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But Roosevelt could not deliver. Massive logistical and production problems obstructed any possibility of invading Western Europe on the timetable Roosevelt had promised. As a result, despite Roosevelt's own best intentions and the commitment of his military staff, he could not implement his desire to proceed. In addition, Roosevelt repeatedly encountered objections from Churchill and the British military establishment, still traumatized by the memory of the bloodletting that had occurred in the trench fighting of World War I. For Churchill, engagement of the Nazis in
North Africa and then through the "soft underbelly" of Europe-Sicily and
Italy-offered a better prospect for success. Hence, after promising Stalin a second front in August 1942, Roosevelt had to withdraw the pledge and ask for delay of the second front until the spring of 1943. When that date arrived, he was forced to pull back yet again for political and logistical reasons. By the time D-Day finally dawned on June 6, 1944, the Western
Allies had broken their promise on the single most critical military issue of the war three times. On each occasion, there had been ample reason for the delay, but given the continued heavy burden placed on the Soviet Union, it was perhaps understandable that some Russian leaders viewed America's delay on the second front question with suspicion, sarcasm, and anger. When
D-Day arrived, Stalin acknowledged the operation to be one of the greatest military ventures of human history. Still, the squabbles that preceded D-
Day contributed substantially to the suspicions and tension that already existed between the two nations.

Another broad area of conflict emerged over who would control occupied areas once the war ended? How would peace be negotiated? The principles of the Atlantic Charter presumed establishment of democratic, freely elected, and representative governments in every area won back from the Nazis. If universalism were to prevail, each country liberated from Germany would have the opportunity to determine its own political structure through democratic means that would ensure representation of all factions of the body politic. If "sphere of influence" policies were implemented, by contrast, the major powers would dictate such decisions in a manner consistent with their own self-interest. Ultimately, this issue would become the decisive point of confrontation during the Cold War, reflecting the different state systems and political values of the Soviets and
Americans; but even in the midst of the fighting, the Allies found themselves in major disagreement, sowing seeds of distrust that boded ill for the future. Since no plans were established in advance on how to deal with these issues, they were handled on a case by case basis, in each instance reinforcing the suspicions already present between the Soviet
Union and the West.

Notwithstanding the Atlantic Charter, Britain and the United States proceeded on a de facto basis to implement policies at variance with universalism. Thus, for example, General Dwight Eisenhower was authorized to reach an accommodation with Admiral Darlan in North Africa as a means of avoiding an extended military campaign to defeat the Vichy, pro-fascist collaborators who controlled that area. From the perspective of military necessity and the preservation of life, it made sense to compromise one's ideals in such a situation. Yet the precedent inevitably raised problems with regard to allied efforts to secure self-determination elsewhere.

The issue arose again during the Allied invasion of Italy. There, too, concern with expediting military victory and securing political stability caused Britain and the United States to negotiate with the fascist Badoglio regime. "We cannot be put into a position," Churchill said, "where our two armies are doing all the fighting but Russians have a veto." Yet Stalin bitterly resented being excluded from participation in the Italian negotiations. The Soviet Union protested vigorously the failure to establish a tripartite commission to conduct all occupation negotiations.
It was time, Stalin said, to stop viewing Russia as "a passive third observer. ... It is impossible to tolerate such a situation any longer." In the end, Britain and the United States offered the token concession of giving the Soviets an innocuous role on the advisory commission dealing with Italy, but the primary result of the Italian experience was to reemphasize a crucial political reality: when push came to shove, those who exercised military control in an immediate situation would also exercise political control over any occupation regime.

The shoe was on the other foot when it came to Western desires to have a voice over Soviet actions in the Balkan states, particularly Romania. By not giving Russia an opportunity to participate in the Italian surrender, the West-in effect-helped legitimize Russia's desire to proceed unilaterally in Eastern Europe. Although both Churchill and Roosevelt were
"acutely conscious of the great importance of the Balkan situation" and wished to "take advantage of" any opportunity to exercise influence in that area, the simple fact was that Soviet troops were in control. Churchill-and privately Roosevelt as well-accepted the consequences. "The occupying forces had the power in the area where their arms were present," Roosevelt noted, "and each knew that the other could not force things to an issue."
But the contradiction between the stated idealistic aims of the war effort and such realpolitik would come back to haunt the prospect for postwar collaboration, particularly in the areas of Poland and other east European countries.

