#88 - Mine All Mine

* In October 1945, Navy Day 1945 in New York City, at the Commissioning of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman gave a speech. * Here’s a clip. * https://youtu.be/BjUz4BPWwbc?t=2m21s * FAKE TRUMAN ACCENT: “We don’t seek any more land - because we already took as much as we could from the Native Americans, and the Mexicans, and the Hawaiians, and the Spanish." * He went on to say The world "cannot afford any letdown in the united determination of the allies in this war to accomplish a lasting peace."' * So he’s all about working with the Soviets and finding a lasting peace. * Or is he? * Privately it seems like he didn’t believe peace with the U.S.S.R. was possible. * Like FDR before him, Truman envisioned a world with open international trade - something the U.S. economy desperately needed - which meant global capitalism. * But the U.S.S.R. had just turned back the Nazis, fighting them for years without much support, and had played a huge role in their final defeat. * and they had the world’s largest land army. * They weren’t about to kowtow to the American new world order. * The only way the USA could force the Soviets to go along with it was war. * And the Soviets had just proven - again - how difficult their country was to invade. * And the American people wouldn’t support another war. * Especially not to overthrow a recent ally, just because they wanted to enforce their own new world order. * Not yet, anyway. * Some in Washington believed the U.S. had no real choice but to find a way to work with the USSR * Other believed the Soviets couldn’t be trusted, and pointed to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. * They conveniently ignored the places where the Soviets had kept to their agreements - Greece, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. * As of October 1945, Truman and his inner circle seem to have no grand strategy regarding working with the Soviets at this stage. * But over the next few months, they started concluding that they weren’t going to be able to work with Stalin. * And by late 1947, the term “Cold War” had already entered the political lexicon. * and America's containment strategy had been implemented. * At the end of World War II the United States possessed far and away the world's largest economy. * Its GDP was five times that of Great Britain, four times that of the Soviet Union. * As we’ve pointed out many times - this was mostly due to the fact that the U.S. was the only major economy not flattened by the war. * And now it also had the bomb. * Initially Truman and Byrnes, his new Sec of State, thought they could dangle the bomb in front of Stalin as a way to induce him to accept their view of the world. * Not in a “do it or we’ll drop it on you” approach, although that was always an unspoken threat, but in a “do it and we might share our atomic secrets with you” approach. * Of course, what they didn’t know at the time, was they didn’t HAVE any secrets. * Stalin knew it all. * In the first Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) conference, which took place in London from September 11 to October 2, Byrnes tried to use a combination of threats and sweets to get Molotov to budge on a range of issues - the control of Germany and eastern Europe - but Molotov just laughed in his face. * By December, Byrnes had been told by Truman to stop trying to woo the Russians. * In fact, Truman got all up in his face for trying to conclude a deal without the White House’s approval. * He felt Byrnes had over-stepped his authority. * It’s like Truman has become Stalin and Byrnes is Molotov. * Truman is beginning to mistrust and sideline Byrnes already and he’s only six months into the job of SoS. * Now Truman is going to start playing tough again with the Russians. * In September the departing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices