American Politics and Diplomacy; Origins of the Cold War; and the Dewey-Truman Election of 1948, part 1

How did the Cold War come about? There's a large revisionist literature which attributes it to the United States in various ways. To the alleged open door, pressure of the United States to try to keep the markets of Eastern Europe open to our exports and to do that we allegedly had to try to keep them. Anti-Soviet governments there. There's another line of argument which is that the Cold War came about because we used the atomic bomb, a pot stamp, an after to threaten the Soviet Union. There's another line of argument which is that we did not offer the Soviet Union's efficient aid and finally that we didn't offer the Soviet Union a place of significance and power in the occupation of Italy and of Japan. Now these and other arguments I leave to question period what I thought it might be most useful to do is for me to state rather bluntly in my own view.

You're listening to an analysis of American politics and diplomacy. Such analysis is particularly appropriate now as the bicentennial period of the United States coincides with the post-Vietnam era. The purpose of this weekly radio series is to illuminate the crucial but often little understood relationships between domestic and foreign affairs in American history since the 19th century. These programs are designed by a pair of distinguished scholars who are also man and wife. Elspeth Rastau is Associate Professor of History and Dean of General and Comparative Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her husband Walt Rastau is Professor of History and of Economics at UT Austin and is perhaps best known for having been a top advisor to President's Kennedy and Johnson. Join us now as Communication Center at the University of Texas at Austin presents this week's exploration of American politics and diplomacy from 1895 to the present. By the election of 1948, Europe as you know had been virtually split on the

elb, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, as well as Bulgarian Romania had come under the control of communist governments. Tito in the year 48 split from Stalin. He was running a communist state but one that was independent of Moscow and looking quietly to the west for its economic and implicitly its security ties. Berlin was blockaded by the East Germans and the Russians and airlift was supplying a West Berlin right during the election period. The nationalist Chinese were in a process of disintegration in their struggle with the Chinese communists all who were knowledgeable agreed that the communists were on their way to winning but it was not at that time a hot political issue in the United States because in the phrase of the time China had not been lost but as early as January 8th, 1947 Mr. Marshall General Marshall who'd been trying to negotiate between the

nationalists and the Chinese communists had given up. There were guerrilla wars going on with communists fighting against the existing governments in of course against France in colonial Indo-China, in Malaya, in Burma, in the Philippines, in Indonesia. Asia was very uneasy but again no great crisis. The Truman Doctrine was operating in Turkey and Greece where guerrilla, very intense guerrilla war had been going on but it began to break up when Tito's split from Stalin and the frontier was closed, Yugoslavia to help the Greek communists and finally the Marshall Plan was an operation. The American role in Europe was supported by a large bipartisan majority including the majority in the Republican Congress that had been elected in 1946 primarily on bring the boys home and get rid of rationing. But the election takes place in the

midst of a rather intense phase of the Cold War. Now how did the Cold War come about? There's a large revisionist literature which attributes it to the United States in various ways. To the alleged open door, pressure of the United States to try to keep the markets of Eastern Europe open to our exports and to do that we allegedly had to try to keep anti-Soviet governments there. There's another line of argument which is that the Cold War came about because we used the atomic bomb, a pot stamp and after to threaten the Soviet Union. There's another line of argument which is that we did not offer the Soviet Union sufficient aid and finally that we didn't offer the Soviet Union a place of significance and power in the occupation of Italy and of Japan. Now these and other arguments I leave to question period what I thought it might be most

useful to do is for me to state rather bluntly my own view. In Europe I believe the Cold War came about because of three four circumstances. First the way the war was fought. The war was fought in ways which left the Soviet armies in physical control of Eastern Europe and Berlin. This happened partly because the Allies did not win the war in 1944 which would have left them much further than the East and there are people who argue that were the different and were vigorous and imaginative policy by generalized now the war might have been won and our armies would have been a different position. I'll just say that if we had accepted Churchill's advice and not landed in the south of France and make it mid-August 44 but gone storming through the Lubianna Gap into Austria and Eastern Europe we could have prevented that de facto control and there's also arguments about getting into Czechoslovakia. But in any case the fact was that diplomacy began