Moments of conflict, of course, took place within the context of day-to- day cooperation in meeting immediate wartime needs. Sometimes, such cooperation seemed deep and genuine enough to provide a basis for overcoming suspicion and conflict of interest. At the Moscow foreign ministers conference in the fall of 1943, the Soviets proved responsive to
U.S. concerns. Reassured that there would indeed be a second front in
Europe in 1944, the Russians strongly endorsed a postwar international organization to preserve the peace. More important, they indicated they would join the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated, and appeared willing to accept the Chiang Kaishek government in China as a major participant in world politics. In some ways, these were a series of quid pro quos. In exchange for the second front, Russia had made concessions on issues of critical importance to Britain and the United
States. Nevertheless, the results were encouraging. FDR reported that the conference had created "a psychology of ... excellent feeling." Instead of being "cluttered with suspicion," the discussions had occurred in an atmosphere that "was amazingly good."

The same spirit continued at the first meeting of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in Tehran during November and early December 1943. Committed to winning Stalin as a friend, FDR stayed at the Soviet Embassy, met privately with Stalin, aligned himself with the Soviet leader against
Churchill on a number of issues, and even went so far as to taunt Churchill
"about his Britishness, about John Bull," in an effort to forge an informal
"anti-imperial" alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union. A spirit of cooperation prevailed, with the wartime leaders agreeing that the
Big Four would have the power to police any postwar settlements (clearly consistent with Stalin's commitment to a "sphere of influence" approach), reaffirming plans for a joint military effort against Japan, and even—after much difficulty—appearing to find a common approach to the difficulties of
Poland and Eastern Europe. When it was all over, FDR told the American people: "I got along fine with Marshall Stalin ... I believe he is truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people—very well indeed." When pressed on what kind of a person the Soviet leader was,
Roosevelt responded:

"I would call him something like me, ... a realist."

The final conference of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at Yalta in
February 1945 appeared at the time to carry forward the partnership, although in retrospect it would become clear that the facade of unity was built on a foundation of misperceptions rooted in the different values, priorities, and political ground rules of the two societies. Stalin seemed to recognize Roosevelt's need to present postwar plans—for domestic political reasons—as consistent with democratic, universalistic principles.
Roosevelt, in turn, appreciated Stalin's need for friendly governments on his borders. The three leaders agreed on concrete plans for Soviet participation in the Japanese war, and Stalin reiterated his support for a coalition government in China with Chiang Kaishek assuming a position of leadership. Although some of Roosevelt's aides were skeptical of the agreements made, most came back confident that they had succeeded in laying a basis for continued partnership. As Harry Hopkins later recalled, "we really believed in our hearts that this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for. The Russians have proved that they can be reasonable and far-seeing and there wasn't any doubt in the minds of the president or any of us that we could live with them and get along with them peacefully for as far into the future as any of us could imagine."

In fact, two disquietingly different perceptions of the Soviet Union existed as the war drew to an end. Some Washington officials believed that the mystery of Russia was no mystery at all, simply a reflection of a national history in which suspicion of outsiders was natural, given repeated invasions from Western Europe and rampant hostility toward communism on the part of Western powers. Former Ambassador to Moscow Joseph
Davies believed that the way to cut through that suspicion was to adopt
"the simple approach of assuming that what they say, they mean." On the basis of his personal negotiations with the Russians, presidential aide
Harry Hopkins shared the same confidence.

