US Views of the Cold War

American occupation policy in Europe resulted from the agreements made between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta in February of 1945, and elaborated upon at the Potsdam Conference later that year. Yalta is generally spoken of as the beginning of the Cold War but deeper roots go back to the Casablance Conference, which Churchill proclaimed to be the "end of the beginning." By declaring for "unconditional surrender, the Conference was held to serve the purpose of assuring Stalin the allies would never make a separate peace with Hitler. This was a message never accepted by Stalin, only heightening his belief the allies would fight to the last drop of Russian blood.

The American people had entered the war, and persuaded themselves, as well as were persuaded their leaders, the war was for the salvation of mankind. This national attitude was represented by Roosevelt on his return from Yalta:-

The Crimea conference . . . ought to spell the end

of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive

alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances

of power, and all the other expedients that have

been used for centuries, and have always failed.

Yalta and Potsdam called for the complete disarmament of Germany, removal of the Nazi party, and the former nation was divided into four zones of admin

. . .
am meetings, and adopted a course of political and military aggrandizement that soon was to threaten another world war. Fear of socialism, prevention of communism, the hope that America would use its economic power to define the structure of postwar trade and world economy, the need for American goods and supplies for its industry, all merged into a national and general ideology of cold war liberalism. This ideology was transformed into a crusade against communism, and, at this time, the Soviet Union was seen in the United States, as the head of - "unified global conspiracy dedicated to our obliteration . . . " In 1947, two very important elements of the cold war were propagated by the Truman administration. First was the Truman Doctrine, sent to Congress in a message of March, 1947, and, second, The Marshall Plan, of December, 1947: In the critical spring of 1947, the overt and all- out political conflict between Russia and the west, which would come to be called the cold war, pre- sented itself as an imminent danger but not as a foregone conclusion. To the American people, the role was that of not being the divider of Europe, if it were to be divided into two opposed camps. There was much opposition toward
. . .

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Approximate Word count = 2241
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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