300 ChaPter^6
The Cold War, like the war itself, was a war to expand the Open Door,
and it was going well. Still, the Americans would, increasingly, argue that it
was the Russians causing global turmoil, that Stalin was intending to domi-
nate Europe and maybe other areas, and that the “global communist con-
spiracy”–the alleged desire for the Communists to take over the world–had to
be stopped. To be sure, the Soviet Union had left occupation forces in coun-
tries in Eastern Europe as it liberated them from the Nazis in that crucial
1943-45 period, and had established friendly Communist governments there
[much as, for instance, the U.S. had done in Latin America for well over a
half-century by that time] and it did possess military strength, especially 2.8
million Red Army troops, down from 11 million in uniform during the war.
But the idea that the Soviet Union could rival the U.S. in power, or take over
vast sections of the globe, was virtually impossible. The imbalance in power
was so great, the U.S. advantage so huge, that any country, especially one so
devastated by the war, could hardly challenge American supremacy. American
leaders, however, knew that, even though they had great advantages, they
could use fear to convince the public that they had to take a hard line–build
more weapons, intervene in more countries, gain more power–to protect their
interests against the communists. And thus the Cold War was born.
To give a detailed, blow-by-blow, description of the early Cold War years is
too large a task for a study of U.S. history from the Civil War forward. The
events in that early period, from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, occurred at
such a hectic pace and in so many areas that one cannot explain them all in
brief. But there are some episodes and developments that are both important
by themselves, and that highlight the larger Cold War issues, and we will focus
on those rather than try to cover all the intricate details of the whole period.Poland, Germany, and Greece
When the war ended in mid-1945, the U.S., Russia, and Great Britain had to
determine how to deal with Germany, what to do about the Soviet position
in Eastern Europe, and how to rebuild Europe. These issues would lead to
serious differences between the three and break up their “Grand Alliance,” and
lead to an intense and dangerous Cold War rivalry.
Among the first issues to be discussed, during a conference at Yalta, in the
Ukraine, in February 1945 were the futures of Poland and Germany. Poland