In Germany overwhelmingly large numbers of
Red Army divisions and far fewer American and
British troops faced each other across zonal occu-
pation lines that were rapidly hardening into an
armed border. Neither politically nor economic-
ally was Germany being treated as one unit, as
had been agreed at Potsdam in 1945. Mutual
recriminations grew. West and East were each
piling up grievances against the other.
For the Americans, the problems of Europe
after the defeat of Germany were seen more in
economic and political terms than military. The
agreements reached at Potsdam were difficult to
carry out. The Soviet Union was proving an awk-
ward ‘ally’. But in 1945 and 1946, despite grow-
ing tension with the Soviet Union, American
forces were leaving Europe to be demobilised at
home. The divisions that remained were intended
not as a defence against Russia, but as the mini-
mum necessary to control the Germans. The main
aim of US policy was to ensure that basic living
standards were maintained and that money was
made available for relief supplies. Each occupying
power in Germany – the USSR, Britain, France
and the US – went its own way. For the British,
themselves weak economically, the task of main-
taining food supplies in their zone was a heavy
burden, using up the dollars loaned from the US.
General Lucius Clay was the man appointed to
oversee the US zone. Accusing the Soviet occupa-
tion authorities of not fulfilling agreements
reached, in May 1946 he cut off German repara-
tions to the East. As tensions grew, the US contin-
ued to feel safe in the knowledge that it was the
only nation to possess the atomic bomb. It was
unrealistic to expect America to share its secrets
with the Russians, any more than the Russians
were willing to share their armaments secrets with
the Americans. But the atomic weapon was some-
thing different. One day the Soviet Union would
be able to make its own nuclear weapons – sooner
than anyone expected – and other nations too. The
US could use its advantageous position to reach an
international agreement that would eventually
control production, perhaps eliminate the weapon
altogether, so avoiding a nuclear-arms race. The
Americans did evolve a plan (the Baruch Plan) in
June 1946 which entailed, as it was bound to, con-
trol and inspection in stages over raw materials and
atomic plants through the establishment of a UN
International Atomic Energy Authority. But the
US insisted it would retain its atom bombs until all
the stages of control and supervision had been sat-
isfactorily completed. Thus the Russians would
have to reveal all their secret nuclear research while
the US alone would hold viable atomic weapons.
The Russians countered with a plan to ban the pro-
duction of atomic weapons, to be followed by the
destruction of existing (US) weapons, and at the
UN they vetoed the American proposals. Without
trust between the Soviet Union and the US, nei-
ther plan would work. The Russians were deter-
mined to catch up with the Americans and the
Americans understandably were not going to
throw away their advantage and fall behind. Would
an act of faith on America’s part have persuaded
the Soviet Union to be more amenable to Western
demands over Germany or Eastern Europe? It
seems unlikely.
For Washington the most urgent need was to
assess Stalin’s future intentions. There was a con-
sensus that the Soviets were concerned for their
own security and that Stalin was isolating the
Soviet Union while continuing to build up its
industrial might and thus its military potential
at the expense of its people’s standard of living.
But in ensuring its security how aggressive would
the Soviet Union prove to be? How many coun-
tries on its borders, not yet within its full grasp,
would it seek to dominate? The degree of destruc-
tion the Soviet Union had suffered during the
war, the paramount need for reconstruction
which constrained Soviet leaders from risking war
with the West, Stalin’s own preoccupation with
consolidating his power at home and Soviet
power in Eastern and central Europe, his innate
caution – all these factors were given insufficient
weight. They were certainly underrated by George
Kennan, an American diplomat serving in the
Embassy in Moscow who did more than anyone
else to provide on the Western side the intellec-
tual Cold War rationale. In February 1946 he sent
an 8,000-word telegram to Washington with his
psychological assessment of the Soviet leadership’s
outlook on world affairs. In it Kennan explained
that he did not accept that the comparative
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