1. Heroes and Villains of the Cold War: From World War II to the Cold War: Former Allies Become Rivals

My Name is Joseph Stalin: Revolutionary, Dictator, and Leader of the Soviet Union

For nearly three decades I stood at the center of the Soviet Union. I was born Ioseb Jughashvili on December 18, 1878, in Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. My father was a shoemaker, and my mother hoped I would become a priest. Poverty and hardship surrounded my childhood. I attended a theological seminary in Tiflis, but revolutionary ideas interested me more than the priesthood. The Russian Empire appeared to me unequal, corrupt, and ready for revolution. I chose politics, and eventually I chose revolution.

Becoming a Revolutionary

As a young man, I joined the revolutionary movement and became associated with Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks. I organized workers, distributed illegal political literature, helped raise money for the movement, and repeatedly found myself arrested, imprisoned, or exiled by the czarist authorities. During these years I adopted the name Stalin, derived from the Russian word for steel. Revolution was dangerous work, and weakness could mean prison, exile, or death. I learned to value discipline, secrecy, organization, and loyalty—qualities that would later define the government I built.

Revolution and Civil War

In 1917, the Russian Empire collapsed. Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power during the October Revolution, but taking control of Russia was only the beginning. Civil war followed between the Bolshevik Red forces and their many enemies. I served the revolutionary government in several political and military assignments. The Bolsheviks survived, and in 1922 the Soviet Union was established. That same year I became General Secretary of the Communist Party. Some considered the position administrative. I understood that controlling appointments and the machinery of the Party could mean controlling the state itself.

The Struggle After Lenin

Lenin died in 1924, and there was no simple successor. Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and others competed for influence. I built alliances when they were useful and broke them when circumstances changed. Gradually, my rivals were removed from positions of power, expelled, exiled, imprisoned, or killed. By the end of the 1920s, I had emerged as the Soviet Union's dominant leader. Revolution had destroyed the old Russian order. I intended to build something powerful enough that no foreign nation could easily destroy what replaced it.

Transforming the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union remained economically behind the great industrial nations, and I believed we had little time to catch up. My government launched Five-Year Plans to expand factories, mines, electrical production, steelworks, railroads, and military industries. Agriculture was forced into collective farms. Industrial production grew dramatically, but the human cost was enormous. Collectivization contributed to catastrophic famine, especially in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other agricultural regions. Millions suffered or died while millions more endured displacement, imprisonment, and brutal working conditions.

The Great Terror

I demanded political obedience, and suspicion became one of the defining features of my rule. During the Great Purge of the 1930s, those who opposed my government. officials, military officers, intellectuals, ordinary citizens, and even old Bolsheviks were accused of treason, sabotage, or conspiracy. Show trials condemned prominent opponents, while the secret police arrested enormous numbers of people. Many were executed; many others disappeared into the Gulag system of forced-labor camps. My government presented these actions as necessary defenses against enemies of the Soviet state. In practice, terror also destroyed real and imagined opposition and concentrated extraordinary power in my hands.

Hitler Invades My Country

In 1939, my government signed a nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler's Germany, including secret arrangements dividing parts of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. We would have controlled much of Europe with Hitler and Mussolini controlling much of the rest. In June 1941, Hitler broke that agreement and launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. The invasion became a catastrophe of almost unimaginable scale. Cities burned, armies were surrounded, and millions of Soviet citizens were killed. But the Soviet state did not collapse. Factories were moved eastward, new armies were raised, and the Red Army fought back. Stalingrad became a symbol of that resistance. By 1945, Soviet soldiers had driven the Germans back across Eastern Europe and into Berlin.

From Allies to Rivals

During the war, I worked with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill because we shared an enemy. But cooperation did not erase distrust. The Soviet Union had suffered roughly 27 million military and civilian deaths during the war, and I was determined that Germany would never again have an easy road toward invading Soviet territory. At Yalta and Potsdam, we argued over Germany, Poland, reparations, borders, and the governments of Eastern Europe. I wanted neighboring states that would not become bases for another attack against us. The Americans and British increasingly saw my policies as Soviet expansion. The wartime alliance was beginning to disappear.

The Beginning of the Cold War

After 1945, Soviet influence hardened across much of Eastern Europe while the United States strengthened its position in Western Europe. Each side claimed the other threatened the future. Washington increasingly spoke of containing communism; Moscow portrayed Western capitalism as hostile to the Soviet system. There was no formal declaration announcing a Cold War. Instead, distrust accumulated through speeches, diplomatic confrontations, competing governments, military preparations, and struggles for influence. The alliance that had defeated Hitler had become a rivalry between two superpowers.

The Strange Alliance That Defeated Hitler - Told by Joseph Stalin

There are alliances built upon friendship, alliances built upon shared beliefs, and alliances built because the alternative is destruction. Ours belonged to the last kind. The Soviet Union was Communist. Britain was a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. The United States was a capitalist republic. We disagreed over economics, government, religion, property, and the future of the world. Yet during the Second World War, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt found themselves sitting at the same tables and directing armies against the same enemy. Adolf Hitler had accomplished something remarkable: he had given three very different powers a reason to cooperate.

Before We Became Allies

Do not imagine that Moscow trusted London or Washington before the war. Western governments had long feared Communist revolution, while we remembered foreign intervention against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. In 1939, after negotiations with Britain and France failed to produce the security arrangement we wanted, my government signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with Hitler. Its secret protocol divided parts of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, and Soviet forces invaded from the east on September 17. For nearly two years, Germany and the Soviet Union avoided war with one another. I knew Hitler was dangerous, but I badly misjudged when he would turn his armies against us.

Hitler Breaks the Pact

Before dawn on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Millions of German and Axis troops attacked the Soviet Union along an enormous front. Our forces suffered catastrophic losses. Entire Soviet armies were surrounded, enormous numbers of soldiers were captured, and German troops drove deep into Soviet territory. The invasion transformed the international situation almost overnight. Churchill despised communism, but Britain was already fighting Hitler. He immediately announced support for the Soviet struggle. The enemy of Britain had now become the enemy of the Soviet Union.

America Enters the War

The United States was not yet formally at war, but President Roosevelt understood that a German victory over the Soviet Union could leave Hitler dominant across Europe. American aid began reaching us through the Lend-Lease program. Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Germany declared war on the United States four days later. Now the three great powers—the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States—were joined in the same enormous conflict. We became known as the Grand Alliance. We did not suddenly agree about politics. We agreed that Hitler had to be defeated.

An Alliance Built on Necessity

Our contributions to the war were different but interconnected. The Soviet Union carried the enormous burden of fighting the main body of the German Army on the Eastern Front. Britain provided bases, naval strength, air power, intelligence, and a launching point for operations against occupied Europe. The United States became an industrial powerhouse, producing extraordinary quantities of aircraft, trucks, ships, weapons, food, fuel, and other supplies. Through Lend-Lease, the Soviet Union received hundreds of thousands of American trucks and other equipment that helped move soldiers and supplies. Soviet factories produced enormous quantities of our own weapons as well. This was not charity. It was a partnership created to destroy a common enemy.

