not with­ out reason, that if ever the Russians wanted war, it would not be because of the Berlin currency but because they believed the time to be right for war. Finally, on June 26, Truman decided to provision the city by air until a “diplomatic solution” could be arrived at. On June 28, ISO planes landed at Tempelhof Airport with 400 tons of supplies: onethirtieth of the daily needs of the besieged city. The Russians, who clearly did not think the airlift could succeed, never once attempted to intercept the American and British planes. On July 3 the Western commanders paid a visit to Sokolovsky. Replying to Robertson of Britain, who said that he would like to come to an agreement on the monetary reform, Sokolovsky declared frankly that the “technical difficulties” that were blocking traffic be­ tween Berlin and western Germany would continue until the West abandoned its plans for a West German government.42 He said not a word about the monetary reform that, according to the official Soviet version, was the source of the crisis. In actuality, Stalin thought that he had found a way either to prevent the Allies from accomplish­ ing their plans in the west or to eliminate the Berlin outpost that Nikita Khrushchev thirteen years later likened to a “cancerous tumor.”4* •

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An equally futile exchange of notes followed this fruitless effort. To demonstrate how determined he was, Truman decided with Attlee's approval to send B-29 bombers to Britain—the planes that carried the atom bombs. At the same time, work was swiftly being completed on an airfield to handle large cargo planes. When Clay and his political adviser, Murphy, went to Washington on July 20 to confer with the President and his Cabinet, the volume of daily deliveries had already reached 2,400 tons and the people of Berlin were heroically accepting meager rations. Hope surged again in the United States, where the President interpreted the blockade as a counter-attack by international com­ munism after the defeats that it had just sustained in Greece, Finland, France, Yugoslavia and in the Italian elections. Clay told the National Security Council— the highest American policy-making body— that to abandon Berlin would be a disaster. This set off a debate on the best means of remaining there: an in­ tensification of the airlift, whose capacity, if it was to be truly ef­ fective, would have to be raised to 4,500 tons daily, or armed convoys. Finally Truman decided in favor of the former, as entailing less risk, in spite of the disadvantage that General Vandenberg, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, pointed out: namely, that this would involve concentrating in Germany the greater part of all transport craft avail­ able to the United States. A short time later he reached an agreement with London and Paris for a joint representation by the three ambassadors to Stalin himself. At 9 P.M. on August 2 the generalissimo received the three diplomats: Bedell Smith, Chataigneau and Sir Frank Roberts, Bevin’s private secretary, who substituted for the ailing British ambassador. Stalin proved extremely cordial. The American representative having told him that negotiation was impossible as long as the blockade continued, he replied that he by no means intended to compel the Western Powers to leave Berlin. “After all, . . . we are still Allies.“44 After discussing the monetary reform and the juridical bases of the Western Powers’ presence in the former German capital, he suggested that the Soviet zone’s currency be introduced into West Berlin simul­ taneously with the end of transport restrictions and the withdrawal of the Western currency. He was, therefore, no longer clinging to an­ •

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nulment of the London decisions on the creation of a West German government as a prerequisite. The ambassadors regarded this offer as “promising.”48 But after they met Molotov to draft the communiqué announcing agreement on these foundations, they sang a different tune. The Soviet minister intended to maintain all the restrictions that antedated the total blockade and he refused to give any assurance whatever on the con­ trol of credit circulation in Berlin. To the Western Powers this was a sword of Damocles hanging over the economy of their sectors. When the stalemate continued, they demanded a new meeting with Stalin, who received them on August 23. Still as cordial as ever, the Father of the Peoples began with a considerable concession; he gave them to understand that all really harassing curbs would be eliminated. Furthermore, he agreed that banknotes would be issued under the control of a four-power commission. But this time he insisted that the communiqué contain a passage concerning the establishment of a West German government and a statement that the discussion of this subject “took place in an atmosphere of mutual understanding.”44 Rightly or wrongly, the Western Powers considered that this was a trap and that the adoption of such phraseology would mean, as Bedell Smith wrote, that they had “sold out for a precarious stay of execution in Berlin.”47 In the end, however, it was agreed to send a directive to the four military commanders in the capital bidding them within a week to find a way of ending the transport restrictions and intro­ ducing the Eastern currency into West Berlin under four-power control. A new meeting with Stalin was envisaged for that date. But Sokolovsky utterly ignored the agreement in principle that had been reached in Moscow. On September 7 the four generals acknowledged that it was impossible to come to an understanding. Before taking leave of his colleagues, the Russian had given them friendly notice that Soviet air maneuvers would be held in the area of Berlin and that his pilots would certainly have to use the air lanes, since there was no convention forbidding such use. The ambassadors tried unsuccessfully to get back to Stalin: he had gone away on va­ cation. The “Kremlinologists” in the State Department, the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay argued interminably over the reasons why the Soviet Union had not carried out the compromise that the generalissimo himself had proposed. The most widely held opinion •

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was that the Politburo repudiated him. What has since been learned of the way in which Stalin, by merely lifting an eyebrow, made every back bend before him shows how badly the Soviet system was mis­ understood in those days; as Churchill said, it was “a mystery wrapped in an enigma.” Faced with the defeat of these attempts to arrive at a negotiated agreement with the Soviet Union, the United States, in spite of the hesitations of London and Paris, which could not quite see what was to be gained by such a move, brought the entire matter before the U.N. Security Council. On the initiative of the Argentine Foreign Minister Bramuglia, who was then President of the Council, the non-permanent members tried to find a conciliatory solution. But on October 22 Vishinsky vetoed the project that they had laboriously worked out because it did not expressly tie the elimination of the blockade to the introduction of the Eastern mark into the western sectors. On November 13 the Australian Minister Evatt, who was Presi­ dent of the General Assembly, and Trygve Lie, Secretary General of the U.N., called on the heads of the Great Powers to open talks at once to resolve the question of Berlin and to support Bramuglia’s efforts at conciliation. But this appeal was in vain. The Western Powers were winning, and they no longer felt any need to make concessions. On October 22, in fact, Clay had been able to tell the National Security Council of the United States that “the airlift was no longer an experiment.”48 Bad weather could no longer prevent the landing of planes that were now carrying a daily average of 4,000 tons of goods to Berlin. Economic life had been reorganized in the former capital, where even an electric power plant had been flown in, in parts, to say nothing of the coal required to keep it running. The whole of western Germany demonstrated its solidarity with the popu­ lation of the besieged city, which, on December 5, made its feelings clear by voting overwhelmingly for Ernst Reuter and his running mates in the municipal elections in West Berlin. Western politicians and intellectuals flew in to Tempelhof Airport one after another to encourage the Berliners. The frontline city (Frontstadt) had become the very symbol of the fight for freedom. The ordeal forged emotional bonds between the defeated enemy of yesterday and the most power­ •

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ful of its conquerors, bonds that neither the most brutal passions nor the most insidious wiles would later be able to touch. By the beginning of 1949 the Russians had acknowledged their defeat. Once more they had to retreat without losing too much face. Answering questions put by an American journalist, Kingsbury Smith, Stalin asserted that lifting the restrictions on the Western Powers* communications would present no difficulty if the counter-measures that the Western nations had taken were suspended at the same time and if the creation of a West German state was postponed until there could be a new meeting of the Foreign Ministers. He did not allude to the monetary question. On February IS, acting on instructions from Truman, to whom these remarks were like a flea in the ear, Jessup, the American delegate in the Security Council, asked his Soviet colleague, Malik, whether this omission had been deliberate. The Russian replied that he knew nothing about the matter but that he would find out. He brought back the answer a month later: it was affirmative. He asked only that at the same time the transport re­ strictions were ended that a decision be made on the convocation of the Council of Foreign Ministers. On May 4 a communiqué informed the world that the blockade would be lifted on May 12. The airlift did not stop, however, for several months after that. In all it had delivered almost two-and-a half million tons of goods to Berlin in some 275,000 flights. It had cost the lives of thirty-nine British and thirty-one American flyers and nine civilians; and it had cost the United States $350 million, Great Britain £ 17 million and the German people DM 150 million. The status quo ante was restored only with respect to communica­ tions. The Control Commission was not summoned to meet again, nor was the Four-Power Kommandatura. Two rival municipal gov­ ernments ran the western and Soviet sectors: in the west, that of Ernst Reuter, elected on December 5; in the east, that of Friedrich Ebert, son of the Social Democrat first President of the Weimar Republic, put into office a week earlier in the traditional City Hall by an assembly that had not been elected. The chief of police, Markgraf, who had been dismissed by the western city government and supported by the Soviet authorities, continued to perform his duties at the head of a police force now linked with that of the eastern zone. •

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On May 8 the Parliamentary Council in Bonn adopted the “fundamental law" that was to serve as the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. But the Western Allies exercised their veto against the extension of the new state’s authority to West Berlin, where they themselves intended to continue to enjoy those sovereign rights that the victors had pledged to assume on the sur­ render of the Third Reich. A week later, a People’s Congress totally dominated by the Communists in turn adopted a constitution for the German Democratic Republic on the pattern of the people’s de­ mocracies. It was hardly surprising, under these conditions, that the meeting of the four foreign ministers that began in Paris on May 23 should have adjourned on June 20 without having been able to achieve the slightest result. No one, however, would have had the temerity to prophesy that the positions of the two camps in Europe had been stabilized for any length of time, that it would require a nine-year wait before the Russians would seriously resume their attempt to destroy the Berlin outpost and that then they would twice more fail to do so. For some time it was to be Asia that would be the theater of the greatest— at all events of the bloodiest— battles of the so-called Cold War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 12 Dedijer, p. 316. 13 Dedijer, p. 321. 14 Dedijer, p. 350. 18 Le Monde, June 30,1948. 10 Le Monde, June 14,1956. 17 Dedijer, p. 385. 18 Djilas, p. 143. 19 Karol, Visa pour la Pologne, p. 135. 20 François Honti, Le Drame hon­ grois (Paris: Editions du Triolet, 1949) p. 134. 21 Fejtö, p. 378. 22 Fejtö, p. 380. 28 Le Monde, March 2,1948. 24 Djilas, p. 155.

1 Fejtö, p. 183. 2 de Gaulle, Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, II, Unity, 1942-1944, p. 534. 3 Fejtö, p. 95. 4 Manchester Guardian, December 15,1945. 8 Fejtö, p. 193. • Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart in Foreign Affairs, July, 1948. 7 Fleming, I, p. 495. 8 Le Monde, February, 28,1948. 9 Forrestal, p. 387. 10 Forrestal, p. 395. 11 Dedijer, p. 321.

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25 Lauri Hyvamaki, Les années de danger 1944-1948 (Helsinki: Editions Otava, 1954). A French translation of the principle pas­ sages of this book— the only one, to our knowledge, dedicated to these events— was kindly made available to us by the late Gunnar Palmroth, former ambassador of Finland in Paris. 2< Le Monde, March 16,1948. aT Hyvamaki. 88 Lord Ismay, NATO, The First Five Years (Paris, n.d.) p. 8. 28 Cl. Delmas, L'Alliance Atlantique (Paris: Payot, 1962) p. 154. s° Fauvet, p. 17. 81 de Gaulle, Complete War Memoirs II, p. 530. 82 Bedell Smith, p. 27. 88 Documentation sur FOtan, (Paris: NATO, 1957) A .l. annexC. 84 Keesing’s 9924B.

89 Jacques Fauvet, p. 144.

86 A. Grosser, La IVe République et sa politique extérieure (Paris: A. Colin, 1961) p. 137. 82 Clay, p. 350. 88 Le dossier de Berlin (Paris: U.S.I.S., Embassy of the United States, 1959) p. 13. 88 Forrestal, pp. 407-408. 40 Bernard Winter, Berlin, enjeu et symbole (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1959) p. 49. 41 Clav, p. 366. 42 Clay p. 367. 48 Winter, p. 160. 44 Bedell Smith, p. 244. 49 Bedell Smith, p. 245. 48 Bedell Smith, p. 250. 47 Bedell Smith, p. 250. 48 Truman, II, p. 129.

« CHAPTER

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TH E M A R G A R IN E C O M M U N IST S You know that China was ignorant of the ideas that tend toward action; and they took hold of her as the idea of equality seized the men of 1789 in France: gripped like prey. Perhaps that is true of the whole of yellow Asia. — A n d ré M alrau x ,

FAR

FR O M

P U T T IN G

AN

END

The Conquerors

TO T H E C I V I L W A R

IN

China, as might have been expected at one time, the Japanese ag­ gression of 1937 had created the conditions for a Communist victory and for spreading the struggle to most of the neighboring countries. Stalin’s loyalty to his Chinese disciples, however, had been put to a rough test. After having forced them into a reconciliation with Chiang Kai-shek against the invader, he surprised them in August 1941 when he concluded a non-aggression treaty with Japan that implied, among other things, the end of Soviet help to China and the recognition of Manchukuo, and hence of the seizure of China’s richest province by the Japanese imperialists. It can well be believed that the effect of this news on the leaders of Yenan was comparable to that of the announcement of the Nazi-Soviet alliance on the west­ ern Communists. But there is no record that Mao or his colleagues made any public disavowal. On the contrary, they accused Washing­ ton and Tokyo of plotting together and conniving with Chiang to arrive at an “Oriental Munich”1 at China’s expense. The collaboration between Mao and the Kuomintang had already •

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misfired. After the defeats that had cost Chiang most of the large Chinese cities in 1937-1938 and that had induced his chief lieu­ tenant, Wang Chin-wai, to set up a government favorable to the Japanese invader, the generalissimo— or, as he was called for short, the Gimo— had felt some little relaxation of enemy pressure begin­ ning in the summer of 1939. More moderate elements had come to power in Tokyo; their successors were more interested in conquering Southeast Asia than the deep reaches of the Middle Empire. Chiang took advantage of this fact to turn part of his forces against the Communists. Well aware that Japan could be defeated only if the United States and Great Britain entered the war—to which end he strove as hard as he could— he was seeking above all to prevent Mao’s supporters from taking advantage of the war to establish themselves in areas from which it would be impossible to dislodge them after the victory. As early as 1939, after having prohibited various mass organiza­ tions favorable to the Communists, he had set up blockades of the regions that the Communists controlled. In the winter of 1940-1941, he liquidated by force of arms the left-leaning high command of the “New Fifth Army” after he had driven it out of the territory that it occupied. “You think it is important that I have kept the Japanese from expanding during these years, . . he said at the time. “I tell you it is more important that I have kept the Communists from spreading. The Japanese are a disease of the skin, the Communists are a disease of the heart.’’3 When the Americans later found themselves at grips with the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, they suddenly discovered that a country whose resistance they had barely shored up until then was indeed important. Many promises were made to China, especially for arms deliveries, which were hardly fulfilled. Against the advice of Stalin, who had little respect for China, Roosevelt insisted that she be given the status of a great power. The chief problem for Washington was to determine how she could contribute to the war against Japan. There were two opposing schools on this subject. General Chennault, who commanded the Fourteenth American Air Force, believed that the chief value of the country lay in providing bases for his bombers. He insisted that priority be given to the development of these bases and he took ab­ *

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solutely no interest in the Chinese Army. Thus relieved of making even a token effort, Chiang obviously supported him to the hilt. This concept was vigorously opposed by the American Commander in Chief in the Far East, Stilwell, whose sour temperament had earned him the nickname of “Vinegar Joe.” A former military attaché in Peking who spoke their language fluently, he was fond of the Chinese and, in contrast to many of his compatriots, he was deeply convinced that they had an aptitude for war. He contended that it was necessary and possible to commit large Chinese forces successfully against Japan. But in his opinion three conditions were required: Burma had to be reconquered, for without it land communications could not be reestablished with free China, since the Japanese held her entire coast; the Kuomintang and the Communists would have to be recon­ ciled so that the troops involved in fratricidal struggles could be employed against the common enemy, and finally the Chinese armies would have to be placed under American command. In effect the general staff of the Kuomintang had not emerged from the Middle Ages and drastic reforms were required if an effective instrument was to be forged out of an organization sapped by corruption, byzantinism and incompetence. Stilwell, who was backed by Marshall and the American Secretary of War Stimson, therefore came into violent conflict with Chiang. “He did not conceal from the Chinese,“ his political adviser, John Paton Davies, wrote in a memorandum of March 1943, “what he thought of their incompetence and corruption.“* Now, what he thought was that the Gimo—whom he nicknamed “the peanut“— did not have the slightest intention of making any extra effort for the continuation of the war and that “anyone who pushed him in that direction would be opposed or eliminated.“ He went so far as to com­ pare the Kuomintang’s regime to Nazism.4 As for Davies, whom Dulles had dismissed in 1954 for lack of judgment and discretion, he summed up the situation by saying that China’s policy was to remain technically in the war so she could sit at the peace table as a fighting ally, but to commit as few of her forces as possible and rely on the other members of the United Nations and especially the United States to beat Japan. All these arguments, which led to nothing, made Roosevelt im♦

