THE PRESIDENT’S FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH THE USSR
In Washington, Harry Truman found himself thrust onto the world stage. The country was still at war in Europe and Asia, and he faced many unfamiliar problems. As a veteran of the Senate, he knew the legislative branch of government but was not well versed in foreign policy. Although he had been added to the Democratic ticket for the 1944 elections, the secretive FDR had not told him that the United States was working on an atomic bomb, much less let him in on the politics of the “grand alliance.” Truman confided to his diary on the day he was sworn in: “I knew the president had a great many meetings with Churchill and Stalin. I was not familiar with any of these things and it was really something to think about but I decided the best thing to do was to go home and get as much rest as possible and face the music.”3
The new president retained Roosevelt’s entire cabinet, so contrary to Cold War legend, there was no sudden break with FDR’s policies. What changed was the international situation when, within a month, Germany was defeated. Questions were now bound to arise about how to make peace in Europe, how to respond to Soviet behavior in Eastern and Central Europe, and how to end the war with Japan.
At the time, of course, Poland was “the pressing and dangerous problem” on the agenda, and on April 13 Truman wrote to Prime Minister Churchill, in response to a message of condolence, to say he wanted to do something about it.4 The president was inclined to “get tough” with the Kremlin and had Secretary of State Stettinius ask Ambassador Harriman in Moscow to raise the Polish issue again before Molotov left on his trip to the United States.5
Stalin went to great lengths to allay Western suspicions regarding Soviet intentions. He prided himself on how shrewdly he had instructed foreign Communists after the Red Army liberated their countries. He met with them in Moscow before they went home and coached each and every one of them to form national front governments, made up of a coalition of parties. The reality that the Communists were dominant, however, was too obvious to ignore. Western Allied commissions in Eastern Europe sent numerous reports to that effect to Washington and London.
Once the White House was notified of Molotov’s impending visit, Truman and his advisers concluded that the American government should get beyond merely exchanging pleasantries. Following up on this resolution on April 16, Truman and Churchill sent a joint message to Stalin regarding discussions under way in Moscow by a commission charged with working out a new provisional government for Poland. They asked that representatives of the Polish government-in-exile be permitted to join those discussions.6 The backdrop for this request was that the Anglo-American leadership and Stalin accused each other of not holding to the Yalta agreements with regard to Poland, Romania, or Bulgaria. Moscow was trying to maximize the influence of Communist parties, while the West sought to protect vulnerable nations from Soviet encroachment and domination. The note hinted that further infringements would make it difficult to get Congress to grant the $6 billion loan the USSR was seeking from Washington.7
The new president’s goal was the cautious one of keeping to agreements already made. His great fear was that he might not be up to the job and seem weak. As it was, he had no long-term plans or hidden agenda with respect to the Soviet Union, Europe, or Asia, and he wanted to get along with Moscow as much as anyone. At times he sounded terribly naïve and inclined to pursue foreign policy in absolutist terms. The overriding need of the moment was still to win the war, and he wanted the Soviet Union in it to the end, especially for the final fight against Japan.8
Ambassador Harriman was anxious about the meeting that he had arranged for the new president with Molotov, so he hurried back to Washington. He arrived on April 20 and went straight to the White House, where he made no effort to conceal his worst fears, saying that the Kremlin would not be satisfied until all the Eastern European countries were turned into images of the Soviet Communist regime. Using the most undiplomatic language, he offered the president a startling vision that something akin to a new “barbarian invasion of Europe” was already under way.9
On April 23, Commissar Molotov called at the White House to open discussions. Charles Bohlen, a Soviet expert in his own right, served as translator, as he had for Roosevelt at Tehran and Yalta. Bohlen and others in the State Department were convinced that FDR had tried too hard to get along with Stalin, with nothing to show for it.
At their second meeting, Molotov asked President Truman whether he intended to respect the treaties, agreed on by FDR, by which the Soviet Union would be given certain territories in Asia for entering the war against Japan. The president said he would fulfill those promises but wondered when the Kremlin would live up to agreements to give Eastern European countries the opportunity to establish their own democracies.
The assertive Molotov, who was usually in control of situations like this, lamely objected that the Poles had worked against the Soviet Union. When he recalled the event years later, he said he was upset by Truman’s tone and responded in kind. In fact, he did no such thing.10 Instead he tried to move the conversation back to the war with Japan, at which point Truman, whose voice had been steadily rising, broke off the conversation with the words, “That will be all, Mr. Molotov. I would appreciate it if you would transmit my views to Marshal Stalin.” Bohlen remembered how he enjoyed translating those sentences. “They were probably the first sharp words uttered during the war by an American president to a high Soviet official.”11
This relatively minor event did not “cause” the Cold War, though for years it was taken as “symbolic” of how the United States supposedly had become a “world bully” that did not understand the Soviet “obsession with a pursuit of security.”12
Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Andrei Gromyko, was also present that day, and although the Truman-Molotov exchange was not mentioned in the official Soviet records, he later recalled his surprise that the once “kindly” Senator Truman was coming across as “harsh” and “cold” since becoming president.13 Gromyko explained the transformation by saying the new man in the White House already had the atomic bomb and was flexing his muscles.14 That was not the case, however, as Truman was given more details about that weapon only after, and not before, this brush with Molotov. Gromyko’s misleading statement is one of many that fuel myths about the early “atomic diplomacy.” It is true that the day Truman was sworn in, and in the emergency atmosphere of that moment, Secretary of War Stimson had mentioned that the United States was developing a weapon of “unbelievable destructive capacity,” yet he said no more than that and left the new president “puzzled.”15
The American memorandum of the Truman-Molotov talks struck some Soviet diplomats in Washington almost as if it were an ultimatum. Moscow was to help move the deal forward with Poland and allow non-Communists a role in government there, or else it would be difficult for the U.S. to continue its cooperation—that is, to grant the Soviet Union the aid it so badly needed.16
The touchy Molotov notified Stalin, who sent a stiff reply to the White House that arrived on the night of April 25. The president recalled the message as most “revealing and disquieting.” The Soviet leader forcefully restated his long-held views, asserting that his country was “entitled to seek in Poland a government that would be friendly to it.” As for objections that such a regime might not be representative, he pointed out what the West was supposedly doing in Belgium and Greece. He would not ask, he said, how representative those governments were.17