The Argument Over the Second Front

Cooperation did not mean agreement. For years, I demanded that Britain and the United States open a major second front in Western Europe. German forces were killing Soviet soldiers and civilians on a terrible scale, and I wanted Western armies attacking Hitler's forces from the other direction. Churchill and Roosevelt had their own military calculations. Allied forces fought in North Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, conducted strategic bombing, and prepared for the enormous challenge of crossing the English Channel. From Moscow, however, every delay encouraged suspicion. I wondered whether the Western powers intended to allow Germany and the Soviet Union to exhaust one another.

Stalingrad, Normandy, and the Road to Berlin

The war gradually turned. Soviet forces stopped the Germans at Moscow and won a monumental victory at Stalingrad in 1942–1943. The Battle of Kursk further weakened Germany's offensive power in the east. Then, on June 6, 1944, American, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops landed in Normandy. At last Germany faced enormous offensives from east and west. Soviet armies advanced through Eastern Europe while Western Allied armies drove across France and into Germany. Hitler's empire was being crushed between us.

Three Leaders at One Table

Roosevelt, Churchill, and I met personally at Tehran in 1943 and Yalta in February 1945. We discussed military strategy, Germany's future, Poland, borders, the war against Japan, and plans for what became the United Nations. Photographs showed three Allied leaders sitting together, but photographs cannot show suspicion. Churchill feared Soviet expansion. Roosevelt hoped cooperation could continue after the war. I was determined that the Soviet Union would never again be left vulnerable to an invasion from the west. We shook hands while already disagreeing about what victory should produce.

Victory Reveals the Cracks

Germany surrendered in May 1945. Hitler was dead, Berlin had fallen, and the common enemy that had held our alliance together was gone. The Soviet Union had suffered destruction on a scale difficult to comprehend, with roughly 27 million Soviet military personnel and civilians dead. Britain was exhausted by years of war, while the United States emerged with immense industrial and military power. Our armies now occupied different parts of Europe, and the questions we had postponed during the war could no longer be postponed.

My Name is Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman, and Voice of Defiance

My life carried me from cavalry charges and distant battlefields to the chamber of the House of Commons and, at Britain's darkest hour, to 10 Downing Street. I was born on November 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. My father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a prominent politician, while my mother, Jennie Jerome, was American-born. I was hardly the model schoolboy, but I possessed ambition in abundance. History fascinated me, words became my weapons, and from an early age I was determined that my life should not pass unnoticed.

A Young Soldier Searching for Adventure

I entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and became a cavalry officer. Yet soldiering alone was not enough for me. I wanted to witness history while it was being made, so I traveled as both soldier and correspondent to Cuba, India, Sudan, and South Africa. During the Boer War, I was captured after an armored train was attacked, imprisoned in Pretoria, and escaped. The adventure made me famous in Britain. War taught me courage, certainly, but it also taught me that decisions made comfortably in government offices could carry terrible consequences for men standing beneath gunfire.

Into the House of Commons

In 1900, I was elected to Parliament. I began as a Conservative, crossed to the Liberal Party in 1904, and eventually returned to the Conservatives. I held a succession of important government positions and developed a reputation for energy, ambition, and controversy. I supported social reforms but remained an ardent defender of Britain's power and empire. Politics is seldom a tidy occupation. I made allies, acquired opponents, changed positions, and discovered that a man who intends to accomplish anything in public life must expect criticism from every direction.

The Disaster of Gallipoli

During World War I, as First Lord of the Admiralty, I strongly supported an attempt to break the deadlock by attacking the Ottoman Empire through the Dardanelles. The resulting Gallipoli campaign of 1915 became a costly failure. Allied forces suffered enormous casualties without achieving their objective, and I lost my position. I later served on the Western Front before returning to government. Gallipoli followed me for years. It taught me that bold plans may appear brilliant upon a map but become something entirely different when ships, soldiers, weather, geography, and an intelligent enemy enter the equation.

The Wilderness Years

During the 1930s, I found myself increasingly outside the center of political power. Adolf Hitler was rebuilding Germany's military, and I repeatedly warned that Britain was allowing a dangerous dictatorship to grow stronger. Many considered my warnings excessive. Britain remembered the slaughter of the First World War and desperately wanted peace. I understood that desire, but I did not believe peace could be preserved merely by wishing for it. When Hitler continued expanding and Europe descended into war in September 1939, the danger I had warned about had arrived.

Britain's Darkest Hour

I became Prime Minister on May 10, 1940, the very day Germany launched its great offensive into Western Europe. France soon fell, British forces escaped from Dunkirk, and Britain stood against Hitler with much of Europe under Nazi domination. I could not promise the British people an easy victory because there was none to promise. My task was to convince them that defeat was worse than the sacrifices required to resist it. Through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, Britain endured. Our cities were bombed, families were killed, and homes were destroyed, but Britain remained in the war.

The Grand Alliance

Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor transformed the conflict. Britain now fought beside Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and Franklin Roosevelt's United States. Stalin and I disagreed profoundly about politics and the future of Europe, but Hitler had made cooperation necessary. Roosevelt became an indispensable partner and a friend. Together our nations planned enormous campaigns, including the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. It was an extraordinary alliance: capitalist democracies and a Communist dictatorship joined together because defeating Nazi Germany came first.

Victory—and Defeat at Home

Germany surrendered in May 1945. Britain had survived, and Hitler's regime had been destroyed. Yet political victory does not guarantee electoral victory. While I attended the Potsdam Conference with Truman and Stalin, the British election results arrived. My Conservative Party had been decisively defeated by Clement Attlee's Labour Party. I left the conference and the premiership. Such is democracy. A nation may cheer you as its wartime leader and then calmly inform you that it prefers someone else to manage the peace.

I Warned of an Iron Curtain

I remained convinced that another danger was emerging. Soviet power was spreading across Eastern Europe, and the wartime alliance was disappearing. In March 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, with President Truman present, I delivered the speech remembered for the phrase "iron curtain." I warned that Europe was becoming divided and argued that the English-speaking democracies must remain strong and united. We had defeated one dictatorship. I did not believe we should ignore the expansion of another merely because its armies had recently fought beside ours.

My Final Years

I returned as Prime Minister in 1951 and served until 1955. By then I was an old man in a world transformed by nuclear weapons, superpowers, and the Cold War. I continued writing, and in 1953 I received the Nobel Prize in Literature. I died on January 24, 1965, at the age of ninety. My funeral brought together leaders from across the world, but I had already lived long enough to see the British Empire diminish and a new international order replace the one into which I had been born.

Yalta: Planning the Postwar World - Told by Winston Churchill

By February 1945, we could at last see the approaching defeat of Nazi Germany. Yet victory presented us with a question almost as formidable as war itself: what sort of Europe would emerge when the guns became silent? Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and I traveled to Yalta, a Crimean resort on the Black Sea, to discuss that future. We arrived as allies, but we represented three nations with very different interests. Germany was collapsing before us. The difficult business was deciding what should follow.