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patient. He did not like Stilwell’s harsh manner, but on the other hand he was susceptible to the influence of Madame Chiang, who spent most of her time in Washington, and to that of the banker, T.V. Soong, the Gimo’s shrewd foreign minister. He expressed in addition the opinion that in no case was there any chance that Mao would traffic with Tokyo, while itfwas never possible to be absolutely sure of the Kuomintang. Had not forty-two generals gone over to the Japanese with all their forces in the single year of 1943? True, some of them had acted with government agreement, applying the very Chinese tactic of the “Trojan horse:” no longer a burden on the Nationalists, they would desert the enemy as soon as he attempted to make use of them. But who could reasonably guarantee their intentions? Therefore it was important, in Roosevelt’s view, to humor the Nationalists and shore up the prestige of Chiang, for whom there was no visible replacement. To this end Roosevelt met Chiang in Cairo at the end of November 1943 in company with Churchill before going on to Teheran. The meeting ended in favor of Stilwell: he was au­ thorized to organize a general offensive to try to re-open the Burma Road. In addition the President undertook to persuade the Gimo that he had to bring the Communists into his government. According to Elliott Roosevelt, Chiang “agreed, contingently,”“ to this, pro­ vided that the United States would guarantee that the Soviet Union would respect the Manchurian border. The President did indeed question Stalin a few days later on his intentions in the Far East. The conversation lasted only three-quarters of an hour, in order not to arouse suspicion in Churchill, who was kept awake nights by the President’s anticolonialism. The meeting was dominated by the Georgian’s announcement of his decision to join the war against Japan within six months after the defeat of the Reich. Roosevelt had therefore to be satisfied with nothing but his willingness— which to the President was “obvious”— to leave Man­ churia to China and to support Chiang . . . against the British, whom he wanted to force into relinquishing Hong Kong and their con­ cessions in Canton and Shanghai. Roosevelt was able only to touch on the question of the orientation of the Chinese Communists—the Gimo had made his own conviction that they blindly followed Moscow’s orders unmistakably clear—and it does not appear that *

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this time “Uncle Joe” gave an accurate answer. To tell the truth, the Americans gave the matter little thought at the time. What was up­ permost in their minds was to get on with the war. But every one of them who had been able to spend any time with Mao in the caves of Yenan where his austere power was sheltered went home convinced that the Chinese Communists were infinitely more determined than the Nationalists to fight the Japanese. As early as 1942 Vice President Henry Wallace— whose progressivism got him into trouble with Truman four years later—had visited Communist China. Like all the journalists who had visited the Red troops— Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, Michael Lindsay—he had been struck by the contrast between their dignity, aggressiveness and discipline, and the indifference that reigned in Chungking, where the generals were said to be installed with their wives and children and had gone into business, in control of contraband through the lines and drawing enormous profits from it. The reports of American air­ men who had fallen in Communist-held territory corroborated these impressions. At this time the United States and the Soviet Union were allied against fascism, with which, after all, Chiang’s government had more than one common characteristic. Many Americans, beginning with their President, wanted to believe that the Soviet system would gradu­ ally evolve toward democracy. The dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 had strengthened this hope. Mao had taken this occasion to state that since 1935 the Inter­ national had not intervened in the affairs of the Chinese party. This was rather overstating it, inasmuch as the explanations given to the Party members after Chiang was set free in December 1936 had expressly mentioned the directives of the Comintern. Moreover, on July 1, 1943, Mao had given a speech hailing the Red Army, Marxism-Leninism and the inspired Father of the Peoples, and the style of the speech was perfect in its orthodoxy. Rather than heed the evidence, many people preferred to be lulled by illusions that Stalin himself was eager to sustain his wartime partners. This is why he told Averell Harriman on June 10, 1944, that “The Chinese Communists are not real Communists. They are ‘margarine’ Communists”*—an expression whose exact meaning, however, he was careful not to provide. Even more reassuring remarks were made to the ingenuous •

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General Hurley. Always mistrustful of the “dudes” in the State Department, whom he suspected of executing Churchill's policies rather than his own, Roosevelt had sent Hurley as his personal repre­ sentative to Chiang. A former cowboy turned oil king, Hurley was a Republican. But he had become a personal friend of the President, who valued his robust optimism, his remarkably dynamic nature and above all his utter loyalty. Immediately after the Teheran conference, Roosevelt had charged him with pursuing negotiations with the Soviet Union on the Far East. When he sent him to Chungking in August 1944, the situation had become dramatic. The plan for amphibious opera­ tions in Burma that had been drafted in Cairo were abandoned for lack of landing craft to get British and American troops ashore. All that could be managed was a land offensive, in which, on Roosevelt’s insistence, Chinese troops took part in force. The campaign enabled Stilwell not only to score great successes but also to prove that he had made no mistake in putting his faith in the martial qualities of the Chinese soldiers under the right commanders. In the midst of all this, a new event occurred to strengthen his position. In order to create a diversion, after their repeated defeats in the Pacific, the Japanese had moved over to the offensive in central China in May. In a few weeks they overran the Kuomintang armies, seizing seven American bomber bases, in particular that of Kweilin, where General Wedemeyer’s air lift had made it possible over the preceding years to amass a tremendous store of war matériel that had to be blown up on a moment’s notice. And Stilwell had empha­ sized and re-emphasized the danger of setting up major air bases in areas that were inadequately defended against a possible return of the enemy in force. Roosevelt was very upset and again sent Henry Wallace to China with the task of bringing the Kuomintang and the Communists into genuine negotiations. While refusing, Chiang suggested that the Americans mediate. He complained about Stilwell’s behavior and said he hoped that Roosevelt would send him a personal representative. And this was how Hurley came to be sent to Chungking. He traveled by way of Moscow, where it was no trouble for Molotov to convince him that the elements in China that were pretending to be Communists had nothing to do with either communism or the Soviet *

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Government. On his arrival in Chungking he told the Gimo that as he saw it, Stalin was convinced that communism could only succeed in Russia or at least that they should not try to impose it on other countries by force and that in his view Russia would not finance or direct any more Communist activities in other countries. He went on to plead vigorously with Chiang the need, which had already been set forth in a personal message from the President on July 6, to entrust the general management of the operations against Japan to Stilwell, with the right to use the Communists if circum­ stances warranted. On September 16 Vinegar Joe personally delivered a new letter from Roosevelt to the generalissimo, urging Chiang in effect to give Stilwell free rein. A month later, however, Stilwell was assigned to other duties. Hurley felt that it was an “affront” to Chiang for the general to have delivered the message in person. Encouraged by Hopkins, Roosevelt had given up the idea of forcing the Nationalists to come under the practiced hand of the Commander in Chief of the Far East by threatening to cut off their supplies, as Stimson and Marshall had urged. On November 7 Hurley arrived in Yenan, where he was en­ thusiastically welcomed; his natural exuberance and cowboy yells changed the reception into a carnival. He believed that all that was needed was a little good will to settle everything between the two Chinas. He spoke of a coalition government, a unified command, freedom of speech and assembly, and democracy American style. It would have been suicide for Chiang to agree to such a program. The most that he was willing to discuss was giving the Communists a place in the Defense Council, provided a million of their soldiers disarm, which was completely out of the question. After a new mission failed in January, Hurley, who had mean­ while been appointed official ambassador to China, allowed himself to be completely circumvented by the Gimo, whose ardent defender he became at every opportunity; he dismissed colleagues who were bold enough to doubt that Chiang’s policies were well-founded, and he was against sending arms to the Communists. The battles between the Communists and the Nationalists soon resumed. Official American policy, however, continued to call for the reunification of China under Chiang, a goal that Stalin himself *

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had expressly agreed with in conversations with Hurley on April 15, 1945, and with Hopkins on May 28. According to the account by Roosevelt’s eminence grise, which Truman had sent to Hurley in order to try to repair the deterioration in Soviet-American relations, he told him that “he would do everything he could to promote unifi­ cation of China under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek” and “that no Communist leader was strong enough to unify China.”7 In July Hurley cabled that in his opinion— it was always in his opinion— the Chinese Communists would join a united government if an agreement between the Kuomintang and the Kremlin convinced them that the latter was no longer backing them. And on August 14, the eve of the surrender of Japan, a thirty-year treaty of alliance was signed by China and the Soviet Union, and Moscow recognized the national government as the central government of China and com­ mitted itself to giving it full support. Both before and after the Potsdam Conference this treaty had been the subject of laborious negotiations between T.V. Soong, who had become premier, and Stalin and Molotov. The Russians had their own way of interpreting the promises that Roosevelt had made at Yalta— without consulting Chiang— in order to persuade them to enter the war against Japan after Germany surrendered. The preser­ vation of the status quo in Outer Mongolia became recognition of the People’s Republic de jure; the internationalization of Dairen, its long-term cession to the Soviet Union; the management of the Eastern Chinese and Southern Manchurian railways by a joint company, their running under Russian control. At a time when all the powers, one after another, were relinquishing their concessions in China, some­ what greater disinterestedness might have been expected from the nation that in 1921 had voluntarily yielded all the rights exercised in China by the tsarist empire___ The Chinese yielded only inch by inch and only after Stalin had solemnly promised to respect Mongolian sovereignty unreservedly and in no way to help Mao. During October the Mongolians were given the opportunity to vote in a referendum on independence for their country. Rarely was a vote so unanimous; there was no one, not even an eccentric or a madman, to vote “no.” True, the voters had to sign their names in a register, in one of two columns, depending whether they wanted to vote “yes” or “no.” •

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Many aspects of the Soviet-Chinese talks were still undecided when the attack on Hiroshima led the Soviet Union to accelerate its entry into the war against Japan. Now, as a result of the war, ChouTeh, the Commander in Chief of the Chinese Red Army, had hun­ dreds of thousands of combat soldiers in contrast to the tens of thousands that he had had before, and he immediately ordered them to accept the surrender of the Japanese armies wherever this might be possible, to move toward Manchuria in order to establish contact with the Russians and to set up provisional administrations in any regions that they liberated. These soldiers, who had received no supplies from either the Russians or the Americans, were poorly aimed. The surrender of Japan presented them with a splendid opportunity to replace their wooden rifles with fine new machine guns, to equip themselves with artillery, a motor pool—everything that goes to make up a modern army. There was nothing surprising in this move. Since the spring the Communists had been moving toward the coast, obviously in order to occupy as much territory as possible as soon after victory as pos­ sible; on several occasions pitched battles had ranged them against the forces of the Kuomintang. Therefore, as soon as he could, Chiang had to sign an agreement with Moscow that would recognize his authority over the whole of China. As far as Stalin was concerned, was not this treaty a mere paper concession, intended to conceal the help—his right hand not knowing what his left was doing— that he would give to his Chinese disciples? Virtually the only clue to his real intentions is a little phrase that was dropped during the Russian-Japanese-Yugoslav talks of February 1948. “Uncle Joe” had just observed that the Greek uprising could not possibly succeed and that it must be halted as quickly as possible. “Someone,” according to Djilas, who had the story from Kardelj, “mentioned the recent successes of the Chinese Communists.” The Georgian admitted the successes, declared that the problem was different, and added: “True, we, too, can make a mistake! Here, when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to reach an agreement as to how a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek might be found. They agreed with us in word, but in deed they did it their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck. It has been shown that they were right, and not we.”8 •

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From these remarks, of which Dedijer gives a similar version, it is clear that the Soviet leaders were lying when they told the Americans that they had no private relations with the Chinese Communists. And also that the Russians under-estimated the chances of the Chinese Communists. Unless Moscow simply did not want them to succeed. This is Djilas’ hypothesis, and it is strongly supported by the sub­ sequent course of relations between the Soviet Union and the other Communist states. Stalin wanted to wield an authority over the inter­ national working-class movement as complete and exclusive as that which he wielded over Russia. He could not hope to accomplish this unless the countries in question were small and too weak to dream of challenging Moscow's orders or unless their leaders were wholly in debt to him for their positions and were dependent on the Red Army for their tenure in power. None of these conditions applied to China, a vast country with almost three times the population of Russia. Mao and his comrades had learned to rely on no one but themselves— which, furthermore, was the advice that they gave Ferhat Abbas when he visited them in 1960; and the country was not occupied by Soviet troops. There was nothing, consequently, that could compel an eventual Communist Chinese state to obey Moscow. Hence, once Mao had triumphed, Stalin soon began a series of moves that clearly showed he wanted to win Mao's favor. But in 1945 the Soviet Union’s pri­ mary concern was to see to it that Japanese imperialism, from which, ever since the revolution, it had to suffer so much, could not re­ turn in force and to prevent the United States and Great Britain from wielding too exclusive an influence in this area. Therefore, as soon as Japan surrendered, Stalin sought to carve out an occupation zone there as he had done in Germany, but Truman flatly turned him down. And in London in September 1945, Molotov badgered Byrnes and Bevin for the creation of an Allied Control Council in Tokyo that, although, of course, headed by the American Commander in Chief, MacArthur, would still have had broad powers and would have given the Soviet Union leverage on Japan, which the United States was treating as its private preserve. It was an important ques­ tion to Stalin, because he brought it up with Harriman when the latter visited the Crimea on October 25 to deliver President Truman’s letter discussing the negotiation of peace treaties with Germany’s •

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satellites. He professed that he was amazed to find no mention of Japan in the document and he complained that his representative in Tokyo, General Derevyenko, had been treated “like a piece of furni­ ture”9 by the American proconsul, MacArthur, who never consulted him on anything. In Moscow in December, after lengthy discussions, the foreign ministers decided to establish a Far East Commission of eleven members and a consultative inter-allied council. The actual state of affairs was scarcely affected. In China, the existence and power of a Communist Party, whose collaboration with the Kuomintang the Americans in particular hoped for, gave the Kremlin ipso facto the leverage that it had unsuccessfully tried to obtain in Tokyo. Such a union gave ground for believing that Chiang would do only what his partner allowed him to do and that therefore he would be compelled in all cases to maintain a policy of good relations with Moscow. If each side went back to freedom of action, China would relapse into anarchy and this in itself would be reason enough for the Soviet Union to retain and indeed to extend its zones of influence, both in Manchuria and in Sinkiang, where it was encouraging a separatist movement independent of Mao. Were not both these possibilities decidedly preferable to creating a second Soviet Union that might well become a competing pole of attraction for the Asiatic and African masses and in any case very different from Moscow? In these circumstances Stalin would have understandably prodded Mao to seek for conciliation. A few days after the Soviet-Chinese treaty was signed, Mao and Chou En-lai boarded Hurley’s plane in Yenan and flew to Chungking to confer with Chiang. On September 3 an agreement in principle was arrived at, providing for all parties to be represented in the major organs of government. But the question of unifying the armies remained open; and the Communists went right on occupying huge areas without paying the slightest attention to the Sino-Soviet treaty. Fearful of finishing last in this race, the Gimo asked the United States to help him move his soldiers to strategic points. Washington replied quickly and decisively. In a few weeks three whole armies— some eighty-five thousand men— were air-lifted into the interior provinces. In order to prevent any surprise countermove, Truman even had the Marines occupy Peking, Tientsin and Tsingtao, •

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pending the arrival of the government forces. Finally, when the Soviet authorities refused to allow the Nationalists troops to use Dairen as a point of departure for Manchuria, on the pretext that the city was a commercial port unsuitable for military purposes, the United States Navy assumed the task of landing 400,000 of Chiang’s soldiers in the ports of the province. Peking and Moscow finally arrived at an agreement on the terms of their arrival in Manchuria. But in several areas the Communist troops were already on the spot and had seized stocks of Japanese arms, which the Russians, when they withdrew, had left virtually unguarded. Prevented by the American action from installing them­ selves on the coast and in the major cities of central China, the Com­ munists had in effect launched a general drive on Manchuria, where they expected to be able to rely at least on the passivity of the Russians and where the country's industrial and military arsenal constituted the “Chinese Ruhr.” At the end of the year the situation was so serious for Chiang that he even asked the Russians to delay the departure of their troops from Manchuria. As a result the Communists did not take over Changchung, the capital of the province, until April 18, 1946, ex­ actly four days after the Russian forces had left. . . . At first the shifts in position of the two armies had not interfered with the course of the negotiations. Each side reckoned that its mili­ tary successes were putting it in a better position for working out a compromise. Indeed, a new agreement was reached on October 11 for convening a Constituent Assembly on an exceedingly democratic basis and for creating an interim government council, half of whose members would be appointed by Chiang; he would have the right of veto over all its decisions unless they had been approved by twothirds majorities. Six weeks later, however, after mutual recrimina­ tions over troop movements, the talks were interrupted. The Communist delegation went back to Yenan, and fresh obstacles arose in various parts of China. It was clear that that part of United States policy that relied on Chiang’s capacity to reunify his country had failed. But Hurley did not see things this way; during a visit to Washington, he delivered a violent speech before the National Press Club on November 27, accusing the “stuffed shirts”10 in the State Department and the President himself of having sabotaged his efforts .