with the Russians in physical control of Eastern Europe and Berlin. Secondly American demobilization we had the bomb and we had a few bombs but for whatever reasons we demobilized our armed forces so that in the Soviet Union did not. Therefore we had no usable military strength in 1945-46-47. There was hardly an American military unit of any kind that was wholly operational because of the pace and scale of demobilization. This was done unilaterally. The Soviets did not disarm their armed forces. They sat there in the areas that they occupied and to this must be added what President Roosevelt said at the first day at Yalta. Thinking of his experience, remember he was the vice presidential candidate in 1920 and of the probable mood of the United States

at the end of this war. He told Stalin and the others assembled that the United States would not be able to keep forces in Europe for more than two years and undoubtedly Stalin thought that well he lived around there he'd wait two years and see what happened. And indeed American demobilization looked as though it was wholly consistent with his prediction. Roosevelt's prediction. We still have ample forces in Europe 30 years, I guess, at 30 years after Yalta. But that was not the way it looked at the time to Roosevelt and Stalin. Third, American diplomacy towards Eastern Europe. But Yalta, there were two very important political agreements reached. One on Poland. Poland was took up over 75% of the time at Yalta and it really was the key to a solution to the situation in Eastern Europe other than

just splitting Europe on the L. The agreement was that the interim government, which was the Lublin government, the communist government, then in Warsaw, would take into it some non-communist who were then in London and that interim government would then conduct a secret election, secret ballot, universal suffrage, except for fascists who've been conspiring with the Germans, and only then would a Polish government emerge. This was an extraordinarily serious commitment that was made in the most sensitive place that would determine the shape of Eastern Europe and indeed all of Europe. The second was the more general agreed statement on the liberation of the liberation of the so-called liberated areas of Eastern Europe, which called for free elections there also. But the Polish agreement which took an enormous amount of Roosevelt's and Churchill's energy to negotiate was solid. Well, in a long passage

between Yalta in 1947, the United States failed to insist on the honoring of this. And I believe that with that failure to honor that a split of Europe was the only realistic option. So those are the three things on the American side. The way the war was fought, argumentualization, and our diplomacy towards Eastern Europe. Now what about the Soviet side? There I think you've got to try to look at it from the Soviet point of view, and indeed from Stalin's point of view. He had an option that gradually unfolded to him. He was being offered by the United States and Britain. A disarmed Germany, a voice in the roar and in other Western aspects of European life, but not a total control and not a veto. As against this image of a united non-communist Germany with free elections in Eastern Europe, but a Soviet

troops assuring that Germany would be disarmed. He had the option of going for consolidating his base in Europe in Eastern Europe under his total control, and then seeing if he couldn't extend his power to the West. When Abraham and his U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union at that time met Stalin in Potsdam, Harriman had come home to see Mr. Truman and they gone back together. He had said to Stalin that this must be as he greeted him again because he knew him well. This must be a great occasion for you to be here in the heart of Germany after all your people have suffered at the hands of the Germans. Stalin's reply was, Zar Alexander got to Paris, and this is indeed what happened after the Napoleonic Wars. And there's no doubt that a man with a communist background and a Russian background would think in terms of the post-war

dishevelment of Europe, how far he could push west Russian influence, and a communist must have had a sense of moral duty, historical duty, to use the dishevelment of the post-war Europe to extend his power to a maximum. Stalin was not as we know more about him, one of the most outstanding characters ever to appear in world politics. But in a matter of this kind, I don't believe moralizing is very helpful. At least I can reconstruct from Russian history and history of communism. Why? It would look more attractive to him. If it did not get into a war of the United States, the United States did not appear to care all that much about Eastern Europe, to seize the option of total power up to the elve, and then see how far he could build beyond it. That's a view incidentally which I hold now in retrospect as a historian,

but I was a very low-order bureaucrat in the state department at that time. I came out of uniform and worked on German Austrian economic problems, and believed very ardently that we should try to avoid the split of Europe, and felt at the time that it was not inevitable. If we could persuade the Russians, that in fact the option was not to consolidate Eastern Europe, and then pushing Italy in France and Germany further to the west, but that there'd be a split Europe back by the United States. In any case, I wanted that option formulated, but in fact, we did not hold up that option to Stalin. I was split Europe, effectively mobilized with U.S. strength there, until after he'd made his commitment to consolidate it by, as he did. So in a curious way, I agree with not with the revisionist arguments, but I am inclined to think that we are because of the various positions we took and the weaknesses we displayed bear a very high degree of responsibility for the Cold War.

Now, why didn't the United States insist that they Stalin honor his Yaldic commitment on the elections in Poland? I think the answer is that no American, if either party was prepared to go to war on Eastern Europe, because although Eastern Europe plays a role in the balance of power in Europe, it is not decisive. Recall the story of China. American policy lit Manchuria goal at the Chinese cities, go to the coastal cities, go. And Franklin Roosevelt only blew the whistle on the Japanese when they moved into, from north into China to south into China, and threatened the whole sea roots of Southeast Asia. China, as we'll see, was not regarded by the United States as absolutely decisive to the balance of power. It was important, but not decisive. And the same thing was true of Eastern Europe. Well, we can come back to that. In Asia, of course, the Cold War emerged from the failure of the nationalist in their struggle against the

Cold War struggle against the Communists. Behind that was the degeneration that occurred after 1957, when the nationalists who had done pretty well from 27 to 37, they were driven out of their cities. They were driven back on chunking, and by some complex process there, their capacity to rule and avoid corruption to generate it. And when they emerged, to take over China, Chunkai-Shak had every opportunity to consolidate his position in China. He had three times the forces of the Communists who'd built up in the north, it is true. He had great prestige. He had held out. He's his allies with some help from him. And won the war against Japan. He was recognized as one of the big four in the world, but he could not effectively rule or effectively fight. For the United States, I think the critical date is October 44, when still

after failing to persuade Chunkai-Shak to conduct the military and political reforms that he wanted to leave. And in the Pentagon, as Stimson says, China became a definitely limited commitment of the United States. In the post-war, let's say he came back. There was a sort of nationalist communist land grab to see how much of China each could consolidate down to January 46. There was a year of negotiations in which the United States played a key role, notably General Marshall. Marshall gives up in 47 or January there's a war, and he loses it. And then, as this was happening, as it became palpable that the communists were going to win, Stalin, who would never believe the communists would win this. He was really thought Chunkai-Shak can solidate and had dealt with him in a very direct diplomatic way. He began to shift communist policy in Asia. The turning points in about the autumn of 47

in the first meeting of the common forum in which instructions were given to start up guerrilla warfare in Asia. And this warfare started, well, it was already underway and into China, but it was started in Burma, Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaya. And the general view was that with the communists taking over China and with this wobbly colonial or post-colonial situation, it again was a moment of tremendous historic opportunity for the communists, and they shook the tree very hard. But the shaking of the tree at that time did not produce any catastrophes, so Mr. Truman, against the background of a great deal on ease in Asia, and a fairly well-formed western bloc policy holding its own against the blockade of Berlin could run his election primarily domestic grounds. We're turning obviously not only to a new phase in diplomacy, but a new phase in politics,

in a sense because Roosevelt died in April of 1945. We moved then into a post-Rosevelt era in that year. The successor to Roosevelt, Vice President Truman, had had a relatively brief period as Vice President, and had had little familiarity with many of the issues he was to confront. He was given a very short honeymoon, if a honeymoon at all, by Congress, and by the midterms in 46, Truman and the Democratic Party were in trouble, more serious trouble apparently, than the Democrats had encountered since Roosevelt won in 32. The midterms in 46 then indicated a return to Republican control, both in the House, where the Republicans piled up a 28-seat margin in the Senate, which they held by a precarious two-seat margin, but in many state houses where

