304 ChaPter^6
meant that the Soviet Union would try to expand but that the U.S. could
contain it so that it would not gain influence outside of those Eastern European
countries where the Russians had taken control in the late stages of World War
II. Though Kennan would later claim he was misunderstood, and become a
strong critic of the Cold War, American leaders at that time naturally assumed
that containment would be a global military policy, to be used not just in
Eastern Europe but virtually everywhere that “Communist” threats existed.
That indeed is what happened. U.S. officials, led by President Truman, began
to see any challenge or alternative to the U.S. economic plan for the postwar
world as a threat and began to describe any such different views as
“Communist.” In much of the world, however, local groups–often including
workers, socialists, human-rights activists, peasants, and others who did not
have power–had led the fight against fascism during the war and were now
fighting for liberation or equality against the oligarchies–older and more estab-
lished men of influence with economic, military and political strength and
connections to the U.S. and other powers. The U.S. defined these peoples’
movements, often based on nationalism and fundamental notions of fairness
and equality, as “Communist” and acted to eliminate them. One such example
was in Greece, which led to a major leap in America’s global commitments.
Greece had helped defeat the Germans with a significant contribution
coming from a group of fighters from the Communist Party. The govern-
ment, however, was run by a thuggish group of military officials, referred to
as the “regime of the Colonels.” They ran Greece with an iron fist, denying
people fundamental rights and keeping the majority of workers and farmers
in dire economic conditions, and they received a large amount of financial
aid from Britain. As a result, a group of rebels from that impoverished
majority, many who had fought against the Nazis in the war, emerged to
challenge the Colonels. By that time, some were Socialists but most were
not, and the rebels had no connection to the Soviet Union and were not a
“Communist” group at all. That did not matter. Truman and other officials
felt far more comfortable with the Colonels, because they was on good
terms with western capitalists, so, when Britain said it could no longer afford
to support the Greek regime, Truman announced that he would pick up that
duty.
There was one problem. The amount of money Greece needed was quite
big–$400 million–and the American people, with the depression in recent