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to reconcile the two great Chinese factions with the blessings of Stalin and the approval of the Gimo. He thereupon resigned. The United States, however, was in no position to change course. To intervene openly in the civil war was impossible for a country that was thinking only of demobilization. And the sorry fate of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war was ever a reminder for anyone whose memory was at all good. Simply to abandon Chiang, in the view of Wedemeyer, who had succeeded Stilwell, was to resign oneself to the fact that within a few months China would succumb to communism. There remained only one solution, the one stated by the American historian, Arthur Link: MMediation, and withdrawal if mediation failed.”11 A mediator had to be found whose prestige was great enough to give him some chance of success. A great man was available: General Marshall, who had just retired from his post as Chief of Staff of the Army. During a Cabinet lunch Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson said that appointment of Marshall would erase the effect of Hurley’s resignation. Everyone endorsed this suggestion, which Marshall, as a loyal soldier, at once accepted. According to the instructions that he carried, the general was supposed to persuade both sides to come to an agreement on ending hostilities, backed if necessary by Allied guarantees, and on convoking a national assembly to bring about the unification of China with the understanding that the central government, which was recognized by the United Nations, “represented the proper instrument for the ac­ complishment of this objective.” By the following January 10 the first goal had been achieved. The armistice was proclaimed and mixed commissions, headed by American officers, were set up at several places to supervise its ful­ fillment. Marshall undertook a long journey across the entire country in order to see for himself that the truce was being observed. It was then that he met Mao. The consultative commission, the formation of which had been decided on in principle in October, finally met, and on February 25 the Communist troops were officially integrated into the national army. On March 14 the mediator returned to Washington to work out with the President a massive aid program for China. But at that time •

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the central government contained, in Truman’s words, “a number . . . of leaders who felt confident that the Communists could be defeated in battle.”13 It is they who must be held responsible for the incidents that broke out during March, especially in Manchuria and Jehol, and so brought about the resumption of the fighting. The Com­ munists, who gained substantially by it, insisted that the Kuomintang had acted only on the Americans’ orders. When he returned to China from Washington, Marshall found Chiang again inclined to negoti­ ate, but presently he began to increase his demands. At the same time, the “China lobby” was broadening its influence in Congress, and Truman was faced by the threat of a vote of unconditional aid to the nationalists; no better way could have been found to encourage the extremists in Peking to sabotage the mediators’ efforts. Marshall did indeed succeed in winning a two-week truce in June. But, in the following month, the civil war was resumed on a grand scale. On August 10, on Marshall’s advice, Truman wrote to Chiang to warn him of a change in American policy “unless convincing proof is shortly forthcoming that genuine progress is made toward a peace­ ful settlement of China’s internal problems.”18 The Gimo replied that that depended on the Communists and on them alone. His troops had just made notable gains in Manchuria, having taken control of the capital among other cities, and, in the opinion of the American missus dominicus, he was now putting all his trust exclusively in force. Marshall took it for granted that his mission had failed. But the new American ambassador, Leighton Stuart, who had been born in China and who spoke the language, was not yet ready to despair. Thanks to his efforts, a new armistice was proclaimed. Chou En-lai even agreed to go to Chungking; he arrived there only to learn that Chiang had just left for Formosa, where he was extremely busy putting down an anti-Chinese uprising. When the Gimo returned, he was more exacting than ever and the negotiations came to nothing. Finally, on November IS, the Constituent Assembly whose creation had been stipulated in the MaoChiang agreements of October 1945 went into session in Peking despite the Communists’ refusal to take any part in its deliberations. Mao believed that it was now useless to continue the talks, and on February 3 Truman recalled Marshall, who a few days later became •

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Secretary of State. Before assuming his new duties, the general placed the responsibility for his failure on both parties, asserting that hence­ forth the only hope lay in the liberals in the government and mi­ nority parties. His departure from China was the best evidence that he had considered that hope slim. Several weeks later the Kuomintang opened an offensive that enabled it to seize Yenan, the Communists’ capital. But although they allowed the Nationalists to occupy the cities, the Communists tightened their grip on the countryside and severed rail and road links. In June Marshall told a Cabinet meeting in Washington that “every sign of disintegration’’14 was becoming visible and he ques­ tioned the wisdom of continuing to supply weapons and matériel to the Nationalist forces and thus giving the Russians a pretext for de­ nouncing American intervention in the civil war. For all practical purposes, and in spite of the objections of military officers who on the whole favored the continuation of the American military presence in China, the total strength of the American forces in the country was reduced to six thousand. In August Truman, who was still searching for a new policy, appointed General Wedemeyer to head a general investigation of the Far East. Stilwell’s successor returned with the most pessimistic con­ clusions. He declared publicly in September that the Chinese Mwere wasting their time, complaining on the one hand about foreign in­ fluences and on the other trying to obtain foreign help.” He added that China “possessed the greater part of the resources necessary to her own recovery” but that this could be accomplished only if “Ürere was a moral and spirtual recovery.”10 In his report to the President, however, after having denounced Kuomintang methods, he said that reforms were possible if the United States would give the Kuomintang vigorous moral and material support. He asserted that China’s shift to communism would make her the agent of Soviet expansionism and jeopardize American interests in the Far East. He therefore proposed that the U.N. take control of Manchuria in order to prevent her from falling under Soviet influence and that the United States “inaugurate a large program of moral, advisory and material assistance to China.”1* Truman took only a limited cognizance of this report, which was •

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not immediately made public. In February 1948, Marshall told the National Security Council that “under present conditions of disorder, of corruption, inefficiency and impotence of the central government” the Chinese problems are “practically unsolvable . . . we cannot afford to withdraw entirely from our support of the Chiang Kai-shek gov­ ernment,” he added, “and neither can we afford to be drawn in on an unending drain upon our resources.”17 As a consequence, the Presi­ dent asked Congress to grant China $570 million in aid, to be spread over fifteen months. It was a pittance in comparison to the needs of the Kuomintang, whose armies suffered a series of resounding defeats in the autumn and were compelled to abandon Manchuria, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of prisoners and enormous supplies. Nevertheless, Chiang still would not concede defeat. He pro­ fessed that the loss of Manchuria had “relieved the government of a tremendous burden."1* In fact he still had fifty-six American trained and equipped divisions to push back the Communists, who despite their lack of tanks and planes were preparing to go on to the offensive in the central provinces. But on November 10, three days after the offensive had begun, 23,000 of his soldiers rose against their officers, making it possible for the Communist General Chen-Yi to swallow this Nationalist force. Its Caucasian officers fled and their soldiers sur­ rendered as a unit. On January 15, 1949, Tientsin fell, followed in a few days by Peking. When Mme. Chiang arrived in Washington in December 1948 to appeal for greater help, she was refused. Perceiving that he had nothing more to expect from this quarter, the Gimo tried to turn to the Russians, who in general had thus far clung to their policy of non-intervention. Obviously it was no accident that on February 21 of the preceding year Pravda had felt it necessary to point out that, unless notice to the contrary was forthcoming at the stipulated time, the Chinese-Soviet non-aggression treaty of 1937 would be auto­ matically cancelled. The Cabinet formed in December by Sun Fo— the son of Sun Yat-sen— sounded out the Kremlin on the chances of mediation and then, on January 8, officially appealed to the good offices of the Big Four. But the United States rejected the plea and was followed by the Soviet Union. In order to make it unmistakable to Chiang that his time was up, the Soviet press, which until then had *

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shown remarkable restraint with respect to Chinese concerns, sud­ denly began to devote considerable space to Mao’s pronouncements accusing his rival of insincerity in his quest for peace. Probably to demonstrate his good faith, the generalissimo re­ signed in favor of his vice president, Li Tsung-jen, an old liberal who had not tempered his criticisms of the government and whose election a few weeks earlier by parliament had occasioned general surprise. Li immediately got in touch with the Soviet ambassador, with whom he drafted an agreement envisaging China’s neutrality during any war and the reduction of American influence. This move, which the State Department branded unbelievable, never got any further. The death knell had struck for the Kuomin­ tang; on April 23 its capital, Nanking, fell into the hands of Mao’s troops; on May 25, a few days after the end of the Berlin blockade, they seized Shanghai, the largest city in China and the citadel of capitalism in Asia. Robert Guillain, a special correspondent of L e Monde, was present at the arrival of these “Martians: Chinese sol­ diers who knew how to fight, who did not sack the conquered city after their victory but who slept on the sidewalks rather than seize dwellings and ravish women. . . .’’ He observed that the “disorder and corruption that the outside world had taken to be the normal state of China and the Chinese’’ had in fact created “a passionate need for social discipline and order”19 to which the revolution was the right solution. Before the end of the year, the whole of mainland China was in the Communists’ hands and the Nationalists were fleeing en masse, by plane and ship, to Formosa. On September 30 Mao Tse-tung was elected president of the Chinese People’s Republic in Peking. On the following day the Soviet Government, even though its ambassador had followed the Kuomintang Government in its retreat from Canton, recognized the new regime, whose leaders had on various occasions since the beginning of the year declared their total adherence to the “Socialist camp” against imperialism. In December, Mao himself went to Moscow in order to take part in the celebrations of Stalin’s seventieth birthday. On February 14 they signed a treaty of mutual assistance to remain in force for thirty years, and directed against any danger coming from Japan or from any state that might be allied with her. •

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The Soviet Union undertook to cede all its rights in Manchuria within two years and to give China clear title to Dairen and Port Arthur. In addition Moscow gave her a credit of $300 million at interest of 1 percent, to be used over five years, repayment to begin in 1954. The niggardliness of this loan, the length of the negotiations, the two-year interval stipulated for the withdrawal from the railway and the ports, all support Max Beloffs hypothesis that the Kremlin first wanted to see what policies Mao and his government were going in fact to adopt before proceeding any further. Moscow’s recognition of the Communist Government was quickly followed by recognition from the European people’s democracies and by the majority of the Asiatic countries. On January 6, 1950, wor­ ried about Hong Kong, the British Labour Government followed suit. The Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and The Netherlands emu­ lated London’s example. France was preparing to recognize Mao when Peking recognized the Viet Minh as the provisional government of Viet Nam. France at once dropped her plans, which were not to be realized until the beginning of 1964. The United States, where the collapse of the Kuomintang had aroused violent anger against the Democratic administration, limited itself to a declaration by Presi­ dent Truman himself, on January 5, that it had no intention of provid­ ing military assistance to the Nationalist authorities who had fallen back on Formosa. Would Washington proceed from this to recogni­ tion of the Communist Government? The North Korean attack on South Korea on June 25, 1950, completely changed the entire aspect of the problem.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 1 Est et Ouest, March 1960, p. 27. 2 Fleming, II, p. 554. 8 Tibor Mende, Des mandarins à Mao (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962) p. 154. 4 Theodore H. White, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane, 1948) p. 320. *

5 Elliott Roosevelt, p. 164. 4 Herbert Feis, The China Tangle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953) p. 140. 7 Sherwood, p. 902. 8 Djilas, p. 182. 8 Byrnes, p. 217. 10 Truman, II, p. 66. 385

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11 Arthur Link, American Epoch (New York: Knopf, 1955) p. 662. 12 Truman, II, p. 80. 13 Truman, II, p. 83. 14 Forrestal, p. 285. 18 J. J. Brieux, La Chine du national­ isme au communisme (Paris:

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Editions du Seuil, 1950) p. 181. 18 Link, p. 663. 1T Forrestal, p. 372. 18 Claude Roy, Clés pour la Chine (Paris: Gallimard, 1953) p. 202. 18 Robert Guillain, Six cents millions de Chinois (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) p.42.

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STORM O Y E R A S I A Men switch masters willingly, thinking to make nutters better. . . . —Machiavelli, The Prince

N O T O N L Y C H IN A B U T T H E W H O L E O F E A S T A N D S O U T H -

east Asia came out of the Second World War completely transformed. The Japanese thrusts had shown the fragility of empires until then deemed invincible. The nationalist movements that Japan had en­ couraged had taken advantage of her retreat to set up provisional governments in many places. Prodded by Moscow and Yenan to com­ bat the invader, the Communists had materially strengthened their positions. The Soviet Union and the United States, which had be­ come the dominant powers in that part of the world, were unequivo­ cally opposed to any reestablishment of colonial status. Labour-led Britain, learning a lesson from the upheaval and oriented doctrinally toward the emancipation of the peoples under her tutelage, had initiated the procedures that led to the independence of India and Burma in spite of ChurchiU’s vehement protests. Under these condi­ tions it would have been a miracle if France and The Netherlands had been able to restore their former positions and if the Cold War had not found new ferment in the Pacific. In Java the Communist Party had organized an armed revolt as early as 1926; drowned in blood, it had split the party into Stalinist and Trotskyist factions, thus leaving the field open to the Indonesian Nationalist Party (IN P) of Dr. Ahmed Sukarno, who had not bog­ gled at collaborating with the Japanese during the occupation. On August 17, 1945, forty-eight hours after their surrender, he pro­ claimed an independent Indonesian Republic. This was relatively easy inasmuch as there was no one on the spot to stop him. The first *

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Allied troops— the British— arrived a month later with the mission of receiving the Japanese surrender. Their commander at once made it known that he intended to maintain order, possibly with the help of the Japanese troops, until “the legal government of the Nether­ lands East Indies” was restored.1 During October and November there were increasingly violent clashes between the British and the Nationalists, who were supported by the Communists. In addition, the Soviet Union was giving its full support to Sukarno. In January 1946, the Ukrainian delegate in the Security Council brought formal charges against the presence of the British in Indonesia, which, it said, con­ stituted a threat to peace. This was at the peak of the Middle East crisis, when the Council was already considering three similar com­ plaints: a Soviet charge against Great Britain for maintaining her troops in Greece, an Iranian accusation against the Soviet Union because it refused to withdraw its forces from Azerbaïdjan, and a Syrian-Lebanese protest against France and Britain for a similar re­ fusal in the Levant. There was violent debate after the Ukrainian proposal was de­ feated. Moscow accused London of considering nothing but the pro­ tection of its own interests, and Bevin, who was making every effort to persuade the Dutch and the Indonesians to a compromise solution that would enable him to withdraw the Tommies, the last of whom sailed out in November 1946, reacted with his habitual sharpness. On March 25, 1947, the good offices of London were rewarded with an agreement between The Hague and the Djakarta Cabinet, headed at that time by the moderate Socialist, Soltan Sjahrir—the Nehru of Indonesia. The jurisdiction of the new republic was limited to Java, Madura and Sumatra; it agreed to be part of a United States of Indonesia linked to The Netherlands by personal ties. But the Soviet Union and the Communists, with their “left wing” allies, de­ nounced the “purely formal”2 character of this agreement, whose execution never got beyond the beginning stage. On May 27 the Dutch, who had signed only because their backs were to the wall, issued an ultimatum that brought about not only the resignation of Sjahrir, who was succeeded by the left-wing Social­ ist, Sjarifuddin, at the head of a Popular Front government, but also the general renewal of the fighting. In August the Security Council •

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ordered a cease-fire and charged a Belgian-Australian-American commission under the late Dr. Frank Graham, president of the Uni­ versity of North Carolina, to enforce it. A new agreement was signed on January 17, 1948, aboard an American warship. Washington, which was fearful lest in the end the Communists gain total control, could not have evidenced more plainly its concern with what was happening in Indonesia. The agreement was extremely advantageous to the Dutch, whom it authorized to occupy a large part of Java and to retain sovereignty over Indonesia pending the plebiscites that would allow the local populations to make their choice. But Sjarifuddin’s cabinet was grappling with severe economic problems that the armistice had only aggravated by allowing the Dutch to retain the sugar-cane plantations and the greater part of the rubber, tea and coffee estates; eight days after the accords had been signed, the Cabinet resigned. The extreme left refused to join the new govern­ ment headed by Mohammed Hatta. In August there was a dramatic surprise. Until shortly before, the Communist Party had still been negotiating with Hatta for a pos­ sible restoration of the Popular Front. But when the Communist leader Muso returned from Moscow, he at once compelled the Party’s directorate to perform its self-criticism and denounce the agreement with The Netherlands. Sjarifuddin revealed that he had been a Party member since 1935. On September 18 there was another surprise: the Communists launched an armed uprising in eastern Java. There can be little doubt that they were acting on orders from the Kremlin, which was uneasy at the increasing power being taken by the Ameri­ cans. It was in this same year, which in Europe was the year of the Prague coup and the Berlin blockade, that Communist insurrections began in Burma, Malaysia and the Philippines. Their defeat in Indonesia was total and immediate. Thousands of Communists were killed or captured, and the entire Party leadership was butchered. In the view of the people, the Communists had stabbed the republic in the back, and the Party’s membership sagged to ten thousand. As a result of destalinization and of the intelligent leader­ ship of its new chief, Dipa Aidit, it was, however, to rise from these ashes until in the 1960s it could count some two million members. The republic had had to commit a large proportion of its troops .

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against the Communists. The Dutch thought it had been weakened enough to warrant their launching a “police action” against it on December 29, 1948, in accord with the desires of the new parliament in The Hague, which was indubitably more conservative and “colonial­ ist” than the legislature that had been elected immediately after the liberation. The key men in Djakarta, led by President Sukarno, were taken by surprise and arrested and the whole country was virtually occupied. It was a Pyrrhic victory. The Dutch Army’s communications were quickly paralyzed by guerrilla attacks. The United States, where opinion had reacted sharply against the Dutch violation of the armi­ stice, cut off all economic assistance. In the last analysis the Dutch Cabinet had no choice but to bow to the resolution adopted on Janu­ ary 21, 1949, by the Security Council, which called for an immediate cease-fire, the release of the Indonesian ministers and the proclama­ tion of independence before July 1,1950. A round-table conference was held in August. On December 27, 1949, The Hague granted Ahmed Sukarno sovereignty over every­ thing that had been the Netherlands East Indies except New Guinea, which was not ceded until 1962, again under American pressure. The Soviet Union recognized the new government even while attacking the new agreements, but a coldness persisted between them until Stalin’s death, and Moscow never missed a chance to castigate the maneuvers of the United States, especially after some fifty Communists involved in disorders in 1951 were arrested. The situation changed only when, under Molotov and Shepilov, the Kremlin came to acknowledge the virtues of neutrality. I

«

I

While the future of Indonesia had been left in the air during the Second World War, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed at Teheran in 1943 that French domination of Indochina must be ended. The Presi­ dent had even discussed with Chiang Kai-shek a system of tutelage designed to prepare the country for independence. When the Japanese liquidated what was left of the Vichy administration in Indochina on March 9, 1945, Washington went so far as to instruct the Far East Command to refuse the slightest help to any French troops who might •

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try to resist. On March 11, Emperor Bao-Dai and King Norodom Sihanouk proclaimed the independence of Annam (rebaptized Viet Nam) and Cambodia under the protection of Tokyo. Five months later, after Japan had capitulated, Bao-Dai wrote to de Gaulle to demand that he “abandon any thought of re-establishing French sovereignty or a French administration in any form" and to warn him, in a style reminiscent of Churchill, that if in spite of this he attempted to do so “every village would become a core of resistance."3 But there was no question of the emperor’s keeping his throne. On August 26 he was forced to abdicate in favor of a “democratic republic” of which he became merely the “adviser,” declaring that he would rather be a simple citizen of a free country than the sovereign of an enslaved one. Only the Communist Party was capable of exer­ cising any authority; it allotted itself two-thirds of the cabinet posts, beginning with the premiership, which was given to its founder, Ho Chi Minh. Even today mystery still surrounds the life of this professional revolutionary, who arrived in Europe just before the First World War and became a pastry cook in London and later a photograph re­ toucher in Paris. It is known that he left France about 1924 after having published a magazine, The Pariah— the name alone indicates its character— and established friendships with Communist leaders. Later he worked in Moscow, accompanied Borodin to Canton, where the first Indochinese Communist organization was founded, and set up the first Communist Party in Viet Nam during the winter of 1929-1930. In July 1930 he felt that his time had come. The mutiny of the Yen-Bay garrison, organized by bourgeois nationalists, had drowned in its own blood. Famine gripped northern Annam, where the peasant masses were beginning to rebel at the methods of the colonial ad­ ministration. It was no trouble for the Communists to organize them and to set up Chinese-style soviets in the province of Nghe-An. The French troops reacted with extreme brutality. Most of the Party’s leaders were executed or interned in the sinister cells of PouloCondor. Ho himself fled to Hong Kong, where the British arrested him in 1933. The French Sûreté thought that he had died in prison. Probably he managed to escape. No one knows, however, what he did * 3 9 1 *

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until 1941, which found him in Tsin-li, China, where he organized the unified front against French colonialism and Japanese imperialism that entered history under the name of Viet Minh. At first the new movement was protected and financed by local authorities of the Kuomintang; but the tension between Chiang and the Communists resulted in Ho’s being arrested again; released from prison in 1943, according to a pamphlet dated August 6, 1944, he threw himself into “creating zones with revolutionary governments that would gradually move toward establishing a unified power through general armed insurrection."4 In October 1944, he secretly returned to Viet Nam, where various “liberated zones” were formed with help from American intelligence services. By the time that Japan collapsed, the Viet Minh held many trumps: the population was worn thin by the suffering brought on by the war; the Viet Minh was the only force worthy of the name; and, finally, French prestige had been grievously damaged by Tokyo’s liquidation of the army and the colonial administration. The Viet Minh managed to gain control of much of the Vichy arms and Japa­ nese supplies. It had no trouble in supplementing this arsenal by turning to the Chinese generals, who were always short of cash and whom the Potsdam agreements had authorized to accept the sur­ render of the Mikado’s soldiers in the northern half of Indochina, which they exploited fully. In the southern part of the country the British troops had been entrusted with this task. But they were not charged with maintaining order. On September 2 a wave of savagery broke over Saigon, where ISO Frenchmen had been massacred by a population hysterical at the proclamation of its independence. General Gracey, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, assumed the responsibility of distributing arms to French soldiers newly freed from Japanese camps. Then the French population avenged itself on what it still called “the natives." On October 9 Bevin made an agreement with Paris for the restoration of the French administration in South Viet Nam and on October 25 Leclerc entered the capital at the head of a powerful armored corps. The future marshal soon saw that force would not be able to restore a vanished past, and he immediately recognized the need for .

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an understanding with the Viet Minh. Indeed, on March 6 he reached an agreement that made the Republic of Viet Nam a “free state” within the French Union and the Indochinese Federation. Referen­ dums were planned in order to establish the precise limits of its juris­ diction. The military convention signed a month later by Minister of Defense Vo Nguyen Gap, a member of the Viet Minh, and General Salan stipulated that France would help create and train a Vietnamese army, with which she would jointly defend the country for five years, after which she would evacuate it completely. In order to carry out this agreement two French divisions landed in the Bay of Along. A certain similarity, incidentally, will be seen between this formula and that which temporarily prevailed a few months later between The Hague and the Indonesian Cabinet of Soltan Sjahrir, thanks to the good offices of London. In both cases, the colonial power over­ estimated its strength and thought that it could safely violate its pledged word and rely on the force of its arms. One man devoted all his efforts to this end: Thierry d’Argenlieu, who had emerged from a Carmelite monastery to become an admiral of Free France and whom de Gaulle had appointed High Commis­ sioner in Saigon. In his view the accord reached with the Viet Minh was a veritable Munich. He told Leclerc that he was astonished that the leaders of “such a fine fighting force would rather negotiate than fight.”5 Taking advantage of the fall of the government in Paris, he championed a Cochin China separatist movement and thus aroused uneasiness in the Viet Minh, which had been led to believe by the agreement of March 6 that it could unite the “three Kys,” the three provinces of Viet Nam. This became apparent in April, when the first conference met in Dalat to evolve methods for putting the agreement into operation. It became still more apparent on July 9 in Fontaine­ bleau when negotiations began (Ho Chi Minh being present) in order to define Viet Nam’s position within the French Union. The conferees soon came up against the question of Cochin China. A provisional government composed of prominent pro-French personalities had been set up in May, and it had sent a mission to Paris under Colonel Xuan, who was favorably received in many quarters. Even Maurice Thorez did not hesitate to tell him that he did not intend in any way “to be considered the eventual liquidator of the French positions in Indochina.”6 •

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“Do not let me go home empty-handed,“ Ho Chi Minh pleaded to the chief of the French mission in Hanoi, Governor Saintenay. This was an allusion to those groups in Viet Nam that were working against his policy of negotiation and alliance. A modus vivendi was finally arrived at on November 14 in Fontainebleau, but it was so limited in scope that it fooled no one. Shortly afterward serious inci­ dents occurred when the French unilaterally imposed their customs control on Haiphong, the port of Hanoi. These had been virtually resolved when General Valluy decided “to teach the Viet Minh a lesson”7 and on November 23 ordered the city bombed and commanded his troops to occupy it. The dead totalled six thousand. He sought to negotiate but on December 19 the Communist militia seized hostages from the French population. It was war, a war that continued for seven-and-a-half years. In May 1947, the Radical prefect, Emile Bollaert, who had succeeded d’Argenlieu, also tried to negotiate. But Paul Coste-Floret, the M.R.P.’s Minister for Indochina, asserted that “a military problem no longer existed;”* he refused to deal with the Viet Minh and pledged an independent Viet Nam to Bao Dai, who had taken refuge in Hong Kong. The history of the Viet Nam war at this time was concerned essentially with French policy. But the fact that the enemy in this war was communism brought it progressively within the ambit of the Cold War. Beginning in 1948, the year of the Prague coup, the Soviet press engaged in increasingly violent attacks on the attitude of the French Government and the encouragement that Paris, according to Moscow, was getting from Washington. In January 1950, Ho Chi Minh asked diplomatic recognition for his government—which was immediately granted by Moscow and Peking. Meanwhile the mod­ erates had been eliminated from it; soon the Communist Party, which had been dissolved in 1945, would be officially reestablished. These reasons were enough for General de Lattre de Tassigny, who had been appointed commander in chief in December 1950 after the French Army had undergone a series of reverses, to sound the alarm to Washington. Involved in the Korean War, the American leaders, hitherto most distrustful of French colonialism, from now on viewed the war in Indochina as one more front on which communism had to be contained and so would assist France. Whence the world crisis *

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provoked in 1954 by the climax of the Indochinese drama at a time when, in Moscow, the theme was “thaw.”

s

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The Korean affair, which ended analogously, had appeared at first, however, to be developing in a totally different manner. In Cairo on November 30, 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek had decided that at a given time the former “empire of the tranquil morn­ ing,” annexed by Japan at the beginning of the century, would re­ cover its freedom and independence. In Teheran Stalin had endorsed this declaration, but he reckoned that a preparatory period of some forty years would be required. Roosevelt favored a trusteeship formula, and the chief of the Soviet Government, after he had made it plain at Yalta that it would not be necessary to occupy the country permanently, had endorsed such a solution when he received Hopkins in May 1945: the country would be administered jointly by the United States, China, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. It was agreed to form a Soviet-American commission, with the duty of helping to form a provisional government and draft a proposed agree­ ment for four-power trusteeship for the countries involved. In fact this was never done. Furthermore, the proposal deeply wounded the feelings of a population that considered itself ripe for immediate in­ dependence. The 38 th Parallel had been fixed by common agreement as the line to separate the zones in which the Americans on the one hand and the Russians on the other would receive the surrender of the Japanese forces, but after the autumn of 1945 it had become a veri­ table frontier. In its zone the United States opposed the establishment of those Communist-dominated people’s committees on which the Russians based the administration of tfieir zone. The same process that had taken place in Germany was repeated in Korea, and on May 8, 1946, the mixed commission adjourned sine die. A few days later Edwin Pauley, Truman’s personal representative, was able to get into the northern zone; he found that the Russians “had no im­ mediate intention of withdrawing from Korea,” where they roughly treated any political group that was tempted to make a distinction between “loyalty to Moscow” and Korean patriotism. He formed the view that “Communism in Korea could get off to a better start than *

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practically anywhere else in the world" and that it was Korea where the "test” would be made that would determine whether a democratic system could “be adapted to meet the challenge of a defeated feudal­ ism.”9 But he could not guess the form that test would ta k e .. . .

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Few Asian countries have escaped trouble in the post-war years, but nowhere have they posed such problems for East-West relations as in China, Indonesia, Indochina and Korea. The Hindu-Moslem rivalries were the source of the frightful massacres that ended in 1947 with the partition of India after Attlee had promised her autonomy. The governments of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, which became independ­ ent the following year, decided to remain in the Commonwealth, and India was resolved to observe a policy of neutrality and “active co­ existence” that on several occasions gave her the opportunity to medi­ ate differences. As long as Stalin lived, the Soviet Union stubbornly persisted in viewing Nehru as a mere tool of British imperialism. The Indian Communist Party incited bloody strikes, notably in Bombay, and in 1949 it even provoked an armed rebellion among the peasants in the south. Subsequently it took power legally in the state of Kerala and then gave it up without much resistance when the government in New Delhi dismissed it. Unlike India, Burma had been occupied by the Japanese. The Communist Party, which had taken an active part in the resistance, was ousted from the Anti-Fascist League, the main political move­ ment in the country, at the end of 1946. When Thakin Nu’s govern­ ment won recognition of the country’s independence from Great Britain on January 4, 1948, the Soviet Union denounced what it called the fictitious character of this independence, and soon the Communists went over to armed action. They were not alone. Groups of Trotskyists had already been in action for two years, the Karen tribesmen of the southeast armed themselves and fought to defend the right of their province to autonomy, some of the military had taken to the underground, and to varying degrees banditry flourished in many areas. All that was needed to complete this picture of bloody anarchy was the entry of Chiang Kai-shek’s troops on the scene. In 1949, having been thrown back by Mao’s armies, 4,000 K uom intang soldiers fled into the Shan States, in northeast India. In spite of re­ *

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peated representations to the U.N., even today the Rangoon govern­ ment has been able to rid itself of only a small proportion of them. Malaysia did not achieve independence until ten years later than the other major British possessions in Asia. The structure of her population, composed of Chinese and Malays in almost equal pro­ portions; the strategic importance of Singapore, which moreover formed a separate colony; the economic importance of the rubber plantations and the tin mines, all combine to explain this delay. The Communists, who were drawn mostly from the Chinese, launched a guerrilla campaign of special savagery in June 1948, and the British fought back resolutely. It was a Socialist sultan who finally became president of the Malay Federation, where the British held fast until the complete annihilation of a revolution that in 1950 had seemed almost certain to succeed. As for the Philippines, to which the United States, in pursuance of earlier agreements, granted independence immediately after the victory over Japan, they too were the scene of bloody fighting from 1948 on, after the left-wing Hukbalahap resistance movement, better known as Huk, refused to lay down its arms to the government of President Roxas. The movement’s leader, Luis Taruc, then disclosed that he had long been a member of the Communist Party, whose influence over the Huks became clearer each day. There too the underground seemed close to victory, but there too in the end the government won control. It is difficult to contend that without the powerful help of the United States it would not have succeeded. Compared with the troubled waters in the rest of Asia in the first five post-war years, Japan appeared remarkably calm. Satisfied with the American protectorate despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meekly obedient to MacArthur’s orders for democratization, she seemed an unresisting convert to the “American way of life.” Deprived of vir­ tually any voice in the conditions of the American occupation, the Soviet Union frequently protested against these “colonial” methods, as well as against the decision Washington took in 1947 to negotiate a separate peace treaty with Japan. The Japanese Communist Party called the tune for this campaign, which bore some fruit in the 1949 elections when the Party won al­ most 10 percent of the votes and 35 seats in Parliament. In the same year 90,000 prisoners of war returned to Japan after exposure to *

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intensive propaganda during their captivity in the Soviet Union. The extreme left made the most of economic difficulties and deliberately provoked incidents. During July the Japanese police raided the Party headquarters and the offices of its newspapers, hoping to find proof that it was preparing an uprising. The Communists did not resist, and consequently their deputy leader, Sanso Nosaka, became the target of a violent attack in the Cominform journal in January 1950. But his comrades stood by him, he performed a limited act of contrition and in the end was rehabilitated. The Japanese Communist Party survived this crisis, which was comparable to those that occurred more or less everywhere in the Communist movement as a result of the break with Tito. Encouraged by Mao Tse-tung’s victory and by the conclusion of a treaty of al­ liance with the Socialists, it launched new strikes, punctuated by riots. On May 30 a crowd stoned five American soldiers during a Com­ munist demonstration in the Imperial Square in Tokyo. The reprisal was harsh. Eight demonstrators were sentenced to hard labor and seven deputies, including Nosaka, were forbidden to take any part in public affairs. They then fled in order to avoid arrest. But on June 25 MacArthur found he had other fish to fry: the North Korean army had crossed the 38 th Parallel in force.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES marche (Hanoi: Editions en Langues Etrangères, 1955) p. 32. 8 Devillers, p. 242. • Devillers, p. 268. 7 Jean Lacouture and Philippe De­ villers, La fin d’une guerre ( Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1960) p. 18. 8 Fauvet, p. 157. • Truman, II, p. 321.

1Tibor Mende, L ’Asie du Sud-Est entre en scène (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954) p. 144. 2 Max Beloff, Soviet Policy in the Far East (London: Oxford University Press, 1953) p.216. 8 Philippe Devillers, Histoire du ViêtNam (Paris: Editions du Seuil, n.d.,) p. 138. 4 Nguyen Van-Dam, Le Viêt-Nam en

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Birth of Karl Marx. 1847 June: first congress of the League of Communists, in London. 1848 February: fall of the July Monarchy. Publication of The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels. 1861 American War of Secession. 1864 International Workers' Order founded. 1867 First volume of Capital published. 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Paris Commune. Birth of Lenin. 1871 Dissolution of the International. 1883 Death of Marx. First Russian Marxist group in Geneva founded by Plekhanov. *

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1889 The Second International founded. 1898 The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party founded. 1903 July-August: second congress of the R.S.D.L.P. Formation of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. 1904 Russo-Japanese War. 1905 January: beginning of the first Russian revolution. 1912 January: sixth conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in Prague expels the Mensheviks and becomes the Bolshevik Party. September: the Kuomintang founded by Sun Yat-sen. 1914 July 28: the First World War begins. 1915 September: the “Zimmerwald Conference” of Socialists opposed to the “imperialist” war. 1917 March 12: bourgeois revolution in Russia. March 15: Nicholas II abdicates. April 6: the United States enters the war. April 16: Lenin returns to Russia. November 7 (October 25, old style): victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Petrograd and then in Moscow. December 2: German-Russian armistice. • 400

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1918 Februaıy 23: the Red Army founded. March 3: German-Russian Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Summer: beginning of Western intervention in Russia July 16: Nicholas and his family executed. November 11 : armistice on the western front. Creation of workers’ coun­ cils throughout Germany. November 18: White Admiral Kolchak proclaims himself supreme regent in Siberia with Allied backing. 1919 January: Noske crushes the Spartacist revolution in Berlin. February 21: Kurt Eisner, president of the councils’ Bavarian Republic, assassinated in Munich. March 3 : the Bavarian Republic falls. March 21: beginning of the four-month reign of Communism in Hungary. March 27 : the Third International created in Moscow. April: Kolchak defeated near the Volga. June 28: Treaty of Versailles signed. November 19: the American Senate refuses to ratify the Versailles Treaty. December 15: dissolution of Kolchak’s government. 1920 January 16: Allied blockade of Russia lifted. January 2: the League of Nations created. Februaıy 2: Russia recognizes the independence of Estonia. Similar treaties during the year with Lithuania, Hungary and Finland. February 7 : Kolchak executed. April 26: Poland invades the Ukraine. Spring: Allied intervention in Russia ends. August 12: Battle of Warsaw. September 1: first Congress of Eastern Peoples in Baku. October 12: Polish-Russian armistice. November: Wrangel’s White Army routed. The Russian Civil War ends. December 20: the French Communist Party created after a split in the Socialist Party. 1921 March 3 : the Kronstadt sailors revolt. The New Economic Policy. March 4: Harding succeeds Wilson as President of the United States. •

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March 16: Anglo-Russian commercial agreement. Agreement between Russia and Mustapha Kemal. July: the Chinese Communist Party founded. 1922 April 4: Stalin becomes general secretary of the Russian Communist Party. April 8: Genoa conference on the reestablishment of international ex­ changes. April 16: German-Russian Treaty of Rapallo. October 25 : Japanese intervention in Siberia ends. October 29 : Mussolini takes over the Italian Government. December 30: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics founded. 1923 January 26: agreement between Joffé and Sun Yat-sen. The Chinese Com­ munist Party joins the Kuomintang. September: Communist insurrection in Bulgaria defeated. October: proletarian governments in central Germany liquidated. 1924 January 8: Great Britain recognizes the Soviet Government de jure. January 21 : death of Lenin. February 7 : Italy recognizes the Soviet Government. October 11 : Trotsky publishes The Lessons of October. October 28: France recognizes the Soviet Government 1925 January 15 : Trotsky leaves the Commissariat for War. April 17: Briand becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs in France. October 16: Treaty of Locarno between Great Britain, France, Italy, Bel­ gium and Germany guaranteeing the 1919 borders. 1926 April 24: German-Soviet non-aggression treaty. September: Germany admitted to the League of Nations. October: Trotsky ousted from the Politburo. November: Communist rising in Java. • 4 0 2