The majority of well-informed Americans, however, endorsed the opposite position. It was folly, one newspaper correspondent wrote, "to prettify
Stalin, whose internal homicide record is even longer than Hitler's."
Hitler and Stalin were two of the same breed, former Ambassador to Russia
William Bullitt insisted. Each wanted to spread his power "to the ends of the earth. Stalin, like Hitler, will not stop. He can only be stopped."
According to Bullitt, any alternative view implied "a conversion of Stalin as striking as the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus." Senator
Robert Taft agreed. It made no sense, he insisted, to base U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union "on the delightful theory that Mr. Stalin in the end will turn out to have an angelic nature." Drawing on the historical precedents of the purge trials and traditional American hostility to communism, totalitarianism, and Stalin, those who held this point of view saw little hope of compromise. "There is as little difference between communism and fascism," Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen said, "as there is between burglary and larceny." The only appropriate response was force.
Instead of "leaning over backward to be nice to the descendents of Genghis
Khan," General George Patton suggested, "[we] should dictate to them and do it now and in no uncertain terms." Within such a frame of reference, the lessons of history and of ideological incompatibility seemed to permit no possibility of compromise.

But Roosevelt clearly felt that there was a third way, a path of mutual accommodation that would sustain and nourish the prospects of postwar partnership without ignoring the realities of geopolitics. The choice in his mind was clear. "We shall have to take the responsibility for world collaboration," he told Congress, "or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict." President Roosevelt was neither politically naive nor stupid. Even though committed to the Atlantic
Charter's ideals of self-determination and territorial integrity, he recognized the legitimate need of the Soviet Union for national security.
For him, the process of politics—informed by thirty-five years of skilled practice—involved striking a deal that both sides could live with.
Roosevelt acknowledged the brutality, the callousness, the tyranny of the
Soviet system. Indeed, in 1940 he had called Russia as absolute a dictatorship as existed anywhere. But that did not mean a solution was impossible, or that one should withdraw from the struggle to find a basis for world peace. As he was fond of saying about negotiations with Russia,
"it is permitted to walk with the devil until the bridge is crossed."

The problem was that, as Roosevelt defined the task of finding a path of accommodation, it rested solely on his shoulders. The president possessed an almost mystical confidence in his own capacity to break through policy differences based on economic structures and political systems, and to develop a personal relationship of trust that would transcend impersonal forces of division. "I know you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you," he wrote Churchill in 1942, "[that] I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so."
Notwithstanding the seeming naivete of such statements, Roosevelt appeared right, in at least this one regard. The Soviets did seem to place their faith in him, perhaps thinking that American foreign policy was as much a product of one man's decisions as their own. Roosevelt evidently thought the same way, telling Bullitt, in one of their early foreign policy discussions, "it's my responsibility and not yours; and I'm going to play my hunch."

The tragedy, of course, was that the man who perceived that fostering world peace was his own personal responsibility never lived to carry out his vision. Long in declining health, suffering from advanced arteriosclerosis and a serious cardiac problem, he had gone to Warm
Springs, Georgia, to recover from the ordeal of Yalta and the congressional session. On April 12, Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died. As word spread across the country, the stricken look on people's faces told those who had not yet heard the news the awful dimensions of what had happened. "He was the only president I ever knew," one woman said.
In London, Churchill declared that he felt as if he had suffered a physical blow. Stalin greeted the American ambassador in silence, holding his hand for thirty seconds. The leader of the world's greatest democracy would not live to see the victory he had striven so hard to achieve.

2.2 The Truman Doctrine.

Few people were less prepared for the challenge of becoming president.
Although well-read in history, Truman's experience in foreign policy was minimal. His most famous comment on diplomacy had been a statement to a reporter in 1941 that "if we see that Germany is winning [the war] we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances." As vice-president, Truman had been excluded from all foreign policy discussions. He knew nothing about the
Manhattan Project. The new president, Henry Stimson noted, labored under the "terrific handicap of coming into... an office where the threads of information were so multitudinous that only long previous familiarity could allow him to control them." More to the point were Truman's own comments:
"They didn't tell me anything about what was going on. . . . Everybody around here that should know anything about foreign affairs is out." Faced with burdens sufficiently awesome to intimidate any individual, Truman had to act quickly on a succession of national security questions, aided only by his native intelligence and a no-nonsense attitude reflected in the now- famous slogan that adorned his desk: "The Buck Stops Here."