Meeting in the Crimea

The conference opened on February 4, 1945, at the Livadia Palace and continued until February 11. Stalin's armies were already deep inside Eastern Europe and approaching Berlin from the east, while British, American, and other Allied forces were advancing from the west. This military reality mattered enormously. Diplomats may write agreements on paper, but armies standing on the ground possess an argument of their own. The Soviet Union controlled much of the territory whose political future we were attempting to settle.

What Would Become of Germany?

None of us intended to allow Germany to begin another European war. We agreed that defeated Germany would be occupied and divided into zones administered by the United States, Britain, Soviet Union, and eventually France. Berlin itself, although located deep within the Soviet occupation zone, would also be divided among the four powers. We discussed disarming Germany, eliminating Nazi institutions, punishing major war criminals, and reparations. We agreed on the necessity of preventing another Hitler, but agreement on that principle did not mean agreement on how Germany should ultimately be rebuilt.

The Argument Over Poland

Poland was among our most difficult questions. Britain had entered the war in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland, and I could hardly treat Poland's future as a minor detail. Yet Soviet armies now occupied the country, and Stalin regarded Poland as essential to Soviet security. Russia had been invaded from the west more than once, and he wanted a friendly government there. At Yalta, we agreed that Poland's existing Soviet-backed provisional government would be reorganized on a broader democratic basis and that free elections would be held. Those words sounded promising. Their meaning would soon become fiercely disputed.

What Did "Free Europe" Mean?

We also issued the Declaration on Liberated Europe, committing ourselves to helping liberated peoples establish democratic institutions and governments broadly representative of their populations. Yet Britain, America, and the Soviet Union did not always mean the same thing when speaking of democracy. Roosevelt and I expected genuine political choice. Stalin's government viewed political developments through the requirements of Soviet security and Communist power. We could agree upon language at a conference table while disagreeing profoundly about what that language required in practice.

Roosevelt and the United Nations

President Roosevelt placed enormous importance on creating the United Nations. The failure of the League of Nations remained a warning from the previous generation, and Roosevelt wanted an international organization in which the great powers would participate rather than retreat into isolation. At Yalta, we settled important arrangements concerning voting in the future Security Council. The United States, Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France would become permanent members with veto power on substantive matters. Roosevelt hoped that continued cooperation among the great powers could prevent another world war.

Stalin Promises to Fight Japan

The war against Japan was still raging, and no one yet knew exactly how long it would continue. Roosevelt wanted Soviet participation after Germany's defeat. Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan within two or three months after Germany surrendered. In return, the Soviet Union was promised concessions affecting territories and interests in East Asia, including southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, along with arrangements concerning ports and railways in the region. At the time, American planners believed Soviet military assistance could prove extremely valuable in defeating Japan.

The Reality Behind the Handshakes

Photographs from Yalta show Roosevelt, Stalin, and me seated together as the leaders of a victorious alliance. But one must never mistake a photograph for the whole political reality. Roosevelt was gravely ill and would die only two months later. Stalin commanded armies occupying much of Eastern Europe. Britain had fought for nearly six exhausting years and possessed far less power than it had before the war. We were partners, certainly, but each of us was also thinking about what would happen when our common enemy disappeared.

The Problem with Yalta

Yalta has sometimes been described as though Roosevelt and I simply handed Eastern Europe to Stalin. The reality was more complicated. Soviet forces were already occupying much of the region, severely limiting what Western diplomacy could accomplish without risking confrontation with an ally whose armies were still fighting Germany. We obtained commitments concerning elections and representative government, but enforcing those commitments would prove another matter entirely. Stalin interpreted Soviet security requirements far more broadly than we wished.

My Name is Harry S. Truman: From Missouri Farm Boy to U.S. President

I never expected to become President of the United States. I was born May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, and grew up mostly around Independence and my family's farm near Grandview. I was no great athlete. My eyesight was poor, so I spent a good deal of my boyhood reading history and biographies and playing the piano. I learned early that a man does not have to be the biggest fellow in the room to accomplish something. He needs to know what he believes, do his work, and stand by his decisions.

A Farmer Who Went to War

After high school, I worked several jobs, including clerking in Kansas City banks, before returning to help run the family farm. Then America entered World War I. I served in the 129th Field Artillery and became captain of Battery D. We went to France and saw action in battles including Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. Commanding soldiers taught me something no book could teach: when you're responsible for other people's lives, you cannot spend all day worrying about whether everybody likes your decisions. You study the facts, make the best decision you can, and take responsibility for it.

Bess, Business, and Hard Times

When I came home, I married Bess Wallace in 1919, the girl I had known since childhood. We later had our daughter, Margaret. I went into the men's clothing business with my Army friend Eddie Jacobson, but the business failed during difficult economic times. I could have allowed that failure to finish me. Instead, I kept going and spent years paying what I owed. Public life would later bring failures considerably larger than a clothing store, but the lesson remained the same: getting knocked down is one thing; deciding to stay down is another.

From Missouri Politics to Washington

Politics eventually became my profession. I served in Jackson County government before Missouri voters sent me to the United States Senate in 1934. During World War II, I became chairman of a Senate committee investigating the national defense program. We went after waste, inefficiency, and poor management in wartime production. That work brought me national attention because I believed the taxpayers deserved an honest accounting of their money. In 1944, the Democratic Party chose me as Franklin Roosevelt's running mate. I became Vice President in January 1945.

Eighty-Two Days Later

I had been Vice President only eighty-two days when President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Suddenly, I was President. There wasn't any time to stand around wondering whether I was ready. American forces were fighting a world war, Germany was nearing defeat, Japan was still fighting, and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was already creating difficult questions about the future of Europe. I soon learned about matters Roosevelt had barely discussed with me, including the secret project to build an atomic bomb. The responsibility was mine now, whether I had asked for it or not.

The Year of Decisions

Germany surrendered in May 1945, but peace did not make the problems disappear. At Potsdam, I sat across from Stalin while the victorious Allies argued over Germany and the future of Europe. Then came one of the gravest decisions any President has faced: the use of atomic bombs against Japan. I approved their use, and Japan surrendered in August. World War II was over, but almost immediately another struggle was taking shape. The Soviet Union and the Western democracies had defeated Hitler together, yet the alliance was rapidly giving way to distrust and confrontation. I later called that first period of my presidency a "year of decisions." It certainly was.

The Cold War President

During the years that followed, my administration confronted Soviet expansion, supported European recovery through the Marshall Plan, backed the creation of NATO, recognized the new state of Israel, ordered the Berlin Airlift, and eventually sent American forces into Korea under United Nations authority. At home, I ordered the desegregation of the armed forces and fought for what I called the Fair Deal. Some decisions were popular. Plenty were not. A President who makes decisions only after checking which way the political wind is blowing isn't much use as a President.

Back Home to Independence

I left the presidency in January 1953 and returned to Independence, Missouri. I wrote my memoirs, helped establish my presidential library, and spent much of my remaining life thinking about history and the presidency. I died on December 26, 1972, at the age of eighty-eight. I had traveled a considerable distance from that Missouri farm without ever believing I had become something other than a citizen temporarily entrusted with an extraordinary responsibility.

