“UNITED: The United

Nations Fight for Freedom” (USA,

1943):FDR hoped to continue the

wartime alliance with the USSR in

the postwar world

W. Averell Harriman(1891-1986):

1913: graduates from Yale, founds major Wall Street bank;1940-42: FDR’s special envoy to

Churchill and Stalin;1943-46: Ambassador

to USSR;later Secretary of Commerce and

Governor of New York

George F. Kennan(1904-2005)

1925: Graduates from Princeton, joins Foreign

Service;1933-38: Posted to

Moscow;1938-44: Transferred to Prague, Berlin, Lisbon, &

London;1944-46: Returns to

Moscow (sends “Long Telegram,” February

1946); 1947-49: Director of

Policy Planning at U.S. State Department

(quarrels with Dean Acheson);

1951-52: Ambassador to the USSR

“Curzon Line B”

was proposed by the British

Foreign Secretary in

1920

THE DISPUTE OVER POSTWAR POLAND

January 21, 1944: Ambassador Harriman warns the State Department from Moscow that the London Polish government in exile has no future unless it accepts the Curzon Line, purges its most reactionary members, and adds at least one minister acceptable to Stalin.February 6, 1944: Churchill appeals to the London Poles to accept the Curzon Line, but they refuse.March 4, 1944: Harriman approaches Stalin to convey concern about civil war in postwar Poland.June 1944: The Soviets announce the formation of a “Polish National Council” in Lublin.August-October 1944: Warsaw Uprising by the Polish Home Army is crushed by the Germans.

Hitler ordered the Warsaw Ghetto leveled

after the Ghetto Uprising of

January-May 1943.

The Polish Home Army seized control of central

Warsawon August 1, 1944,as the Red Army

approached.

When the Polish Home Army surrendered on October 2,

the Germans destroyed Warsaw completely, then withdrew

The Soviet conquest of

western Poland in January 1945, on the eve of the

Yalta Conference.

The Big Three at Yalta, February 1945:Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, & Joseph

Stalin

Did FDR understand that he had in effect sacrificed Poland?

The Occupation Zones Agreed Upon at Yalta:

The Oder-Neisse Line

marked the new Polish-German

border

U.S. planners anticipated 1,000,000 casualties during the final invasion of Japan

U.S. and Soviet troops link up on the ruins of a bridge over the Elbe River at Torgau, April 25,

1945

The Red Army takes Berlin, May 2, 1945

At Potsdam in July 1945, Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, and Stalin agree on the Four D’s:

Denazification, Democratization, Demilitarization, Decartellization

Truman MAY not have understood the implicit bargain at Yalta (contrast Gaddis, 21-24)

THE DETONATION OF THE ATOMIC BOMBOVER HIROSHIMA ON AUGUST 6, 1945:

About 70,000 died that day, and 70,000 more within 6 months

“No Nonsense!”(USSR, 1948):The Soviets

detonated their first A-bomb on August 29, 1949.Gaddis concludes

on p. 27 that statesmen in Moscow and

Washington were caught in a

“security dilemma.”

Border revisions and streams of refugees in 1945

Communist strongholds in Greece, 1946/47

Marhsal Josip Broz Tito (1892-

1980),the Communist

leader of Yugoslavia who broke openly with Stalin in

1948.He was the real

patron of the Greek

Communists…

Harry S. Truman announces the “Truman Doctrine”

to the U.S. Congress on March 12, 1947

Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposes the

European Recovery Program at Harvard in June 1947

(below) and then finalizes the plan for its implementation

with Ernest Bevin and Robert Schuman in Paris in October

1948

Stalin prohibited any East European participation

The Marshall Plan as the wind in Europe’s

sails(Federal Republic of

Germany, 1950).By 1952 the USA had contributed

$11 billionto revive the

economy of Western Europe, the most

successful economic aid program in history

Klement Gottwald led the Czech Communists to a plurality in 1946 with 38% of the popular vote and

then became premier of a Popular Front government. Jan Masaryk and all other non-

Communist ministers were replaced with Communists in February 1948.

Soon thereafter Masaryk was found dead beneath the window of his Prague apartment

The currency reform in “Bizonia,”

21 June 1948:Every West German citizen received 40 new Deutschmarks.

Stalin responded with a blockade of

West Berlin.

The Berlin Airlift, October 1948:Grateful West Berliners greet an American transport plane

Dean Acheson signs the NATO

treaty in Washington on April 4, 1949, as Harry Truman

and British Foreign

Secretary Ernest Bevin look on

In 1949 Konrad

Adenaueremerged as the elected leader of the pro-Western Federal Republic

of Germany

Walter Ulbricht founded the pro-SovietGerman Democratic Republic

The “Iron Curtain” dividing Europe, 1949 to 1989

EVIDENCE OF STALIN’S PLAN FOR WORLD DOMINATION?

1. The Greek Civil War of 1946/47 (actually fomented by Tito).

2. April 1947: A strike at the Renault Plant near Paris gains the support of the French Communist Party and leads to the fall of the Popular Front Government (??).

3. Chinese Civil War, 1947/48: The sudden victory of the Communists over the Nationalists leads to conspiracy theories in Washington.

4. Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, February 1948.

5. June 1948: Soviet Blockade of Berlin, which leads to the Berlin Airlift.