The Problem of Germany: 1945-1948

The wartime Western-Soviet alliance effectively dealt with the common Nazi German military threat. However, by the end of World War II, the victors had agreed on little more than to occupy, de-nazify and jointly administer their defeated and devastated German former enemy. The traditional approaches of the United States and the Soviet Union to foreign policy largely shaped their respective approaches to the German problem but left them ill-prepared to resolve their postwar differences over Germany. An initial period of partial cooperation was followed by a series of East-West confrontations and to a mutual hardening of positions which led to the armed division of Germany. American and other Western actions were largely motivated by fear of the spread of communist influence in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe, which, after much uncertainty and confusion, coalesced around a policy of containing Soviet expansion based on a new 'realism.' The actions of the Soviet Union reflected the mindset of its dictator Josef Stalin whose methods largely undermined the accomplishment of

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h his Long Telegram to the State Department in which he commented on "the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs," its morbid fears and suspicions of the West and its need for an external enemy to justify the Stalinist dictatorship at home (Chace 149-150; and Kennan 566-582). Kennan called for the long term containment by the West of Soviet expansionism. Its arrival in Washington coincided with the gradual emergence of a consensus within the American government in favor of a more forceful reaction to the perceived threat of communist expansion in Germany and elsewhere. During the spring, summer and fall of 1946 American foreign policy was undergoing a transition away from collaboration with the Soviet Union and toward containment. Kennan said that when he returned to the United States that spring "much of American opinion, at least in educated circles, was at that time bewildered and confused" (Kennan and Lukas 37). Truman was receiving conflicting advice from the anti-communist hardliners who included Kennan, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, Byrnes, White House adviser Clark Clifford and others. At the same time, FDR's former Vice President and Truman's Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace argued that American policy was
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4908
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)