The Decisions I Leave to History

I made decisions that changed nations and affected millions of lives, and I knew perfectly well that history would argue over some of them long after I was gone. I won't pretend every decision I made was perfect. There are consequences of war and government policy that deserve sober examination, and there are things any man would wish had turned out differently. But when the decision reached my desk, passing responsibility to somebody else was not an option. A President receives the facts available to him, considers the consequences, makes the decision, and then has to live with it. That was the job I was given, and I tried to do it the best way I knew how.

Roosevelt Dies and Truman Takes Command - Told by Harry S. Truman

On April 12, 1945, I began the day as Vice President of the United States. Before the evening was over, I was President, Commander in Chief, and responsible for directing the largest war our country had ever fought. Franklin D. Roosevelt had led America for more than twelve years. I had been Vice President for only eighty-two days. Germany was approaching defeat, Japan was still fighting, Soviet armies were moving across Eastern Europe, and somewhere inside the American government scientists were building a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. I was about to inherit all of it.

A Summons to the White House

That afternoon, I was at the Capitol when I received word that I should come immediately to the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt met me there and told me the President was dead. Roosevelt had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage while staying at Warm Springs, Georgia. I asked Mrs. Roosevelt if there was anything I could do for her. She answered, in effect, that the question was what they could do for me, because I was the one in trouble now. She understood immediately what had fallen upon my shoulders.

The Oath of Office

At 7:09 that evening, I took the presidential oath in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Bess and Margaret stood nearby, along with members of Roosevelt's Cabinet and congressional leaders. There was no celebration. A President had died during a world war, and the government could not stop to collect itself. I decided to keep Roosevelt's Cabinet in place for the moment. Continuity mattered. American soldiers were fighting across Europe and the Pacific, and our allies and enemies needed to know that the United States government remained steady.

The Weight of the Presidency

The following day, I met with reporters and told them that I felt as though the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me. I asked for their prayers. That was not false modesty. Roosevelt had been President since 1933. He had personally handled much of America's wartime diplomacy and had developed relationships with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin that I did not possess. I had attended Cabinet meetings as Vice President, but Roosevelt had not brought me deeply into many of the most sensitive wartime decisions.

Finishing the War in Europe

There was little time for education. Soviet armies were closing on Berlin from the east while American, British, and Allied forces advanced from the west. Hitler's government was collapsing, but serious questions were already emerging about Poland and the governments of Eastern Europe. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin had made agreements at Yalta only two months earlier. Now it was my responsibility to determine whether Stalin intended to honor them as we understood them. I quickly discovered that defeating Germany and deciding what came after Germany were two different problems.

My First Confrontation with the Soviets

On April 23, I met Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov at the White House. I spoke firmly about Poland and the agreements made at Yalta. Molotov was not accustomed to being addressed in such a manner by American officials and protested. I made it clear that agreements between nations were expected to be carried out. Whether my approach was wiser than Roosevelt's would be debated for years, but one thing was already apparent: relations between Washington and Moscow were becoming more difficult even before Germany had formally surrendered.

A Secret I Had Barely Known Existed

Then came another extraordinary revelation. Secretary of War Henry Stimson briefed me about a secret project developing a new explosive weapon of almost unbelievable destructive power. This was the Manhattan Project, a massive scientific and industrial undertaking that had been kept secret even from most high-ranking government officials. As Vice President, I had known almost nothing about it. Now I was the man who might have to decide whether the weapon would be used. There was no instruction manual waiting on the presidential desk.

Germany Falls, but Japan Fights On

On May 8, 1945, Germany's unconditional surrender brought the European war to an end. Americans celebrated Victory in Europe Day, but I could not regard the war as finished. Across the Pacific, American forces were still fighting Japan. The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa demonstrated how costly the final stages of the war could become. Military planners were preparing for the possibility of invading the Japanese home islands. At the same time, scientists raced to complete and test the atomic bomb.

Learning to Deal with Stalin

I also had to decide what kind of relationship America would have with the Soviet Union after the war. The Soviet people had endured tremendous losses fighting Nazi Germany, and the Red Army had played an indispensable role in Hitler's defeat. But Stalin's growing influence over Eastern Europe concerned us deeply. Was he primarily creating a security barrier against another invasion, or was he expanding Soviet domination wherever his armies could reach? That question would become one of the central problems of my presidency.

Germany Surrenders—but the Alliance Begins to Crack - Told by Harry S. Truman

On May 8, 1945, Americans filled the streets to celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Nazi Germany had surrendered unconditionally, Adolf Hitler was dead, and the war that had devastated Europe was finally over. I had been President for less than a month. I was glad to announce the victory, but I knew there was unfinished business. Japan was still fighting in the Pacific, and the alliance that had defeated Hitler was already showing serious cracks. For years, America, Britain, and the Soviet Union had shared one overriding purpose: defeat Nazi Germany. Now that purpose was gone.

A Continent in Ruins

Victory did not leave us a peaceful Europe. It left us a wrecked Europe. German cities had been devastated by bombing and ground combat. Millions of soldiers, refugees, former prisoners, forced laborers, and concentration camp survivors were moving across the continent. Transportation systems were shattered, economies disrupted, and governments had collapsed or been overthrown. Allied armies occupied enormous stretches of territory. We had defeated Hitler's government, but now somebody had to determine what political order would replace it.

Dividing Defeated Germany

The Allies had already agreed that Germany would be divided into occupation zones. The United States, Britain, Soviet Union, and France would each administer a portion of the defeated country. Berlin presented an unusual problem. Although the German capital lay deep inside the Soviet occupation zone, Berlin itself would also be divided into American, British, French, and Soviet sectors. At first this arrangement represented Allied cooperation. Before long, those lines on the map would become some of the most important boundaries of the Cold War.

What Should We Do with Germany?

We agreed on several broad objectives. German armed forces had to be dismantled, Nazi organizations eliminated, leading war criminals prosecuted, and Germany prevented from starting another war. But agreement became harder when we discussed Germany's economic future. The Soviet Union had suffered staggering destruction and wanted substantial reparations. Stalin intended to take resources from Germany to help rebuild what the Germans had destroyed. We understood the Soviet demand for compensation, but there were concerns that stripping Germany too severely could leave the country economically ruined and politically unstable.

The Memory of the First World War

We had history to consider. After World War I, Germany had faced reparations, political instability, economic crisis, and eventually the rise of Hitler. No responsible American leader wanted to repeat the conditions that had helped destroy Germany's democracy. Yet allowing Germany to recover too quickly also frightened countries that had endured German occupation. The problem was difficult: punish Nazi aggression, compensate its victims, prevent Germany from becoming dangerous again, and somehow create a stable society from the wreckage.

The Argument Was Bigger Than Germany

Germany was only one part of the disagreement. Soviet armies now stood across much of Eastern and Central Europe. Poland was especially troubling. At Yalta, Stalin had agreed to broaden the Soviet-backed Polish government and support free elections, but Washington and Moscow increasingly disagreed over what those promises meant. Similar questions appeared elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Stalin argued that the Soviet Union needed friendly neighboring governments for security. We increasingly feared that "friendly" meant governments controlled by Moscow.

