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COLD WAR: 1945-49 (3 of 9)

Czechoslovak workers' May Day
poster with hammer and sickle.

In Stuttgart in early September, 1946, the U.S. Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, announced a changed policy concerning Germany that also annoyed the Russians. Byrnes spoke of returning to the German people a centralized government, of helping Germany to recover economically, and he suggested that for the sake of fairness Germany's eastern border might be readjusted, returning to Germany some of the lands given to Poland. The Soviet Union was hostile toward any show of favoritism to Germany and remained focused not on Germany's economic recovery but on receiving more reparations. And France was also unenthusiastic about a German recovery.

The winter of 1946-47 aggravated Europe's miseries. Hunger was accompanied by economic stagnation, inflation and political unrest. Economic crisis in Britain led the British government to ask the United States to assume the burden of overseeing affairs in Turkey and Greece, seen as a bulwark against Communist expansion southward. In Greece, a communist led insurgency was taking place, and the Soviet Union had been pressuring Turkey, interpreted in the United States as a threat to advance communism. [link] 

In March 1947, Truman responded with what became known as the Truman Doctrine, designed to contain communism. A grand strategy in foreign policy had been devised by the U.S. State Department, created by an experienced diplomat, George F. Kennan. He had been stationed in Moscow beginning in 1944, second only to the U.S. ambassador there, and he had interacted with Russians and with Soviet officialdom. Kennan had known the hostility to the West that Stalin was supporting. He disliked it, and he disliked talk of an inevitable war with the Soviet Union that could be heard among some in the United States. His strategy was for long range containment of Soviet power, patience and if possible the avoidance of all out war. His was the grand strategy that would prevail, willy-nilly, through a variety of administrations until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1989.

Truman faced a Republican Congress, the Republicans having gained a congressional majority in the 1946 elections. Truman asked Congress for military aid for Turkey and for Greece. He spoke tough about the dangers of communism, believing as did an advisor or two that in order to get Congress to loosen its hold on the nation's purse strings it was necessary to scare people regarding the dangers of communism.

In June, 1947, Truman and his new Secretary of State, George Marshall, began pushing what was called the European Recovery Program, which would become known as the Marshall Plan. The purpose of the plan was to create economic cooperation among the states of Europe and to stimulate economic growth in Europe. And there was some hope that creating hope and relieving misery would diminish the appeal of Marxist arguments and the appeal of communism among Europeans.

The Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, welcomed the plan, arguing with his colleagues that everyone wanted reconstruction. But Stalin was suspicious. He described the plan as a ploy by Truman. "They don't want to help us," he said. "They want to infiltrate European countries." But he agreed to Molotov discussing it with Western diplomats.

Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia agreed to join in the U.S. plan for economic help, and Stalin recoiled, fearing the influence it would give the capitalist West in these countries. On July 3, 1947, in the middle of his discussions with Western diplomats, Molotov switched positions. He followed Stalin's leadership and accused the Western powers of seeking to divide Europe into two hostile camps.

Czechoslovakia still had a coalition government, with a third of its cabinet Communists, reflecting the third of the vote that Communist candidates had won in 1946. Czechoslovakia's president, Eduard Beneš, was a liberal. Its prime minister, Klement Gottwald, was the head of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Angry with the Czechoslovak government, on July 9, Stalin summoned Gottwald to Moscow. The Czechoslovak delegation returned to Prague on July 11, and after a long meeting among the full government it was announced that Czechoslovakia would cancel its decision to join the Marshall Plan. Czechoslovakia's foreign secretary, Jan Masaryk, was distraught. "I went to Moscow as the foreign minister of an independent sovereign state," he said, "I returned as a Soviet slave." [note]

With Stalin against the Marshall plan, communists in Western Europe led street demonstrations against it. France's Communist Party made a bid for power. The labor unions it led went out on strike, calling for united action on the Left, for a 25 percent increase in wages and more bread. Millions supported the strike and through the autumn France remained economically paralyzed. The more conservative leadership of France's government expelled the government's Communist ministers.

In September, in response to the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union organized an international organization called the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). Its invited members were the communist parties of France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia. The Communist Party USA was eager to join but uninvited. The Soviet Union's members proclaimed that the world had divided into two camps, one devoted to socialism and democracy and the other to reaction and war. The U.S. was described as imperialist and the Marshall Plan as an attempt to revive a German industry controlled by U.S. financiers. Communist Party representatives were urged to give up nationalism in favor of internationalism and were invited to confess their previous mistaken tactics.

In December in France a passenger train derailed, killing twenty people. It was seen as the work of saboteurs supporting the labor strike. Public opinion was swinging against the strike. People were tired of it. A settlement was reached, labor winning a rise in wages, but less than the twenty-five percent originally demanded. The U.S. told the French that no Marshall Plan aid would be forthcoming until the threat from Communists within France was over.

The popularity that the Communists had won from their fight against fascism and Germany was on the decline in France. Communists were losing in France, but in occupied Romania their domination of the government increased, and in December they forced the abdication of the king, Michael.

Also in December, President Truman submitted the Marshall Plan to Congress, the plan involving $13.3 billion in aide from the U.S., which Congress had to approve. Week after week the debate in Congress dragged on. This was a Republican Congress, the first since the days of Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. A significant number in Congress balked at  pouring billions of dollars into "a bottomless pit of wasteful altruism." But then events in Czechoslovakia shocked them into loosening their hold on federal spending.

Czechoslovakia had been suffering from especially bad harvests and unrest. Masaryk had appealed to the U.S. for aid but had been told that a loan would not be forthcoming until Prague changed politically. The Soviet Union promised Czechoslovakia 600,000 tons of grain to prevent starvation, and among the Czechoslovaks this won support for Stalin. With the arrival of the deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union, supposedly to oversee the grain delivery, the government's non-communist ministers resigned, hoping to force an early election. In February, 1948, the Czechoslovak Communist Party organized street demonstrations and worker assemblies in factories. Units of communist-led armed factory workers marched. President Beneš feared civil war and allowed Gottwald to form a new government, and from a minority within a coalition government the Communists became the government.

Headlines in the United States screamed takeover. The Secretary of the Navy proposed steps to prepare Americans for war. President Truman spoke to a joint session of Congress, blamed the Soviet Union for the takeover in Czechoslovakia and called it "a ruthless action." He called on Congress to pass the Marshall Plan and for the enactment of a universal military training and a Selective Service (conscription) bill. On April 3, Congress approved 5.3 billion for the Marshall Plan.

In mid-April, 1948, sixteen European nations signed onto the Marshall Plan -- now called the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). Not joining were Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Albania -- places where Communists had considerable influence. Finland did not join either, wishing to avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union.