Republican governors came in in the midterms in 46. The Republicans then prepared themselves between 46 and 48 for the first victory in a long time. They were hungry for the presidency, after all they not won since 1928, and that was quite a while. The questions then that they were asking were not could they win, but who would be the strongest candidate? In 47, a series of considerable events take place in Congress. They not only the so-called Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, but it's a period in which Congress is active in other levels as well. By 1948 then, the politics of the period suggested that not only was the incumbent president in a defensive position, but that he should take credit for such achievements as he had. So the 48 election becomes, in a sense, a multiple paradox. Why did a president who had achieved

a measure of success in Congress on his foreign policy not refer to it in this campaign? Why did a president who could have run once again against Herbert Hoover against whom Democrats had been running steadily since the Depression, not to do this? The answer is that the election of 1948 is a relatively uninteresting, low stimulus election. To a political scientist, it is a classic maintaining election. In 48, the Republicans encountered a Roosevelt coalition that had survived the president. In other words, Roosevelt was dead, but the building blocks of the Roosevelt coalition were there, labor, cities, city machines, parts of the South, ethnic votes, including Jewish vote, which in the issue of Palestine was sensitized at this period, it was a familiar coalition

then, which the Democrats had. And in 48, all that happened was that the standing strength of the majority party was reflected in the outcome. So few people turned out in 48 that inevitably the party, which had the largest number of party regulars, was the one that won. Now, I will get into what Truman did in a moment, but it's worth realizing that there were no real issues in 48. There was no clash of candidates in 48. There was no real encounter that would excite the voters, and you can see this in the composition of the votes. As you look at it, you see of the total Democratic vote, 74 percent. It's been estimated were party regulars. The Republican vote in 48, 71 percent were party regulars. No great switching in either direction. And on the whole, it was not only a low turnout, but the smallest percentage of adults turned out at the polls

in 1948, since the establishment of the two party system, if you forgive the country, the first two elections after women entered the polling place in 1920 and 1924. Harry Truman then was a maintaining victor, and a maintaining victor who of course defied the predictions of 48, but the predictions should have taken into account these facts, which I'm suggesting. The New York Times on the eve of the election, I'll begin with the end and then get into the rest, the Times predicted that Dewey would get 305 electoral votes. Actually, it was Truman who got 304 electoral votes. Truman's total in the popular column was 24 million, roughly 100,000. In 1948, Dewey came in with just under 22 million. Strom Thurmond, I'll turn to in a moment, on the state's rights democratic ticket, one just 1,169,000, but he managed to get some electoral

votes. Henry Wallace on the progressive ticket did not get any electoral votes, although he had roughly the same popular vote. And the Democrats squeaked back in and won Congress. In other words, it was an unexpected election only because of the noise in the system, and the noise was generated deliberately by one of the candidates. Let's turn then from the results of this classic maintaining election to a few things, one, the choice of the candidates, and two, the campaign. First of all, let's look at the platforms and see what the composition of domestic and foreign issues amounts to in 48. The Republican platform bore the marks of Senator Vandenberg who helped to draft it. Senator Vandenberg had switched from being an outstanding isolationist member of the Senate to being a supporter of what was then called collective security. Vandenberg wrote into the 48

Republican platform roughly an endorsement of the Marshall Plan, not in so many words. A support of the kinds of foreign policy on which Truman had been active in particularly in the year before. Qualified support then for Truman's doctrines, not capitalized, in general, is the foreign policy component of the Republican platform. The platform is also quite strong on civil rights, and it's a clear and interesting statement for the party. The Democratic platform in 48 bore the marks of a relatively young member of the Senate, Senator Humphrey. And the important fact in the Democratic platform was the strength of the civil rights plaque. It was strong enough in time to drive strong Thurmond out of the convention and into a third-party stance. It was strong enough in terms of its attitude on poll tax, lynching, etc., to alienate important parts of the conservative

southern wing of the Democratic Party. The foreign policy planks were not particularly interesting, they were as would be expected with an incumbent an endorsement of what had been achieved. The only party which had an exclusively foreign policy orientation was that of the one time Vice President Henry Wallace, who splintered in December of 47 into a progressive party, not to be confused with any other party by the same name, because Wallace's progressive party was oriented almost exclusively towards a reproach mall with the USSR, towards the, if you will, towards the end of the Cold War. Yes, they argued for domestic reform, but the orientation of the party was largely towards Détente. Into support for Wallace came not only some liberal members of the Democratic Party, but also he was backed by the Communist Party, backed by so-called fellow

travelers, and he was to be a very important factor for Truman in 48 because he took away the charge of radicalism from the Democratic Party, removing this argument by putting it into the opposition, gave Truman a very clear advantage.