Stalin Had His Reasons—and We Had Ours

No one in Washington could ignore what the Soviet Union had suffered. German armies had invaded Soviet territory, destroyed thousands of communities, and contributed to the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. Stalin wanted a protective belt between Germany and the Soviet homeland. I could understand the desire for security. But there was a difference between wanting secure borders and denying other nations meaningful political independence. That distinction would become one of the central disputes between our governments.

Two Armies, Two Visions of Europe

By the spring of 1945, an uncomfortable reality had developed. American, British, and other Western Allied armies occupied much of Western Europe, while Soviet armies occupied much of Eastern Europe. Military positions increasingly shaped political possibilities. We favored rebuilding representative governments and economies tied to the Western world. Stalin wanted governments he considered reliable along the Soviet frontier. The wartime military map was beginning to become a political map.

The Enemy That Had United Us Was Gone

During the war, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin could postpone certain arguments because Hitler remained more dangerous than our disagreements. Germany's surrender changed that calculation. Suddenly, questions about borders, elections, reparations, political systems, and economic reconstruction could no longer wait. Every decision raised another question: Was the Soviet Union protecting itself or expanding? Were the Western powers rebuilding Europe or extending their own influence? Each side increasingly suspected the motives of the other.

Poland Becomes the First Great Political Dispute - Told by Joseph Stalin

If you wish to understand why the alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western powers began to break apart, look first at Poland. To the Americans and British, Poland became a test of whether the promises made at Yalta would produce representative government and meaningful elections. To me, Poland was also a question of Soviet security and power. For generations, armies attacking Russia had crossed Polish territory. After the destruction we suffered during World War II, I had no intention of allowing Poland to become the road by which another enemy could march eastward.

Poland Between Powerful Neighbors

Poland's tragedy was partly geographical. It stood between Germany and the Soviet Union, two enormous powers that had repeatedly fought across Eastern Europe. In 1939, my government signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with Hitler, including a secret agreement dividing spheres of influence in the region. Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, and Soviet forces entered eastern Poland on September 17. Poland was divided between us. That fact cannot be removed from the story merely because Germany later invaded the Soviet Union and turned us into enemies.

Hitler Turns Poland into a Killing Ground

German occupation brought extraordinary brutality. Nazi Germany murdered millions of Polish citizens, including most of Poland's Jewish population, and attempted to destroy much of the country's political and cultural leadership. The Soviet occupation had also brought arrests, deportations, and executions. Most notoriously, thousands of Polish officers and members of the Polish elite captured by Soviet forces were murdered by the Soviet secret police in 1940, including at Katyn. My government denied responsibility for decades, but Soviet authorities had ordered the killings. Poland had suffered under both of the great powers surrounding it.

Two Governments Claim Poland

During the war, a Polish government-in-exile operated from London and maintained ties with Britain and the United States. Meanwhile, as the Red Army advanced westward, the Soviet Union supported a rival Communist-dominated authority centered in Lublin. This created the essential political question: who would govern Poland after liberation? Britain supported the legitimacy of the London-based Polish government, while I intended to ensure that the government actually operating in Poland would not be hostile to Moscow.

The Warsaw Uprising Deepens Suspicion

In August 1944, the Polish Home Army launched an uprising against the Germans in Warsaw as Soviet forces approached the city. The Poles hoped to liberate their own capital before the Red Army arrived and thereby strengthen the position of the non-Communist Polish resistance. The Germans crushed the uprising with terrible brutality while Soviet forces remained outside Warsaw for much of the battle. Military exhaustion and German resistance affected Soviet operations, but historians have long debated the extent to which political calculations also influenced our failure to provide greater assistance. Whatever the explanation, the destruction of the Home Army weakened an important force that might have resisted Communist control after the war.

The Argument at Yalta

When Roosevelt, Churchill, and I met at Yalta in February 1945, Poland became one of our most difficult subjects. We agreed that the Soviet-backed provisional government would be reorganized to include other Polish democratic leaders. We also agreed that free and unfettered elections should be held as soon as possible. The words appeared clear enough on paper. The disagreement concerned what they would mean when applied to a country already occupied by the Red Army and dominated by political forces supported from Moscow.

Why I Wanted a Friendly Poland

I did not view Poland as an ordinary diplomatic question. Napoleon's armies had invaded Russia through Polish lands in 1812. Imperial Germany had attacked Russia during the First World War, and Hitler's armies crossed occupied Poland when they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The German invasion caused destruction on a scale difficult to comprehend. I wanted governments along our western frontier that could never become partners in another attack against us. To me, a government hostile to Moscow in Warsaw represented a security danger I was unwilling to accept.

What the Western Allies Saw

Truman and Churchill saw something different. Britain had entered World War II after Germany invaded Poland, and now the country Britain had gone to war to defend seemed in danger of falling under another powerful neighbor's domination. Western leaders increasingly concluded that my definition of a "friendly" government meant one in which Communists and their allies controlled the important institutions. Political opponents in Poland faced intimidation, arrests, and restrictions. From Washington and London, this did not resemble the political freedom they believed had been promised at Yalta.

The Elections That Settled the Question

A coalition government was eventually formed, but Communist influence continued to expand. A referendum in 1946 was accompanied by intimidation and manipulation, and the parliamentary election of January 1947 was neither genuinely free nor fair. The Communist-dominated bloc officially claimed an overwhelming victory. Opposition forces were suppressed, and Poland moved firmly into the Soviet sphere. Moscow had obtained the strategically friendly government I wanted. The West saw confirmation of its growing fear that Soviet promises about Eastern European democracy could not be trusted.

Potsdam: The Victorious Allies Meet as Suspicious Rivals - Told by Truman

When I arrived outside Berlin for the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allies had won the war in Europe, but victory had not produced unity. Franklin Roosevelt was dead. Adolf Hitler was dead. Germany had surrendered. Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and I gathered to determine what would happen next, but this was not the same alliance that had met at Yalta only five months earlier. The enemy that had held us together was gone, and nearly every major question about Europe's future now exposed differences between us.

Walking Through Hitler's Ruins

Potsdam stood near a Berlin devastated by war. I toured the ruined German capital and saw what years of dictatorship and warfare had brought upon it. Buildings had been smashed, streets reduced to rubble, and civilians struggled among the remains. Germany was occupied by the victorious powers, but we still had to decide how that occupation would work. Our task was not merely to punish the Nazi leadership. We had to prevent another German war while somehow creating a stable country from the wreckage Hitler had left behind.

Meeting Stalin for the First Time

I had never met Joseph Stalin before Potsdam. Roosevelt had dealt with him personally at Tehran and Yalta, but I inherited that relationship when I became President. Stalin was calm, deliberate, and accustomed to negotiating from strength. His armies occupied much of Eastern Europe. I intended to deal with him firmly. The Soviet Union had made an enormous contribution to defeating Germany, but I believed agreements among allies had to mean something, especially the promises concerning Poland and political freedom in liberated Europe.

What Should Become of Germany?

We agreed that Germany would remain divided into American, British, Soviet, and French occupation zones. We also agreed on major goals including demilitarization, denazification, democratization, and the prosecution of war criminals. The Nazi state had to be dismantled completely. But beneath these areas of agreement was a growing argument about Germany's economic future. How much industry should remain? How much should be removed? Could Germany be rebuilt without once again becoming dangerous? Those questions would become increasingly important as the Soviet and Western occupation zones began developing differently.

Stalin Wants Reparations

Stalin wanted Germany to pay heavily for the destruction it had caused. I understood why. The Soviet Union had suffered staggering losses, and German forces had destroyed cities, farms, factories, and infrastructure across Soviet territory. But the United States and Britain did not want reparations handled in a way that would permanently cripple Germany's economy. We eventually reached a compromise under which each occupying power would primarily take reparations from its own zone, with additional arrangements allowing the Soviets to receive some industrial equipment from the Western zones.

Poland Changes Shape

Poland remained another major dispute. Its borders were being dramatically shifted westward. The Soviet Union retained large areas of eastern Poland, while Poland received former German territories in the west, with the Oder and Western Neisse rivers serving as the provisional western boundary pending a final peace settlement. Millions of Germans were subsequently expelled or fled from territories transferred to Poland and other Eastern European states. At the same time, I remained concerned about whether Poland would receive the genuinely representative government and free elections promised at Yalta.

Churchill Disappears from the Conference

Then something happened that demonstrated democracy in its plainest form. Britain held a general election while we were meeting. Churchill left Potsdam temporarily to learn the results, expecting that he might return. He did not. The British people had voted his Conservative government out of office. Clement Attlee, the Labour leader, became Prime Minister and returned to the conference in Churchill's place. In a matter of months, Stalin had watched Roosevelt die and Churchill lose office. Of the three great leaders who had met at Yalta, Stalin was the only one still sitting in power at Potsdam.

News from New Mexico

I also arrived at Potsdam carrying a secret Stalin was not supposed to know in detail. On July 16, before the conference formally opened, American scientists successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb in New Mexico. I received the news while at Potsdam. On July 24, I casually told Stalin that the United States possessed a new weapon of unusual destructive force. He showed little surprise and simply expressed hope that we would make good use of it against Japan. What I did not know was that Soviet intelligence had already provided Stalin with information about the Manhattan Project.

Japan Still Had to Be Defeated

Although Germany was finished, Japan continued fighting. On July 26, the United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan's unconditional surrender and warning of "prompt and utter destruction" if it refused. The Soviet Union was not then a signatory because it had not yet entered the Pacific war against Japan. Behind our discussions about Europe stood another enormous question: how would the war against Japan end, and what role would the Soviet Union play afterward?

Allies at the Table, Rivals Beneath It

Potsdam ended on August 2, 1945. We had reached agreements, but I left Germany knowing that the wartime partnership was changing rapidly. Stalin wanted security, reparations, and governments friendly to Moscow along the Soviet frontier. We wanted stability as well, but we increasingly believed that Soviet actions were restricting the independence of Eastern European nations. Both sides were beginning to look beyond the defeated Axis powers and toward each other.

Victory Over Japan Changes the Balance of Power - Told by Joseph Stalin

When Japan announced its surrender in August 1945, the greatest war in history was finally coming to an end. Germany had already been destroyed, and now the last major Axis power was defeated. Americans celebrated. Soviet soldiers celebrated. People across the world hoped peace had arrived. Yet I understood that something else had happened as well. The common enemies that had forced the Soviet Union, United States, and Britain into their strange wartime partnership were gone. We had defeated our enemies together. Now we would discover whether we could live with one another without them.

A Promise Made at Yalta

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, I had promised Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan within two or three months after Germany surrendered. In exchange, the Soviets were promised important concessions in East Asia, including southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, while Soviet interests concerning certain ports and railways were also recognized. Germany surrendered in May. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The next day, our forces launched a massive offensive against Japanese forces in Manchuria.

The Red Army Strikes in Asia

The Japanese Kwantung Army had occupied Manchuria for years and was once considered one of Japan's strongest military formations. Soviet forces attacked from several directions in what became the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. Our armies moved rapidly across enormous distances, using tanks, artillery, aircraft, and experienced troops transferred from the European war. Japanese resistance collapsed quickly in many areas. Soviet forces advanced through Manchuria and into areas of Korea while also attacking Japanese positions on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

America Reveals a Terrible New Weapon

But another development changed the world even more dramatically. On August 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9, another atomic bomb destroyed much of Nagasaki. I had already learned through Soviet intelligence that the Americans were developing an atomic weapon, but its successful use demonstrated that the United States now possessed a military capability no other country yet had. The Soviet Union had enormous armies. The Americans had the atomic bomb. The balance of power had suddenly acquired an entirely new dimension.

Japan Surrenders

On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan would accept surrender, and the formal documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri on September 2. Historians continue to debate the relative importance of the atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war, Japan's deteriorating military position, and other factors in producing the surrender. What was beyond dispute was that the war was finished. For the first time since the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Moscow, Washington, and London no longer had a powerful common enemy requiring their military cooperation.

Europe Was Exhausted

The old European powers emerged from the war badly weakened. Britain had been victorious, but six years of warfare had strained its economy and resources. France had endured defeat and occupation before liberation. Germany was ruined and divided into occupation zones. Italy had been defeated. Cities, factories, railroads, bridges, farms, and homes across Europe had been destroyed. Millions of people were dead or displaced. The European states that had dominated international politics for centuries no longer possessed the strength they once had.

Two Giants Remain Standing

The United States emerged in a very different condition. Its homeland had escaped the widespread destruction suffered in Europe and Asia, and its factories had produced weapons and supplies on an extraordinary scale. It possessed enormous naval and air forces, tremendous economic power, and, temporarily, the world's only atomic bombs. The Soviet Union had suffered catastrophic destruction, but the Red Army occupied territory from eastern Germany deep into Eastern Europe. We had paid an enormous price for victory, yet we had emerged as one of the world's two dominant military powers.

The Map Became Power

Armies do not simply disappear when wars end. American and British forces occupied much of Western Europe, while Soviet forces stood across much of Eastern and Central Europe. Those military positions influenced the governments that followed. I wanted states along the Soviet Union's western border that would never again serve as corridors for invasion. Washington increasingly wanted European governments able to make political choices without Soviet domination. Both sides spoke of security, but we were beginning to define security in ways that collided with one another.

A Vacuum Across the World

The weakening of the European empires created opportunities and dangers far beyond Germany. Colonial independence movements were growing in Asia, the Middle East, and eventually Africa. Germany and Japan had been defeated, while Britain and France could no longer exercise global power as easily as before. Into that changing world stepped the United States and the Soviet Union, each possessing different political systems, economic ideas, military power, and visions of the future.

