BETWEEN WAR AND ABUNDANCE 223The French Communist Party designed this
propaganda map at the height of the early Cold War,
urgently asking “Who is the aggressor? Who is the
menace?” If there was any doubt, the party insisted
that it was the American military that drove the epic
struggle between communism and the West.
The Cold War began even before World War II
ended. Though formal allies, the Soviet Union and
the United States had a history of mutual suspicion.
Joseph Stalin saw the United States as capitalist
and expansive, a nation that deliberately delayed
the opening of a second front in Europe so that the
Soviets would shoulder the fight against Germany.
During the war, President Roosevelt believed—
perhaps naively—that he could “handle” Stalin, but
later generations wondered if more could have been
done to resist Soviet demands at the Yalta meeting
in February 1945. Within two months Roosevelt was
dead, leaving his inexperienced vice president, Harry
Truman, to lead the country through the final stages
of the Pacific War.
That summer, the United States detonated an
atomic bomb, which Truman believed would give
him an uncontested advantage over the Soviets. The
U.S. used the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
which simultaneously defeated the Japanese and
demonstrated American military prowess. Relations
with the USSR deteriorated rapidly from there. In
1946 Winston Churchill described an “iron curtain”
that divided free Europe from the Soviet sphere. The
next year, a young American diplomat stationed in
Moscow sent a lengthy telegram to his superiors
describing Russian behavior as governed chiefly by
a sense of international insecurity. Such a mindset,
leavened with a zealous commitment to communism,
meant that, while the Soviets might not pose a direct
threat to the United States, they must be met with
patient, firm, and vigilant containment.
In perhaps the first example of containment,
President Truman committed military support to
Greece and Turkey to stave off communist influence.
He then proposed a massive infusion of economic
aid to those western European countries willing to
support democratic institutions and free trade. While
the Soviets and their eastern European allies initially
THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR
French Communist Party, “Voici les
bases Americaines dans le monde”
[Here are the American bases
throughout the world], 1951
considered accepting the aid, their ultimate rejection
of the Marshall Plan heightened Cold War divisions
further. These tensions worsened in 1948, when a
communist coup in Czechoslovakia was followed by
a blockade of Berlin. Western Europeans responded
with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
which obliged the United States to extend its military
commitments in Europe. Before the end of the year,
the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb, and the
communists mounted a successful revolution in
China. Fears of a communist axis mounted when
North Korea invaded its southern neighbor in 1950.
This rapid sequence of threatening events drove
Truman toward his more hawkish advisers. The result
was an increase in American commitments abroad,
and by 1950 more than a million American military
personnel were stationed across thirty-five foreign
countries. That military presence prompted French
communists to produce this broadside, most likely
part of the party’s campaign in the parliamentary
election of June 1951. The French Communist Party
won a quarter of the vote that summer.
While the broadside portrays the United States
as the aggressor, the country does not appear on
the map save for a sliver of Alaska over the North
Pole. Instead, it is the growth of American military
bases that encircle the Soviets and their communist
allies, who, as the text explains, have yet to fire a shot
beyond their borders. The map presents a communist
heartland that is encroached upon on all sides by
American militarism. By this time Eastern Europe
was largely controlled by the Soviet Union, though
in an Orwellian twist the map identifies these as
“Democraties Populaires.” With its global perspective
and suggestive symbols, the French Communist
Party urgently points to a need to join the worldwide
network of support for the Soviets and resistance
to American capitalism. The oblique perspective
used by Harrison on page 206 to highlight American
vulnerability in World War II is here used to highlight
Soviet vulnerability in the Cold War.
Though an exaggerated example, the map reflects
the ambivalence felt by many in western Europe
after the war: grateful for American aid and military
protection but concerned by their dependence upon
the same. Even as propaganda, the map captures the
global nature of the emerging Cold War. The conflict
took hold not just in Europe, but also in the growth of
communist parties in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The next map reflects the American response,
which frames the Soviets as the aggressors and the
Americans as the defenders of freedom.