THE IRON CURTAIN

During 1946 and 1947 the Soviet Union tightened its hold on Eastern Europe (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany). Promised elections in Europe did not actually take place for two years. In some cases communists backed by Stalin forced noncommunists who had been freely elected out of office.

In March 1946 Winston Churchill made a speech at a college in Fulton, Missouri, where he noted that the Soviet Union had established an iron curtain that divided the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites from the independent countries of Europe. This speech is often viewed as the symbolic beginning of the Cold War.

Another key document from this era was written by American diplomat and expert in Soviet affairs George F. Kennan. Kennan wrote an anonymous article in Foreign Affairs magazine in July 1947 (the author was only identified at “Mr. X”), stating his opinion that Soviet policy makers were deeply committed to the destruction of America and the American way of life. The article maintained that the USSR felt threatened by the United States and felt that it had to expand for self-preservation. Kennan stated that a long-range and long-term containment policy to stop communism was needed. According to Kennan, if communism could be contained, it would eventually crumble under its own weight. The policy of containment was central to most American policy toward the Soviet Union for the next 45 years.

If President Truman was looking for an opportunity to apply the containment policy, opportunities soon presented themselves in Turkey and Greece. The Soviets desperately desired to control the Dardanelles Strait; this Turkish controlled area would allow Soviet ships to go from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. In addition, communists were threatening the existing government in Greece, In February 1947, the British (still suffering severe economic aftershocks from World War II) stated that could no longer financially assist the Turkish and Greek governments, and suggested that the United States step in (some historians maintain that this symbolically ended Great Britain’s great power status and demonstrated that now the United States was one of the two major players on the world stage). In March 1947, the president announced the Truman Doctrine, which stated that it would become the stated duty of the United States to assist all democratic nations of the world who resisted communism. Congress authorized $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey. The policies outlined in the Truman Doctrine and in George Kennan’s article can be found embedded in American foreign policy all the way through the 1980s.