The Alliance Loses Its Purpose

We had cooperated because Hitler threatened us all. We continued cooperating against Japan because the war had not yet ended. But after September 1945, what enemy remained powerful enough to hold our alliance together? There was none. Instead, Washington looked toward Soviet forces in Eastern Europe, and Moscow looked toward American economic strength, military bases, and atomic weapons. Yesterday's allies began studying one another as possible future opponents.

My Name is George F. Kennan: The Diplomat Who Helped Define the Cold War

I spent much of my life trying to understand Russia, diplomacy, and the dangerous relationship between great powers. I was born on February 16, 1904, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My mother died shortly after my birth, and my childhood was marked by a certain loneliness that remained part of my character. I was more comfortable with books, ideas, and careful observation than with crowds. After studying at Princeton University, I entered the United States Foreign Service in 1926. I could not have known then that my study of Russia would eventually place me near the center of America's confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Learning to Understand Russia

The Foreign Service sent me to Europe, and I eventually devoted myself to studying Russian language, history, and culture. This was important because diplomacy requires more than translating words. One must understand how another nation remembers its past, fears its enemies, and views its place in the world. When the United States formally established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933, I accompanied the first American ambassador, William C. Bullitt, to Moscow. There I observed Joseph Stalin's Soviet system at close range and became increasingly skeptical of the possibility of easy cooperation between our governments.

Watching Stalin's Soviet Union

Moscow in the 1930s taught me that Soviet behavior could not be understood simply by listening to official statements. Stalin was consolidating power while purges, arrests, and political terror transformed Soviet society. The Communist government viewed much of the outside world through suspicion and ideological hostility. Yet Russia also carried older fears created by centuries of invasion and insecurity. I came to believe Soviet foreign policy was shaped by a combination of Communist ideology, Russian history, and the leadership's determination to preserve its own power.

War and an Uncomfortable Alliance

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the United States and Soviet Union eventually found themselves fighting the same enemy. This was a military necessity, not evidence that our political differences had disappeared. I served in several diplomatic posts during the war and returned to Moscow in 1944 as deputy chief of mission at the American embassy. I watched the wartime alliance approach victory while wondering what would happen once Hitler was gone. The common enemy had concealed profound disagreements. Victory would soon expose them.

The Alliance Begins to Break

By 1945, those disagreements were becoming impossible to ignore. Soviet armies occupied much of Eastern Europe, and Stalin intended to ensure that governments along the Soviet frontier would not threaten Moscow. American leaders increasingly expected liberated countries to have greater political independence and meaningful elections. Each side believed it possessed legitimate security interests. Each increasingly suspected the other of using those interests as an excuse for expansion. Diplomacy became more difficult because the same events could appear defensive from Moscow and aggressive from Washington.

The Long Telegram

In February 1946, the State Department asked our embassy in Moscow to explain Soviet behavior. I responded with what became known as the Long Telegram—more than 5,000 words attempting to describe how I believed Soviet leaders viewed the world. I argued that the Kremlin saw permanent tension with capitalist nations as useful and would test opportunities to expand its influence. But I did not believe the Soviet Union was eager to launch a reckless war. Soviet power, I argued, could be resisted through patience, firmness, political strength, and confidence in our own institutions.

The Idea of Containment

The following year, I published an article anonymously under the name "X" that developed these ideas further. The policy became known as containment. The essential idea was not that American armies should fight communism everywhere. Rather, the United States should prevent Soviet power from expanding into strategically important areas while allowing the weaknesses within the Soviet system to work over time. I believed the struggle would be long, but I did not believe it required a third world war. The strongest answer to Soviet pressure was a stable, prosperous, confident Western world.

When My Idea Became Something Larger

Containment quickly became one of the central ideas of American Cold War policy, but governments have a habit of taking ideas beyond the intentions of the people who first proposed them. I became concerned as containment grew increasingly associated with military commitments around the world. I supported resisting important Soviet advances, but I did not believe every Communist movement was controlled from Moscow or that every distant conflict represented the same threat. Geography, history, nationalism, and local circumstances mattered. Foreign policy required discrimination, not simply a single answer applied everywhere.

Diplomat, Critic, and Historian

I later helped establish the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and briefly served as American ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952. My relationship with American foreign policy became complicated because I increasingly criticized aspects of the Cold War strategy I had helped inspire. I opposed excessive reliance on nuclear weapons and questioned several later American military policies. Eventually I turned much of my attention toward history, teaching, and writing at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. I lived long enough to see the Soviet Union itself disappear in 1991.

Kennan's Long Telegram: Trying to Understand Stalin - Told by George F. Kennan

In February 1946, I sat in Moscow watching the wartime partnership between the United States and Soviet Union deteriorate with remarkable speed. American officials wanted to know why Joseph Stalin seemed unwilling to cooperate in building the postwar world we had imagined. Why was Soviet influence tightening across Eastern Europe? Why did Moscow speak about capitalism as though conflict remained inevitable? Washington asked our embassy for an explanation. I answered with a telegram of more than 5,000 words. I did not know it then, but that message would become one of the most influential American diplomatic documents of the early Cold War.

Years of Watching the Soviet Union

I had spent years studying Russia—its language, history, culture, and government. I had served in Moscow during the 1930s and returned during the Second World War. I admired much about Russian culture and understood the terrible sacrifices made by the Soviet people against Nazi Germany. But admiration for a people should never prevent a diplomat from examining their government carefully. Stalin's government was secretive, authoritarian, and deeply suspicious of the outside world. To understand its foreign policy, I believed Americans first had to understand how Soviet leaders viewed themselves and us.

Stalin's Speech Raises Questions

On February 9, 1946, Stalin delivered an election speech in Moscow discussing capitalism, war, and Soviet industrial development. He argued from Marxist-Leninist ideas that capitalist economic systems produced rivalries that could lead to war. American officials were alarmed by the tone. The Treasury Department soon asked the American embassy why the Soviets were resisting participation in institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. I believed the answer required far more than a few sentences about economics.

I Begin the Long Telegram

On February 22, I sent my response to Washington. It contained more than 5,000 words divided into sections examining Soviet beliefs, policies, and vulnerabilities. Diplomats are not generally encouraged to send essays disguised as telegrams, but this problem could not be explained briefly. I argued that Soviet behavior was rooted partly in Communist ideology and partly in older Russian traditions of insecurity. The Kremlin, in my view, saw the outside world as fundamentally hostile and used that supposed hostility to justify its own political control.

How I Believed Stalin Saw the World

I argued that Soviet leaders believed peaceful capitalist societies and the Communist system were ultimately in conflict. This did not mean Stalin wanted an immediate military war with the United States. That distinction was essential. Soviet leaders could be cautious. They could retreat when confronted by determined resistance. But they would probe for weakness, expand influence when opportunities appeared, and use Communist parties and sympathetic organizations abroad to advance Soviet interests.

Not Hitler's Germany

This was precisely why I did not believe we should respond with panic. Nazi Germany had deliberately gambled on enormous military wars and rapid conquest. Stalin's Soviet Union behaved differently. I believed Soviet power was patient and opportunistic rather than recklessly adventurous. If Moscow encountered weakness, it might advance. If it encountered strong and determined opposition, it could adjust. Therefore, America did not need to choose between surrender and immediate war. There was another possibility: patient resistance.

