Stalin was given an inkling of future difficulty even as the Germans were going down to defeat. Lend–Lease aid was stopped without warning on 8 May 1945, and the ships on the high seas were ordered back to the USA. The USSR had served its military purpose for the Americans; it now had to show it deserved any further assistance. American actions in western Europe conformed to this pattern. Both overt and clandestine support was given to political groups in France and Italy dedicated to undermining the growth of communist influence. A blind eye was turned to General Franco’s advocacy of Hitler’s cause as Spain too was brought under American hegemony. The British assisted royalist forces in Greece in crushing the large armed units of communists. The Truman administration pursued the military and economic interests of American capitalism on every continent. Air force bases were acquired in Africa and Asia.1 Pro-Washington dictatorships were helped to power in Central and South America. The British and Americans intervened in the Middle East to guarantee their access to cheap oil and petrol. American general Douglas MacArthur was given plenipotentiary authority in Japan until such time as he could establish a state in line with the USA’s political orientation.
The British Empire was in decline, and Stalin cannot have been surprised that the Americans were eager to expand their political and military hegemony over the maximum number of countries. As the United Kingdom’s weakness was exposed, world politics became contest between the USSR and the USA. Stalin had to manoeuvre carefully. Negotiations to found the United Nations Organisation had begun in San Francisco in April 1945. Stalin wished to have the USSR made a member of the Security Council and to secure a right of veto within it. Molotov negotiated on Stalin’s orders. It was not a congenial experience as the Americans were no longer worried about the sensitivities of their Soviet interlocutors.2
The policies of the USSR became clearer in 1946. By then Churchill was out of office but his speech at Fulton, Missouri on 5 March rejected any attempt at conciliation. Churchill spoke of an ‘iron curtain’ drawn down the centre of Europe by Stalin and the communist leadership. Concessions to the USSR should cease. Churchill was summarising what Truman had said in piecemeal fashion since the outset of his Presidency. But this left a lacuna in Anglo-American strategic thought. It was filled by a telegram sent from Moscow by American diplomat George Kennan on 22 February. Kennan argued that the Western Allies should seek to ‘contain’ their global adversary rather than use military force. By their further development of nuclear weapons the Americans also could deter the USSR from adventurism and aggression. This was the core of American state doctrine over succeeding years, and any member of the USA’s leadership who challenged it was removed. President Truman became ever more assertive in his diplomatic dealings. The British were helpmates rather than decision-makers, but they approved the new orientation; and Stalin, regularly supplied with information from his intelligence agencies, knew that limits had been placed on his activity in global affairs if he wished to avoid armed confrontation with a stronger enemy.
The year 1947 pivoted the Grand Alliance towards open disharmony. Several events increased the mutual antipathy. Every crisis strengthened the belief of leading politicians, including Truman and Stalin, that their chronic suspicion of the rival power and its leader had been justified. Resumed co-operation would be difficult. The Allies lurched into the Cold War. Truman and Stalin spoke fractiously about each other. Each felt empowered by military victory to enhance his state’s influence in the world and to ensure that his rival — whether in Washington or in Moscow — did not get away with anything.
The USSR had gone on flexing its muscles after the Second World War without getting into a fight. Avoidance of a Third World War was the supreme immediate priority. Little was done in the Far East. Stalin accepted that the Americans had unchallengeable control of Japan and its political and economic development; he contented himself with possession of the Kurile islands obtained in accord with the Yalta agreements. He also concluded that prolonged occupation of northern Iran by the Red Army would endanger relations with the USA. The Western Allies repeatedly demanded the withdrawal of Soviet armed forces, and in April 1947 Stalin at last acceded to this. The Iranian government proceeded to suppress separatist movements in the north of its country. But the Soviet Army pulled back, never to return. Stalin simultaneously tried to put pressure on Turkey for territorial concessions. In this instance President Truman’s robust defence of Turkish sovereignty saved the situation from developing into an emergency. Stalin’s chimerical ambitions to turn Libya into a protectorate of the USSR were also quietly abandoned after British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin flew into a rage in negotiations with Soviet diplomats.3
The serious trouble started on 5 June 1947 when US Secretary of State George Marshall announced economic assistance to European countries which had suffered from Nazi aggression. The offer was also available to the USSR, and Stalin’s original scheme had been for representatives of Bulgaria and Romania to attend the subsequent exploratory gathering in Paris with the purpose of disrupting it; but he had second thoughts, becoming convinced that a ‘Western block against the Soviet Union’ was being organised.4 Marshall intended to undermine Soviet hegemony over the countries of eastern Europe by providing them with American financial help. The Ministry of External Affairs in Moscow explored whether funds really would be released to the USSR for its post-war recovery. The answer was that the Americans made open markets the condition for aid. As Truman and Marshall knew, there was never any chance that Stalin and his associates would accept such restrictions. The Marshall Plan was tied to the geopolitical objectives of the USA and these included the drastic reduction of the USSR’s power in Europe. Even Jeno Varga, who had suggested the possibility of a parliamentary road to communism in Europe, saw the Marshall Plan as a dagger pointed at Moscow.5 Moderation in Soviet foreign policy came to a halt. Thus began the Cold War, so called because it never involved direct military conflict between the USSR and the USA.
Having conquered eastern Europe, Stalin would not relinquish his gains. He held to a traditional view of security based on buffer states. This was an approach soon to be made obsolete by long-range bombers and nuclear missiles. It also overlooked the huge onus taken upon itself by the USSR in occupying these countries and becoming responsible for their internal affairs. Most communist leaders in eastern Europe anticipated Stalin’s reaction and broke off negotiations with the Americans in Paris.