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CHRONOLOGY

1927 March: Chiang Kai-shek liquidates the Communists in Shanghai. May 12: Anglo-Soviet relations broken. September: “Autumn harvest” insurrection in China. November 30: the Soviet Union joins the disarmament conference. December: Communist rising crushed in Canton. 1928 August 27 : Briand-Kellogg Pact “outlaws” war. 1929 January: Trotsky expelled from Russia. October 1: the first Soviet Five-Year Plan launched. October 19: Wall Street crash. Beginning of the world depression. December 27 : liquidation of the kulaks begins in Russia. 1930 June 30: Allied troops complete evacuation of the Rhineland. July: uprising in Tonkin. 1931 April 14: the Spanish Republic proclaimed. September 18: Japan invades Manchuria. November 7 : Chinese Soviet Republic proclaimed in Kiangsi. 1932 February 2: the World Disarmament Conference begins. November 4: Franklin D. Roosevelt elected President of the United States; the New Deal. November 29: Franco-Soviet non-aggression treaty. 1933 January 30: Hitler becomes Chancellor. March 27 : Japan leaves the League of Nations. June 7 : Anglo-French-German-ltalian treaty initialed. •

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October 14: Germany withdraws from the League and the Disarmament Conference. November 17: the United States recognizes the Soviet Union de jure. 1934 February 6: nationalist rioting in Paris. April 17: France decides to guarantee her security by her own means. July 13: Barthou’s plan for an eastern Locarno. July 25: Dollfuss, premier of Austria, assassinated. September 18: the Soviet Union admitted to the League of Nations. October 9: Alexander of Yugoslavia and Barthou assassinated. October 16: beginning of the Chinese Communists* “long march” (until October 1935). December 1: Kirov assassinated in Leningrad; the terror unleashed in the Soviet Union. 1935 March 16: Germany reinstitutes compulsory military service. May 2 : Franco-Soviet mutual-assistance treaty. May 12: Laval in Moscow. May 16: Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty. October 3: Italy invades Ethiopia. 1936 February 29: American Neutrality Act March 7 : remilitarization of the Rhineland. May 3: Popular Front in France. Léon Blum becomes premier. July 17: Spanish Civil War begins. August 21 : Zinoviev and Kamenev executed. November 25: German-Japanese “anti-Comintern” treaty. December 12: Chiang Kai-shek captured by the Communists in Sian. 1937 May 18: Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain. June 16: Tukhachevsky executed. June 21 : fall of Léon Blum’s government. July 7: Marco Polo Bridge incident. Sino-Japanese War begins. September: Chiang and Mao reconciled. November 6: Italy joins the anti-Comintern alliance. December 3: Italy leaves the League of Nations. *

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1938 February 27: Halifax succeeds Eden in the Foreign Office. March 13: Germany annexes Austria. April 8: Blum's second cabinet falls. Daladier forms a government with Georges Bonnet as Foreign Minister. September 30: Munich. October 22: Soviet feelers toward Germany. October 24: Berlin raises the problem of Danzig. 1939 March 10: Stalin’s “chestnuts out of the fire" speech. March IS: Germany sets up her “protectorate” over Bohemia. March 28: Spanish Civil War ends; Spain joins the anti-Comintern treaty. March 31: London, soon followed by Paris, guarantees Poland’s frontiers; opening of negotiations with the Soviet Union. April 28: Hitler repudiates the German-Polish agreement of 1934 and de­ mands that Danzig and the “Corridor” be returned to the Reich. May 3: Molotov succeeds Litvinov in the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. August 12: Anglo-French-Soviet military negotiations. August 23: Ribbentrop in Moscow. German-Soviet non-aggression treaty. September 1 : Germany invades Poland; the Second World War begins. September 17: the Red Army enters Poland. September 27: Polish resistance ends. September 28-October 11: signature of agreements granting the Soviet Union bases in the Baltic states. November 30: the Soviet Union invades Finland. December 14: the League of Nations expels the Soviet Union. 1940 March 12: Soviet-Finnish treaty. April 9: Norway and Denmark invaded. May 10: German offensive in the west. Churchill becomes Prime Minister. June 10: Italy enters the war. June 22: armistice of Rethondes. End of June: the Soviet Union claims Bessarabia and annexes the Baltic states. November 12: Molotov in Berlin. November 18: Hitler decides to invade the Soviet Union. * 405

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1941 April 5 : Soviet-Yugoslav non-aggression pact. April 6: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece. April 13: Soviet-Japanese non-aggression pact. May 6: Stalin becomes President of the Council. June 22: Germany invades the Soviet Union. July 30: Hopkins in Moscow. August 14: the Atlantic Charter. December 5 : Eden in Moscow. December 6: the first Soviet counter-offensive begins. December 7 : Pearl Harbor. December 8: Britain and the United States at war with Japan. December 11 : Germany declares war on the United States. 1942 January 1: signature of the United Nations Declaration. May 26: Molotov signs a treaty of alliance with Great Britain in London. August 12: Churchill and Harriman in Moscow. November 8: the Allies land in North Africa. November 19: Soviet counter-attack begins at Stalingrad. 1943 January 14-26: Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Casablanca. February 2: Germans surrender at Stalingrad. April 20: annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto. April 25 : discovery of the Katyn massacre. Soviet-Polish rupture. May 13: Axis resistance ends in North Africa. May 22: the Comintern dissolved. July 10: Allies invade Sicily. July 26: fall of Mussolini. September 8: Italy surrenders. October 18-30: Hull, Molotov and Eden confer in Moscow. November 28-December 2: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill confer in Teheran. December 4: Yugoslav National Committee created. 1944 April 28: Greek fleet mutinies in Alexandria. June 4: Rome liberated. June 6: Allies invade Normandy. •

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CHRONOLOGY

July 20: attempt to assassinate Hitler. July 23: pro-Soviet Polish National Committee formed. August 1: Warsaw revolt begins. August 23 : Soviet-Rumanian armistice. August 25 : liberation of Paris. Red Army enters German territory. August 26: Bulgaria asks for an armistice. September 5 : the Soviet Union declares war on Bulgaria, which it invades on September 9. September 14: the Western Allies enter Germany. September 20: Finnish-Soviet armistice. October 2: Warsaw insurgents surrender. October 9: Churchill in Moscow. Agreement on spheres of interest in Balkans. October 20: Belgrade liberated. December 3: Civil War in Greece. December 10: de Gaulle in Moscow; Franco-Soviet treaty of alliance signed. December 25 : Churchill in Athens. 1945 January 12 : armistice in Greek Civil War. January 17: Russians take Warsaw. January 20: armistice with Hungary. February 4: Yalta conference. February 13: Budapest captured. March 23 : the Western Allies cross the Rhine. April 12: the death of Roosevelt. April 13: Vienna captured. April 23 : the Russians enter Berlin. April 30: the death of Hitler. May 8: the Reich surrenders. May 26: Hopkins in Moscow. June 25 : United Nations Charter. June 26: Soviet note to Turkey on the Straits. July 6: Washington and London recognize the Polish Government in War­ saw. July 16: first test of the American atomic bomb. July 17: Potsdam Conference. July 25 : Labour wins the British elections. August 6: Hiroshima. August 8: Russia declares war on Japan. August 9: Nagasaki bombed. *

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August 14: Siuo-Soviet treaty of alliance. August IS: Japan surrenders. August 17: Polish-Soviet agreement on the Oder-Neisse Line. Proclama­ tion of Indonesian independence. September 2: proclamation of independence of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. September 26: French authorities return to Saigon. October 11 : agreement between Mao and Chiang. November IS: Anglo-American-Canadian atomic agreement. November 18 : Soviet Army occupies Iranian Azerbaijan. November 27 : General Marshall appointed to mediate in China. November 29: proclamation of the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. 1946 January 20: de Gaulle gives up the leadership of the French provisional government. March S : Churchill’s anti-Soviet speech in Fulton, Missouri. March 6: agreement between France and Ho Chi Minh. March 2S : Soviet troops leave Iran. April 23: Socialist and Communist parties merge in the Soviet zone of Germany. April 2S : peace conference with German satellites opens in Paris. June 16: the United States offers the U.N. Bernard Baruch’s plan for the world control of atomic energy, which the Soviet Union subsequently rejects. June-September: French-Viet Nam conference at Fontainebleau. September: Greek Civil War begins anew. September 6: Byrnes’s Stuttgart speech offering friendship to the German people. September 19: Churchill, in Zürich, proposes that a Council of Europe be created as the first step toward a “United States of Europe.” October: Soviet-Turkish tension. Adoption of peace treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and Finland. November 23 : Haiphong bombed. Indochinese war begins. December 1: Iranian troops reoccupy Azerbaijan. December 12: U.N. General Assembly calls for the diplomatic boycott of Spain. 1947 January 1: British and American zones of Germany merged. January 17: Churchill launches movement for European unity in London. • 408

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CHRONOLOGY

March 4: Anglo-French treaty of Dunkirk. March 10: the Big Four Foreign Ministers’ Conference opens in Moscow. March 12: the “Truman Doctrine” for aid to Greece and Turkey promul­ gated. April 21 : Anglo-French-American agreement on German coal. April 24: Moscow Foreign Ministers’ Conference fails. May 5 : French Government dismisses Communist ministers. June 5: Marshall Plan launched. July 2: the Soviet Union rejects the Marshall Plan. All the East European countries as well as Czechoslovakia and Finland follow suit. August IS: India and Pakistan become independent. September 2: the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro. September IS: Trieste becomes a free city. September 23: Nicholas Petkov hanged. October S: creation of the Cominform. Economic union of the Saar with France. November 21 : opposition parties dissolved in Poland and Hungary. December 24: Greek guerrillas form a provisional government. December: Chinese Civil War resumes. 1948 January 1: the King of Rumania abdicates. February 16: (North) Korean People’s Republic proclaimed. February 2S : the Prague coup. March 17: Brussels Pact. May 8: first congress of the European movement in The Hague. May 17: proclamation of the state of Israel, recognized by the United States, France and the Soviet Union. June 5: American Senate adopts the Vandenberg Resolution which makes it possible for the Atlantic Pact to be concluded. June 18: Monetary reform in the western zones of Germany and Berlin. June 20: Berlin blockade begins. June 28: Yugoslavia ousted from the Cominform. August IS: proclamation of the Republic of (South) Korea. September: Gomulka expelled from Politburo of the Polish Workers’ Party. December 28: Anglo-French-American agreement on international status of the Ruhr. 1949 January 25 : foundation of the Comecon. January 28: creation of the Council of Europe. .

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January 31 : Chinese Communist troops enter Peking. April 4: Atlantic Pact signed. May 5 : (West) German Federal Republic proclaimed. May 11 : Berlin blockade lifted. July 14: Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb. September 22: Laszlo Rajk sentenced to death. October 1: Chinese People’s Republic proclaimed. November: Rokossovsky heads Polish Army. December 14: Rostov executed. December 27: recognition of Indonesia’s independence. 1950 January: Truman initiates production of thermonuclear bomb. Soviet Union walks out of Security Council to protest the U.N.’s refusal to admit Communist China. February 14: Sino-Soviet treaty of friendship. April 9: Robert Schuman proposes the creation of the European Coal Union. June 6: East Germany recognizes the Oder-Neisse Line. June 25 : Korean War begins.

•

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T H E M AJOR F IG U R E S

BEVIN, Ernest (1881-1951): son of a policeman, orphaned early, went to work at the age of nine, first as farm boy then as teamster, longshoreman; long unemployed; became head of longshoreman’s union and then, in 1922, of Transport Workers’ Union. President of Trades Union Congress in 1937, elected Labour M.P. in 1940, be­ came Minister of Labour and National Service in Churchill’s National Unity Cabinet. In 1945 Attlee appointed him Foreign Secretary, and he served until just before his death. Bibliography: The Job to Be Done. BIDAULT, Georges (1 8 9 9 ) : before the war, history professor and editorial writer (anti-Munich) of L ’Aube. President of the Na­ tional Resistance Council during the war. Minister of Foreign Affairs almost uninterruptedly from 1944 to 1948, President of the pro­ visional government from June to December 1946, Premier 19491950, again Foreign Minister 1953-1954. Broke with the Fifth Republic, chiefly over what he called its abandonment of Algeria. In exile in Brazil. Bibliography: D ’une Résistance à Vautre. CHAMBERLAIN, Neville (1869-1940): son of the great British radical leader, lord mayor of Birmingham in 1915, Conservative M.P. in 1918, long Chancellor of the Exchequer, became Prime Minister in 1937. His name is a synonym for the policy of appease­ ment of Hitler. Called “the man with the umbrella.” CHIANG KAI-SHEK (1 8 8 7 ) : Career soldier and revolution­ ary, in 1924 he headed the Whampoa Military Academy. A member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang (1926), he •

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became in the same year commander in chief of operations in the north. Generalissimo and President of the Council of State in 1928, after the break with the Communists, he has ever since retained, under various titles, the leadership of the Chinese Nationalist state and the Kuomintang. He resigned the presidency of the republic in 1949, took it back the next year and set himself up on Formosa after the Communists’ victory on the mainland. Nicknamed “the Gimo.” Bibliography: China’s Destiny; A Summing-Up at Seventy; etc. CHURCHILL, Winston Spencer (1874-1965): born of a descend­ ant of the Marlboroughs and an American mother, an average stu­ dent at Harrow before being admitted, on his third attempt, to the military academy of Sandhurst. As journalist or soldier took part in various wars from Cuba to the Transvaal at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Elected Conservative M.P. in 1900, joined Liberals in 1905 and became successively Under Secretary for Colonies and then President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary (1910) and First Lord of the Admiralty (1911), a post that he had to give up in 1915 after the unsuccessful landing in the Dardanelles (the Gallipoli disaster). Left the govern­ ment to take command of battalion on the Flanders front. Lloyd George appointed him Minister for Armaments (1917), then for War (1919) and Colonies (1921). Defeated in the 1922 elections, returned to Parliament in 1924 as a Conservative. Chancellor of the Exchequer until 1929, then kept out of government for ten years. A champion of resistance to Nazism, he again became First Lord of the Admiralty when war was declared. Appointed Prime Minister on the day Germany invaded the West and remained head of government until the July 1945 elections overthrew the Conservatives. Returned to power 1951-1955. Nicknamed “former naval person” (in his correspondence with Roosevelt), “Winnie,” “the old lion,” etc. Major works: Randolph Churchill; The World Crisis; Great Con­ temporaries; Marlborough; History of the Second World War, etc. CLEMENCEAU, Georges (1841-1929): physician, mayor of Mont­ martre in 1870, extreme-left Deputy, Dreyfusard and avowed anti­ clerical, Minister of the Interior, then Premier 1906-1909. Again •

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TUE MAJOR FIGURES

Premier in November 1917, became symbol of the resolution to de* feat Germany. Defeated in presidential election of 1920, he withdrew from public life. Nicknamed “The Tiger.” Bibliography: Le voile du bonheur; A u soir de la pensée, etc. DIMITROV, Georgi (1882-1949): Bulgarian printer, joined the Social Democratic Party in 1902, Deputy before the war; turned to Bolshevism, took part in organizing Communist insurrection in 1923 and fled to Moscow after its defeat. General secretary of the Bul­ garian Communist Party, indicted in the Reichstag fire trial of 1933 and triumphantly acquitted. Later became general secretary of the Comintern. Returned to Bulgaria in 1945 and became Premier a year later. EDEN, Anthony (Earl of Avon) (1 8 9 7 ): officer in the First World War, Conservative M.P. 1923-1957, Under Secretary in Foreign Office (1931), Lord Privy Seal (1934), Foreign Secretary (1935), resigned early in 1938 because of his disagreement with Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Minister for Dominion Affairs (1939), for War (1940), again Foreign Secretary (1940-1945), Prime Minister ( 1955-1957). Bibliography: three volumes of memoirs: Full Circle; Facing the Dictators; The Reckoning. EISENHOWER, Dwight David (1 8 9 0 ) : career officer, colonel in 1940, Commander in Chief of Allied forces in North Africa and then in Europe during Second World War, became Chief of the General Staff 1945-1948. Went into retirement as president of Co­ lumbia University (1948). First supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe in 1951, overwhelmingly elected President of the United States in 1952 as a Republican and re-elected in 1956. Nick­ named “Ike.” Bibliography: Crusade in Europe; M y Years in the White House, etc. GAULLE, Charles ( 1890) : career officer, tank colonel at beginning of war, became Under Secretary of State for War in Paul Reynaud’s cabinet. On June 18, 1940, he called on all Frenchmen who rejected the armistice to rally behind him. Leader of the “Free de

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French,” he became co-president and then president of the French Committee of National Liberation in Algiers, which became the pro­ visional government of the French Republic. Relinquished power in 1946, founded the Rally of the French People. Premier in 1958, he was elected President of France a year later. Bibliography: Le Fil de l’Epée; La France et son armée; Mémoires de guerre, etc. HITLER, Adolf (1889-1945): of Austrian origin, corporal in the German Army during the First World War. Became head of the N a­ tional Socialist Party in 1923. Imprisoned in 1924 as the result of the failure of his putsch in Munich. Chancellor in 1933, “Fuehrer and Chancellor of the Reich” in 1934, committed suicide in 1945 in the ruins of the Chancellery when the Russians entered Berlin. Called “Der Fuehrer.” Bibliography: Mein Kampf. LENIN (Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov) (1870-1924): of middle-class origin, he became a Marxist while a university student, was deported in 1895 and then lived abroad, chiefly in Geneva. From 1903 a prime mover in the “bolshevik” (hard) faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, leading a campaign in 1914 against the support given by the Socialist parties of Europe to the “imperialist” war. Returned to Petrograd in 1917 with a German safe-conduct, summoned the workers to a second revolution and took temporary refuge in Finland. President of the Council of People’s Commissars from October 25, 1917, seriously wounded by an assassin in 1918, stricken in 1922 by a paralysis that forced him to give up virtually all activity. Major works: Two Tactics of Social-Democracy (1905); Imperial­ ism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ( 1915) ; Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder ( 1920). MAO TSE-TUNG (1 8 9 3 ): son of average peasants, joined the Republican Army in 1911, then studied at the Upper School of Changsha and became assistant librarian at the University of Peking. Converted to Marxism in 1920, took part in the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai in 1921 and became its • 4M

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THE MAJ OR F I G U R E S

representative for Hunan, then president of its Organization Office. Temporarily expelled from the Central Committee in 1927, he re­ grouped the Communists a few months later in Kiangsi after the failure of various revolts. In 1931 he proclaimed the Chinese Soviet Republic in Kiangsi and was elected its president but in 1934-1935 Nationalist pressure compelled him to order his troops and those of Chu-Teh, who had joined them, into a 7,000-mile retreat into Yenan, in the north. In 1937 he reached an understanding with Chiang Kaishek: the Chinese Red Army became the Seventh Nationalist Army. But it was only a paper collaboration. The Civil War was resumed on a large scale after the surrender of Japan, despite General Marshall’s efforts at mediation, and resulted in victory for the Communists. Mao headed the Chinese People’s Republic until 1959, when he limited himself to the chairmanship of the Communist Party. Major works: Report on an Investigation of the Revolutionary Situa­ tion in Hunan (1927); Strategic Problems of the Revolutionary War in China (1936) ; On the New Democracy ( 1939). Some of his many poems have been translated. MARSHALL, George C. (1880-1959): career officer, Chief of the General Staff in 1939, retired in 1945, he was chosen by Truman to try to mediate between Chiang and Mao. Secretary of State in 1947, when he proposed the plan that bears his name. Retired in 1949 but was again recalled at the beginning of the Korean War to become Secretary of War. Resigned in 1951 for reasons of health. Received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. MOLOTOV (Vyacheslav Mikailovich Scriabin) ( 1890) : born into the middle class, he very early joined the Bolsheviks and was in Petrograd at the time of the February revolution. A member of the Central Committee, he became editor in chief of Pravda during the October Revolution. Secretary of the party in 1921, a member of the Politburo in 1925, president of the Council of People’s Commissars from 1930 to May 1941, he was also Commissar and then Minister for Foreign Affairs from May 1939 to 1951 and again from 1953 to 1956. Implicated in the conspiracy of the “anti-Party group” against Khrushchev in June 1957, he was expelled from all leadership posts and made ambassador to Outer Mongolia, then a member of the • 4 1 5

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HISTORY

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THE

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WAR

Soviet delegation to the International Atomic Agency in Vienna. Having resumed his attacks against Khrushchev, he was stripped of his duties and probably expelled from the party in 1962. RIBBENTROP, Joachim von (1893-1946): wine salesman, mili­ tant Nazi, he became ambassador to London in 1936 and Reich Foreign Minister in 1938. Hanged at Nuremberg as a war criminal. Bibliography: memoirs. ROOSEVELT, Franklin Delano (1882-1945): related to former President Theodore Roosevelt, the champion of “imperialism,” the later Roosevelt, like his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, symbolized the liberal reform tendencies of the Democratic Party. Under Secre­ tary of the Navy during the First World War. Though paralyzed in both legs by poliomyelitis in 1921, he continued his political career, which brought him election to the presidency in 1932 and triumphant re-elections in 1936, 1940 and 1944. Assuming office at the height of an economic depression, he brought about a rapid recovery through his “New Deal,” whose foundation on state planning and control outraged the conservatives. From 1936 on, in spite of the deeply rooted isolationism of popular opinion, he led America farther and farther into the camp of the great democracies. He made many speeches (especially his famous “fireside chats” ), but unfortunately left no memoirs. STALIN (Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili) (1879-1953): a seminarian and the son of Georgian peasants, he was expelled from school for his Socialist activities. A Bolshevik since 1903 and a theo­ retician on the problem of national minorities, he was exiled from 1912 to 1917. After the Revolution he became a member of the Politburo and Commissar for Nationalities. He defended Tsaritsyn against the Whites during the Civil War and the city was renamed Stalingrad in his honor. General Secretary of the party in 1922, he eliminated one by one all his actual or potential rivals. Absolute master of the country after 1927. President of the Council of Peo­ ple’s Commissars (May 1941), he was proclaimed Marshal of the Soviet Union and Generalissimo of the Red Army during the war.

T HE M A J O R F I G U R E S

Nicknamed “the inspired father of his peoples,” “Uncle Joe” (by Roosevelt and Churchill), etc. Major works: Marxism and the Na­ tional Question; Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism; The Problems of Leninism. THOREZ, Maurice (1900-1964): a miner, he joined the Socialist Party in early youth and then the Communist Party. Regional secre­ tary for the north, he was sentenced to sixteen months’ imprison­ ment in 1925 for his campaign against the war in Morocco. In the same year he became a member of the Politburo and organizing secretary. He was arrested again in 1929; in 1930 he was secretary of the French section of the Comintern and secretary of the French Party’s Politburo, the general secretary of the French Communist Party from 1935 to 1963. Sentenced for desertion at the beginning of the Second World War, he fled to the Soviet Union and returned at the end of 1944 after having been amnestied by General de Gaulle. Minister of State from 1945 to 1947, president of the French Communist Party in 1963. Bibliography: Fib du Peuple. TITO (Josip Broz) (1 8 9 2 ): a Croatian metal worker, a Socialist, he was a sergeant in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. Captured by the Russians in 1915, he joined the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution. In 1919 he became an active leader of the illegal Yugoslav Communist Party and spent most of his time either in prison or in exile. After the Yugoslav Party’s leadership cells were dissolved by the Comintern in 1937, he was ordered to rebuild the party and set up its new leadership in Yugoslavia. On June 27, 1941, the Yugoslav Party’s Central Com­ mittee appointed him commander in chief of all partisan groups. In November 1943, meeting in Jajce, Bosnia, the A.V.N.O.J. (Anti-Fas­ cist Council of National Liberation) appointed him a marshal and president of the provisional government. Confirmed in both posts on March 7, 1945, by the Regency Council to which King Peter I, un­ der American and British pressure, had agreed to transfer his pow­ ers. After the break with the Cominform (1948), he was elected President of the Republic. His Comintern name was “Walter.” • 417

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WAR

TROTSKY (Leon Davidovich Bronstein) (1879-1940): a Socialist student exiled to Siberia, he escaped in 1902. He lived in London, where he joined the Mensheviks. President of the Petrograd Soviet during the 1905 Revolution, he was again exiled to Siberia and again escaped. Expelled from France, he took refuge in New York, then returned to Russia in May 1917 to resume the presidency of the Petrograd Soviet and join the Bolsheviks. A member of the Politburo during the October Revolution, he became People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs but gave up this position after the Brest-Litovsk treaty to become Commissar for War. He clashed with Stalin after Lenin’s death and lost all his posts in succession. Expelled from the party and exiled to Turkestan in 1927, he was banished in 1929. He was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by a Stalinist agent. Major works: The Lessons of October; The Revolution Betrayed; The Permanent Revolution; M y Life, etc. TRUMAN, Harry S (1 8 8 4 ): a haberdasher in Missouri, he was an artillery major in France during the First World War, later a judge; became a Democratic Senator in 1934 and Vice President of the United States in 1944, succeeding to the presidency on Roose­ velt’s death. Re-elected in 1948 against all expectations, he retired in 1953. Bibliography: Memoirs. WILSON, Woodrow (1856-1924): after having failed in his at­ tempts to become a lawyer and politician, he devoted himself to teaching political science and history at Wesleyan University and later at Princeton, of which he became president in 1902. He strove in vain for educational reforms and returned to politics. Elected Governor of New Jersey as a Democrat in 1910, he became the leader of his party in 1912 and President of the United States in 1913. He launched the program of the “New Freedom” in the name of social justice. He led the United States into the First World W ar in 1917 but in 1919 failed to win Senate ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. Stricken by paralysis, he abandoned any thought of seeking re-election in 1920. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1919. •

4 1 8

•

T HE MA J O R F I G U R E S

THE MAJOR FRENCH PREMIERS: Aristide briand (eleven times between 1909 and 1929) Raymond Poincaré (five times between 1912 and 1929) Alexandre millerand (1920) Edouard herriot (three times between 1924 and 1932) André tardieu (three times between 1929 and 1932) Pierre laval (four times between 1931 and 1935, before becoming Vice President of the Vichy government) Edouard daladier (three times between 1933 and 1940) Albert SARRAUT (1933 and 1935-1936) Pierre-Etienne FLANDIN (1935) Léon blum (1936-1937 and 1938) Camille chautemps (four times between 1930 and 1938) Paul REYNAUD ( 1940) Paul RAMADIER ( 1947) Robert schuman (1947-1948) Henri queuille (1948-1949)

THE AMERICAN SECRETARIES OF STATE: Cordell hull (1933-1944) Edward R. stettinius ( 1944-1945) James byrnes (1945-1947) George C. marshall (1947-1949) DeanACHESON (1949-1952)

THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTERS: David Lloyd george, Liberal (1916-1922) Ramsay Macdonald, Labour ( 1924,1929-1935) Stanley Baldwin , Conservative (1923-1929, National Union 19351937) Neville chamberlain , Conservative ( 1937-1940) •

4 19

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WAR

Winston S. churchill , Conservative (1940-1945) Clement attlee , Labour ( 1945-1951)

THE SOVIET PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS AND MINISTERS FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS: G. V. CHICHERIN ( 1918-1931 ) Maxim Litvinov (1930-1939; 1941-1943, ambassador to the United States) Vyacheslav molotov (1939-1951)

THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTERS: Aristide briand (1915-1917; 1921-1922; 1925-1926; 1926-1932) Edouard herriot (1924-1925; 1926; 1932) Raymond Poincaré (1912-1913; 1922-1924) Louis BARTHOU (1917; 1934) Pierre laval (1932; 1934-1936) André tardieu ( 1932) Joseph Paul-Boncour (1932; 1934; 1938) Edouard daladier (1934; 1939-1940) Pierre-Etienne flandin (1936,1941, in Vichy) YvonDELBOS (1936-1938) Georges bonnet ( 1938-1939) Paul REYNAUD (1940) René massigli (1943-1944 in London) Léon blum (1946-1947) Robert schuman (1948-1953)

4 2 0

IN D E X

Acheson, Dean, 271, 272, 290, 326 Afghanistan, 59 Africa, North, 195, 280, 301, 335 Aläsks 13 14 Albania, 108, 120, 223, 293, 294, 330, 345, 346, 348 Alexander I of Russia, 12,13 Algeria, 297, 411 Anders, Wladyslaw, 176 Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., 281, 282, 284 Anschluss, 83, 88, 92, 245 Anti-Comintern Pact, 94, 113 Antonescu, Ion, 209 Archangel, U.S.S.R., 35, 43, 157, 158 Ardahan, Turkey, 59, 288, 290 Argentina, 246 Armenia, 34, 56, 59 Armija Krajowa (A .K .), 185, 186, 205 Atlantic Charter, 179, 212, 220 Atlantic Pact, 246, 290, 357, 358 atomic bomb, 232, 250-1, 252, 253, 263-75 pass. Atomic Energy Commission, 268 Attlee, Clement, 255, 268, 270, 274, 275, 276, 290, 362, 396 Austria, 32, 77, 83, 92, 104, 162, 178, 190, 245, 250, 256, 258, 301, 302, 306, 315, 316, 317, 345 Axis powers, 110, 162, 193, 201, 296 Azerbaijan, U.S.S.R., 34, 56, 280, 282, 283, 284, 285, 388 Badoglio, Pietro, 193, 197 Baku, U.S.S.R., 40, 43, 57, 58, 62, 135,136,147 Baldwin, Stanley, 63 Balkans, 16, 210, 211, 217, 218, 280, 286, 288

Bao-Dai, Emperor, 391, 394 Barthou, Jean Louis, 83, 84, 85 Bartlett, Vernon, 99 Baruch Plan, 271, 272, 273 Batum, U.S.S.R., 59, 136, 147 Bavaria, 178, 190 Beaverbrook, William, Lord, 157 Beck, Jozef, 83, 86, 99, 105, 106, 112, 115, 175 Belgium, 83, 139, 178, 180, 304, 325, 356 Bene!, Eduard, 205, 245, 330, 340, 341, 342, 343 Beria, Lavrenti, 53, 279 Berlin, 230, 231, 232, 337, 359-60; occupation of, 250, 303-4; airlift for, 360, 361, 362, 364, 365; see also East Berlin; West Berlin Bessarabia, 35, 76, 122, 140, 145, 182 Bevin, Ernest, 63, 255, 283, 284, 297, 298, 301, 310, 314, 318, 324-30 pass., 337, 338, 356, 388, 392, 411 Bidault, Georges, 214, 297, 299, 301, 305, 316, 318, 319, 324, 326, 328, 329, 330, 336, 338, 356,411 Bierut, Boleslaw, 207, 213, 214, 255, 349 Black Sea, 133, 135, 146, 147, 286, 289 Blum, Léon, 64, 90, 92, 324 Bohlen, Charles, 225, 226, 246, 305 Bolsheviks, 20, 23, 28, 30, 34, 38, 39, 41, 44, 56, 59, 70, 280 Bonn, Germany, 366 Bonnet, Georges, 87, 93, 97, 104, 115, 124 Borodin: see GrUsenberg, Michael Bosphorus Strait, 147, 288 Braun, Wernher von, 309

42 1

INDEX

Brcst-Litovsk, Treaty of, 33-4, 39, 48 Bretton Woods Conterence, 323-4 Briand, Aristide, 76 Brussels Pact (1948), 356, 357 Bukharin, Nikolai, 30, 51, 54 Bukovina, Rumania, 140, 141, 142 Bulgaria, 48, 59, 143-8 pass., 155, 209-12 pass., 235, 254, 293, 294, 297, 298, 300, 302, 327, 330, 327, 345, 346, 350 Bulgarian Agrarian Party, 327, 332 Bullitt, William, 41, 73, 171, 172 Burma, 192, 335, 370, 373, 387, 389, 396 Byelorussia, U.S.S.R., 34, 40, 44, 125, 129, 223, 270 Byrnes, James F., 228, 251, 275, 296, 297, 298, 301, 304, 309, 310, 312, 315, 325, 377; quoted, 253, 313, 315, 316; and Stalin, 299, 312-13; speech on future of Germany, 315— 16, 323 Cairo, Egypt, 163, 201, 373, 395 Cambodia, 391 Canada, 268, 270, 274, 357 Canton, China, 66, 68, 371, 384 Casablanca, Morocco, 170, 191 Catholic Church, 60, 171, 350, 351, 352 Caucasus, U.S.S.R., 32, 40, 75, 135, 137, 279 Central Powers, 17, 31, 32, 33, 34, 39 Ceylon, 396 Chamberlain, Neville, 63, 91, 94, 97, 104, 105, 106, 110, 134, 137, 141, 411 Chang Hsue-liang, 94 Chen Tu-siu, 70 Chennault, Claire, 369 Chetniks, 192, 193 Chiang Kai-shek, 66, 68, 69, 94, 95, 188, 251, 252, 325, 368-84 pass., 390, 411-12; and Stilwell, 370, 373, 374 Chicherin, Grigori, 33, 44, 51, 60, 66, 75 China, 15, 16, 57, 65-70 pass., 94, 222, 233, 249, 258, 296, 335; re­ unification under Chiang, as Ameri­

can policy, 374, 375; victory o f Communism in, 380-5 Chinese Communist Party, 65, 66, 70, 371, 372, 375, 377, 378, 414, 415 Chou En-lai, 66, 94, 378, 381 Chou-Teh, 70, 376 Chungking, China, 372, 373, 374, 378, 381 Churchill, Winston, 16, 35, 40, 45, 63, 79, 93, 104, 116, 141, 149, 153, 155, 156, 160, 161, 162, 170, 184, 201, 204, 215, 240, 246, 275, 412; quoted, 40, 139, 141, 148-9, 156, 158, 164, 169-70, 179-80, 207, 210, 211, 220, 226, 233, 235, 236, 242-3, 244, 253, 276, 277, 364; be­ comes Prime Minister, 141; and Stalin, 156, 158-63 pass., 166, 168, 169, 186, 207, 208, 211, 212, 217, 218, 242, 243, 253, 256, 281, 290; at Teheran Conference, 166, 170, 187, 188, 190, 226; and Roosevelt, 170, 171, 179, 180, 191, 220, 236, 371, 373; urges Anglo-American operation through Ljubljana gap, 170, 188, 203, 232, 244; on “un­ conditional surrender“ of G er­ many, 191, 192; and Tito, 194, 202, 203; and revolt of Warsaw Underground, 208; and E.L.A.S., 216; at Yalta Conference, 224. 225, 226, 227, 229; lauds Yalta Agree­ ments, 233, 235; sends messages to Roosevelt on danger to Poland, 236; on Yugoslavia, 242-3; and Truman, 243-4, 245, 249, 277, 306; consents to use of atomic bomb against Japan, 251; defeated in general elections (1945), 255, 275; expresses scorn of Attlee, 255, 275-6; Stalin’s conviction of weak position of, 256; makes “Iron Cur­ tain” speech, 276-7; on Spain, 335; see also Great Britain Ciano, Galeazzo, 140, 141, 301 Clauss, 128, 164, 165, 175 Clay, Lucius, 250, 305, 311, 321, 344, 359, 361, 362, 364 Clemenceau, Georges, 35, 40, 61, 412-13 Cohen, Benjamin, 252