The Importance of American Strength

The most important battlefield, as I saw it, was not necessarily a battlefield at all. If the United States maintained strong institutions, a healthy economy, political confidence, and cooperation with other stable nations, Soviet pressure could be resisted without starting another world war. Moscow benefited from disorder, division, and fear. Therefore, one of America's strongest responses was simply to make democratic society work well enough that Communist promises became less attractive.

The Telegram Reaches Washington

My message circulated rapidly through the State Department, military circles, and the Truman administration. Copies were read by officials trying to understand why the wartime alliance had deteriorated so quickly. I had provided them with an explanation that seemed to fit what they were witnessing in Poland, Eastern Europe, Germany, and Soviet diplomacy. Suddenly, a telegram written from Moscow was helping shape how American policymakers interpreted Stalin's actions.

An Idea That Would Become Containment

I had not yet produced a complete blueprint for every American Cold War policy. Nor did I believe the United States should confront every Communist movement everywhere with military force. My argument was more selective. Soviet expansion should be met with firm, patient resistance at important points where vital interests were threatened. Over time, I believed the internal weaknesses of the Soviet system could limit its power. The United States needed endurance more than recklessness.

By 1947, the Wartime Alliance Is Over - Told by Kennan, Stalin, and Churchill

Churchill: "Consider how quickly the world changed. In May 1945, British, American, and Soviet soldiers were celebrating the defeat of Hitler. Our armies had fought the same enemy, our leaders had met around the same tables, and our nations had paid an enormous price for victory. Yet the alliance had always depended upon necessity. Once Nazi Germany and then Japan were defeated, the question that had been waiting beneath the surface returned: what sort of Europe would replace the dictatorships and destruction of the war?"

Stalin: "You speak as though Soviet actions appeared without cause. My country had been invaded from the west repeatedly, and the German invasion of 1941 brought destruction on a scale Britain and America did not experience at home. The Soviet Union required security. I wanted governments along our western frontier that would not permit their territory to become a road for another invasion. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the other countries near us could not, from my perspective, be separated from the question of Soviet survival."

Security or Expansion?

Kennan: "And there lay the difficulty. What Moscow called security increasingly appeared in Washington as expansion. Communist-dominated governments were gaining control across Eastern Europe, while political opponents faced restrictions, intimidation, arrests, and removal from power. American officials began asking whether Stalin intended merely to protect Soviet borders or to extend Soviet political influence whenever opportunities arose. From my experience in Moscow, I concluded that Soviet pressure would continue where it encountered little effective resistance."

Stalin: "And what did Moscow see when it looked westward? The United States emerged from the war with tremendous industrial strength, enormous armed forces, worldwide economic influence, and the atomic bomb. American leaders spoke of an open international economy and representative government, but Soviet officials could see that American power stood behind those ideas. You feared Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. We feared an American-led capitalist world powerful enough to surround and pressure the Soviet Union."

Churchill Sounds the Alarm

Churchill: "By March 1946, I believed the division of Europe could no longer be disguised with polite diplomatic language. At Fulton, Missouri, I declared that an 'iron curtain' had descended across the continent. I was describing what I believed had already occurred: governments throughout Eastern Europe were coming increasingly under Moscow's control. I called for close cooperation between Britain, the United States, and other democracies. Stalin regarded my speech as hostile. I regarded silence as considerably more dangerous."

Stalin: "I answered that speech sharply because I regarded Churchill's call for Anglo-American cooperation against Soviet influence as threatening. The Soviet Union had sacrificed enormously to defeat Germany, and now Western leaders spoke as though the presence of our armies in Eastern Europe made us the new enemy. From Moscow, Churchill's words sounded less like a defense of peace than the beginning of an organized political front against the Soviet Union."

Washington Changes Its Thinking

Kennan: "The change inside Washington was becoming unmistakable. When I sent the Long Telegram from Moscow in February 1946, I argued that Soviet leadership viewed long-term conflict with the capitalist world as unavoidable and would exploit opportunities to expand its influence. I did not recommend another world war. Quite the opposite. I believed Soviet power was cautious enough to be resisted through patient, firm opposition. By 1947, the idea that Soviet expansion must be contained was becoming increasingly influential in American policy."

Churchill: "And events appeared to strengthen that argument. The dispute was no longer simply about Stalin's intentions. Europe was physically and economically exhausted. Germany remained occupied and divided. Britain was struggling under the enormous economic burden left by the war. France and Italy faced political uncertainty, while Greece was caught in a civil war and Turkey faced Soviet pressure over strategic questions. The weakness left by six years of destruction created opportunities for political movements and outside powers alike."

Stalin Sees an American Challenge

Stalin: "Do not imagine that only the West felt surrounded. The Americans possessed economic resources beyond anything Europe could match. Washington increasingly involved itself in European affairs instead of returning to the relative detachment that had followed the First World War. American money, American political influence, American military strength, and the American atomic monopoly all mattered. Soviet leaders could reasonably conclude that the United States intended to organize much of the non-Communist world around itself."

Kennan: "That perception was part of the dangerous cycle developing between us. Soviet actions frightened Western governments, causing them to cooperate more closely with Washington. That Western cooperation then frightened Moscow, encouraging Stalin to strengthen Soviet control over Eastern Europe. Each side increasingly interpreted the other's defensive measures as evidence of offensive intentions. Fear produced action, action produced more fear, and the wartime alliance disappeared piece by piece."

Europe Divides

Churchill: "Look at the map by 1947 and you can see the outlines of the new struggle. Soviet influence dominated much of Eastern Europe. Western European governments remained outside Moscow's control and increasingly looked toward the United States for assistance. Germany itself was divided into occupation zones. There was not yet a Berlin Wall, NATO, or Warsaw Pact, but the political division from which those later developments would grow was already visible."

Stalin: "There had been no declaration of war between us. Soviet and American armies were not exchanging artillery fire across Europe. Ambassadors still met, governments still negotiated, and both sides participated in the United Nations. Yet cooperation no longer rested upon trust. We studied one another's military strength, political intentions, economic policies, and alliances. The former partner had become the potential opponent."

The Cold War Takes Shape

Kennan: "That is why 1947 matters. In less than two years, the international system had been transformed. The alliance that defeated Hitler had given way to a rivalry centered increasingly upon two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. America believed Soviet expansion had to be resisted. Moscow believed growing American influence threatened Soviet security and Communist power. Europe was separating into competing political and economic spheres."

Churchill: "There was no single gunshot that announced the beginning of the Cold War. No army crossed a frontier on one particular morning and declared that the former alliance was finished. Instead, it emerged from Poland, Germany, Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, American concerns about Communist expansion, economic competition, military power, ideological hostility, and years of accumulated suspicion. In 1945, we stood together over the ruins of Hitler's empire. By 1947, we were looking across those same ruins at one another. The Second World War was over, but the peace had already produced another great struggle."