Truman's dilemma was compounded by the extent to which Roosevelt had acted" as his own secretary of state, sharing with almost no one his plans for the postwar period. Roosevelt placed little trust in the State
Department's bureaucracy, disagreed with the suspicion exhibited toward
Russia by most foreign service officers, and for the most part appeared to believe that he alone held the secret formula for accommodation with the
Soviets. Ultimately that formula presumed the willingness of the Russian leadership "to give the Government of Poland [and other Eastern European countries] an external appearance of independence [italics added]," in the words of Roosevelt's aide Admiral William Leahy. In the month before his death, FDR had evidently begun to question that presumption, becoming increasingly concerned about Soviet behavior. Had he lived, he may well have adopted a significantly tougher position toward Stalin than he had taken previously. Yet in his last communication with Churchill, Roosevelt was still urging the British prime minister to "minimize the Soviet problem as much as possible . . . because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arrive everyday and most of them straighten out." If Stalin's intentions still remained difficult to fathom so too did Roosevelt's. And now Truman was in charge, with neither Roosevelt's experience to inform him, nor a clear sense of Roosevelt's perceptions to offer him direction.

Without being able to analyze at leisure all the complex information that was relevant, Truman solicited the best advice he could from those who were most knowledgeable about foreign relations. Hurrying back from Moscow,
Averell Harriman sought the president's ear, lobbying intensively with
White House and State Department officials for his position that
"irreconcilable differences" separated the Soviet Union and the United
States, with the Russians seeking "the extension of the Soviet system with secret police, [and] extinction of freedom of speech" everywhere they could. Earlier, Harriman had been well disposed toward the Soviet leadership, enthusiastically endorsing Russian interest in a postwar loan and advocating cooperation wherever possible. But now Harriman perceived a hardening of Soviet attitudes and a more aggressive posture toward control over Eastern Europe. The Russians had just signed a separate peace treaty with the Lublin (pro-Soviet) Poles, and after offering safe passage to sixteen pro-Western representatives of the Polish resistance to conduct discussions about a government of national unity, had suddenly arrested the sixteen and held them incommunicado. America's previous policy of generosity toward the Soviets had been "misinterpreted in Moscow," Harriman believed, leading the Russians to think they had carte blanche to proceed as they wished. In Harriman's view, the Soviets were engaged in a
"barbarian invasion of Europe." Whether or not Roosevelt would have accepted Harriman's analysis, to Truman the ambassador's words made eminent sense. The international situation was like a poker game, Truman told one friend, and he was not going to let Stalin beat him.

Just ten days after taking office, Truman had the opportunity to play his own hand with Molotov. The Soviet foreign minister had been sent by
Stalin to attend the first U.N. conference in San Francisco both as a gesture to Roosevelt's memory and as a means of sizing up the new president. In a private conversation with former Ambassador to Moscow
Joseph Davies, Molotov expressed his concern that "full information" about
Russian-U.S. relations might have died with FDR and that "differences of interpretation and possible complications [might] arise which would not occur if Roosevelt lived." Himself worried that Truman might make "snap judgments," Davies urged Molotov to explain fully Soviet policies vis-a-vis
Poland and Eastern Europe in order to avoid future conflict.

Truman implemented the same no-nonsense approach when it came to decisions about the atomic bomb. Astonishingly, it was not until the day after Truman's meeting with Molotov that he was first briefed about the bomb. By that time, $2 billion had already been spent on what Stimson called "the most terrible weapon ever known in human history." Immediately,
Truman grasped the significance of the information. "I can't tell you what this is," he told his secretary, "but if it works, and pray God it does, it will save many American lives." Here was a weapon that might not only bring the war to a swift conclusion, but also provide a critical lever of influence in all postwar relations. As James Byrnes told the president, the bomb would "put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war."