422

INDEX Colby, Bainbridge, 71 Cominform, 294, 333, 334, 336, 344, 354, 356, 398, 417 Comintern (Third International), 42, 55, 56, 59, 64, 66, 69, 70, 79, 81, 94, 171,333, 344,372,417 Compton, Arthur H., 264 Conservative Party, British, 63 Constantinople: see Istanbul containment policy, U.S., 331 Coolidge, Calvin, 54, 72 Cot, Pierre, 82 Coulondre, Robert, 90, 93, 110, 112 Council of Foreign Ministers, 296 ff., 301,302,313,314,318 Crimea, U.S.S.R., 35, 40. 45, 232, 377 Cripps, Stafford, 136, 141, 142, 149, 152, 161 Cuba, 15, 276 Curzon Line, 45, 46, 125, 178, 181, 185, 186, 187, 205, 213, 214, 226 Czechoslovakia, 84, 85, 87, 92, 93, 94, 97, 103, 104, 110, 178, 310, 329, 337, 341, 342, 343-4, 352 Dairen, China, 188, 233, 375, 379, 385 Daladier, Edouard, 82, 97, 110, 115, 127, 133, 134, 135, 137 Damaskinos, Archbishop, 216, 290 Danzig, 92, 101, 104, 105 Dardanelles, 18, 146, 147, 257, 285, 288 Darlan, Jean, 135, 191, 195 Declaration on Liberated Europe, 225, 235, 297 de Gaulle, Charles, 168, 194, 196, 197, 214, 215, 220, 231, 275, 304, 318, 336, 357, 358, 391, 393, 41314; quoted, 117, 195, 200, 358, 359 Delbos, Yvon, 90 Denikin, Anton, 40, 44,45 Denmark, 109, 137, 178, 357 destalinization, 352, 389 Dimitrov, Georgi, 333, 337, 346, 347, 349, 413; quoted, 126 Djilas, Milovan, 150, 167, 230, 329, 334, 347, 348, 353, 377; quoted, 49,376 Dodecanese Islands, 297, 301

Dollfuss, Engelbert, 83 Duclos, Jacques, 334, 337 Dulles, Allen, 162 Dulles, John Foster, 79, 233, 338, 370 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, 222, 223, 246 Dunkirk, France, 160, 178 Dunn, James, 332 East Berlin, 365 East Germany, 337, 366 Eden, Anthony, 91, 152, 161, 169, 175-81 pass., 186-90 pass., 194, 195, 207, 210, 212, 229, 231, 233, 282, 357,413 Einstein, Albert, 263, 264, 265, 272 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 195, 244, 299, 413 Eisner, Kurt, 42 E.L.A.S. partisans, 201, 215, 216, 292, 293 Enver Pasha, 58 Eritrea, 297 Estonia, 76, 108, 109, 123, 129, 139, 182 Ethiopia, 297 Ethiopian War, 77, 88 European Consultative Commission, 191, 231 Fermi, Enrico, 264, 265 Finland, 28, 29, 44, 76, 95, 107, 108, 109, 114, 122, 143-7 pass., 177, 301, 302, 341: in war with Russia, 129-36 pass., 155; Stalin's demands upon, 179, 180, 188; discussed at Teheran Conference, 188; escapes “satellization,” 189, 300, 352-6; re­ jects Marshall Plan aid, 330 Finnish Communist Party, 130 Finnish Social Democratic Party, 28, 29 First International, 14 Flandin, Pierre-Étienne, 87, 88 Foch, Ferdinand, 35, 304 Formosa, 381, 384, 385 Forrestal, James V., 258, 268, 289, 290 Fouchet, Christian, 214 France. 16, 18, 29, 34, 35, 43, 63, 64, 83-6 pass., 103, 104, 106, 170,

423

INDEX

France ( confd .) 178, 214, 222, 231, 258, 275, 296, 300, 301, 318, 385; popular front in, 81; enters World War II, 1245; and Russo-Finnish War, 133, 135; collapse of, 140; discussed at Teheran Conference, 194-5; re­ sistance organizations in, 196; re­ fuses to merge its German zone with that of U.S., 315; critical economic situation of (1947), 324; worsening of relations with U.S.S.R., 338; signs mutual-assist­ ance treaty (1948), 356; and Viet Nam, 392-4 Franck, James, 263, 264, 265 Franco, Francisco, 91, 257, 335, 336 Franco-Soviet Pact, 87, 90, 98, 116, 127, 128 Free French, 169, 194, 195, 196, 304, 393, 413-14 French Communist Party, 64, 81, 90, 127, 196, 197, 324, 336 French Socialist Party, 324 Fuchs, Klaus, 252, 270, 274 Gafenco, Grégoire, 105, 112 Gamelin, Maurice, 84,135,136 Gasperi, Alcide de, 300 General Assembly of U.N., 222, 223, 271,336 Georgia, U.S.S.R., 34, 56, 289 German Christian Democrats, 308 German Communist Party, 78, 306, 307, 360 German Social Democratic Party, 78, 79, 306, 307, 360 Germany, 11, 16, 27, 32, 34, 40, 60, 61, 64, 65, 75, 82, 98, 112, 113, 137, 178, 231, 257, 258, 306; Soviets formed in (1918), 39; Spartacist revolt in, 41; in non­ aggression pact with Poland (1934), 83; U.S.S.R. sells strategic raw materials to, 126; in war with U.S.S.R., 154, 155, 156, 159, 161, 164, 167, 168, 172, 174; discussed at Teheran Conference, 189-90; Allies demand unconditional sur­ render of, 191, 192; discussed at

Yalta ‘ Conference, 226. 228-30; surrender of, 247; administered by Control Commission, 303-5, 30919; division of, 305, 358-9, 360; and Socialist Unity Party (SED ), 307, 308, 359; Länder administra­ tions in, 308, 312, 316, 321, 322; Federal Republic of, 366; see also East Germany; Hitler, Adolf; West Germany Ghavam as Sultaneh, 283, 284, 285 Goebbels, Joseph P., 191, 306 Goering, Hermann, 87,191 Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 122, 186, 333, 347, 349 Gottwald, Klement, 329, 341, 342, 343, 352 Gouzenko, Igor, 274 Graham, Frank, 389 Great Britain, 13, 15, 16, 18, 29, 35, 43, 59, 62, 85, 92, 103, 104, 120, 178, 198, 211, 253, 388; and American Civil War, 14; Russia as nineteenth-century rival of, 14-15, 280; enters World War II, 124-5; and Russo-Finnish War, 134, 135, 136-7; makes overtures to Stalin, 148-50; participates in American atomic research, 274; tests nuclear device, 275; maintains close rela­ tions with U.S., 275; gives military and financial aid to Greece and Turkey, 292; recognizes Grozea’s government (1946), 300; lendlease for, 322; critical economic situation of (1947), 324; signs mutual-assistance treaty (1948), 356; recognizes Communist China, 385; see also Attlee, Clement; Churchill, Winston Greece, 145, 148, 149, 178, 201, 210, 211, 215, 220, 225, 254, 286, 291-7 pass., 301, 310, 388 Greek Civil War, 290, 295 Greek Communist Party, 295 Greenglass, David, 273 Grenier, Fernand, 196 Gromyko, Andrei, 223, 272, 284 Grotewohl, Otto, 307 Groves, Leslie R., 274 Grozea, Petru, 235, 298, 300, 301

424

INDEX Griisenberg, Michael (Borodin), 66, 68, 391 Gutt, Camille, 325 Haiphong, North Vietnam, 394 Halifax, Edward, Lord, 63, 91, 104, 108, 110, 111, 116, 128 Hanoi, North Vietnam, 394 Harding, Warren G., 71 Harriman, Averell, 153, 157, 158, 167, 213, 239, 241, 247, 322, 372, 377 Hay, John, 15 Henlein, Konrad, 92 Herriot, Edouard, 64, 76, 82 Hess, Rudolf, 149 Himmler, Heinrich, 162 Hindenburg, Paul von, 76, 78 Hiroshima, 252, 253, 264-7 pass., 274, 296, 376, 397 Hitler, Adolf, 63, 76, 77, 78, 80, 83, 85, 88, 89, 91, 108, 191, 359, 414; becomes chancellor, 76-7; and Stalin, 79, 80, 103, 116, 120-3, 124, 127, 128, 143, 144, 151, 152, 153, 163, 176, 281; quoted, 79-80, 105, 140; and Anschluss, 83, 88,92; reoccupies Rhineland, 86, 88; in pact with Stalin, 120-3, 127, 128, 176, 286; decides on war with Rus­ sia, 140, 147; signs treaty with Italy and Japan, 142; contempt for west­ ern “plutocracy,” 163; see also Germany Ho Chi Minh, 391-2, 393, 394 Hodja, Enver, 291 Hohenlohe, Prince von, 162 Hong Kong, 371, 385, 391, 394 Hoover, Herbert, 59 Hopkins, Harry, 157, 167, 178, 182, 191, 195, 219, 224, 374, 375; quoted, 157, 233; and Stalin, 246, 247-8, 249, 395 Horthy, Miklôs, 210 Hughes, Charles E., 71 Huks, 291, 397 Hull, Cordell, 82, 171, 172, 187, 190, 217, 220,228 Hunan province, China, 70 Hungarian Revolution, 240 Hungary, 97, 104, 142, 147, 177,

190, 210, 211, 212, 300, 301, 302, 327, 337, 341; Communist regime in (1919), 42; Tildy government in (1945), 301; Small Holders’ Party in, 327, 332; rejects Marshall Plan aid, 330; Communists seize control of (1947), 332; Catholic hierarchy in, 352 Hurley, Patrick, 373, 374, 375, 379, 380 Iceland, 357 India, 170, 223, 280, 387, 396 Indian Communist Party, 396 Indochina, 57, 324, 335, 390, 392, 393,394, 396 Indonesia, 57, 146, 335, 387, 388, 389, 390, 396 Indonesian Communist Party, 389 İnönü, ismet, 286 International Monetary Fund, 323 Iran, 57, 174, 177, 192, 193, 256, 277, 280-5 pass., 292, 293, 296, 301, 302; see also Persia Iraq, 152, 282, 284, 285 Ireland, 84, 357 Iron Curtain, 254, 269, 276, 277, 295, 331,335 Israel, 335 Istanbul, 18, 59, 285, 289 Italian Communist Party, 197, 300 Italy, 83, 88, 91, 111, 113, 120, 124, 142, 143, 146, 166, 178, 197, 280, 297, 300, 301, 302, 345; surrender of, 187, 193; social unrest in, 325; signs Atlantic Pact, 357 Japan, 11, 16, 35, 65, 75, 77, 94, 120, 122, 142, 143, 146, 147, 155, 177, 188, 232, 233, 249, 296, 335, 368-78 pass., 387; atomic bomb used against, 251, 252, 253, 264, 265, 376; Stalin declares war on, 253; surrender of, 253; post-war years in, 397-8 Japanese Communist Party, 397, 398 Java, 387, 388, 389 Joffé, Adolf, 39, 66 Kalinin, Michael, 71,130 Kamenev, Lev B., 50, 62

425

INDEX

Kaplan, Fanny, 39 Kars, Turkey, 59, 288, 290 Katyn massacre, 183, 184,185, 205 Keitel. Wilhelm, 98 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 64 Kemal Atatürk, 59, 281, 286 Kennan, George, 331, 332, 335; quoted, 41, 331, 332 Kennedy, John F., 244 Kerensky, Aleksandr, 23, 25, 26 Kesselring, Albert, 163 Khrushchev, Nikita, 51, 54, 62, 103, 150, 168,313, 348, 361,415 Kiev, U.S.S.R., 29, 32, 45, 103, 187, 223 King, Mackenzie, 268, 270, 274 Kirov, Sergei, 80 Kleist, Peter, 164, 165 Kolchak, Aleksandr, 40,43 Kollontai, Aleksandra, 72, 134, 136, 140, 164, 188 Korea, 15, 16, 253, 395, 396 Korean War, 385, 394, 398 Kornilov, Lavr G., 23 Kovacs, Bela, 327 Kreisau Circle, 163 Kronstadt revolt ( 1921 ), 49 Krupp, Gustav, 312 Kun, Bela, 42 Kuomintang, 66, 68, 69, 368, 370, 371, 373, 376, 378, 381-5 pass., 411,412 Kurdistan, 18, 35 Kuusinen, Herta, 355 Kuusinen, Otto, 131, 132, 134 Labour Party, British, 62, 63 Lange, Halvard, 352 Latvia, 76, 108, 123, 139, 182, 183 Laval, Pierre, 85, 87, 88 Lawrence, Ernest O., 264 League of Nations, 65, 77, 78, 84, 85, 87, 88, 93,95, 107, 133,220 Leahy, William D., 239 Léger, Alexis, 84 Leino, Yrjo, 353, 355 Lend-Lease Act, 156 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 12, 20-30 pass., 33, 34, 39, 41-5 pass., 55, 57, 62, 280, 285, 360, 414; quoted, 19-22 pass., 26-7, 30-3 pass., 42, •

43, 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, 58, 60, 65, 84; warns against Stalin, 49-50; fa­ vors economic agreement with U.S. (1919), 71; on League of Nations, 84 Leningrad, U.S.S.R., 107,110,150 Libya, 193, 297 Lie, Trygve, 357, 364 Lilienthal, David, 271, 272 Lithuania, 44, 76, 108, 113, 114, 122, 123, 129, 139, 182, 204 Little Entente, 84 Litvinov, Maxim, 75, 76, 81, 82, 88, 92, 93, 98, 101, 103, 106, 157, 180, 182, 183 Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, 170, 188, 203, 232 Lloyd George, David, 40, 59 Locarno Pact, 61, 84 Lockhart, Bruce, 32 Long March, of Chinese Communists, 67, 70 Longo, Luigi, 334 Lublin Committee, 205, 207, 209, 213, 214, 215, 226, 227, 235, 240, 246, 349 Luxembourg, 109, 139, 180, 356 Luxemburg, Rosa, 186 Lvov, U.S.S.R., 187, 204, 207, 213, 226 MacArthur, Douglas, 172, 233, 377, 378, 397, 398 McCarthy, Joseph R., 71, 268 MacDonald, James Ramsay, 62 McKinley, William, 15 Maclean, Fitzroy, 193, 194, 203 MacMahon Act, 273, 274 Macmillan, Harold, 217 Maisky, Ivan, 108, 128, 129, 152, 163, 228 Malaysia, 335, 389, 397 Malenkov, Georgi, 290, 313 Manchuria, 15, 16, 77, 233, 253, 371, 376-83 pass., 385 Mannerheim, Marshal, 29, 107, 188 Mao Tse-tung, 65, 69, 70, 95, 368, 369, 371, 372, 375, 377, 380, 384, 385, 398,414-15

4 2 6

•

335,

136,

368, 131, 194, 378,

INDEX Marshall, George C , 241, 292, 317-22 pass., 325-6, 331, 338, 356, 357, 359, 370, 374, 415; quoted, 326, 327, 383; on mission to China, 380, 381 Marshall Plan, 325-30 pass., 336, 340, 342, 354, 357 Marty, André, 43 Marx, Karl, 18, 19, 25, 26, 56; quoted, 14, 18, 19, 97, 238, 261 Masaryk, Jan, 340, 342, 343, 356 May, Allan Nunn, 270, 274 Mediterranean Sea, 279, 286 Mensheviks, 19, 20, 21, 23, 27, 52, 280 Metaxas, Joannes, 201, 291 Mexico, 13, 14 Middle East, 257, 287, 388 Mihailovich, Draja, 192, 193, 194, 202 Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw, 185-6, 204-7 pass., 211-14 pass., 226, 227, 236, 240, 249, 327 Mikoyan, Anastas, 126,137 Millerand, Alexandre, 63 Mindszenty, Joseph, 350-1 Minsk, U.S.S.R., 45, 223 Moch, Jules, 266, 337 Mollet, Guy, 86 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 76, 79, 101, 102, 107, 109, 110, 113, 116, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 129, 130, 133, 137, 151, 212, 240, 415-16; quoted, 79, 84, 116, 125-6, 131, 139, 145, 154, 242, 297; meets Hitler, 143-7; receives German declaration of war, 153; and Clauss, 165; signs mutual-assist­ ance treaty with Britain, 181; meets de Gaulle, 194-5; at Yalta Conference, 228; intransigeance of, after Yalta, 236; meets Truman, 241-2; at Potsdam Conference, 257; announces U.S.S.R.’s posses­ sion of secret of nuclear fission (1947), 267; at Council of Foreign Ministers, 296-302 pass., 313, 314; tries persuasion on Germany, 314; and Marshall Plan, 328-9; and Kardelj, 347 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 61

Monroe, James, 13 Montenegro, 194, 346 Montgomery, Bernard L., 244 Montreux Convention, 146, 147, 257, 285, 288, 289 Morgenthau, Henry, 228, 247 Morgenthau Plan, 310 Moscow Conference, 317-19, 321, 327 Moscow Trials, 80, 81, 90, 132, 225, 283, 350 Mosely, Philip, 231 Mossadegh, Mohammed, 282 Munich Pact, 94, 97, 98, 103, 106 Murmansk, U.S.S.R., 35, 43, 169 Murphy, Robert, 172, 257, 299, 362 Mussolini, Benito, 63, 77, 82, 83, 88-9, 91, 94, 108, 148, 163, 197, 201; quoted, 140 Nagasaki, 253, 264, 266, 397 Nagy, Ferenc, 327 Nagy, Imre, 240 Nanking, China, 384 Nazism, 17, 40, 63, 75, 76, 77, 79, 90, 155, 414 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 396 Netherlands, 18, 139, 178, 356, 357, 388,389 New Economic Policy, 49, 54 Nicholas I of Russia, 13, 18 Nicholas II of Russia, 16, 17, 18, 29, 279 N.K.V.D., 90 Noël, Léon, 98 Normandy, France, 204, 275 Norway, 109, 133, 134, 136, 137, 142, 160, 178, 352, 357 Nosaka, Sanso, 398 Noske, G., 41, 78 ^ Nuremburg Trials,' 83, ı98, 102, 185, 308 W Oder-Neisse line, 254,316 Odessa, U.S.S.R., 40, 43,285 Open Door Policy, 15 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 264, 265 Ottoman Empire, 18, 58, 285 Outer Mongolia, 56, 68, 70, 95, 233, 375