In the years subsequent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historians have debated the wisdom of America's being the first nation to use such a horrible weapon of destruction and have questioned the motivation leading up to that decision. Those who defend the action point to ferocious
Japanese resistance at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and the likelihood of even greater loss of life if an invasion of Japan became necessary. Support for such a position comes even from some Japanese. "If the military had its way," one military expert in Japan has said, "we would have fought until all 80 million Japanese were dead. Only the atomic bomb saved me. Not me alone, but many Japanese. . . ." Those morally repulsed by the incineration of human flesh that resulted from the A-bomb, on the other hand, doubt the necessity of dropping it, citing later U.S. intelligence surveys which concluded that "Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." Distinguished military leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower later opposed use of the bomb. "First, the
Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing," Eisenhower noted. "Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon." In light of such statements, some have asked why there was no effort to communicate the horror of the bomb to
America's adversaries either through a demonstration explosion or an ultimatum. Others have questioned whether the bomb would have been used on non-Asians, although the fire-bombing of Dresden claimed more victims than
Hiroshima. Perhaps most seriously, some have charged that the bomb was used primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union rather than to secure victory over
Japan.

Although revulsion at America's deployment of atomic weapons is understandable, it now appears that no one in the inner circles of American military and political power ever seriously entertained the possibility of not using the bomb. As Henry Stimson later recalled, "it was our common objective, throughout the war, to be the first to produce an atomic weapon and use it. ... At no time, from 1941 to 1945, did I ever hear it suggested by the president, or by any other responsible member of the government, that atomic energy should not be used in the war." As historians Martin
Sherwin and Barton Bernstein have shown, the momentum behind the Manhattan
Project was such that no one ever debated the underlying assumption that, once perfected, nuclear weapons would be used. General George Marshall told the British, as well as Truman and Stimson, that a land invasion of Japan would cause casualties ranging from five hundred thousand to more than a million American troops. Any president who refused to use atomic weapons in the face of such projections could logically be accused of needlessly sacrificing American lives. Moreover, the enemy was the same nation that had unleashed a wanton and brutal attack on Pearl Harbor. As Truman later explained to a journalist, "When you deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast." Although many of the scientists who had seen the first explosion of the bomb in New Mexico were in awe of its destructive potential and hoped to find some way to avoid its use in war, the idea of a demonstration met with skepticism. Only one or two bombs existed. What if, in a demonstration, they failed to detonate? Thus, as horrible as it may seem in retrospect, no one ever seriously doubted the necessity of dropping the bomb on Japan once the weapon was perfected.

On the Russian issue, however, there now seems little doubt that administration officials thought long and hard about the bomb's impact on postwar relations with the Soviet Union. Faced with what seemed to be the growing intransigence of the Soviet Union toward virtually all postwar questions, Truman and his advisors concluded that possession of the weapon would give the United States unprecedented leverage to push Russia toward a more accommodating position. Senator Edwin Johnson stated the equation crassly, but clearly. "God Almighty in his infinite wisdom," the Senator said, "[has] dropped the atomic bomb in our lap ... [now] with vision and guts and plenty of atomic bombs, . . . [the U.S. can] compel mankind to adopt a policy of lasting peace ... or be burned to a crisp." Stating the same argument with more sophistication prior to Hiroshima, Stimson told
Truman that the bomb might well "force a favorable settlement of Eastern
European questions with the Russians." Truman agreed. If the weapon worked, he noted, "I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys."

Use of the bomb as a diplomatic lever played a pivotal role in Truman's preparation for his first meeting with Stalin at Potsdam. Not only would the conference address such critical questions as Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia's involvement in the war against Japan;

It would also provide a crucial opportunity for America to drive home with forcefulness its foreign policy beliefs about future relationships with Russia. Stimson and other advisors urged the president to hold off on any confrontation with Stalin until the bomb was ready. "Over any such tangled wave of problems," Stimson noted, "the bomb's secret will be dominant. ... It seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes and diplomacy without having your master card in your hand." Although Truman could not delay the meeting because of a prior commitment to hold it in
July, the president was well aware of the bomb's significance. Already noted for his brusque and assertive manner, Truman suddenly took on new confidence in the midst of the Potsdam negotiations when word arrived that the bomb had successfully been tested. "He was a changed man," Churchill noted. "He told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting." Now, the agenda was changed. Russian involvement in the Japanese war no longer seemed so important. Moreover, the United
States had as a bargaining chip the most powerful weapon ever unleashed.
Three days later, Truman walked up to Stalin and casually told him that the
United States had "perfected a very powerful explosive, which we're going to use against the Japanese." No mention was made of sharing information about the bomb, or of future cooperation to avoid an arms race.

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