427

INDEX

Paasikivi, Juho, 129, 130, 3S2, 3S4, 355 Pakistan, 396 Papandreou, George, 201, 216 Papan, Franz von, 163 Patton, George S., 299 Pauker, Anna, 337, 348 Paul-Boncour, Joseph, 76, 82 Pauley, Edwin, 395 Paulus, Friedrich, 61,189 Pavelich, A., 193, 350 Pearl Harbor, 155, 162, 177, 200, 369 Peking; 378, 383 “permanent revolution“ vs. “socialism in one country,” 51 Persia, 16, 18, 59, 280, 281; see also Iran Pétain, Henri Philippe, 139, 194, 195 Peter II of Yugoslavia, 148, 192, 202, 242 Petkov, Nicholas, 298, 327, 332 Petliura, Simon, 30,40, 45 Philippines, 15, 335, 389, 397 Pilsudski, J6zef, 44, 45, 76, 87, 175, 205 Poland, 11, 14, 18, 30, 44, 45, 46, 64, 76, 80, 84, 86, 90, 91, 93, 98, 102, 104, 105, 109, 112, 114, 116, 125, 178, 255, 293, 327, 333; in non-aggression pact with Germany, 83; and Franco-Polish Treaty, 104; and Hitler-Stalin Pact, 122; oc­ cupied by Wehrmacht and Red Army, 122, 124; government in exile, 175, 181—7 pass., 207, 213, 254; Churchill and Stalin discuss future of, 212, 213, 243, 254; dis­ cussed at Yalta Conference, 226, 227, 228; Stalin endangers freedom of, 235-6; Stalin traps nonCommunist leaders of, 240; Stalin disclaims intention of sovietizing, 248; Communists take control of, 249; rejects Marshall Plan aid, 330 Polish Communist Party, 186 Polish Corridor, 92, 101,105 Polish Socialist Party, 183,185 Polish Workers’ Party, 186, 349 Politburo, 51, 313, 364 Popular Front, 81, 88, 89, 90, 210 Port Arthur, China, 188, 233, 385 •

Portsmouth, Treaty of (1905), 16 Portugal, 84, 357 Potemkin, Grigori, 85, 102, 112; quoted, 87, 129 Potsdam Conference, 250, 251, 253, 255-8 pass., 275, 282, 288, 296, 299, 303, 309, 316, 375 P.O.U.M., 90 Pravda, 20, 58, 78, 79, 81, 90, 92, 99, 109, 130, 135, 163, 175, 184, 206, 277, 289, 327, 334, 346, 383 Prussia, 18, 178, 182, 189, 190, 230, 317 Quebec Conference, 231 Rada, in Ukraine, 29, 30, 39 Rajk, Laszlo, 327, 332, 349 Rakosi, Matyas, 42, 306, 351 Ramadier, Paul, 324, 326, 337 Rapallo, Treaty of, 60, 75, 81 Rathenau, Walther, 60 Reuter, Ernst, 360, 364, 365 revisionism, 65, 81, 348 Reynaud, Paul, 94, 134,137 Reza Khan, 281 Rhineland, 83, 86, 88, 91, 178, 190, 214, 304,316 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 97, 98, 99, 105, 116, 119-20, 123, 127, 140, 143, 144, 163, 165, 416 Rokossovski, Konstantin, 205, 206, 209 Roosevelt, Elliott, 170, 191, 220, 224, 232, 371 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 14, 16, 46, 68, 72, 91, 105, 108, 113, 130, 161, 169, 190, 205, 215, 263, 369, 370-1, 416; quoted, 72, 83, 170, 182, 204, 220, 224, 227, 232; and Stalin, 73, 157, 158, 163, 166, 167, 171, 236, 256, 275; extends provi­ sions of Lend-Lease Act to U.S.S.R., 156; at Teheran Con­ ference, 166, 187, 188, 189, 195, 222, 223, 226, 229, 233, 254, 390; and Churchill, 170, 171, 179, 180, 191, 220, 236, 371, 373; opposes colonialism, 170, 371; misunder­ stands nature of Communism, 171; meets Eden, 182; expounds plan to

428

•

INDEX

dismember Germany, 190, 229; and revolt of Warsaw Under­ ground, 208; on Stalin-Churchill agreement to partition Europe, 217-18; at Yalta Conference, 219, 224-30 pass., 233, 313, 375; mix­ ture of idealism and arrogance in, 224; exaltation at Yalta Agree­ ments, 233; death of, 236, 238; Stalin’s conviction of weakness of, 256 Roosevelt, Theodore, 15, 16,17 Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 273, 274 Roy, Manabendranath, 57 Royall, Kenneth, 361 Ruhr, 83, 190, 229, 304, 310, 312-19 pass., 324, 358 Rumania, 64, 76, 77, 86, 93, 109, 114, 140, 142, 147, 148, 149, 177, 180, 209-12 pass., 254, 297-302 pass., 347, 348, 350; turned over to Communists, 235; Agrarian Party reduced to impotence in, 327; re­ jects Marshall Plan aid, 330 Russia, 14-19, 45, 48, 59, 280, see also Soviet Union; Stalin, Joseph Russian Civil War, 12, 34, 38, 39, 41, 53 Russian Revolution, 11, 12, 22, 23, 26, 34, 39, 43, 56, 62, 280 Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, 19, 20, 21, 23, 33, 78 Russo-Finnish War, 129, 130-2, 133, 134, 135, 136 Russo-Turkish War, 19 Ruthenia, 341, 350 Ryti, Risto, 134, 136 Saar, 82, 83, 84, 190, 229, 315, 318, 324 Sacco-Vanzetti case, 71 Sadoul, Jacques, 32 Saigon, South Vietnam, 392, 393 Sakhalin, 147, 233 Sarraut, Albert, 64 Saxony, 48, 60, 190, 230, 250, 306, 312 Schacht, Hjalmar, 90 Scheidemann, Philipp, 61 Schumacher, Kurt, 307 Schuman, Robert, 337

Schuschnigg, Kurt von, 91 Scobie, Ronald M., 216, 290 Second International, 19, 21 Security Council of U.N., 222, 223, 225, 246, 249, 270, 283, 284, 289, 296, 336, 364, 388, 390 Seeckt, Hans von, 61 Seeds, William, 102 Seward, William H., 13,14 Shanghai, China, 65, 66, 371, 384 Shaposhnikov, Boris, 114 Siberia, 20, 35, 38, 178 Sikorski, Wladyslaw, 175, 176, 177, 181-5 pass., 203, 205 Silesia, 187, 332 Simon, John, 82 Singapore, 397 Sinkiang province, China, 68, 378 Sjahrir, Solten, 388, 393 Smith, Bedell, 279, 286, 305, 321, 323, 327, 357, 362, 363 Smolensk, U.S.S.R., 184, 187 Smygly-Rydz, Eduard, 115 Social Revolutionaries, Russian, 19, 23, 27, 34, 38, 39, 40, 43 Somaliland, 297 Soong, T. V., 251, 371, 375 Sorge (spy), 177 Southeast Asia, 369, 387 Soviet Union, 61, 64, 71, 82, 92, 104, 113, 116, 171, 197-8, 211, 322; first Five Year Plan in, 54; recog­ nized by Weimar Republic, 60; recognized by U.S., 72, 82; in non­ aggression pact with France, 76, 85; in non-aggression pact with Germany, 80; joins League of Na­ tions, 84; in non-aggression pact with Nationalist China, 95; sells strategic raw materials to Reich, 126; expelled from League of Na­ tions, 133; annexes Baltic states and Bessarabia, 139-40, 142, 182; in war with Germany, 154, 155, 156, 159, 161, 164, 167, 168, 172, 174; breaks with Sikorski govern­ ment, 184, 185; obtains nuclear secrets from spies, 252, 270, 274; tests sixty-megaton bomb, 266; Truman’s attitude toward, 267; losses during World War II, 269;

429

INDEX

Soviet Union ( cont’d .) rejects Baruch Plan, 272-3; seeks access to Mediterranean, 279; de­ mands mandate over Tripolitania, 280, 297; and Iran, 281-3; and Turkey, 285-6, 288-90; sets up Soviet companies in occupied Ger­ many, 311; and Bretton Woods Conference, 323-4; exploits Eu­ rope to further Communism, 327, 341; and Marshall Plan, 328, 329, 330; worsening of relations with France, 338; Yugoslavia’s rupture with, 344, 347-9; purges popular democracies, 349-30; reaction to Atlantic Pact, 358; retreats from Berlin blockade, 365; and non­ aggression pact with Japan, 368; signs treaty with Nationalist China (1945), 375; enters war against Japan, 376; see also Russia; Stalin, Joseph Spaak, Paul-Henri, 357 Spain, 81, 95, 163, 186, 257, 328, 335,336 Spanish-American War, 15 Spanish Civil War, 88, 89, 90, 336 Spartacist revolt, 41, 78 Stalin, Joseph, 16, 20, 28, 30, 33, 39, 49, 50, 52, 55, 59, 60, 65, 66, 75, 76, 86, 94, 116, 132, 150, 151-2, 158, 166-7, 341, 346, 416-17; quoted, 22, 28, 52, 54, 55, 61, 99, 100, 116-17, 119, 152, 153, 154, 160, 161, 167, 174, 179, 187, 189, 206, 208, 214, 215, 226, 227, 247, 277, 279, 286-7, 319, 372, 376; and Trotsky, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55; and Chinese Communists, 69, 70, 368, 372, 377; and Roosevelt, 73, 157, 158, 163, 166, 167, 171, 236, 256, 275; eases tension with France (1931-2), 76; and Hitler, 79, 80, 116, 120-3, 124, 127, 128, 143, 144, 151, 152, 153, 163, 176, 281; purges by, 80-1; and Spanish Civil War, 89; meets Ribbentrop, 119-20; in pact with Hitler, 120-3, 127, 128, 176, 286; ignores British overtures, 149, 150; attempts to appease Hitler, 151-3, 286; and *

Churchill, 156, 158-63 pass., 166, 168, 169, 186, 207, 208, 211, 212, 217, 218, 242, 243, 253, 256, 281, 290; demands Second Front, 159, 160, 161; at Teheran Conference, 166, 187, 188, 189, 192, 194, 195, 222, 232, 305, 390, 395; as mar­ shal, 168-9, 192; talks with Sikorski, 176-7; proposes territorial changes during talks with Eden, 178-9; breaks with Sikorski, 184, 185; suppresses Polish Communist Party, 186; on “unconditional sur­ render” of Germany, 191-2; and Tito, 204; and revolt of Warsaw Underground, 205, 206, 208; con­ fers with Churchill on future of Balkans, 211; at Yalta Conference, 215, 223-30, 235, 282, 288, 305, 395; rejects proposal to dismember Germany, 230; and Truman, 239, 240, 241, 249, 251, 252, 257, 258, 299, 377; and Hopkins, 246-9 pass., 395; disclaims intention to sovietize Poland, 248; declares war on Japan, 253; at Potsdam Con­ ference, 257, 282, 288; answers Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, 277; and Byrnes, 299, 312-13; on Berlin blockade, 362, 363; on Chi­ nese “margarine” Communists, 372; seeks occupation zone in Japan, 377; and Mao Tse-tung, 377, 378, 384; see also Russia; Soviet Union Stalingrad, Battle of, 39, 172, 192 Sternberg, Ungern, 56 Stettinius, Edward R., 224, 232, 239, 246, 251, 297 Stilwell, Joseph, 370, 371, 373, 374, 380 Stimson, Henry L., 241, 251, 263, 268, 370, 374 Straits, the, 133, 145, 146, 147, 212, 285, 286, 288, 289 Strang, William, 111 Stuart, Leighton, 381 Subasic, Ivan, 202, 242 Subhi, Mustapha, 59 Sudetenland, 85, 97, 100, 178 Suez Canal, 15,149

430

♦

INDEX

Sukarno, Ahmed, 387, 388, 390 Sun Yat-sen, 66, 68 Sweden, 109, 133, 134, 136, 145, 163, 357 Switzerland, 21, 84, 109, 162, 163, 385 Sykes-Picot agreement (1916), 18 Syria, 282 Szilard, Leo, 264, 265 Taft, Robert A., 172 Taft, William H., 17 Tanner, Väinö, 131,134 TASS, 152, 153, 183, 328, 352 Teheran Conference, 166, 170, 187-9, 190, 192, 194, 195, 213, 219, 222, 223, 226, 229, 232, 233, 244, 305, 390, 395 Thorez, Maurice, 64, 196, 197, 328, 393,417 Thuringia, 48, 60, 230, 250 Tientsin, China, 378, 383 Tildy, Zoltan, 301 Tito, Josip Broz, 154, 167, 174, 192, 193, 194, 202, 203, 204, 210, 242, 245, 253, 291, 317, 333, 341, 345, 346, 350, 398, 417; quoted, 204; stops aid to Andartes, 294; breaks with U.S.S.R., 344, 347-9; see also Yugoslavia Togliatti, Palmiro, 197, 300 Transcaucasia, 34, 35, 56, 136, 169, 280 Trans-Siberian Railroad, 35, 126 Transylvania, 142, 301 Trieste, 170, 203, 245, 246, 296, 301, 302, 332, 345 Tripolitania, 280, 297, 301 Trotsky, Leon, 12, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38, 44, 49, 50, 51, 54, 57, 59, 418; and Stalin, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55 Truman, Harry S, 238-42, 264, 304, 317, 325, 330, 356, 357, 358, 375, 378, 385, 418; and Stalin, 239, 240, 241, 248, 249, 251, 252, 257, 258, 299, 377; meets Molotov, 241-2; and Churchill, 243-4, 245, 249, 277, 306; suspends lend-lease, 247; quoted, 249, 258, 268, 290, 292, 293, 326, 381; and atomic

bomb, 252, 264-8 pass., 270, 273, 274, 277; at Potsdam Conference, 253-4, 257, 258; attitude toward U.S.S.R., 267; signs MacMahon Act, 273; tires of “babying” Rus­ sians, 275; hears Churchill’s speech at Fulton, 277; and Turkey, 289, 290; and interest payments on lend-lease, 322; requests Wallace’s resignation, 323; orders Berlin air­ lift, 361; sends bombers to Britain, 362; Wedemeyer's report to, 382 Truman Doctrine, 290, 292, 293, 317, 327 Tudeh Party, 281, 282, 284 Tukhachevsky, Mikhail, 80, 164 Turkey, 33, 57, 84, 133, 147, 178, 192, 282, 285-93 pass. Ukraine, 29, 30, 32, 35, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 99, 103, 104, 125, 129, 163, 223, 270, 341, 350 United Nations, 68, 162, 171, 179, 220, 222, 223, 224, 229, 236, 240, 246, 249, 252, 253, 269, 270, 286, 289,322, 370 United States: enters World War I, 11; intervenes in Russian Civil War, 12; Civil War in, 14; Com­ munist Party of, 70; recognizes U.S.S.R., 72, 82; isolationism in, 83; pro-Russian attitude during World War II, 172; enters World War II, 177; secrecy in, concerning nuclear weapons, 269, 273, 274; recognizes Grozea government, 300; containment policy of, 331; National Security Council of, 362, 364, 383; see also Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Truman, Harry S Vandenberg, Arthur H., 246, 247, 273, 293,312, 357 Varga, Eugene, 250 Varkiza Agreement, 290 Versailles, Treaty of, 60, 61, 64, 65, 7 6,81,82, 85,91, 129, 190 Vichy government, 194, 196 Viet Minh, 291, 385, 392, 393, 394 Viet Nam, 385, 391, 392, 393, 394 Vinson, Frederick M., 268

43 I

INDEX

Vishinsky, Andrei, 139, 225, 226, 235, 240, 283, 298, 364 Vladivostok, U.S.S.R., 35, 38,48 Vlassov, Andrei, 164, 311 Voroshilov, Kliment, 82, 87, 107, 113, 114, 115, 123, 125, 128 Wallace, Henry, 269, 323, 372, 373 Warsaw, Underground revolt in, 204-9 Wassilevka, Wanda, 185 Wedemeyer, Albert C., 373, 380, 382 Weimar Republic, 60, 365 Werth, Alexander, 184 West Berlin, 305, 359, 362, 363, 366 West Germany, 358, 359, 361, 364, 366 Weygand, Maxime, 45, 84,135 Wilson, Horace, 112 Wilson, Woodrow, 12, 16, 17, 31, 35, 40, 43, 71, 191, 271, 418; quoted, 17 40 44 World Bank, 323 World War I, 17, 21, 39-40, 58, 226 World War II, 124, 161-65, 175; 247, 253 Wrangel, Pëtr Nikolaevich, 41, 45, 63

Wu P’ei-fu, 68 Yalta Agreements, 233, 236, 249, 251, 254, 375 Yalta Conference, 16, 68, 166, 182, 215, 218-31 pass., 234, 235, 247, 282, 288, 305, 313, 395 Yenan, China, 70, 94, 194, 368, 372, 374, 378, 379, 382, 387 Yugoslav Communist Party, 344, 346, 347, 348,417 Yugoslavia, 77, 84, 148, 149, 178, 192-4, 202, 203, 204, 211, 212, 245, 253, 286, 291, 293, 296, 301, 310, 333, 341, 345, 346; govern­ ment of national union in (1945), 242; claims southern Corinthia, 317; rejects Marshall Plan aid, 330; breaks with U.S.S.R., 344, 347-9; see also Tito Zhdanov, Andrei, 109, 139, 333, 334, 353,354 Zhukov, Georgi, 250, 299 Zinoviev, Grigori, 21, 50, 53, 57, quoted, 58 “Zinoviev Letter,” 62

432